Goodreads Blurb: Heart of Darkness, a novel by Joseph Conrad, was originally a three-part series in Blackwood’s Magazine in 1899. It is a story within a story, following a character named Charlie Marlow, who recounts his adventure to a group of men onboard an anchored ship.
Goodreads Review: Reading this book is like having one of those dreams that seem so real you start to doubt your own perception of reality. Strange, unnerving, and something that will always provoke the question ‘did that really happen or did I just dream that’.
Goodreads Blurb: In The land of Painted Caves, Jean M. Auel brings the ice-age epic Earth’s Children series to an extraordinary conclusion. Ayla, one of the most remarkable and beloved heroines in contemporary fiction, continues to explore the world and the people around her with curiosity, insight, and above all, courage.
Goodreads Review: Once again extremely well researched, with technically very well written prose. My only issue is that most of the plot seems to be shoved in right at the end. I think it should have been spread around a little be more – more drama (even if it’s slightly daft drama) and less descriptions of caves 🤣
Goodreads Blurb: For years, rumors of the “Marsh Girl” haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet fishing village. Kya Clark is barefoot and wild; unfit for polite society. So in late 1969, when the popular Chase Andrews is found dead, locals immediately suspect her.
Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Goodreads Blurb: Meet Laura Ingalls, the little girl who would grow up to write the Little House books.
Pa Ingalls decides to sell the little log house, and the family sets out for Indian country! They travel from Wisconsin to Kansas, and there, finally, Pa builds their little house on the prairie. Sometimes farm life is difficult, even dangerous, but Laura and her family are kept busy and are happy with the promise of their new life on the prairie.
LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE is the second book in the Laura Years series.
Goodreads Blurb: From New York Times bestselling author Peter F. Hamilton comes his first audio original, A Hole in the Sky, Book 1 in the Arkship Trilogy.
Sixteen-year old Hazel lives in the Daedalus, a starship that is flying in search of a new world. The ship has been traveling for five hundred years, searching for a world to settle in after having to abandon its last world. Everyone on board Daedalus lives a very simple existence in farming villages. The age of machines supplying their needs was lost during a mutiny five hundred years ago. The captain regained control of the ship after a huge struggle. Now, with finite resources, everything in the habitat is Cycled, including humans, who essentially are suicided at sixty-five so they don’t deplete the biosphere’s resources.
Goodreads Blurb: The Shelters of Stone opens as Ayla and Jondalar, along with their animal friends, Wolf, Whinney, and Racer, complete their epic journey across Europe and are greeted by Jondalar’s people: the Zelandonii. The people of the Ninth Cave of the Zelandonii fascinate Ayla. Their clothes, customs, artifacts, even their homes—formed in great cliffs of vertical limestone—are a source of wonder to her. And in the woman Zelandoni, the spiritual leader of the Ninth Cave (and the one who initiated Jondalar into the Gift of Pleasure), she meets a fellow healer with whom to share her knowledge and skills.
But as Ayla and Jondalar prepare for the formal mating at the Summer Meeting, there are difficulties. Not all the Zelandonii are welcoming. Some fear Ayla’s unfamiliar ways and abhor her relationship with those they call flatheads and she calls Clan. Some even oppose her mating with Jondalar, and make their displeasure known. Ayla has to call on all her skills, intelligence, knowledge, and instincts to find her way in this complicated society, to prepare for the birth of her child, and to decide whether she will accept new challenges and play a significant role in the destiny of the Zelandonii.
Jean Auel is at her very best in this superbly textured creation of a prehistoric society. The Shelters of Stone is a sweeping story of love and danger, with all the wonderful detail—based on meticulous research— that makes her novels unique. It is a triumphant continuation of the Earth’s Children saga that began with The Clan of the Cave Bear. And it includes an amazing rhythmic poem that describes the birth of Earth’s Children and plays its own role in the narrative of The Shelters of Stone.
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Goodreads Review: Exceptional Book. Another home run for Jean M. Auel! I don’t know why people are so snarky about these later books, they’re really good. Can’t wait to read the next one 😁 What? Why are you all looking at me like that?
Goodreads Blurb: Jean M. Auel’s enthralling Earth’s Children® series has become a literary phenomenon, beloved by readers around the world. In a brilliant novel as vividly authentic and entertaining as those that came before, Jean M. Auel returns us to the earliest days of humankind and to the captivating adventures of the courageous woman called Ayla.
