Thanks to J. Kaye's Book Blog I'm going to start posting what I'm reading this week and what I've recently finished.
Finished
North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell is a classic novel that I read for my Prose By Women Writers class. This is the kind of book I typically enjoy though (I'm a Jane Eyre fanatic) so it was more fun than work for me. My favorite aspect of the book is that it allowed the working class to speak for themselves, a rarity in Victorian literature. Emma: A Victorian Romance Volume One by Kaoru Mori is a great graphic novel that I found out about last week. I promptly purchased Volumes One and Three from Daydream Comics in Iowa City, they unfortunately didn't have Volume Two. The graphic novel is based in Victorian London and is about a romance between a male of the gentry and a maid. Mori does an amazing job capturing several aspects of Victorian society, I will be posting a review this week.
And Only to Deceive by Tasha Alexander is a mystery novel that I could not put down, although to be fair I was reading it during Dewey's Readathon. It is a Victorian mystery about a woman who falls in love with her husband after his death... or is he really dead? I will be posting a review this week.
Currently Reading Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters by Jane Austen and Ben H. Winters. I just finished Sense and Sensibility for class so I'm excited for this modern spin.
Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon is a Victorian sensation novel
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie is a mystery I'm reading for Barnes and Noble's Literature By Women Book Club.
This weeks participants in Weekly Geeks were asked to explore book recommendations. Becky wrote:
So your assignment this week, if you choose to play along, is to ask your readers for recommendations. Choose a genre--any genre--and ask for recommendations. You can be as general or as specific as you like. Consider it as an "I'm looking for..."
The second part of the assignment is to write a list of recommendations and share them with your readers. Choose a genre--any genre--and share your list of favorites. I think of this as "If you're looking for..." Here are just a few of the great responses we got...
Bunny from Bookosaurus Rex joined us for the first time (Welcome to Weekly Geeks, Bunny!). She asked readers for recommendations of Victorian literature- 'as in, something actually written during and set in the Victorian era' Her list of favorite books with a Victorian setting includes: Tipping the Velvet AND Fingersmith...both by Sarah Waters, The Gemma Doyle Trilogy by Libby Bray, and The Ruby in the Smoke by Phillip Pullman.
Megan from Leafing Through Life loves historical fiction. She wants to explore an historical fiction sub-genre involving kings and queens and knights and court intrigues and would love your recommendations. In exchange, she shared some of her five star historical fiction books including: Sweetsmoke by David Fuller, A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly, and The True Story of Hansel and Gretel by Louise Murphy.
Bernadette at Reactions to Reading is looking for some audio-book recommendations. She writes:
Listened to anything lately that has left you breathless? speechless? teary? joyful? bent over with laughter? If so, let me know. Tell me what book you listened to and what you loved about the experience (if you can please tell me the name of the book, author and narrator as there are often different narrators of the same book and I want to share your exact experience if I can). Erotic Horizon is an eclectic reader looking for recommendations for good crime fiction, M/M, Urban Fantasy and Paranormal. She also writes that although self-help is not her favorite thing to read, she is 'open to reading books that give you a chance to open you inner eyes and rethink just about everything of your life or the people who revolves around you. Also world folklore would be nice as well.'
Trisha at Eclectic/Eccentric gave us some great recommendations for non fiction, personal essays and short stories including Stiff by Mary Roach, Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs, The Latin Deli by Judith Ortiz Cofer. In return she looking for good Contemporary Literary Fiction...'stories published in the last fifteen years or so that aren't YAL, SFF, non-fiction, romance, etc.'
This is only a small smattering of responses to this week's Weekly Geeks. It is never too late to join in!
Okay I have recently received a lot of awards, and unfortunately have not been on top of award posts. This means that I have gotten a few awards that I am not quite sure where they came from. Also, since I have gotten so many awards at once I'm not going to be passing them onto 30 gagillion blogs because that would mean I would have to go out and find blogs I don't actually read, and then give them awards. Since I don't want to do that I will just pass on these awards to blogs I truly love and feel deserve them. So the list...
