Sunday Salon - A few Review type Bits and Bobs...

This weekend has been great. My family have been here since Friday night and have been helping decorate the house and suchlike. We've basically been watching movies, playing board games, and having a giggle, but now they are gone and the house is quiet and I am watching Mr Magorium's Wonder Emporium, which is awesome. The Christmas tree lights are on, we've been eating individually wrapped chocolates out of a tin, and I'm starting to feel a bit festive (and bloated).

In the spirit of Advent with Austen, I've been reading many Jane Austen related things in the last couple of weeks. I'm not sure why, but I've not finished a lot. I started Lady Susan/The Watsons/ Sanditon last week, and I've finished the first two but not the last, and halfway through Sanditon I got distracted by Jane Austen Made Me Do It, a collection of short stories inspired by Austen, which I've been reading for the past week and also have yet to finish.  

I'm still unsure of what I felt about Lady Susan. It was written early on but Austen never submitted it for publication, and it was only after her death that her nephew decided it was an important enough part of her legacy that the general public should have access to it. It is written in letter format, and although it is of course well -written, for me it lacked the empathy and depth of character usually present in Austen's novels.

The ambitious Lady Susan Vernon, notorious flirt, scandalous lady, recently widowed, escapes from an unfortunate liaison with a married man to stay with her brother and disapproving sister in law. Reginald De Courcy, Mrs Vernon's brother also comes to stay, fully prepared to be horrified by Lady Susan, but soon succumbs to her manipulative ways.When Lady Susan's young daughter, Frederica is also brought to the house, relationships become strained and tensions run high.

Because of the letter format, I didn't get any of the sense of immediate action that's usually present in Austen - it was much more removed than that. Everything that happened was only learned about after it had taken place, and so didn't feel as gripping. I also didn't personally connect with any of the characters. In every other one of Austen's novels there have been characters I really loved - Elizabeth Bennet, Anne Elliot, and even despite Austen herself thinking nobody would like her, Emma Woodhouse - but in Lady Susan there was nobody. The title character was a completely scheming and manipulative, and her lack of feeling for her own daughter at times completely disgusted me. There wasn't really a character that I particularly cared about and I can see why Austen didn't think it was good enough for publication. I still enjoyed reading it, but not as much as I did The Watsons, which I was really disappointed about finishing, because it's really only the first fragment of a story.

Anyway, mini- review I know, but pretty much all I have to say about these. Since finishing Persuasion, I've now read all six of Austen's completed novels, and I do want to finish Sanditon, because I think that her unfinished works are really interesting in terms of what more she could have achieved had she lived longer.

Anyway, this post has taken me so long to write that Mr Magorium has finished, and I'm now watching Star Trek with the hubby. Hope your Christmas preparations are all going well and that the week ahead isn't too stressful. Relax, read, and enjoy. Happy Sunday, everybody!

The Sunday Salon - I refuse to believe it's almost Christmas!

I feel like I've failed quite epicly on the review front lately. For a while now I've been reading a lot and not reviewing much, and after beating myself up over it for a week or so I decided to cut myself some slack. I've already decided to make December an 'easy reading' month, where I will be mostly re-reading plus a few library books (currently Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips, which is shaping up to be a lot of fun), so hoepfully I'll be able to catch up on a few reviews in the next couple of weeks.

It's been a while since I've done a monthly summary post, so here's what's happened in November...

I have read the following sixteen books:

• The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan
• An Abundance of Katherines by John Green
• Fables: Animal Farm by Bill Willingham
• Chocolat by Joanne Harris (re-read)
• Percy Jackson and the Titan's Curse by Rick Riordan
• Little Women by Louisa M. Alcott (re-read)
• Good Wives by Louisa M. Alcott (re-read)
• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
• Little Men by Louisa M. Alcott (re-read)
• Jo's Boys by Louisa M. Alcott (re-read)
• Saplings by Noel Streatfeild
• A Killer of Pilgrims by Susanna Gregory
• What Lies Beneath by Sarah Rayne
• Still Alice by Lisa Genova
• Mort by Terry Pratchett (re-read)
• Curtain Up by Noel Streatfeild

