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Category: Readalongs

#TraLaFrankenstein Hangs an Innocent Woman

THE MURDERS HAVE BEGUN in our Frankenstein readalong, and I have to admit that I was not expecting quite such a rapid onset of murder and mayhem. “Rapid” in terms of how much of the book has elapsed so far, not rapid in terms of how much time has elapsed. As I may have mentioned in my last anger-post about horrible Victor Frankenstein and his horrible decision-making process, he legitimately just lets the chips fall where they may w/r/t the ten-foot-tall monster he’s made. Like he makes this monster, the monster gets away, and then two years go by. Chapter…

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READATHON READATHON READATHON ahem

So the time has come for Dewey’s 24-Hour Readathon, and like last time (or the time before? idk), I was supposed to have plans this day and then the plans got NOT EVEN CANCELED, just rescheduled, which is like, the best of all possible worlds. (The plans were a crawfish boil. I’d have been so sad if it was canceled.) This will be my master post, and I will update it as I go along! Feel free to ignore everything, but your takeaway regardless should be that readathons are the best. In Conclusion Y’all, I’m going to be super real…

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Frankenstein in May: A Readalong

Remember the time I claimed to be a feminist and an SF fan but then I reached an advanced old age without ever reading a super foundational SF text by a nineteenth-century feminist author? WELL THAT TIME IS ONGOING but fortunately my friend Alice has extended the hand of mercy unto me and proposed a co-hosting of a Frankenstein readalong in the month of May. Even more excitinger, there exists a new annotated edition of Frankenstein, published by the good folks at Liveright, and I am here to report that it is amahzing. The annotations (from what I can tell…

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Aurora Leigh Readalong: The Finishing

Here we are at the end of November, and here you are wondering why I have put you through this experience of reading a Victorian epic poem about a complainy poet and a saintly poor person and a snooty philanthropist and a sneaky posh lady. I don’t really have a moral to tell you. I just like Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s writing a lot. I think that underneath all that waffling on about the nobility of poetry, and all that Manichean stuff about virtue and evil (ugh okay it’s not Manichean BUT KINDA), she can be a shockingly modern writer, and…

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Aurora Leigh Readalong, Part Three

I enjoy that the consensus of this Aurora Leigh readalong immediately and spontaneously coalesced into the following: This is very hard and requires slow, careful reading. But so many good lines! Also, Romney is a butthead. Those three main bullet points do sum up with extreme accuracy the main three things I remember from reading Aurora Leigh for the first time in 2010 or whatever it was. For those reading along at home, I do not remember softening towards Romney as time went on. Maybe this reread will surprise me (but I don’t think so). How can I ever like…

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Aurora Leigh Readalong: Part Two

We commence Book Three with Aurora telling us a little of her career after her aunt’s death. There’s some wonderfully bitchy lines that make me wish EBB had lived in the age of Twitter (or, I mean, at least the age of online criticism, right?). He’s ‘forced to marry where his heart is not, Because the purse lacks where he lost his heart.’ Ah!–lost it because no one picked it up! That’s really loss! HARSH. Mostly, though, she’s writing about writing, and it’s a good time to mention that L.M. Montgomery, author most famously of Emily of New Moon and…

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Aurora Leigh Readalong: Part One

AT LAST I HAVE TRIUMPHED. Many years have I been badgering my good friend Alice to do a readalong of Aurora Leigh; many years has she responded with limited enthusiasm to the prospect of reading a Victorian epic poem about a cranky lady poet. BUT I HAVE WORN HER DOWN. Thanks, Wonder Woman! I am proud! So we are duly launching into the Aurora Leigh readalong, and I hope nobody hates it, since the fact that we’re doing it is absolutely my fault. The first book introduces us to little Aurora, whose mother dies when she is quite young and…

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A Reader Imbibes Peril

Guess what time it is! IT IS RIP TIME! The twelfth annual Readers Imbibing Peril began on 1 September (as always) and will be running through the end of October. Join us, comrades, as we read perilously spooooooky books under the auspices of the marvelous Heather and Andi. PS have you noticed that next year it will be R.I.P THIRTEEN? I hope that you have noticed. It is never far from my mind. I am doing a ghost noise about it as we speak. My planned reads for R.I.P. 12 include: The Painted Queen, by Elizabeth Peters and Some Interloper…

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#24in48 Readathon

Update 7/23/17 Okay, look. I have not been posting a ton of blog updates in this readathon because I’ve been yammering on Twitter BUT: I made a book spine poem, and I am so proud of it that I need to share it with you. Look at this business. Here is a transcript of my faboo poem. It is called “music of the ghosts.” You can tell that’s the title because I have helpfully set it off with the opposite side of the book spine. I have done the same for the stanzas. music of the ghosts the dearly departed…

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