New arrivals …

It’s so long since I did an ‘Incoming’ post. I don’t like to overdo them, but have recently acquired some great books I wanted to share with you…

• The River of No Return by Bee Ridgway. Billed as ‘a story of love and time travel’ I couldn’t resist accepting a review copy of this book published next week.
• Shakespeare’s Restless World: An Unexpected History in Twenty Objects by Neil McGregor. Drawing you into Shakespeare’s world, McGregor analyses how these objects influenced his life and times. Based on the Radio 4 series which I enjoyed so had to buy. A beautifully produced book.
• Constance by Patrick McGrath. Another beautifully produced book that I couldn’t resist buying. I’m loving these new designs from Bloomsbury Circus – squarer than standard paperbacks, and with French flaps. It’ll be my first McGrath read, and I’m looking forward to it.
• Beautiful Fools by R Clifton Spargo. Given that I adored Baz Luhrmann’s Great Gatsby last week, browsing in my favourite bookshop yesterday, this book shouted out to me. It’s a novel based on the lives of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.

• The Cleaner of Chartresby Salley Vickers. New out in paperback – Yippee!
• Emilie and the Hollow Worldby Martha Wells. This YA book also shouted from the shelves to me – a bit steampunk, a bit like Verne’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth or Edgar Rice Burrough’s Pellucidar books – this novel from the new Strange Chemistry imprint from Angry Robot books sounds great fun.
• A Heart so Whiteby Javier Marias, trans Margaret Jull Costa. This was a charity shop find – I love Penguin Modern Classics and having spotted this one in great condition bought it without even looking at the blurb.

Have you read any of these?
Have you got any good new books recently?

The TBR Double Dog Dare – A final quick report

Well today is the start of the second quarter of 2013 and the official end of this year’s TBR Double Dog Dare hosted by James at Ready When You Are, C.B.  It’s the third year of the dare, and the third time I’ve participated.

Apart from my book group choice for March which was Gone Girl, (and I flagged that up in advance), I’ve managed to read 21 books from my TBR. It is but a small dent, however I have caught up on several books I’ve had for years, plus several review copies I’d been putting off reading and a few that arrived in December so could count as being already in the TBR as of January 1.

I find it a valuable exercise and hope to continue doing it each year for the foreseeable future, but for April it’s back to shiny new books!

Look at what I won!

Tags

Prizes, TBR

I have had my moments as a ‘comper’ in the past – entering loads of competitions, and winning a few too. I haven’t done that for years though, and have reverted to not winning things in general – but this week I’ve won twice! Not only did I win a prize (a nice multi-wicked candle) in my daughter’s old school Christmas fete raffle, but I entered a twitter competition from @AtlanticBooks and blow me, I won!

My prize was a selection from their current list:

I’m particularly looking forward to reading The Dinner by Herman Koch since I read Stu’s review, and only this afternoon I was looking at The Potter’s Hand by A.N.Wilson in the bookshop – it’s about Josiah Wedgwood; Will Rycroft admired Patrick Flanery’s Absolution too. I shall look forward to reading those three, but know nothing about the others – but they look interesting.

I do like winning books – such fun!, as Miranda would say. A huge thank you to Atlantic Books.

Incoming Beryl …

Tags

Art, BBRW, Beryl Bainbridge Reading Week, Biography, Writing

Beryl Bainbridge: Artist, Writer, Friend by Psiche Hughes

I am inordinately excited to have been able to get my mitts on this rather different biography of my favourite author, the first full biography since Beryl’s death. Thanks to my lovely neighbours who rescued it from the Amazon delivery man and depot hell this morning, so I could share it with you.

The lovely thing is that Beryl turns out to have been a brilliant artist as you can see from the cover below, and made money from her painting when writing couldn’t provide it.

This biography comes from art publishers Thames & Hudson, and is beautifully produced on quality paper with over 100 illustrations in colour and b/w including many photos of Beryl throughout her career.

Beryl and Italian-born Psiche met in the early 1960s, they were neighbours in London and their friendship lasted until Beryl’s death in 2010.

I am really looking forward to reading this book and savouring Beryl’s art. Expect a full review soon!

If you want to find out more about Beryl, why not check out my Reading Beryl page, which contains all the reviews and links from Beryl Bainbridge Reading Week, which I hosted back in June.

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I received a review copy via Amazon Vine. To explore further on Amazon UK, please click below:
Beryl Bainbridge: Artist, Writer, Friend by Psiche Hughes, pub Oct 2012 by Thames & Hudson, Hardback, 205 pages.

