we have made it to the end of another year!!! And that means another year of trying to tame our TBR piles has passed, and maybe we’ll have better luck next year!!!
But it’s been another great year of reading although I haven’t done as well as previous years! But I’m not complaining as I still reached my GoodReads target and managed to finish 207 books so I’m very happy with that! It has made very little impact on the TBR mountain though so we need to go for more in 2023!!
And it’s bought a lot of great books in to my life, far too many to mention! But there have been a few that have stuck out so here’s the most memorable! In no particular order!!
Hello! Happy Saturday!! And happy last day of 2022!! Where did it all go?! I’m glad to see the back of it to be honest, and just hope 2023 brings happier days!
So it’s been bit quiet on the reading front this week, but hope to get back on it next year! Just 2 books finished this week, and I’ll save my haul for a separate post as Santa & Gift vouchers has resulted in a bumper book pile!!
It’s that time of year!! Add more books to the overcrowded bookshelves and feel completely guilt free about it!! Because Santa – and the book tokens I got as gifts – made me do it! So it’s their fault!!
This little pile was from Santa on Xmas Morning!
THE JOURNEY by JAMES NORBURY
The journey of Big Panda and Tiny Dragon continues with an inspiring story of friendship and discovery for readers of all ages.
In the eagerly anticipated follow up to the international bestseller, The Journey: Big Panda and Tiny Dragon continues the adventures of two unlikely traveling companions as they embark on a path that brings them farther from home, and closer to each other and themselves.
“Change,” said Big Panda. “even if you don’t know where it will lead, is better than stagnation.”
When Tiny Dragon feels unhappy, he confides in Big Panda, who leads his friend on a journey to heal his heart. They explore new lands, encounter extraordinary experiences, face demanding challenges, and, ultimately, find contentment. As Big Panda and Tiny Dragon trek further on their trail of acceptance, they learn that changes and challenges are a natural part of life and essential for growth.
SHIVER by JUNJO ITO
A best-of story selection by the master of horror manga.
This volume includes nine of Junji Ito’s best short stories, as selected by the author himself and presented with accompanying notes and commentary. An arm peppered with tiny holes dangles from a sick girl’s window… After an idol hangs herself, balloons bearing faces appear in the sky, some even featuring your own face… An amateur film crew hires an extremely individualistic fashion model and faces a real bloody ending… An offering of nine fresh nightmares for the delight of horror fans.
THE NIGHT SHIP by JESS KIDD (already read but wanted a copy on my shelves!)
Based on a true story, an epic historical novel from the award-winning author of Things in Jars that illuminates the lives of two characters: a girl shipwrecked on an island off Western Australia and, three hundred years later, a boy finding a home with his grandfather on the very same island.
1629: A newly orphaned young girl named Mayken is bound for the Dutch East Indies on the Batavia, one of the greatest ships of the Dutch Golden Age. Curious and mischievous, Mayken spends the long journey going on misadventures above and below the deck, searching for a mythical monster. But the true monsters might be closer than she thinks.
1989: A lonely boy named Gil is sent to live off the coast of Western Australia among the seasonal fishing community where his late mother once resided. There, on the tiny reef-shrouded island, he discovers the story of an infamous shipwreck…
CAT LADY by DAWN O’PORTER
We’ve all known a cat lady – and we’ve probably all judged her too. But behind the label – the one that only sticks to women – what if there’s a story worth nine lives?
Told with Dawn’s trademark warmth, wit and irreverence, CAT LADY is a story about defying labels and forging friendships. It’s for the cat lady in all of us – because a woman always lands on her feet . . .
THE SATSUMA COMPLEX by BOB MORTIMER
‘My name is Gary. I’m a thirty-year-old legal assistant with a firm of solicitors in London. To describe me as anonymous would be unfair but to notice me other than in passing would be a rarity. I did make a good connection with a girl, but that blew up in my face and smacked my arse with a fish slice.’
Gary Thorn goes for a pint with a work acquaintance called Brendan. When Brendan leaves early, Gary meets a girl in the pub. He doesn’t catch her name, but falls for her anyway. When she suddenly disappears without saying goodbye, all Gary has to remember her by is the book she was reading: The Satsuma Complex. But when Brendan goes missing, Gary needs to track down the girl he now calls Satsuma to get some answers.
