Reading Life: 18th September 2017
Posted 18th September 2017
Category: Reading Life Genres: N/A
3 Comments
Firstly, thank you all for your messages about Tabby. I’m not able to respond individually at the moment but I did read them all. Thank you.
My reading life has been different lately; I’m still figuring out reading times in regards to my job – I’ve been doing some content marketing for the SO: To Speak festival of Southampton and it’s been a lot of fun, finding out connections between Jane Austen and the city, and Southampton composers and Charles Dickens.
I am a bit behind on my reviews so I’ll be scaling back during November and December. The biggest thing will be reading for my event with A J Waines. Waines is a psychological thriller writer with two interesting stories. One is fair – she is a hybrid author, self-published in Britain and traditionally published in Europe. The second is pretty awesome – in 2013 she published a book called Girl On A Train. You can probably guess the rest – two years later sales of her book increased and, a fact we’re using verbatim in the promotional material, The Wall Street Journal said that she started getting lots of reviews saying it wasn’t what people expected.
Many readers have said they liked it a lot more than the other one.
I’ve retitled the event this time; instead of ‘in conversation with’, we’re calling the evening The Original Girl On A Train, neatly sidestepping any issues over using Hawkins’ title but being obvious about what we’re talking about. I’m looking forward to it, it’s in conjunction with the festival so there’s more support and advertising opportunities.
But, and admittedly more to the point in the context of these posts, Waines’ has quite a backlist, so I’ve lots of reading ahead of me.
In terms of other titles, I’m in the midst of Nicholas Royle’s Ornithology, a short story collection based around the theme of birds that has similarities to other books – Max Porter’s Grief Is The Thing With Feathers, for one. More importantly, in terms of similarities, you may remember a few months ago I reviewed An English Guide To Birdwatching by Nicholas Royle. Excellent book – only it wasn’t written by the Nicholas Royle whose short story collection I’m reading now. However, An English Guide To Birdwatching references the short story collection – I believe it is in part why the title of the novel includes birds. The two authors met a few years ago – they didn’t know about each other until they both submitted work to the same literary magazine and the editor of that magazine sent the replies to both stories to a solo Nicholas.
It’s confusing, yes. But having first read In Camera (‘Salt’ Nicholas, as I’ll likely refer to him from now on – he works at Salt Publishing), and then Birdwatching, reading Ornithology is a particular experience I’d never have had in another situation. It’s this weird situation wherein there’s added context to the book that in a way shouldn’t be there.
I’ll stop there.
Moving on, I’ve just finished Fanny Blake’s Our Summer Together – a contemporary romance about a 60-something British women who has a relationship with a younger Bosnian immigrant. Not bad, just a bit repetitive and with two highly different characters. I’m a fair way through Lesley Glaister’s The Squeeze – a difficult read but well written. Next up is Chitra Ramaswathy’s Expecting – a memoir that’s up for the Polari Prize – and after that I may read a bit of Dorthe Nors. I’m going for shorter books at the moment.
I’m considering making a start on Virginia Woolf’s oeuvre before Christmas but we’ll see – previously I didn’t know much about her and so was surprised not to find her books on Project Gutenberg. I now know a lot more, including the new fact that I want to go and visit Monk’s House, and so will work on the idea that if I get all the reading that needs to be done before Christmas… done… I’ll go purchase Orlando.
What are you reading at the moment, what did you read previously, and what will you read next?
September 18, 2017, 3:50 pm
I’m in the midst of the annual RIP Challenge, so I’ve just finished The Recipient by Dean Mayes and am currently enjoying an older Michael Crichton book, Timeline. Next up will be the next selection for my monthly bookclub – Rick Bragg’s memoir of his mother entitled All Over But the Shoutin’.
September 18, 2017, 8:46 pm
At the moment, I’m reading young adult thriller Resthaven by Erik Therme, North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell and history non-fiction Queens of Conquest by Alison Weir. Previously, I read the very amusing Agatha Raisin and the Murderous Marriage by M C Beaton and next, I fancy re-reading The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman.
Happy reading this week :-)
3 Comments
Comments closed
September 18, 2017, 12:35 pm
I’m just coming to the end of The Essex Serpent. It’s harder work than I was expecting and I still don’t know what I think of it.