Two Katie Ffordes

I'm still not reading that much. Being busy is partly to blame but where the rest of the blame lies is hard to say. I think it's possible to read yourself to a standstill and that you then need to give yourself a break and slow down. Do something else. Some people call it a 'reading block' and perhaps that's so. It's not that I'm not reading, I'm just not reading at my normal speed. But's here's the thing, what I am reading I'm thoroughly enjoying and loving and that is - books by Katie Fforde.

I would say this author is my 'guilty pleasure', except for the fact that I dislike the term. Why feel guilty about what you love to read? It smacks of book snobbishness and that's something I abhor. It's a bit of a feature, in fact, of one of the two books I've read by Katie Fforde this month: Love Letters.

Laura works in a bookshop. She has a degree and maybe should be doing something a bit more challenging but she adores her job and wouldn't change it for anything. Except that she will have to as the shop is closing. Good at organising literary events in the shop, Laura lands herself a temporary job organising a brand new literary festival. It's to take place in and around a stately home and the surrounding village; the couple who own the house are running the event. Laura inadvertantly leads people to believe that she knows the famous Irish writer, Dermot Flynn. She sets people straight, she knows his two books well, but not him. But people ignore this and send her off to Ireland to try to persuade the reclusive author, who never leaves Ireland, to come to their festival. When she eventually tracks him down Laura's nerves lead her to drink too much and she ends up in bed with the author, although the situation is much more complicated than that would indicate. One way or another Laura persuades the author to come to the festival but Laura is soon to discover that persuading Dermot to come is actually the easy part...

I wonder how much of her own experiences the author put into this book. By that I'm not referring to the romantic elements but all of the wonderful background settings. She must have had experience of literary festivals, how they're run, the authors who attend. There are two wonderful middle-aged chick-lit writers among the characters and they're just joyous. It struck me she must know what she's talking about when she observes these authors mingling with each other and records the snide remarks. There are comments on book snobbery... how literary authors look down on chick-lit writers because they actually 'sell' books. Anne and Veronica, the chick-lit authors, turn up in a Porshe, which says it all really. Plotwise the book was huge fun. A great deal of misunderstanding between Laura and Dermot made for all kinds of twists and turns and sometimes you just think, 'Why don't they just 'talk' to each other?' But heck... that wouldn't be any fun at all, would it? LOL. What else? Not much else to say other than the final chapters of this book were some of the funniest I've read anywhere. I giggled and giggled at Laura's rather staid parents' reaction to what happened... hilariously written, pure pleasure to read.

So, I enjoyed that one, but before it I'd actually read another, Living Dangerously, the very first book Katie Fforde wrote and if anything, I enjoyed that even more.

Polly Cameron is in her mid-thirties and living alone with her cat. She's trying to become established as a potter but is having to work in a wholefood cafe in order to pay the bills and eat. Her experiences with the opposite sex have led her to believe that the whole romance/sex thing is incredibly over-rated and it's not for her. Not that her mother and friends accept this and it's at a party given by an old school friend, Melissa, that Polly meets David. He's middle-aged, tall and very good looking but this is countered by the fact that he's a bit stuck-up quite frankly and Polly is not at all taken. David has two teenage sons, one of whom, Patrick, Polly helps out when he's clearly drunk and under the influence of drugs. This brings her further into contact with David and Polly can feel an attraction growing. A distraction is needed and Polly finds it with a predatory journalist. It's on an evening out at a pub with a bad reputation, with said journalist, that Polly once again encounters Patrick, once again under the influence. Coming to his rescue she drives the boy home but the car breaks down and they have to walk the rest of the way home. Drenched to the skin, David is there to greet them and clear up the mess: what happens as a consequence is life-changing for Polly.