I also signed up for a lot of reading challenges for next year. I really feel like I'm getting better at reading the books I own and controlling the impulse to buy more. Having said that, I did buy three this week - Amazon just makes it too easy, and there were a couple I wanted to get hold of for Advent with Austen. This past week I was reading A Walk with Jane Austen by Lori Smith, which I absolutely adored, and which got me all inspired to write and to re-read all the Austen I read so long ago. Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility were the first of her novels I read, and that was about six years ago I think if not more. It really must be time for a re-read! I love that this event is giving me an opportunity to completely indulge myself and get immersed in all things Jane - Austen makes me happy to read and that's what I need right now :-)

Most excitingly (for me at least), I am hosting my first ever reading challenge for 2012. The Telling Tales Reading Challenge is the amalgamation of my passion for fairytale and mythology, several conversations on the subject with my sister, and the fun I had participating in the Once Upon a Time challenge this year. If you want to know more about it, and to sign up, go here, and forgive me for the convoluted nature of the levels - I got a little carried away with the list making!!

In other news, I just got back from seeing Hugo which was entirely amazing. It's been a very long time since I watched a film through my hands, but I had to because not knowing what was going to happen made me so tense! The film was incredibly acted and very moving and now I really really must get my hands on a copy of the book! Anybody read it? What did you think?

Hope you're all having a lovely winter Sunday

Sunday Salon - The Armchair has moved!!

It has been a while since I've done a Sunday Salon - things have been a bit complicated and crazy since we got back from honeymoon in September, but hopefully that is almost all over now, and we will all start to feel a bit happier for the New Year. So, on to the big news! This weekend we've been moving. As a result of this the Armchair is no longer actually next to the sea. We are only around the corner, but I will miss being able to see the sea from my window. However, to make up for the lack of sea, I do now have my own personal READING ROOM!! Currently it's full of boxes, but hopefully soon it will have a little sofabed and desk and a big standing lamp, and the walls will be lined with bookcases. I am so excited about it! :-) It would be nice if people would stop making so many nursery and baby remarks in reference to the second bedroom, but being the eldest of seven it's kind of expected of me so I guess I'll just have to put up with it.

So, the most important query I have this week is one I know lots of people have asked in the past, and is in relation to organising books, as my day off this week will be spend with giant cups of tea, sorting out my reading room. I've organised my books most ways that are possible in the past - prior to moving I'd got them in a system I quite liked. As we only had the two rooms really, in the bedroom I had all my 'keeper' books. Then in the living room I had one shelf for non-fiction, biography, ARCs, classics, poetry and literary criticism, and one big shelf for all my unread books, categorised by shelf. My latest idea is to organise them by publisher and then alphabetically within publisher group. This is mostly because I've recently fallen in love with Persephone books and I think they'd look beautiful all together on the shelves, but I realise this probably isn't the most practical way to organise my collection... Does anybody have any suggestions?

Oh, and the other great thing about moving is that we now FINALLY have reliable home internet, so I should be able to post whenever I want to, rather than whenever I remember to plan ahead and bring my laptop to work with me! Very happy Sunday, everybody, and a late Happy Thanksgiving to the Americans!

The Sunday Salon - Advent with Austen and the Readathon!

Hello everyone! It's finally starting to feel wintery by the sea, and I have to admit that I totally love it, although I did *somehow* manage to leave our big umbrella in the pub last night... no idea how that happened...*shifty eyes*. Anyway, I've been disgustingly rubbish at posting lately, and I really am planning to be better. The internet isn't behaving itself lately, and we still have a lot going on so it's been difficult to find the time. However, it's getting scarily close to the end of the year, and so in desperate hopes of motivating myself, I've signed up for a couple of exciting events!

The first is coming up in a couple of weeks. Back in April, I jealously watched as the blogosphere went absolutely MENTAL for 24 hours with posts about the readathon. I hadn't quite geared myself up to that sort of level of reading back then, though, but when I heard it was coming up again, I had to sign up!