The TBR Double Dog Dare

Tags

Challenges, TBR

For the past two years, James over at Ready when you are CB has hosted the TBR dare, and I signed up for the full dare both times. The TBR Dare became the TBR Double Dare, and this year has become the TBR Double Dog Dare, as James’s dog Dakota is in on the act!

The dare also has its own page where you can sign up if you wish.  It’s very simple. You are dared (not challenged), to reduce the size of your TBR stack by only reading books you already own (or have on order) between Jan 1st 2013 until the end of March.  You can make sign up for as long or short a period as you want, and make it fit your reading patterns.

Again, I accept the dare, and plan to go the full three months once more.  The only exceptions for me will be reading group books if I don’t already own them, and I will allow myself one new review copy per month that needs reading before 1st April – but only if it’s totally irresistible.

Note – the TBR Double Dog Dare does not stop you acquiring books to read afterwards. You can build up a lovely stack of new books to dive into in April if you wish.  The first rule of the dare is to have fun!

Strange places for books

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TBR, Travel

I think about the over-large extent of my TBR piles all the time. Blog-friend Simon Savidge has been doing that too recently. In his recent post on his TBR he asked “Where is the strangest place that you have ever left piles of books?” Rather than comment, I went to take a photo of my travel shelf …

… yes, it is in the smallest room in the house. Well, it was just the right sized shelf, and, before you ask, I’m definitely not a toilet book reader!

Where travel books are concerned though, if I’m going somewhere, one book is not enough, two is OK, but three is definitely best, and if one can be a Michelin Green Guide all the better.  I haven’t been abroad at all since 2008, and some of the guidebooks I brought over from my late Mum’s are calling to me. I’ve never driven on the other side of the road though, I was always driven before, so a citybreak or two for my daughter and I could be the best way to get back into foreign holidays…  but I won’t sit and peruse the books in the loo!

Weekend musings & Giveaway results

This week has been rather busy physically and mentally; although I’ve been reading I haven’t had been in the right mind for blogging – so a big thank you again to my friend Julia for her midweek review for me.

Yesterday I did have a bit of a break, and filled it with a spontaneous garage sale – which meant my daughter and I carrying 400+ surplus books downstairs and setting up our stall augmented with some DVDs, CDs and other bits and pieces. Then we waited anxiously (in my daughter’s case), and reading a book in the sunshine in my case, for passers by. We made 10p short of £30 which is wonderful, and I will donate £5 of that to Helen & Douglas House children’s hospice in Oxford.

I’m still sorting out more books to go, and the next sunny, dry Saturday when we’re free we’ll do it again, then the remaining books will go to the charity shop. I also still have some more interesting/collectible/out of print books for sale – see the tab above.

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Lots of interesting books have arrived at Gaskell Towers recently – it’s always a dilemma of what to read next – as I still want to reduce the TBR piles, and not just read the latest new arrivals. Here are a few of the new ones though…

• All Quiet on the Western Front – I’m an addict to the lovely tomes from The Folio Society, and am delighted to have been offered a free book by a publicist working for them. I chose this one as I’ve wanted to read it for years.
• The Sacrifice (The Enemy) the fourth in Charlie Higson’s wonderful zombie series for older children, which I reviewed the first two of here.
• The Stress of Her Regard by Tim Powers. A supernatural story set in 1816, the year that Byron and Shelley and co had a momentous house party on the shores of Lake Geneva. The Romantic poets get caught up in an adventure with a man whose wife was murdered on their wedding night as she slept beside him. I couldn’t resist this – just the thing for autumnal nights!
• In the Shadow of the Banyan by Vaddey Ratner arrived yesterday from Simon & Schuster. Set in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh during the Khmer Rouge’s rule of terror, it tell of seven year old Raami’s fight for survival. I know this is going to be gripping and tragic to read, but I do hope Raami survives.

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And finally, I have giveaway results – Thank you to everyone who commented and entered.

Firstly, the Sophie McKenzie giveaway of Missing Me.

The winners, picked at random were:

Rosie & Rosie Herridge

A total coincidence – two Rosies!
The books will come direct from the publisher.

Now for my 4th Blog-birthday giveaway – the winners, drawn randomly again, are:

• Iris,
• A Fiction Habit,
• Alex in Leeds, and
• David 73277.

