How To Cheer Yourself Up....

Well, I have been crook. Is that just an Australian slang word or is it known further afield? I remember my dad saying that "...he was as crook as Rookwood." Rookwood being a large, well known cemetery in Sydney! So you get my drift ... I have been sick, unwell, feeling poorly etc. But I am feeling much better now and there really is nothing like a book buying binge to cheer oneself up (well, a little anyway).



As is my usual way I have picked up a range of fiction and non-fiction titles lately. The non-fiction is fairly heavy on what I have started to call medical lit. Since reading Atul Gawande's Complications I have been attracted to books that look into the lives of patients and their families and doctors as they face life threatening illness and disease. I think this penchant may actually have commenced as far back as my reading of Oliver Sacks' Awakenings. Apart from these new titles (Vital Signs, Making the Cut and Shimmer - these ones are all Australian by the way) I have recently read Direct Red by Gabriel Weston. This book made it onto the Guardian's First Book Award Longlist (it has since not made the shortlist). It is a rather short book describing the author's introduction into emergency medicine in a large London hospital. It was particularly good at describing the plight of young female doctors entering the male dominated medical fraternity. Also, Weston is very good at describing her inner, often conflicting, thoughts and feelings over her patients' treatment, her own abilities and career prospects. I enjoyed reading this book but felt it could have been more substantial had it delved a little more deeply into each topic raised.

Another book (shown above) that I am particularly excited about reading is Peter Carey's Parrot and Olivier. I note that this title is only currently out in Australia and won't be released elsewhere until April 2010. I haven't read any Carey since Jack Maggs but the plot of his latest really has me intrigued:
"...Olivier is a young aristocrat, one of an endangered species born in France just after the Revolution. Parrot, the son of an itinerant English printer, wanted to be an artist but has ended up in middle age as a servant. When Olivier sets sail for the New World - ostensibly to study its prisons, but in reality to avoid yet another revolution - Parrot is sent with him, as spy, protector, foe and foil. Through their adventures with women and money, incarceration and democracy, writing and painting, they make an unlikely pair. But where better for unlikely things to flourish than in the glorious, brand-new experiment, America?" (From Penguin books website)

I am also looking forward to Liz Jensen's The Rapture. How is it that I have never heard of this writer before????? This is her seventh book and she has what I believe to be the most amazing looking backlist I have encountered in some time. See it here. It is so very varied and on topics which interest me greatly. I have since ordered her three previous books from bookdepository.co.uk!

While I have been convalescing I also made a new author friend :-) His name is Stieg Larsson and I am sure many of you have made his acquaintance already; well, through his novels anyway - very sadly he died soon after finishing The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo trilogy. There has been a lot of good (even great) things written about these books and I commenced them with trepidation. After the first 50 pages (of the first instalment) I was wondering what all the fuss was about then after a 100 pages the exterior world seemed to vanish while I became consumed by Larsson's characters and intriguing, contemporary storyline. You are not likely to ever forget Larsson's female protagonist, Lisbeth Salander. You would be hard pushed to find a more unique and original character. I have recently finished the second book in the series, The Girl Who Played With Fire and liked it even more than the first. This despite the rather clunky translation and annoying typographical errors! So, I am having a short breather before commencing the recently released final instalment, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest.

So what else can I see in this collection? I am definitely staying true to some of my favourite author's:
Jane Gardam - The Man in the Wooden Hat - which is a follow up to her previous novel Old Filth, which my book club read and absolutely loved.
Irene Nemirovsky - All Our Worldly Goods - again a prior book group favourite for Suite Francais.
Salley Vickers - Dancing Backwards - another author I have read for my book club. While I really liked The Other Side of You, my fellow clubbers had mixed feelings about it.
Anita Diamant - Day After Night - what can I say, The Red Tent was another book club read and while not one of my favourites I am intrigued by the subject matter of her new one.
Audrey Niffenegger - Her Fearful Symmetry - while I may be one of the few that wasn't completely bowled over by The Time Traveller's Wife this has ended up probably being a good thing as it seems lovers of it have been quite underwhelmed by her new one (going on the Amazon.co.uk reviews at least).