The readathon runs from 1pm London Time on Saturday October 22nd, and runs for (shockingly) 24 hours from then :-) I'm working that day, but I finish work at 5.30, so from then on I will be alllll in, and I'm really excited! I will post a proposed reading list closer to the time, and will just have to keep my fingers crossed that my internet behaves itself that day! It sounds like it will be amazing, with all kinds of mini challenges and events going on. If you want to join in (and you should!), go here and sign up! You can also sign up to host a mini challenge or to be a cheerleader.

The other thing I've signed up for and am hugely excited about its this:

This event is hosted by Teadevotee, The Sleepless Reader, Iris on Books, Things Mean a Lot, and Reading Fuelled by Tea. Starting on the first Sunday of Advent, 27th November, and ending on Christmas Eve, the event celebrates the 200th anniversary of the publication of Sense and Sensibility. There will be lots of events and different levels of participation, but basically all you have to do is read Austen and related books, and/or watch Austen inspired, adapted or related TV shows and films. It sounds brilliant, and I'm going to be reading A Walk with Jane Austen by Lori Smith, as well as attempting a possible re-read of Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, and possibly watching the Pride and Prejudice TV series starring Colin Firth for the first time ever! (Yes, I know it's shocking).

If you want to join in the festivities, go and sign up here, and wait with growing anticipation for December!

The Sunday Salon - Wedding Countdown!

Happy Sunday all. We're now into the last three weeks before the wedding and my previous 'relax, it'll all turn out fiiiiine' attitude is morphing into something comparitively like stress. I'm suddenly realising that I may actually want my wedding to be perfect - a fact that I've been vigorously denying up until now. All my life I've rebelled against being particularly girly, and that includes getting all screamy and pink and fluffy about the wedding. Obviously I'm excited. Obviously it will be one of the most important days of my life so far, but I'm really not into all the mushy yucky stuff. Up until now I've been really quite laid back about the whole thing. Basically, the vast majority of the important people in my life are going to be there, even to the extent of flying in from Australia for it, and if they're all there and my fiance is there, then I figured there wasn't too much else to worry about, but now suddenly I find myself worrying about my shoes not being quite right, and whether the chairs will be ok. So to bring myself back down to earth I'm going to do a sum up of my book related activity for July and August. After the wedding, I do feel like I'll be entering a new phase of my life, and so I'm trying to get myself all up to date with everything before then, including reviews and stuff. Currently I'm incredibly behind in my reviews, so wish me luck!

This week I have read:

• The Help by Kathryn Stockett - a few months ago the blogosphere was absolutely raving about this, so I was intrigued. The issues it addresses interested me and I thought it was absolutely brilliant. I was up until 2am last night finishing it, because I just couldn't put it down!
• Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan - the second in the series, the Percy Jackson books are a little immature but I'm loving them anyway!
• Driving Over Lemons: An Optimist in Andalucia by Chris Stewart

I have currently reviewed none of these titles!! So far in August I've reviewed:

• The Sandalwood Tree by Elle Newmark for the Transworld Book Group and the Historical Fiction Challenge
• How to be a Woman by Caitlin Moran - one of my absolute favourite books of the year so far!
• Bake Sale by Sara Varon, a gorgeous children's graphic novel with recipes!

So I know, I've been terrible at reviewing this month. I blame wedding stress and work and hopefully I'll be better after September 10th!

If you've stuck with me this far, thank you! This may be when you want to leave us though, as I'm about to list my acquisitions for July and August. I think I may need to start joining in with In My Mailbox, as this always ends up being a huge and horrendous list, which I mostly compile to attempt to scare myself into buying less books. It never works *sigh*.