Oh! this has to be my favourite of Katie Fforde's books. Not an unusual reaction from what I can gather from reading other reviews. I suspect the attraction is the rather Pride and Prejudice bent to the plot. David being the clear Mr. Darcy figure, the journalist, Mr Wickham, and so on. I suppose David's son, Patrick, is the Lydia figure with a role reversal in that it's Polly who comes to his rescue - although that connection is slightly more tenuous. It doesn't matter, not to me anyway, the book is huge fun and I loved it to bits. So much that although I read it on my Kindle I ordered a hard-copy to keep on my bookshelves. The story is very romantic, funny, and best of all the characters feel real. All of Fforde's heroines are normal women with insecurities, imperfections, often a bit scatty, very far from perfect examples of womanhood. I love that they're usually a bit older than your average heroine and I particularly liked that the hero in this was middle-aged. She doesn't exactly say but David had to be 50 or close and that makes such a refreshing change. How Katie Fforde makes reading about normal people so addictive, I have no idea. Clever writing is the only answer I can come up with. Long may she continue to come up with the goods but I'm okay as there are quite a few of hers I've yet to read. I'm off the library this afternoon and hoping to find several that I really fancy - Summer of Love, Wild Designs, Highland Fling and Paradise Fields. But anything at all will do!
~~~oOo~~~

Scene of the blog

I was absolutely delighted when Cathy from Kitling: Books asked me take part in her weekly feature, Scene of the Blog. I wondered a bit what I could possibly find of interest to say and photograph but once I started it was huge fun.



The post is now up so I hope you'll visit Kitling: Books and take a look at where I blog. Many thanks to Cathy for her hard work on this regular feature.

New books!

And so... I had a birthday on Tuesday. I hate to think of the number of years I seem to have notched up but there you go... nothing to be done about that except be grateful it's not the alternative! My birthday was spent in Cornwall. To be precise exploring some of the Cornish coast... here's a quick look at precisely the sort of views I had:




This is Godrevy Lighthouse on the north coast of Cornwall.


Anyway, this is not a post about that... that's for later... this is a post about my new books. I did quite nicely for my birthday, some years I don't get any, but this year I got four.





A close friend gave me Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin and The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, neither of which I've read and both of which I want to at some stage. And my youngest daughter gave me A Tiny Bit Marvellous by Dawn French... probably my favourite commedienne but I've never read any of her books.

My husband bought me this:



I fell in love with John Brett's paintings after our trip to Cardiff in March. He travelled the coast of Britain painting the scenery back in Victorian times and this is a book of his Cornish artwork. It's stunning.








I'm so thrilled with this gorgeous, beautiful, amazing book.

So why would I need more books after that lot? Well, I was in Truro and they have a nice Waterstones there, very friendly staff and and a great collection of books. Quite honestly I could have stayed there all day. And no way was I going to come out of there with no books! Pigs would take to the air first! Here's what I bought:




For some reason they're all non-fiction. I don't know why. I got The Victorians by Jeremy Paxman to go with my dvds of the same name. Up With the Larks by Tessa Hainsworth I've had on my radar for some while, and where better to buy a book about Cornwall than in Cornwall... Scribble, Scribble, Scribble by Simon Scharma was, literally, a random grab from the essays section and is, of course, a book of essays on various random subjects.

So that's it. Thrilled with all my new books and they will be added to the mountainous tbr pile, but hopefully not to languish there *too* long.
~~~oOo~~~

Still here...

My life is all painting and decorating at the moment. Thankfully it's going well and the bedroom should be finished over the weekend, just in time for us to head off to Cornwall for a few days over my birthday. Can't wait to be honest. The Cornish coastline and Atlantic ocean are calling to me...

I'll have to decide which books to take of course. I don't think my current read, Living Dangerously by Katie Fforde, will last that long. It's a delicious romance and I'm absolutely gobbling it up. What I really love about it is that it's about grown-up people falling in love, with all the baggage that comes with being an adult, but still manages to be really funny. I'm also not completely immune to the fact that it's rather 'Pride and Prejudice' in its plot. In fact I completely love that facet of the book.

Katie Fforde has such a wonderful, funny way, with words and it sometimes makes me wonder if you can be as funny, writing in other languages. (Or have cryptic cross-words for that matter?) I suppose you can but it does seem to me that English is particularly well equipped for humour. I enjoy some of the Wondrous Words posts that pop up on my followers list on Wednesdays. Yvonne's from Fiction Books was a good one today and reminded me of the quote:

"English is a language that lurks in dark alleys, beats up other languages and rifles through their pockets for spare vocabulary."

I'm not sure who said it, or even if that's precisely what was said, but my goodness how true it is.

