Rebecca Reads

Although Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a slim book (124 pages), the issues raised are relevant today. I wouldn’t say Gilman’s writing is stunning or beautiful. The plot is not engaging or page-turning. It is predictable and overly “convenient.” The characters are stereotypes on steroids. But rather than expecting any of those other things, [...]

In November, I reread Cry, the Beloved Country for my book club and then, because I loved that book so much, I read Too Late the Phalarope, also by Alan Paton.
Although I am glad I had a second experience with Paton’s South Africa, I still much preferred the first novel. I’d be happy to send [...]

I’m back to blogging after a busy family-filled weekend. My brother got married on Saturday. The bride was beautiful, and it was a wonderful day (and weekend) overall.
I wanted to write a post with the BBAW meme, among other things, but I just spent more than two hours going through Google Reader and reading and [...]

Last May 1, I officially started Rebecca Reads. I had been tinkering with a site for a few days and I post-dated some pseudo-reviews that I’d written for a personal site, but it wasn’t until May 1 that I opened the site to Google and started linking to it when I commented on your sites.  [...]

I don’t often read modern fiction, but when I heard Bridget Jones’ Diary was a “modern day retelling” of Pride and Prejudice, I thought I’d give it a try. I was lucky enough to find a fairly new, nice-looking copy on a library cart for (probably) a quarter a few months ago, so I thought [...]

In Sister Bernadette’s Barking Dogs: The Quirky History and Lost Art of Diagramming Sentences, Kitty Burns Florey sets out to tell why diagramming sentences is so much fun and the brief history of the art of diagramming sentences. To some extent, I felt Florey’s book was more memoir and humor than it was history. Yet, [...]

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I loved reading Vladimir Nabokov’s short stories a few months ago because his control of language is so powerful, although I did feel that some of his stories were rather odd. Nabokov’s novel Pale Fire is similar in that it is both odd and powerfully written. It is a masterwork of creation: who [...]

A number of people got some Really Old Classics read by the end of February. I’m sending a lucky winner a book of your choice. But first, here’s who participated in the first half of the Really Old Classics Challenge. I’ve formed it like a mini-blog carnival so you might get an idea for your [...]

It’s the new year! New challenges are beckoning us, as are new books. But let’s not forget the really old ones!
How about a mini-challenge (with a giveaway) to remind you?

To my surprise, I greatly enjoyed reading The Book that Changed My Life, edited by Roxanne J. Coady and Joy Johannesson.
The Book that Changed My Life is a collection of essays by writers, and since I don’t often read modern fiction, I didn’t expect to recognize many of the authors highlighted, much less did I [...]