In July:

Second Hand

• The Giant Book of Lost Worlds
• Join Me by Danny Wallace (because he is laugh out loud on the train hilarious)
• Body Surfing by Anita Shreve (because I've still not read any of her books!)
• Shanghai Girls by Lisa See
• Farmhouse Cookery - one of those gigantic big old school cookery books with recipes for the most miscellaneous stuff involving copious amounts of dripping. Love.
• The Truth by Terry Pratchett - my favourite Discworld novel, which I didn't own, so had to buy.
• Guardian of the Horizon by Elizabeth Peters - if anybody hasn't read the Amelia Peabody series and is a fan of detective type fiction, you definitely should. They have the advantage of being both hiliarious and interesting as well as dramatic, and you never see them second hand. Like, ever.
• Curse of the Pharoahs by Elizabeth Peters - see above!
• When We Were Very Young by A.A. Milne - part of my stockpiling for future generations of the family. Also, my fiance never had the benefit of A.A. Milne's brilliant poetry as a child, so I'm educating him now.
• The House at Pooh Corner by A.A. Milne - because it's been years since I read it.
• The Looney by Spike Milligan
• Wizards: A History by P.G Maxwell- Stuart
• The Complete Short Stories by Franz Kafka
• About a Boy by Nick Hornby - despite him being one of my favourite authors, I didn't actually own any of his books aside from The Complete Polysyllabic Spree. Time to rectify that.
• High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
• A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
• The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon - because Rhys hadn't read it, and everybody should.
• Quest for Lost Heroes by David Gemmell - because it's rare for me to find a Gemmell I don't own in a charity shop, so when I do, I grab them!
• Bloodstone by David Gemmell - see above
• Waylander by David Gemmell
• Matilda by Roald Dahl

From ReaditSwapit:

• Snow White, Blood Red by Terri Windling & Ellen Datlow
• Gaglow by Esther Freud
• The Hippopotamus by Stephen Fry
• One Day by David Nicholls
• Biblioholism by Tom Raabe
• Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan
• Percy Jackson and the Titan's Curse by Rick Riordan
• The Wonderful Weekend Book by Elspeth Thompson

New:

•  Bake Sale by Sara Varon
• How to be a Woman by Caitlin Moran (birthday present from Hana at Booking in Heels)
• These Old Shades by Georgette Heyer
• Death: The High Cost of Living by Neil Gaiman

And my most overly exciting book of July was a gift from my future father-in-law of an 1860's edition of Jo's Boys by Louisa Alcott. It's obviously a bit faded and has serious old book smell, which I love, and it's illustrated!!

That was possibly the longest list EVER, even for me and my list obsessiveness. I won't detail what I've got in August, except to say that so far it's a grand total of twelve books... nowhere near the THIRTY FIVE which came into the house in July!!

So I'm definately going to start doing this on a weekly basis....

Anybody else got any interesting books in the past couple of months/weeks?

Sunday Salon: Six Months of Streatfeild

Happy gorgeous, sunny Sunday, everyone! My year of reading as much Noel Streatfeild as possible is over half way through, so I though it was time to do a roundup post...Before I do that, though here’s a short review of my latest read.

The Painted Garden (also published in the U.S as Movie Shoes)

As a young child, Apple Bough was undoubtedly my favourite Streatfeild, as it was the first one I remember reading to myself, but my favourite bedtime story that I ever had has to be The Painted Garden. This book was definintely one of the more exciting, plot wise. Because each child has an individual plot line, Streatfeild keeps the story very diverse, and the book is never boring. She is also, as always, great at getting inside a child’s head, and explaining very clearly exactly how a child would feel and react in certain situations. I love that reading her books always takes me absolutely back to my childhood. There are points in the book where I remember similar things happening to me as a child, and responding to them in exactly the same way as Rachel, Jane, and Tim do. It was a quick read, and very pacy. Almost by the time I’d got everything straight in my head, the Winters’ were back on the boat to England! The Painted Garden stood up to the re-reading very very well, and if I ever have kids, I’ll definitely be reading it to them!

