Amazing Books for Your Reading List – June 28, 2022
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The heatwave is finally breaking! And not a moment too soon. I was starting to go a bit crazy being cooped up in the house. Although the house is looking better and better as I’m completing painting projects, changing light fixtures. I find those kinds of projects fun. Plus, it’s finally cool enough to enjoy reading on the patio for a change
My reading list week includes The Venice Sketchbook by Rhys Bowen. I chose this purely because the cover appealed to me. We’ll see how that works out for me! The next book on my reading list is the classic, The Catcher in the Rye. One of those books most people read in school but somehow, I did not. And finally, I’ll be reading Wide Sargasso Sea, which is something of a sequel to my favorite, Jane Eyre.
Join the conversation! Tell me what’s on your reading list this week in the comments.
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Wide Sargasso Sea, a masterpiece of modern fiction, was Jean Rhys’s return to the literary center stage. She had a startling early career and was known for her extraordinary prose and haunting women characters. With Wide Sargasso Sea, her last and best-selling novel, she ingeniously brings into light one of fiction’s most fascinating characters: the madwoman in the attic from Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. This mesmerizing work introduces us to Antoinette Cosway, a sensual and protected young woman who is sold into marriage to the prideful Mr. Rochester. Rhys portrays Cosway amidst a society so driven by hatred, so skewed in its sexual relations, that it can literally drive a woman out of her mind.
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Anyone who has read J.D. Salinger’s New Yorker stories–particularly A Perfect Day for Bananafish, Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut, The Laughing Man, and For Esme With Love and Squalor–will not be surprised by the fact that his first novel is full of children. The hero-narrator of The Catcher in the Rye is an ancient child of sixteen, a native New Yorker named Holden Caulfield.
Through circumstances that tend to preclude adult, secondhand description, he leaves his prep school in Pennsylvania and goes underground in New York City for three days. The boy himself is at once too simple and too complex for us to make any final comment about him or his story. Perhaps the safest thing we can say about Holden is that he was born in the world not just strongly attracted to beauty but, almost, hopelessly impaled on it.
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There are many voices in this novel: children’s voices, adult voices, underground voices-but Holden’s voice is the most eloquent of all. Transcending his own vernacular, yet remaining marvelously faithful to it, he issues a perfectly articulated cry of mixed pain and pleasure. However, like most lovers and clowns and poets of the higher orders, he keeps most of the pain to, and for, himself. The pleasure he gives away, or sets aside, with all his heart. It is there for the reader who can handle it to keep.
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Caroline Grant is struggling to accept the end of her marriage when she receives an unexpected bequest. Her beloved great-aunt Lettie leaves her a sketchbook, three keys, and a final whisper…Venice. Caroline’s quest: to scatter Juliet “Lettie” Browning’s ashes in the city she loved and to unlock the mysteries stored away for more than sixty years.
It’s 1938 when art teacher Juliet Browning arrives in romantic Venice. For her students, it’s a wealth of history, art, and beauty. For Juliet, it’s poignant memories and a chance to reconnect with Leonardo Da Rossi, the man she loves whose future is already determined by his noble family. However star-crossed, nothing can come between them. Until the threat of war closes in on Venice and they’re forced to fight, survive, and protect a secret that will bind them forever.
Key by key, Lettie’s life of impossible love, loss, and courage unfolds. It’s one that Caroline can now make right again as her own journey of self-discovery begins.
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Read Along with Me Hey Readers! I am taking some time for myself for a week or two. The first half of this year has been so incredibly busy so I’ve decided to take just a little break from a few things to make sure I’m keeping life in balance. I hung an “out of…
Read Along with Me And just like that, it’s June! I hope you’re enjoying the warm weather of the summer. I am working my way back from my brief hiatus. If you are waiting on a response from me about a book review, I will be in contact shortly. I have a number of emails…
Read Along with Me I hope you’re managing to stay cool in this crazy heat wave! My grandfather (may his memory be for a blessing) used to tell me that indoor projects should be saved for the winter, when it was too cold to be outside, in Wisconsin. I’m quickly learning, now living in the…
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