And so begins Gary’s quest, through the estates and pie shops of South London, to finally bring some love and excitement into his unremarkable life…
And then there was the Waterstones half price sale! And book vouchers made me have a little spend up – all for free! Yay!!
ANXIOUS PEOPLE by FREDRIK BACKMAN
Viewing an apartment normally doesn’t turn into a life-or-death situation, but this particular open house becomes just that when a failed bank robber bursts in and takes everyone in the apartment hostage. As the pressure mounts, the eight strangers begin slowly opening up to one another and reveal long-hidden truths.
First is Zara, a wealthy bank director who has been too busy to care about anyone else until tragedy changed her life. Now, she’s obsessed with visiting open houses to see how ordinary people live—and, perhaps, to set an old wrong to right. Then there’s Roger and Anna-Lena, an Ikea-addicted retired couple who are on a never-ending hunt for fixer-uppers to hide the fact that they don’t know how to fix their own failing marriage. Julia and Ro are a young lesbian couple and soon-to-be parents who are nervous about their chances for a successful life together since they can’t agree on anything. And there’s Estelle, an eighty-year-old woman who has lived long enough to be unimpressed by a masked bank robber waving a gun in her face. And despite the story she tells them all, Estelle hasn’t really come to the apartment to view it for her daughter, and her husband really isn’t outside parking the car.
As police surround the premises and television channels broadcast the hostage situation live, the tension mounts and even deeper secrets are slowly revealed. Before long, the robber must decide which is the more terrifying prospect: going out to face the police, or staying in the apartment with this group of impossible people.
THE BEAUTIFUL ONES by SILVIA MORENO-GARCIA
They are the Beautiful Ones, Loisail’s most notable socialites, and this spring is Nina’s chance to join their ranks, courtesy of her well-connected cousin and his calculating wife. But the Grand Season has just begun, and already Nina’s debut has gone disastrously awry. She has always struggled to control her telekinesis—neighbors call her the Witch of Oldhouse—and the haphazard manifestations of her powers make her the subject of malicious gossip.
When entertainer Hector Auvray arrives to town, Nina is dazzled. A telekinetic like her, he has traveled the world performing his talents for admiring audiences. He sees Nina not as a witch, but ripe with potential to master her power under his tutelage. With Hector’s help, Nina’s talent blossoms, as does her love for him.
But great romances are for fairytales, and Hector is hiding a truth from Nina—and himself—that threatens to end their courtship before it truly begins. The Beautiful Ones is a charming tale of love and betrayal, and the struggle between conformity and passion, set in a world where scandal is a razor-sharp weapon.
AND EVER MORNING THE WAY HOME GETS LONGER AND LONGER by FREDRIK BACKMAN
From the New York Times bestselling author of A Man Called Ove, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry, and Britt-Marie Was Here comes an exquisitely moving portrait of an elderly man’s struggle to hold on to his most precious memories, and his family’s efforts to care for him even as they must find a way to let go.
With all the same charm of his bestselling full-length novels, here Fredrik Backman once again reveals his unrivaled understanding of human nature and deep compassion for people in difficult circumstances. This is a tiny gem with a message you’ll treasure for a lifetime.
I WHO HAVE NEVER KNOWN MEN by JACQUELINE HARPMAN
‘For a very long time, the days went by, each just like the day before, then I began to think, and everything changed’
Deep underground, thirty-nine women live imprisoned in a cage. Watched over by guards, the women have no memory of how they got there, no notion of time, and only vague recollection of their lives before.
As the burn of electric light merges day into night and numberless years pass, a young girl – the fortieth prisoner – sits alone and outcast in the corner. Soon she will show herself to be the key to the others’ escape and survival in the strange world that awaits them above ground.
THE BEAUTY OF THE DEATH CAP by CATHERINE DOUSTEYSSIER-KHOZE
Nikonor is an eccentric and scholarly snob, a mycomaniac who has just made it to the Château de la Charlanne where he spent his childhood in the company of his twin sister, Anastasie. After all these years, it is not quite clear what brings him back to la Charlanne–an isolated and somewhat derelict castle located in the heart of the French countryside–but he is keen to share various memories with the reader in order to ‘set the record straight’, while he delivers his opinions on literature, cheeses, and, especially, mushrooms.
