Hello there, hope you're well, do take a seat and have a cup of tea. I can do normal, Earl Grey, and... er, water. More miscellany for you - and on the right day of the week as well (though I'm actually typing this on Friday - sshh, don't tell anyone).
1.) The blog post - is a myriad wonder... featuring several posts from a fairly recent blogger who seems to be reading all the books I want to read, or re-read. Here's one on Mariana by Monica Dickens; one on Can Any Mother Help Me? by Jenna Bailey; one on The Enchanted Places by Christopher Milne - go, enjoy, and welcome Claire aka Captive Reader to the blogosphere.
2.) The link - comes with a warning, this weekend. I found this hilarious... others were not, shall we say, 'exceedingly diverted'. Click here to judge for yourself.
3.) The book - I don't know if I've always made this obvious, but 'the book' section in this weekend miscellany is for books I've heard of, or which have come through the door, but which I haven't read. Usually they're ones I don't think others will have heard about yet - but this week I've gone for one that I somehow missed, but hope you have heard of - White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi. I was very impressed by The Icarus Girl back here, and have The Opposite House on my shelves, but 
somehow didn't notice that White is for Witching was published back in May 2009 - and is coming out in paperback in April, I think. Reviews aren't great at Amazon, tis true, but I'd rather hear your views... the publishers say "A remarkable, shape-shifting tale... The narrative oscillates between the mundane and the supernatural, and it is this skilful blend of the fantastic and the everyday that makes it resonate so chillingly... In the end, this isn't a fantasy about ghosts and witches. It is really about memory and belonging, love and loss." Over to you...
And a little extra - I'd love contributions to this in future, if you hear any - Best Bookish Quotation of the Week. I'm not talking quotations from books, I'm talking quotations about books which you've said yourself, or have heard friends say. I hope my friend won't mind me using hers - I'll keep her anonymous until/unless she hoves over and approves...[edit: she now has, and you can find out who it is in the comments!]
"I recite my Book Depository preorders to myself at night if I'm having trouble getting to sleep!"
rivalled only, this week, by my own confession to my housemate: "I once bought a book solely because I liked the smell..."
If you have any others - let me know!
I had so intended to join in with Woolf in Winter today, and their joint read of To The Lighthouse - I decided to read it slowly, and luxuriate in it... but... I read it too slowly, and on about p.30. Oh dear. I'll write about it properly when I've finished (I'm loving this slow pace, and will continue) - but click here for more Woolf reactions.
Keep those prize-draw entries coming, still plenty of time to win Scandinavia's finest!
Today's post is a question that's only for bloggers, I'm afraid. I love all you folk who visit without your own blogs, but I want to ask a question to bloggers, about their blog names... how did you choose it??
I guess in a lot of cases it will be obvious what the name means, but I'm interested in how you chose that particular way of naming your blog, and which alternatives you considered first.
Back in 2007 when I was rooting around for a name to attach to my blog, I hit upon 'Stuck in a Book' quite quickly. My criteria were - something with 'book' or 'reading' in the title, to make it obvious what my blog was about; and something beginning with 'S'. That might sound a little silly, but because my name (Simon) begins with 'S', it would have felt funny to be called something which didn't...
And then I had a bit of difficulty, because somebody had already taken stuckinabook.blogspot.com (for an inactive blog which has now disappeared, grr!) hence the addition of hyphens. I did think that people would always forget the hyphens, and end up at Mysterious Blog of Inactivity, but thankfully you're all cleverer than that. Unless there are legions of dissatisfied people coming up against a 'This Blog Has Been Removed' wall...
Perhaps I should mention my favourite blog name. Well, you're all great of course - but the favourite name I've come across so far is... *drum roll please* makedoandread! What an accolade to win. I just love how evocative of the blog it is - the (belated) wartime spirit, the reading priority, the humour. Wonderful.
So, over to you. Why did you choose your blog title, and which other ideas did you discard? And for those of you with obvious blog-name provenance (I'm looking at you, Harriet Devine's Blog, as my example!) what made you choose your name rather than an alias?
I'm hoping for lots of interesting answers - fire away!
It's been a while since I did a giveaway - and this isn't even a publishers freebie, but a spare copy I had that I was going to give to a friend, who turned out to have already read it. Step forward, A Winter Book by Tove Jansson.
This wonderfully evocative collection of stories is set in Sweden and Finland, and though mostly in winter, also features stories from all the year round. I almost never feel a sense of place in what I read, but I did in A Winter Book.
