I’m fully initiated in BookMooch now. I’ve sent books and just this weekend I received my first book. Yippee. I had been going through Nancy Pearl’s book, Book Lust, to help me in my search for the perfect books for the Classics Challenge and one writer she mentioned that she liked quite a bit was Barbara Pym.
“Barbara Pym’s novels are the closest you can come to reading the sorts of books Jane Austen might have written, had she lived in the middle of the twentieth century. Pym’s books are witty and stylish, filled with unforgettable, gently quirky characters, and marked by insidiously charming opening lines.”
Wow, how come I haven’t read any of her books before? After a quick search on BookMooch I found Jane and Prudence. From the publisher: Middle-aged Jane is the well-intentioned but far from perfect clergyman’s wife and mother. Prudence, who at 29 is teetering at the edge of spinsterhood, is an attractive, educated working girl. The two best friends share memories of their carefree days at Oxford, leisurely lunches, and gossip, but their ultimate goal is to find a suitable mate for Prudence.
A bit of romance, quirky characters and sketches of village life sound like my idea of a comfort read. So I asked for the trade and voila I have the book now. I can see I’m going to love BookMooch.
And while I didn’t choose the Barbara Pym for my classics challenge, I am excited at having discovered a new author. Has anyone read Pym’s books? Any thoughts?
