From Dusk ‘Til Dawn Read-A-Thon Update #1 + Challenges

UPDATE #1

So.....yesterday I was kind of a failure. I went to bed at 10pm! But I have a good excuse: me head hurted a lot! Still, I manage to read a couple of chapter from 1: The Intern (Sins07) by Jess C Scott and I'm planning to finish it by tomorrow.

Reading Through Life Mini-Challenge

Carina, from Reading Through Life, is asking us to "Write a post describing your ideal comfort food meal to break your hypothetical 15 hour fast one of the nights of this week’s read-a-thon." You can read more about it here.

I have always been impressed with Ramadan, during which practicing Muslims refrain from food and drink from dawn until dusk. I don't think I have that kind of strength, specially involving food. I'm actually on a diet and gosh, I'm a little bit moody! So anyway, my ideal food meal is....PIZZA! Maybe you're thinking...Pizza, really? Well, I have been wanting to eat pizza for about a month, and literally I could kill for one from Domino's.

Young Adult Books Reviews Challenge over here.

Third Time Lucky

My recent experiences - as documented this week - with Muriel Spark and Evelyn Waugh have led me to wonder about Third Time Lucky Syndrome. This is, of course, a syndrome I have entirely fabricated... Back in June 2007 (gosh, that makes me feel old) I made up Second Book Syndrome. Not the 'tricky second novel' for the author - but the tricky second novel for the reader. I.e., you've loved a novel by an author - and then the next one you read doesn't live up to your expectations. Not necessarily an I-hate-this-book situation, just something of a disappointment. I had it with Frank Baker, which has discouraged me from reading the backlog of Baker novels waiting for me, after Before I Go Hence was so much worse than Miss Hargreaves. I had the same experience with Edith Olivier, and probably other people... let me know if you've experienced Second Book Syndrome, with examples please.


But onto the topic for today - which is basically Second Book Syndrome in reverse. The first book you read by the author doesn't blow you away... but the second does. This was my experience with Penelope Fitzgerald (Human Voices = no; The Bookshop = genius) and Susan Hill (The Battle for Gullywith = did nothing for me; Howards End is on the Landing, The Beacon, In the Springtime of the Year = Hill becomes one of my favourite post-war writers). But - you perspicacious folk will have noticed - it's Third Time Lucky Syndrome we're talking about today. How likely is it that we'll - that you'll - read one unimpressive book, another unimpressive book, and then persevere onto the third? (By 'unimpressive', I of course mean that it failed to impress that individual reader - these things are subjective, of course).

Which gets me thinking. If an author is renowned, then I will probably give them a second chance (unless I really hate the first book I try - I'm looking at you, Lionel Shriver) but I doubt I'd often give them a third, nor would I even bother with a second if the author's name meant nothing to me. Of course, Spark and Waugh are a bit different because I quite liked the first two I tried - it just wasn't til the third that I was bowled over.

I'd love to know your thoughts. How many chances are you willing to give an author? Have you found that you loved the third (say) book you read by a previously uninspiring author? Not necessarily their third published novel, of course, but the third one you encounter. Will you persevere with an author you feel a bit ho-hum about, or are the tbr piles so tottering that it's one-strike-and-you're-out?

Let me know!

Piece of Waugh

And now for the second novella choice recommended by Simon S... (and various other people, I think, but I can't remember who) - The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh. I don't remember buying this, but I've had it on my shelves for years, back from the days when I routinely mixed up E.M. Forster and Evelyn Waugh (though two 20th century writers with more variant styles would be hard to imagine) and before I'd read either of 'em.

As with The Driver's Seat, this is the third novel I've read by the author, and easily my favourite of those three. (That gives me an idea for a blog post... come back tomorrow, friends). You can see my thoughts on Put Out More Flags here, and apparently I never got around to writing about Decline and Fall. Whilst I thought both of those novels were very good, and often very funny too, there was a cruel and selfish streak running through them that affected my wee sensitive soul. I couldn't laugh when I was that appalled and upset for the innocent bystanders being tricked or left devastated. In The Loved One (subtitled An Anglo-American Tragedy) the humour is rather gentler - perhaps because Waugh is laughing at an institution rather than individuals. The lack of cruelty may not satisfy the ardent Waughite, I'd be intrigued to know, but it left me able to love the novella without any reservations.

Which probably isn't immediately apparent from the novella's setting - an undertakers/funeral home/cemetery in Los Angeles. Called 'Whispering Glades'. Oh, and next door (where our English hero Dennis works) is the 'Happier Hunting Ground', providing similar services for pets. Now, I haven't read Jessica Mitford's The American Way of Death, exposing the American funeral system with all its (at that time, in 1963) over-the-topness, abuses and exploitation - but I can only imagine it makes a great companion read to Waugh's 1947 novella. (According to LibraryThing, I don't even own the Mitford book... can this be true?? On my Amazon wishlist it goes...)

