Dana Swier Huff's Blog, page 86

A Farewell to Arms

We were having some trouble with our Internet connection this morning. Since it looked like it was going to be a long-standing issue, perhaps even stretching into the beginning of the week (quelle horreur!), I decided to try to finish A Farewell to Arms. I am teaching it for the first time starting next week, and I wanted to be ready. I have not read a lot of Hemingway's novels. I have never read The Old Man and the Sea or For Whom the Bell Tolls, but I have read and loved The Sun Also...

Battle of Maldon

Have you ever heard of the Battle of Maldon? It happened on this date in 991 when Vikings invaded Essex, inspiring an Old English poem that influenced the writing of J.R.R. Tolkien.

August 12 marks the birthday of the former British poet laureate Robert Southey 1in 1774. I always remember an Introduction to Literature professor I had freshman year of college tried to tell us Southey was the father of Frankenstein novelist Mary Shelley. Nope. William Godwin was. August 12 also marks the...

Reading Update: August 8, 2010

I'm still reading books set in Salem. After finishing Brunonia Barry's The Map of True Places and The Lace Reader, I returned to Katherine Howe's The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, although this book is set more in Marblehead than Salem, it does have some scenes in Salem. I think my favorite thing about Salem was just walking around and looking at everything. It truly is a unique town, and I do hope I have the opportunity to go back.

In addition to The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane...

Goodreads and Shelfari

Do you use Goodreads or Shelfari? Or both? I use both services. Each has features I like, but neither one does everything I want a reading social network to do.

Sharing Progress

Goodreads gives readers the option to share their progress through status updates either with page numbers or percentage read, which is great if you're reading on an e-reader. I really like this feature. I think Shelfari should add it. Both sites do a great job cataloging multiple versions of books so that you can add t...

The Lace Reader: A Re-Read

I first read Brunonia Barry's debut novel The Lace Reader right before it was published as an advanced reader copy. You can read my review here. I decided to re-read the novel after my trip to Salem. I think Barry's Map of True Places captures the character of Salem perhaps more clearly than Barry's first novel, but I think that The Map of True Places is also more about Salem than The Lace Reader. It's strange, but this time reading, I did see some elements of a feminine hero's journey that I...

Gulliver's Travels

Jonathan Swift's novel Gulliver's Travels is as excellent a satire today as when it was published in 1726. Lemuel Gulliver is a surgeon with the soul of an explorer. Gulliver's Travels purports to be the tale of his voyages, including descriptions of the strange peoples and sites he encounters. Most readers are familiar with his iconic adventures in Lilliput, a land populated by beings six inches tall, where Gulliver towers over the inhabitants like a giant. Gulliver is initially mistrusted a...

New Kindles

Perhaps the biggest book news this week has been the impeding release of the latest generation of the Kindle, Amazon's e-reader device. The new Kindle will be available in two colors: white or graphite, marking the first time you could get the Kindle in more than one color. The biggest news is that the Kindle will be available in wireless only and wireless + 3G versions. The wireless only version will be an affordable $139. I paid $259 for my Kindle with wireless and 3G in April, but this...

Reading Update: August 2, 2010

After finishing The Map of True Places, I decided to re-read The Lace Reader. I won't give away the spoilery ending, but I will say that The Lace Reader is an interesting and different book on a re-read after the reader knows how it ends. I had forgotten that Ann Chase, who appears in The Map of True Places, was also in this book, but when she mentions being friends with Towner Whitney, I looked it up and discovered she had indeed been a character. She is such a fun character and so well...

The Map of True Places

Brunonia Barry's second novel The Map of True Places is the story of Hepzibah Finch, known as Zee, a Boston therapist. When her patient Lilly Braedon commits suicide, Zee's life spirals out of control—how could she not have seen the suicide coming? After all, wasn't Lilly so much like her mother, who committed suicide about twenty years ago? Zee visits her father in Salem only to find the medication he's taking for Parkinson's is causing him to have hallucinations that he's Nathaniel...

Reading Update: July 31, 2010

I have been reading Georgette Heyer's Regency romance Charity Girl for the Celebration of Georgette Heyer at Austenprose. I am about 1/3 the way through. I also picked up Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms because I need to have it read before school starts: it's summer reading for my 10th grade students, and I haven't read it before. I know, shocking! I like it so far, but I can't deny that I have truly been wanting to read something set in Salem ever since my trip. I tried to tell...