I received the Silver Lining Award from my good friend Jade at Chasing Empty Pavements. As I understand from her post, this award means that I always try to look at the upside of things. It's pretty amazing I got this award, because I was known as the resident debbie downer at my high school when I was about 15. But hey, what can you expect from a 15 year old? I have five more years of wisdom now! Thanks for this award!
I am now going to pass this award on to Displaced English Major, Southern City Mysteries, Helen Loves Books, and Confessions and Ramblings of a Muse in the Fog.
The next award I received was from a blog I truly respect (not that I don't respect the others), A Guy's Moleskine Notebook. This reading journal is a daily go to for me and I know I can always depend on it for honest reviews and musings that have a lot of heart.
I am going to give this award to Dyxie Land: Gay/Straight Take on Nothing, Books and Movies, and Laura's Reviews. I realize some of you have probably gotten this award before, it circulates quite a bit (this is my second time) so sorry about that. But I wanted to give you all something!
Laura at Reading and Rooibos gave me the Kreativ Blogger award. I only recently discovered her blog but it has quickly become a favorite of mine. For this award I am supposed to list seven things about myself... but more on that later. Thanks Laura!
I am giving this award to A Guy's Moleskine Notebook, The Book Whisperer, Bookmarked!, and A Bookish Way of Life.
And last but not least, I received the Sugar Doll award from Michele at Southern City Mysteries. Hers is a wonderful writer's blog that I urge you to check out. She also has a new weekly meme called Writing Prompt Wednesdays, be sure to join in on that! This award requires to me say ten things about myself...
And I am giving this award to Stuck in a Book, Boarding in My Forties and Chasing Empty Pavements.
So what I'm going to do is tell you fifteen things about myself. I think that's fair. I think I should get some kind of theme going though. So maybe I will tell you fifteen things about since college.
1. I only applied to one school, the University of Iowa. I knew I would get in, I knew it was where I wanted to go, and I didn't want to spend a lot of money on application fees when I knew I was only going to consider Iowa. 2. When I first came to Iowa I was a Journalism and English double major. At the end of first semester my freshman year I quit Journalism, even though that is what I thought I really wanted to do. My roommate and I had a very lengthy discussion the night I decided to quit Journalism. She was a Journalism major too. 3. Since quitting Journalism I have considered French, Communication Studies, Linguistics, American Studies, and History as possible second major or minors. Right now I am interested in History and Museum Studies. That seems to be where life is taking me. 4. My freshman year my boyfriend and I were attending different schools. He was at Kansas State and I was obviously at Iowa. He decided to transfer to Iowa this year and it has made a world of difference in both of our lives, but I am thankful we had that time apart because it makes us appreciate each day together even more. 5. A couple other people joined me at Iowa this year. My best friend from high school, Katharyne, and my other good friend from high school Benjamin. Having both of them with me makes school quite the trip! 6. I asked for a coffee pot my senior year so I could have coffee in my dorm room. I rarely make coffee now, just like my family told me I wouldn't. I just don't have time. 7. Last semester I took all English classes. A hint for everyone else: Never, ever do that. 8. Going on a year and a half now I have worked at the lovely Currier-Stanley Residence Halls Front Desk. I steal pens (But don't tell Barb!) 9. The first English class I took at Iowa was a class on Virginia and Leonard Woolf taught by the lovely Lara Trubowitz. It was a fascinating class and sparked my interest in Victorian literature, mostly because Virginia hated those Victorians so much. 10. In my Victorian Lit class last semester there were two males. And about thirty students. It was an interesting class, and my prof brought Christmas cookies to our final! 11. I have started four (I think?) blogs since I came to college. This is the only one that has stuck. Why that is I do not know. I think I had a different attitude with this one, and an actual purpose. 12. I had season tickets to Iowa football games my freshman year. Yeah, that was a waste of my parents' money. I rarely went to football games in high school. 13. My class was supposed to be the last class to graduate from out old high school, but they didn't get the new high school finished in time so we were the second to last class to graduate from our old high school. I will lie to my children about this because second to last sounds stupid. 14. Last year I saw Ben Folds twice. I also saw Jack's Mannequin twice. I geek out for pianos. 15. Since coming to college I have found out that I love to read literary criticism. So sue me.
Thanks everyone who gave me an award! Sorry this was such a sloppy post, it'll teach to be more on top of this in future!
1. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy I'm going to have to agree with Jamie on this one, this ginormous doorstop is the book I am most scared of. I don't really have plans of reading it right now. 2. Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray I've had this book for about four years and have never gotten around to reading it. It's so long and the language makes me a little sleepy. 3. Middlemarch by George Eliot I had to read this multi-plot 800+ page novel for a Victorian literature class and was terrified to start it. I'm so glad I read it though because it turned out to be one of my favorite books. 4. Speak, Memory by Vladmir Nabokov I wasn't terrified of Lolita when I read it, but the experience of reading it has me afraid of Speak, Memory, Nabokov's autobiography. I read a selection from it for a writing class and was a little dense about some of the imagery. I think I would be able to tackle something like this in a group of people who could talk it out with me. 5. In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust Proust, need I say more? 6. Lady Chatterly's Lover by D. H. Lawrence I've wanted to read something by Lawrence ever since I read How to Read Literature Like a Professor, but I think the book kind of scared me of it at the same time. 7. The Shining by Stephen King I don't read scary books and I've never read anything by Stephen King. Every time I think about this book I think of when Rachel was reading it on Friends and how freaked out she got. I get scared fairly easily so I'm sure I would too. 8. The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris This is basically for the same reasons as number seven, except for I've seen the movie of this and I was terrified for months afterward. 9. The Waves by Virginia Woolf I'm running out of stuff to read by Woolf, but this one I just keep putting off. My professor went into detail about what a challenging book it is and I just don't think I'm ready for it. 10. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez I know a lot of people who loved this and a lot of people who hated it. I know it will be challenging but I also feel like I should read it.
Have you read any of these? Join in the fun or check out other lists at The Broke and Bookish.
This was my first week back to school and I'm already ready for a break. I was talking with a friend earlier this week and I admitted that this semester is the least excited for school I have ever been. It's not that I don't like my classes or that I'm not looking forward to school. I guess I'm just pretty neutral about the whole thing. But I can't really stay neutral, because life is already getting crazy and busy. For instance, last Sunday I had my first meeting of the year for the literary magazine I'm on. Sunday! Before school even started! I was dumbfounded. And since then I've had to work at the student organization fair (only a half hour, but still) gone to all of my classes, drop a class, work, do quite a bit of a reading. This of course seems like quite a lot, because instead of doing my homework this week I've mostly been reading Mockingjay. Great way to start off the year. I did do my homework, I just didn't do it when I should have. Luckily Mockingjay is in the past now, and I'm sure I will have an abundance of evening hours to work on my studies...
But no seriously, I actually don't think my classes are going to be that bed this semester. Two of my classes focus on essays, which is lovely because essays are usually no longer than 30 pages, which is much better than the 60 pages of Victorian literature I was reading every night last semester. Another class is literary history and poems, which is also not too difficult to get through. My Human Origins class has about a chapter of reading the week and the reading is fairly short, and my Nonprofit class is... well I don't want to discount the Management Organization department at this fine university so I just won't say anything about that.
Yesterday I actually felt excited about this whole school thing though, because Thursdays this semester are about the greatest schedule day I've ever had in the history of my college career. I work from 8:30-12:30 in the library, then I go to my piano class for an hour. Piano isn't as terrifying as I thought it would be and I was pleased to find out there wasn't much for me to learn this week because I can already read music in treble and bass clef. After piano I had an hour so I went to the practice rooms to practice piano. Also wonderful. I was really interested in music and making music when I was younger but kind of lost that towards the end of high school. I really missed it and piano is something I've always wanted to learn. So I am! Feels good to do something just because you want to. After practicing I headed to my Nature Writing class. The class meets twice weekly and every Thursday we meet at an outdoor location. So I just got to explore the trees and outdoor things for about a half hour, then we all came to talk about what we had seen. Awesome. Ah I love Thursdays.
So maybe there is something to look forward to in all of this.
is a fascinating look into the world of madness. The novel was written in 1861. A biographical note: Braddon lived with publisher John Maxwell and his children but they could not get married because his wife was still alive and in an insane asylum. It's like the real life Jane Eyre
!
