(An effort to give readers a little more than the short biography provided by Blogger.)
Jenni Buchanan is a professional writer and owner of
BlogProfs.com, a company providing quality blog content to attorneys around the country. She has been published in both the professional and literary fields.
A lifelong reader and writer, Jenni has worked in just about every field of writing--including technical, creative, and journalistic--before finding the one that made her happy and made her money at the same time.
It was Jenni's unflagging belief that everybody has the potential to appreciate literature if only they are exposed to the right books, that led Jenni to begin teaching her "
Rediscovering the Classics" class in 2007, which continues to meet each September to June, and reads one classic work of fiction each month. The blog
Banquet of Books is an extension of Jenni's belief in the magnetism of great books, combined with her incorrigible desire to inflict her enthusiasm for all things literary on anyone who will listen.
Jenni generally prefers classics to contemporary literature, with
Shakespeare as the obvious and undeniable choice for best author of all time. It has been said that all readers can be divided into two categories; those who claim
Hamlet as their favorite Shakespeare play, and those who prefer
Lear. Jenni falls firmly into the
King Lear camp.
Aside from all things Shakespeare, Jenni will read with pleasure anything written by
Jane Austen or
Charles Dickens. She thinks that Nabokov's
Lolita is the most beautiful bit of prose she has ever read, loves the social insights of
George Eliot, the tragic romanticism of
F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the philosophical questions posed by
W. Somerset Maugham.
When it comes to contemporary authors, Jenni finds the prose of
Kamila Shamsie--most notably
Kartography--is the most perfect and moving of the past decade.
A.S. Byatt, and
John Updike are further top contemporary choices for intelligent and well-crafted fiction, with a shout-out to
Margaret Atwood, whose
The Handmaid's Tale should be required reading for ALL high school students.
Harold Bloom and
Bill Bryson are Jenni's favorite non-fiction authors. Harold Bloom because of his ability to perfectly dissect a work of fiction or poetry, and because he makes literary criticism interesting and accessible; Bill Bryson because of his wonderfully conversational writing style and because he has a wickedly enjoyable sense of humor. Also among Jenni's favored works of non-fiction are Biographies and baseball writing.
Jenni attended
college in Southern California and graduated with a B.A. in English in 1997. Before college Jenni spent most of her time reading the right books at the wrong times and generally avoiding any schoolwork that kept her from her personal reading list. The result of this was a very unbalanced report card and extremely frustrated teachers.
Jenni's hope is that this blog, in addition to serving as an outlet for her never ending opinions about all things literary, provides encouragement for fledgling readers, community for avid readers, and food for thought for those in between.
Happy Reading!
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