Choose Your Own Edition: O Pioneers!

On the heels of my search for the perfect The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, I bring you my longtime search for the perfect O Pioneers! This book. This book is my very favorite Willa Cather. And that is saying something, as I consider her to be the actual Great American Novelist. I am so very grateful we made our way around to her in my tenth grade American literature class. I was so, so ready for a woman author and stories that felt like they represented the land I knew and loved, even if they hailed from time periods and life experiences entirely separate from my own. To this day, I count the first time I read O Pioneers! as one of the highlights of my life.

I currently own a somewhat battered mass market copy (I believe it's a Signet Classic) with rows and rows of hay bales on it. Which is fine. But it doesn't sing the way the cover of this beautiful book should. And so I bring you the three editions I like best and ask your humble opinion. For a long time, I've leaned toward the one on the left, with the barn and the lovely simple lettering. Then I recently ran across the middle Oxford Classics edition with Alexandra herself on it, and I'm quite taken with it as well. Alexandra. How I love her. And lastly, the brighter Penguin Classics poppies. They are all lovely in their own way. Which way do you lean?

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Angie's 2026 Must Be Mine

As ever, begin as you mean to go on. And so here are my most anticipated titles of 2026: And no covers on these yet, but I'm just as excited for each one: The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, Volume 9 by Beth Brower Finest Kind of Fate by J.J. Mulder My Kind of Guy by Sarina Bowen Ravenous by Kresley Cole Mastermind by Sarah MacLean Game of Rogues by Julie Anne Long Grim Tidings by B.K. Borison Villain Edit by Rosie Danan What titles are on your list?

Retro Friday Review: Song of the Sparrow by Lisa Ann Sandell

Retro Friday is a weekly meme hosted here at Angieville and focuses on reviewing books from the past. This can be an old favorite, an under-the-radar book you think deserves more attention, something woefully out-of-print, etc. Everyone is welcome to join in at any time! So this is a book I've spent a lot of time talking about. Chances are, if you've hung around these parts, you've heard me push it. But I actually read it for the first time way back in the olden days before the blog was, well, what it is now. I read it shortly after it was first published, back in 2007, when I was writing monthly posts, mere collections of mini-reviews. So Song of the Sparrow got shortchanged. I decided to address that situation today. The fun thing is lots of friends have read (and reviewed) it since, and so I was able to trip through their lovely thoughts and remember my own. When I heard about a retelling of Tennyson's " Lady of Shalott ," I was so in. I mean, I'...

Bibliocrack Review | Don't You Forget About Me by Mhairi McFarlane

There's really very little to say, isn't there? I hope you are well, wherever you are. I hope that your loved ones are. I hope that you're finding small ways to stay afloat, to remain connected to something, someone, someplace (real or fictional) that sustains you. Dark and difficult times, indeed. I've rather been holding on to this review. I felt so much, so quickly, so irrevocably for this book that it rapidly became hard to talk about to anyone who hadn't read it. And so I hope I can do it justice, just barely enough justice that, if you haven't, you'll run right out and do so. Now is the perfect time. I feel strongly that this book is what you need in your life at this moment. And so. You might want to prepare yourselves. I'm about to wax rhapsodic. But first, and introductory excerpt: At the end of that session, Fay said, What if it's not what happened with this boy you regret, it's you? It's the you who you left behind. It's ...

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