Found in Used Books, #5

A two-sided laminated photographer’s card/bookmark (?) found in a copy of Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy, which I admit to half-heartedly slogging through right now.

Pride and Prejudice, New Books, and a Cool New Way to Keep My Place

I just finished my second Jane Austen novel, Pride and Prejudice (I read Sense and Sensibility a few months ago), and can now safely declare myself a serious Austen fan. Contrary to what you may have heard about Jane Austen, she is surprisingly funny! And witty! And not at all boring! Really, it’s true. And her stories are not just about romance and balls and courtship, though those are important plot elements; they maintain serious and intelligent social commentary with a sharp tone.

I loved Pride and Prejudice particularly for it’s protagonist, Elizabeth Bennet, who grew on me steadily throughout the novel. Constrained by a society and time in which women’s prospects are considered only in terms of their relationships to men, Elizabeth Bennet is uncommonly confident, assertive, and unwilling to settle for comfort and polite society. In turn, she is loved for her impertinence, her (by the end) well-deserved pride, and her mind. Which is more satisfying by the end of the book than it may sound right now. But yeah, Go Lizzy!

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On a different note, my parents were here for a few days this week which was great, and as always we went to the Strand Bookstore together where I pressured them into buying me lots of new shiny books (even hardcovers!) and then my dad made his usual joke, something along the lines of “Busy social life you must have, eh em?”

Yeah, thanks dad! Anyway, here’s what I got:

The Vagrants, by Yiyun Li

The True Deceiver, by Tove Jansson

Saint Joan of Arc, by Vita Sackville-West

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot

Stranger From Abroad, by Daniel Maier-Katkin

I’m agonizing over what order to read these in. So excited for each of them! Bah.

Also, I’ve decided it’s time to stop using miscellaneous receipts and ticket stubs and candy wrappers as bookmarks and to use actual, you know…bookmarks. My boyfriend gave me an old Star Trek one of his recently, and after visiting the gift shop in The American Folk Art Museum post-Strand, I found the second addition to my new collection. It has nothing to do with the exhibits I saw, but I still really like it:

Yes, that is a working magnifying lens.

LOVE IT.