Rachel Kovaciny's Blog, page 49

"Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" by J. K. Rowling

I have not read the Harry Potter books since 2007, when I reread the first six books to prepare for the seventh book's release.  So, I've decided it's high time to reread the whole series, and I'm calling 2021 My Year with Harry Potter.  

I've read Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone three times before, which is once more than books 2 through 6 and twice more than book 7, which I've only read once.  The reason I've read this one an extra time is that, when I was a senior in college, I did an in...

Announcing a "Sense and Sensibility" Read-along!

I am pleased to announce that I will be leading a read-along of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility this spring!

We will begin March 1, and I am planning an easy pace of about 6 chapters a week.  I hope to post three times a week, discussing two chapters per post.  Most of the chapters are quite short, so I think that will be very feasible, and will let us finish up in mid-May.

I hope you will join me!  It doesn't matter if you've read Sense and Sensibility before, or never read it -- all will be ...

"Jewel of Persia" by Roseanna M. White

I don't read a lot of Biblical fiction, mostly because the idea of fictionalizing the life of a real person from the Bible kind of bothers me.  But Jewel of Persia is about a fictional person living at the time of the book of Esther, more than about Esther herself, so that sounded like a book that I would really enjoy.  And it turns out, I did!

Kasia is a young Jewish woman who catches the eye of mighty emperor Xerxes, who takes her as one of his wives even though she has no dowry.  Theirs is a l...

"My Side of the Mountain" by Jean Craighead George

I read this book over and over and over as a kid.  Between it and The Black Stallion by Walter Farley, I also spent a huge amount of time imagining I was living alone in the wilderness and surviving off the land.  (I also went through this phase of eating random flowers to see if they were something I should keep an eye out for if I ever needed to live in a flower-strewn meadow.  Know of any meadows where there are a lot of carnations?  I liked them.)

Well, now I've read it as an adult, and I hav...

That Curious Sense of Freedom: January 2021 Inklings!

You may remember that, a few years ago, Heidi Pekarek hosted a monthly link-up series called Inkling Explorations.  It was a low-key way to share book and movie scenes around a common theme, once a month, and it was really fun.  Heidi revived the series (now called Inklings!) recently, and I'm joining in this month!

The January prompt is a new beginning in book or film.  Since I recently reread The Blue Castle by L. M. Montgomery, which is all about new beginnings, I thought I would share this pa...

"The Moonstone" by Wilkie Collins

I tried to read The Moonstone a couple of years ago, and just couldn't get into it.  Don't know why.  Wasn't in the right mood, maybe?  Still, I knew I wanted to read it, since it's widely hailed as one of the first great mystery novels.  I got this lovely copy with a gift card, and it sat on my TBR shelves for months and months because I was hesitant to try it again, if you must know. 

But some friends on Bookstagram decided they wanted to do a very laid-back read-along of it, just reading it at...

"Black Heroes of the Wild West" by James Otis Smith

This is a fantastic book!  It tells the stories of three Black Americans and their real-life adventures in the Wild West.  And it does it in a graphic-novel-like style that is engaging and fun.  I found it at the library and might just have to pick up a copy to add to my homeschooling history shelves.

The three heroes it features are "Stagecoach Mary" Fields, Bass Reeves, and Bob Lemmons.  I actually got this from the library because I'm working on an article about Mary Fields for my next Prairie...

Looking Back; Looking Forward

Most of the time, I do one post wrapping up the last year's reading challenges and such, and another declaring my intentions for the new year.  However, a lot of my new challenges are just carrying on from last year, so I'm doing them all in one post this year.

A Literary Christmas (hosted by In The Bookshelf)

I said I wanted to read and review three Christmas books for this event, and I actually read six and reviewed five!  You can read them all here.  I'm sure I will participate in this event ag...

The Smashing and Dashing 2020 Character Awards

Katie of I'm Charles Baker Harris (And I Can Read) didn't actually tag me with doing this, but she did encourage me to, so I'm going to!  You can read her post here.

The idea is to answer these with characters from books you read in that particular year.  If you want to do this too, go right ahead!  I'm not going to tag anyone, but I will provide a copy-able list of the questions at the bottom of the post.

All right.

Most Relatable Character 
I'm taking this to mean the character *I* related to the ...

"A Holiday by Gaslight" by Mimi Matthews

What a fun finale to my Christmas reading this year!  I polished off this novella in about a day, and it was like a nice dessert -- satisfying, but not over-satiating.  It has a little bit of a North and South flavor to it, intentionally, with a young lady falling for a man in trade.  I'm going to be rereading Gaskell's book in February, and this nicely got me in the mood for that.
In this case, the young lady is being courted by a merchant who is stiff and formal around her, causing her to misun...