Happy reading. I'm going to spend a pleasant hour this afternoon choosing some books to take on my hols.
~~~oOo~~~

Not reading...

Well, I seem to have solved my problem by going back to the old interface. Which I had no idea you could do, but of course this is only a temporary solution. When Blogger switch permanently to the new one, I may be up the creek without a paddle... although I have downloaded Live Writer at Deslily's suggestion. Honestly. Why the heck can't things be left as they are?

Anyway. The title of this post is not quite correct. I have been reading - just not
at my normal speed. We're close to the end of yet another month and I have two books to show for it. I'd like to say it bothers me but actually it doesn't. Partly, the month has been a busy one - family staying at Easter, which somehow it seemed to take me longer to return to normal from than would usually be the case. Then we set about decorating one of the bedrooms and that's still ongoing, a long job because we're replacing the wallpaper and my husband is the sort that likes to do a thorough job with the painting etc. So, less time to read, and in the evening I haven't always felt that I wanted to pick up a book. Sometimes you just want to crash out in front of the TV - which can be a bit difficult at this time of year as the TV schedules are not what you might call 'wonderful'.

So, spurred on by our enjoyment of the Victorian paintings at Cardiff museum, I bought some dvds from 2009:




The Victorians - Their story in pictures, presented by Jeremy Paxman. For people outside the UK, Jeremy Paxman is most well known here as rather an abrasive TV journalist and interviewer, who never lets politicians off the hook. Oddly, his documentary style is rather different. Paxo (as he's commonly referred to in this country... it's a brand of stuffing used for stuffing poultry... LOL) is clearly smitten with his subject in this series. The use of paintings to illustrate Victorian life was totally inspired and Paxman's direct and humorous delivery of facts and opinions, not sparing any blushes when it came to embarrassing or difficult subjects, was just perfect. Everything was covered, from the Industrial Revolution, to home-life, sexual mores, the Victorian obsession with death, the after-life, fairies and so on, to Queen Victoria herself and touching on The Empire. I thought the whole series was stunning, the best £6.50 I've ever spent, and was incredibly sorry when we'd watched the last one, last night. It felt a bit odd because we'd also just finished watching Paxo's new 'Empire' series for the BBC, on the TV. The two series tie in so nicely together, they can be watched back to back... which what we did. I can only hope he has something new on the go and that we won't have too long to wait. For this do I happily pay my TV license.

So that's what I've been watching. Now books. Well, I've just finished this:




A Crown of Lights by Phil Rickamn. Which tied in very nicely with the
book I'm reading slowly with Susan from You Can never have too Many Books which is The Morville Hours by Katherine Swift:




You wouldn't think there was much of a similarity but there you would be wrong. Both books take place in the border areas between England and Wales. In the first it's the counties of Herefordshire, where the Rev. Merrily Watkins is the diocesan deliverance consultant, and Radnorshire in Wales. In the second it's the county of Shropshire, to the north of Herefordshire, where Katherine Swift was transforming the garden of Morville House in a secluded valley. I'm guessing there might be all of twenty miles between where one book is set and the other was actually happening. Both authors have the timeless, mysterious atmosphere of that entire region spot on.

Merrily has to deal with a charismatic vicar in a small secluded valley in
A Crown of Lights. Two satanists buy an old farmhouse with a
decommissioned church on the land, and plan to return the site to its pagan
roots. The local vicar is a man who believes in hardcore Christianity, a man
who exorcises demons from the local people in some indescribable ways... The
scene is set for a clash in an area where all kinds of worship go back
thousands of years. And it is this which also preoccupies Katherine Swift in
The Morville. Her valley is likewise timeless, a place where things
have been the same for countless years and probably will never change.

I came to Morville and found a home. I'm digging in. I travel in time now
rather than space, my expeditions only as far as the end of the garden.
Distance has nothing to do with remoteness. I am obsessed by roads, but
never go anywhere. I pour over maps but am rooted to the spot. I dream of
distant lands, but found one here, bounded by my own garden wall.

Connecting the two books is a very real sense of the supernatural, enhanced
and firmly rooted in the past. Again from The Morville Hours:

In winter, on the inside of one of the panes - always the same one - the
mist of condensation clears and then mists over again, every few seconds,
over and over - always in the same place, slightly below the middle, a
little towards the bottom - at about head-height: a regular pulse, starting
from the centre and spreading outwards, as if an exhalation of breath had
momentarily warmed the cold pane - as if someone were standing at the
window, as if all that remained of them were that warm breath and that
lingering gaze, looking out into the garden.

Stunning. I've never come across writing like it to be honest. And Merrily
Watkins continues to enthrall. My daughter told me that the books get better
and better and she was so right.

So, what to read next. Weirdly, I've a mind to read something completely different. I came across a review for a Katie Fforde book on The Book Jotter - Living Dangerously. I can't explain it but sometimes you read about a book and know that you have to read it *now*. So I nabbed it for my Kindle and that will probably be my next read... along with The Morville Hours of course.

Happy reading, whether you're whizzing through books, or like me, not getting through very many at all but loving what you are reading regardless.
~~~oOo~~~