So - where Jessica Mitford went, Waugh had gone before. Through the eyes of Dennis, who aspires to raise the standards - and the prices - of the Happier Hunting Ground, we are taken around an overblown and ridiculous funeral home and invited to laugh at all its ludicrousness. You can be buried according to temperament - and pay more for proximity to, say, a statue of Goethe. You can give description of how you want your loved one (for they would never be called 'the deceased' or anything like that) to look:

"Have you brought any photographs of your Loved One? They are the greatest help in re-creating personality. Was he a very cheerful old gentleman?"

"No, rather the reverse."

"Shall I put him down as serene and philosophical or judicial and determined?"

"I think the former."

"It is the hardest of all expressions to fix, but Mr. Joyboy makes it his speciality - that and the joyful smile for children. Did the Loved One wear his own hair? And the normal complexion? We usually classify them as rural, athletic, and scholarly - that is to say red, brown, or white."

If that line didn't make you crack at least a smile, then perhaps you need to book yourself into Whispering Glades. For you can book ahead, as it were, as exemplified by this lovely line (the words Simon S quoted which made me determined to read The Loved One):

"Can I help you in any way?"

"I came to arrange about a funeral."

"Is it for yourself?"

In amongst all this there is, of course, romance. Dennis catches the eye of a corpse beautician - and has competition from the aforementioned Mr. Joyboy. That all adds a fun subplot - it's fairly astonishing, the amount Waugh manages to pack into a slim book. Nothing is wasted, there is no extraneous matter - and it's rather a lesson to those novels which ramble on for chapters and chapters unnecessarily. Oh, just one more line I wanted to share, which demonstrates Waugh's delicious humour:

"Here is the strangulated Loved One for the Orchid Room."

Of course, beneath the layers of humour there is a far more serious heart to the novel - the concerns Jessica Mitford raised, which Waugh leaves the reader to recognise unaided. Which is sensible - his is a work of fiction; Mitford's was non-fiction. I have no problem with a bit of didacticism in literature - it is a very modern bewailing, and seems to me to betray some insecurity - but Waugh lets comedy do the job, and thus gets through to an audience which might never pick up a copy of The American Way of Death. Not, of course, that this was an option when The Loved One was published.

Do go and see Simon S's review of The Loved One, which persuaded me to (eventually!) pick up my own copy.

Waiting on Wednesday # 15 ~ The Twin's Daughter

"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 Goodreads.com

Lucy Sexton is stunned when a disheveled woman appears at the door one day…a woman who bears an uncanny resemblance to Lucy's own beautiful mother. It turns out the two women are identical twins, separated at birth, and raised in dramatically different circumstances. Lucy's mother quickly resolves to give her less fortunate sister the kind of life she has never known. And the transformation in Aunt Helen is indeed remarkable. But when Helen begins to imitate her sister in every way, even Lucy isn't sure at times which twin is which. Can Helen really be trusted, or does her sweet face mask a chilling agenda?

Filled with shocking twists and turns, THE TWIN'S DAUGHTER is an engrossing gothic novel of betrayal, jealousy, and treacherous secrets that will keep you guessing to the very end.

Lauren Baratz-Logsted

August 31st 2010 by Bloomsbury USA Children's Books

Hardcover, 400 pages
Amazon

The Driver's Seat

I'll kick off with the first novella I read at the weekend... although, first, a detour via the word 'novella'. Peter questioned the criteria for a novella - and he has a point. In the research I did once about short stories, the general consensus seemed to be that there was no strict definition for the novella. It's basically just a short novel, without necessarily any structural differences from a novel proper - and who can determine what qualifies as 'short'? Rather arbitrarily, I said 200 pages - but font and margin sizes can mean that 150 pages of one book would be 300 pages of another, and I didn't have time or energy to make word count estimates... so 200 pages was the number I chose to signify novella! As it turned out, of the seven I read The Driver's Seat (1970) by Muriel Spark was the thickest, at 160 or so pages - although I suspect it had fewer words than some of the others.

The Driver's Seat came with recommendation from Simon S, as did one of the other titles this week - so thanks Simon! It was also, apparently, recently in contention for the 'lost Booker' of 1970. I have read some Muriel Spark before (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and The Girls of Slender Means) and, while I certainly enjoyed them, they didn't quite click. The Driver's Seat definitely did.

It tells the story of Lise, a woman who leaves work to fly south on holiday... but Lise is an oddball of the oddest variety. She is looking for her 'type' and isn't afraid to accost strangers to tell them so - but, when pressed, isn't sure what her 'type' is - just that she'll know when she finds him. We first meet Lise whilst she is buying clothes for her holiday - settling on a dress: 'a lemon-yellow top with a skirt patterned in bright Vs of orange, mauve and blue' along with a red/white striped coat. "Of course, the two don't go well together" says the salesgirl - but Lise thinks otherwise, and welcomes the attention such a brash outfit gives her.

About thirty pages in, the reader gets a bit of a shock. Although it comes quite early on, I won't mention it here - suffice to say, it throws the rest of the novel into some sort of waiting game, the reader never being quite sure where they stand. Spark's prose is deliberately - and deliciously - disorientating. We move in and out of Lise's thoughts, never quite grasping hold of her perspective, nor yet letting it slip entirely out of reach.

