charles barrow's writing

I've talked about 'Victober 'on here before, though to my surprise I find it was back in 2022. It's a BookTube event that takes place during the month of October, when readers are encouraged to read a book published by a UK author in the Victorian era - during the reign of Queen Victoria 1837-1901. The last time I took part in this challenge, or at least the last time I wrote about it on my blog was in October 2022. That year I read Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. This year I will be choosing one of the books from the stack pictured below. Sorry the photo is a little murky and the book titles a little hard to read, but the books pictured (from bottom to top) are: Doctor Thorne by Anthony Trollope, David Copperfield by Charles Dickens, Ivanhoe by Walter Scott, and The Sign of Four by Arthur Conan Doyle. Last time I took part in this challenge I didn't follow the letter of the rules and I may not ...

 #Victober continued So I read Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, as my attempt to get involved in this year's Victober. And you'll know if you read my last entry that this wasn't the recommended book, for the group read. In fact, I've not followed any of the rules, as laid down, so far, but I'm not too bothered tbh. I really enjoyed Jane Eyre, it's stayed with me for the past few weeks. Funny isn't it? You finally get around to reading these classics and you realise why they've lasted the course and have the reputation that they do. And why millions love them. Well, that's probably true for Jane Eyre, but not for all the classics, though I'm sure you'd find an advocate for any that you cared to name, if you searched hard enough. Anyway, back to Victober. I still had two weeks left of the month and felt I should continue in the vein that I started; by not recognising any of the rules - read a book by a British author, written during the reign of...

As mentioned in early September, October is all about Victorian literature. In a theme tagged #VicTober on Youtube, where I first learned of it, readers are encouraged to read books written during the Victorian period - 1819-1901 if you wanna get pedantic. Furthermore it has to be by an English writer. BookTubers are reading Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge as a group read, but I decided to skip over that as I read a Hardy recently (Under The Greenwood Tree), and had my heart set on reading Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte instead. I thought I must have read this book before, at school maybe, but no. I didn't recognise large swathes of the story. I definitely knew that I'd seen a film or TV adaptation because I remembered a crucial, very cinematic, plot point that comes right near the end. Anyways, I enjoyed it. It was slow going at times, as classic novels can be. Some of the language is overly flowery - why use one word when you can use ten. Some of the religious and...