#victober 2024

[iscahmckrae]

[aliteraryprincess]

November 2024 Wrap Up

Don't mind me once again posting my wrap up halfway through the next month...

Books Read: 13

The month started off really strong and kind of dwindled a bit at the end, but that's okay. I also DNFed two books, which was disappointing (particularly Lakesedge because my OwlCrate copy is sooo pretty). But my favorite of the month was The Goblin Emperor, which is now my second favorite book of the whole year. And it was closely followed by You Let Me In. My least favorites would be the ones I didn't finish. 😆 Starred titles are audiobooks and titles marked with ® are rereads.

The Secret History by Donna Tartt - 5 stars ®

You Let Me In by Camilla Bruce - 5 stars *

The Flight of Gemma Hardy by Margot Livesey - 3 stars

How to Be a Victorian by Ruth Goodman - 4 stars

House of Salt and Sorrows by Erin A. Craig - 5 stars ®

The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison - 5 stars

The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter - 4 stars ®

The Daisy Chain by Charlotte Mary Yonge - 4 stars

The Mirror Season by Anna-Marie McLemore - 4 stars

Sisters of Charity, Catholic and Protestant, Abroad and At Home by Anna Jameson - 3 stars

Graveyard Shift by M. L. Rio - 3.5 stars

We Used to Live Here by Marcus Kliewer - 3.5 stars

Autobiography by Harriet Martineau - 3.5 stars

Books DNFed: 2

Lakesedge by Lyndall Clipstone - it lacked atmosphere and character development, which are things I want in a Gothic fantasy

The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter by Theodora Goss - it was playing with structure in ways that just did not work on audiobook *

On Tumblr:

I'm doing good with continuing to post photos! Hopefully that will go on into the new year.

Book Quotes: The Secret History by Donna Tartt

Book Quotes: "The Lady of the House of Love" by Angela Carter

Book Photography: How to Be a Victorian by Ruth Goodman

Book Photography: House of Salt and Sorrows by Erin A. Craig

Book Photography: The Secret History by Donna Tartt

Book Photography: The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison

Book Photography: The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter

aliteraryprincess' DNFs as of 2024

On YouTube:

And there's the usual amount here I'd say. We've got some Nonfiction November videos and, of course, my Victober wrap up. And I'm starting to think about my end of the year reading.

Victober Wrap Up | 6 books!

End of the Year Book Tag 2024

The Nonfiction Journey Tag

What's On My Nonfiction TBR?

Currently Reading 11/25/24

December TBR | closing out my 2024 reading!

[fictionadventurer]

2024 Victober Wrap-Up

I spent October almost exclusively reading Victorian works. Mostly short stories and novellas, a couple of novels, one play. I even read several things I had planned to read (with several more surprise impulse reads).

The Rector by Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

Premise: The first short story in the Carlingford Chronicles. After fifteen years as a fellow at a university, a man takes on his first assignment as a parish priest, and learns he may not be as prepared for the work as he thought. My Thoughts: The beginning was rough, but as soon as the rector comes on the scene, it becomes surprisingly lovely. It reminds me just a bit of Elizabeth Goudge in how compassionately it explores the spiritual journey of a middle-aged man struggling to discover his true vocation.

The Executor by Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

Premise: The second short story in the Carlingford Chronicles, about man who becomes executor of a will that deprives a poor family of the inheritance they'd expected. My Thoughts: It's pretty dry and forgettable, though there are a couple sweet moments of the romance. Mostly useful as backstory for the next book.

An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde

Premise: A woman threatens to destroy the career of a morally-upright politician by revealing a secret about his past. My Thoughts: This play is about politics and a moral dilemma. Of course I loved it. I was surprised at how earnest (pun not intended) Wilde sometimes was about the material, while still throwing in a lot of characteristic humor.

The Doctor's Family by Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

Premise: Third story in the Carlingford Chronicles series. A novella about a doctor whose drunken brother returns from Australia trailed by his wife, children, and the wife's take-charge sister, whose devotion to the family interferes with her blossoming romance with the doctor. My Thoughts: Nettie is a fun character, but the story is so repetitive, with the same stupid obstacles coming up over and over, that it got very frustrating. The doctor did not deserve her.

The Doctor's Wife by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

Premise: A practical country doctor falls in love with a dreamy young girl whose expectations about life are shaped by the novels she reads. My Thoughts: I read the first few chapters, and I still love Braddon's style and her characters (especially the one who's a sensation novelist!) but I just couldn't motivate myself to keep going with it when there were so many other books fighting for my attention. I do plan to finish it.

A Dark Night's Work by Elizabeth Gaskell

Premise: It's a novella by Elizabeth Gaskell. What more do you need to know? My Thoughts: I wish I'd gone into this story blind, because knowing the twist that drives the story made the beginning much more stressful than it should have been. I really struggled through the first part of the story, but after about the halfway point, things started coming together, and I was riveted. I loved the characters (or loved to hate them). This features another of Gaskell's heavily flawed but loving fathers plus some sweet love stories and deliciously thorny plot twists. Not my favorite Gaskell, but a good read.