And before I forget, if you are a Persephone booklover and have an unread copy of Marghanita Laksi's Little Boy Lost handy - READ IT, NOW! If you haven't got a copy - THEN GET ONE, NOW! I loved this book about a very sad and introverted Englishman's harrowing journey to find his son in postwar France - which is not resolved until the final page! Yes, the final page and it is oh so very good. I cannot wait to get my hands on Laski's The Village. And yes, I WANT IT NOW :-)

Finally, I have just started Abraham Verghese's Cutting For Stone which I have chosen for my book club. It has pretty much drawn me in from page one. It is one of those big, sprawling, multi-character, multi-time frame and multi-continent novels concerning the life and times of twin boys. It is written by a doctor about doctors, among many other things and I can't wait to continue the journey.

And one more thing (I promise - come on, I haven't written a post in a month, what did you expect?) I have just discovered one of my other favourite authors, Jonathan Safran Foer, has a new book out and it's non-fiction and is a study of all things concerned with eating meat and has been very favourably compared with the work of Michael Pollan. So if you have read (and loved) Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma or Eric Schosser's Fast Food Nation or Peter Singer's The Ethics of What We Eat (I could go on some more but I won't) then check out Foer's Eating Animals. I did and it's already on its way to my post box ;-)

I apologise for being away so long but stuff happens, as it were and I am eager to commence my slow but steady trip around your blogs. See you soon(ish)!

p.s. I am also excited about Barbara Kingsolver's new one, The Lacuna, but more of that later ...

The Tortoise and the Hare by Elizabeth Jenkins

I have just finished reading this novel for the Cornflower book group and as such what I am about to write may suit those who have read the book more than those who have not. But having said that, I would urge those who have not read this book or any of Elizabeth Jenkins' work to rush out and do so. This book has raised so many issues that I literally cannot stop thinking about it. For a plot summary please direct yourselves here.

I purposely did not read the forward or afterward until I had finished the novel which is my usual want as I find they can overly influence my initial reading. As such, I came to the novel having read only the back cover whose description ended with the sentence "...And to Imogen's increasing disbelief, she may be succeeding." So firstly I would say that I really did not know how this book would end and like Imogen, was equally amazed at the influence of Blanche on Evelyn. Despite all the mounting evidence I kept thinking that Imogen was misinterpreting the clues. Also, I couldn't quite believe that a husband would so openly go about having an affair in front of his wife. As such, with my current day sensibilities, I found Evelyn to be a monstrous, unemotional but ultimately very needy individual. He had raised Imogen, as it were, to play the submissive and beautiful wife but had tired of that. He then went out and found himself an altogether opposite companion and then expected Imogen to dutifully accept the situation which isn't as shocking as one may first think when it becomes apparent that Imogen herself fully expected Evelyn to take a mistress at some stage in their marriage. But here's the rub - she expected that replacement to be a younger version of her beautiful self. Her vanity and pride is wounded nearly beyond repair. With her self confidence shattered she eventually accepts a split with Evelyn to be the only way forward.

I was interested to see in Carmen Calill's Afterward a reference to Diana, Princess of Wales. I too found many parallels between the Charles-Diana-Camilla menage-a-trois and that of Evelyn, Imogen and Blanche. I couldn't help remembering the interview Diana gave on the BBC Panorama program where she stated something to the effect that there was three people in her marriage and this was ultimately too many! I wonder if Diana ever got to read The Tortoise and the Hare?

As my discussion may already indicate I had great sympathy for Imogen but upon further reflection I could see how other readers may find her to be extremely irritating and passive. In her defence I would state that this is what she had been raised to be - it was the birthright of her class and beauty. So too was Evelyn a result of his class, his handsomeness and his profession. I was so completely dismayed to read that Gavin was turning out to be exactly like his father - someone who disliked his mother but fully expected her to be at his beck and call when he was home.

I am sure that I bring to this novel present day sensibilities but I see so much in this novel that is still so prescient today. In this way, I took this novel rather personally in that in my own family, beauty and slimness was (and still is!) given great but subtle priority. As such, despite all other achievements these two qualities should (as far as my parents are concerned) always remain on one's agenda. Is it any wonder that my eldest sister has had a low grade eating disorder her whole life while I am continually battling with my own weight, despairing its upward climb as I get older? I couldn't help but notice Imogen's description of Blanche as that of a bull - short stumpy legs protruding from a stout body! Like Blanche, I was trained to believe that beauty wins out in the end and however much my own intellectual beliefs counter this the emotional baggage of my youth continues to affect my subconscious reactions to this very day.