Winner of both a Prix André Dubreuil and a Prix Fondation Prince Pierre de Monaco upon its original publication in France, The Beauty of the Death Cap is a darkly comic and sinister novel, a work that, page by page, becomes ever more disturbing, as we try to discover who Nikonor really is.
NIGHT TRAIN TO THE STARS by KENJI MIYAZAWA
Japanese fairy tales – enchanting, enigmatic stories of animals, human beings and the great natural world.
Dark and innocent, sublime and whimsical, Miyazawa’s stories have the ageless feel of the best fairy tales. There are animal allegories such as ‘The Ungrateful Rat’ where a rude rodent insults all the objects he meets – until he meets the Rat Trap/ There are morality tales such as ‘The Restaurant of Many Orders’, where two hunters become the hunted. There are also transcendent stories of childhood and mortality like Miyazawa’s best-known ‘Night Train to the Stars’, where a magical steam train carries children through the night and up to the heavens.
These stories reveal the unique brilliance of one of Japan’s most beloved early twentieth-century writers.
THE PERFECT GOLDEN CIRCLE by BENJAMIN MYERS
Summer 1989, rural England, the tail end of long decade of mass unemployment, class war and rebellion, and the continued destruction of the English countryside. Over the course of a burning hot summer, two very different men – traumatized ex-soldier Calvert, and affable and chaotic Redbone – set out nightly in a decrepit camper van to undertake an extraordinary project. Under cover of darkness, the two men traverse the fields of rural England in secret, forming crop circles in elaborate and mysterious patterns, designs so intricate that they inspire the kind of awe that the ancient Gothic cathedral in nearby Salisbury once inspired.
As the summer wears on, and their designs grow ever more ambitious, the two men find that their work has become a cult international sensation – and that an unlikely and beautiful friendship has taken root as the wheat ripens from green to gold.
But as harvest-time beckons — and as media and the authorities begin to take too much interest in their work– Calvert and Redbone have to race against time to finish the most stunning and original crop circle ever conceived: the Honeycomb Double Helix.
ONCE UPON A TOME by OLIVER DARKSHIRE
Welcome to Sotheran’s, one of the oldest bookshops in the world, with its weird and wonderful clientele, suspicious cupboards, unlabelled keys, poisoned books and some things that aren’t even books, presided over by one deeply eccentric apprentice.
Some years ago, Oliver Darkshire stepped into the hushed interior of Henry Sotheran Ltd on Sackville Street (est. 1761) to interview for their bookselling apprenticeship, a decision which has bedevilled him ever since.
He’d intended to stay for a year before launching into some less dusty, better remunerated career. Unfortunately for him, the alluring smell of old books and the temptation of a management-approved afternoon nap proved irresistible. Soon he was balancing teetering stacks of first editions, fending off nonagenarian widows with a ten-foot pole and trying not to upset the store’s resident ghost (the late Mr Sotheran had unfinished business when he was hit by that tram).
For while Sotheran’s might be a treasure trove of literary delights, it sings a siren song to eccentrics. There are not only colleagues whose tastes in rare items range from the inspired to the mildly dangerous, but also zealous collectors seeking knowledge, curios, or simply someone with whom to hold a four hour conversation about books bound in human skin.
By turns unhinged and earnestly dog-eared, Once Upon a Tome is the rather colourful story of life in one of the world’s oldest bookshops and a love letter to the benign, unruly world of antiquarian bookselling, where to be uncommon or strange is the best possible compliment.
LEGENDS AND LATTES by TRAVIS BALDREE
Worn out after decades of packing steel and raising hell, Viv the orc barbarian cashes out of the warrior’s life with one final score. A forgotten legend, a fabled artifact, and an unreasonable amount of hope lead her to the streets of Thune, where she plans to open the first coffee shop the city has ever seen.
However, her dreams of a fresh start pulling shots instead of swinging swords are hardly a sure bet. Old frenemies and Thune’s shady underbelly may just upset her plans. To finally build something that will last, Viv will need some new partners and a different kind of resolve.
A hot cup of fantasy slice-of-life with a dollop of romantic froth.
