Apollo 13 by Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger

 

Title: Apollo 13

Author:  Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger

Narrated by:  Fred Sanders

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio

Length: Approximately 16 hours and 15 minutes

Source: Review Copy from Simon & Schuster Audio.  Thank you @simonandschuster #BookClubFavorites for the free books!

 

Do you have any favorite topics that you like to read about?

We have spent long weekends this year traveling around and touring colleges. Our oldest son is a senior and he wants to be an aerospace engineer.  We all enjoy history and decided on the college tour drives it would be perfect to listen to Apollo 13 by Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger.

Apollo 13 is an excellent movie, but this book fills in all of the details that can’t possibly fit into a movie.  It gives the background of the Apollo program and of the astronauts that were aboard Apollo 13.  They were supposed to be the third mission of astronauts that walked on the moon, but instead an oxygen tank explosion ended their mission and left them scrambling for their lives.  Together with support from numerous NASA personnel below, they had to work together to come up with a solution that would ultimately bring them safely home.

Fred Sanders was a good narrator.  Apollo 13 was an intriguing non-fiction tale.  Whenever I turned it off to talk to my husband, my oldest son requested that it be turned back on again.  This was the story of Apollo 13 told in third person from Jim Lovell, Marilyn Lovell, and ground control’s point of view.  It was amazing how many things went wrong, yet they all kept calmly solving the problems and carrying on.  It is a very inspiring story. This is a great book for anyone interested in the space program.

COVER REVEAL - The Berlin Letters by Katherine Reay

I have wonderful news to share today.  Author Katherine Reay has a great new historical fiction novel, The Berlin Letters:  A Cold War Novel,  ready to be published on March 5, 2024.  I'm happy to share all that I know about this new novel and reveal the beautiful cover. I have greatly enjoyed Katherine Reay's novels in the past, just recently A Shadow in Moscow.

More information about the novel follow below.

QUICK FACTS

·       Title: The Berlin Letters: A Cold War Novel

·       Author: Katherine Reay

·       Genre: Historical Fiction, Espionage Thrillers, Inspirational Fiction

·       Publisher: ‎Harper Muse (March 5, 2024)

·       Length: (384) pages

·       Format: Trade paperback, eBook, & audiobook 

·       ISBN: 978-1400243068

·       Cover Reveal Book Blast: July 21-27, 2023

 

BOOK DESCRIPTION

Near the end of the Cold War, a CIA code breaker discovers a symbol she recognizes from her childhood, which launches her across the world to the heart of Berlin just before the wall comes tumbling down.

November 1989—After finding a secret cache of letters with intelligence buried in the text, CIA cryptographer Luisa Voekler learns that not only is her father alive, but he is languishing in an East German Stasi jail. After piecing together the letters with a series of articles her grandfather saved, Luisa seeks out journalists Bran Bishop and Daniel Rudd. They send her to the CIA, to Andrew Cademan—her boss.

Luisa confronts Cademan and learns that nothing is a coincidence, but he will not help her free her father. So, she takes matters into her own hands, empties her bank account, and flies to West Berlin. As the adrenaline wears off and she recognizes she has no idea how to proceed, Luisa is both relieved and surprised when a friend shows up with contacts and a rudimentary plan to sneak her across the wall.

Alternating storylines between Luisa and her father, The Berlin Letters shows the tumultuous early days of the wall, bringing Berlin, the epicenter of the Cold War, to life while also sharing one family’s journey through secrets, lies, and division to love, freedom, and reconciliation

PURCHASE LINKS

AMAZON | BARNES & NOBLE | BOOKSHOP | GOODREADS

AND THE BEAUTIFUL NEW COVER 

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THIS COVER?

AUTHOR MESSAGE

Dear Readers,

Thank you so much for your extraordinary support for my current novel, A Shadow in Moscow. I am still on tour right now sharing the story with libraries and bookstores, and I am beyond grateful each day as I see your reviews and support on social media. So, again, thank you!

