Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict

Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict by Laurie Viera Rigler


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This sprightly romantic comedy is a sequel to Rigler's Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict. In a variation of the time traveler theme, Regency era gentlewoman Jane Mansfield wakes up in the body of 21st century Courtney Stone. Much confusion ensues as she makes sense of this strange new world, and learns to make her way. Rigler carries it all off with a sure comic touch. All in all a light, fun read.

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Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict

Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict by Laurie Viera Rigler


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Heroine Courtney Stone, a diehard Jane Austen fan, wakes up one morning in a strange bed, in a strange body and in a different century. She's a wisecracking survivor of the 21st-century romance scene, suddenly transported to the early 19th century.

It's great fun to follow her gaffes, her disgust and her delight as she discovers this new world and as she struggles to regain what she has lost.

The good: witty dialogue, evocative historical detail.

The bad: formulaic Chick Lit plot.

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Portrait of an Unknown Woman

Portrait of an Unknown Woman by Vanora Bennett


My rating: 2 of 5 stars
The good: Intriguing portrait of Sir Thomas More, seen through the eyes of his foster daughter Meg Giggs.
The bad: stiff dialogue, melodramatic plot, complete with revealed secret identities and unsuspected parentage of main characters.
I stopped reading about 1/3 of the way through and skimmed the rest to see how the plot turned out.

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One Amazing Thing

One Amazing Thing by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This homage to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales is a collection of tales told by a group of would-be-travelers-to-India who are trapped by an earthquake in the Indian Consulate of San Francisco, and who are trying to stave off despair as they wait for rescue.
Each tale is a story of love found and love lost: sometimes heartbreaking and sometimes slyly funny. Divakaruni is a master of beautiful language, and is deft in her characterizations.
Spoiler alert: I do have one complaint. I was disappointed by the novel's ambiguous ending. I had come to care for all the characters and I ended up not knowing if they would be rescued or not.

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The Happiness Hypothesis

The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom by Jonathan Haidt


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Jonathan Haidt, associate professor of psychology at the University of Virginia,read the ancient and classical philosophers in light of the modern psychology.And what a great job he does!

For example, in his chapter “The Uses of Adversity,” he starts out with this famous quote from Nietzsche, “what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.” But is this really true? Haidt reviews the psychological literature, and concludes that it’s only true if a person learns to cope with adversity the right way. A trauma or tragedy can lead to growth if a person works to make sense of the event in terms of his or her own personal narrative.

There’s lots more wisdom in this book about relationships, meaningful work and the sources of human happiness. Not only that, but the writing is lively and intelligent, and not at all contaminated by the deadly dull style that too often makes psychology inaccessible to lay people.

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Cordelia's Honor

Cordelia's Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Bujold's Vorkosigan saga is great entertainment, and I reread it from time to time when I need an escape from reality. The dialogue is witty, and the characters grow and change and Bujold even attacks challenging themes, like the nature of parenthood. This is the first novel in the series, and a great read.

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Another blog?

"What?" you say. "You don't have enough to do?  You already have a perfectly serviceable blog The Do It Yourself Scholar, not to mention an off-line life that takes up most of your time."

Well, my other blog is really devoted to academic podcasts and life-long learning.  This one is more self-indulgent, a place to play with ideas and talk about the books I've read.  I've made a resolution to  write at least a sentence or two about each book I read this year, and I've been posting over at GoodReads.  Here's my opportunity to see what they look like in blog form, and to play around with the blogger platform.  So, ándale pues.