Rejected!

OK, I know I said that we would try to stay grounded throughout this entire process. Stay realistic. Keep our heads out of the clouds. We told ourselves that nobody makes it on their first try. But the truth?

We wanted that Yes.

We wanted it SO badly.

And we didn't get it.

BOOM! That's what you get for having dreams!

A month ago, we sent out five queries. And this is what we got so far.

Janet Reid: Pass.
Suzie Townsend: Pass.
Sarah Heller: Pass.
Stephen Barr: Pass.

Well, nobody ever said this whole writing thing would be easy. But we never expected it to be this hard. Come on, people! Not even a nibble? Do we suck that badly?

I guess we need to go back and read that first post of ours: Writing is hard. Writing is incredibly hard. But you know what, Internet audience? It doesn't matter.

Because we'll never give up.

They can reject our query, but they can never reject...OUR FREEDOM!!!

Conferencing

Sorry to go silent for a few days, I've been at a Middlebrow Conference - this one, in fact - and will report back soon. Just thought I'd keep you posted! Have a gander at the programme, and let me know what you think...

Cover Reveal: Insurgent by Veronica Roth

Look what I found at EW.com! Do you like it? Insurgent is the sequel of Divergent, by Veronica Roth.

I have only read amazing revies about this book, and it's on my list to read for the Read Your Own Books Read-A-Thon!

What do you think?

Here is the cover of Divergent, in case you want to compare it:

Read Your Own Books Read-a-Thon: Starting Line!

The Read Your Own Books Read-A-Thon is starting now!

- Hosted by: The Bibliophilic Book Blog

- Runs from 9pm on Thursday the 15th (EST) until Sunday the 18th at 9pm (EST).

- Twitter hashtag: #SIRYOBM

My goal:

Read 3 of my own books! :)

- Divergent by Veronica Roth

- ??

- ??

I must read Divergent, everybody keeps saying it's fantastic! But for the other two books, how about random books? I just want to grab one and read it :) Here is my IMM shelf, feel free to make recommendations!

Oh, and I also should finish reading Going Bovine by Libba Bray!

Shaving Through The Blitz

I believe, when I told you about my purchases in Hay-on-Wye, I advertised Shaving Through the Blitz (1943) by G.W. Stonier as being akin to 'Mr. Miniver', had that book ever existed. Which probably got quite a few of you interested.


Well, it isn't anything like that, really. About all is has in common is that is was evidently once columns in a paper. But it's still really good. Keep reading...

I was expecting whimsy and cosiness and a general determination to ignore the more brutal aspects of war in favour of bottling pears and entering flower shows - that sort of thing. And I was prepared to devour it in the same spirit. But Stonier's book - and his narrator Mr. Fanfarlo - is of a rather different temperament. It's quite lyrical, in a semi-experimental manner, moving through the sights, sounds, and feelings of wartime London, rather than narrating them in a straightforward manner. Fanfarlo is also proudly aesthetic, and is given to this sort of moral dilemma:

Suppose during an air raid I held Botticelli's Venus under one arm and an old woman unknown to me under the other, with the chance of saving one but not both, which should I choose? Immortal painting or crumbling flesh and blood? The first! As an artist, I claim that right.

I say moral dilemma, but he is not unduly given to morals. Shaving Through the Blitz was surprisingly 'progressive' - Fanfarlo lives with a woman called Lizzie, who would quite like him to propose, but doesn't intend to force the matter. He works, in a fairly dispassionate way, at the Ministry to 'provide slogans that shall be breezy and full of dare-and-do'. There were definite overtones of Evelyn Waugh's Put Out More Flags. Which is a hint that Stonier can be very funny at times, even while being aesthetic and high-falutin'. I particularly liked a little conversation about a young man writing for the Mass Observation project. A lady comments:

"That's bad. Can't you break him of it? My little nephew was a terrible mass-observer, too, before he got married."

That puts Nella Last et al in their place, doesn't it?

As always, it is deeply interesting to read about the war from those who experienced it. I feel like I have a fairly informed awareness of the (upper)middle-class housewife's view of war, from various contemporary novels, but Stonier provides a viewpoint I hadn't really encountered before. All the pieces slotting together is satisfying, to create a portrait of how wartime Britain would have felt. And this (lengthy) excerpt, below, made the book worth finding, all by itself. I think it a really moving, unusual angle upon the way the war changed, and how people at home changed their responses to it. I'm going to finish off this post with it, and encourage you to track down a copy of Shaving Through The Blitz if you can. Not the most whimsical of wartime books, but perhaps one of the more unusual.

