More books to read!

I’ve been away from home for four weeks, and when I returned, I found the following waiting for me:

The Miracles of Prato, by Laurie Albanese (ARC)
The Little Giant of Aberdeen County, by Tiffany Baker (ARC, but finished copy)
The Needle in the Blood, by Sarah Bower
The Women, by TC Boyle (nice ARC surprise from Penguin; it' about Frank Lloyd Wright, told through the eyes of the four women who loved him)
A Place Beyond Courage, by Elizabeth Chadwick
The Dud Avocado, by Elaine Dundy
The Glassblower of Murano, by Marina Fiorato
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, by Jamie Ford (ARC)
The Founding, by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles
Darling Jim, by Christian Moerk (ARC)
The Birthday Present, by Barbara Vine (ARC)

Comments

Anonymous said…

I've read a great deal of good things about , The Glass Blower so I can't wait to hear what you think of it!

January 13, 2009 at 9:57 PM

Serena said…

don't you love when you come back and there are great many books waiting for you.

January 15, 2009 at 12:57 PM

Anonymous said…

Ah, I was overjoyed to think that The Women had to do with the 1935 movie of the same title. Obviously it's not. But still it's appealing.

January 15, 2009 at 10:06 PM

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

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.

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

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