THE WINNERS by FREDRIK BACKMAN (already read but wanted a copy on my shelves!)
Two years have passed since the events that no one wants to think about. Everyone has tried to move on, but there’s something about this place that prevents it. The residents continue to grapple with life’s big questions: What is a family? What is a community? And what, if anything, are we willing to sacrifice in order to protect them?
As the locals of Beartown struggle to overcome the past, great change is on the horizon. Someone is coming home after a long time away. Someone will be laid to rest. Someone will fall in love, someone will try to fix their marriage, and someone will do anything to save their children. Someone will submit to hate, someone will fight, and someone will grab a gun and walk towards the ice rink.
So what are the residents of Beartown willing to sacrifice for their home?
WILD by AMY JEFFS
Sheer cliffs, salt spray, explosive sea spume, thunderous clouds, icy waves, whales with mountains on their backs, sleet, bitter winds, bleak, impenetrable marshes, howling wolves, forests, the unceasing cries of birds and the death grip of subterranean vaults that have never seen the sun: these are wild landscapes of a world almost familiar.
In Wild, Amy Jeffs journeys – on foot and through medieval texts – from landscapes of desolation to hope, offering the reader an insight into a world at once distant and profoundly close to home. The seven chapters, entitled Earth, Fen, Forest, Beast, Ocean, Catastrophe, Paradise, open with fiction and close with reflection. They blend reflections of travels through fen, forest and cave, with retelling of medieval texts that offer rich depictions of the natural world, from the Old English elegies, the Welsh Englynion, the Norse poetic Edda – stories that largely represent figures whose voices are not generally heard in the corpus of medieval literature: women, outcasts, animals.
Illustrated with original wood engravings, evoking an atmospheric world of whales, wolves, caves, cuckoos and reeds, Wild will leave readers feeling ‘westendream’: delight in the wilderness.
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Very happy with that little lot!! Now to find room for them all!!
Hello! Merry Christmas Eve!! Hope you’ve got the treats out ready for Santa when he drops off all your bookish gifts in the morning!! I have!! Just hope he got my list!!
And talking of books, it’s been a good bookish week as I’ve been trying to catch up on some unfinished books to clear the backlog! So 6 books got finished this week, 4 new books arrived in the post – so it’s all go on the book front! Isn’t it always?! But 0 on the Netgalley front so that’s good!
Had a little spend up at Galley Beggar Press and got a lovely Tote bag as a free extra! Ooh I do love a Tote!
INSIGNIFICANCE by JAMES CLAMMER
JOSEPH is trying to focus on a plumbing job he is doing for his wife’s friend, but is distracted by the terrible things that have been happening within his family.
Joseph believes that his son has tried to kill his wife.
Joseph is afraid his son will try again.
Joseph is also terrified that his wife is going to leave him. And that he himself may not get through the day.
Insignificance, James Clammer’s first novel for adults, unfurls over the course of a single day. Placing the reader right inside the head of its struggling narrator, it works double time, both as an act of empathy – a taste of the uncertainty and awkwardness of one vulnerable man, and his relationship with the world – and also as a tense, emotional and gripping drama.
Exploring the burdens of mental health as well as family life, as well as a particular illness called Capgras Syndrome (a condition in which someone comes to believe that a person close to them has been replaced by an imposter) – Insignificance is a deeply human story, a novel that portrays the thoughts of one working man on his own terms, without artifice or condescension… and a novel that takes us ever closer to the edge.
AFTER SAPPHO by SELBY WYNN SCHWARTZ
“What did we want? To begin with, we wanted what half the population had got by just being born.”
IT’S 1895. Amid laundry and bruises, Rina Pierangeli Faccio gives birth to the child of the man who raped her – and who she has also been forced to marry. Unbroken, she determines to change her name; and her life, alongside it.
1902. Romaine Brooks sails for Capri. She has barely enough money for the ferry, nothing for lunch; her paintbrushes are bald and clotted… But she is sure she can sell a painting – and is fervent in her belief that the island is detached from all fates she has previously suffered.
… In 1923, Virginia Woolf writes: I want to make life fuller – and fuller.
