Tag: Historical Fiction

Books

Book 735: The Jane Austen Society – Natalie Jenner

Geoff W

Talk about a change of pace! I kept putting this off when it came up from my library. I was loving all the MM romance and young adult books I’ve been reading, but I finally just said okay. It was 100% worth it to slow down and take the village life pace to read this and not rush through it like some of the high-intensity romances I’ve read recently.

I’m pretty sure I stumbled across this on bookstagram and new I’d get to it eventually. I don’t discriminate between books inspired by Austen’s works, life or legacy—they’re all fair game to me and each new one I read adds a new dimension to my understanding/enjoyment of Austen and her continued impact on society.

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Books

Book 691: The Sealed Letter – Emma Donoghue

Geoff W

A few months ago I went through my bookshelves and made a couple of piles of books. The only qualifications were that they had to be on my shelves for a while (this has been on my shelves since April 2014) and that they probably be a quick read. This one falls somewhere in the middle of the pack of Donoghue’s books that I’ve read. It’s definitely not as good as Room or Slammerkin, but I do think it’s a little better than Hood, mostly because Donoghue really excels at historical fiction.

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ARC, Books

Book 686: Enter the Aardvark – Jessica Anthony

Geoff W

This was a weird ass novel. I should’ve known it by the title when I requested it from NetGalley, but it was even weirder than I expected.* I’m sure I requested it because the blurb mentioned the modern protagonist was in deep denial about his sexuality, but that’s all I remember the rest was a weird wonderful surprise as I read it.

This is another dual narrative novel, authors really love those lately, with one portion taking place in modern America and the other taking place in the late 19th century England, and what ties the two together is a preserved Aardvark that arrives/is created at the most inconvenient time.

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Books

Book 685: A Gay Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum – Bert Shrader

Geoff W

This has been sitting on my shelf for almost three years ever since I read the Rolling Stones’ article “How One Publisher is Rescuing 1970s Gay Porn Paperbacks”. I finally got around to this as I was looking at the shorter books already on my shelves. And after the emotional drain that was Ethan Frome I thought I should try and get a little further away and a smutty gay porn novel from the 1960s checked all the boxes plus some.

Let’s just say, not a lot has changed in erotica novels. I mean sure the large portion of MM romance/erotica novels are now written by women, but the few that I know for a fact were written by men are pretty damn similar to this one. The big things that have changed is that in general the toxic masculinity and hetero-toxicity in general seem to have been tone down in the more recent books and there are some overt racist scenes and comments sprinkled throughout the novel that were horrible.

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Books

Book 677: Persuasion – Jane Austen

Geoff W

Apparently I revisit Jane Austen’s Persuasion (May 2015 response) every 5-6 years. Last time I read it was when some friends and I did a Jane Austen Book Club back in 2015.

I decided to re-read it again while on vacation after reading the Austen Addicts trilogy (A Weekend with Mr. Darcy, Dreaming of Mr. Darcy, and Mr. Darcy Forever) by Virginia Connelly, who by all measures appears to be slightly obsessed with it—or at least co-obsessed with it and Pride and Prejudice. The further I read in Connelly’s trilogy the more I wanted to go back and read the originals again. I guess that’s a sign of a good referential nod right?

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