Skip to main content

Sunday Salon


I’ve been busy working lately, so my reading has fallen off a bit. However, I did manage to finish The Observations, by Jane Harris, which I thoroughly enjoyed. It’s a Victorian-style ghost story, but so much more at the same time. Review to be posted soon.

Book buying has continued, with the purchase of The Lady Chapel and The Nun’s Tale, the second and third books in the Owen Archer mystery series. I read The Apothecary Rose in 2005, and never got around to the rest of the series because they’re so hard to find in bookstores or libraries. But I finally found inexpensive copies of The Lady Chapel and The Nun’s Tale through Powell’s Books.

Then, yesterday, I picked up two books in the Morland series: The Black Pearl (#5, about the reign of Charles II) and The Question (# 25; takes place during the Boer War). I also picked up a novel called Harriet and Isabella, by Patricia O’Brien. It’s about the relationship between Harriet Beecher Stowe and her sister Isabella Beecher Hooker, during the time that their brother, Henry Ward Beecher, went through an infamous adultery trial. It’s set in Brooklyn Heights, very near where I used to live. Currently I’m reading The Black Pearl. I’ve been told that I should start the series from the beginning, but I’ve found that I haven’t been too lost thus far.

Comments

S. Krishna said…
Hmm...I put down The Observations after reading about 100 pages. Maybe I should go back and finish it!
Anonymous said…
I have HARRIET AND ISABELLA here somewhere. Probably behind some of the double stacked items. Your comments reminded me of why I purchased it in the first place. Look forward to hearing your thoughts when you get around to it.
Sandra said…
I really enjoyed The Observations, I look forward to your review. I have copies of The Apothecary Rose and A Gift Of Sanctuary on my shelves waiting. I got them on ebay with some other books and never got to them. I'll try them next time I'm in the mood for a mystery. If you haven't read A Gift of Sanctuary and can't find a copy I'd be happy to send it to you when I'm finished reading it. I don't usually keep mysteries after I'm done with them. Just let me know.
Anonymous said…
That's funny. I got Harriet and Isabella this week, too. It sounds interesting, doesn't it? I hope that we both enjoy it.

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...