Skip to main content

The Sunday Salon


I’ve been very busy for the past couple of weeks! Two weeks ago I moved into my new apartment, so I’ve been very busy with all that entails. There are still some finishing touches that need to be done (I didn’t get the window blinds for the living room until Tuesday), but it’s all looking pretty good! I spent much of the first Saturday unpacking books; I think I had 31 boxes of them! Nothing is organized on the shelves, though. I culled a lot from my collection to trade at the Book trader here in Old City Philadelphia for credit for new books—so I went back there this morning and walked away with The Ice House, by Nina Bawden, The Burning of Bridget Cleary, by Angela Bourke, West With the Night, by Beryl Markham, and Mary Olivier: A Life, by May Sinclair. The Book Trader is a great place to find those hidden treasures—especially those of the Virago kind!

Speaking of Virago, last week I participated in Virago Reading Week. I usually love many of the books they reprint, but for some reason I couldn’t quite get myself to enjoy the books I picked out to read: Devoted Ladies, by Molly Keane, Harriet Hume, by Rebecca West, and The Loved and Envied, by Enid Bagnold. I’m planning on doing Persephone Reading Weekend, which is coming up at the end of the month. I had fun last May doing the Reading Week that was organized, and I think I’ve got some good ones on the shelf that are begging to be read: Every Eye, by Isobel English, A Very Great Profession, by Nicola Beauman, Alas Poor Lady, by Rachel Ferguson, Few Eggs and No Oranges, by Vere Hodgson, and There Were No Windows, by Norah Hoult.

This week I got back into reading historical fiction, with The Lion of Mortimer, by Juliet Dymoke (about Edward II) and The Tudor Secret, by CW Gortner. Both enjoyable, but not favorites. I really am in a reading slump right now, aren’t I? I think after I finish The Tudor Secret, I think I’ll go for some nonfiction, which I’m really in the mood for right now; my last great read was the superb A Woman’s Place.

Comments

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...

Review: The Piano Teacher, by Janice Y.K. Lee

The Piano Teacher is a complicated novel. On the surface, it’s about a love affair between two British ex-patriots in Hong Kong in 1952-3. Claire Pendleton comes to Hong Kong with her husband Martin at a time when the world is still recovering from WWII; Claire takes up work as a piano teacher for the daughter of a wealthy Chinese family, where she meets Will Truesdale, the Chens’ enigmatic chauffeur. The book jumps back in time between the 1950s and the beginning of WWII, when Will is interned in Stanley, a Hong Kong camp for enemies of Japan. On “the outside” is Tudy Liang, Will’s beautiful Eurasian lover. There’s no doubt that Lee’s writing is beautiful. But there’s something lacking in this short, terse novel that I can’t quite put my finger on. First, I think it’s the tenses she uses when taking about each story: that which is set in the 1950s is in the past tense, while the war scenes are talked about in the present tense (confusing, no?) The interpersonal relationships of the m...