amelia_petkova

I never read Jane Eyre for school. It was one of those books Everyone Has To Read that somehow missed my entire education, like Romeo and Juliet. I did read Jane Eyre just because I felt like it, I think when I was a teenager. I must have liked it because I didn't remember hating it, never watched any of the movies, never got around to re-reading it...until now. I'm able to spend part of each workday listening to my headphones and I've been working my way through a lot of audio books. And last week I decided to re-read Jane Eyre. I remembered all the main plot points, but not so much of the details. Thoughts in roughly chronological order:

Jane's aunt and cousins are hell on wheels. I wanted to start cheering when, just before Jane goes to school, she reams out Aunt Reed--excuse me, "Mrs. Reed"--about how Jane will never call her "aunt" again and will tell the entire world in detail about what a terrible person Mrs. Reed. I don't have a paper copy or ebook checked out from the library right now, so I can't quote, but my jaw dropped behind my face mask (I have to work at the office) when I listened to that speech. And then Mrs. Reed leaves the room! She's scared and runs off!

Mr. Brocklehurst can also drop dead. I know the general outline of Charlotte Bronte's biography, and I feel like his character is one of the ones where Charlotte must have drawn heavily from people she met in real life, and used this book as an excuse to absolutely roast them.

Helen Burns IS the trope embodiment of "too good for this sinful world."

I like Mrs. Fairfax so much! She's so kind and welcoming when Jane arrives at Thornfield Hall.

More reactions to come later, when I have more time for blogging.

My current audio book is "Shades of Milk and Honey" by Mary Robinette Kowal, which I had vaguely remembered being advertised as "Jane Austen-esque fantasy" and had been on my To Read list for a while. I'm limiting myself to just a couple hours of listening each day, to make it last longer.

So far I've seen that yes, it's fantasy set in Regency England with a Jane Austen-type mood. It sets up the fantasy element right away, showing that this version of England has the magical art of glamour, which can be used by either gender but is included in the arts that genteel young ladies should learn.

Reactions so far:

I like Jane but there might be too much of how little she sees her self-worth. She's not beautiful, but she's accomplished and intelligent and the people she meets generally find her interesting.

Melody, the younger and beautiful sister is certainly feather-brained. The two sisters do love each other, but that fact that they end up being attracted to most of the same men isn't helping their sisterly bond at the moment.

( Spoilers and plot theories behind the cut )

I'm halfway through listening to the audio book of The Awakening by Kate Chopin for the first time. Events so far can be summed up as Edna, the protagonist, saying, "I don't give a fuck and I'm gonna do what I want" and her husband in the background going "WTF?" again and again.

Sharing some of the books I read this year and my thoughts on them!

The Light Princess by George MacDonald: A princess is cursed to float about in the air. My favorite part is the princess's evil aunt's eyes that literally change color according to her mood.

The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling: I listened to a great audio book of this. It's done entirely in script format so I don't know if the actual book is very different. Eartha Kitt voiced Kaa the snake!

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: I loved the concept of this but wish I liked the actual book more. I just think I don't care for James's writing style.

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistlestop Care by Fannie Flagg: Another audio book winner. The accents were so great and I loved the characters, both in the present day and in the "past" sections of the story. Idgie and Ruth are so great together and I was crying by the end of the book. I really need to watch the whole movie adaptation at some point.

Irish Earth Folk by Diarmuid MacManus: I'm always a sucker for books of folktales and folklore, and the fact that this book's focus is on a certain geographic area and all the stories are connected to people that either the author knew or are told by friends of friends made it especially interesting.

The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis: Time travel to the Middle Ages and our protagonist accidentally ends up in the period of the Black Death. A great book and totally heartbreaking in parts.

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher by Kate Summerscale: True crime about the murder of a child in Victorian England. So, so good and I really need to write a longer post about it because the events were a major inspiration for...

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins: Great mystery novel. I'm still surprised that I enjoy Collins so much, given that he was major buddies with Charles Dickins and and I couldn't stand Dickens when I had to read him in high school.

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel: One of the only dystopia/post-apocalyptic novels I've really enjoyed and wanted to re-read.

A Desperate Fortune by Susanne Kearsley: Not my favorite Kearsley novel that I've read--I'm not as into Jacobins as she is--but I still liked it a lot. Notable for having a heroine with Asperger's who's treated well by the story, though I can't say how accurate the depiction is.

The Duchess by Amanda Foreman: A biography of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. A very fascinating woman who got married way too young, was really good at politics, and had an astounding gambling problem.

The Princess and the Goblin by George Macdonald: I liked this one just as much as The Light Princess. I've had a copy of this book for years but never got around to reading it until now. Curdie is clearly the most capable character in the entire book.