How it has changed in the last eighteen months! Do you (who does not?) remember the carefree evenings when we all used to go for strolls in the new-found dark? It was a spree then, to walk to a theatre, or merely to walk, to stumble over sandbags and cross the road by others' lights. "Sandbags!" we would exclaim as we picked ourselves up and went on to discover lamp-posts. Friendliness displayed itself in many ways, in a noisy jostling, in such illumination as was allowed. Torches stared at one another, cigarettes flickered a dialogue on street corners. Along Tottenham Court Road gaiety had lost nothing with the lights down, and a bubbling trail of voices down each pavement drew whisperers out of side-streets and brought even the sedentary to their doors. A gross amiability, the adolescent pleasure of being heard but not seen, infected every one who was being nudged, shoved, swept along and held back by the stream. A match would flare nearby, thrillingly, in the darkness, to reveal a face lit from below: a girl's sucked-in cheeks over a cigarette, a beaming negro, perhaps, delighted with hours when others were as black and easily tickled as himself.

All that has disappeared - the lingering, the voices, the cigarette dream; and now with darkness falls the hush. Emptiness, but with every cranny filled. London has been given over to a monstrous drama, an act of darkness from which ordinary people, you and I as individuals, shut ourselves away. Earth and sky contract to form the arena; the city puts up its searchlights, a beetle laid on its back and helplessly wavering its legs, while the hornet drones overheard; night after night the assailant returns, the victim quivers with upturned belly. "A very bad night," says Mrs. Greenbaum, heaving over in the morning to probe her fatness with an indignant finger, "an awful bad time it was last night, sure." The rest of us, having shared the same delirium, with the same hornet boring down to a point in our bellies, nod stoically and blink at our silly nightlight.

Waiting on Wednesday # 64 - Scarlet by A. C. Gaughen

"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:

Many readers know the tale of Robin Hood, but they will be swept away by this new version full of action, secrets, and romance. Posing as one of Robin Hood’s thieves to avoid the wrath of the evil Thief Taker Lord Gisbourne, Scarlet has kept her identity secret from all of Nottinghamshire. Only the Hood and his band know the truth: the agile thief posing as a whip of a boy is actually a fearless young woman with a secret past. Helping the people of Nottingham outwit the corrupt Sheriff of Nottingham could cost Scarlet her life as Gisbourne closes in. It’s only her fierce loyalty to Robin—whose quick smiles and sharp temper have the rare power to unsettle her—that keeps Scarlet going and makes this fight worth dying for.

Scarlet by A. C. Gaughen

February 14th 2012 by Walker & Co

Doesn't it sounds amazing! Robin Hood is one of my favorite stories :)

Inscriptions

Do keep your blog nominations coming on yesterday's post. One thing Book Blogger Appreciation Week is showing me is how many new blogs there are! The old faithfuls - the blogs I've been reading for three or four years - feel to me a bit like we're a huddle of parents at the schoolgates. Proud parents, of course. I just hope Stuck-in-a-Book can keep up, despite steadfastly refusing to have too drastic a face-lift! I'm always a little wary asking for feedback on the general direction of my blog, because I'm so overly-sensitive about creative things, but... well, I'm not going to make this a navel-gazing post!

Instead, let's gaze at title-pages, and endpapers, and all those bits of a book which a previous owner might have scrawled on. Oddly enough, although I could never bring myself to write in a book (except in pencil) I love buying secondhand books with these inscriptions. Now and then I have vague intentions to collate all the inscriptions I have found in various books, but, of course, I haven't done anything of the kind. And most of them simply say 'To Margaret, love Elspeth' or similar - a lovely memento of an unknown friendship, but perhaps not worth noting down at length.

But I couldn't help sharing this one with you all. It's in Llewelyn Powys' A Baker's Dozen, which I read and enjoyed recently, and will write more on later. That review may well descend (or, indeed, ascend) into a paean to the countryside. For now, we won't go past the first page - on which, on the 15th July 1941, Peter (I think) wrote this:

"Sun! Sun! Sun! Oh Summer
dancing Sun! Sink slowly down into
the West. Let the hours
of happy freedom be long and longer."

To Swithin on his 26th birthday, from Peter

15.7.41

I assumed it was a quotation, but Google brings up no results. So, unless any of you can tell me differently, I think I must assume this was Peter's own, rather lovely, little verse for the enchantingly-named Swithin. As my housemate Mel pointed out - his birthday is St. Swithin's Day. Nickname or were his parents opportunists? And was he off fighting the war?

I've found lots of inscriptions in books before, but I think this one might just be my favourite. Any wonderful examples you'd got to share?