And then the writing - Tove Jansson is never sentimental, but her writing is very honest, and very beautiful. Not floaty or over-wraught - I haven't encountered a style like hers, in fact, so I am at a loss to explain it - but I do know that she is one of my favourite writers, and that I love this collection. Not to mention the beautiful book itself, as are all the Sort Of Books publications I've encountered.
I wrote about A Winter Book - gosh - two and a half years ago. You can read what I wrote here, and it's got some little excerpts from the book too. But, let's face it, it's a free book we're talking about!
Pop your name in the comments, and at the weekend (or thereabouts) I'll do a draw and send A Winter Book flying off somewhere - feel free to enter wherever you are in the world. If Thomas Teal can translate this book, I can post it abroad. Ready, Steady... Go!
You know how it is - you start a book in October, and... you finish it in January. I don't quite know how that happened, but there it is, Mrs. Tim of the Regiment by DE Stevenson has been on my bedside table for at least three months, dipped in and out of, and yesterday evening I read the last page. It certainly wasn't because I didn't enjoy it, but perhaps because I wanted something light, enjoyable, and reliable on the bedside table. All the books I've read in the Bloomsbury Group series have been gems, and this was no different.
The first thing to say, which Elaine and others have noted in their reviews, is that Mrs. Tim of the Regiment is very much a book of two halves. Though not signposted, this novel is actually Mrs. Tim of the Regiment and Golden Days put together, but they have been that way since 1940 odd - it wasn't Bloomsbury's decision. The two books are very different in style - both are about Hester Christie (aka Mrs. Tim) an army wife, looking after her husband and two children, and being witty and self-effacing and coping with everything that's thrown her way. But, though it all takes diary format, only the first half really feels like a diary - the second half is far more narrative driven.
And the second thing to say is - how very like the Provincial Lady this is! Well, the first half especially. Sometimes I had to remind myself that I wasn't reading an unknown fifth PL book. Take, for instance, this sizeable quotation:
Suddenly the spell is broken, the door of our compartment is pushed ajar, and through the aperture appears the fat white face of Mrs. McTurk. Of all the people in the world Mrs. McTurk is, perhaps, the one I least want to see. I can't help wondering what she is doing in the train, and how she found me. She must be - I suppose - one of those peculiar people who walk about in trains. Why couldn't she have remained peacefully where she was put by the porter amidst her own belongings in (I have no doubt) a comfortable first-class compartment?
"Is this really you?" she says
I reply that it is. The woman has the knack of saying things which invite a fatuous answer.
"Well I never!" she says.
I fix a false smile upon my countenance, whereupon she insinuates her cumbrous body through the door, and sits down beside Betty.
"So you are going north for a holiday," she says.
Betty bounces up and down on the seat. "Do you know Mummie?" she cries excitedly. "Fancy you knowing Mummie! I thought Mummie didn't know anybody in Kiltwinkle. Of course I knew lots of children at school, but it was awfully dull for Mummy. Mrs. Watt said there would be lots of parties, and Mummie bought a new dress, and then nobody asked her."
I plunge wildly into the conversation, wishing, not for the first time, that Betty were shy with strangers.
I suspect the Provincial Lady's Vicky and Mrs. Tim's Betty never met - but what good friends they would have been, had they done so. I also suspect that DE Stevenson had read the Provincial Lady books (the first of which was published just a couple of years before she started her Mrs. Tim books) and I don't blame her at all for wanting to emulate them.
Mrs. Tim, especially these early sections, is deliciously moreish. Not a great deal happens, not in the way of linear plot - the attempts to find a house were hilarious, looking round increasingly unsuitable properties - this is mostly the quotidian, finding humour and pathos in the everyday. As the second half of the book arrives, Mrs. Tim heads up to Scotland sans husband, and becomes embroiled in the confusing love lives of various young folk. She even becomes an unwitting object of attraction herself (Stevenson rather cleverly using the diary format to show Hester's oblivious innocence even while letting the reader know what is going on.) But, of course, Hester has eyes only for her husband.
Mr. Tim himself is rather more likable than his Provincial Lady counterpart - you feel that the Christie marriage has more laughs in it than the PL's. At the same time, he is as bad as Robert when it comes to recognising quotations from Jane Austen...
