Rachel Kovaciny's Blog, page 106

Five Magic Bookmarks -- Winners

Congratulations to the five winners! They are:

Cowboy -- Carissa H.
Horse -- Lynn L.
Castle -- Rayleigh G.
Dragon -- Hayden W.
Moon -- Ally M.

Please check your email for a message from me asking for your mailing address so I can get these sent off.

And to all of you, whether you won or not -- I'm holding another giveaway on my Hamlette's Soliloquy blog starting Monday to celebrate Legends of Western Cinema Week! Check back then to see what I'm giving away :-)

Jane Eyre Read-Along: Chapter 20

First off, DON'T FORGET that today is the LAST DAY to enter my GIVEAWAY for Five Magic Spindles-themed bookmarks!

Now, this chapter has two parts to it, really.  First, Jane spending a terrifying night tending the injured Mason up in the creepy third floor with only a door between her and untold horrors.  Second, Jane and Rochester walking around the garden as he alllllllmost declares his love for her, and then infuriatingly doesn't.  Dreadful man!  I stamp m...

"The Last Kind Words Saloon" by Larry McMurtry

After Emma Jane reviewed this on her blog a couple weeks ago, I got it from the library because it's been a long time since I ready anything by Larry McMurtry -- like probably 15 years.  I read a couple of his books in college because one of my apartmentmates sophomore year gave me a copy of Dead Man's Walk for my birthday, and then I read another one of his books after that, I think Comanche Moon.  Been a long time, and I disremember exactly what it was.

I did enjoy The Last Ki...

Jane Eyre Read-Along: Chapter 19

We're halfway through the book!  Yay us.

This is one of my favorite chapters.  I love this scene in the 1983 movie version (so much so that I blogged about it here a while back).  I like how smart Jane is here -- right from the beginning, she suspects this is no "sibyl," and she answers mysterious questions with snappy, intelligent rejoinders.  Throughout, she is, as Rochester says, "very correct, very careful, very sensible" (p. 240).  But isn't she always?  We e...

"Greenwillow" by B. J. Chute

She's done it again!  Heidi Peterson has convinced me to read a book I'd never heard of before, and now I've found a new favorite.  This happened with The Blue Castle last year, and again with Greenwillow this summer.  Thank you again and again, Heidi!

This is a quiet, gentle story of people living in an idyllic patch of England's countryside a hundred years ago or so.  Mainly, it concerns a young girl named Dorrie, who is a live-in maid-of-all-work for two sweet, elde...

Women's Classic Literature Event: Group Check-In 3

The question for the third group check-in is:

Describe the writing style of your favorite author for the event so far. 

My favorite author for the event thus far has been Eleanor Pruitt Stewart, whose Letters of a Woman Homesteader  was the very first book I read for it.  I hope to read her second volume, Letters on an Elk Hunt, before the event ends.  Her books are nonfiction collections of letters she wrote while homesteading in Wyoming in the early 1900s.  What partic...

Jane Eyre Read-Along: Chapter 18

I'm sorry this read-along has kind of gotten bogged down lately.  Totally my fault -- my summer has been way too busy, with more company, more travelling, and more projects than I had anticipated.  We are probably not going to finish this book by the end of August.  However, I'd like to have it polished off by mid-September, so here's hoping I can carve out more time for reading and posting in August than I did in July.

Back to the story!  Jane seems to equate activity with...

Five Magic Bookmarks -- A Giveaway

Today's the day!  Five Magic Spindles gets officially released today!  Yes, I'm quite giddy.  Again.  I've gotten giddy many times during this long, fun experience, starting the day I found out "The Man on the Buckskin Horse" won the contest.  But today, at last, I can hold a book with my name on the cover in my own hands.  This is dream-like and glorious.

And I want to share the joy.  So I've created five bookmarks, one for each of these really fun Slee...

Jane Eyre Read-Along: Chapter 17

So this is the chapter where I get annoyed with Mr. Rochester.  I mean, I know what he's up to, but dude... cruel.  It's really mean to purposely try to make someone jealous, no matter what your motives are.

Meanwhile, Jane's still very suspicious of Grace Poole.  I was surprised to read that she's not yet 40.  I always think of her as being much older than me, but... I was like 16 when I first read this, so I guess that just lodged in my brain.  Now I'm 36.  Soon...

Jane Eyre Read-Along: Chapter 16

And just when we were getting used to him, off he goes.  And he doesn't even have the courtesy to tell Jane he's leaving.  Perhaps, as much as she "wanted to hear his voice again, yet feared to meet his eye" (p. 182), so he was also worried about how to react to her the next morning?  He as good as told her he's falling in love with her, and maybe now he's worrying about what will happen next.  Still, as a devotee of plans, I find his zipping around on a whim to be both in...