Loosely promoted as the sequel to Ballet Shoes (it isn’t, really, despite briefly featuring a couple of the Fossil girls), The Painted Garden is about Streatfeild’s trademark three children, Rachel, Jane, and Tim Winter. Rachel is a talented ballerina, and Tim a talented pianist. As is also trademark with many of Streatfeild’s books, Jane, the awkward middle child, is seemingly talented at nothing. As the story begins the children’s father John is suffering a nervous breakdown following a car accident. In order for him to recover, the doctor orders him to warmer climates. As a result the entire family – John and his wife, Bee, the three children and their nanny, Peaseblossom – are invited to California to stay with Aunt Cora. Starting with the six day boat trip from Southampton to New York, the Winters’ embark on an exciting journey, via boat and train, to pastures new, where great things await for all of the children. Rachel meets Posy Fossil, the famous dancer (and of Ballet Shoes fame) who takes her under her wing, and brings her to Saturday dancing classes with a world-renowned ballet troupe, Tim finds a piano to practice on in the Antonio’s drugstore, where he is noticed and put on Hiram’s Hour, a weekly radio programme, and Jane, who dreams of one day being a lady dog walker, manages to get herself (via way of a ‘neglected’ dog named Hyde Park) the part of Mary, in a film of The Secret Garden.

So, that was a very mini review, but if I’m honest I do find it hard to write long reviews of most of Noel Streatfeild’s books. It tends to be issues around reading that they make me think about, rather than the books themselves. For instance, this most recent book made me think about the value of reading as adults, the books we loved as children, and what it is that makes certain books enjoyable as re-reads, and others book which really do only work when you’re a child. When I’ve mulled this over a bit more, there’ll probably be a post on it. In the meantime, does anybody have any ideas?

I’ve read ten of Noel Streatfeild’s books so far this year, and have another seven on my shelf. I’ve also started searching for more. The books I’ve read so far are:

·         The Growing Summer (re-read)

·         White Boots (re-read)

·         Dancing Shoes (re-read)

·         Apple Bough(re-read)

·         When the Siren Wailed

·         A Vicarage Family

·         Away from the Vicarage

·         Beyond the Vicarage

·         Meet the Maitlands

·         The Painted Garden (re-read)

I really can’t pick a favourite, so my top three are The Painted Garden, The Growing Summer, and White Boots.

On my shelf, I have still to read:

·         Thursday’s Child (re-read)

·         Far to Go (re-read)

·         Party Frock (re-read)

·         Tennis Shoes

·         Saplings

·         Curtain Up

·         Ballet Shoes for Anna

This challenge has been really good for me – it’s like the best kind of comfort reading. Every book is like curling up with a massive mug of tea and a big slice of cake with some awesome kind of icing. I love it!

Also, don't forget to visit tomorrow for the UK and EU Giveaway Hop that I'm taking part in! Free book, you know you want to! :-)

The Sunday Salon - June Sum up Part One...

I’ve got various reasons why I’ve not posted much this month, but if I’m honest, I think I’m just feeling slightly overwhelmed. Lately, I’ve been requesting lots of titles, and accepting lots more books for review, and I’ve also discovered Netgalley. All this has conspired to make me feel like I’ve lost a lot of the freedom to read what I want, rather than what I feel I should read. It’s a bit silly, as all of the books which have come into my house for review purposes, whether they’re ones I’ve requested or been asked to review, have done so because I’ve been very excited to read them, but there are also so many books I already own that I want to read, that I’m finding it difficult to prioritise the books I have to review. And the more I don’t read them, the more guilty I feel, and then I avoid them more, which leads to yet more guilt. It’s a very viscious circle.

The discovery of the genius of Netgalley this month was amazing fun, but also re-introduced the problems I have previously anticipated with ebooks. In the past I’ve got up on my high-horse about losing the magic of the traditional book format, and above all, the inability to smell ebooks, but I overlooked the critical problem, which is my terrible eyesight. While I adore the concept of Netgalley – quick, free access to lots of advance copies of awesome books, which I can store in no space at all – I actually find it really difficult to read books on my PC screen. After about 20 minutes my eyes start to hurt, and a few minutes after that, I start to develop big headaches. Because I’m stubborn, I’ll probably persist with the format, but I’m not sure how successful I’ll be! Also this month I’ve been chronicling, here and on twitter, my ongoing internet woes, which still aren’t over. My home internet is still being horribly temperamental and patchy, so I’m just hoping that it will allow me to do all the things that I need to do in the next few months!

