Bogormen

Title: The Valley of Horses Author: Jean M. Auel Genre: Historical fiction Rating: 5/5 # pages: 546 Date read: April 2008, August 2022

Cruelly cast out by the new leader of the ancient Clan that adopted her as a child, Ayla leaves those she loves behind and travels alone through a stark, open land filled with dangerous animals but few people, searching for the Others, tall and fair like herself. The short summer gives her little time to look, and when she finds a sheltered valley with a herd of hardy steppe horses, she decides to stay and prepare for the long glacial winter ahead. Living with the Clan has taught Ayla many skills but not real hunting. She finally knows she can survive when she traps a horse, which gives her meat and a warm pelt for the winter, but fate has bestowed a greater gift, an orphaned foal with whom she develops a unique kinship. One winter extends to more; she discovers a way to make fire more quickly and a wounded cave lion cub joins her unusual family, but her beloved animals don't fulfill her restless need for human companionship. Then she hears the sound of a man screaming in pain. She saves tall, handsome Jondalar, who brings her a language to speak and an awakening of love and desire, but Ayla is torn between her fear of leaving her valley and her hope of living with her own kind.


Probably my favourite in the series. No annoying Broud character like in the first, and it hasn't yet reached the repetitiveness of the third and fourth. I have yet to read the fifth because I couldn't stomach rereading 3 and 4 but am thinking I may just skip those two and go straight to it. I think I remember enough of what happens.

Anyway, I love reading about the interaction between Ayla, Whinney and Baby and how Ayla slowly but surely learns to use her instincts to teach herself new things.

Reread 2022: No longer my favourite in the series - I actually liked the first one a tad more. I found that I didn't care all that much about the chapters focusing on Jondalar and his brother, and kept looking forward to the ones that focused on Ayla instead.

I still really enjoyed it though, and finished it in just a few days.

Title: Mansfield Park
Author: Jane Austen
Genre: Classics
Rating: 8/10
# pages: Audiobook
Date read: June, 2007

Summary: Fanny Price, the main character, is the daughter of a genteel woman who married for love but soon found herself in poverty. When Fanny's aunt and uncle, the wealthy owners of Mansfield Park, invite Fanny alone, of all the children, to live with them, Fanny enters a new world, where she is educated, clothed, and housed, but always regarded as an "outsider."

Through Fanny's two cousins, Maria and Julia, Austen shows the complex interactions of the upper class as they negotiate marriages, try to maintain the family's reputation and wealth, and react to those "beneath" them socially. Fanny, having experienced both poverty and plenty, comments on what she sees, and though she lacks the witty charm of some of Austen's other characters (such as Elizabeth Bennett), she shows an intelligence and conscience lacking among her cousins. Only Edmund, the youngest of the Bertram sons, pays genuine attention to her, and her love for him is real, though secret.

Review: I don't think, when I started listening to "Mansfield Park", that I'd fully realized how long it was. But that's a good thing! So far it's been my experience that JA's long books (like Emma and P&P) are far superiour to her shorter ones (like Persuasion and Northanger Abbey), and that was also the case here. At any rate I was very pleasantly surprised, and while P&P is still my favourite Jane Austen, this one rates among the top 3.

And by reading "Mansfield Park", I believe I've finally read all of JA's books. Yay!

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Title: Persuasion
Author: Jane Austen
Genre: Classics
Rating: 8/10
# pages: 237 pages
Date read: November, 2006

Summary: When she was 21 years old, Anne fell in love with and was engaged to Frederick Wentworth, a young captain in the Navy. Her belated mother's best friend, Lady Russell, dissapproves of the match as being below Anne, due to Anne's claim to nobility, and Anne cancels the engagement, much to her and and Captain Wentworth's grief. Nearly eight year's have passed since she broke off her engagement to Captain Wentworth when she, Lady Russell, and a Mr. Shepherd, a friend of her father's, are forced to pose and intervention and tell her father that he must quit his estate and find someone to lease it to, or he will be sent tot he poorhouse. Her father, his only pride being in his social position and personal appearance, relents, but only if they can find suitable tenants - which they do in Admiral Croft and his wife, the sister of Captain Wentworth. Anne thinks that her broken heart has mended, until she sees him again. Anne and Wentworth must negotiate their past, their different social classes, and proper behavior to find their way back to one another. (Amazon.com)

Review: For some reason I had a hard time getting through this one, which was weird, as I remember loving it the first time I read it. Perhaps I just wasn't in a JA-kind-of-mood. Still, Jane Austen always makes for a good read, and when I finally got properly into the book I enjoyed it, although it's very inferiour to her other books. I don't think you get to know the characters as well. But as this is also the shortest of her books that I've read, that might be part of it too.

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