The Transatlantic Book Project: The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender

By Rachel

TABP

Last month, I posted about The Transatlantic Book Project, which is being hosted by myself and Alicia @ A Kernel of Nonsense. A quick recap for those who don’t know: 2 books are travelling around 10 book bloggers, 5 in the US and 5 in the UK, and those bloggers are going to annotate the books and share blog posts/reviews about the book, the process and their experience.

The Transatlantic Book Project GiftsAlicia sent me her book selection, The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender, as well as some lovely goodies, and I braced myself to put pen to paper. It was A LOT more difficult than I imagined. I’ve never been the type to write in books, even when I studied English Literature I made my notes on the text in a separate notebook, and I’ve previously blogged about how annotating books feels like I’m defacing them! Something as simple as writing in a book became a real challenge!

Luckily, the book’s layout is excellent for annotating, as there’s plenty of space at the end of each chapter. I did have to remind myself that there needs to be enough room for 10 bloggers to make notes though, so I only wanted to write something when it felt like I would be adding to the overall conversation. Deciding when what I had to say was significant enough to annotate posed another problem – my words would be forever marked on the page in purple ink!

In the end, I made a note at the end of a chapter if I had a comment to make on the events of the story, and highlighted a couple of phrases that I felt were just absolutely beautifully written. I will be putting up a separate and full review of the book soon. The annotations have definitely been useful for writing the review, and I can see so many benefits to making notes in your books – a quick flick through an annotated book and you remember much more of the story, and how you felt/thoughts you had when reading it. It also personalises your own library or collection in a lovely way. I might consider annotating a few of my own in future, maybe in pencil…

I’m sending this book to Trish @ Between My Lines next, so make sure to check out her blog for her thoughts on The Transatlantic Book Project, and on The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender.

About Rachel

Avid reader & #bookblogger. Lover of all things business. A fan of drinks & dancing. Ever optimistic. Feminist.

15 Responses

    1. Rachel

      I don’t usually do that either! I’m not that fond of eBooks, but the ability to take notes and highlight and then skip to them is SO useful. I keep threatening to start taking notes, but I never do. It feels more like study, and less like fun, that way. R xx

      Liked by 1 person

    1. Rachel

      It’s so exciting that it’s finally happening! I’m going to total the number of miles these books are travelling because I would say it’s going to be a lot! R xx

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  5. Ksenia

    I’ve already told you previously that I love this idea of The Transatlantic Book Project. Looking forward to future updates. As for the marking my books, I’m the same. I just can write in my books.

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    1. Rachel

      I don’t like writing in books either – but I picked up S by JJ Abrams and Doug Dorst, and then I picked up a book in a second hand store that had notes in the margins that were insightful, and it was so interesting to read someone else’s thoughts while reading, and THEN Alicia mentioned this project to me, and I thought it would be so cool to own/read my favourite book with some thoughts from some of my favourite people. I haven’t started writing in my own books since, but I’m definitely more open minded about it! R xx

      Liked by 1 person

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