Books

Book 407: Lost In A Good Book (Thursday Next #2) – Jasper Fforde

This one, like The Eyre Affair, has been on my shelf for quite some time. I picked it up in July of last year, but I have no recollection of where, but that’s neither here, nor there. What really matters is that the series has DEFINITELY picked up and the only reason it took me a week to read it is because I flew 1,200+ miles (MA to NC to MA) and drove 900+ (All over NC).

I’m not sure if this will be my last read for 2015, but if it is I’m okay with that. I’m already planning to dive right into The Well of Lost Plots, but I’m not sure if I’ll want to go right into Something Rotten or if I should go ahead and read an advance copy of a book I have for January. I also really want to read a set of books I got for Christmas. I guess it’s a good thing I have too many choices right?

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Books

Book 406: The Eyre Affair (Thursday Next #1) – Jasper Fforde

I wanted to love this a lot more than I did, but that being said I did really enjoy it. I picked this one up back in May of last year at the bi-annual Friends of the Library book sale. I then almost immediately picked up Lost In A Good Book and even more recently (as in this past weekend), picked up the next three in the Thursday Next series: The Well of Lost PlotsSomething Rotten and First Among Sequels! Friends have told me that the series get betters and I’m clearly hoping that happens as I’ve bought through the fifth book in the series.

I think where I struggled with getting into this one was the world building. The world of Thursday Next is a fascinating place full of mystery, technology and a love of literature I would jump into in a heartbeat, war and all.

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ARC, Books

Book 402: Prejudice & Pride – Lynn Messina

I’m not sure where to put this one. It agitated me from the beginning because of its portrayal of fundraising professionals (more on that later), but Messina’s interpretation of Austen’s wit may or may not have made up for that (I’m still trying to determine that for sure).

We all know I love some Jane Austen fan-fiction and I just got a new Wuthering Heights fan-fiction novel so when the publicist* for the novel reached out to me with a copy** of this novel mentioning the upcoming Curtis Sittenfeld adaptation, Eligible, for The Austen Project, I knew I had to say yes. I’m still not sure about the cover because it’s just a bit too disjointed for me, but you know what they say about not judging a book by its cover right?

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Books

Book 400: The Dante Club – Matthew Pearl

And another TBR bites the dust! This book has been hanging out on my bookshelves since December of 2012 when I picked it up at one of my favorite used bookstores, Edward McKay, back in NC. More importantly, it is the 26th book from my TBR shelves this year. How awesome is that? That’s more than 1/3 of all the books I’ve read this year and I am incredibly happy and proud of that number.

I don’t know why I put off reading The Dante Club for so long. Maybe it was in some sort of effort to actually read all of Dante’s Divine Comedy before I read it, but that obviously hasn’t happened. The other thing that has left me wondering since I finished it , and honestly since I started it, is I can’t quite put my finger on why I didn’t enjoy this book as much as I feel I should have.

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Books

Book 393: Sense & Sensibility (Marvel Illustrated) – Nancy Butler and Sonny Liew

I have finally made up for lost time. The downside is I’ve read them all now 🙁 The upside is that I now want to turn around and re-read them, but I will wait a bit. It’s not like I don’t have a full shelf of Austen fan-fiction waiting on me, or that I still get to read Pride and Prejudice for Jane Austen Book Group this year.

With Marvel Illustrated’s Jane Austen books, this was the third and final illustration style. I’m not sure which is my favorite because they were all unique and each had their own drawbacks, so maybe I don’t need to pick one. I will say Marvel Illustrated and Butler got it right with all of the covers except Northanger Abbey. Which is even stranger because the cover I like the most, from Sense & Sensibility doesn’t look like the illustration style inside!? It probably doesn’t hurt that the illustration cover for #4 makes me think of Wuthering Heights instead, or at least the idea of the Brontë sisters on the moors. The rest of the covers are more representative of Liew’s illustration style.

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