Song for a Sunday

I spent most of my waking hours yesterday baking (pictures and recipes to follow - but not for Paul Hollywood's foccacio which did not work, chuh) and quite a few of them listening to this song.  Florence and the Machine aren't (isn't?) as obscure as most of the artists I feature here, at least in this country, but this new song 'Shake It Out' is too good not to share.  Enjoy!  (And don't try to delve too deeply into the horse metaphor... I had no idea what she was singing about.)

Cover Reveal: Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore

Finally! I've been waiting for this book forever! I absolutely loved Graceling and Fire. What do you think about the cover? I think the cover is interesting. Not my favorite, but still I like it. The keys and the eye....what do you think it's going to happen in this book?

Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore

Publisher: Dial

Release date: May 1, 2012

Series: The Seven Kingdoms #3

Summary from Goodreads:

Book 3, tentatively titled Bitterblue and currently in progress, is a companion book to both Graceling and Fire and takes place in the seven kingdoms eight years after Graceling. Bitterblue will tie all three books together in some way. Bitterblue is the sixteen-year-old protagonist, and Katsa, Po, Giddon, Helda, and other characters from Graceling will be part of the fabric of the book. Plenty of fighting still to come!

(4) All of the above...

I've been meaning to ask this question of y'all for ages, and today seems as good a day as any.  Quite a while ago, Harriet and I were discussing (in person, no less) how we ranked the three main components of what makes a novel good.  Of course, 'what makes a novel good' is subjective, and the answers are as many and varied as there are readers, but perhaps the criteria we consider when making this evaluation can be listed more succintly.  (Succint, me?  Yes, I know...)

Anyway, broadly speaking there are three things readers ponder on when evaluating how good a novel is.   They are plot, character, and writing style.

With me so far?  Are we all agreed?  Doubtless we aren't, but let's assume (for, ironically, the sake of argument) that we are.

Well, then - what order would you put these in, in terms of priority?  Ideally, a novel would have an engaging plot, well-drawn characters and accomplished writing style - but not every novel can be Pride and Prejudice, can it?  If you have to rank them... how would you rank them?

Long-term SiaB readers might not be surprised at the order I choose:
1.) writing style
2.) character
...
...
...
3.) plot

Yes, plot comes a long way third for me.  If I find a book to be badly written, nothing can save it in my eyes.  I could just about forgive a book for having lacklustre characters if it is beautifully written (this is my experience with, say, Virginia Woolf's The Waves) but I can happily, contentedly adore a novel where nothing happens - so long as the writing is good and the characters well-drawn.

All this, of course, requires sweeping generalisations... over to you, grab a broom, start sweepin'!

Book Review: A Night to Surrender by Tessa Dare

Title: A Night to Surrender

Author: Tessa Dare

Series: Spindle Cove #1

Release Date: August 30th 2011

Author: Harper Collins, Inc.

Age: Adult

A peaceful resort by the sea, Spindle Cove is a retreat for Regency ladies—offering intelligent, often unconventional women a temporary escape from men and their madness. Unfortunately for Miss Susanna Finch, the seaside safe haven she has so painstakingly nurtured is no longer quite so safe. The Cove’s been invaded—not by Napoleon’s forces, but by battle-weary, barely civilized, dangerously handsome men.

Victor Bramwell, the new Earl of Rycliff, knows he doesn’t belong in Spindle Cove. So far as he can tell, there’s nothing in this godforsaken place but spinsters… and sheep. But he’s stuck here—with orders to gather a local militia. It’s a simple mission, made complicated by the spirited, exquisite Susanna. Not only has she driven all red-blooded men from the place with her "modern" notions, but her lively wit and tempting beauty are distractions Bram doesn’t need.

Bram fears he may have met his match, for Susanna won’t easily surrender.

The scene is set for an epic battle ... but who can be named the winner, when both have so much to lose?

