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Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte. Semi-autobiographical novel about the daily life (and sufferings) of a governess. It lacks The Tenant of Wildfell Hall's sheer awesomeness and "Screw you, misogynistic laws! Also you, romantic ideals of brooding Byronic heroes redeemed by the love of a Pure Woman." and is a much calmer and ( Read more... )

The Sarashina Nikki is the last of the Heian diaries for me. Unlike the other three nikki, this isn't really a diary so much as a memoir. Sarashina writes her various entries years after events actually take place, her entries affected by the fact that many of the people she talks about are dead by the time she wrote it, and briefly summarizes ( Read more... )

I read a bunch of Sabatinis last year (largely his earlier books, which are in the public domain) and they were fun, but kind of blended together in my head. Mistress Wilding, which uses the Monmouth Rebellion as its backdrop, and which was my first sabatini for this year, largely blends in as well, but it gets special mention for some of the ( Read more... )

I'm not sure how old I was when I first read The Princess and the Goblin, but I was young enough that I did not yet realize that not all classics looked like classics, as opposed to sometimes being packaged like "normal" books. I remember my surprise when I realized I'd read and reread a book that was just over a hundred years older than me ( Read more... )

This is the best known of of the four Heian lady diaries, and the second one that I've read. The other was Murasaki's. Murasaki and Shonagon appear to have hated each other. While Murasaki's diary was fairly focused on details and specific historical events and descriptions-I think someone mentioned that some believe Murasaki was asked to write it ( Read more... )

Northanger Abbey is an earlier Austen, and I think it shows. While it’s not necessarily “simpler” than Emma or Pride and Prejudice (the only other Austen books I’ve read so far) it is less complex.

The crux of the plot is that Catherine Morland, a young woman in love with gothic novels, goes to Bath and, via miscommunication, she and her brother ( Read more... )

I have to say, people certainly aren’t kidding when they say that the Miss Marple adaptations get rewritten a lot. But then, I’m not sure how to avoid that when your title character is usually a supporting character. (Obviously, some things got changed more than others, especially in the more recent versions ( Read more... )

Richard Wyndham, a fashion-sensitive cynic, is stumbling around drunk because he’s realized he really can’t stand the woman his family expects him to marry when he sees a cross-dressing young woman climbing out a window with the assistance of a rope of sheets that isn’t long enough. The young woman, Penelope Creed, is fleeing an unwanted marriage ( Read more... )

Noel Streatfeild’s “Shoes” books (many of which were renamed to carry the “Shoes” title) are largely-independent books focusing on children and the performing arts. The leads range in age from around 9-12, and most of the books I’ve read take place over at least a year, with most leads being siblings (biological or adopted) or cousins. The books I’ ( Read more... )

I’m going to start off by going on a bit about a part of the plot that really annoyed me, but I actually liked this a lot ( Read more... )