Year in Books 2019, slightly belated
January 7, 2020
Redeeming Qualities
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Redeeming Qualities 
This reminds me that I should re-read the Torchy books! Thank you! (and I hope for more delicious book reviews in the new year!)
doing my best!
It’s so nice to have you back.
thank you!
This new year is starting out a rough reading experience. I’m far away from home, caring from my newborn and 3 yr old grandsons. They are sweet and give great joy. But being away from familiar faces and places has me blue. What do I do, I comfort read. But I didn’t bring my beloved Betty’s or even the Mitford collection. So first I tried one off my TBR e-list. My Lady Nobody. Oh My! Constant suffering, death, awful in laws. By the time the heroine got her HEA, most people would have jumped off a bridge.
So I read your Old Year list and decided to try Anna Buchan’s A Proper Place, followed quickly by the Day of Small Things. I read it hoping that the hero killed on Mt. Everest would be found and thawed for the HEA at the end. Didn’t happen.
So back to Gutenberg for The Making of Mary
This book seemed to be written by two different people. The main body of the book about a girl in her late teens taken in by a generous and loving family was touching and very humourous. The prologue and epilogue were morose and horrid. If you try this book you can read the beginning but stop before the epilogue. Trust me!
So, Please, can someone recommend an e-textland love story with beauty and a definate HEA.
Melody, thank you for continuing this experience. You do it so well. I appreciate your point of view. You put ideas together so well that even when I disagree, it’s a joy to read.
Happy New Year 🎈🎉
Well, The Queen of Farrandale (which I just posted about) and the next thing thing I have coming up are both nice and light with proper happy endings, although the romance isn’t the point of the former and the latter opens with the hero’s marriage rather than closing with it. And I have a few more things lined up that I’m looking forward to.
I’m sorry you didn’t enjoy my two favorite Buchan novels. In those, I’d rather have not had that romance than to have seen it end happily. (But Althea and Charles are nice, aren’t they?) If that was your first Anna Buchan and you enjoyed it aside from your disappointment, try Penny Plain which has a much more traditional happy ending, and is almost as good otherwise.
Hey there, just saw your reply. Thanks for those. But before I did, I gave Anna Buchan another try. First with ‘The House that is Our Own’. It helped my mood.👍 Not knowing the end caused a bit of anxiety, I don’t quite trust the writer not to kill off the hero.😏 I then saw that ‘Penny Bright’ and ‘Priorsford’ were prequels and devoured them quite quickly. I’m learning to appreciate this author.Next up is Pink Sugar who’s characters show up a bit in ‘Priorsford’. I’ve found a few more of Anna’s books and also downloaded her brother John Buchan’s fiction books. I’m not much into mysteries, so I’m going to try his historical novels. As always, your blog post books get read, too.
Thanks bunches for the reply.
Mary
I love The House that is Our Own, although, again, I didn’t think the romance was necessary to the book. Pink Sugar is one of the ones I haven’t read yet–I’m scared of running out of Anna Buchan.
I’ve read John Buchan’s The 39 Steps, and enjoyed it, although for some reason it took me a few tries to get through it. I think I prefer the movie.
Any recommendations for early 20th century novels that deal with the suffrage movement/first wave feminism? I’m curious about how these issues were dealt with in media while it was actually going out, as opposed to modern historical fiction writing about issues of the past today.
Off the top of my head, maybe The Fifth Wheel, by Olive Higgins Prouty. You might also want to look in a library for Toward a Feminist Tradition: an annotated bibliography of novels in English by women, 1891-1920.