Lud-in-the Mist by Hope Mirrlees: A 1920s fantasy novel that I partly liked so much because the style is so different from current fantasy. Also, fairy fruit that makes people act unnaturally is a major part of the plot and I'm always up for that.

The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton: Takes place in present-day Australia and Victorian England. A woman finds out that she was abandoned and then adopted as a child and tries to find out her origins. It took me a little while to get into things, but by the time I'd gotten halfway through the book I didn't want to put it down.

The Mabinogion, Sioned Davies edition: I love it so much! I'm really glad that this is the version I had when I finally got around to reading these stories.

Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day by Winifred Watson: Turned out to be a lot different from the film version. A light, quick novel that's completely delightful and Miss Pettigrew has the wonderful time she's long deserved.

The Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich: The first of Erdrich's novels I've read and I definitely want to read more of her works.

The Romanov Bride by Robert Alexander: Historical fiction about Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna of Russia and the Russian Revolution. The Kitchen Boy was the first Alexander novel I read and this one is just as good.

Jane Austen at Home by Lucy Worsley: Notable in that it's as much about the Georgian period as Jane Austen. I knew a fair bit about her already from the Austen class I took in college but I learned a lot more from this book.

Arrowood by Laura McHugh: A young woman returns to her family's home where her baby sisters disappeared when she was a young child. Very Gothic.

Buried in a Bog by Sheila Connolly: First novel in a mystery series set in County Cork, Ireland. I wish it had been more about bog bodies, but otherwise I liked it.

I'm only through Books 1 and 2 of the super-long Le Morte d'Arthur and I kind of want to have a drinking game where you take a shot every time somebody dies but then you'd die of alcohol poisoning after five pages and you wouldn't even get to have Merlin make a pretty tomb for you.

One of my goals this year has been to read and cross off books from my To Read list. Since The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins has been on my list so long that I didn't remember what it's about or why I put it on my list, I had to read it. I'm about 30 pages in and want to write down what I think so far before any plot twists turn up. This novel started its publication as a serial in 1859 and I haven't read a lot of Victorian literature, so I'm not sure how it might turn out.

Walter Hartright is a drawing instructor in his late 20s who has just applied to and accepted a job posting of tutor for several months to two young women at an estate in Cumbria (northern England). On the night that he's thinking about the job offer and walking home to London, he meets a nervous woman all in white who makes him promise multiple times to escort her safely to London and leave her when she asks, and she's very relieved when he doesn't know a certain nobleman. He overhears several men after he leaves her and discovers she has escaped from...an asylum!

So far he's met only one of the young ladies who's described as being the most ladylike and wonderful person from the back, then when she turns around..."Never was the old conventional maxim, that Nature cannot err, more flatly contradicted--never was the fair promise of a lovely figure more strangely and startlingly belied by the face and head that crowned it." Marian Halcombe is described as "almost swarthy" with brown eyes and "thick, coal-black hair growing unusually low down on her forehead." Is she meant to be of partial African or southern European descent? We haven't met her half-sister yet but I have a feeling she'll be blonde and blue-eyed, or otherwise a stereotypically beautiful Englishwoman.

They also have an invalid uncle, no companions other than servants, and two female companions who left recently due to the presence of too many women and not enough social activities.

I don't have many guesses as to what will happen next, but there are almost 600 pages to go and I look forward to shenanigans.

So I just finished reading We Have Always Lived in the Castle.

Yikes.

Spoilers, spoilers, nothing but spoilers ahead:

( Read more... )

Talk about a creepy ending!

I just read a review of "Sisi", the newest novel about Empress Elisabeth by Allison Pataki. Near the beginning, the review says, "She was the Princess Diana of her time, a storied beauty who longed for more than the trappings of royalty. So why has Sisi been largely lost to history?"

Um.

The musical "Elisabeth" has been around since 1992, it's been translated into multiple languages so that it can be performed in multiple countries, and has been seen by millions of people. I wouldn't consider Sisi as being "largely lost to history".

I finally got around to reading "Táin Bo Cuailnge" (listening to "The Tain" by the Decemberists is gong to make so much more sense now). After asking for recommendations, I read the edition by Thomas Kinsella and it's great. The story is very accessible, the introduction has a lot of useful information, and there are several maps that turned out to be helpful when I was reading. Years ago on a whim I bought the "Oxford Dictionary of Celtic Mythology" which, besides being interesting on its own, let me refer to it to make sure I didn't miss anything while I was reading the epic.

( Some thoughts, more or less in the order of the plot )

Great story, would read it again.

Can anybody recommend a good edition of the Tain Bo Cuailnge? Alternately, any editions you recommend avoiding would also be helpful. I'm planning on reading it for the first time.