I want you all to be the first to see the cover for my new novel, The Berlin Letters, which will be released March 5^th, 2024. After A Shadow in Moscow, it was the book I had to write. While Ingrid’s and Anya’s stories were sometimes difficult, they were also fascinating and took me to places I had not anticipated. The ideas of sacrifice, freedom, courage, love, hiddenness, and the shadows between perception and reality, rose within that novel and wouldn’t let me go. 

While still pondering a lot of those themes, I came across these photographs and many more. They are of the very early days — even the first day — of the Berlin Wall in 1961. I read stories of mothers passing their children over the barbed wire. I read of one East German soldier jumping over it himself. I began to envision what might happen… To the mother. To the father. To the child passed over the Wall on that August morning in 1961. 

Luisa Voekler, the story’s leading character, is that young girl and she doesn’t know of this past until the Wall’s final week in 1989. Then, like me, she can’t let it go. She starts a search. She plots a rescue mission. And in the process, she finds her father and she finds herself. 

Like A Shadow in Moscow, this is a split-time story. One POV will take you behind the Wall with Haris Voekler, Luisa’s father, while Luisa will tell you her own story and carry readers from Washington DC to Berlin. There are, of course, a whole host of other characters as well — some you’ll love, some you’ll question, and others you’ll simply worry about. You’ll worry because The Berlin Letters is a race, a chase, a spy novel, and a love story. And, I must say, there’s an old friend who comes to Luisa’s aid I developed a little crush on — you might find yourself sighing and swooning over Daniel too. 

Thank you so much for sharing the cover of this new story — I love it! You see Luisa front and center, in the exact outfit she wears during a scene in East Berlin, and you see her resting on a Trabant, just about the only car East Berliner’s could purchase at the time. I love the fact that the car is yellow too! And doesn’t that font just scream 1980s? 

And while the themes within this story focus upon many of the questions in our hearts, there is so much lightness and fun as well. And, once it’s out in the world, I hope you each will close that final page with a smile, a sigh, and a deep sense of hope. 

All the best to you!

Katherine 

 

AUTHOR BIO

Katherine Reay is a national bestselling and award-winning author of several novels and one work of nonfiction.

For her fiction, Katherine writes love letters to books, and her novels are saturated with what she calls the “world of books.” They are character driven stories that examine the past as a way to find one’s best way forward. In the words of The Bronte Plot’s Lucy Alling, Katherine writes of “that time when you don’t know where you’ll be, but you can’t stay as you are.”

 

WEBSITE | TWITTER | FACEBOOK | INSTAGRAM | PINTEREST | GOODREADS

The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck

 

Title:  The Good Earth

Author:  Pearl S. Buck

Narrated by:  Anthony Heald

Publisher: Blackstone Audio

Length: Approximately 10 hours and 37 minutes

Source: Purchased from Amazon.com

 

What book has a character in it that you have a love / hate relationship with?

Tonight, for my Back to the Classics Book Club at the Kewaunee Public Library, we are going to discuss Pearl S. Buck.  We all picked a Pearl S. Buck novel to read and share.  I was going to read Sons, which is the second book in the House of Earth Trilogy.  Then I realized it had been twenty or so years since I read the first book in the Trilogy, The Good Earth, and I didn’t remember much from it.  Therefore, I read The Good Earth instead.  The Good Earth is a Pulitzer Prize winning novel for 1932 and was the best-selling novel for both 1931 and 1932 in the United States.  Buck won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1938.  Buck grew up in China as the child of missionaries and wrote the novel while she lived in China using her firsthand observations of village life.  This novel brought a story of rural China to many people in the United States for the first time.

Wang Lung is a farmer in a rural village.  The novel starts the day of his marriage.  He is going to marry a woman named O-Lan who had been a slave at the House of Hwang.  Wang Lung and O-Lan have a good partnership with both working hard on the land.  Things are going well when a famine strikes.  They work through the hardship to become a wealthy family.

I liked the characters in this novel and the picture it captures of a rural village of China at an indetermined time (there are trains – late nineteenth or early twentieth century).  I like how it goes through about forty years of this family’s story.  I also enjoyed that the ending was a bit of a cliffhanger, so I do want to continue this trilogy by reading Sons. 

