If there’s an X, I have read it
- Mary Shelley Frankenstein
- Brendan Gill When the Money Stopped HI,CFI (Have it, can’t find it)
- Charlotte Bronté X Jane Eyre
- John Cheever X Stories
- Dorothy Sayers X Gaudy Night
- George Eliot Daniel Deronda
- Dai Sijie Balzac & the Little Chinese Seamstress
- Willa Cather Death Comes for the Archbishop
CGII (couldn’t get into it) - Virginia Woolf X Mrs. Dalloway
- Larry McMurtry Lonesome Dove
- Cervantes Don Quixote
- Walker Percy X The Moviegoer
- Helen Simonson X Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand
Not on my list, but from Jun to present, I also read
- Wilkie Collins The Moonstone (3rd time)
- Jeannette Walls The Glass Castle
- Kathryn Stockett The Help
- Ken Kesey One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
- Mary Lawson The Other Side of the Bridge
Wish I knew what you were reading– bye!
Hey! I loved Jane Eyre too!
Hi – this blogging thing is something else! I can see that you are having fun and the blogs are attracting people with similar interests. I tried to log in as a guest but, as usual, I get the runaround with passwords etc. Maybe some day I will try again.
I just finished “The other side of the bridge” and am just collecting my thoughts on it.
Catherine—I’ll be interested in your opinion of The Other Side of the Bridge when
you’re ready.
I just finished Charles Finch’s Beautiful Blue Death, a Victorian mystery. It has a beautiful cover! And it has some good reviews. It’s pretty well plotted and he’s clearly worked hard to evoke the period, but I found the style a little halting, and I was distracted by minor anachronisms (that probably only a Victorianist like me would notice or care about). I do think I’ll eventually read the next book in the series, but with mixed feelings.
You write a good review. It’s difficult to read a book and enjoy it
thoroughly when you are waiting for the author to make a slip. Perhaps
by the next in the series the author will write with a surer hand.
Upon reflection, it’s a good mystery. The issue was just that the blurbs and reviews I’d read made it sound like the book has an amazing ability to evoke the Victorian period. True, the author clearly worked hard to create atmosphere and context; probably the only reason I sometimes noticed a “jar” is because I study that period and spend most of my reading in that period. That’s probably an unfair standard to hold up for a mystery book. And as I said, I’ll look for the next in the series regardless.
Ah, that is very fair of you to view it that way.
It might interest you to know that today a friend recommended a very good
mystery that takes place in Quebec City. Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny.
It got excellent reviews and is the fifth in a series. I plan to look into it a bit
when I have a moment . . .