Giveaway: CSN Stores $60 gift certificate!

Hi! Finally I'm back and I have a gift for you! I'm giving away a 60$ gift certificate from CSN Stores!

They have everything on their stores....modern duvet covers, pet furniture, toys, shoes, bags...even bookshelves! I'm sure you will find something you'd like to have...maybe a valentine's present?

I'm sure you want to win :D Just visit CSN Stores and leave a comment on this post telling me what you would spend your certificate on. Don't forget to add your email address!

Bonus entries: (Please leave a comment for each of your bonus entries. Don't forget your email address.)

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+1 Post a link to this giveaway on your blog, Facebook, or Twitter account. Leave me a link in your comment so I can find it.

This contest is open to US and Canadian readers. You must be 18 years old to enter. If you choose to purchase an item that does not have free shipping, you will be responsible for shipping costs. If you are in Canada, there may be Canadian fees that you will be responsible for.

This contest begins on February 6, 2011 and will end February 13, 2011. The winner will be chosen with a random number generator.

Song for a Sunday

This is probably the oldest song I've included in the Sunday Songs, and it's very lovely. Tells a story more than most songs seem to. Over to Nanci Griffith and Love at the Five and Dime. (I couldn't embed the version I like most; this one.)



For previous Sunday Songs, click here.

Stuck-in-a-Book's Weekend Miscellany

Happy weekend, everyone. Hope you've got something fun planned - I'm off to London later on Saturday to see Sheridan's The Rivals, with Penelope Keith and Peter Bowles. Something of a To The Manor Born reunion... plus, I've never seen a Sheridan play, and this one was fun to read. But, in my absence, enjoy this little miscellany of links and posts.

1.) Three Percent, a resource for international literature at the University of Rochester, have announced the 25 books on the longlist for 2011 Best Translated Book Award. Here's the list. Do go and check it out - it's something a little different from the usual literary awards. I've only read one of them - being honest, I've only heard of one of them - but it is The True Deceiver by Tove Jansson (oddly, for it was translated in 2009). If the others are up to that novel's incredible standard, then this is a list worth watching.

2.) Speaking of which, do go and read Danielle's lovely review of The Summer Book, also by Tove Jansson.

3.) More neat segues (that's segues, Colin... heehee) - Danielle and Darlene have both agreed to take part in two mini-readalongs this month (that's one each). Both sprung from Virago Reading Week and surrounding discussions, which is lovely.

Darlene and I will be reading William by E.H. Young - I've been meaning to read more Young for a while, and have had William for five years or so.

Danielle and I will be reading Gay Life by E.M. Delafield. You'll note that my copy is signed! This novel is rather more difficult to get hold of, so participants would have to search hard. Try your library catalogues? And Danielle's little introductory post will definitely entice you...

Do join in with either or both, if you can. One day I'll head up a readalong of a book that's actually in print! Anyway, we're reading about the middle of February, so over the next couple of weeks.

4.) I give up on being seamless... I found this link to the books which Harold Bloom considered fitted into his study The Western Canon. It covers more or less all time... and is enormous. I have no idea how he managed to read all these books, let alone all the ones which (presumably) didn't make the cut. Once you've got a subsection for modern Catalonian literature, you know you mean business. BUT, it definitely makes for interesting reading.

5.) And, finally, Wikio have released their latest literary blog rankings. Off I slip, down the charts... but I'm clinging on! As usual, silly but fun.

Wikio.co.uk - February Literature Ranking

1	Bad Conscience
2	Crooked Timber
3	Charlie's Diary
4	Making it up
5	Book Chick City
6	Savidge Reads
7	Other Stories
8	A Don's Life - Times Online WBLG
9	My Favourite Books
10	booktwo.org
11	Stuck In A Book
12	Reading Matters
13	An Awfully Big Blog Adventure
14	Quaerentia
15	The Book Smugglers
16	Cornflower
17	Asylum
18	Pepys' Diary
19	UrbanTick
20	Gaskella

Ranking made by Wikio.co.uk

A Little More Than Kin

You know how I love novellas - the shorter and punchier the better - and might have noticed that I was impressed by Susan Hill's The Beacon. Indeed, it's my Bloggers' Book of the Month choice for February, at the Big Green Bookshop in Wood Green.

That made me pretty excited when Hill announced that her latest novella was coming out - A Kind Man is obviously being marketed in a similar style to The Beacon (although, tut tut Chatto and/or Windus for putting an apostrophe in Howards End is on the Landing on the dustjacket. You win back some of those points for Mark McEvoy's cover image. And for sending me a review copy - thanks!) If it could be as good as The Beacon, then I was very keen to read it. Also, fact fans, A Kind Man was published fifty years to the day after Hill's debut novel. Gosh!