Which brings me to the fun stuff!! Over July and August I have some wicked stuff coming up here on the blog, and I’m very excited. The schedule is currently as follows:

July 20^th – An Armchair by the Sea will be featured on Scene of the Blog! This is a brilliant feature over at Kittling: Books, spotlighting a different blogger each week, and looking at the different places that are important in their everyday blogging lives.

August 1^st – 8^th – UK and EU Blog Hop. Lots of blogs are participating in this, just head over to the website to check out the complete list. I’ll be giving away at least one (possibly more) great book during the week, so make sure you check it out!

August 6^th – I am part of a blog tour for Pam Allyn’s Your Child’s Writing Life: How to Inpsire Confidence, Creativity and Skill at Every Age. Although I don’t currently have children, I’m looking forward to reading this, as I do feel really strongly about the amount of children I’ve met who just aren’t interested in books, stories, or reading at all.

August 7^th – Guest review of Georgette Heyer’s These Old Shades as part of Georgette Heyer Gems at Stiletto Storytime. This will be a re-read for me, as I was a huge Heyer fan in my early adolescence, so I’m excited to see if I still feel the same about this book!

Also at some point during August I will be partaking in The Classics Circuit John Steinbeck Tour, for which I will (hopefully) be reading East of Eden.

So yes, lots of things, lots of deadlines, lots of excitement! To balance this, I’ve decided that much as I’d love to commit to having two monthly features on the blog (The Fairytale Feature, and my new Beyond the Graphics graphic novel\film adaptation feature), I don’t think that realistically I can commit to religiously posting both of them every month. AS you will see, we are now in July and I’ve not posted the June Fairytale Feature, or the first Graphics feature. I have read the books and done the research and even started writing both, but they’ve not made it up yet. Because of this, I’ve decided that both these features will now be ‘as the mood takes me’. I will post them as regularly as I am inspired to, as I think that will make me feel less pressured!

Yeesh that’s a lot of stuff! I will hopefully be back to regular reviews this week, provided the weather’s not too nice! Here's my roundup for June, and I've decided to introduce three 'awards' for each month, more for me to recap what I've read and how I felt than anything else!

Books read in June –

1.    A Game of Thrones – George R.R Martin

2.    A Visit from the Goon Squad – Jennifer Egan

3.    Bright Young Things – Scarlett Thomas

4.    Case Histories – Kate Atkinson

5.    Coming Up for Air – Patti Callahan Henry

6.    Ghost World – Daniel Clowes

7.    In Your Face – Scarlett Thomas

8.    The Fry Chronicles – Stephen Fry

9.    The Summer We Read Gatsby – Danielle Ganek

10. When You Reach Me – Rebecca Stead

Most Enjoyed Book: -

Case Histories by Kate Atkinson!

Most Anticipated Book: -

IN YOUR FACE by Scarlett Thomas (which was also great!)

Most Unexpected Book: -

When You Reach Me – Rebecca Stead

And finally, happy 4^th of July to all the Americans!

The Sunday Salon - Why Are the Months Going so Fast????

Please can somebody explain to me how it is already June?? I just don't understand how the year is going so fast! I think the first few months went quite slowly, as I wasn't working much or really doing much at all, but since I've started working full time, weeks have been flying by. I've already been in my new job a month, and feel like I've been there a lot longer. Also, since the death of my book buying ban, I've been acquiring books like a fiend, making up for lost time! In the past two weeks, I've somehow managed to add an absolutely massive THIRTY FIVE books to my collection. I have a serious problem. And since I've started buying again, I guess I need to start monitoring how much I buy again. In the interest of stats, and keeping tabs on how long I've had things, here's my acquisition list for May:

******WARNING- It's VERY long******

Books I've Bought for Myself:

