Rachel Kovaciny's Blog, page 105

Jane Eyre Read-Along: Chapter 25

Does anybody else just NOT want to read the next chapter?  Just stay living here in this slightly uneasy, but still happy section?

No, I'm not quitting the read-along.  I'm just not looking forward to chapter 26.

Anyway, getting pretty Gothic here, folks.  Jane has her creepy dreams.  The weather is stormy and violent.  And she thinks her wedding dress looks like a wraith or a ghost.  Creeeeeepy.

And then we read about her nighttime visit from someone truly horrific...

Jane Eyre Read-Along: Chapter 24

So much foreboding in, with, and under the happiness.

Jane wakes up feeling like his proposal was a dream.  His pronouncement that she will be Jane Rochester strikes with something akin to fear.  She's convinced that "Human beings never enjoy complete happiness in this world" (p. 302).  And his insistence on telling her she is beautiful makes her uneasy.

Speaking of which... do you just want to take Rochester aside and tell him to stop treating her like a new toy, already?  ...

The Tolkien Blog Party is ON!

Encouraged by so many of you, I am pleased to announce that, despite my super busy September schedule, I AM going to host a Tolkien blog party after all!  I've got ideas for the blog tag and one game, and a handful of fun prizes that I'm making myself.

And so, I've made some new buttons that y'all can add to your own blogs if you so desire.  Things will kick off on Sunday, September 18, and wrap up on Saturday.





I'm looking forward to sharing all the Tolkien love!

"The Witch of Blackbird Pond" by Elizabeth George Speare

It's been many years since I last read this.  At least two decades, I think.  I thought I remembered what it was about really well, but it turns out I only remembered that the heroine liked to hang out in a meadow and with a lonely old woman who was accused of being a witch.  The rest, I'd forgotten, like that the heroine is an orphan who moved to New England to live with relatives she'd never met, and who is desperately homesick for her old life in Barbados.

I had also forgotte...

Tolkien Party Idea

Lovely friends, I have a problem.  I'm horrifyingly busy right now.  And have been all summer.  And will be through the end of September.  (Possibly forever, but I'm trying to be optimistic right now, 'kay?)

And I had been thinking that I might have to skip hosting my annual Tolkien Blog Party of Special Magnificence.  Because Tolkien Week is less than a month away, and I have had zero time to prep for it.  By now, I've usually got giveaway donations lined up and...

Jane Eyre Read-Along: Chapter 23

What I want to know is, how does Charlotte Bronte keep lines like "Oh, Jane, you torture me!" (p. 298) and "Make my happiness -- I will make yours" (p. 299) from sounding like sentimental, hackneyed claptrap?  Why do I thrill over this chapter (it miiiiiiiiight be my favorite) and find it not merely believable, but wholly delicious?  It amazes me, I tell you.  It's her first published novel, but it is almost startlingly good.  In my humble opinion, anyway.

So anyway, my mar...

"Rainbow Valley" by L. M. Montgomery

Sigh.  I remember now why I didn't like this book much as a teen.  It's the same reason I still don't like it much now.

You'd think it's because, while the Meredith and Blythe children are fun and charming, after a while, it's just more of the same.  The Merediths get into trouble, the Blythes are their loyal chums, and Mary Vance yells at them over it.  But that's not what keeps me from liking Rainbow Valley.  The blame for that lies solely on the story of Rev. Mered...

Jane Eyre Read-Along: Chapter 22

One of the things I've always liked best about Jane Eyre is how non-compliant she is.  That may be a horrible thing, but I myself am not at all a compliant person, and so from the first time I read this book, I identified with that aspect of Jane's personality very strongly.

The whole part where Jane returns to Thornfield really hit my emotions this time, especially when she said that she "had never experienced the sensation" of returning home before (p. 283).

Does it ever bug you when old...

Jane Eyre Read-Along: Chapter 21

My goodness, this chapter has a lot going on, huh?  First off, it sets up Jane's ability to Hear Things.  She says, "Sympathies, I believe, exist (for instance, between far-distant, long-absent, wholly estranged relatives; asserting, notwithstanding their alienation, the unity of the source to which each traces his origin), whose workings baffle mortal comprehension" (p. 259).  This will come up again very late in the book, and I like that Bronte sets up that ability here so th...

"Sixguns & Society: A Structural Study of the Western" by Will Wright

Once in a while a book opens your eyes and makes you look in whole new ways at something you thought you knew and understood.  This is such a book, for me.  I have loved western movies since I was about 2, and I have watched hundreds of them over the past thirty-some years.  I've read western novels and nonfiction books, I've written westerns, I've played cowboys for countless hours.  I thought I pretty much understood what westerns were about.

And then I read this book.

Wil...