The love of the land was a constant theme through this story. I also liked how it showed that once the person that did all of the hard work has accumulated wealth, their descendants can find themselves destroying the family through their vices.  This was the end of the House of Hwang, and Wang Lung’s sons seem to be going down that same pathway.

The famine was brutal and devastating.  It was terrible to realize this happened several times during the farmers lifetime and they had no safety net to fall back on.

 The real hero of this story was O-Lan, and I felt very conflicted about Wang Lung.  He treats O-Lan terribly.  When O-Lan gives birth and then immediately goes out to the field to work. Wang Lung won’t even let her have a bit of time to rest, which did not endear him to me.  O-Lan is always selflessly working for her family only to be replaced by a concubine.  O-Lan has two small pearls that are her only special treasure.  Wang Lung takes them from her and makes them into earrings for his concubine.   O-Lan dies of cancer and Wang Lung is sad at the time but can’t help thinking about how unattractive he finds her.  I just wanted to smack Wang Lung.   He seemed to have problems with not being able to control himself around the ladies.  The other part I had a problem with was when his son told him that he liked a slave that they owned.  Then the 70-year Wang Lung decides that the 16-year-old slave is pretty attractive and takes her for his own concubine.  He then wonders why his son runs away.  I would run away too Wang Lung.    Thinking about it, Wang Lung is a good three-dimensional character with both good and bad traits.

Anthony Heald was a good narrator of this audiobook.  I enjoyed listening to it and found the story to be very engaging on my drives.

They Do It With Mirrors by Agatha Christie

 

Title:  They Do It With Mirrors

Author:  Agatha Christie

Narrated by:  Emilia Fox

Publisher: HarperAudio

Length: Approximately 6 hours and 35 minutes

Source: Checked out with Hoopla through the Kewaunee Public Library.  Thank-you!

Do you pick books to read based on the title? 

They Do It With Mirrors is the June pick for #ReadChristie2023 to meet a theme of “gunshot.”  I thought it was interesting on the website for the challenge it said that Agatha Christie was less confident of her knowledge of death by gunshot as compared to death by poison. Guns were still prominent in her works with 42 deaths caused by them throughout her works. 

I started They Do It With Mirrors in June but didn’t finish it until July.  This title grabbed me.  What exactly do they do with mirrors?  I was hoping that mirrors played prominently into the answer to the murder, but unfortunately it is just a phrase that Miss Marple says to explain the solution.  I was pleased that unlike a couple of other Miss Marple mysteries I have read, Miss Marple is in this entire novel and is the primary detective on the case.

Miss Marple is visited by an old school friend, Ruth.  Ruth is convinced that there is something wrong with her sister Carrie and hopes that Miss Marple can visit and investigate the problem.  Carrie was also Miss Marple’s friend in school.  Together with her husband, she has transformed her home, Stoneygate, into a rehabilitation center for delinquents.  There are also a number of family members visiting as well.  After a murder takes place, Miss Marple uses her skills to solve the mystery.  Was it one of the delinquent young men or a family member?

I love that Miss Marple is a nosey old lady and she is fine with that.  She strikes up conversations with everyone but is also not afraid to pull out her binoculars and pretend to look at birds so she can listen to other people’s conversations.  I was not quite sure how this one was going to end, but it was a satisfying conclusion.

Emilia Fox was a wonderful narrator of the audiobook, and I greatly enjoyed her narration.

Crow Mary by Kathleen Grissom

 

Title: Crow Mary

Author:  Kathleen Grissom

Narrated by:  Carolina Hoyas

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio

Length: Approximately 10 hours and 46 minutes

Source: Review Copy from Simon & Schuster Audio.  Thank you @simonandschuster #BookClubFavorites for the free books!

What book, movie, or show do you enjoy that features a person standing up for themselves and others?

Goes First is a young Indigenous woman in the Crow tribe in 1872.  She is sixteen and in love  with a young man destined to be the future chief.  She loves her life with her tribe, but often thinks about the violent death of her Grandma when she was a young girl.  Her Grandmother’s brother becomes a Grandfather to her.  Her life takes a change when her fiancée is killed.  Her father, the chief, tells her that a white trader, Farwell, would like her as a wife and it would help out their tribe.  Goes First marries Farwell and her name changes to Crow Mary.  She tries to straddle both the White and Native worlds as they fall slowly in love. 