• The Outsiders by S.E Hinton
• Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner  (read about on Sophisticated Dorkiness)
• The Merlin Conspiracy by Diana Wynne Jones (after reading Neil Gaiman's tribute to her )
• Dear Fatty by Dawn French
• The Little House by Philippa Gregory (recommended by my friend Judith)
• Peter Pan & Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens by J.M Barrie
• Confessions of an Eco- Shopper by Kate Lock
• The Hand that First Held Mine by Maggie O'Farrell (because the lovely woman at the car boot sale threw it in for freeeeee!)
• Essays in Love by Alain de Botton
• A Drink Before the War by Dennis Lehane
• The Best of Miss Marple by Agatha Christie
• Yes Man by Danny Wallace (Who is totally hilarious)
• Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris (recommended by my little sister, the Cheese Ninja)
• The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon 
• In Her Shoes by Jennifer Weiner
• The Serpent on the Crown by Elizabeth Peters (bought for my mum, but she already has it!)
• Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters (see above)
• Vanity Fair by William Thackaray (I read it years ago, but wanted my own copy for the readalong)
• An absolutely beautiful boxset of Faber Poetry comprising: The Waste Land and Other Poems (T.S Eliot), Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (Eliot), Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis (Wendy Cope - a poet I've not read before), Ariel (Sylvia Plath), Death of a Naturalist (Heaney), Crow (Ted Hughes), High Windows (Larkin), Tell Me the Truth About Love (Auden), Kid (Armitage), and The War Poems (Sassoon)

Books I've Been Given or Swapped:

• A LOT of Ian Rankin (A Good Hanging, Blood Hunt, The Naming of the Dead, Strip Jack, The Black Book, Mortal Causes, Let it Bleed, Black & Blue, The Hanging Garden, Dead Souls, Set in Darkness, and The Falls) - lots of these are in big books, so I'm counting them as one book, although they're actually three. 
• Blink by Malcolm Gladwell (result of my appeal for Creative Nonfiction Recommendations)
• The Ugly Duckling by Iris Johansen (for my July Fairytale Feature - June is Cinderella, and I'm working on it at the moment!)
• Gossip Girl: Love the One You're With by Cecily von Zeigesar
• Saplings by Noel Streatfeild
• The Jacobite Trilogy by D.K Broster
• Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

Three More to Mention:

• Coming Up for Air by Patti Callahan Henry (Review copy from St Martin's Press)
• The Summer We Read Gatsby by Danielle Ganek (Review copy from Plume)
• Promises to Keep by Jane Green (Review copy from Plume - published in the U.K as The Love Verb)

Aaaand breathe! Hugely long list, I know, and it's led to my fiance putting his foot down. Although I'm not back on my ban (I seem to be unable to stop at the moment... ) he has said that from now on, I have to read two books that I already own for every one I buy. This includes reading two for every one that I've bought over the last two weeks... so I won't be buying again for a while! To be honest, though I've got some awesome stuff on my shelves, and it should be fun to rediscover the reasons why I absolutely had to have things!

The thing I'm most excited about, though, is that I've recently got all excited about reading and blogging again! I was going through a bit of a slump back there for a while, and I think it was a lot to do with the fact that I was feeling some pressure (I'm not sure why) to make my blog be a certain way - i.e. to be 'literary' or 'serious' or something, I'm not really sure - rather than just being what I want and need it to be, which is an outlet for all my book related madness! And so, in deference to said madness, here's the list of stuff I read in May :-)

• Delirium by Lauren Oliver
• Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams (read for The Birth Year Reading Challenge)
• Emma by Jane Austen (read for The Classics Circuit)
• Even the Dogs by Jon McGregor
• Godmother: The Secret Cinderella Story by Carolyn Turgeon (read for the Fairytale Feature)
• Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel (read for the Historical Fiction Challenge)
• Meet the Maitlands by Noel Streatfeild (for my Noel Streatfeild reading challenge)
• Of No Consequence by Sonia Rumzi
• Rock and Hard Places by Andrew Mueller
• The Art of Forgetting by Camille Noe Pagan (Review copy from Dutton)
• The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs
• The Locust and the Bird by Hanan Al - Shaykh

Links go to my reviews, and that's pretty good for me in recent times! Favourite read for May was probably Godmother by Carolyn Turgeon. I loved Mermaid, which I read in April, and I'm thinking I might have found another author to add to my 'favourites' list!

