All Roads Lead to Austen: A Year-long Journey With Jane by Amy Elizabeth Smith

All Roads Lead to Austen: A Year-long Journey With Jane is Amy Elizabeth Smith's first book. Smith is a tenured university professor in California who teaches literature; she specializes in Jane Austen novels (and is an Austen enthusiast), and she teaches a course in Austen novels. The premise of this book was to travel to six different Central and South American countries to meet with both formal and informal reading groups to discuss various Jane Austen novels. The groups read Austen in Spanish translation, and Smith wanted to find out if these readers connected with and reacted to Austen's novels in the same way that her students back home did. Smith also wanted to find out if Spanish language readers thought Austen's themes were universal enough to translate across time and cultures.

Ya'll know I'm a sucker for an English period drama. I've seen all of Austen's novels in film adaptation form (but sadly have never any of her novels). So when this book popped up in the new titles list on the online catalog of the library website, the Austen in the title is what grabbed my attention. Intrigued, I thought I'd give this book a try. And overall, I'm glad that I did.

The introduction and first pages of the first chapter were slow and at first I wasn't sure the story would keep my attention. However, after a few chapters I was all in. The slowest parts of the book for me were when the author was describing the geography and physical settings of the countries. The most fascinating were the descriptions of the reading groups' interactions and reactions to the Austen novels as well as the discussion of cultural differences, the gender roles in the different countries, and the history of each country visited.

The author's various personal struggles with the language barrier and her health as well as her account of her fledgling (mostly) long distance romance also add many layers to the story. I also enjoyed reading about her trips to local bookstores and identified with her love of books, reading and acquiring various used and new books. However, as someone who can spend hours perusing titles in a bookstore or a library, I have long ago committed to acquiring my reading selections pretty much solely from the local library system. (This has saved me much money and book shelf space and makes the most sense for someone who never re-reads a book.)

As part of her literary adventure the author asked those who participated in her reading groups to recommend authors from their countries who were important to their national literature, were required reading in school or were very popular, best selling authors. Reading about these authors and the literature scene in these countries and how it differs from American or British literature was also pretty interesting. Through these authors and their works, Smith also touched a little bit on the history of each nation's literature and the development of each country's respective national literature.

While this book's built in readership is obviously Jane Austen enthusiasts, fans and scholars, ultimately I think any book or literature lover and anyone who considers themselves an avid reader will enjoy this book. People who like to read about travel will also enjoy this book and it's original approach to the genre of travel literature. I hope you will check this book out the next time you visit the library.

--Review by Ms. Angie

How To Be A Heroine: Or What I've Learned From Reading Too Much by Samantha Ellis

I feel as if I could write a book subtitled "What I've Learned From Reading Too Much" except all my lessons would be culled from Greek mythology, the Babysitters' Club, the lives of British queens, crime mysteries, suspense thrillers and celebrity and entertainment gossip. I first ran across How To Be A Heroine by Samantha Ellis in an ad in BookPage. The title sounded intriguing and once I looked it up on Amazon, I was in for reading it. It reminds me of the literacy autobiography writing assignment that I had in one of my English composition classes in college--except this is the literacy autobiography on steroids. The premise of this book is that the author revisits the seminal texts that she read in her youth by examining the lessons and impressions of the novels that she had upon her first readings when she was younger. Ellis has then re-read the novels as an adult specifically for the writing of her own book to see if the novels hold up to her original i

Heat Lightning by John Sandford

I'd previously read John Sandford's first Virgil Flowers novel, Dark of the Moon , a few years back and found it to be a quick, well written read. Recently I discovered he has since written three more Flowers titles and decided to start with the second title and read through to the fourth and most recent one. Heat Lightning is the second Flowers installment. The darkness of the crimes committed that must be solved in the novel are leavened by the lighter presentation of Flowers and the story. It works well together--a dark crime doesn't always need dark prose to back it up. Virgil Flowers is Lucas Davenport's go to man in the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension when there's a sensitive, tough or otherwise puzzling case to solve. Flowers has a high clearance rate and can often turn around a case in about a week. This particular case is especially perplexing with quite a few red herrings thrown into the mix to throw everyone--Flowers and the reader in

The Whisperers by John Connolly

If there was one thing Jimmy didn't care for, it was competition, ... There were some exceptions to that rule: he was rumored to have a sweet deal with the Mexicans, but he wasn't about to try to reason with the Dominicans, or the Columbians, or the bikers, or even the Mohawks. If they wanted to avail themselves of his services, as they sometimes did, that was fine, but if Jimmy Jewel started questioning their right to move product he and Earle would end up tied to chairs in the [bar] with pieces of themselves scattered by their feet, assuming their feet weren't among the scattered pieces, while the bar burned down around their ears, assuming they still had ears. from page 86 The Whisperers is John Connolly's newest Charlie Parker installment in which some beloved characters reappear and in which previous characters from another Parker installment reappear to shed further light on the big baddie that may or may not be coming for Parker in the future. This newest inst

A Series Of (Un)Fortunate Reviews

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