Skip to main content

The Sunday Salon

My week in reading:

I finally finished In A Dark Wood Wandering, a slow read but definitely worthwhile. My review will be up sometime this week or next.

I also read The Slaves of Solitude, by Patrick Hamilton; my copy has been sitting around since April… of last year. Good reading there as well.

I’m currently finishing up book 9 in the Morland Dynasty series, The Flood-Tide, set between 1772 and 1789. Revolution, revolution, everywhere….

Yesterday I took a trip out to West Chester to Chester County Books and Music, where I bought a copy of No Dark Place, by Joan Wolf (mystery set in mid-12th century England); and I basically cleaned out their inventory of Mary Stewart books that I haven’t read, which includes:

The Moonspinners
The Gabriel Hounds
My Brother Michael
Madam, Will You Talk
Wildfire at Midnight


Also bought from Amazon and Amazon UK this week were copies of A Plague on Both Your Houses, by Susanna Gregory (medieval mystery; I seem to have a hankering for these lately), and The King’s Mistress, by Emma Campion. Am I sick or what? Aren't I travelling to London in three weeks, where I'll probably buy lots of new books?

Also, you have until Friday at midnight to enter my contest here for one of two copies of The White Queen, Philippa Gregory’s new book…

Comments

Ah, Mary Stewart! Yes! My mom handed off her Mary Stewart books to me when I was teen. I couldn't get enough of them. Moon Spinners. Read that first. I seem to remember dolphins and Greece....
Table Talk said…
I loved Mary Stewart as a teenager but haven't read her since. I feel a library purge coming on. Enjoy yourself in London.
Melissa said…
I LOVE Chester County Books and Music! What an awesome place. Haven't been there for awhile, though ... hmm, might have to remedy that pretty soon.

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...