George Talboys has been in Australia working to make money for his wife back home in England. They are newly married and he wants to provide a good life for her because he felt she seemed unhappy with the small amount of money they had. He left in the middle of the night without giving his wife anything but a note saying where he was going. His thoughts have been filled with his wife and he is excited to get home to her, but when he arrives he finds out that his wife, Helen Talboys, is dead.
George and his friend Robert spend a great amount of time together after his arrival and Robert sees how depressed George has become. They visit the deceased wife's father and their child she left behind. George does not take the child. Eventually George is nowhere to be found and Robert declares that he is dead, and possibly murdered. When George disappears they are at Audley Court, Robert's uncle's residence.
Robert's uncle, Sir Michael Audley has recently taken a very young wife, Lucy Audley. She is the same age as his tomboy daughter, Alicia, and has no history. She is childlike, with blonde hair and blue eyes, but there is something in her personality that people seem to pull away from. Alicia especially dislikes her.
I will admit that the plot was pretty easy to figure out in the first few chapters which isn't necessarily a good thing in a "murder mystery" but it really is quite good. It's one of my favorite books I've read this semester and if you like murder stories or Victorian literature it is definitely a must read.
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For those of you who don't normally read my blog I'll let you in on a little secret: I love classic novels (and really I love Victorian literature). My challenge for you is to think of your favorite classic novel, grab it (or you can look it up online), and find a quote from the novel that makes you love it. If your novel is borderline classic that is fine, this is just a chance for us to share quotes from novels we love and talk about why we love them. You can include some context for the quote if you would like so people can understand why it is so important. If you don't have a quote from the book you can also find a quote from the author, or you can do both!
My favorite classic novel, and actually my favorite novel, is Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. I could talk about this novel for hours, but instead I will just make my post because I know you all have reading to do. I chose three short quotes because, well, because I am bad at making decisions.
It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquility: they must have action; and they will make if if they cannot find it. -Jane
To live, for me, Jane, is to stand on a crater-crust which may crack and spue fire any day. -Rochester
I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will, which I now exert to leave you.-Jane
These are three of my favorite quotes from the novel and I picked them out as favorites during different times I read the book. The final quote is the first quote I loved in the novel, I found it the first time I read it when I was seventeen. The first quote I found during my second time reading the novel when I was eighteen. The second quote I found just this year when I read the novel as a 19 year old. I explain this only to show the reason I love Jane Eyre: it's a novel that grows with you. Each time I read it I find something new and I find myself becoming annoyed with Jane in different places and sympathizing with her for different reasons.
Finally I'll include a quote from Charlotte herself:
"I'm just going to write because I cannot help it." You can post this in a comment to this post or in a link to your blog. Happy Reading!
Well I'm over halfway through. I'm actually pretty proud of myself because without the readathon I would not have gotten this much reading done this weekend. I've decided to leave Lady Audley's Secret for later because a) It is late b) I'm reading it for class c) I'm already way ahead. So I will read that tomorrow.
I think my next project is going to be And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie because I am reading it for the Barnes and Noble Literature by Women book club. I've had the book for years just sitting in a drawer so I'll give it a shot tonight. Eventually though I'm going to have to go to bd, but I don't think I'm quite ready yet.
Books Read: And Only to Deceive by Tasha Alexander Pages Read: 180 Total Books Read: And Only to Deceive Emma: A Victorian Romance Volume One, and Sense and Sensibility (And I saw Where the Wild Things Are) Total Pages Read: 466
Since I forgot about doing a What I'm Reading Monday post yesterday I figured I'd make up for it today.
Finished Lady Audley's Secret
is a Victorian sensation novel. I posted a review yesterday which you can read here.
Still Reading Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters
is a Quirk Classic edition of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility. I should finish it in the next couple days.
Started Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere
by Jan Morris is a travel novel about the city of Trieste. Trieste is in Italy, but it has the cultures of many countries in it because it has kind of been passed between surrounding countries. Morris mostly discusses the "nowhereness" of the place.
A Little Princess (Unabridged Classics)
by Frances Hodgson Burnett is my first read for Shelf Discovery.
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie is a mystery I'm reading for Barnes and Noble's Literature By Women Book Club.
