Come and escape from the world in some great books!
My first Austen for an age - and I'm not sure I ever read this one - has revealed itself to be delightful: genuinely funny and literate with a well fleshed out protagonist and a surprisingly knowing and assured narrative voice - for a novel written when the author was but 28.
In terms of reading, romance is not my preferred genre - my imagination tends towards the darker areas, gothic and crime and literary fiction... Of Gooderads 100 best Romance novels of the last three years, I have read, well, one! I have read more romance recently than at any other time in my life, and in fairness thoroughly enjoyed them. But it is still with some trepidation that I embark on a list of my favourite romantic pairings from recent reads.
This week is a freebie week and I am in the midst of listening to Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen, her first novel and written around 1798, albeit not published until after her death. It is part of my half-formed intention - a vague idea and inclination perhaps - to try to re-read Austen, returning to an author that I did not gel with as a teenager at university. Certainly, it is much funnier and more wry than I remembered Austen to be. Which bodes well. Anyway, the point of this preamble is that I love the way Catherine Morland becomes obsessed with The Mysteries of Udolpho, by Ann Radcliffe - to the extent that she would prefer to curl up at home with the novel than venture out into Bath's social scene, has limited conversation save for her love of the novel, and is desperate for her life to emulate the thrills and passions of the novel. So I thought I'd use this as a springboard to explore bookworms in fiction.
The Book Lovers' Sanctuary 
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