Bookin' It Thru Life

Such a weird little book...given my proclivity for novels set in this time I was willing to go along with it but once I was done I was like-What did I just do?  At the end of the day this was really a set of vingettes that take place when a occasional visitor to a small town makes her observations.  After having read W&D, its almost like Gaskell was setting up the town in which she later set Molly Gibson and her father into.  Scholars

Somehow Jane Austin and the Bronte's have a monopoly on Victorian chick lit but with Wives and Daughters, Gaskell demonstrates that she belongs right in the middle of that group, if not at the very top.  Gaskell, where have you been all my life?  I had no idea there was such a treasure hiding in plain sight if only I had known to look.  Molly Gibson is every bit the heroine that Elizabeth Bennet is without any of the hidden snark and she far exceeds anything Emma aspired to.   And don't get me started on the horrible Fanny from Mansfield Park-Austin should have packed that one up before she got started.  Gaskell's story doesn't need unlikely coincidences to propel the story forward (of course Darcy was home just when Elizabeth was touring his estate; naturally Wickham knew Darcy in the good old days...).  Mrs. Kirkpatrick/Mrs. Gibson, Molly's stepmother, is a deeply flawed character who provides a crisp contrast to the Molly's near perfection, though G...

My nephew Ben recommended this one to me.  I was curious-it was the first book he and I had really ever talked about and he gave it high marks.  Of course I knew what it was about-the movie starring Leonardo DiCapri was in every preview I saw for months at one time.  Not a movie I particularly wanted to see...apparently there was a bear mauling and that sounded gruesome and that was that.  However, I can't pass up a good book recommendation so off I went to acquire The Revenant. First, I had a vague understanding of what "revenant" meant but could not have written a definition out.  Per google its "a person who has returned, especially supposedly from the dead".  Hard to believe with all the zombie shows I have watched (ok, really just the Walking Dead and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies but still) and zombie books I have read (yes, well, that's pretty much the Walking Dead and Pet Sematary and Cronin's The Twelve series, if that even counts) I...

The Washington Post review said it begged to be read in one sitting.  The WSJ said it was "arguably the buzziest novel of the season".  Publicists say its coming to Hulu in spring 2020.  What do I say?  Eh.  It was not bad, just wasn't that good.  A pretty run of the mill coming of age love story when all the dust settled. Connell and Marianne, who run in very different social circles, find each other in high school and then again in college.  Their on-again-off-again relationship is similar to half a dozen that I myself witnessed over the course of high school and college.  I can't argue that it was unrealistic, or that Rooney did not have a handle on her subject matter, but it I found it mundane and the lack of quotation marks when the characters were speaking...an irritation I could not shake. Quotable Quotes: On the experience some have of leaving high school, going away for the first time, and trying to figure oneself out: If anythi...