Rachel Kovaciny's Blog, page 102

Jane Eyre Read-Along: Chapter 34

NOW I remember why I don't like St. John Rivers much.  It's this chapter.  It starts well enough, with all the Christmasyness, and did you catch that Jane's school had sixty girls now?  WOW!  (Also, I got this big kick out of the bit about how British peasants are better than other peasants.)  
But then St. John decided to skulk around being grim and gruff and positively unpleasant.  Here's the thing:  I hate being forced to do things, even if they're go...

Women's Classic Literature Event: Group Check-In 4

The question for the fourth group check-in is this:

Share the most memorable scene from one of your reads for this event.

There was one scene from Rilla of Ingleside  by Lucy Maud Montgomery that I have remembered clearly for decades.  As a teen, it was my favorite moment in the book because it was the part I laughed hardest over.  While rereading it this fall for the first time in probably twenty years, I kept wondering when that scene would crop up.  As I neared the end of...

Top Ten Tuesday: Feels Like Fall

Today's topic from The Broke and the Bookish is a fall freebie, so I'm listing off my Top Ten Books That Remind Me of Fall.  Some of them take place partly or entirely in autumn, and some just feel like they ought to be read when leaves are turning colors and the air is crisp and invigorating.  Here they are, with titles linked to my reviews when possible:


1.  The Hound of the Baskervilles by A. Conan Doyle takes place in October, and every October for over a decade, I have...

"The Enemy" by Lee Child

I have a book hangover.  The worst book hangover I have had in a looooooooong time.  The kind where my brain is still gallivanting around inside a fictional world, and the rest of me is trying to navigate real life without it.

In other words, wow.  Now this was a well-written book.

I'm not going to call it a "good" book because it was about bad stuff.  Murders and conspiracies and gay-bashing and all sorts of wrong -- and, of course, one wonderful, not-so-white knight w...

Jane Eyre Read-Along: Chapter 33

A few chapters ago, I mentioned that the tendency for books of this era to rely on coincidence and convenience can be hard to accept.  We've come to the huge coincidence:  Jane just happened to land on the doorstep of her only living relatives in all of England.What're the odds?  Pretty slim, I would think.
However, I love this book anyway  You couldn't write it today without people calling you far-fetched, so I guess we can all be glad it was written when it was!
Don't you...

Jane Eyre Read-Along: Chapter 32

You're not going to believe this, but I'm starting to change my opinion of St. John Rivers.  Just a bit.  I didn't remember this chapter much at all -- to be honest, several of the times I've read this, I skimmed through this whole part of the book.  I've always been irked with him for his seemingly high-handed rejection of Miss Oliver and insistence that being a missionary is holier than being a parish minister.  I still disagree with the latter, but his decision not to p...

Jane Eyre Read-Along: Chapter 31

And so Jane begins her newest adventure, teaching poor young girls.  I do like her attitude that "the germs of native excellence, refinement, intelligence, kind feeling, are as likely to exist in their hearts as in those of the best-born" (p. 415).  Yet, she feels as if she's sunk to a lower place in society than she previously possessed, which I'm sure she has -- schoolmarm to a bunch of commoners must be a lower station than private governess to a gentleman's ward.  What I lo...

"Lady Cop Makes Trouble" by Amy Stewart

You might remember how much I ooohed and ahhhed over Girl Waits With Gun  this summer.  I snatched up a copy of the sequel while I was on vacation, but didn't have time to read it until we got home.  However, once I was in it, I was really in it, and I think I liked it even better than the first book!  Girl dragged a little in places, as the Kopps waited and waited to catch Henry Kauffman.  But Lady never felt draggy at all.  Yay!

Once again, wh...

Top Ten Tuesday: Books I've Read Thanks to You

Today's topic from The Broke and the Bookish is "Ten Books I've Read Because of Another Blogger."  I have gotten so many wonderful recommendations from other bloggers, even before I started a book-dedicated blog.  Here are ten I've loved, with the titles linked to my reviews of them:


The Blue Castle  by L. M. Montgomery -- I read several rave reviews of this over the course of a year or two, and finally got it from the library.  And promptly cursed my reticence to read it, b...

Jane Eyre Read-Along: Chapter 30

One of the things I have had the hardest time reconciling myself with, when I read books from the 1800s, is how often they rely on coincidence and convenience.  Faint with hunger and desperation, Jane just happens to fall in with people she likes!  And not just likes, but with whom she shares "perfect congeniality of tastes, sentiments, and principles" (p. 405).  I'm happy for her, but wow, how convenient, huh?  And the coincidence will come into play in a couple of chapte...