February Books of the Month

March 20, 2020 by Christina

February feels like a lifetime ago, doesn’t it? I know it was a busy month for me because my calendar is packed with book club meetings, dinner plans with friends, and an introduction to quilting class on Sundays. Yet, from the vantage point of mid-March, it feels unimaginably footloose and fancy free. What did I do when I could go and do whatever I wanted? Well, what I did was read an astonishing 17 books during this month thanks in […]

Categories: 2020 Reads, Amish, Animals, Audiobook, Awards and Prizes, Book Club, Canada, Caribbean, Classics, Classics Club, Crime, Europe, Feminism, Fiction, Food, Indigenious Peoples, Juvenile, LGBTQA+, Mountain West, Nonfiction, North America, Persephone Books, ReadDiverse, Religion, Travel, United Kingdom, United States, Women's Prize • Tags: A. J. Finn, Adam Darlin, Audre Lorde, Becky Ohlsen, Brendan Sainsbury, Catherine Bodry, Chris Chalk, Christopher Ketcham, Coco Morante, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Edwidge Danticat, Jesmyn Ward, Jia Tolentino, John Lee, Jon Krakauer, Kamila Shamsie, Kevin Harrison Jr, L. M. Montgomery, Linda Castillo, Marghanita Laski, Richard Thomas, Rutina Wesley, Shelly Frasier, Steven Higashide, Susan O'Malley, Sy Montgomery

A Lady of Quality by Frances Hodgson Burnett

December 23, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – Kindle edition. Project Gutenberg, 2012. Originally published 1896. 256 pgs. Free download. In 1690, the wife of Sir Jeoffry, Daphne, dies soon after giving birth to her ninth child. Her husband is disappointed with the birth of a ninth daughter and refuses contact with the baby, banishing Clorinda to the other side of the castle with her only living siblings, Anne and Barbara. Blessed with better health than either of her sisters, Clorinda grows up to be an […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Classics, Classics Club, Europe, Fiction, United Kingdom • Tags: Frances Hodgson Burnett

The Shuttle by Frances Hodgson Burnett

December 20, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – Kindle edition. Project Gutenberg, 2012. Originally published 1906. 522 pgs. Free download. The book’s title refers to ships shuttling back and forth over the Atlantic, carrying wealthy Americans heiresses to England in search of titled husbands and impoverish, titled Englishmen in search of wealthy women. (Think Cora Crawley from “Downton Abbey” and her marriage to Lord Grantham.) According to Persephone Books, it would later be estimated that more than five hundred American women married titled foreigners and some […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Chunkster, Classics, Classics Club, Europe, Feminism, Fiction, New York, North America, Persephone Books, United States • Tags: Frances Hodgson Burnett

Wife in Name Only by Charlotte M. Brame

December 6, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – Kindle edition. Project Gutenberg, 2012. Originally published 1876. 137 pgs. Free download. Comprised of thirty short chapters, Brame’s book can be roughly divided into three parts to follow the shifts in who the main character is. In Part One, a provincial doctor with a failing practice aids a titled Englishman traveling with his ill, pregnant wife. The two are traveling under an assumed name because they married without permission from the man’s father and do not want their […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Classics, Classics Club, Europe, Fiction, United Kingdom • Tags: Charlotte M. Brame

The Time Machine by H.G. Wells

December 2, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – audiobook. Read by Kelsey Grammer. Apple, 2018. Originally published 1985. 4 hours, 7 minutes. Free download. Identified by the narrator as simply “The Time Traveler”, a Victorian English scientist and gentleman inventor living in Richmond, Surry is invited to a weekly dinner party to share about his latest invention. At this particular dinner party, the narrator recounts the Traveler’s revelation that he has built a machine capable of carrying a person through time. Encouraged by the audience’s response, […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Audiobook, Classics, Classics Club, Dystopia, Europe, Fiction, Science Fiction, United Kingdom • Tags: H.G. Wells

