Fall '12 reading list

After a busy summer of refinishing furniture (3 Alvar Aalto bookcases, 1 McCobb dresser, 1 McCobb 2-drawer cabinet, plus just-the-tops of another McCobb cabinet and a no-name wheely coffee table case piece) I got busy with my day job early Autumn.

I love to read in the Fall, as I turn back to my beloved depressing classics. But I needed some light fare to balance my heavy work load.

Hence, I finally finished reading Cherry Ames Department Store Nurse, which Rich and I had started reading together some time ago. Cherry toggles between patients at the department store, trying to pick up the floor manager (they finally hook up, but on xmas eve—what a time for a first date!), and solving the mystery of the stolen vase. Yes.

Then, I started in reading my beautiful clothbound HC edition of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, recommended to me as the best of all the Bronte sister novels. Well, I LOVED it.

The structure of the novel was a little cumbersome (in theory, this dude is writing to a friend of his, talking about the mysterious Mrs. Graham for the first third of the book, which culminates in her throwing her diary at him; then, he either shares the diary in its entirety or re-writes it in its entirety to his friend for the next third of the book; then finished telling his tale), but with a little suspension of belief, it works fine.

I later read that the moment Mrs.Graham left her husband was one of the earliest feminist moments in literature.

Unlike Jane Austen or Dickens, Anne Bronte's syntax and sentence structure made it a very easy read. I flew through almost half on 10/29, which we had off from work due to Hurricane Sandy. Best hurricane ever!