Their idyllic world is shattered when they witness the Cypress Hills Massacre of 1873.  Crow Mary saves the lives of four Indigenous women who are being held captive.  Farwell reports the massacre and tries to get the people responsible to pay for the crime, but the public sentiment turns against him.  This event changes the course of their lives forever.  How will their family survive as the world they live in changes forever?

There is a great foreword at the beginning of the novel from a descendant of Crow Mary whom the author worked with to make sure that this story was culturally sensitive to her story and the story of the Crow people.  There is also a great author’s note at the end that describes how the author came across this story.  She visited a fort and an interpreter acted out the story of Crow Mary which immediately intrigued the author.  It is a fascinating story that I had never heard before.  I am so glad that Grissom found this true story of an intriguing woman and brought it forward for the world to learn about.

The story made me really think about alcohol and how its effects could really destroy lives.  This story also made me realize why prohibition may have been enacted.  It was disturbing how alcohol was poisoned and used to keep the Indigenous people under control and wasting all of their money on it rather than needed supplies.

It was sad how an entire way of life for the Crow people was annihilated over time.  The discussion of the boarding schools and how children were just kidnapped from their parents was heartbreaking.  The culture of the Crow and other tribes was different than the European way of living, but it had its own beauty, traditions, and culture. 

Carolina Hoyas was a great narrator for this novel.  I felt like she was the voice of Crow Mary and I enjoyed learning her story.  This was my first Kathleen Grissom novel, but I do have a copy of The Kitchen House that I need to read.

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte

 

Title:  The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Author:  Anne Bronte

Narrated by:  Piers Wehner & Katy Carmichael

Publisher: Naxos Audiobooks

Length: Approximately 20 hours and 29 minutes

Source: Checked out with Hoopla through the Kewaunee Public Library.  Thank-you!

 

Have you ever heard of Anne Bronte?  Have you ever read any of her novels?

I read all of the Bronte novels written by Charlotte, Emily, and Anne back in high school and college.  I enjoyed them all, but I was surprised at how well I loved Anne’s novels.  She is the lesser-known Bronte and not nearly talked about as much as Charlotte or Emily.  I think this is a shame as I truthfully enjoy The Tenant of Wildfell Hall more than Wuthering Heights.  I think it’s just as good as her sisters.  Unfortunately, Charlotte held The Tenant of Wildfell Hall back from being published again while she was alive.  It was considered a scandalous book for its time as it dealt with alcoholism, marital strife, and a woman leaving her husband and supporting herself.  In the twentieth century, this book has been reexamined and is considered one of the earliest feminist novels.

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was the JASNA Northwoods book club pick for our June meeting that was rescheduled for August.  I finished this book the beginning of June and was ready to discuss it, but I wasn’t finished with the second book so I am glad for the extra time.

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is a story within a story.  The story starts with a young gentleman farmer named Gilbert Markham writing a series of letters to a friend that describe how a mysterious young widow, Helen Graham, has moved to the neighborhood with her small son.  She supports herself as an artist.  Gilbert finds himself falling in love with her, but she becomes the talk of the neighborhood as various rumors abound.  Helen gives Gilbert her diary to discover her true past.  In it, Gilbert discovers that Helen is still a married woman.  She married Arthur Huntingdon for love, but he soon slips into a life of alcoholism and womanizing.  He uses Helen’s money to fund his lifestyle. Helen tries to make her life work, but when she finds Arthur getting their son drunk and trying to lead him into a dissolute life, she knows it is time to leave.   The book flips back in the final third to Gilbert’s point of view. Will Helen and Gilbert get their happy ending?

I really liked how forward-thinking Helen was with her questioning of why boys were educated on the ways of the world while girls were not. I like her posing the question of why aren’t women better prepared for the world and how to handle it?  Why were they left in a state of naivety? It was also forward thinking to have Helen leave her husband and try to support herself.