Like all the rest of the Bloomsbury Group series, Mrs. Tim of the Regiment is a delight to read, and I wholeheartedly recommend it. Being honest, it 
doesn't maintain the high level throughout - I much preferred the first half to the second, as has probably become clear - but it's just the sort of book you'll want to read once you've exhausted EM Delafield's superlative Provincial Lady series. And if, somehow, you've not read the PL books yet - hie thee to a library!
Apparently there's a whole series of Mrs. Tim books - and I'm told they're also more narrative-driven. Though I don't think I'll be using up my Project 24 allowance on them, they're certainly going into my Amazon Marketplace Basket to be pondered over for 2011... (edit: no they won't! I've just seen the prices!)
Oh - and if you've got this far, do pop in tomorrow for a giveaway of... a mystery title! All will be revealed tomorrow....
So, that book Elaine gave me in Colchester - frankly I'm surprised that nobody has given it to me before - it's Simon's Cat by Simon Tofield.
I came across the YouTube channel for this cartoonist a long time ago, possibly on one of those days when I was feeling a little glum and so was looking at YouTube videos of kittens, and then this lovely book came out. Do go and have a look at the cartoon videos here, they're a mixture of the very observant and the very silly. Observant about cats, that is - the way they move, the things they seem to be thinking. And the book is the same - I love this picture, and the oscillating friendship between Simon's Cat and the Garden Gnome which is seen throughout the book... all very silly and fun. Thanks Elaine!
There seems to be a correlation between literary bloggers and cat-lovers. Not everyone is wise enough to see that cats are the best and greatest creatures on God's earth, of course, but those of us who recognise the fact are also often well aware that books are the best inanimate objects on God's earth. It's just common sense, really. There are probably quite a few bloggers who weary of getting their most excitable comments on posts which are simply photos of their pets, rather than their well-thought-out book analyses - but I'd take a photo of a kitten over the best book review, any day.
Luckily for us, there seems to be a whole industry of cat cartoon books. A while ago I 'reviewed' Everyday Cat Excuses by Molly Brandenburg, and my favourite of this subgenre is Jeffrey Brown's wonderful Cat Getting Out of a Bag and other observations.
It's a must for any cat lover - gently very amusing, and certainly the most observant as to how cats behave, getting across all their little ways, silly and dignified alike. I did buy it for my friend, but then my friend became my housemate, so I get to look at it too. Only eleven months til Christmas, why not pick this one up now... then you have eleven months to enjoy it before you give it away.
Project 24 - #2 & #3
So, on my travels to Suffolk, Mum and I had three things definitely factored into the itinerary - aside from seeing her sister, of course. Firstly was the spectacular (and spectacularly cheap) hot chocolate at the Essex Rose in Dedham - a three-mug jugful for £2! - second was meeting up with lovely Elaine of Random Jottings, more on that tomorrow, and last was... Castle Books in Colchester. Back in 2001 we had a family holiday in Felixstowe, and popped over to Colchester. Castle Books was where my AA Milne liking developed into an obsession, as they had quite a few of his books, quite cheaply. And I've had fond memories of it ever since.
It didn't disappoint - a wonderful stock, very reasonable prices, and enough temptation to tip me halfway through February on my Project 24 restrictions... that's right, I bought two. On any other day I'd have happily bought ten, so I do count it as *something* of a success... no?
First up is I. Compton-Burnett by Pamela Hansford Johnson, a little booklet about ICB's novels from 1951 - it looks like an interesting snapshot of response to ICB by another interesting novelist.
And second is a beautiful book called More Talk of Jane Austen by Shelia Kaye-Smith and GB Stern. I've flicked through Talking of Jane Austen once or twice, though I don't own it - the books look like a lovely mix - informal chat about Jane Austen from the mouths of those with know-how. Indulgent without being unscholarly - think this'll be one to curl up with soon.
So, there we have it! Numbers 2 and 3 in my Project 24. I also bought a little book about EF Benson in Castle Books, but that was a gift for Elaine - who, in turn, gave me a book - which you'll be hearing more about tomorrow...
somehow didn't notice that White is for Witching was published back in May 2009 - and is coming out in paperback in April, I think. Reviews aren't great at Amazon, tis true, but I'd rather hear your views... the publishers say "A remarkable, shape-shifting tale... The narrative oscillates between the mundane and the supernatural, and it is this skilful blend of the fantastic and the everyday that makes it resonate so chillingly... In the end, this isn't a fantasy about ghosts and witches. It is really about memory and belonging, love and loss." Over to you...
