Rachel Kovaciny's Blog, page 94

Great Gatsby Read-Along: Chapter VII

Oh, I hate this chapter.

It's not even Myrtle's death that makes me hate it, it's that horrible scene in the hotel room.  It's so claustrophobic, so sickening somehow -- I had to force myself to read it today, and it made me feel nauseated.  Ugh.

The power in Fitzgerald's writing is staggering sometimes!

I really hate heat, and unremitting, dauntless heat like he describes here is just abominable, to me.  I would not have fared well before air conditioning was invented.  Or I...

Great Gatsby Read-Along: Chapter VI

This chapter begins amusingly enough, with little tales of Gatsby's notoriety -- my favorite being that "he didn't live in a house at all, but in a boat that looked like a house and was moved secretly up and down the Long Island shore" (p. 103).  That cracks me up.

But we quickly move to more serious stuff, particularly the true story of Gatsby's background.  Or, more truthfully, what Nick Carraway believes is the truth about him, that he was in fact a nobody named James Gatz who rei...

Great Gatsby Read-Along: Chapter V

(Yup, this is the cover on the giant book
Alan Ladd is reading in my blog header.)Anybody else tempted to just quit reading after this chapter?  I'm not going to, but I have to say... this chapter is like that breathless moment at the top of the roller coaster's first hill, where the train pauses for just an instant or two and hangs in between anticipation and the wild ride.  Sometimes I want to just stay right there, where the ride is ahead and the waiting is behind me.

But, lik...

"Bookworm Journal: A Reading Log for Kids... and Their Parents"

Here's a book I thought some of my friends who are parents might be interested in, especially with school being done (or almost done) and people looking for something fun to help their kids keep reading during the summer.  


I bought the Bookworm Journal from Amazon last year to help encourage Sarah as she learned to read.  We used it all through first grade, about once a week.  She would read a book aloud with me, later on to me, and we'd fill out the journal together. &nbs...

Great Gatsby Read-Along: Chapter IV

I need you to know up-front that I have been awake since 4:40am, and I have hosted a yard sale with 4 of my friends from 6am to noon, and my feet hurt a lot.  Also, I have not had as much caffeine as I would like.  You've been warned.

I mean, we open with the sentence, "On Sunday morning while church bells rang in the village alongshore, the world and its mistress returned to Gatsby's house and twinkled hilariously on his lawn" (p. 64).  Well, if that's not an indictment of the...

Great Gatsby Read-Along: Chapter III

Time to admit that my plan for reading this is not going the way I'd hoped.  I'd planned to read a chapter of So We Read On one day, a chapter of Careless People the next, and a chapter of The Great Gatsby the third, at which point I would post about the chapter and whatever I'd learned from the other two books.  Alas, real life has intervened, in the form of first all my kids getting a cold, then me catching it from them.  Also, the other two books are WAY more...

Top Ten Tuesday: In Honor of D-Day

This week's prompt from The Broke and the Bookish is "Top Ten Books From X Genre That I've Recently Added To My TBR List."  Because today is the 73rd anniversary of the D-Day invasion of Normandy, France in 1944, I'm going to list off the Top Ten WWII-Related Books On My TBR List.




Agent Zigzag by Ben Macintyre

American Women and WWII by Doris Weatherford

The Bitter Road to Dachau by Robert L. Wise

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein

Dear Enemy by Jack Cavanaugh



Lipstick and Lies by Margit...

Great Gatsby Read-Along: Chapter II

Gatsby may be "the man who gives his name to this book" (p. 2), but he's nowhere to be found in this chapter.  Oh, he does get name-checked, but we spend this chapter learning about the very broken people living near Gatsby, and near Nick.  And we learn some interesting stuff about Nick too.

So what is up with this Tom Buchanan guy, huh?  He's met Nick a couple of times over the years, and today he invites Nick to go hang out with him and his mistress, Myrtle, in their little lo...

Great Gatsby Read-Along: Chapter I

(The original cover image)Yes!  Here we are at last, ready to embark on our voyage of learning about dreams, disillusionment, love, and loss.

Sounds cheerful, doesn't it?

So while I'm reading this, I'm also reading So We Read On:  How The Great Gatsby Came to be and Why it Endures by Maureen Corrigan, and I'm going to dip into Careless People:  Murder, Mayhem, and the Invention of The Great Gatsby by Sarah Churchwell too.  I had hoped to have at least one of t...

"Five Poisoned Apples" Cover Reveal and Contest Info

Today's the day you've been waiting for!  The day that Rooglewood Press announces their final fairy tale retelling contest!  And I get to be part of the reveal, so here it is:


I think this is the prettiest cover yet.  If you're curious, the photo is by Wynter Clark, and the design is by Julia Popova, who also designed the previous covers in the series.

If you're interested in entering the contest, the official page is right here.

You all know I won the last contest with my story...