Author: josephdavidquinton

Victorian October Reading Challenge 2017

Franz_Xaver_Winterhalter_Family_of_Queen_Victoria

Victorian October (#Victober) is a reading challenge which was created by Kate Howe in 2016 in which the participants read Victorian literature during October.  The 2017 reading challenge is being hosted by Kate Howe, Katie from Books and Things, Lucy from lucythereader, and Ange from Beyond the Pages.  I have selected the following books to meet the five reading challenges:

  1. Read a Victorian book by a Scottish, Welsh, or Irish author. The Sign of Four by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
  2. Read a Victorian book recommended to you.  David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
  3. Read a Victorian novel or story with supernatural elements. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
  4. Read a lesser known Victorian book (less than 12,000 ratings on GoodReads). Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope
  5. Read a Victorian book by a female author. North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

Happy Reading!

#FridayReads for 25 August 2017

AisforAlibi

This weekend I shall be reading the following books:

 

Rabbi David Small Mystery Series by Harry Kemelman

HarryKemelman_FridatTheRabbiSleptLate

In 1964, Hary Kemelman published the first Rabbi David Small novel.  This novel, Friday, the Rabbi Slept Late, won a 1965 Edgar Award for Best First Novel and led to the publication of eleven other novels centered around a conservative Jewish Rabbi, who is a master of Talmudic logic.  Kemelman and Agatha Christie were my first foray into the world of cozy mysteries and gave me a great love of the sub-genre.

  1. Friday, the Rabbi Slept Late – 1964
  2. Saturday, the Rabbi Went Hungry – 1966
  3. Sunday, the Rabbi Stayed Home – 1969
  4. Monday, the Rabbi Took off – 1972
  5. Tuesday, the Rabbi Saw Red – 1973
  6. Wednesday, the Rabbi Got Wet – 1976
  7. Thursday, the Rabbi Walked Out – 1978
  8. Conversations With Rabbi Small – 1981
  9. Someday the Rabbi Will Leave – 1985
  10. One Fine Day the Rabbi Bought a Cross – 1987
  11. The Day the Rabbi Resigned – 1992
  12. That Day the Rabbi Left Town – 1996

War and Peace Read-a-long

During June and July, I have undertaken the Herculean task of reading War and Peace by Count Leo Tolstoy.  Outside of Turgenev, I have never read a piece of Russian literature, but was compelled to read this massive tome when I learned of the War and Peace Read-a-long created and hosted by two BookTubers who I greatly admire: Ange of Beyond the Pages and Yamini of TheSkepticalReader.

To facilitate the reading and discussion of this novel, the hosts have created a group at GoodReads and a Twitter feed which will be the mode of information dissemination, as well as facilitated discussion.

Personally, I will be reading the Penguin Classics edition of War and Peace, written by County Leo Tolstoy and translated by Anthony Briggs; however, the hosts have spoken of several translations that can be read in their introductory videos: Ange, Yamini, and their live stream collaboration.

They have also created a reading schedule and various translation samples using Google docs.

My Briggs’ edition contains 1399 pages, which may be daunting to some readers, but I have been assured that this is a wonderful read and the novel’s size should not be a deterrent to its enjoyment.