#Marian Halcombe deserved better

[questionableadvice]

~ Friendly Talks About Marriage, G. W. Shinn, 1897

I'm side-eyeing Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White so hard right now. I read it when I was a teenager but I'm still mad that the hero chose Laura instead of her far more interesting (but less pretty) sister.

[lady-in-the-lair]

Top 10 2021 Books - thanks @eldritch-elrics for the tag! In no particular order.

Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte) – LOVED this. My favorite part is the childhood sections but really it’s just a wonderful book, highly recommended. Jane is such a unique and well-developed character. She'd be good friends with my beloved Marian Halcombe in an opposites attract way.

Vanity Fair (Thackeray) – RAWDON MY BELOVED. Somehow he managed to be everything I hate in a male character, then poof he shows affection towards his son + devotion to his wife + a capacity for change and boom, I’m in his pocket. Becky is probably the character most normal people go for but I couldn’t forgive the things she’d done. Just ugh.

Three Men in a Boat/Three Men On a Bummel (Jerome K. Jerome) – reread – LOVE this book – highly recommended! The humor still holds up. Three idiots on a boat trip on the Thames and a bike trip through Germany. Three Men on a Bummel is eerily prognostic.

Ivanhoe (Sir Walter Scott) – surprisingly good! A bit hard to get through the faux Olde English but it’s easier to read than Don Quixote. Rebecca Rocks! Ulrica My Darling! Two great female characters out of three ain’t bad. It’s also got a lot of offensive stuff in it but it was probably progressive for its time (you’ll know what I mean if you read it. Isaac, you deserve better than the author insinuating you’d choose money over the daughter you clearly adore and not thanking the guy who helped save her life!).

Shadow Over Innsmouth (Lovecraft) – a reread - I got to read an actual paper version of it in the beautiful Lovecraft treasury my friend bought me for the holidays. The creeping horror! The decay and freaky mating rituals and that freakish priest and the chase sequence! The treasury has his original draft in the back and I’m looking forward to see how different the two are.

“The Hunger” (1996) (Len Kaminski) – reread - Just the absolute best Venom story ever, hands-down. The intensity! The intimacy! The insularity! It would be perfect if not for the puzzling symbiote design. Romance! Handholding! Date night! Cannibalism! It’s got it all. “Couldn’t live without it, couldn’t live with what’s it’s become”! Eddie going full-on commando to save Symby or die with it! Just the best.

Hot Water (PG Wodehouse) – I reread a bunch of other Wodehouse books but I know for sure I reread this. It’s one of his better early ones and just fluffy perfection.

The Caves of Steel (Asimov) and I, Robot and The Naked Sun. Caves of Steel was the best, though the other two were good. I threw The Robots of Dawn straight in the trash, probably the first time I’ve ever tossed a book instead of donating.

Weapon – a DK book - technically I haven’t finished it yet – it’s this amazing book about ancient/modern weapons from around the world.

A book I won’t give the title of but it was vintage photos of my neighborhood from around the turn of the century. Really cool.

Honorable mentions:

Sherlock Holmes’s London – book about London during Sherlock Holmes’s era, social conditions, police, wars, etc + stuff about Holmes and Doyle

Venom (Mike Costa) – reread - finally bought this, including the last copy of the 2016 run of Lethal Protector available online. Going to count this run as a book (it’s like five volumes!!) – not sure what else I can squeeze in here that I haven’t said elsewhere. I’ve got little quibbles but overall it's great. This would make top 10 but I already had a Venom comic.

Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen) – didn’t love it, didn’t hate it. I liked the second half a lot better, when the focus zoomed in on Jane. I think I’ll like it better on reread but her family is mostly insufferable.