Susanna Finch is living at Spindle Cove, a retreat for ladies escaping from men. Susanna is strong, full of energy and loves her friends at Spindle Cove, a place where the population are mostly women.

But when Victor Bramwell is named as the new Earl of Rycliff, Susanna's peace is disturbed. He's sexy, stubborn, and impressed by Susanna and her friends.

I really liked Bram and Susanna's romance. They move very quickly and their love scenes are very steamy! But still their relationship seemed realistic and very romantic.

But I mostly loved Susanna. She's one of my favorite heroines. Very strong and intelligent, I felt like I could relate with her because she was very ladylike but liked to do men's stuff, as firing guns!

I also liked the secondary characters. They are so fun! Everyone has it's own personality, and I want to know each of their stories.

A Night to Surrender was the first book I read from Tessa Dare, but I immediately loved her writing. Her story is original and funny, it starts with sheep bombing! Who else can write a romance book that starts with sheep bombing and you still want to continue reading it?

Overall, I loved A Night to Surrender and I can't wait to read Colin's and Minerva's story at A Week to be Wicked.

More about this book at tessadare.com, Goodreads, Amazon, The Book Depository.

The Tiny Wife - Andrew Kaufman

Rebecca at The Friday Project, an imprint of Harper Collins, very kindly sent me a copy of a teeny tiny book called The Tiny Wife, by Andrew Kaufman - who is apparently famous for All My Friends are Superheroes, of which I have to confess ignorance.  It immediately ticked a lot of boxes for me.  (1) it's short, (2) it's fantastic-but-not-fantasy, and (3) it has attractive silhouettey pictures which remind me of that wonderful scene in the penultimate Harry Potter film where the story of the Deathly Hallows is told.

The novella kicks off with a bank robbery - of sorts.  As the opening lines say:

The robbery was not without consequences.  The consequences were the point of the robbery.  It was never about money.  The thief didn't even ask for any.  That it happened in a bank was incidental.  It could have just as easily happened in a train station or a high school or the Musée d'Orsay.

The thief takes, instead, takes the item of the greatest sentimental value to each person - be it a photograph, a watch, a Camus book or even a calculator.  The thief explains that these objects contain some of their possessors' souls.

"Listen, I'm in a bit of a rush, so let me conclude.  When I leave here, I will be taking 51 percent of your souls with me.  This will have strange and bizarre consequences in your lives.  But more importantly, and I mean this quite literally, learn how to grow them back, or you will die."

And he's quite right.  The strange consequences occupy most of the rest of this slim volume.  One woman's lion tattoo leaps from her ankle and chases her everywhere, a man's office fills with water, another man's mother keeps subdiving into smaller versions of herself... and Stacey, the tiny wife of the title, is gradually shrinking.  She and her husband, who occasionally takes the first-person narrative, must discover how to halt the process.

I loved the idea, as I said.  It's just the kind of off-the-wall thing I like when I'm not curled up with a cosier 1930s novel.  And I did enjoy it - Kaufman obviously has an incredible imagination, and even a touch of sentimentality which is all too often missing from surreal works (the final line of The Tiny Wife is brilliant).  His style is great - deadpan in the way I love.  The more fantastic a story is, the more matter-of-fact the writing should be.  Yet sometimes the story itself all seemed a bit too off-the-wall - as though he were putting down the next zany idea to pop into his head.  The overall concept was great, but the details didn't seem to wholly cohere - why were certain things happening in relation to certain objects being given?  What role did the thief play?  I don't need everything to be explained in a book, far from it, but I like to know that the author has everything under control - that his imagination won't escape his grasp.  Take the ur-text of all fantastic books, for example: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.   It's totally mad, nothing makes sense or seems to relate to anything else - but somehow Lewis Carroll weaves a distorted internal logic throughout, and is obviously in control.

But it's a faint criticism of a short, enjoyable (mad) read - I would love to read more of Kaufman's work, and I can only see him getting better.