Dracula by Bram Stoker

November 18, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – Kindle edition. Top Five Books, 2011. Originally published 1897. 398 pgs. Purchased.  Told in a series of diary entries, ship logs, telegrams, and phonograph recordings, Stoker’s novel recounts the efforts of Jonathan Harker, Lucy Westenra, Mina Murry, John Seward, Quincey Morris, Arthur Holmwood, and Abraham Von Helsing to rid themselves and the world of Count Dracula, a vampire who has left his castle in Transylvania and traveled to England in the hopes of finding new victims and spreading […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Classics, Classics Club, Europe, Fantasy, Fiction, United Kingdom • Tags: Bram Stoker

Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith

September 23, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – Kindle edition. W.W. Norton, 2012. Originally published 1950. 292 pgs. Purchased.  On a cross-country train trip, Guy Haines makes the mistake of telling a stranger his business. Upon hearing how much Guy desires a divorce from his estranged, pregnant wife in small town Texas, Charles Anthony Bruno decides to murder the young woman and free Guy from her derailing his career as a budding architect. The offer originally sounds like a joke to Guy; something Bruno offers as […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Book Club, Classics, Classics Club, Crime, Fiction, New York, North America, United States • Tags: Patricia Highsmith

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

September 6, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – audiobook. Read by Grover Gardner. Blackstone Audio, 2011. Originally published 1906. 13 hours, 17 minutes. Purchased. Immigrating from Lithuanian to Chicago, Jergis Rudkus is eager to live out his own American dream with his wife, Ona, and her stepmother and stepsiblings. Jergis takes a job at Brown’s slaughterhouse in Chicago, expecting to make enough to support his wife and their extended family. But the family, including the children, are all sent out to find work as the family […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, AP Literature, Audiobook, Classics, Classics Club, Fiction, Food, North America, United States • Tags: Upton Sinclair

The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss

March 25, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – audiobook. Translated from the German. Read by Frederick Davidson. Blackstone Audio, 2009. Originally published 1812. 10 hours, 18 minutes. Library copy. Wyss’ novel follows a Swiss family figuring out how to survive on an uninhabited island after a violent storm wrecks their ship among the rocky outcropping of an uninhabited island. The rest of the crew headed to Port Jackson, Australia via the East Indies abandoned the family, taking all the lifeboats but leaving the livestock and provisions […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Audiobook, Classics, Classics Club, Fiction, German, Juvenile, Oceania, Translated • Tags: Johann David Wyss

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Part Two)

March 4, 2019 by Christina

Fiction — audiobook. Read by George Guidall. Translated from the Russian by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. Recorded Books, 2000. Originally published 1866. 25 hours, 1 minute. Library copy. This post includes my thoughts on Part Four through the Epilogue of Dostoyevsky’s most famous work. For my thoughts on Parts One through Three, please see this post. As the end of Part Three, the main character, Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov had awoken to find an unknown yet aristocratically dressed man standing over […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Audiobook, Classics, Classics Club, Crime, Europe, Fiction, Russia, Russian, Translated • Tags: Fyodor Dostoyevsky, George Guidall

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Part One)

February 20, 2019 by Christina

Fiction — audiobook. Read by George Guidall. Translated from the Russian by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. Recorded Books, 2000. Originally published 1866. 25 hours, 1 minute. Library copy. Arguably Dostoyevsky’s most famous work, Crime and Punishment is divided into six parts plus epilogue. Given the novel’s length and (assumed) difficulty in reading, my book club decided to split the book at the halfway mark and discuss it at two meetings. Our February meetup covered Part One to Three, which […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Audiobook, Classics, Classics Club, Crime, Europe, Fiction, Russia, Russian, Translated • Tags: Fyodor Dostoyevsky, George Guidall

The Warden by Anthony Trollope

February 1, 2019 by Christina

Fiction — audiobook. Read by Simon Vance. Blackstone Audio, 2005. Originally published 1855. 7 hours, 12 minutes. Library copy. In the fictional English county of Barsetshire, Septimus Harding serves as the warden of Hiram’s Hospital and Precentor of Barchester Cathedral. The hospital is supported by a charitable bequest from the Diocese of Barchester, and Harding draws a hefty salary for performing his duties as the warden. This hefty salary, though, attracts the attention of John Bold, a man who is […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, AP Literature, Audiobook, Classics, Classics Club, Europe, Fiction, United Kingdom • Tags: Anthony Trollope, Simon Vance