The Bookman

My reading is going a bit slowly this month, what with Easter and family visiting and so on. I have finished my first book of the month though, at last, and it's my second read for Carl's Once Upon a Time VI challenge - The Bookman by Lavie Tidhar.



It's the reign of Queen Victoria but not the Queen Victoria we know. The world has been taken over by a race of lizards from an alien planet and they now rule over most of the countries of the world, including England. Queen Victoria is a lizard.

Orphan is, as his name suggests, an orphan. He knows only that his father was a sailor of some kind, but knows nothing about his mother or her family. He lives in London, in a bookshop, with Jack, a close friend. The love of his life is Lucy, and when she is killed in a bomb attack on the Mars probe, Orphan's life falls to pieces. He is himself attacked but does not know why. Arriving back at the bookshop he discovers that Jack is not what he thought and, after a catastrophic event, goes on the run. He realises The Bookman is after him. The Bookman is a very mysterious figure who is commiting terrorist attacks and, Orphan suspects, is the one responsible for Lucy's death.

When The Bookman captures Orphan he gives him no choice but to go on a mission to a mysterious island known as Caliban which, it's rumoured, is where the lizards first landed and came from. The promise is that if he does this, Lucy will be returned to him. Orphan sets off on a voyage with Jules Verne and a rum looking bunch of sailors, having no idea what is store for him, or whether he will ever see London again.

I'm developing a bit of a taste for steampunk with its dark, Victorian settings and weird mechanical elements such as automatons or flying machines. The Bookman is pure steampunk and I felt I should have loved it a lot more than I actually did. The silly thing is, I can't really decide why I didn't love it. I suppose it didn't help that I was unable to read it all in one go, over a couple or three days. I was busy, so it took me over a week to read and it may have been that that made the plot feel bitty. At times I felt confused about what was going on and that's a shame as this is in fact quite a readable book. There is adventure a plenty, the main character, Orphan, is a likeable young man, and the various settings - Victorian London, the high seas, the island, are well described and easy for the reader to imagine.

There are also many literary characters which make the book fun and interesting. Mrs. Isabella Beeton is a spy character, Jules Verne, a French poet and adventurer, Irene Adler, a police inspector, Moriarty is England's Prime Minister, Sherlock Holmes makes a couple of very brief appearances and his brother, Mycroft, is also alluded to. It's fun - if a bit bizarre - but somehow it all lacked a bit of depth for me. The Bookman could have been a chillingly frightening character but he was just short of that. I wanted to know a *lot* more about these lizards, as I thought there was real potential for fear there, but there was precious little detail. It's a huge shame as there was certainly no lack of imagination in the book. Perhaps the author attempted too much, I don't know. There are two subsequent books in the series and it's possible that a lot more will be explained in those. At the moment I'm not sure if I will read them, if I do they'll come from the library I suspect.
~~~oOo~~~

Easter

I have family staying at the moment so online time is limited. But I just wanted to pop in here and wish everyone a Happy Easter. Hope your weekend is exactly what you want it to be. I'm having fun with the grandkids, playing loads of Scrabble, and eating too many hot-cross buns!




And so our mothers and grandmothers have, more often than not anonymously, handed on the creative spark, the seed of the flower they themselves never hoped to see - or like a sealed letter they could not plainly read.
Alice Walker