The results are in and the number was 2. This means my next read off my Classics Club challenge will be The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy.
In this classically simple tale of the disastrous impact of outside life on a secluded community in Dorset, now in a new edition, Hardy narrates the rivalry for the hand of Grace Melbury between a simple and loyal woodlander and an exotic and sophisticated outsider. Betrayal, adultery, disillusion, and moral compromise are all worked out in a setting evoked as both beautiful and treacherous. The Woodlanders, with its thematic portrayal of the role of social class, gender, and evolutionary survival, as well as its insights into the capacities and limitations of language, exhibits Hardy’s acute awareness of his era’s most troubling dilemmas.
(All purchases made using one of the above affiliate links gives a small percentage of money to myself with no extra cost to yourself. All proceeds go towards the upkeep of this blog. Thank you ever so much, your support is gratefully received.)
Hopefully, I will be able to finish and review The Woodlanders before the deadline of 30th October.
Please drop me a comment if you are doing the Classics Club challenge or if you have taken part in the Spin Challenge.
Goodreads Monday is now hosted by Budget Tales Book Club. All you have to do is show off a book from your TBR that you’re looking forward to reading.
Hello!
I hope everyone has had a good start to the week so far. I have gone for another book off my Classics Club list because they are all on my vast Goodreads TBR.
Alongside Edgar Allan Poe in America, Britain’s Wilkie Collins stands as the inventor of the modern detective story. The Moonstone introduces all the ingredients: a homey, English country setting, and a colorfully exotic background in colonial India; the theft of a fabulous diamond from the lovely heroine; a bloody murder and a tragic suicide; a poor hero in love with the heroine but suspected of the crime, who can’t remember anything about the night the jewel was stolen; assorted friends, relatives, servants, a lawyer, a doctor, a sea captain—suspects, all; and, most essentially, a bumbling local policeman and a brilliant if eccentric London detective. Adding spice to the recipe are unexpected twists, a bit of dark satire, a dash of social comment, and an unusual but effective narrative structure—eleven different voices relate parts of the tale, each revealing as much about himself (and, in one case, herself) as about the mystery of the missing Moonstone.
Filled with suspense, action, and romance, The Moonstone is as riveting and intoxicating today as it was when it first appeared more than a century ago.
I read The New Magdalen by Wilkie Collins recently and I could not put it down, so I am quite excited to read this soon, as I just love Wilkie Collins.
Have you got a favourite Wilkie Collins book?
Please drop me a comment if you have taken part in Goodreads Monday and I will head over for a visit.
It is time for another spin event from The Classics Club. I really enjoyed the last one I did, because it chose me an absolutely brilliant book that I think I would have left to the end of the challenge. So here are my 20 books, whichever number gets picked on the 18th September I will read and review the book before the set date of 30th October.
Silas Marner by George Eliot
The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
Cecilia by Frances Burney
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
Three Men in a Boat by Jerome. K. Jerome
The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith
Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte
North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
Evelina by Frances Burney
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
Lorna Doone by R. D. Blackmore
The Runaway by Elizabeth Anna Hart
The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope
Candide by Voltaire
I’m really looking forward to what the random selection will be and I hope I will be able to read the book within the time frame.
Wish me luck!
Please drop me a comment if you are taking part in the Spin event or if you have read any of the books on my list.
My chosen poem today is by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Gerard Manley Hopkins was born on the 28th July 1844, he was an English poet and Jesuit priest. His two main themes in his poetry are nature and religion. He died in 1889 of what is believed to be typhoid fever. His work was largely ignored during his life but was published posthumously.
Pied Beauty
Glory be to God for dappled things -
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced - fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.
Gerard Manley Hopkins
The rules are answer the questions below and share a link to your blog in the comments section of Sam’s blog.
What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you will read next?
Hello
I hope everyone is having a good week so far. Reading is still going well so far this month so I am hoping to make a serious dent in my TBR pile and Goodreads Challenge.
What I am Currently Reading
I started this yesterday and so far I am really enjoying it.
What I have Recently Finished Reading
I can’t quite believe I managed to finish three books in a week but reading shorter books is really helping my pace.
What I Think I will Read Next
Hopefully I will start reading one of these this week.