Told in a series of cascading vignettes, featuring a multitude of voices, After Sappho is Selby Wynn Schwartz’s joyous reimagining of the lives of a brilliant group of feminists, sapphists, artists and writers in the late 19th and early 20th century as they battle for control over their lives; for liberation and for justice.
Sarah Bernhard – Colette – Eleanora Duse – Lina Poletti – Josephine Baker – Virginia Woolf… these are just a few of the women (some famous, others hitherto unsung) sharing the pages of a novel as fierce as it is luminous. Lush and poetic; furious and funny; in After Sappho, Selby Wynn Schwartz has created a novel that celebrates the women and trailblazers of the past – and also offers hope for our present, and our futures.
ENGLISH MAGIC by USCHI GATWARD
English Magic moves through fields and parklands, urban estates and empty beaches, upmarket art galleries, scuffed corner shops. It lands at Heathrow Airport, takes a taxi to the suburbs, finds emptiness and oppression. It strikes out for the countryside on May Day to where there are maypoles and fire blazing haybales, and where blessings sound like threats. It takes a train to the sea. The rain powers down. The beach is damp. Balloons pop. It in a flat, drags itself out of half sleep… and there something tapping behind the gas fire. Scraping and flurrying. What is it? In her debut collection of short stories, the prize winning author Uschi Gatward takes us on a tour of an England simultaneously domestic and wild, familiar and strange, real and imagined. Coupling the past and the present, merging the surreal and the mundane, English Magic is a collection full of humour and warmth, subversion and intoxication a and announcing the arrival of a shining new talent.
THE PERCEPTION OF DOLLS by ANTHONY CROIX
And from Fahrenheit Press Book Subscription is this newbie
“It’s almost as if history is trying to erase the whole affair.” – Anthony Croix
The triple murder and failed suicide that took place at 37 Fantoccini Street in 2001, raised little media interest at the time. In a week heavy with global news, a ‘domestic tragedy’ warranted few column inches. The case was open and shut, the inquest was brief and the ‘Doll Murders’ – little more than a footnote in the ledgers of Britain’s true crime enthusiasts – were largely forgotten.
Nevertheless, investigations were made, police files generated, testimonies recorded, and conclusions reached. The reports are there, a matter of public record, for those with a mind to look.
The details of what took place in Fantoccini Street in the years that followed are less accessible. The people involved in the field trips to number 37 are often unwilling, or unable, to talk about what they witnessed. The hours of audio recordings, video tapes, written accounts, photographs, drawings, and even online postings are elusive, almost furtive.
In fact, were it not for a chance encounter between the late Anthony Croix and an obsessive collector of Gothic dolls, the Fantoccini Street Reports might well have been lost forever.
Hello! Happy Saturday!! It’s been the week we had some snow! And it’s been blooming freezing!! Hopefully warmer days are on the way now!!
On the book front it’s been fairly steady! Just 2 books finished – I need to pick the pace up again! – and 4 newbies added to the Netgalley shelves! Maybe 2023 is the year I get to clear my NG shelves… yeah right!!
Too many lovely books on Netgalley for me to add this week!
A MARRIAGE OF FORTUNE by ANNE O’BRIEN
publication date – January 2023
England, 1469. As the War of the Roses rages on, Margaret Paston knows that there is only one way to survive the loss of the Paston’s family seat, Caister Castle: a fortunate marriage for one of her unruly daughters. A favourable match will change the future of her family overnight but a scandal will ruin the Paston name forever…
INK BLOOD SISTER SCRIBE by EMMA TORZS
publication date – July 2023
Joanna Kalotay lives alone in the woods of Vermont, the sole protector of a collection of rare books; books that will allow someone to walk through walls or turn water into wine. Books of magic.
Her estranged older sister Esther moves between countries and jobs, constantly changing, never staying anywhere longer than a year, desperate to avoid the deadly magic that killed her mother. Currently working on a research base in Antarctica, she has found love and perhaps a sort of happiness.
But when she finds spots of blood on the mirrors in the research base, she knows someone is coming for her, and that Joanna and her collection are in danger.
