Skip to main content

Sunday Salon and some giveaway winners


Is it really Sunday again? Hard to believe that another week has flown by. It’s a quiet day today, but my dad has football going full-force, and my parents are celebrating their 34th anniversary today!

In reading, this week I’ve completed:
The King’s Mistress, by Emma Campion
The Lady Queen, by Nancy Goldstone

Currently I’m struggling through AS Byatt’s new book, coming out at the beginning of next month:The Children's Book. It’s very hard to connect with any of the characters, plus the author describes every. Single. Little. Thing. I really want to like AS Byatt’s books (I’m the only person I’ve ever met who was lukewarm about Possession), but I find it very hard to like them. Do you have an author like that, where you keep reading their work, hoping to like them—but just not?

Also, I forgot to choose winners for my two-week-old context for Michelle Moran’s Cleopatra’s Daughter… so they are:

Irene Yeates
Scapettajunkie
Melissa at Shhh I’m Reading

Please e-mail me with your mailing addresses, and I’ll get the books out to you right away. Coming up this week I have some reviews scheduled, plus I'll have another giveaway (and I promise I won't be such a flake about it!

Comments

Kristen M. said…
You're not the only one ... I didn't even get through a quarter of Possession before I gave up. I just didn't feel that it had any rhythm to it. I may try it again in the future but then I may not. And it kind of turned me off to Byatt altogether.
Marg said…
I haven't even tried. It doesn't really even interest me that much despite the rave reviews that the book seems to get all the time.
Anonymous said…
Actually, I'm with you on Possession. My entire book club felt pretty lukewarm about it. We appreciated it more once we discussed it and dug a bit deeper into the book, but I'm still not feeling compelled to pick up another Byatt book.
Susan said…
I started Possession in the spring, and i still haven't finished it! I enjoyed the student university rivalry, but I know what you mean about her characters seeming distant and cold - that's my problem with Possession, too. I'm halfway through, and reading it mostly because this part is set in Yorkshire, where I lived for a year! The story is interesting, but it takes so LONG to get anywhere.

Popular posts from this blog

Another giveaway

This time, the publicist at WW Norton sent me two copies of The Glass of Time , by Michael Cox--so I'm giving away the second copy. Cox is the author of The Meaning of Night, and this book is the follow-up to that. Leave a comment here to enter to win it! The deadline is next Sunday, 10/5/08.

A giveaway winner, and another giveaway

The winner of the Girl in a Blue Dress contest is... Anna, of Diary of An Eccentric ! My new contest is for a copy of The Shape of Mercy , by Susan Meissner. According to Publisher's Weekly : Meissner's newest novel is potentially life-changing, the kind of inspirational fiction that prompts readers to call up old friends, lost loves or fallen-away family members to tell them that all is forgiven and that life is too short for holding grudges. Achingly romantic, the novel features the legacy of Mercy Hayworth—a young woman convicted during the Salem witch trials—whose words reach out from the past to forever transform the lives of two present-day women. These book lovers—Abigail Boyles, elderly, bitter and frail, and Lauren Lars Durough, wealthy, earnest and young—become unlikely friends, drawn together over the untimely death of Mercy, whose precious diary is all that remains of her too short life. And what a diary! Mercy's words not only beguile but help Abigail and Lars

Six Degrees of Barbara Pym's Novels

This year seems to be The Year of Barbara Pym; I know some of you out there are involved in some kind of a readalong in honor of the 100th year of her birth. I’ve read most of her canon, with only The Sweet Dove Died, Civil to Strangers, An Academic Question, and Crampton Hodnet left to go (sadly). Barbara Pym’s novels feature very similar casts of characters: spinsters, clergymen, retirees, clerks, and anthropologists, with which she had direct experience. So it stands to reason that there would be overlaps in characters between the novels. You can trace that though the publication history of her books and therefore see how Pym onionizes her stories and characters. She adds layers onto layers, adding more details as her books progress. Some Tame Gazelle (1950): Archdeacon Hoccleve makes his first appearance. Excellent Women (1952): Archdeacon Hoccleve gives a sermon that is almost incomprehensible to Mildred Lathbury; Everard Bone understands it, however, and laughs