The framing device with Gilbert was okay.  It felt like Gilbert’s side of the story could have been edited down.  I liked how the beginning of the story was like a Jane Austen novel.  I didn’t really feel Gilbert and Helen’s love story.    I don’t think Gilbert was Helen’s equal, especially when he mistakenly beat up her brother in a jealous rage. 

I liked how this story was one of what happens if you actually marry the Byronic hero from Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre . . . . or the bad boys from Austen like Willoughby or Wickham.  The man who was so charming in the beginning, is an impossible husband to live with.  It was interesting to think about.  It also makes me wonder, how much of the story was based on Anne’s brother Branwell?  Or was it based on things she saw as a governess?  It made me really think about the lack of options women had at the time and how they could be stuck in a truly terrible situation.

Piers Wehner & Katy Carmichael were both good narrators.  Wehner narrated the Gilbert letters while Carmichael narrated Helen’s letters.  It was a very interesting audiobook.  I liked comparing sections to my book as well.

The Paris Daughter by Kristin Harmel

 

Title: The Paris Daughter

Author:  Kristin Harmel

Narrated by:  Madeleine Maby

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio

Length: Approximately 12 hours and 7 minutes

Source: Review Copy from Simon & Schuster Audio.  Thank you @simonandschuster #BookClubFavorites for the free books!

 

What is your favorite novel/movie/show that is set during WWII?  I have so many favorites.  I am looking forward to All the Light You Cannot See by Anthony Doer becoming a series on Netflix later this year.  I loved that book. 

Kristin Harmel is one of my favorite authors and her works that I have read so far have all been set during the WWII time period.  In the Paris Daughter, American ex-pats Elise and Juliette become best friends in Paris right before WWII.  They are both expecting babies.  Elise is married to an artist and Juliette and her husband Paul run a bookstore.  Both women have daughters, but as war marches across Europe, their lives are changed forever.  Elise has to make one of hardest decisions a mother has to make and give her daughter to Juliette to care for as she flees from the Nazis.  After the war ends, Elise returns to find the bookstore bombed out and Juliette and her family missing.  What happened to her daughter in her last moments?  Where is Juliette?

The Paris Daughter was a bit of a slow start for me, but once I got into the story, I couldn’t stop listening to the audiobook.  Madeleine Maby is a good narrator as well and the story was engaging.  I guessed the big reveals in this story, but I still enjoyed it.

This novel really tugged at my heart strings as a mother, and it really made me think about all of the children that disappeared or were killed during World War II (and other conflicts).  Thinking about their parents and wondering what happened to your children.  How many children were never found again?  How many children returned home to find their families gone?

I also enjoyed the story about artwork and how the war impacted it.  Art was worth more from artists that were killed during the war.  Art had disappeared and been rampantly stolen.  I also love the movie Woman in Gold and it makes me wonder how many people never got back their own works of art.

I learned new things in this novel as well and Harmel’s notes at the end are wonderful.  There is a big moment towards the end of the book that I thought was all fiction, but it was a real event.  I was intrigued.  I enjoy learning new to me history.

Overall, The Paris Daughter is an intriguing new WWII historical fiction novel that focuses on motherhood and also the art world during that time period.  I highly recommend it.

The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde

 

Title:  The Importance of Being Earnest

Author:  Oscar Wilde

Narrated by:  Full Cast Audio Adaptation featuring Tim Brooke-Taylor

Publisher: Spiteful Puppet

Length: Approximately 1 hours and 56 minutes

Source: Checked out with Hoopla through the Kewaunee Public Library.  Thank-you!

Do you like to read plays?  If so, what are some of your favorite plays to read?

I had watched The Importance of Being Earnest movie back when it came out in 2002, but I had never read the actual play.  @Deesreads put together a read along for The Importance of Being Earnest in June.  I listened to this full cast production, and it was delightful and a fun audiobook.

The Importance of Being Earnest is a madcap comedy of mistaken identities.  Jack Worthing is a wealthy man.  He was adopted by his uncle Thomas Worthing after being found at a train station.  He goes by the name Ernest while in London.  He falls in love with a young woman named Gwendolen who only agrees to marry him as she wants to marry a man named Ernest. 

