All posts tagged: book reviews

Friday Reads: Kilmeny of the Orchard

Ok, I think I had better be right up front here.  I love L.M. Montgomery as an author.  I’m a diehard fan, I adore her books, and would own all of them if I could. Well, almost all of them. Kilmeny of the Orchard is the one exception. It’s Montgomery’s one big flop (literary wise, not sure about financial wise).  I’m sure somewhere along the line someone, Montgomery, a publisher, someone must have noticed that it sucked.  Apparently they said “Meh, who cares, we’ll publish it anyway.” These are the things that are wrong with Kilmeny of the Orchard: Racism, sexism, classism, disabilityism (OK, that isn’t even a real word, but you know what I mean), and my ultimate literary cliche pet peeve: the gorgeous girl who thinks she is ugly.  There is also some low level, but still totally creepy, pseudo-pedophelia.  And wanna-be incest.  And some pretty old fashioned ideas about the worth of people born outside of marriage. And…well, you get the idea. OK, so basic plot:  Eric Marshall (the pseudo-pedophile) is rich …

Friday (don’t) Reads: My Theodosia

I’ve already mentioned my inclination to pick up old books at op shops just because they have pretty covers, and interesting titles.  Sometimes it pays off, and sometimes…it doesn’t. Alas, this week’s review, My Theodosia by Anya Seton, is the latter. It looked like a promising book.  It’s about the mysteriously tragic Theodosia Burr Alston, who was the only child of the fascinating and controversial Aaron Burr. Now, if you aren’t American, you’ve probably never heard of Aaron Burr, and if you are, you probably remember some school lesson about a duel where he cowardly murdered Alexander Hamilton, making himself one of the most loathed figures in early American history. The truth, as always, is far more complicated.  What we don’t generally recall from the school lesson is that Burr was Vice President of the US under Thomas Jefferson, and that he is credited with instituting the modern American presidential campaigning system.  I’m not sure that fact is to his credit, and neither are the (possibly completely unfounded and spurious) charges that he attempted to …

Friday Reads: Flora Klickmann and her flower patch

I have a confession.  Sometime I buy old books in op shops just because the books are pretty. I know. This is usually a really stupid habit, because our house is quite small, and I generally have to give the books back to op shops when I realise they are less fun to read than to look at. Sometimes though, my “Oooh…bookey pogey bait” habit pays off, because I end up buying books that I have never heard of which turn out to be fantastic. One of these fantastic and unexpected finds was two books by Flora Klickmann: The Flower-Patch Among the Hills and Between the Larch-woods and the Weir. I really almost didn’t buy the books.  They were $5 each, and I’d never heard of Klickmann.  And they weren’t actually that pretty. But I did, and they are fabulous. Klickmann was the editor of the Girls Own Paper in London, and the first book (The Flower-Patch) started out as articles for the magazine.  This means that both books are more a series of anecdotes …