Tag: United Kingdom

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 670: A Weekend with Mr. Darcy (Austen Addicts #1) – Victoria Connelly

Geoff W

Hello, TBR pile, it’s been a long time. I picked this e-book up EIGHT YEARS AGO. Who knows why I didn’t read it that summer, but I finally read it and thoroughly enjoyed it.

When I picked up the book, there were only three books in Connelly’s Austen Addicts series, but since then it’s increased to six. I’m not sure I’ll read past Mr. Darcy Forever since it looks like Connelly may have switched publishers and those last three covers are frightful, but never say never right? It’s also probably a good thing I didn’t read it eight years ago when I had more time day-to-day because Connelly introduced me to the Republic of Pemberley, a Jane Austen message board/forum. I did a cursory look over it and yeah, I definitely would’ve gotten lost in that quagmire!

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Books

Book 668: Charlotte Brontë Before Jane Eyre – Glynnis Fawkes

Geoff W

I stumbled across this illustrated biography of Charlotte Brontë after one of my google alerts (“Boston” and “Brontë”) alerted me to this article in Seven Days, Vermont’s Independent Voice publication. I’ve been meaning to read an actual Brontë biography forever really, but specifically since the 2017 release of To Walk Invisible on PBS and my visit to the Parsonage in 2018.

I read The Mother of the Brontës last year which covered a good portion of this and some of the inspired works cover similar time periods because they were all so young. The downside of the Brontës and Austen are how short their lives were and we can only glean so much from the few letters and drafts of their works that exist, but there are instances where a little creative license and ingenuity can make these well known facts and situations seem new again. And that is the case with this Fawkes work.

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Book 667: Firewall – Eugenia Lovett West

Geoff W

I’m not going to lie, when I read the first line of this one I got super nervous. The last time I read a book from a non-major publishing company that was set in Boston, I was VERY disappointed. So it was a good thing I was pleasantly surprised by this one—especially as it came from the same publicity company!*

Firewall is actually the third in the Emma Streat mystery series and I wouldn’t usually take on a book mid-series. However, West’s story of not getting published until she was in her 70s and then again in her 90s (Concord Monitor News) was intriguing and the blurb for this was just interesting enough to tempt me.

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ARC, Books

Book 658: The Children of Harvey Milk – Andrew Reynolds

Geoff W

I’m not sure how I stumbled across this one, but when I did back in May I requested a copy from the publisher and they kindly obliged.* I was interested because of the subject matter, but also because Reynolds is based at UNC Chapel Hill (my undergrad) and his name rang a bell because he’d chaired the Sexuality Studies program there at some point in the recent past. And then with my master’s degree focusing on the Civil Partnership Act (2014) in the UK, of course I was going to want to read this book and see what he had to say.

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