If they are to survive, she and Joanna must unravel the secrets their parents kept hidden from them – secrets that span centuries and continents, and could cost them their lives
THE CASSANDRA COMPLEX by HOLLY SMALE
publication date – May 2023
Cassandra Penelope Dankworth is a creature of habit.She likes what she likes (museums, jumpsuits, her boyfriend Will) and strongly dislikes what she doesn’t (mess, change, her boss drinking out of her mug). Her life runs in a pleasing, predictable order. Until now.She’s just been dumped. She’s just been fired. Her local café has run out of banana muffins.Then, something truly unexpected happens: Cassie discovers she can go back and change the past.Now, Cassie should be able to find a way to fix the life she accidentally obliterated. And with time on her side, how hard can it be…?
IN A THOUSAND DIFFERENT WAYS by CECILIA AHERN
publication date – April 2023
Alice sees the worst in people.
She also sees the best. She sees a thousand different emotions and knows exactly what everyone around her is feeling. Every. Single. Day.
But it’s the dark thoughts. The sadness. The rage. These are the things she can’t get out of her head. The things that overwhelm her.
Does a dating App hold the key to the recent mysterious disappearances of several women from a leafy suburb.
Women are vanishing in the town of Applehurst. The police have one lead.
All the women met with a man on Tinder.
When the body of one of the missing women is found, The Police face a race against time to locate the remaining women before they come to further harm.
Can DI Vincent Sullivan and DS Josephine Jenkins unravel the mystery before the killer kills again?
Bad Blood is the new crime thriller from the bestselling author of Guilty
This is Book 2 in the DI Vincent series, but my first and definitely won’t be my last! The shocking opening had me hooked straight away, and the author has done a great job at exploring the world of online dating and delving into the darker side of human behaviour.
When women start going missing after going on Tinder dates, the police, and families, are left to wonder just what is going on. This starts off a game of action and suspense in every chapter as the story cleverly switches from the normality of daily life goings on giving you a glimpse behind various characters, to the POV from the main investigators – DI Vincent and DS Josephine Jenkins. I loved how these 2 characters worked so well with one another, from their banter to their way of going around trying to find out what is really going on.
As more bodies keep appearing the twists and turns ramp up, and I found myself getting suspicious about everyone at some points as you’re left thinking one way one minute, and another the next!! It really is cleverly written and it just keeps you guessing throughout.
There are many different threads to the story which help keep the interest in all the characters but it never becomes too overwhelming with the different POV’s. It just keeps the story flowing nicely as there’s always a new angle to explore, or new pieces of evidence shedding light on the latest investigation. And with the world of online dating now more prevalent it really gives the reader more connection – and scare them off going on a dating app EVER again!!!
I also found the attention to detail spot on as it gives you a greater vision of the settings and the nuances of each character, which made it much easier to connect with and want to know more about them all. The tension was always there and it was really cleverly executed!! Highly recommend!
★★★★★
Many thanks to the author, Sadie Ryan, for the gifted e-copy of the book in return for a fair and honest review.
Hello! Happy Saturday!! Boy it’s chilly!! Finally we get blue skies and frosty gardens!! no snow… yet!!
And the cold seems to have slowed down my reading speed! Only 2 books finished this week and a slight lack of apathy about what to pick up next to read! There has been 1 new addition to my Netgalley shelves, and also a couple of real books thanks to book subscriptions I have!
Determined to overcome a family tragedy, Elle Cassidy decides to reopen her late mother’s ailing newsagent as a stationery shop in the quiet Scottish town of Fir Haven.
But when the arrogant yet handsome crime writer Dexter Grayling almost runs over Elle in his beast of a sports car, the town is thrown into a tailspin – especially when Dexter claims that local resident Linda Carlucci has put a curse on him and he is no longer able to write.
Can Elle put aside her dislike for the self-absorbed writer and help Dexter uncover what is really going on with the Carlucci family? And in the process will Elle realise that there’s a lot more to her beloved Fir Haven than she first thought…
And on the Subscription Book front I have these….
HISTORY.A MESS by SIGRUN PALSDOTTIR
Peirene Press
publication date – 2023
A young PhD student has spent six long months transcribing the diary of the seventeenth-century artist ‘S.B.’. Then, hidden between mundane descriptions of the artists’ daily routine, she makes a profound discovery: a single passage revealing that S.B. is a woman. Believing she has identified the first professional female artist in Britain, she maps out her entire thesis, right down to the dedication. Fizzing with ideas she sees her career, and her life, blossoming in front of her. However, she has made a simple mistake – one that she won’t acknowledge until it’s far too late to turn back. As she goes to ever greater lengths to protect her work from the truth, she begins to lose her grip on her thesis, her life and then her sanity. What follows is a remarkable exploration of intellectual integrity and denial, and a poignant, funny portrait of academic ambition.
