Rachel Kovaciny's Blog, page 48

The "Sense and Sensibility" Read-Along Begins!

Today's the day, my friends!  The day we start reading Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen together.

I will post the first discussion post soon (maybe even tomorrow!), but first I want to talk a little about how this will work.  Several times a week, I will post about the next section of book.  I'm going to include two chapters in each discussion post because Sense and Sensibility has fifty chapters, but most of them are very short.  So we'll have twenty-five discussion posts, and I'll try to po...

Thrusting the Snow Aside: February 2021 Inklings

It's still February, so I still have time to join this month's Inklings link-up hosted by Heidi here at Along the Brandywine.  This month, the prompt is a snow scene in book or film.

I'm choosing the attempt to pass through the Redhorn Gate in the White Mountains of Middle-earth in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien.  The fellowship is trying to make their way through the mountains, but a mysterious and evil snowstorm falls upon them and forces them to halt.  They...

"Faces to the Sun" edited by S. J. Blasko

This is a collection of poetry and short stories all written by people who struggle with mental health and mental illness.  The point of the anthology is to help other strugglers to see they're not alone, and to help people who don't deal with mental health troubles to understand what that can be like.  It succeeds admirably at the latter, for me.  

All proceeds from sales of this book go to organizations that provide mental health services, which I think is neat.

I liked so many pieces in this bo...

Top Ten Tuesday: I Dearly Love a Laugh

This week's Top Ten Tuesday prompt from That Artsy Reader Girl is "books that made me laugh out loud."  I dearly love a laugh, much like Elizabeth Bennet, and so a book that can make me laugh aloud is one I will probably like a lot.  Here are my top ten, with all titles linked to my reviews:

Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery -- An orphan girl with a big imagination is adopted by an aging brother and sister and spreads sunshine and bemusement wherever she goes.

Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webste...

"Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" by J. K. Rowling

My Year with Harry Potter continues rolling delightfully along!  I basically inhaled The Chamber of Secrets in three days.  I just kept sneaking off to read it whenever I had a few minutes, and that's such a delightful way to live :-)

My plan for this year is to make myself read at least two books between each installment of the Harry Potter series so that I won't just smush them all together in my head.  And to make their joy last longer.  I do love to savor things I particularly enjoy.  And I l...

New Short Story "Run, Run" Now Available!

I have a new FREE short story available for both Kindle and Nook!  "Run, Run" is a follow-up to my Snow White retelling, One Bad Apple.  As such, it does give away the ending of that book just a little, in that you'll know a lot of characters who survive to the end.  If you're sensitive to spoilers and haven't read One Bad Apple, you might want to save it until you've finished the book.  That kind of goes for the synopsis below, too.
This story retells The Gingerbread Man, and here's the official...

"Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass" by Frederick Douglass

I can't believe I'd never read this before!  You'd think with all the history classes, all the literature classes, surely someone would have assigned Frederick Douglass's Narrative to me.  But, nope.  You'd also think I would have gotten around to reading it before now, on my own, especially since I've owned a copy for at least two years.  But, nope.

Well, I've read it now, and I found it both enlightening and enjoyable.  While sometimes Douglass does start to sound a little bit... oratorical... ...

"Further Chronicles of Avonlea" by L. M. Montgomery

Well, I just didn't like this collection as well as Chronicles of Avonlea.  There were fewer funny, cheerful stories, and more with unpleasant characters.  I did enjoy many of the stories, but not all of them.

My favorites were "Aunt Cynthia's Persian Cat," "The Materializing of Cecil," "The Brother Who Failed," "The Return of Hester," and "Only a Common Fellow."  I especially loved "The Brother Who Failed" because it made me cry.  Which is odd, given that I didn't like this as well as the first ...

"For the Sake of the Game" edited by Laurie R. King and Leslie S. Klinger

Hmm.  While this book was a fun, fast read, I didn't enjoy it quite as much as the earlier collections in this series, A Study in Sherlock , In the Company of Sherlock Holmes , and Echoes of Sherlock Holmes .  Like those first three, this is a collection of short stories somehow inspired by the Sherlock Holmes canon, by a very varied group of writers.  Some stories have Holmes and Watson in them, some don't, etc.

I think that a lot of the stories in this collection were less charming and quirky, and...

"The Color of Compromise" by Jemar Tisby

I read this for Jamie Lapeyrolerie's book club.  Unfortunately, due to some kind of weird library snafu, I got my copy the day of the club discussion, so I'm only now finishing it.  Yes, it took me about three weeks to read this book, not because it's long, but because it is hard.

Now, the first five chapters, I felt like I wasn't really learning much new stuff.  Those were talking about the history of slavery in the US from the early days of colonialism through the onset of the Civil War.  And I...