So finally, who is the tortoise and who the hare? I note that Calill in her Afterward felt that Imogen was the tortoise "... as she struggles through a mire of misery but leaves it behind" while Blanche is the hare "...because though she has raced off with the trophy-husband, where love is betrayed once, so it may be again." Mantel writes in her Forward that "It is the older woman who reads the emotional logic of the situation. The tortoise overtakes the hare." Before reading these women's insights I would have firstly fallen into Calill's camp but I can also see the logic of Mantel's interpretation. What is ultimately more interesting (for me at least!) is Mantel's observation "...Most women readers today will feel they are like neither of the rivals, but if they are honest they will see a bit of both in themselves." For what do we read but to shed light on the human condition and our own place in it?

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel despite the uneasy feelings it brought to the fore but I can also see that if one could not summon much sympathy for Imogen one's reading of it could be very different. Putting all the machinations of plot and character aside though it is a beautifully written and wryly observed novel that could probably withstand the reader not liking any of it characters and I suspect for Jenkins this may have been the point!

After finishing this novel I am looking forward to reading more Virago Modern Classics and I am now excited to be off to read all the other reactions to this novel...

Booker Prize Kiss of Death and Some New Releases

The Glass Room by Simon Mawer

Having recently finished Simon Mawer's The Glass Room, I would say that this is my favourite book from the Booker Long List 2009 - so far (having not finished The Children's Book or started The Little Stranger or Wolf Hall). Ostensibly a novel concerning the history of a house built near a town called Mesto in Eastern Europe, it skillfully inter-weaves the stories of it's inhabitants mainly from the pre-war 1930's through to the post-war 1960's and 70's. As such, there is a strong architectural current running through the novel as well as other themes such as the nature of love, fatefulness of connections (both good and bad), alternate scientific and political beliefs (misguided or otherwise) and the nature of home and birthright. Also, as the novel's time frame would suggest, it details the cultural destruction of Mesto by the invading Nazi's and then communist Russians and the effects of the racial policies of the former and the devaluing of human connections by the latter. The only discordant note (and then, for me, only slight) were two points of somewhat improbable coincidence which saw characters reunited over disparate geographical space and time but were important for narrative progression and conclusion. Also, I found this novel to have an amazing narrative pace - I was always keen to pick it up and felt rather bereft when I turned the last page. I was surprised to learn that Mawer has written eight previous novels but it is always good to know that long time authors can still break through for their first Booker Prize nomination. I will certainly be looking up some novels from his back list. The Glass Room also put me in mind of a novel I read last year for book club, Nancy Horan's Loving Frank which also skillfully weaved together themes of architecture, history and the nature of love. I would recommend this book wholeheartedly too.

September 2009 New Releases

Below are the top three new books that have piqued my interest this month:

Under This Unbroken Sky by Shandi Mitchell "Set in 1938 on the Canadian Prairies, Under This Unbroken Sky, tells the story of a farming family from the Ukraine who, having survived war and Stalin's labour camps, set out to make a living from an unrelenting land in a new country. The harsh vicissitudes of farming life and tensions within the family combine to generate a conflict that ends in tragedy. This is the harrowing and magnificent tale of an immigrant family whose desperate hands work the earth and preserve its gifts, while equally desperate minds plot much darker deeds. Nearly all is lost when a brother is pitted against a sister, a mother against her newborn, with dramatic and breath-taking consequences."(Summary from Amazon.co.uk) Having read a few reviews of this novel I could best describe it as a Willa Cather-style beach read! As such, a frontier literary page turner - sounds excellent.

