Thursday, December 5, 2013

I love Jane Austen, but I Didn't Love Death at Pemberly.

Death Comes to PemberleyDeath Comes to Pemberley by P.D. James
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

And I wanted to love Death at Pemberly. It's Jane Austen! And a mystery! What's not to love? But I put off reading this novel because even though this is written by PD James, I've been absolutely horrified at the other P and P sequels I've read before. But thus far I've been pleasantly surprised. I found myself effortlessly slipping back into that world and even though I knew it was coming,  the introduction of the murder came as an abrupt surprise because I found myself so engrossed in the day to day life of the Darcys. Props to James because conveying that kind of surprise in a genre with such established conventions is not easy.

And then I read more of the book, and the more I read, the more disappointed I became. While James actually does a decent job at capturing the spirit of Austen's prose, the mystery itself, which started off with such promise, just falls flat. I won't say what happened in case you might actually want to read Death Comes to Pemberly, but I will say that the ending was a huge anti-climatic let down. In fact, it was so anti-climatic that I initially thought that it couldn't possibly be the ending, but sadly, it had an air of terribly written P and P fan fic.

Honestly, just go read Pride and Prejudice again. Or some of PD James's other novels. Just don't read Death at Pemberly.


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Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Things I Have Done Tonight Instead of Grading

I have 10 million things that need grading like yesterday so of course I did everything I could to avoid grading this evening, like:

Reading this book:

Mr.Darcy. Rawr

Perusing the Sock Dreams website (so. many. plus size socks) and developing a burning desire to own these beauties:
You WILL be mine. As soon as I get paid. 

Playing Candy Crush. 

Who's on level 290? This gal!

Cuddling with this cat

Pepper loves to snuggle, and he doesn't take no for an answer

Watching Teen Titans
Cyborg is kicking butt in the year 3000 BC

Eating ice cream for dinner

Nom. 

I am a productive procrastinator. Who has SO MUCH GRADING to do tomorrow.

I'm going to have the same manic look in my eyes this time tomorrow evening.