Rachel Kovaciny's Blog, page 23

Top Ten Tuesday: Love Me Tender

Our Top Ten Tuesday prompt from That Artsy Reader Girl this week is a Love/Valentine's Day Freebie, so I'm listing off my ten favorite love stories.  They are:
1. Jane Eyre  by Charlotte Bronte
2.  The Blue Castle  by L. M. Montgomery
3.  Persuasion  by Jane Austen
4.  The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
5.  Pride and Prejudice  by Jane Austen

6.  Northanger Abbey  by Jane Austen
7.  Speak Easy, Speak Love  by McKelle George
8.  North and South  by Elizabeth Gaskell
9...

"Shane" by Jack Schaefer (yet again)

Some fictional characters take up residence inside your heart in a quiet, calm, yet confident way, and you can't imagine life without them there anymore.  Shane is one of those, for me.  But not only Shane -- Joe and Marian and Bobby Starrett too.  The whole family of four are so, so dear to me.
This book never ceases to fascinate me.  How Shane rides onto the Starrett family farm one day, just asking for water for himself and his horse, ready to move on through again once he's refreshed.  Accept...

"The Lilies of the Field" by William E. Barrett

Wow.  I mean, wow.  This book is going to end up on my top favorite new reads of 2023 list.  Many, many thanks to Katie Hanna for recommending it to me!
Homer Smith, a black twenty-four-year-old handyman from South Carolina, stumbles on a group of German nuns living in the middle of the desert in the American Southwest.  He offers to help them fix the roof of the little house they live in and ends up building them a chapel.  Homer teaches them better English; they teach him that permanency and be...

"The Vanderbeekers on the Road" by Karina Yan Glaser

Hmm.  Although I still very much enjoyed this latest installment in the Vanderbeekers series, I didn't love it quite as much as the first five.
This book picks up right where The Vanderbeekers Make a Wish left off, with Mrs. Vanderbeeker and all her kids, plus their friends Mr. Beiderman and his ward Orlando, setting off in a borrowed van to pick up Mr. Vanderbeeker.  They follow the cross-country route his dad had planned to take him on twenty years earlier, stopping at places like the St. Louis...

Top Ten Tuesday: Time for Some Thrilling Heroics

This week, That Artsy Reader Girl is giving us a freebie for Top Ten Tuesday!  I've decided to share my top ten favorite swashbucklers with you.

To me, a book or movie is a swashbuckler if it has adventure, sword fights (or brawls), daring escapes or rescues, and a certain amount of swagger.  I adore stories like that!  Here are my ten favorite, complete with a few story elements you'll find in them.  All titles are linked to my reviews.

The Count of Monte Cristo  by Alexandre Dumas -- prison escap...

"Come Forth as Gold" by Erica Dansereau

This book destroyed me.
Have you noticed the trend these days to say, "This book destroyed me!" like that's a happy and fun reaction to a book?  I don't understand that.  If a book puts me through an emotional wringer, if it has a good and satisfying ending, I may eventually be okay with all the stuff it did to me earlier, but I tend not to be like, "This book was so great!  It totally destroyed me!  I loved every minute!  You should read it!"  I find that a very weird reaction, honestly... and a...

"The Jungle Book" (Manga Classics) by Rudyard Kipling (original story), Crystal S. Chan (story adaptation), and Julien Choy (artwork)

I absolutely love All the Mowgli Stories  by Rudyard Kipling, but it's been probably a couple decades since I read just The Jungle Book.  So this was a fun way to re-experience the non-Mowgli stories from that.  In fact, my favorite in this Manga Classics edition ended up being one of the non-Mowgli stories!
My favorite Jungle Book character has always been Bagheera, the great black panther.  I didn't mind his portrayal as a character here, but his artwork made him too round-faced and cute for my ...

Top Ten Tuesday: Hello There (Jan 24)

This week's Top Ten Tuesday prompt from That Artsy Reader Girl is "New-to-Me Authors I Discovered in 2022."  Sometimes I get stuck in a rut and read mostly books by authors I'm already familiar with, but I actually tried quite a few new-to-me authors last year!  Here are ten that I would like to read more books by, plus the books I read of theirs in 2022.  I've linked to my reviews of those books, plus provided what genre they are.

John Dudley Ball -- I read In the Heat of the Night  (mystery)
Coll...

"Sackett's Land" by Louis L'Amour

Do you know what I was absolutely not expecting this book to be?  A swashbuckler.  But that's what it is!  Complete with swordfights, shipboard fights, chases and escapes and various other thrilling heroics.  It's absolutely smashing.
Barnabas Sackett falls afoul of a pampered nobleman by, well, laughing at him.  And then failing to be easy to beat up.  The nobleman vows revenge and keeps trying to find Barnabas and wreak his vengeance, but Barnabas just keeps getting wind of his attempts, or sli...

"Snowfield Palace" by Kendra E. Ardnek

Oh my.  That turned serious.  Which I probably should have expected from a book that combines "The Snow Queen" by Hans Christian Andersen with Mansfield Park by Jane Austen.  Neither one of those are a barrel of laughs and giggles.
Ginny is an orphan taken in by her dead mother's childhood best friend's family.  Although the family gives her a home, they don't give her much attention or love, and she grows up in the shadows, on the edges of their lives.  She loves their son Kaimund from afar, but...