After The Fire A Still Small Voice This novel "...chronicles the stories of two Australian men and the shards of trauma that have made up both lives. Frank and Leon live parallel lives: the narratives begin with young Leon's father heading to the Korean War, and, 40 years later, with an adult Frank holing up in a decrepit beachfront shack. Leon's father returns from Korea badly damaged, having been in a prison camp, and soon runs away, with Leon's mother giving chase. Later Leon is drafted and faces in Vietnam horrors similar to those that traumatized his father. Meanwhile, in the present day, Frank is starting over after his girlfriend leaves him. Making do in the family shack, he befriends his neighbors and threads together a passable existence in spite of remembered tragedies, anger at his shadowy father and a spate of local children gone missing. The two narrative threads stay separate until the final pages, and, refreshingly, their connection isn't overplayed. At times startling, Wyld's book is ruminative and dramatic, with deep reserves of empathy colored by masculine rage and repression."(Summary from Publisher's Weekly) I always love to see new voices in fiction especially when they are describing Australian stories. Oh, I also love the UK version's cover!

Waste: The True Cost of What the Global Food Industry Throws Away by Tristram Stuart I stumbled across this non-fiction expose of the waste laden western food industry (created by producers, retailers and consumers) when I was browsing in my local bookstore. Always keen to expand my "environmental current affairs" knowledge this should be a very sobering read. Expect to read here some shocking facts when I've finished it!

Where My Reading Has Been Taking Me ...

In the past couple of weeks my reading would be summarised in three distinct categories:

1. I Am Sure I Was Born In The Wrong Century ...

I picked up Tracey Chevalier's latest novel Remarkable Creatures and read it, all in the same week. Which is pretty remarkable for me as new books usually need to be mulled over, Librarything catalogued, placed in the tbr pile in correct order, etc etc etc! I was pleasantly surprised by her first novel, Girl With A Pearl Earring but had not read any of her novels since. I firstly read a wonderful interview with her in The Sydney Morning Herald in which she spoke of not being entirely comfortable in the modern world and was actively trying to avoid signing up for Twitter and using her mobile phone. Is this woman my long lost sister, I asked myself? I then read Gaskella's excellent post and thought again, maybe we were triplets, separated at birth? Anyway, I loved the sound of this book - its subject matter (fossils, pre-Darwinian fossil hunters, nineteenth century pre-Darwinian female fossil hunters - you get my drift) its two female protagonists, and its setting; place - Lyme Regis and time - early nineteenth century. Chiefly, the novel follows the fortunes of two women, working class Mary Anning and the upper class Elizabeth Philpott, as they form an unlikely alliance as they search for curies - as Anning calls fossils. The novel, as such, touches on themes of class, friendship, scientific discovery and nineteenth century gender roles. I found this book fascinating and engaging and enjoyed every minute I spent reading it.

At about the time I was reading Chevalier's book I went to see the film, Young Victoria. This film seems to have garnered mixed reviews, especially in Britain, mostly questioning its historical credentials. Well, having come home from the film and immediately looked up photos/paintings of the young Queen Victoria and Prince Albert I can well and truly say Emily Blunt and Rupert Friend make a much more attractive pair but really, this should come as no big surprise. As to its historical accuracy, I cannot comment but I loved this film regardless. The acting was terrific, the story involving and the costumes, divine. I have already added it to my dvd wishlist.

So, if asked where I would time travel to (were it available!) I would definitely say "The early 1800's please" but would also have to add "... and preferably rich and/or from the upper class" as anything less would not be all that good having read Dickens, Thackery and the like ;-)

2. I Backed the Wrong Man Booker Prize Horses ...

With the release of the shortlist for the Man Booker Prize last week I noticed that many of the books I had read, enjoyed and expected to see on it from the longlist had not made the cut - particularly, The Wilderness and Brooklyn. One that I did enjoy, had - Adam Foulds' The Quickening Maze. And surprise, surprise, it was set in the first half of the nineteenth century! But it had more to offer than just that. Just quickly, the story concerns the various inhabitants (owner, staff and patients) of a new sanitarium (mental asylum) set up on the outskirts of the Epping Forest near London in the 1840's. Foulds' novel describes various characters, their inter-relationships, the inside workings of their minds - both sane and insane, and their ultimate redemption or destruction. The novel is partly based on real characters and events. If you are after a novel with a lot of action, this is not it! It is a novel big on character and their social context, the workings of the mind and nineteenth century thoughts on madness and the best ways (or other) of treating those afflicted. Also, I found the writing beautiful and mesmerising.

