Rachel Kovaciny's Blog, page 46

"Recipe for Persuasion" by Sonali Dev

Although this takes place following Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors by Sonali Dev, you can read Recipe for Persuasion on its own and be fine.  Obviously, they both retell Jane Austen novels.

In Recipe for Persuasion, Ashna Raje is slowly losing her late father's restaurant.  Calling her relationship with her mother "strained" would be laughably underestimating their emotionally fraught battles.  A few years earlier, a therapist "diagnosed her with PTSD resulting in acute clinical depression a...

S&S Read-Along: Ch. 23 & 24

Please note that this is the only read-along post I'll be writing this week.  I'm just too busy during Holy Week, and I suspect a lot of you are too.  We'll go back up to six chapters next week.

I've got to admit I don't have a lot to say about these two chapters.  First we have Elinor thinking about what she learned from Lucy about Edward, and then we have Elinor and Lucy discussing Lucy's situation in obliquely sly and snarky ways.  And that's that.
My annotated edition did have one really inter...

"Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" by J. K. Rowling

This is my favorite Harry Potter book.  It's the book that made me a real fan of the series, and it's the book that gave me my favorite character in that universe, Sirius Black.

I love this book so much, I lingered over it and made it last me for days and days instead of gobbling it down like I did the first two.  I would pause at favorite bits and savor them.  I reread my favorite page in the whole series multiple times.  I stopped and reread my favorite two chapters.  I let myself savor the sto...

S&S Read-Along: Ch. 21 & 22

In which Lucy Steele waltzes into our lives and drops her bomb.

Also, I feel like this cover is pretty much the most perfect match for how I felt the first time I encountered this story.  Anyone else here pop-eyed from shock?
But, you know, at least we know now why Edward has never declared his feelings for Elinor or asked her to marry him.  It's because he's been secretly engaged to this chick for four years!  The nerve of some people!
Okay, so, I had to explain this to my husband, because he star...

"The Winter King" by Christine Cohen

Wow.  This book hit me a lot harder than I was expecting.  I went into it thinking, "Okay, a fantasy winter story for early teens could be fun" and came out thinking, "That was so intense and illuminating!"

Cora's family has fallen into hard times ever since her father died while ice fishing.  Shunned by many villagers who think they're cursed, Cora's widowed mother and her three siblings struggle for basic necessities like food and socks.

The village is watched over by a remote deity called the W...

S&S Read-Along: Ch. 19 & 20

Oh my goodness, the Palmers crack me up so much!  Do they make you laugh?  I was chuckling aloud several times during these two chapters.  I absolutely love how Charlotte is so determined to be happy and cheerful, and how successful she is at it.  She's not very intelligent, but she is a ray of sunshine, and I could hug her for that.

(Randomly, is this not one of the weirdest covers I have found yet?  I bet it was made in the '70s.  All '70s book covers are bizarre.)
It's very nice of the Palmers ...

S&S Read-Along: Ch. 17 & 18

I love how much we get to learn about Edward Ferrars in these two chapters!  Like that he knows how to make Elinor laugh.  We finally get to hear him say more than a sentence or two, and I don't know about you, but I am charmed.  I had forgotten that he's actually kind of sarcastic!  But also kind.  He mocks Marianne about her devotion to Romantic ideals about scenery and the outdoors, but not in a mean way.  His is a self-deprecating sort of sarcasm -- he insists he just doesn't know enough abo...

"The Scarlet Pimpernel" by Baroness Orczy

WHY did I wait this long to read this delightful book?  I absolutely loved this jolly story of derring-do.  It's escapist fiction at its finest -- no one in this story really takes their grave danger too seriously, and you never doubt for a minute that the Scarlet Pimpernel will triumph.  The fun is in finding out how.

I watched the 1934 movie starring Leslie Howard close to twenty years ago, and the 1982 miniseries starring Anthony Andrews much more recently than that, so I knew the basic story ...

S&S Read-Along: Ch. 15 & 16

[image error] Turbulent times, eh?  Willoughby takes leave of everyone in an uncharacteristically constrained way, Marianne is thoroughly enjoying (in a backwards sort of way) being as miserable as possible, and now here comes Edward on a completely unexpected visit, but he's not acting particularly happy to see the family either.  Oh my goodness, so much emotional turmoil!

Notice how Willoughby's farewell is all about sparing himself pain as much as possible.  First he says, "I am not suffering under a very h...

"Laura Ingalls Wilder Country" by William Anderson

This book was so lovely!  I read most of it in one afternoon, engrossed in studying the photographs of various places that Laura Ingalls Wilder lived throughout her life, and learning a bit more about her actual history.  She did leave some things out of her books, like the hotel in Iowa that her family ran for a couple of years and the fact that they went back to Wisconsin after the events of Little House on the Prairie, not straight to Plum Creek.  So those was really fascinating to learn a bi...