Double Sunday Status: A Great and Terrible Beauty and Go Set a Watchman

I have two very different books that I'm reading today.  Most likely I'll be posting about two books from now on as I'll have one book at school and one book at home.  They'll also be pretty different.  If I read two similar books at the same time I'm lost, but if they're very different then I can keep everything straight.

A Great and Terrible Beauty

Libba Bray

Simon & Shcuster 2003
Source: Purchased


This is a re-read for me.  I read it years ago, not too long after the second book had been published.  I fell in love with it and then waited impatiently for the third one after I finished the first two.

For whatever reason I have been thinking about this series lately, but it's been so long my thoughts are a bit muddled.  So here I am reading them again.  I am around 10 years older at this point and my life is significantly different, so I wonder if I will see it differently.  I'm only about 100 pages in, and so far I don't feel differently, but I'm wondering where the excitement over this book went.  Maybe it comes later?  I'm enjoying it, but not tearing it apart trying to finish it right this second.  Or maybe I don't need to because I already know what happens (but not really because it's all very vague and the series runs together in my mind).

I would like to note that I'm a little upset about the cover of the book I ordered to the right (I could not find my original, but I'm pretty sure I know who has it).  My original one was such a gorgeous photo and I didn't realize when I purchased this that it was this cover.  The black fence (?) at the bottom just makes it... bleh.  The cover I love is the one I used at the top of the page.

Go Set a Watchman
Harper Lee
Harper Collins 2015
Source: Purchased


I've finally decided to start reading it.  I'm reading this one at school and since I'm desperately trying to finish fluency reads with each student, I'm not getting to read alongside them.  That means I've only read about 40 pages this week.  There are some absolutely stunning lines as well as some words that I've never used before.  Stunning writer.

There are moments where you can tell this is not truly a finished product, but it's still so beautiful.

One of my favorite sentences so far:

"She was completely unaware that with one twist of the tongue she could plunge Jean Louise into a moral turmoil by making her niece doubt her own motives and best intentions, by tweaking the protestant, philistine strings of Jean Louise's conscience until they vibrated like a spectral zither."

The end of this sentence is the best. The way it feels. 

Some new vocabulary for you:

Perspicacious--to have a keen understanding     (I never heard of this word but have been looking for a way to throw it into every day conversation...)

Enisled--isolated as if on an island (I knew what this meant and so may you, but isn't it a wonderful word?)


Image Source: Goodreads

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