Others who got Stuck into it:
"Fun, cute, quirky and well worth a read." - Boof, The Book Whisperer


"[...]what might have come across as overly whimsical instead becomes real, and carries the dramatic weight of a problem to be solved[...]" - David, Follow the Thread

Waiting on Wednesday # 67 - This Is Not a Test by Courney Summers

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

My pick: This is Not a Test by Courtney Summers

Summary from Goodreads:

It’s the end of the world. Six students have taken cover in Cortege High but shelter is little comfort when the dead outside won’t stop pounding on the doors. One bite is all it takes to kill a person and bring them back as a monstrous version of their former self. To Sloane Price, that doesn’t sound so bad. Six months ago, her world collapsed and since then, she’s failed to find a reason to keep going. Now seems like the perfect time to give up.

As Sloane eagerly waits for the barricades to fall, she’s forced to witness the apocalypse through the eyes of five people who actually want to live. But as the days crawl by, everyone’s motivations to survive begin to change in startling ways and soon the group’s fate is determined less and less by what’s happening outside and more and more by the unpredictable and violent bids for life–and death–inside. When everything is gone, what do you hold on to?

June 2012 by St. Martin's Griffin

More zombies!

A Century of Books: some suggestions

I'm already getting excited about A Century of Books, the anti-challenge reading challenge with very few rules and low expectations(!)  If you missed my original post on it, click here.  I'm especially excited about how excited lots of you are - whether you're joining in wholly or casually or just watching from the sidelines.  It's going to be fun!

I was asked by Jo if I could give some suggestions for books, as I imagine most of us have sections of the twentieth century where we're at a bit of a loss for inspiration.  (For me, it's the 1900s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s...)  Jo's was the kind of question I could not possibly resist - the lure of a list, and of going back through my book-lists from the past ten years, was too wonderful a prospect to delay.

And I have made my list!  I was somewhat astonished that not only had I read a book for every year of the twentieth century already (almost), but I could recommend books I thought were good!  1994 took a while, because I absolutely refused to include the abominable Captain Correli's Mandolin, but thankfully I discovered Sylvia Townsend Warner's Diaries were published that year - hurrah!  That book is one of a few below that I haven't actually *finished*, but have dipped into and can safely recommend.

I haven't duplicated any authors, and there is a mix of fiction and non-fiction.  Unless otherwise stated, the books are novels (and there are evidently some decades where my familiarity with novels is second to children's books or plays!)  Quite a few of these have been reviewed on SiaB - just search in the search box, or scroll through all reviews.  And if they're not there and you're interested, just ask!

Without further ado... my suggestions for 1900-1999.