I had also read Me Cheeta and Love and Summer - but agree with the judges that they were not shortlist material. So where to now with my Man Booker Prize reading? Well, I am currently reading The Children's Book and the Glass House has just arrived and I hope to finish those before the winner is announced. I also have The Little Stranger and Wolf Hall on my shelves but do not know if I will get to these in time and despite reading and enjoying Coetzee's Disgrace recently, I do not have a strong compulsion to read Summertime. So, if my past reading experience is anything to go by the winner will probably be either Wolf Hall, The Little Stranger or Summertime!

3. Speaking to the Intellectually Converted ... (Trying to Match This Emotionally)

Most recently I have finished reading Lenore Skenazy's Free-Range Kids. I had seen this book about on some American websites but then came across a great post on it by Babelbabe and I was off to thebookdepository website ;-) This book questions the current practice of Helicopter Parenting - that is, constantly hovering over one's child and not allowing them to independently engage with the world (people and surrounds). I have been known to complain about a number of aspects of my own childhood (ha ha) but cannot fault my parents on this topic. I was allowed to do a number of things that are now considered to be highly hazardous - for example, walk to and from primary school (starting at around age 8 or 9), ride my bike (on the road - don't call child protection please!) and play with the neighbourhood kids out of direct sight of an adult (as long as we stayed in a pre-determined radius of our homes). So, why is it so hard for me to let my own children do these same things and more? Because there are nasty people out there I hear you chorus. But (and this is why Skenazy's book is so good) statistically (and I always love a good statistic) our children are under no greater risk than we were as kids, sometimes even less so. The crime (especially child abduction and harming) statistics say so. Just mull on this for a moment: "... if you actually wanted your child to be kidnapped and held overnight by a stranger, how long would you have to keep her outside, unattended, for this to be statistically likely to happen? About seven hundred and fifty thousand years." (pages 16-17)!

Also, consider this: "... a child is forty times more likely to die as a passenger in a car crash than to be kidnapped and murdered by a stranger ... there are about fifty children killed by kidnappers each year, but ten times that number are killed by fires at home ... and they are eighty or ninety times more likely to be molested by someone they know ..." (page 184 - U.S. statistics) Its always good to be given some perspective.

So, as Skenazy goes on to point out, the media (especially the news media) has a lot to answer for for making us so much more paranoid these days and this is exactly why I no longer watch televised news media (and haven't done for about 4 or 5 years now). I want to give my kids some age appropriate freedoms, show them I trust them and instill in them appropriate levels of self-reliance and confidence. I will know I have succeeded when my girls bring me my first cup of piping hot tea and toast in bed ;-) Also, if this topic interests you I would also recommend Carl Honore's Under Pressure and Tom Hodgkinson's The Idle Parent. Oh and Skenazy is sooooo funny - I liked that too.

So, I'm off now to get back to reading what will not be winning the Man Booker Prize ... oh, and some book blogs of course :-)

Miss Buncle's Book by D.E. Stevenson

I am finding it hard to start this post. A lot of words are rising up in my head to describe Miss Buncle's Book by D.E. Stevenson (picture at left courtesy of Persephone Bookshop website) but they all seem a little inadequate. Words like charming, enjoyable, delightful, amusing ... but it was all those things and a lot more besides. Here is a short description of the novel from the Persephone Bookshop website:

The storyline of Miss Buncle's Book (1934) is a simple one: Barbara Buncle, who is unmarried and perhaps in her late 30s, lives in a small village and writes a novel about it in order to try and supplement her meagre income...[M]ostly this is an entirely light-hearted, easy read, one of those books like Mariana, Miss Pettigrew, The Making of a Marchioness and Greenery Street which can be recommended unreservedly to anyone looking for something undemanding, fun and absorbing that is also well-written and intelligent.

And I think it is the last word in the above description that propels this novel to a higher, more involving, plain. Well it certainly did for me. Miss Buncle's Book describes a book within a book but by and large, it involves a writer commenting on another (fictional) writer, on the craft of writing, on the business of writing and reviewing, on the effects one's writing can have on others - especially those within a small town who discover their fictionalised selves. And this is what makes the book so special. An excellent and absorbing read made that much better by also being smart and clever. In this way, it made me, buy turns, laugh out loud, nod in wry agreement or smirk at someones ignorance or naivety. It had it all :-)

There are a number of things that mark out a good read for me: I always want to return to reading it - sooner rather than later; I want to recommend it to everyone (even strangers in bookshops etc); I read passages out to my husband (who may or may not be interested in hearing them at the time); and it's the sort of book that, in my dreams, I had written! Miss Buncle's Book is all those things and more.

