Have I read this before: Okay, I SWEAR TO GOD I’ve read this before. I distinctly remember propping the U of I Library’s copy up on the elliptical machine at the rec center back in, like, 2007. I swear. But I did NOT remember this book at all, apparently. So.

Review: This is a long-ass book for a relatively simple plot, in my opinion. It meanders all over the damn place at the start with little John Ridd, but I guess it kind of has to in order to set up his back story and socio-economic status. And there’s surprisingly little Lorna Doone for the first portion of the book given that the story is named after her. I guess we get a bunch of her later in the book, though. Am I bad for picturing the Doones like Cletus and his family from The Simpsons?

Favorite Part: This freaking duck part. It sticks out so much from the rest of the book, hahahaha:

“Thereupon Annie and I ran out to see what might be the sense of it. There were thirteen ducks, and ten lily-white (as the fashion then of ducks was), not I mean twenty-three in all, but ten white and three brown-striped ones; and without being nice about their color, they all quacked very movingly.
…
Annie began to cry ‘Dilly, dilly, einy, einy, ducksey,’ according to the burden of a tune they seem to have accepted as the national duck’s anthem; but instead of being soothed by it, they only quacked three times as hard, and ran around till we were giddy.
…
Therefore I knew at once, by the way they were carrying on, that there must be something or other gone wholly amiss in the duck-world.”

(It’s just so freaking random)

Rating: 5/10