If you've stuck with this post till this point, I am amazed! And if anybody has any tips for managing the book acquistion fever, they will be VERY gratefully recieved! I'm sure my fiance would be thrilled, too, he'll probably even send you a present! :-)

Happy June (my birthday month!) everybody!

The Sunday Salon - A Quarter through the Ban!

It's May! That means I've made it an entire three months without buying any books! That's about two months and three weeks longer than anybody, including myself, thought I'd manage, so I'm thoroughly proud of myself :-) Due to RAK, my fiance buying me books, and my awesome best mate's new job, where she basically gets free books and passes them on to me, there's still been a lot of books coming into my house. Also, I've been borrowing a lot from the library, so not making too much of a dent in my TBR shelves, but ah well.

Reading wise, I've done pretty well this week I reckon. I managed to post two reviews (three if you count the one that's coming on the end of this post), which is a vast improvement on the past few weeks, and I finished four books! I read Emma for the ongoing Classics Circuit  Dueling Authors tour, and really loved it. It was a lot different from the other Austen I've read in a lot of ways, and now I'm all motivated to read Persuasion, the final Austen left on my TBR! My other review was of a novelette which the author had sent to me. Despite some stumbling blocks at the beginning, and its' serious subject matter, I'm glad I got to read Of No Consequence by Sonia Rumzi. I also finished Laura's Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate, which I just adored, and which I will definitely attempt to review this week!

I started reading Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams. The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and all of its' sequels, are massive favourites of mine, and literally the only books absolutely guaranteed to make me laugh out loud, wherever I am, and I was totally shocked to find that I had both Dirk Gently and The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul on my shelves, and have yet to read them. So far, I am really enjoying it - I've not laughed as much as I did at Hitchhikers, but I still had a bit of a giggle in the train station! I'm also battling with the idea of starting a reading project of The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer. I'm very scared of the language, though, so it remains to be seen if I go with the original, or get hold of a retelling from somewhere... I'm trying not to wuss out, and just go for it with the middle English... wish me luck!

Anyway, the final book I finished this week, was (finally) Delirium by Lauren Oliver. I sort of feel like I'm the last person in the world to read this book. A while back, everyone was reading it, and totally hyping it up, and then Lauren Oliver came to my local library, and I totally forgot to go! (how annoyed am I with myself??!). Anyway, then I was sent a copy last month, as an RAK, and its' been staring at me, in all its' pretty pale blue glory, ever since. So this week, I finally got around to it, and I liked it. In case there's a person left in the world who hasn't heard about Delirium already, here's the basic outline.

Set in a dystopian world, where a 'cure' for love has been discovered. The borders of the U.S have been sealed for the past 50 years, and when children reach the age of 18, they are evaluated, and then 'cured' of the ability to love. After their evaluation, they are sent a list of 'matches', one of whom they must accept for marriage. They are assigned everything from whether or not they go to college, to how many children they have, by the government. Lena Haloway is preparing for her eighteenth birthday, and the 'safety' of the cure, when she accidentally meets Alex...

I'm not sure what I was expecting from Delirium, and to be honest, I'm still not sure exactly how I felt about it. The ending, like Oliver's first novel, Before I Fall, isn't happy, and it definitely wasn't what I was expecting, but the more I think about it, the more comfortable I am with it. Throughout the novel, I felt that most of the time, the story was going mroe or less where I expected it to, and so I liked the fact that the ending veered away from what I was expecting. In my eyes, at least, the ending helped to validate Lena as a character, and moved her away from the Bella Swan type of girl, who can only function if there's a guy around to motivate her!

To be honest, Delirium did have a little bit of a Twilight-esque vibe through it; mostly just the whole forbidden love angle, but the further through it I got, the more I appreciated the other threads of the story, such as her family situation and issues with her mother, as well as her relationship with her best friend, Hana.

I didn't love it as much as I'd hoped, but it was still an enjoyable (and very quick!) read, and I really like the fact that Lauren Oliver dares to be different with her endings!

Thanks to An Avid Reader's Musings for sending me the book!

Happy Sunday, everyone! :-)