The Making of a Marchioness (alternately, Emily Fox-Seton) by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Premise: A penniless upper-class woman who has resigned herself to a life of singleness unexpectedly attracts the attention of a widower with a title. My Thoughts: In a month where I was feeling not-very-cheerful, the cheerful Emily was such a delight. Burnett always has such a wonderful blend of the romantic and the practical--the world can be beautiful and wondrous, but also has its sorrows and mundane concerns. Emily's situation is explored with a depth that means the story never feels like fluffy wish-fulfillment. The presentation of the Indian characters is very exoticized (even as the characters themselves are actively trying not to be racist) and melodrama gets just a bit over-the-top, but overall it was a sweet little book that makes me want to seek out some of Burnett's other adult novels.

A House to Let by Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Adelaide Ann Proctor

Premise: An elderly spinster moves to London and becomes desperate to learn why a house across the street never gets rented out. The framing story is written by Collins and Dickens, with short stories by Gaskell and Dickens and poems by Proctor inserted in between. My Thoughts: The framing story gives us one of Collins' delightfully vivid first-person narrators. Gaskell's story, "A Manchester Marriage", is far and away the best short story I've read by her, featuring excellent characters, a sweet love story, a heartwarming story about caring for a disabled child, a tragic twist, and one of the funniest proposal scenes I've ever read; this is now one of my favorite Gaskell stories and a highlight of my month. The Dickens story is kind of amusing in its weirdness, but not something I'd ever need to read again. The poems by Proctor were...there. The mini stories don't blend in well with the wider narrative, and the ending doesn't live up to my hopes for the beginning. Overall, a three-star (sometimes two-star) read with a five-star story by Gaskell.

Enoch Arden by Alfred Tennyson

Premise: A blank-verse story about a woman who marries a sailor and the troubles that result. My Thoughts: After I found an old pamphlet version of this poem sitting in a collection of handouts in a church, I just had go to my car and read the poem online. It's surprisingly readable, and a good story, but sad. (I still have no idea why it was in a church display).

Reuben Sachs by Amy Levy

Premise: A young Jewish man returns to London after a trip abroad and must choose between a burgeoning political career and his love for a poor woman. My Thoughts: This short book cemented Amy Levy as one of my favorite Victorian authors. While I was struggling through the wordy style of two of the later books on this list, her breezy, underwritten style was such a delight. She portrays family relationships with so much warmth and wit, and her style sometimes leaves me marveling at how she writes scenes exactly the way I would have written them. Judith was a marvelous character--I loved her family situation, her romance troubles, the internal journey she goes on. The religious element was surprisingly relatable, because it turns out this book isn't about Jewishness specifically (though there's a lot of cultural stuff in the first half of the book), but about secularism vs. tradition, and how cultures and people fail when they worship success and ignore intangibles. I've been thinking about certain scenes (the ballroom scene! the scene with her father! the callback at the ending!) ever since I finished. When I read these obscure old books, I almost never walk away thinking it deserves to be a classic. This deserves to be a classic.

A Struggle for Fame by Charlotte Riddell

Premise: Follows the different careers of a young man and young woman who leave Ireland to try to make it as writers in 1850s London. My Thoughts: A struggle to read. I loved the characters, the story, and the lovely descriptive passages. I was fascinated by the exploration of the Irish experience in England, and all the info about the Victorian publishing industry. But the writing style was so indirect that I was mentally diagramming sentences just to figure out what Riddell was saying half the time. The kind of book that I liked better when I wasn't reading it than when I was. Glad to have pushed through and finished it--the two stories came together in a lovely way.

The Time Machine by H.G. Wells

Premise: A scientist builds a time machine and travels to a far future where humanity has massively changed. My Thoughts: Wells' ideas about human nature and how humanity will evolve are complete nonsense from a Christian perspective, of course, but as a story, I thought this was pretty good. Very imaginative and engaging, with some excellent sense-of-wonder scenes. Having mostly consumed time travel stories that take a fantasy approach, it was fun to see the characters discussing the concept scientifically. The maybe-romance weirded me out, but it made for a final line that almost made me cry from how beautiful it was.

No Name by Wilkie Collins

Premise: After their parents die, two sisters learn they have no legal right to their inheritance, and one sister plots to get it back. My Thoughts: The first section might be my favorite thing I've read by Collins. It's such a warm, loving domestic atmosphere with complex and sympathetic characters and one of the best sister relationships I've read. After the two sisters separate, it got less compelling. The narration distances us from the main character's POV, the writing style becomes ridiculously wordy (where he could say, for example, "she opened a window", he'll explain how she walked to the window, looked outside, considered opening it, walked away, walked back, put her hand on the sill, lifted the sash, etc.), and the villains are unpleasant to spend time with. But there are also some very fun characters, and I do love a good con, so I kept pushing through. The final section returned to that domestic atmosphere I loved from the first section, and it tied together so well that I am very fond of the book as a whole. There's something special about a sensation novel that gets you thinking, not about how contrived the author's plot twists are, but about the beauty of God's providence.