Please drop me a comment with your WWW Wednesday and I will head over for a visit.
It has a dark past – one in which a number of humans were killed. A past that caused it to christen itself “Murderbot”. But it has only vague memories of the massacre that spawned that title, and it wants to know more.
Teaming up with a Research Transport vessel named ART (you don’t want to know what the “A” stands for), Murderbot heads to the mining facility where it went rogue.
What it discovers will forever change the way it thinks…
Review
Murderbot needs answers, it knows it has a dark past and wants to know why the horrors happened. More importantly Murderbot wants to know whether the deaths were its fault or because of another reason. To find the answers, Murderbot needs to get to the place where the massacre happened and this is why Murderbot is on a ship travelling through space.
The spaceship transport that Murderbot is on, is an artificial intelligence that Murderbot nicknames ART, which is short for something far ruder. Murderbot does not trust ART straightaway and they definitely have a few issues when they first really meet but gradually you can see how their friendship develops and they start to trust each other. This leads to ART helping Murderbot to act and behave more human and less like a sec unit.
Once they get to their destination ART suggests that Murderbot takes a job as a security consultant for a group of humans. This way Murderbot has the perfect excuse to investigate from his past which has been hidden from the public. But as we discovered in All Systems Red, when humans need help Murderbot can’t help but help.
I really enjoyed following Murderbot’s investigation and found it rather sad at times. Murderbot clearly has feelings even though it tries to hide the fact and it is because of these feelings it wants to find out about its past. I also loved the interaction between Murderbot and ART. They don’t realise it and would both deny it if somebody pointed it out but they learn from each other and have a really good friendship.
For such a short read this book really packs a punch and I read it in one sitting. I am absolutely loving this series so far and can’t wait to read the next book in the series. I give this book 5 out of 5 Dragons.
(All purchases made using one of the above affiliate links gives a small percentage of money to myself with no extra cost to yourself. All proceeds go towards the upkeep of this blog. Thank you ever so much, your support is gratefully received.)
About the author
Martha Wells has been an SF/F writer since her first fantasy novel was published in 1993, and her work includes The Books of the Raksura series, The Death of the Necromancer, the Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy, The Murderbot Diaries series, media tie-ins for Star Wars, Stargate: Atlantis, and Magic: the Gathering, as well as short fiction, YA novels, and non-fiction. She has won a Nebula Award, two Hugo Awards, two Locus Awards, and her work has appeared on the Philip K. Dick Award ballot, the BSFA Award ballot, the USA Today Bestseller List, and the New York Times Bestseller List. Her books have been published in eighteen languages.
Goodreads Monday is now hosted by Budget Tales Book Club. All you have to do is show off a book from your TBR that you’re looking forward to reading.
Hello!
I hope everyone has had a good Monday so far.
My chosen book this week is by another new author for me, Sir Walter Scott.
Scott’s magnificent historical romance Rob Roy is set against the background of the 1715 Jacobite Rising
In the foreground of the novel we meet young Francis Osbaldistone, who, following a quarrel with his father, has been banished to join his feckless cousins on the Northumbrian estate of Sir Hildebrand Osbaldistone. When Frank discovers that his treacherous cousin Rashleigh, a Jacobite intruder, has designs on beautiful Diana Vernon, and is scheming to bring about the financial ruin of the family, Francis travels to Scotland to enlist the help of the outlaw Rob Roy MacGregor.
(All purchases made using one of the above affiliate links gives a small percentage of money to myself with no extra cost to yourself. All proceeds go towards the upkeep of this blog. Thank you ever so much, your support is gratefully received.)
Please drop me a comment if you have taken part in Goodreads Monday and I will head over for a visit.
My chosen poem this week is by a new poet for me and I chose it because it made me laugh.
Astrophysics Lesson
I took an orange and a plum
To demonstrate the Earth and Sun;
held in place by gravity -
Our little planet, you and me.
I grabbed some grapes for all the stars
And cast them out so wide and far;
Distant suns and foreign moons
In all four corners of the room.
The wonders of the galaxy
Spread out before class 2BT.
'Where did they come from?' someone cried;
'From the fruit bowl' I replied.
Ade Hall
Lady Book Dragon 