A Kind Man is something of a deceptive title, for most of the novella, as we actually see the world through the eyes of that man's wife, Eve. In fact, the narrative opens with Eve making a solitary trip to an isolated graveyard - as the reader soon suspects, to visit the grave of her daughter, who died at three years old. We then move back to Eve's family, and her courtship with Tommy - the kind man of the title - is outlined, as is their marriage. Tommy's kindness is almost his only attribute, and certainly the most distinctive. He is made almost characterless in his ordinariness - rarely do we see anything from his perspective. This, of course, makes it all the more striking when we do; for instance, this excerpt from towards the end of the novel, retelling an event we had already seen from Eve's perspective very early on:

As he had grown up he had watched the young men around him find girls and make them wives and start families and had naturally felt that he would do so too but not understood how to choose. He had looked at some and they were pretty, at others and they were pert, at the ones with kind faces and the hard ones, the laughing ones, the sad and those old before they had had time to be young, but walking by the canal he had seen Eve and she was different. How she was and why and what made him know it, he had wondered every day since.

I do not want to spoil this novella. Too many reviews give too much away. Plot is not the only reason to read fiction, far from it, but the novella which spins on an axis around a central point should not have that point disclosed from the outset; it tips the story off-balance. Suffice to say that is outside of the ordinary, although Hill wisely does not allow it to change the style or genre of the work. If the event would have performed better in a novel by Barbara Comyns (oh, how I would love to have read Comyns' take on it!) then that is not Hill's fault; I can't think of any novelist who can approach the outlandish in so calm and involving a way as Comyns. Hill, however, finds the moral dilemmas caused by the strange and unusual (a thing Comyns would never do) and these form a central force of this beautifully forceful book.

Although this strange event would dominate most novels, and lingers longest in the mind, I think Hill is actually rather stronger at the more simple depictions of grief and mourning. These are emotions she dealt with brilliantly in In the Springtime of the Year, and in A Kind Man they play central roles, and are again shown convincingly and movingly - although (as is right) with a different slant from that previous novella. Everyday life and the dynamics of Eve being a wife, a sister, a daughter, a villager - these are the bread-and-butter of any work of fiction, and Hill is expert at them. I love Hill's appreciation of the countryside, which comes through in occasional unusual and evocative phrases.

As she rounded the peak, she looked up and ahead to the far slope where the sheep were with their lambs, dozens of them scattered about the hillside like scraps of paper thrown up in the air and allowed to settle anywhere.

If these strengths fade into the background once the twist of the novella arrives, that is to be expected - but we should not forget how rare it is to find a novelist who excels at both unexpected, and more predictable, narrative events. Far too rare.

A Kind Man is sombre and wise; it is almost delicate in its subtlety, but at its depth is a fable as sturdy as they come. Sorry to be vague about it, but you'll thank me once you've read it. No other pen but Susan Hill's could have written this novella in this way - and I hope there will be more in the same mould.

The Deb Ball

I couldn't resist kicking off with a picture of a debutante (source) but that's actually not got much to do with today's post. Simon S. wrote a post a little while ago about debut novels - whether we were drawn to them or not. Read it here, if you so wish. He was mostly discussing (I think I'm right in saying) reading choices from among recently published books - the latest Margaret Atwood being his example of a rival to an unknown author's firts novel. Now, I'd probably choose a great deal of books over Atwood, but that's by the by.

His post got me thinking, but more about debut novels in general. I buy far, far more second-hand books than new ones, and I can't remember the last time I bought a new book without having had it recommended - either by a friend or an e-friend! So it's unlikely that I would buy a debut novel published in 2011, unless someone had told me about it.

But, following on from our discussion the other day about authors' timelines (thanks again for your fascinating replies - it was so interesting to have responses from people all along the scale on this topic) I've been thinking about the debut works of favourite authors.

Some - like A.A. Milne (Lovers in London) and Ivy Compton-Burnett (Dolores) tried to distance themselves from their first novels. Milne even went so far as to buy back the copyright to prevent it being reprinted. (That work I have read, and while it's not up to his later stuff, it's still pretty good, and I can't see why he was so ashamed of it.)

But thinking through some authors I love, I haven't read their first books. E.M. Delafield (Zella Sees Herself); Rose Macaulay (Abbots Verney); Charles Dickens (Pickwick Papers).

