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Read in 2017

January: 1. London: the Novel, by Edward Rutherfurd 2. Notes from a Small Island, by Bill Bryson 3. A Very English Scandal, by John Preston 4. Imagined London, by Anna Quindlen 5. The Black Dahlia, by James Ellroy 6. In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote February 1. Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen 2. The Girls of Slender Means, by Muriel Spark 3. Patience, by John Coates 4. Into the Whirlwind, by Eugenia Ginzburg 5. The Turn of the Screw, by Henry James 6. Few Eggs and No Oranges, by Vere Hodgson 7. Vittoria Cottage, by DE Stevenson March: 1. The Exiles Return, by Elizabeth de Waal 2. Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen 3. The Death of the Heart, by Elizabeth Bowen 4. The Buccaneers, by Edith Wharton 5. The Death of the Heart, by Elizabeth Bowen 6. White Teeth, by Zadie Smith April: 1. The Heat of the Day, by Elizabeth Bowen 2. The Two Mrs. Abbotts, by DE Stevenson 3. The Road to Little Dribbling, by Bill Bryson May: 1. London War Notes, by Mollie Panter-Dow...
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2016 Reading

January: 1. The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair 2. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum 3. The Awakening, by Kate Chopin 4. Liar: A Memoir, by Rob Roberge February: 1. The Forsyte Saga, by John Galsworthy 2. Girl in the Woods, by Aspen Matis 3. She Left Me the Gun, by Emma Brockes 4. Because of the Lockwoods, by Dorothy Whipple 5. The Chronology of Water, by Lidia Yuknavitch 6. To Show and to Tell, by Philip Lopate March: 1. Fierce Attachments, by Vivian Gornick 2. Too Brief a Treat, by Truman Capote 3. On the Move: a Life, by Oliver Sacks 4. The Go-Between, by LP Hartley 5. The Art of Memoir, by Mary Karr 6. Giving Up the Ghost, by Hilary Mantel 7. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou 8. The Great American Bus Ride, by Irma Kurtz 9. An Unquiet Mind, by Kay Radfield Jamison 10. A Widow's Story, by Joyce Carol Oates 11. So Sad Today, by Melissa Broder 12. The Liar's Club, by Mary Karr 13. An American Childhood, by Annie Dillard 14. So Sa...
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2015 Reading

January 1. The Vanishing Witch, by Karen Maitland 2. Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen 3. Texts From Jane Eyre, by Mallory Ortberg 4. Brighton Rock, by Graham Green 5. Brat Farrar, by Josephine Tey 6. Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert 7. Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy 8. A Movable Feast, by Ernest Hemingway 9. A Room of One's Own, by Virginia Woolf 10. Other Voices, Other Rooms, by Truman Capote 11. Maggie-Now, by Betty Smith February 1. Middlemarch, by George Eliot 2. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee 3. Nerdy, Shy, and Socially Inappropriate, by Cynthia Lee 4. Music For Chameleons, by Truman Capote 5. Peyton Place, by Grace Metalious 6. Unrequited, by Lisa Phillips 7. Brideshead Revisited, by Evelyn Waugh 8. A Lost Lady, by Willa Cather March 1. Persuasion, by Jane Austen 2. Love With a Chance of Drowning, by Torre DeRoche 3. One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez 4. Miss Buncle's Book, by DE Stevenson 5. One Hundred Yea...
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Read in 2014

January: 1. Outlander, by Diana Gabaldon 2. The Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome, by Tony Attwood 3. Mozart and the Whale, by Mary and Jerry Newport 4. Handling the Truth, by Beth Kephart 5. Girl, Interrupted, by Susanna Kaysen 6. The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath 7. Them, by Joyce Carol Oates 8. Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys February: 1. Random Family, by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc 2. I Was Told There'd Be Cake, by Sloane Crosley 3. The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath 4. Twilight Sleep, by Edith Wharton 5. Twirling Naked in the Streets, by Jeannie Davide-Rivera 6. Hungry Hill, by Daphne Du Maurier 7. Me, Myself, and Why, by Jennifer Ouilette 8. Lady Chatterley's Lover, by DH Lawrence 9. The Wise Virgins, by Leonard Woolf March: 1. Out With It, by Katherine Preston 2. Never Have I Ever, by Katie Heaney 3. Look me in the Eye, by John Elder Robison 4. Beyond, the Glass, by Antonia White 5. Atypical, by Jesse Saperstein 6. The Vanishing Act of Esme...
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Review: Forever Amber, by Kathleen Winsor

Pages: 972 Originally published: 1944 My edition: 2000 (Chicago Review Press) How I acquired my copy: Amazon.com, 2004 Forever Amber  takes place in the 1660s, immediately follwing Charles II's ("the Merry Monarch") return of the Stuarts to the English throne. The book features Amber St. Claire, a young woman who starts out as a sixteen-year-old country girl, naieve to the workings of the world. She immediately meets Bruce Carlton, a dashing young Cavalier, with whom she has a passionate love affair in choppy intervals throughout the book. They have two children together, but Bruce won't marry her for the reason he tells his friend Lord Almsbury: that Amber just isn't the kind of woman one marries. Upon following Bruce to London, he goes to Virginia, leaving her to fend for herself. What follows is a series of affairs and four marriages, with Bruce coming back from America now and then. Amber's marriages are imprudent: her first husband is...
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Review: Katherine, by Anya Seton

Pages: 500 Originally published: 1954 My copy: 2004 (Chicago Review Press) How I acquired my copy: Borders, 2004 This book is more than just a good romance. It is an all-time classic. I am a younger reader, and so I don't have fond memories of the first time this book came out; but I'm glad that they brought Katherine  back into print. It is one of those books that all lovers of historical fiction should read, not simply for the history, but because this is an elegantly crafted novel; unarguably one of the very best I've read in a long time. This novel is a great introduction to the works of Anya Seton. The story of Katherine Swynford and John of Gaunt is set against a backdrop of chivalry and heroic adventure during the 14th century. I thoroughly loved this novel; there are parts of it that still stay with me two months after reading it. Whenever I read historical fiction, I always look to see whether the author has done her research- Anya Seton most definit...
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Review: Jane Austen's Letters, ed. by Deirdre Le Faye

Pages: 667 Original date of publication: 2011 My copy:   2011 (Oxford University Press) Why I decided to read: How I acquired my copy: Amazon.com, April 2013 This is a compilation of many of Jane Austen’s letters, most of them sent to her sister Cassandra between 1796 and 1817, the year of her death. Although many of Austen’s letters were destroyed by her sister in order to preserve the family reputation, the collection contains over 160 letters in which Austen gives her sister details about her life in Chawton—as well as giving us a tantalizing glimpse of what was going through her mind as she was writing her novels (especially the novel that was to become Pride and Prejudice , First Impressions ). There are other letters here, too, giving advice to her niece and professional correspondence to publishers—as well as a couple of letters that were written by Cassandra Austen after Jane’s death. To the sisters, the letters acted in the way that phone calls do toda...
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