And from Renard Press..
INSIDE THE WHALE by GEORGE ORWELL
George Orwell set out ‘to make political writing into an art’, and to a wide extent this aim shaped the future of English literature – his descriptions of authoritarian regimes helped to form a new vocabulary that is fundamental to understanding totalitarianism. While 1984 and Animal Farm are amongst the most popular classic novels in the English language, this new series of Orwell’s essays seeks to bring a wider selection of his writing on politics and literature to a new readership.
Inside the Whale, the eighth in the Orwell’s Essays series, discusses Henry Miller’s controversial Tropic of Cancer, and considers the driving power behind the great books of the 1930s. Comparing Miller with other literary giants, Orwell lambasts the notion that all literature is good, forcing the reader to think for themselves, with his final words ringing in their ears: ‘five thousand novels are published in England every year and four thousand nine hundred of them are tripe.’
ON READING by GEORGE ORWELL
George Orwell set out ‘to make political writing into an art’, and to a wide extent this aim shaped the future of English literature – his descriptions of authoritarian regimes helped to form a new vocabulary that is fundamental to understanding totalitarianism. While 1984 and Animal Farm are amongst the most popular classic novels in the English language, this new series of Orwell’s essays seeks to bring a wider selection of his writing on politics and literature to a new readership.
On Reading, the seventh in the Orwell’s Essays series, collects together Orwell’s short essays on books – ‘Bookshop Memories’, ‘Good Bad Books’, ‘Nonsense Poetry’, ‘Books vs. Cigarettes’ and ‘Confessions of a Book Reviewer’ – giving a rounded view of the great writer’s opinions on the literature of his day, and the vessels in which it was sold.
Delighted to be joining you today for my stop on the Blog Tour for the wonderful CLARA’S CHRISTMAS MAGIC by ROSIE GREEN!
My thanks to the author, publisher and Rachel of Rachel’s Random Resources for putting the tour together and letting me be part of it all!!
Clara’s Christmas Magic
The festive season is fast approaching but with the challenges facing Clara, it looks like being anything but the most wonderful time of the year. Can she somehow find the strength to meet those challenges head-on and find her way to the perfect, happy-ever-after Christmas?
Rosie’s series of novellas is centred around life in a country village cafe. ‘Clara’s Christmas Magic’ is Book 3 in a trilogy about Clara. It would make for the best reading experience if you caught up with the others first: Book 1, ‘Clara’s Secret Garden’ and Book 2 in the trio, ‘A Winter Wish’.
This is the 3rd in the Clara trilogy and just a wonderful wrap up to a fabulous story for such a likeable character!! It can even be read as a standalone, but it’s even better to watch things develop from the start of this trilogy!!
As part of the Little Duck Pond series, I always love to reconnect with these characters, and with this trilogy Clara has become a firm favourite of mine. You’re always cheering her on and wanting that happy ending, as she’s always doing so much for everyone else.
This story sees her taking a trip to New York, with the always lovely Rory!, to try and track down a long lost relative. She’s very hesistant to get involved with so much going on back home, but knows this will be the perfect tonic for her much loved Gran, so no stone is left unturned in their quest to find her.
Wonderful settings, lots of drama going on in the UK and the US and all the situations faced are ones that you can just imagine yourself having to deal with, I loved this installment. Allowing Clara to tell her story over these 3 books has been a wonderful way to connect more with her and I loved every minute of it!!
It always a delight to host a guest post on a publication day, so it’s fabulous to share with you today a post by JULIET ARCHER to celebrate Publication Day for the fabulous HOPE, MISTLETOE AND A CHRISTMAS PROMISE!!
Over to you Juliet….
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RELEASE DAY POST: Hope Mistletoe and a Christmas Promise by Juliet Archer
It’s wonderful to be here on publication day – thank you for inviting me, Karen!
