Books

Book 224: Seating Arrangements – Maggie Shipstead

For a book that has this much hype I expected it to have a lot more impact upon completion. Perhaps I just didn’t understand it and the impact’s subtlety was lost on me. I will say re-reading the last line again increased the impact, but I honestly thought the denouement would be much more dramatic and or conclusive rather than sort of wishy-washy-ing its way to a finale.

Don’t get me wrong, this was not a bad book, it was incredibly well written and the number of lines that made me laugh out loud or that I had to re-read because of how beautiful written they were far outnumbered the issues I had with the book. What got me though is how little action there was in the book. It felt almost like a set of actions stuck on repeat. and that just didn’t do it for me. Thankfully the writing was so great that it pushed the story forward, but I’m still not sure about most of the hype for the book.

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Books

Book 223: The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Brontë – Syrie James

After thoroughly enjoying The Missing Manuscript of Jane Austen and The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen, it will come as no surprise that I enjoyed this book as well! It also doesn’t hurt that I always forget how much I love the Brontës when I’m not reading about them and then as soon as I start reading about them I quickly fall back in love with them. I’m super excited that I’ve got Wuthering Heights to re-read again this year!

The only other Brontë fan-fiction I’ve read was Becoming Jane Eyre in February of last year. I remember enjoying it and of course there were overlaps with this book, as this book covers a lot broader swath of time than the last. This book covers a long period of time and through flashbacks even includes a lot of the Brontës’ youth. It is noteworthy, although not shocking at all, that there are many similarities in writing style and stories in the two books. We know a lot more about the Brontë siblings than we know about say Austen or the more reclusive female writers.

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Books

Book 221: The Darcys and the Bingleys – Marsha Altman

Nearly two full years later I finally got around to reading The Darcys and the Bingleys, and thankfully it was not at ALL what I expected. I mean it does help that Elizabeth and Darcy have a son named Geoffrey in this novel, so OF COURSE it’s going to get my vote! The blurb made me think this book might be more of a raunchy sequel to Pride and Prejudice, thankfully it was nowhere near as bad as I thought it might be. As this book has been on my bookshelf since December 2011, it counts as a bonus book for my 2013 Mount TBR reading challenge.

If I went with just what the back cover says (it’s actually factually wrong, which I find fascinating – I guess the book was edited after the writing of the blurb and it was not kept updated) I would’ve honestly believed this to be a raunchy sequel. It talks about Darcy and Bingley discovering the Kama Sutra and about Elizabeth and Jane eventually discovering it. Although this is true and all four of them are aware of the book and there are references to it here and there throughout the story, it is not the primary plot device. It only serves to get us through the wedding nights and then as a humorous interloper occasionally. I felt this novel could’ve been better without this crutch.

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Books

Book 220: The Missing Manuscript of Jane Austen – Syrie James

What a fun novel! I am so glad I stumbled across this novel and I cannot wait to read more of Syrie James’ works. I can’t remember where I first read about it or why I thought I had to read it, but I checked it out of the library last month and have waited patiently to read it as I trekked through Les Misérables I once again, however, tricked myself into not knowing ANYTHING about the book and did not realize that James wrote a novel in a novel so that was pleasantly unexpected.

I think what I enjoyed most about this novel was the contrast between the missing manuscript The Stanhopes and the modern story of those who find the manuscript. The two novels were intertwined enough to make it interesting, but not so much to make it confusing (I’m looking at you Ms. Atwood! [Even though I still love you and The Blind Assassin was phenomenal]).

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Book Group, Books

Book 219: Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen

It will not be a surprise to those of you who have followed this blog for sometime that I was able to maneuver a second read of Jane Austen into my calendar this year. It just happened to be the same I read back in January. If you really want a laugh, go read my fan-boy love letter to Austen for that response here. I’ve tried to rein it in a bit for this response, but let’s face it that’s not really going to happen.

As I said back in January, very little can be added to the conversation that hasn’t been said. But EVERY single re-read brings something different to light. For instance this time the one scene that particularly stood out to me was when Lydia and her friends made a young male character dress in drag. I mean really? Weren’t they all prim and proper back then? It just made me laugh at the whimsical way in which Austen described it and everyone partook of the action.

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