1900 - The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud (non-fiction)
1901 - Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov (play)
1902 - Just-So Stories by Rudyard Kipling (children's short stories)
1903 - The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin by Beatrix Potter (children's)
1904 - Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie (play)
1905 - The Return of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle (short stories)
1906 - The Railway Children by E. Nesbit (children's)
1907 - The Unlucky Family by Mrs. Henry de la Pasture (children's)
1908 - Love's Shadow by Ada Leverson
1909 - The Caravaners by Elizabeth von Arnim
1910 - Literary Lapses by Stephen Leacock (short stories)
1911 - The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (children's)
1912 - The Unbearable Bassington by Saki
1913 - Old Friends and New Fancies by Sybil G. Brinton (first Austen sequel)
1914 - The Wise Virgins by Leonard Woolf
1915 - Psmith, Journalist by P.G. Wodehouse
1916 - London Revisited by E.V. Lucas (essays)
1917 - Parnassus on Wheels by Christopher Morley
1918 - The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West
1919 - The Young Visiters [sic!] by Daisy Ashford
1920 - Queen Lucia by E.F. Benson
1921 - Dangerous Ages by Rose Macaulay
1922 - Lady Into Fox by David Garnett
1923 - Bliss by Katherine Mansfield (short stories)
1924 - The Home-Maker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher
1925 - William by E.H. Young
1926 - As It Was by Helen Thomas (biog./autobiog.)
1927 - The Love Child by Edith Olivier
1928 - Orlando by Virginia Woolf
1929 - David Golder by Irene Nemirovsky
1930 - Diary of a Provincial Lady by E.M. Delafield
1931 - The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
1932 - Cheerful Weather For The Wedding by Julia Strachey
1933 - Hostages to Fortune by Elizabeth Cambridge
1934 - Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers (children's)
1935 - Untouchable by Mulk Raj Anand
1936 - The New House by Lettice Cooper
1937 - They Came Like Swallows by William Maxwell
1938 - Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
1939 - It's Too Late Now by A.A. Milne (autobiog.)
1940 - Miss Hargreaves by Frank Baker
1941 - Parents and Children by Ivy Compton-Burnett
1942 - The Body in the Library by Agatha Christie
1943 - The Magic Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton (children's)
1944 - A House in the Country by Jocelyn Playfair
1945 - Animal Farm by George Orwell
1946 - Westwood by Stella Gibbons
1947 - The Slaves of Solitude by Patrick Hamilton
1948 - The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh
1949 - I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
1950 - Frost at Morning by Richmal Crompton
1951 - The Lagoon by Janet Frame (short stories)
1952 - Make Me An Offer by Wolf Mankowitz
1953 - The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley
1954 - Love of Seven Dolls by Paul Gallico
1955 - Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead by Barbara Comyns
1956 - The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis (children's)
1957 - The Entertainer by John Osborne (play)
1958 - Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce (children's)
1959 - The Caretaker by Harold Pinter (play)
1960 - The L-Shaped Room by Lynne Reid Banks
1961 - Provincial Daughter by R.M. Dashwood
1962 - We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
1963 - Let's Kill Uncle by Rohan O'Grady
1964 - The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence
1965 - Oxford by Jan Morris (non-fiction)
1966 - Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
1967 - The Death of the Author by Roland Barthes (essay)
1968 - The Real Inspector Hound by Tom Stoppard (play)
1969 - Travels With My Aunt by Graham Greene
1970 - 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff (letters)
1971 - Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor
1972 - The Summer Book by Tove Jansson
1973 - In the Springtime of the Year by Susan Hill
1974 - Enid Blyton: the biography by Barbara Stoney (biog.)
1975 - Danny: The Champion of the World by Roald Dahl (children's)
1976 - Joyce Grenfell Requests the Pleasure by Joyce Grenfell (sketches)
1977 - Abigail's Party by Mike Leigh (play)
1978 - The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald
1979 - The Path Through The Trees by Christopher Milne (autobiog.)
1980 - A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
1981 - Loitering With Intent by Muriel Spark
1982 - Wish Her Safe At Home by Stephen Benatar
1983 - A Very Great Profession by Nicola Beauman (non-fiction)
1984 - Letters to Alice on First Reading Jane Austen by Fay Weldon
1985 - Henrietta's War by Joyce Dennys
1986 - Richmal Crompton: the Woman behind William by Mary Cadogan (biog.)
1987 - Katherine Mansfield: A Secret Life by Claire Tomalin (biog.)
1988 - The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver
1989 - People Who Say Goodbye by P.Y. Betts (autobiog.)
1990 - Immortality by Milan Kundera
1991 - Forever England by Alison Light (lit. crit.)
1992 - The Christmas Mystery by Jostein Gaarder
1993 - The Matisse Stories by A.S. Byatt (short stories)
1994 - Diaries by Sylvia Townsend Warner (diaries!)
1995 - The Tattooed Map by Barbara Hodgson
1996 - Bridget Jones' Diary by Helen Fielding
1997 - Enduring Love by Ian McEwan
1998 - Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman (essays)
1999 - All Quiet on the Orient Express by Magnus Mills