My new novel, Hope, Mistletoe and a Christmas Promise, has a few firsts going for it. It’s my first ever Christmas book, my first story with Hong Kong as a setting, and the first time a little girl features as one of my main characters. How are these firsts connected? Just read on to find out!
Have you ever made a Christmas promise – or compromise? Because Christmas is the time of year when many of us do what we feel is expected of us, willingly or unwillingly. That can become more challenging if our situation changes. When I started writing Pip and Ryan’s story, I thought about the sort of Christmas they were each facing because of their altered circumstances.
For a long time now, I’ve wanted to set a story in Hong Kong. My husband spent the first eleven years of his life in Kowloon, and I felt as though I knew the place – or his version of it – even before we went there in 2018 and 2019. For me, Hong Kong embodies the ultimate East-West culture clash – an idea that inspired Pip and Ryan’s first meeting at the airport.
Finally, to unsettle our romantic leads even more, I decided to introduce a child’s view of Christmas – which brings us back to promises and compromises, doesn’t it?
At its heart, this is a story about two people discovering the real meaning of Christmas, aided and abetted by a six-year-old.
I hope you enjoy it – and Happy Christmas to you all!
Pip Smith knows she owes it to her family to hold on to the festive traditions that have been a comfort since the year everything changed – but this Christmas she’s going to need a miracle to keep everyone in her life happy.
After she’s dumped by her fiancé, an invitation to visit a friend in Hong Kong in the run-up to the festive season seems to offer Pip the perfect escape – and she’ll be home for Christmas, of course. Except her escape ends up becoming far more complex than she intended, when she becomes involved with arrogant American Ryan Hawke and his niece, Shelby – a little girl whose most heartfelt Christmas wish is for a proper family.
Will Pip keep her Christmas promise – or will it be more of a compromise, with the help of a little hope and mistletoe?
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About the Author:
Juliet Archer writes award-winning romantic comedy for Choc Lit and Ruby Fiction. She has been known to spend many happy hours matching irresistible heroes with their equally irresistible chocolate counterparts – watch out for the dark nutty ones!
Her debut novel, The Importance of Being Emma, won the Big Red Read Book of the Year 2011 Fiction Award and was shortlisted for the 2009 Melissa Nathan Award for Comedy Romance. Her second novel, Persuade Me, was shortlisted for the 2011 Festival of Romance Best Romantic Read Award.
Juliet was born and bred in North-East England and now lives in Hertfordshire. Her non-writing career has spanned IT, acquisitions analysis, copy editing, marketing and project management, providing plenty of first-hand research for her novels.
Hello and Happy December!! The shops are full on festive now, the radio stations are full of Christmas songs – I bailed out of Whamageddon 2022 on Day 1 thanks to a cafe I was visiting playing Last Christmas as I walked in 😢 – and I still can’t get in the festive mood!! But I do have advent calendars so that’s a positive!!
On to books – and it’s been another successful week with 5 books finished! And only 1 new Netgalley addition so yay me!!
THE MINISCULE MANSION OF MYRA MALONE by AUDREY BURGES
publication date – January 2023
A woman learns to expand the boundaries of her small world and let love inside it in this sparkling and unforgettable novel by Audrey Burges.
From her attic in the Arizona mountains, thirty-four-year-old Myra Malone blogs about a dollhouse mansion that captivates thousands of readers worldwide. Myra’s stories have created legions of fans who breathlessly await every blog post, trade photographs of Mansion-modeled rooms, and swap theories about the enigmatic and reclusive author. Myra herself is tethered to the Mansion by mysteries she can’t understand—rooms that appear and disappear overnight, music that plays in its corridors.
Across the country, Alex Rakes, the scion of a custom furniture business, encounters two Mansion fans trying to recreate a room. The pair show him the Minuscule Mansion, and Alex is shocked to recognize a reflection of his own life mirrored back to him in minute scale. The room is his own bedroom, and the Mansion is his family’s home, handed down from the grandmother who disappeared mysteriously when Alex was a child. Searching for answers, Alex begins corresponding with Myra. Together, the two unwind the lonely paths of their twin worlds—big and small—and trace the stories that entwine them, setting the stage for a meeting rooted in loss, but defined by love.
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Books and Me! 
