Tag: Jane Austen

Welcome to Triple Choice Tuesday. This is where I ask some of my favourite bloggers, writers and readers to share the names of three books that mean a lot to them. The idea is that it might raise the profile of certain books and introduce you to new titles, new authors and new bloggers.

Today’s guest is Eva, who blogs at The Paperback Princess.

Eva is based near Vancouver, Canada, where she lives with her husband and her German Shepherd, Henrik. She has been blogging about books since late 2011.

“I pretty much eat, breathe and sleep books, aside from the mandatory eight hours a day that I spend working in a non-bookish place,” she says. “I read pretty much anything, aside from science fiction and most fantasy. I used to hate CanLit (which is shameful) but I’m on the road to recovery now.”

Without further ado, here are Eva’s choices:

A favourite book: The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

I was surprised at what a modern heroine Lily Bart actually is. She struggles against the conventions of her time, refusing to marry the expected man, wishing that she could live her own life by her own rules. Edith Wharton herself was such an unconventional woman and I love that she had the guts to create a story like this. Ultimately, it’s such a tragic story and serves
as a reminder of how far we’ve come and how far we still have to go in terms of the female experience around the world.

A book that changed my world: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

This is the book that continues to have the greatest impact on my reading. I first read it when I was 11 — I had watched the BBC mini-series with my mom and loved it and then she told me that it was based on a book and my head exploded. I read it, didn’t understand all of it, but knew that something had shifted within me. This perfect book changed me. I went on to read all of Jane Austen’s books (and continue to re-read at least one of her books every year) and moved onto the Brontes, Dickens, Eliot, Thackeray, Gaskell, Burney etc. Reading Pride and Prejudice when I was 11 turned me into a determined Anglophile and still colours my reading today — I read mostly books by female authors and an astounding number of them hail from the UK.

A book that deserves a wider audience: Far From the Tree: Children, Parents and the Search for Identity by Andrew Solomon

This book is no joke, weighing in at 702 pages of incredibly dense text and heavy subject matter. But it’s so so important to read as human beings. This book looks at the relationships and the experiences of families who have children who are different from them. This could mean that they are deaf, have Down Syndrome, are dwarves, transgendered, criminals, or born as a result of rape, among other things. The main idea that Solomon explores is acceptance vs change. That is, those families that accept their children for who they are and those that wish that things could be changed. It’s an incredible book, that had me crying on the bus more than once. Sometimes it’s a very difficult book to read but mostly it’s one of the most important books I’ve ever read and I’m always trying to get more people to read it!

Thanks, Eva, for taking part in my Triple Choice Tuesday! 

I’ve read a couple of Edith Wharton books (before this blog so not reviewed here) and quite liked them, but dare I admit I’ve never read Jane Austen? One day I’ll change that. Promise.

And thanks for the reminder about Andrew Solomon’s book — I’ve heard very good things about this book from quite a few people now — which I’m keen to read. It won the Wellcome Book Prize, here in the UK, last year.

What do you think of Eva’s choices? Have you read any of these books?