[aliteraryprincess]

It's Victober, which means I need to make another list of all the Victorian literature I've read (or that I can remember reading anyway). How many have you read?

[aliteraryprincess]

October 2024 Wrap Up

Well this was a month. I usually love October. The weather starts to get cooler, Netflix adds a bunch of horror movies, and it's Victober (Victorian October) over on YouTube. Unfortunately, my month got bogged down by job applications and dissertation revisions. And then my grandmother died. So yeah...

Books Read: 6

Everything I read this month was for Victober, and other than one dud, it was a great reading month! Three five star reads is fantastic! No Name is my favorite of the month, but Deerbrook and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes are close behind. Ariadne was dreadful, which is unfortunate since I'm supposed to be writing a dissertation chapter on it.

No Name by Wilkie Collins - 5 stars

A Woman of No Importance by Oscar Wilde - 4 stars

Ariadne: The Story of a Dream by Ouida - 2 stars

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - 5 stars

Deerbrook by Harriet Martineau - 5 stars

Sensational Victorian: The Life & Fiction of Mary Elizabeth Braddon by Robert Lee Wolff - 4 stars

On Tumblr:

Not as much stuff here as last month, but I managed to take some photos!

September 2024 Wrap Up

Book Photography: Thornhedge by T. Kingfisher

Book Photography: No Name by Wilkie Collins

Book Photography: Deerbrook by Harriet Martineau

Reblogged: Manga Recommendations

Tagged: What Would You Take From My Room Poll

Victorian Literature aliteraryprincess Has Read - Updated 2024

On YouTube:

And there's a ton here, mostly for Victober. It's my favorite yearly bookish event.

Underrated Victorian Recommendations #8 | #victober

My Top 10 Favorite Victorian Characters | #victober

September Wrap Up | 16 books for #shaketember #shortyseptember & more!

Victorian Literature I've Read in the Past Year | #victober

Currently Reading 10/14/24 | #victober

Let's Talk About Margaret Oliphant! | #victober

Reading a Book for Every Year of the Victorian Period | #victober

My Dissertation Chapter On The Doctor's Wife | #victober

November TBR | Nonfiction November & more!

September and October Book Haul

[aliteraryprincess]

September 2024 Wrap Up

Thank god it's finally fall! I'm so excited for cooler weather. I finished drafting another dissertation chapter, which means I'm halfway through. Unfortunately, now I have to deal with job applications...

Books Read: 16

Check me out! To be fair, a lot of these are short since I was participating in Shorty September over on YouTube. But 16 is still pretty impressive! My favorite is Wylding Hall, closely followed by Fairy Tale. My least favorite was Life Studies, which I found quite disappointing. Titles marked with ® are rereads.

New Grub Street by George Gissing - 4.5 stars

Snow Drifts by Deven Philbrick - 4 stars

To Bedlam and Part Way Back by Anne Sexton - 4 stars

Fairy Tale by Stephen King - 5 stars

White as Snow by Tanith Lee - 4 stars

Rules for the Dance: A Handbook for Writing and Reading Metrical Verse by Mary Oliver - 4 stars

Time is a Mother by Ocean Vuong - 4 stars

They Never Learn by Layne Fargo - 3.5 stars

The Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare - 4 stars

Passing by Nella Larsen - 4.5 stars

Exit, Pursued by a Bear by E. K. Johnston - 5 stars ®

The Lady's Mile by Mary Elizabeth Braddon - 3 stars

Antigone by Sophocles - 3.5 stars

The Uninhabited House by Charlotte Riddell - 5 stars

Wylding Hall by Elizabeth Hand - 5 stars

Life Studies by Robert Lowell - 2 stars

On Tumblr:

And look at all these photos! I'm having a great time getting back into book photography, especially now that I have a nice camera. I also participated in a readathon hosted by @thereadingchallengechallenge, which was tons of fun!

August 2024 Wrap Up

Book Photography: Red Comet by Heather Clark

Book Photography: White as Snow by Tanith Lee

Book Photography: Fairy Tale by Stephen King

Book Photography: The Norton Shakespeare

Book Photography: Passing by Nella Larsen

Book Photography: Wylding Hall by Elizabeth Hand

Book Photography: The Uninhabited House by Charlotte Riddell

Book Photography: Mini Book Haul

Book Photography: Life Studies by Robert Lowell

Tagged: People I want to get to know better!

TRCC Readathon

On YouTube:

This is the first time in a long time there are less things in this section than in the On tumblr section. I guess I just need a little break from filming.

August Wrap Up | 9 books!

Currently Reading 9/4/24

My Favorite Books Under 250 Pages | Shorty September

Ranking All the Shakespeare Plays I've Read | #shaketember

My Annual Overly Ambitious Victober TBR!