Eventually Lise takes a ball-point pen from her bag and marks a spot in a large patch of green, the main parkland of the city. She puts a little cross beside one of the small pictures which is described on the map as 'The Pavilion'. She then folds up the map and replaces it in the pamphlet which she then edges in her hand-bag. The pen lies, apparently forgotten, on the bed. She looks at herself in the glass, touches her hair, then locks her suitcase. She finds the car-keys that she had failed to leave behind this morning and attaches them once more to her key-ring. She puts the bunch of keys in her hand-bag, picks up her paperback book and goes out, locking the door behind her. Who knows her thoughts? Who can tell?

The ending didn't come as a huge surprise to me - Spark leaves an enormous clue - but, as with Lise's travel throughout the mysterious city, the journey is easily as important as the destination. I finally see what is so special about Muriel Spark, and will definitely be on the hunt for more of her work now. Suggestions welcome...

From Dusk Till Dawn: A Read-A-Thon

Hello everyone!! It's me again, joining another reading activity (I just love them!). This time is the FROM DUSK TILL DAWN Read-A-Thon!

It's basically 5 nights (from Aug 25th to Aug 29th) of reading, just for fun. You start at 8PM and can stay reading until 8AM. I'm sure a lot of us are staying up until late reading/playing/whatever, specially now since we are on vacations (at least me). So why not use that hours to read, instead of playing facebook games!? xD

There are a lot of blogs participating, and many of them are going to host Challenges that we can join in the daylight! It's going to be HUGE, so go and sign up at Book Crazy!

Anyway, I'm hoping to finish reading The Secret of Ka by Christopher Pike and Penitence (Heavenly #2) by Jennifer Laurens, start and finish 1: The Intern (Sins07 #1) by Jess C Scottand hopefully advance on Good Old Dog: Expert Advice for Keeping Your Aging Dog Happy, Healthy, and Comfortable. Too much, right? But I really have to read all of these if I want to keep up with my other challenges, so wish me luck!

P.S.: You're allowed to sleep!

Review: Forgive My Fins (Fins #1) by Tera Lynn Childs

Title: Forgive My Fins

Author: Tera Lynn Childs

Serie: Fins #1

Release Date: May 19th 2010

Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books

Pages: 293

Age: Young Adult

Synopsis from goodreads.com:

Lily Sanderson has a secret, and it’s not that she has a huge crush on gorgeous swimming god Brody Bennett, who makes her heart beat flipper-fast. Unrequited love is hard enough when you’re a normal teenage girl, but when you’re half human, half mermaid like Lily, there’s no such thing as a simple crush.

Lily’s mermaid identity is a secret that can’t get out, since she’s not just any mermaid – she’s a Thalassinian princess. When Lily found out three years ago that her mother was actually a human, she finally realized why she didn’t feel quite at home in Thalassinia, and she’s been living on land and going to Seaview high school ever since, hoping to find where she truly belongs. Sure, land has its problems – like her obnoxious, biker boy neighbor Quince Fletcher – but it has that one major perk – Brody. The problem is, mermaids aren’t really the casual dating type – when they “bond,” it’s for life.

When Lily’s attempt to win Brody’s love leads to a tsunami-sized case of mistaken identity, she is in for a tidal wave of relationship drama, and she finds out, quick as a tailfin flick, that happily-ever-after never sails quite as smoothly as you planned.

I'm a big fan of Tera Lynn Childs Oh.My.Gods series, so I was really eager to read this book as soon as possible. The cover is absolutely gorgeous, and the promise of mermaids excited me.

Lily is a 17 years old mermaid girl living in the human world with her aunt. She has two best friends, a crush, and a neighbor whom she'll like not to exist. She's funny and sweet, but I thought she was very much like the protagonist of Oh.My.Gods series, very naive and with more insecurities that I'd like her to have.

I loved Quince. He is exactly the boy I'd like to date! (if I wasn't dating the most awesome man, hehe). He's intelligent, responsible, totally secure about himself and very funny. He's very respectful with Lily and so sweet.

The other characters, as lily's two best friends, her family, her crush, etc. are ok. I wish she would have spent more time with Peri and Shannen, or her aunt. But it wasn't part of this story....of at least not of this book.

Maybe the plot isn't exactly surprising, but the author manages to invent something new for the mermaids mythology. And her writing style is what I like the most. It's funny, sassy and cute at the same time. It doesn't let you stop reading. Fast paced but at the same time very enjoyable, it was extremely easy to read (I read it in a couple of hours) and at some points I couldn't stop giggling.

I wish the mermaids (their world, people, etc) would have been a little bit more described, but as a series, I'm expecting more of these in the next books.

Forgive My Fins is an excellent young adult chick lit book, perfect for a light reading, with enough romance and fantasy to keep you reading until you end it.

Rating:

More about this book at www.teralynnchilds.com, Amazon.