There are some whose first works weren't up to their later ones (I'd put forward Virginia Woolf with The Voyage Out, and definitely Shakespeare's early comedies; Katherine Mansfield's early stories, and Richmal Crompton's The Innermost Room.)

Others peaked with their first books - Edith Olivier's other novels aren't close to as good as The Love Child; my limited experience of Monica Dickens suggests One Pair of Hands is far from her worst (and the best of the three I've read); Lynne Reid Banks got off to a brilliant start with The L-Shaped Room.

And some seemed to start off just as well as they continued - for my money, Jane Austen was brilliant from her Juvenilia onwards; Decline and Fall is as good as any of the other Waugh novels I've read; Stephen Leacock's wonderful, recognisable style kicked off in his debut, Literary Lapses - if you discount Elements of Political Science and two similar works, which were actually his first three publications.

All of which goes to show that there appears to be little rhyme or reason to where a debut work fits in an author's canon. But it's an interesting topic, and one we've already sort of touched upon - but I'd love to hear incidences from you of debut works which are much better, or much worse, than those that followed. And if you disagree with any of my assertions, then let me know!

Waiting on Wednesday # 36 - How to Flirt with a Naked Werewolf

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted at Breaking The Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

My pick:

Summary from author's blog:

The first in a new paranormal romantic comedy series about a woman who moves to Alaska and finds love with a handsome, rugged....werewolf?!

Even in Grundy, Alaska, it's unusual to find a naked guy with a beartrap clamped to his ankle on your front porch.

But when said guy turns into a wolf, recent southern transplant Mo Wenstein has no difficulty identifying the problem. Her surly neighbor Cooper Graham-who has been openly critical of Mo's ability to adapt to life in Alaska-has trouble of his own. Werewolf trouble. For Cooper, an Alpha in self-imposed exile from his dysfunctional pack, it's love at first sniff when it comes to Mo. But Cooper has an even more pressing concern on his mind. Several people around Grundy have been the victims of wolf attacks, and since Cooper has no memory of what he gets up to while in werewolf form, he's worried that he might be the violent canine in question. 

If a wolf cries wolf, it makes sense to listen. Mo is convinced that Cooper is not the culprit. But if he's not responsible, then who is? And when a werewolf falls head over haunches in love with you, what are you supposed to do, anyway? The rules of dating just got a whole lot more complicated.

Molly Harper

February 22nd 2011 by Pocket
Amazon / The Book Depository

Alpha werewolf, nice cover. Sounds like my kind of book :) What are you waiting for? Leave your links.

Lunch Hour Haul

Thank you for yesterday, you're all very lovely. The blogosphere really is precious to me - so much more than people who don't blog or read blogs could imagine.

As a reward for your kindness, I'm going to show you some more books that I bought... yes, more. Last Friday I popped out to a couple of charity shops during my lunch break, and bought eight books. Well, actually I bought nine, but one of them was for a friend. So that's normal, right? Oh, what the heck, all the money went to charity.


Strange Meeting - Susan Hill
The Bird of Night - Susan Hill
I'm ever more impressed by Hill's novellas, and have heard great things about Strange Meeting. In my head it was a ghost story; I'm happy to see it isn't. The blurb for The Bird of Night enticed me, that I remember - what the blurb said, I have completely forgotten.

One Thing Leading to Another - Sylvia Townsend Warner
I think I might have a few of these stories collected elsewhere, but was tempted by this book in case there were some I *didn't* have... and, I confess it, for that cover.

The Thinking Reed - Rebecca West
I wanted to get a Virago, seeing as it was Virago Reading Week, and this one called out to be. All I know about it is what cropped up in my research a while ago - the Book Society Newsletter said: "However, there is very much besides intellection here. There is that precious quality of making a special vividness and new reality out of familiar scenes; there is feeling, deep, though restrained; there is clever character-drawing; there is satire; there is a central idea and plan in the book; and there is the pleasure for the reader of being taken up into the interior of the book’s world through the medium of Miss West’s lucid and intimate style."

Voices at Play - Muriel Spark
A collection of plays and stories by Spark for the BBC.

Love of Seven Dolls - Paul Gallico
Somehow I still haven't read any Gallico, but this one definitely intrigued me. Seems somewhat creepy, but in the way I can cope with, and thus enjoy.

Theatre - W. Somerset Maugham
Another author I feel I ought to have read, and haven't - since I'm currently enjoying a couple of theatrical autobiographies, this could be a logical next step.

All Quiet on the Orient Express - Magnus Mills
Have read, borrowed from Annabel (Gaskella) - MUST write about soon and, more importantly, return to her!

As always - comments, thoughts? Have you read any of these?