What would you do if you found yourself described in a work of fiction? Well, for Miss Buncle's neighbours, some denied all, some made connections previously unseen, some mended their ways while others continued to act as they had been described in the book - both good and bad. And what did Miss Buncle do? Well, that is for you all to find out in this absolutely wonderful book. Apparently, the story continues in Miss Buncle Married ... either Persephone Bookshop had better publish this quick smart or I will be forced to look elsewhere ;-)

A Bit of Housekeeping Before Persephone Reading Week

All the good intentions in the world did not seem to help my blog posting over the past month! I have been very remiss - blogging in my head rather than online. I am also VERY behind in my blog reading - surprise, surprise ;-)

Anyway, I thought I would briefly comment (see longer blog posts contained in my head!) on some of the books I have read in the past month or so, so I can feel all clean and tidy before I start Clair and Verity's Persephone Reading Week.

Since my last review post, I note that I have read eleven books. Where did that time go, I ask? Of those, my favourite fiction reads would have had to have been:

1. The White Tiger by Aravinda Adiga - I wasn't expecting much from this book - so why did I pick it up, you may ask? A good question, one that I cannot fully answer. All I know is that I was browsing my bookshelves, I pulled it out, I read the first page and I was hooked. Contemporary tales about the Indian underbelly would not usually be my "cup of tea" but the narrator of Adiga's book just lodged in my head and I just had to keep reading to find out how he came to be in the position he was. I suppose, having recently seen the movie Slumdog Millionaire probably helped to pique my interest as well. I have to somewhat grudgingly admit that it probably deserved the Booker Prize, even though it beat out one of my favourites, Sebastian Barry's The Secret Scripture.

2. American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld - Well, I was on a role - why not pull out another book that was flying under my radar? And again, I loved it. I will definitely read her first book, Prep, some time in the future. I have to say I had little or no interest in the "fictionalised" account of Barbara Bush. Without trying to cause offence to any Republicans, she seemed rather meek and retiring each time she was shown on Australian television. But this book showed up on many "Top Ten Books of 2008" lists and I admit I was intrigued. Anyway, I do not know how accurate a portrayal of the former first lady this is (and really, nor do I care that much), but what I do know is that it was an involving tale, well told, that kept my interest to the very end.

3. The Wilderness by Samantha Harvey - I have read a number of fiction books recently concerning Alzheimer's Disease (others include Stefan Merrill Block's The Story of Forgetting and Still Alice by Lisa Genova) and this novel is probably the most literary and labyrinthine of them all. It could very well handle a second reading directly after the first. Harvey expertly opens a pathway into the mind of an Alzheimer's sufferer and shows it's deterioration from inside, out. The Wilderness poignantly shows that while the mind and its concomitant memory can play tricks on us all, those with Alzheimer's sadly lose their ability to decipher them, causing much heartache, especially to their caregivers. A very good book all round.

Of the non-fiction I read these are my favourites:

1. This Lovely Life by Vicki Forman - this is an amazing book, very sad and confronting but ultimately uplifting. It chronicles the life of Forman's very premature son and her quest to provide the best care for his myriad medical problems resulting from his prematurity. It questions the prevailing medical thinking in this field and seems a cathartic purging of one mother's soul as she deals and continues to deal with the "stuff" that life has thrown in her path. I very much admire Forman's truthfulness and the resulting rawness of her story.

2. Nella Last's War by Nella Last - If you are at all an admirer of war diaries then you must simply read this one. If you loved the BBC series 1940's House, again, you must read this book! This is a very engaging diary written by a rather wonderful, forthright and generous lady living in the northwest of England during WWII. A very insightful lady who bared all for posterity, her truthfulness abounds, astounds and draws one in until I had pinch myself "awake" at the end of each chapter. An excellent piece of social history and I loved it.

3. The Idle Parent by Tom Hodgkinson - A must for all Hodgkinson aficionados and anyone who likes to bring a little humour and much down-to-earth wit to the "science" of child rearing!

