In Northanger Abbey we meet Catherine, an optimistic young girl who likes novels. She goes with her parent’s friends to Bath where she makes new acquaintances and meets Henry Tilney to whom she becomes attached. However Catherine is at once too naive in her friendships as well as a bit too imaginative. Stories are made up and they create stumble blocks for Catherine’s true happiness; marriage to Mr. Tilney. “There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have […]
So Much More Shade Than I Remembered (and I thought I remembered a decent amount)
This was a reread for me though it’s been more than a decade since my last read. Instead of going through the plot since I think most people are familiar with the bare bones of the plot, I’m just going to share a few random thoughts I had while listening to this novel. So doing Austen as an audio book is interesting. It was obvious when reading Persuasion that Anne Elliot was the only one with any common sense and that everyone around her was […]
Pratchett Did It Better
I haven’t read a Vonnegut since high school and thought it might be nice to revisit some of the “greats” this summer. I went into Cat’s Cradle cold, and while it was amusing at times and made some fine points, it was exactly what I expected a post-modern classic written by a man of his time to be….In a word: meh. Our narrator starts on a quest to write a book about the day the Atomic Bomb hit Hiroshima, but instead ends up finding religion with a […]
Summertiiiiiiiime and the living is drearyyyyyy (for women)
I am a fan of Edith Wharton. I enjoyed Age of Innocence, Ethan Frome, and House of Mirth. Her writing is straightforward and is a time capsule of the turn of the century. She paints stark and vivid stories centering on women and the ways that they are boxed in by the circumstances of the time. Though she often focuses on the tiresome lives of the wealthy, Summer follows Charity, an orphan of mountain people, who is living her life of few opportunities in a […]