Reflections

I finished 8 books in June, less than usual, partly because I've started a summer re-reading project. For my mid-June birthday I received TWO different annotated copies of Pride and Prejudice, this one and this one. I'm reading both now, which takes much longer than just reading Austen's text but the commentary is so interesting, and sometime after I finish P&P I plan to re-read War and Peace because I also received  a very beautiful illustrated edition of my favorite translation published by The Folio Society (found here)  as birthday present. 

Reading an annotated book turns out to be trickier than I expected. At first I kept getting distracted by all the information in the sidebars and was missing the joy and flow of just reading Austen. Now I'm reading a chapter or two of P&P on my Kindle, then going back to read the annotations in my books, which is working out much better. 

I didn't review but greatly enjoyed The Bellbottom Incident, the final book in Neve Maslakovic's trilogy of time traveling academics. Normally I enjoy time travel books because they bend my mind with temporal and causal paradoxes while taking me to eras I haven't experienced, but in this adventure Julia & company end up on a university campus in the 1970s, which was a blast from my own past since that's when I was going to college.

Also unreviewed by me but equally wonderful is August Folly, one of Angela Thirkell's highly entertaining Barsetshire books set in Britain during the 1930s. This one involves a collection of country families, at least 2 Jane Austen references, a summer holiday production of the Greek play Hippolytus by Euripides, and the misunderstandings of several young couples as they fall in love. 

Here are links for my reviews of Little Pretty Things, Trouble is a Friend of Mine, Run You Down, and Out on the Wire.