Finally, I have just finished Me Cheeta by James Lever as part of my Booker Prize reading list. I liked this novel well enough and while it did make me laugh out loud on many occasions (which I always love in a book) I found it did not completely hold my interest. It intriguingly "dishes the dirt", as it were, on many Hollywood heavyweights and left me not knowing whether this gossip and scuttlebutt was based on reality or a figment of the novelist's mind. I am sure this would be a plus for many readers but I mostly thought it disconcerting. On the plus side, Lever handles the animal rights angle of the novel with aplomb. Ultimately though, Me Cheeta is a bit like a tabloid magazine - funny, trashy but mostly only good in small doses.

So I am off to start Miss Buncle's Book and to catch up with you all during the coming week.

The Post Where I Try and Pass the Buck ...

I thought I would add a photo of my latest purchases. I have gone well and truly overboard in the past month, buying far too many books. BUT I shouldn't have to wear all the blame as many purchases have been influenced by other bloggers - well, that's my excuse anyway ;-)

I find that I have started to buy a number of books in hardcover - something I used never to do. I like the portability of paperbacks but am finding that hardbacks wear better and their price has become quite comparable, especially since the advent of thebookdepository.co.uk and the rise and rise of the Australian dollar against the British pound.

So, who can I lay the blame with first? Well, I think I will have to start with Kimbofo (Reading Matters) for being the first to introduce me, via a very glowing review, to The Wilderness by Samantha Harvey. It was one of the shortlisted books for the 2009 Orange Prize. I find looking at the short list I wouldn't mind reading all the books, except the winner!

I think I will pass the buck to Cornflower for introducing me to the beautifully produced Henrietta's War and I would direct you to her pertinent post concerning the influence sales have on publisher's decisions. It seems there are a number of sequels to Henrietta's War which will only be published if sales of the first are high enough. Buy, buy, buy, I say! Also, I needed to get my hands on a copy of Sweeping Up Glass after this post.

So, who is in my sights next? Ah, I think I will turn to Tara (Books and Cooks). As I have stated before, I love looking at piles of books and in this post Tara shared many of hers. I quickly dashed over to thebookdepository.co.uk and picked up a copy of This Lovely Life. I do like a well written memoir, this one in particular concerns Forman's journey following the premature birth of her twins. Having recently finished it I can say it well and truly lived up to my expectations. I will be writing a fuller review on it shortly.

Ok. I think Danielle (A Work in Progress) should take responsibility for her share! She has a sharp eye for historical and crime novels (amongst other genres) and I have her to thank for East of the Sun (see book on top of pile) and the first of the Maisie Dobbs series.

Can I rope in my local library? Oh, I think that's fair. They put me onto Olive Kitteridge before it won the Pulitzer Prize. As I didn't finish it before the due date I had to go and get my own copy, by which time a new and very inappropriate cover had been placed on it. Do the people who choose the covers actually read the book first? Please compare this lovely hardback cover to the paperback cover. I can tell you right now the book is NOT about a young woman with a bare back and red dress (nearly the opposite actually!)

I would also like to say that Jackie (Farmlanebooks) tipped me over the edge to pick up a copy of The Slap which recently won the 2009 Commonwealth Writer's Prize (South East Asia and South Pacific Region). It has caused quite a stir (positive and negative) in Australia and it's about time I make up my own mind about it. I may even pick it for book club as I am sure it would result in a rather interesting discussion ;-)

Finally I would like to thank, all of the following for supporting and perpetuating my Persephone addiction: Babelbabe, Paperback Reader, Verity and those previously mentioned above, Kim, Tara and Danielle.

So, you could say I am fully responsible for the remainder, two of which deserve special mention:
1) In the Sanctuary of Outcasts by Neil White - non-fiction - follows the story of White as he enters a Federal prison which also doubles as a leprosarium. Strange but true and apparently very life affirming and moving!
2) The Book of Rapture by Nikki Gemmell - fiction - After The Bride Stripped Bare I thought I had sworn off Gemmell for life but the topics this book is said to cover are just too damn interesting (see above link). I have already started this one and am finding it tough going, especially with the second person narrator, but I will persevere!

Well, I hope all you bloggers out there are satisfied ;-)