Literary Criticism
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Review: Heartless (Parasol Protectorate #4) by Gail Carriger
I managed to read another book. This time I read Heartless by Gail Carriger as part of the Steampunk Reading Challenge! Originally I selected only the first two books of Carriger’s Parasol Protectorate series, but after reading Soulless I was hooked on the series and subsequently read Changeless and Blameless. Heartless is clearly a steampunk novel, not just because it features all kinds of dirigibles and steam powered machines but because it distinctly has the scientific flair that defines the genre in general. Heartless picks up right where the last Parasol Protectorate left off…with protagonist Lady Alexia ‘soulless’ Tarabotti Maccon pregnant and trying to avoid all hell breaking loose in…
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Review: The Beekeeper’s Apprentice (The Mary Russell #1) by Laurie R. King
I desperately needed something fun and easy to read….and this time of year I just love a good mystery….something about the turning leaves and the cool, slightly foggy mornings….geese flying south for the winter, the pumpkins ripening….I just love fall and always associate mysteries as the season’s preferred genre….maybe it’s the spirit Halloween (incidentally that is my fav holiday as well)! I just finished reading The September Society by Charles Finch and was hungry for another mystery but was waiting for my mom to give me back my copy of the next book in the series (The Fleet Street Murders) that I plan on reading next. So I was stuck…
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Review: The September Society (Charles Lenox Mysteries #2) by Charles Finch
How perfect and fitting that I am finishing this book today on the first day of September! I’ve just come off a string of long and content heavy books. So I just mentally needed a break from reading things that were hard/complicated, wordy, and had long, extensive family trees (which is so typical of English literary classics and British based books like Outlander or Through a Glass Darkly!). So, I was eager to read something else historically based but yet something I also knew to be a little less complicated and easy to read/understand….I immediately turned to the next book in the Charles Lenox Series, The September Society by Charles…
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Review: Through a Glass Darkly by Karleen Koen
For my birthday a few months ago, my sister got me this book. Both her and I have very similar literary tastes so when she got me this book I was very excited to start reading it–I totally trust her literary judgement, since she is a librarian she knows all the good books/authors :). She had heard lots of good things about it and said she thought it was part of a series but wasn’t sure. She knew the author had written other historic works such as Before Versailles: A Novel of Louis XIV which I saw featured on Goodreads around the same time. Karleen Koen has written four books, Dark Angles,…
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Review: Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Well it’s taken me a few months but I have finally finished Great Expectations! Yes I know I started it like months ago and have been slowly trying to finish it up between the move and other books I’ve been reading. I started reading Great Expectations by Charles Dickens for the Gothic Literature Reading Challenge, I had it down to read for the Victorian Literature Reading Challenge also but I decided to use it for the Gothic one since it had a lot of classic Gothic themes which I love. I have struggled with reading Dickens over the years only because I think he is wordy and often his stories…
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Review: The Wedding by Nicholas Sparks
I think I must be the only girl on earth who hasn’t seen The Notebook. I am just not into Nicholas Sparks, and I had no interest in watching The Notebook let alone reading a Nicholas Sparks novel. However, at the behest of one of my friends, I decided to cave and read ONE Sparks novel. I picked The Wedding. Now, in general I too fancy myself a jaded cynic so Nicholas Sparks has never really had any appeal to me what-so-ever….he seems a little too over the top sappy. Romance as a genre in general has never been one that I am particularly into though I do like Para-Romance books…
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Review: Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
I decided to read Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness as part of the Victorian Literature Challenge. I have read Heart of Darkness before for a Comparative/Literary Criticism class in college. I’ll be honest, I didn’t care for it much then and I didn’t care for it reading it again two years later. Though I hoped that not having to write a paper on the book and not having to deconstruct the entire concepts would help me be able to get into it more but I was sadly disappointed. Conrad’s novel is an interesting specimen in literature, it is more of a transitional book that has a foot in the Victorian era but…
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Review: The Bird Sisters by Rebecca Rasumussen
I won a copy of The Bird Sisters by Rebecca Rasmussen thanks to a Goodreads giveaway. I had heard lots of good things about this book on Twitter and read lots of awesome reviews on Goodreads about this book and I must say in this case the book lives up to its hype….it was GREAT :). The story follows the lives of two sisters who couldn’t be more opposite–Twiss and Milly. The sisters are spinsters who live in the same house that they grew up in and are now in their 70’s. We get a little background on them in the beginning of the story and then the story shifts and…
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Review: The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
I have settled on re-reading one of my fav books of all time….The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. I decided to read Dorian Gray for the Gothic Reading Challenge, I had it on my list to read for both the Gothic Reading Challenge and the Victorian Literature Challenge but decided to use it for the Gothic Challenge since I am in a ‘dark’ mood with all the madness happening…..why not have madness in my literature too LOL. Oscar Wilde is one of my most fav authors, he literally just didn’t care who he made mad and wrote about what he loved….he is eccentric, carismatic, and philosophical in his…
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Review: Dead Reckoning (Sookie Stackhouse #11) by Charlaine Harris
This was on my ‘top most anticipated book releases of the year’ list! As most of you know by now, I am a HUGE True Blood fan and I LOVE the Southern Vampire Mystery Series (SVMS) by Charalaine Harris. Saying that I couldn’t WAIT to get my hands on this book was the understatement of the year! By lucky accident I have been sick for two days now so I have been able to be home for two days and devoured Dead Reckoning by Charlaine Harris. The last book (Dead in the Family), the last book was a huge disappointment to me. Nothing really happened and the story just wasn’t really doing…