This Week In Books

I have been working on this post since Sunday.  The date on it has changed four times. I have since finished Lady Audley’s Secret. I think this is just a slump writing week for me.

The Likeness by Tana French.
So I finished The Likeness and it ended up being about the only thing that I read or listened to for the week, and then after  I finished I couldn’t start anything else.  It’s so good that it requires a certain amount of space around it before you can start anything else. Trish from Hey Lady! Whatcha Readin’? calls this her favorite book ever, and I can see why. I love this book.  I was afraid because I was loving it so much that I was going to be absolutely devastated by the ending, but it all worked out. Seriously, read this book.

Lady Audley’s Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon.
I bought this on audio and I started listening to the first half hour and I was hooked.  But I realized that it was the abridged edition (my bad); I normally don’t do abridged anything.  I mean, just why?  But then I started listening again because I was curious about the story and the way it ended, and it was a prefect follow-up to The Likeness.  A mystery, but totally different in every way, so I won’t even be able to compare the two and inevitably be let-down. I am enjoying the narrator, Juliet Stevnson, and her British accent and all the voices that she was makes up along the way for each othe characters. She is great!  I figure that if I love it so much that I want to read the book and discover what I missed, I can buy it or get it from the library.

So far, Lucy has managed to snag rich and older gentleman Lord Audley, and her servants have looked through her things and discovered a little baby shoe which they intend on keeping to blackmail her.  Meanwhile, George Talboys who is a friend of Mr. Audley’s nephew, Robert Audley, has just returned from a trip to Australia where he had gone on an expedition to earn money to support his family. George has come back a wealthy man.  He returns home to find that his wife has passed away and spends a year in mourning.  I know that there is more to the story and I can’t wait to find out what it is.  This is so interesting that it makes me wonder if I would like the unabridged edition just as much.  Maybe they cut out all of the slow parts.  Long scenery descriptions which I have typically come to expect in classics have been curiously absent.

The Simplest of Acts and Other Stories by Melanie Haney
I have been reading a story here and there and I have been loving them.  Lately it’s been hard to find short stories which capture enough of the characters and the story to really enjoy them but Haney manages to do do both.  The stories are full of rich imagery and characterization, and explore some interesting themes- like traveling in other countries and hanging on when you really need to let go. I love that I feel something at the end of these stories.  That’s a a special thing because a lot of the time after readinng short stories, I am left with one word- huh?

The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen by Syrie James
I just finished reading and loving The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Bronte and already I am back for more of Syrie James.  Enough said.

What do you do with audiobooks when you’re done with them? Do you delete them, or do you have a massive hard drive? They take up lots of space.

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