With her companion, Jondalar, Ayla sets out on her most dangerous and daring journey–away from the welcoming hearths of the Mammoth Hunters and into the unknown. Their odyssey spans a beautiful but sparsely populated and treacherous continent, the windswept grasslands of Ice Age Europe, casting the pair among strangers. Some will be intrigued by Ayla and Jondalar, with their many innovative skills, including the taming of wild horses and a wolf; others will avoid them, threatened by what they cannot understand; and some will threaten them. But Ayla, with no memory of her own people, and Jondalar, with a hunger to return to his, are impelled by their own deep drives to continue their trek across the spectacular heart of an unmapped world to find that place they can both call home.
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Goodreads Review: An excellent argument for why the later books are no less well researched than Clan of the Cave Bear. Some of the travelling parts do drag a little, but they are still very well written and if you can just get past them the bits where they meet people are really good.
Logan Huntzberger is the best boyfriend Rory Gilmore has ever had!!!
Logan Huntzberger
Yeah, that’s right – I went there, I threw my hat in the Rory Boyfriend ring and I chose my horse. That metaphor may have gotten a little jumbled but I tell you what isn’t, my feelings for Logan. He is a fun splash of life and joy into Rory’s world. He’s got a personality, he’s open and upfront about what he wants in a relationship even if that does change over time and most of all, more than any other boy that came before he is Rory’s equal.
With both of her other main boyfriends, because the relationships were conducted in Stars Hollow – Rory was always held up on a pedestal by the people around her. And both Dean and Jess were considered to varying decrees as lesser, with the majority of people in the show expected them to be the ones to prove themselves to her. And not vice versa. And if the relationship got screwed up, obviously it was their fault, and not hers. Like I hate Dean, but seeing a fully adult Luke attack a teenager in the street over a breakup that should have been private between Dean and Rory, was very hard to watch.
Yet partly because he’s older, mainly because the relationship is conducted mostly in Yale and away from the obsessive eyes of her small town – Logan never feels like he is the looser honing in on the precious princess. If anything, in certain parts of the story it’s the other way round. Though never condoned by the narrative, Logan’s family makes it pretty clear they think Rory is beneath the heir to the Huntzberger fortune. And while that’s not great, it is an interest turn around from everyone else in the show thinking she’s perfect and can do no wrong.
I’m discounting the revival here, where yes even I can admit that Logan’s affair with Rory while engaged to another woman made him pretty much as terrible as Rory herself – but since the revival was actual garbage, I don’t tend to use it as basis for any of my arguments.
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Yes, Luke Danes. The Myth, the man, the legend. He is somehow both the best and worst of Lorelai’s love interest. The best because, come on it’s Luke. He’s the warm coffee in your cup, the soft jumper you come home to. The stalwart man who will always stay by your side even when you don’t see him there. And he’s the worst because … season six. I don’t think I need to elaborate on that one. Just season six.
If you’ve enjoyed this wee post remember to follow the Wee Blog if you haven’t already. Also check me out on X, Goodreads, Instagram, Mastodon, Threads, Pinterest, Tumblr, Spotify, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook and Kofi. And remember to subscribe to the Wee Mailing List before the end of the month to discover the Top love interest of Gilmore Girls. Until next time, stay safe and have a great day.
Really? You put Jess at number four on this list? But he’s like one of your favourite characters. I know, but there are like reasons.
Jess Mariano
Yes, while that may be a somewhat contentions thing to say in certain parts of the fandom – Jess Marino is one of my favourite characters. A well written, well acted, deeply troubled young man with the kind of subtle, moving storyline that just makes you want to stand up and say … why the fuck are we watching Rory’s story? Screw the Gilmore Girls, give me the Danes boys. So why you might ask is he not top of this list? Well, if this were like the last one and just about Gilmore Girls characters in general, yeah he’d be at the top. But it isn’t – it’s about Gilmore Girls love interests, and as love interest while he’s far from the worst, he’s also not a very good boyfriend. On a day to day level, Rory needs someone who’s going to be more attentive to her every whim.
That’s not a compliment to her, but it is a fact, and when they’re going out Jess is just not in the kind of emotional place where he can be that kind of lapdog for her. He’s too used to his independence, has his own shit going on and is not willing to share. While he does get to a better place off screen, they never really get the timing right and so things sort of fizzle out. Which considering ‘A Year in the Life’, I can’t help but be thankful for. Let the man be free!!!
If you’ve enjoyed this wee post remember to follow the Wee Blog if you haven’t already. Also check me out on X, Goodreads, Instagram, Mastodon, Threads, Pinterest, Tumblr, Spotify, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook and Kofi. And remember to subscribe to the Wee Mailing List before the end of the month to discover the Top Love Interest of Gilmore Girls. Until next time, stay safe and have a bonnie day.
The Wee Writing Lassie 