Rumbles Of A Book Dragon

I admit, I have a certain love of the classics, probably because I was homeschooled and as such, discovered them on my own rather than having to read them for a class and The Hunchback Of Notre-Dame is my first foray into Victor Hugo. Characters: Pierre Gringoire, Captain Phoebus, Quasimodo, Esmerelda, and the Frollo brothers, Jehan and Archdeacon Claude. Premise: Lust, obsession, and jealousy lead to murder and tragedy in Notre-Dame.  From the title, you would think Quasimodo the hunchback is at the center of the novel, but is actually Esmeralda, the Romany woman who is the main focus.  The original title of the novel is Notre-Dame De Paris 1482 (Our Lady Of Paris 1482) which is a better telling of the tale, and as stated, our main focal is Esmeralda, who is a Romany woman (the novel uses the word "gypsy", however this has fallen out of favor as it is a racial slur and as such I'll be using the word "Romany") who makes her living performing in the streets with ...

Okay, we got the usual tropes: the secret royal, the one-night stand, the surprise baby that daddy doesn't know about, seems pretty cut and dried, right?  Eh, not really.  I do like my Harlequins---as I'm sure you could tell from my previous postings 🤣---and The King's Hidden Heir by Sharon Kendrick seemed like it was gonna be a fun one. Characters: Emerald Baker, Kostandin. Premise: After telling her former one-night stand that he's a father, a woman is whisked away to his country where she tries to get him to open his heart to emotions. Sharon Kendrick is a new author to me and the characters---Emerald and Kostandin---quite the names, don't you think?---were pretty engaging.  Emerald was fun.  She certainly didn't have too much trouble standing up for herself.  When we start out, Emmy and Konstandin met for a tryst which was supposed to be for one night, which was agreed upon.  After he goes back to his country, Emmy finds out she's pregnant and raises t...

Okay I'm gonna be honest, Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence is not something I would normally read as I'm not really big on characters that cheat.  But I was trying to expand my horizons a bit, thus you get this. Characters: Constance and Clifford Chatterley, Oliver Morrell. Premise: A woman has an affair and falls in love with her lover. Holy heck, what did I just read?  This is not my preferred type of literature (which is why I had a hard time finishing it) but I was trying to challenge myself and expand my reading horizons, but this...I...there are no words.  Constance is married to Clifford Chatterley who was paralyzed in the war and her own father advises her to take a lover, which, my dude! No!  Maybe he just really wanted grankids? 🤷‍♀️ And at first, Constance seems devoted to Clifford, but she ultimately starts feeling isolated and starts something with the games-keeper, Oliver Morrell, which, ma'am, no!  This is not what you do when you're mar...

Ya'll guessed it, I'm still on a Children's Lit kick and here we have Beezus And Ramona by Beverly Cleary. I read these books as a kid and honestly I grew out of them pretty quickly as they were rather short (at least this one was with only six chapters) but hey, nolstagia, am I right? Characters: The Quimby family (with a guest appearance by Henry Huggins and his dog Risby)  Premise: Nine-year old Beezus contends with her younger sister, Ramona. As stories go, it's pretty cute, though even as a kid, I wasn't much of a fan of this series, preferring The Mouse And The Motorcycle, though I thought the series was okay.  To be fair, it doesn't have much of a plot, per se.  Just mainly the day-to-day life of the Quimby family.  Beatrice (nicknamed Beezus because Ramona couldn't say her full name properly) has to deal with her younger sister, who in her mind, can be a pain, which is pretty relatable, though to be fair, I'm the younger sibling.  I liked the fa...