Skip to main content

The Sunday Salon


Happy Sunday, everyone!

I spent most of yesterday working on the blog—I wrote a few reviews (I’ve scheduled them to be posted within the next few weeks or so), and I worked on my review database. I’ve decided that, in addition to categorizing them alphabetically by author, I’m going to organize them alphabetically by title as well. I’ve created each of the posts in my separate blog for review links; now I just have to do all the linking! The review data base can be found under the header of the main blog, if you’re reading this post through a feed reader. I'm still working on how to organize it on the page, so please let me know what you think of it! I'd love to make tabs at the top like I've seen other bloggers do, but I don't know how to do it with Blogger. Anyone know how? Any pointers would be greatly appreciated!

I’ve also done a bit of reading this week. I finished Within the Hollow Crown, which is an advance copy of a reprint of one of Margaret Campbell Barnes’s books (this one is about Richard II). I then read The Splendour Falls, by Susanna Kearsley; and I’m now most of the way through The Love Knot by Elizabeth Chadwick, set during the civil war between Stephen and Matilda. I’ve realized that Chadwick’s novels are a bit formulaic, but they’re good comfort reads as well (especially so considering I had a cold this week and wanted something that wasn’t too demanding). I’d like to finish it today, since I’d like to start with something fresh tomorrow morning (Monday and all that), but since I’ve got 150 pages left, we’ll have to see about that.

Speaking of Elizabeth Chadwick, this week I pre-ordered a copy of To Defy a King, but I don’t know if I should cancel the order or not. On one hand, there’s instant gratification, and Elizabeth Chadwick's books are the few that I'll buy in hardcover when they come out. On the other hand, reason is telling me that I should wait until September, when I go back to England for vacation; and reason is also reminding me that I have piles and piles of unread books lying on my bedroom floor right now! It's not as though I really “need” any more. What to do, what to do? LOL.

Comments

Svea Love said…
Oh, I can understand your dilemma about buying another book. I often say the same thing "I really don't need another right now"...but I end up buying it anyway lol :)
Marg said…
I think that you need to buy it! If it was me, and I got to see so many reviews of it, I would regret not buying it straight away.
Sandra said…
I finished a page with all my reviews in alphabetical order, both by author and by title during the recent Bloggiesta. It's made things easier even for me. Mine is all on one page but I love what you've done. Right up there for everyone to see. Never would have thought of doing it like that. Very easy to use. I like to browse older reviews and so many don't have them all in one place for me, I give up in frustration.
I haven't read Chadwick, sounds a little tame for me. Reading is such a mood thing, if you have a hankering to read it now, go ahead and order it I say. Enjoy the rest of your Sunday.
Serena said…
You've been very busy!

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...