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Sunday, January 13, 2013

Currently reading...

I had an email from the county library (their online request service is the best!) and I apparently had six books waiting for me. I hate it when I get all the books I'm in queue for at the same time. I already had A Feast for Crows at home...I was finishing up A Clash of Kings. For some reason, it takes me a really long time to read those books...not so with others. I read Don't Breathe A Word in two days. I really liked that one.

So what am I reading now?
I have A Darcy Connection, which is the book I need to read to keep up with the Pride and Prejudice reading extravaganza.
Also sitting on the floor next to my bed: A Feast For Crows, Legend, Daring Greatly (by Brene Brown), and another, I can't remember the name and I'm too lazy to get up and go look. I have three weeks to read five books. I'm thinking that Legend and A Darcy Connection will be quick reads for me. The other two are going to require pondering. They're books made to be "chewed and digested" rather than "swallowed", to quote Sir Francis Bacon.

And, I am starting Frankenstein with my seniors this week, and that means I need to reread it in order to teach it. Shouldn't be too much of a problem seeing as how I've been teaching it since 2008. No worries there. I like how every time I read it, I see something different, or at least my perspective shifts, if that makes sense. I love to go back and read books that were on my reading lists in high school and college (undergrad anyway). It's always amazing to me how different a book is when you read it again ten years later. Life experience flavors your reading. Like when I read The Awakening by Kate Chopin for the third time (as a grad student); I understood Edna Pontellier much better than I had when I was in my early twenties. It's easier to understand her boredom with her life. It's too easy to get bogged down in the labels we put on ourselves. I recently had a chance to comment on Facebook about how what you want to be when you grow up is different from what you want to do. We should want to be good humans: thoughtful, kind, caring. What we do can change. That's reassuring somehow.

Saturday, January 5, 2013



It is that time of year again! I'm participating in the Pride and Prejudice Challenge (see the link below). I've decided to take on the Aficionada challenge: 12-14 texts!

I'm starting with a re-read of Pride and Prejudice for the month of January.

Other books I'm considering:
Lost in Austen- Emma Campbell Webster
The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen- Syrie James
Becoming Jane Austen- Jon Spence
Old Friends and New Fancies: An Imaginary Sequel to the Novels of Jane Austen- Sybil G. Brinton
Jane Austen: A Life- Claire Tomalin
An Unequal Marriage: Pride and Prejudice Continued- Emma Tennant
Pemberley: Or Pride and Prejudice Continued- Emma Tennant
Mrs. Darcy's Dilemma- Diana Birchall
The Bar Sinister: Pride and Prejudice Continues...- Linda Berdoll
Letters from Pemberley: The First Year- Jane Dawkins
Young Master Darcy: A Lesson in Honour- Pamela Aidan
An Assembly Such as This (Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman #1)- Pamela Aidan
Duty and Desire (Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman #2)- Pamela Aidan
These Three Remain (Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman #3)-Pamela Aidan
More Letters from Pemberley: 1814-1819:  A Further Continuation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice- Jane Dawkins
Desire and Duty: A Sequel to Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice- Ted Bader
The Diary of Henry Fitzwilliam Darcy- Marjorie Fasman
Darcy's Story- Janet Aylmer

The following is a link to the challenge!

The Pride and Prejudice Bicentenary Challenge 2013

The Pride Prejudice Bicentenary Challenge (2013)

January

1/5/13
January being what it is, it's time to create a new list of things that I want to do or change. I started taking guitar lessons last September and that's been really great in terms of being creative. But it's been such a long time since I've written anything that I would like to use 2013 as the year to start writing again. Maybe I won't write anything that anyone else will read, but that's OK. I just need to have a creative outlet.

I'm not sure of the direction that this blog will take, but at least it's a place for me to start putting words into a concrete form.