The play moves on to Jack’s country estate.  He has a young ward named Cecily.  His friend Algernon arrives and calls himself Jack’s long-lost brother, Ernest.  Cecily and Algernon fall in love. The story all comes to a head when Gwendolen and Cecily meet and realize they are both engaged to Ernest.  The play solves this problem neatly in the third act.

This was a clever comedy and it reminded me of a Shakespeare comedy updated to Victorian times.  I really liked that the audiobook was a full cast production.  The voice actors were entertaining, and it helped me to realize who was speaking since I couldn’t see the actors.  There were many great one-liners that were witty and made me laugh.  I also liked the look into Victorian Society and the foibles of the upper class.  I thought the theme of double identity was very interesting particularly with Oscar Wilde’s sad life story.

I hope to someday see this play performed live!

Favorite Quote:  “To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.”

Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa (Bibliolifestyle Book Tour)

 

Thank you, Partner @bibliolifestyle @harperperennial for the review copy of Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa.  This book was published on July 4, 2023.

Takoko has a great boyfriend and job, but she loses it all when he tells her one day that he is engaged to another woman.  She falls into a depression until her mother calls her and tells her that she should help out in her Uncle Satoru’s bookshop.  She accepts his offer and lives in a tiny room above the bookshop and works in the store.  As she lives there, she discovers she loves books and strikes up friendships within the neighborhood. 

This was a delightful gem of a book.  I loved Takoko’s journey.  I also loved how supportive Uncle Satoru was to her to help her to face her sadness and move forward with her life.  I like how he also had a journey of his own with his wife Momoko, who disappeared five years before and has suddenly reappeared. 

I also loved learning about Jimbocho, which is a book district in Tokyo.  It sounds like a place I need to visit on my bucket list.  I especially loved when the characters visit the Kanda Used Book Festival, which is an annual event in their book district.  It sounded like so much fun. I also loved Satoru’s secondhand book shop. 

This was a quick read.  The first half of the book is set when Takoko first arrives at the bookshop and the second half is a year later when Momoko has reappeared.  I loved how people bonded over books and this book was just a nice and peaceful read.  I enjoyed it!

The Husband List by Ella Quinn (TLC Book Tours)

 

Are you a list maker?  I have lists for everything, especially work-related items.  It feels so satisfying to cross something off a list!

Lady Madeline Vivers just wants to have a conventional marriage and life without adventure.  Mr. Harry Stern is ambitious and wants to rise in parliament and does not seem like a good match to Madeline.  Harry is convinced otherwise and thinks Madeline will be the perfect wife to help him to help serve the people of England.  Harry is not titled, which does cause problems for her mother.  The most important thing on Madeline’s list is for her to love her husband for him to love her.  Will Harry be able to meet this requirement or will it be the Duke that her mother is pushing forward?

The Husband List is book number nine in the Worthington series, and the second book in the Worthington Brides series.  I read and enjoyed book number eight (or one), The Marriage List, earlier this year.  I was more used to the characters this time around, but I still think I need to go back to the beginning and read the entire series, so I know what is happening.  There are a lot of supporting characters, and their relationships are not all explained in this novel.  It made it confusing when I just wanted to focus on the main story of Madeline and Harry.

The Husband List is a slow burn romance without a lot of angst to the story. I enjoyed Lady Madeline’s first year as a debutante and her husband list.  I always enjoy balls and social occasions.    The main conflict in this story is Madeline’s mother’s insistent that she married a titled person.  Since I have read The Marriage List, I did like that Eleanor was in this book as well.  Harry and Madeline were both good people and I enjoyed them as characters.  Just like in the first book, there were social issues from the time in this novel and I enjoyed reading about them.

This book was low on the steam level and had mostly closed-door romance. 

Book Source: Review Copy from Kensington Book Group.   Thank-you! I received a complimentary copy of this book as part of the TLC Book Tour. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

Jane Austen’s Little Book of Wisdom: Words on Love, Life, Society and Literature, Compiled by Andrea Kirk Assaf (Austenprose PR Book Tour)

 

Thank-you to Hampton Roads Publishing for the review copy of Jane Austen’s Little Book of Wisdom by Andrea Kirk Assaf.