Well done to you all. As none of you expressed a preference over which of the four books on offer, I’ll send a random pick, unless you change your mind when you send me your addresses. To remind you, the books on offer were:

• Waiting for Robert Capa by Susanna Fortes (Review)
• On the Cold Coasts by Vilborg Davidsdottir (Review)
• The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark (Review)
• I Have Waited, and You Have Come by Martine McDonagh (Review)

Mid-book cull – pause for a giggle or three…

Tags

Culling books

As you may have surmised, I’m in the throes of having a major book cull. I gave seven bags full to my daughter’s school fête back in June, and have been working my way through the other piles, double-stacked shelves and bags over the past weeks.  I’ve sorted out some worth selling via various routes (including the tab above), loads to car boot or try other methods, and some will go to the charity shop. There are over 200 to go now, lots still to come – I may make a list.

Apart from my own book mountains – there were a couple of unsorted bags-full from my late Mum’s still to deal with, and I’m having fun going through them…

Firstly, I’ve allowed myself to be distracted from the heavyweight pleasures of John Saturnall’s Feast by a short Edna O’Brien novel – the first of hers I’ve read, but it seemed appropriate for the time of year… August is a Wicked Month is a 1965 novel in which a twenty-something divorcée looks for love while her young son is on holiday with his father. A couple of chapters in and it’s very racy, and I’m sure that 50 shades author E L James would never describe a certain something as like a ‘foxglove‘ – ‘high and purple‘! (*blushes*). Fun though so far, ahem!

My late Mum often stuck a Post-it note with comments on book covers, or cut out a review and stuck it inside after reading a book. Delving in a bag I came to a book called Pushkin’s Button by Serena Vitale.  Inside was a clipping from the Literary Review of another book about Pushkin, with her note on top – this sounds better-written than this book.  Further down the bag was the book in question – Pushkin by T J Binyon – with a Post-It on the cover saying ‘Better than Pushkin’s Button’. Don’t think I’ll read them though.

Lastly – a nice coincidence…  Today Simon T posted about a book he abandoned after just 1.5 pages. That was Gone to Earth by Mary Webb. Funnily enough, I found a very tatty ex-library copy of it amongst my Mum’s books – and I binned it.  Seems I had the right instinct about it!

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To explore further on Amazon UK, please click below:
John Saturnall’s Feast by Lawrence Norfolk
August is a Wicked Month by Edna O’Brien
Pushkin’s Button by Serena Vitale
Pushkin by T J Binyon
Gone To Earth (Virago Modern Classics) by Mary Webb

Incoming …

Tags

TBR

Abingdon Fire Station held a book sale yesterday – there were literally thousands of books there and masses of bargains to be had. Given that it was just a couple of minutes walk, I went twice! The money raised goes to the Firefighters Charity.

When I first moved to Abingdon, the Fire Station Book Sale was an annual event, but then it stopped.  Now it’s back, and speaking to one of the firemen, they hope to make it an annual event again.

Kids also got a chance to clamber on the fire engines, and play fireman with a hose.  Brave souls could also don a harness and go up in the Simon Snorkell and get an aerial view of the town.  Naturally, the books were the bigger draw for me …
…and didn’t I do well for £14?! (They should charge more next time).  There are 32 books above, and yes it includes five Jilly Coopers – for times when I need a guilty pleasure type of read.  There are also two Muriel Sparks, HE Bates (Darling Buds), Miss Read, some vintage SF, Penelope Lively, Flann O’Brien, Amin Malouf, one of Michael Dibdin’s non-Zen novels, Susan Hill, assorted other crime, thrillers and adventure novels, plus Charles Saatchi, and a lovely 1949 King Penguin at the front on the history of handwriting.

Released! New books here I come….

It’s April 1st, spring has sprung, and I have been released!  Freed from my self-imposed constraints of only reading books that I physically owned before January 1st 2012.

With the exception of one book group read (Stasiland), which I declared before it started, I’ve kept to the TBR Double Dare (hosted by CB James).

I should be pleased with myself, but in reality eight out of the 23 books I’ve read in these three months, arrived during December 2011, and were advance copies of books published in 2012, which is pushing it a bit –  but technically they did qualify to be included.

The real problem is my ‘embargo’ pile.  When I last reported on my progress back in early Feb, it stood at 16 books which had arrived during January.  Now it’s several times larger (I daren’t publish a photo).  So what’ll happen next is that I’ll read just the new acquisitions for the next few months, and not touch my existing TBR mountain range at all.  The lure of the shiny new book…

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! She chortled in her joy.  (with apologies to Lewis Carroll).