Do you have a favorite quote by an author?  I love quotes.

Jane Austen is one of my favorite authors.  Her works are timeless.  She writes such vivid characters that I still recognize them in my friends and family.  Her writing is witty, funny, and true to life.  She is the perfect author to use to create a book of quotes.

Jane Austen’s Little Book of Wisdom is the perfect gift for your Jane Austen loving friend or family member.  The quotes in this book are either Jane Austen’s direct thoughts from letters, poems, etc, or they are quotes from some of her best fictional creations.  In the introduction, it discusses Jane Austen’s life briefly and how the book is set-up.  The quotes are categorized in different themes such as “love and longing,” “friendship,” “life, death, and spirituality,” etc.

Some of my favorite quotes:

“If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.”

“To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love.”

“Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.”

“We do not look into our great cities for our best morality.”

Overall, Jane Austen’s Little Book of Wisdom is a fun book to read some of Austen’s most memorable quotes. 

QUICK FACTS

·       Title: Jane Austen’s Little Book of Wisdom: Words on Love, Life, Society, and Literature

·       Author: Jane Austen

·       Compiled by: Andrea Kirk Assaf

·       Genre: Literary Quotes, Self Help, Gift Books

·       Publisher: ‎Hampton Roads Publishing (March 1, 2023)

·       Length: (400) pages

·       Format: Trade paperback & eBook 

·       ISBN: 978-1642970494

·       Tour Dates: July 10-24, 2023

 

BOOK DESCRIPTION

The ultimate companion for the Jane Austen fan filled with her penetrating insights and humor on life, love, and death.

Jane Austen is one of the most popular female writers in history, best known for her stories of love, loss, and hope, which are cleverly intertwined with her witty insights into the traits and expectations of English Georgian society.
 
Here, in this stunning little book, you will be able to read hundreds of individual quotes from her famous works—from Pride and Prejudice and Emma to Persuasion and Sense and Sensibility—each prompting an emotional response, thoughtful musing, or even a little snigger at the wise and shrewd perceptions that Austen had of the world around her.
 
Utterly charming and very profound, fans of Jane Austen can revel in these much-loved quotes, while a new audience will be introduced to the joys that her books have provided since their publication many years ago. With each chapter focusing on a different theme—from Love & Longing to Female Strength—this gorgeous gift book is the perfect compilation of Austen’s funny, moving, and thought-provoking words.
 
Content of themes:

❤️ Love & Longing

❤️ Friendship

❤️ Society

❤️ Female Strength

❤️ Life & Death

❤️ Faith

❤️ Art & Literature

 

PRAISE FOR JANE AUSTEN’S LITTLE BOOK OF WISDOM

• “A valuable resource for any Austen lover to use for quick reference or to read through.” —Library Journal
• “It’s a lovely way to spend a little time each day revisiting and reflecting on Austen’s beloved works without embarking on a full reread—and also to test your ability to peg each isolated quote to specific events in its respective story. Feel free to invite your fellow Austenites over and turn it into a full-fledged trivia game.” —Mental Floss
• “For Austen fans and lovers of wise words, Jane Austen’s Little Book of Wisdom: Words on Love, Life, Society, and Literature compiled by Andrea Kirk Assaf, provides a genuine treasure trove. Assaf has curated a wonderful collection here, her other works encompassing popes and saints, precisely in line with the reverence Austen deserves.” —NewPages.com
• “This lovely book will provide a daily diet of Austen sensibility every day of the year. My vote: 4 out of 4 teacups.” —JaneAustensWorld.com

 

PURCHASE LINKS

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AUTHOR BIOS

Jane Austen was an English novelist known primarily for her six major novels, which interpret, critique and comment upon the British landed gentry at the end of the 18th century. Austen's plots often explore the dependence of women on marriage in the pursuit of favourable social standing and economic security.

Andrea Kirk Assaf is an editor, journalist, and translator who divides her time between Rome and Michigan.