Sunday Salon: Historical Fiction Reading Challenge - August statistics

  

Each month I share the statistics for the previous month for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge. I always find it interesting to see what are the books that people are reading and reviewing! This month I have visited all the reviews (or at least I think I have). As a result I think I added at least three books to my TBR!

 

In terms of the books, it was a good month for reviews with 58 reviews linked up for the challenge, shared by 19 participants, which is a bit less than this time last year.  There were 56 individual titles reviewed, written by 52 different authors. There were 4 reviewers who reviewed 5 or more books each this month. Thank you to everyone who shared their links whether it be 7 or just 1. 

Let's move onto the books. There were 2 books that were reviewed twice during August. They were:

Death Comes at the End by Agatha Christie was reviewed by both Helen at She Reads Novels and by Laura at Laura's Reviews. I had no idea Christie had written a mystery set in Ancient Egypt.

The Orchid Hour by Nancy Bilyeau was reviewed by Helen and also at The Chocolate Lady's Book Reviews

There were two authors who had multiple books reviewed this month.

Barbara at Stray Thoughts is a big fan of Roseanna  M White. This month she reviewed two titles (Dreams of Savannah and Yesterday's Tides). Laura also reviewed A Beautiful Disguise.

Cathy from What Cathy Read Next read two books by Madalyn Morgan. China Blue is the third book in the Dudley Sisters series and Chasing Ghosts is the sixth, but is the sequel to China Blue, if that makes sense?

It's not too late to join the 2023 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge. The sign up post is here, and you can find the September linky to add your reviews here.

I am looking forward to seeing what people share during September. 

I am also sharing this post with Sunday Salon, hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz.

Sunday Salon: Aussie Author Month wrap up

Last week I didn't post a Sunday Salon post because I was struggling to think of what to post and therefore I took a week off. This week, I have three posts running around in my head, but in the end it was an easy decision on which one to write about!

It is hard to believe that it is May already, and that Aussie Author Month is over, for this year at least.

Every year, one of my blogging goals is to read more Aussie authors, and Aussie Author Month has definitely helped me to work towards this goal. I might not necessarily have read them this month, but I have got several new authors that I am intending to read soon.

The other thing that happened this month is that I really discovered short stories, and these two things are linked, because I thought that short stories would be the best way to introduce myself to as many new authors as possible in a short period of time. I didn't post about as many of them as I would like, but definitely enjoyed reading them more than I expected to. I may get to post about some more of them eventually.

So here's a recap of my Aussie Author Month.

Guest posts from Tansy Rayner Roberts, Sara Foster and Elisabeth Storrs.

Recap of Australian Romance Reader's Convention Part 1 and Part 2.

Reviews: Relentless Adaptations by Tansy Rayner Roberts (short story), Ransom by David Malouf, the Carmine Island stories from Glitter Rose by Marianne de Pierres.

In addition to the authors mentioned above who were all new to me authors, I also read Sarah Mayberry, Heather Boyd, Stephanie Laurens (yes, I know, as a historical romance reader it is way past time that I have read her), Thoraiya Dyer, Sean Williams, Stephanie Campisi, Peter M Ball, Simon Brown, Margo Lanagan and Gabrielle Wang.

Just a couple of things to finish up!

The winners of the giveaway of two copies of The Wedding Shroud by Elisabeth Storrs are:

Maja and Bree

I have sent an email to each of you. Once I have your contact details I will forward those on to the publishers and get your prize on it's way to you!

Finally, thank you to everyone who participated in Aussie Author Month by posting, commenting, tweeting, donating to the Indigenous Literacy Project (it's not too late to donate to this excellent cause), posting on our Facebook page, and thank you to the other organisers for asking me to be part of it.

I look forward to Aussie Author Month being back, bigger and better, next year.

Sunday Salon: October Reading Reflections

I am pretty happy with my October reading! 16 books completed, some good reads, some were ebooks, and a couple were a bit outside my normal reading range. Wait until you see my post tomorrow of the books that I received during the month of October though. Despite a good reading month, my TBR got a lot bigger instead of smaller!

Here are my reads for October:

Lady of Hay by Barbara Erskine 3/5
The Exile by Diana Gabaldon and Hoang Nguyen 4.5/5
The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents by Terry Pratchett 3/5
Adrien English Mysteries by Josh Lanyon 4/5
The Confessions of Catherine de Medici by CW Gortner 4.5/5
The Accidental Mistress by Tracy Anne Warren 4/5
Gobsmacked by L B Gregg 4/5
Shelter Mountain by Robyn Carr 4.5/5
Dark Road to Darjeeling by Deanna Raybourn 4.5/5
Maybe This Time by Jennifer Crusie 3.5/5
Ravishing in Red by Madeline Hunter 4/5
Seducing an Angel by Mary Balogh 3.5/5
The Princess Bride by William Goldman 4/5
The Sharing Knife: Horizon by Lois McMaster Bujold 4.5/5
The Passionate Brood by Margaret Campbell Barnes 4.5/5
The Cinderella Deal by Jennifer Crusie 4.5/5



I thought I would mention a couple of things. Gosbmacked was a m/m romance, and the Adrien English Mysteries are erotic mysteries featuring gay bookseller/amateur detective Adrien English. It is actually the first two books in the series, and I have the next couple waiting here to be read.

The Exile is the graphic novel version of the first half or so of the Outlander novel by Diana Gabaldon. I liked it a lot, but I do think it is a book for the existing fans, not necessarily for new fans of the series.

I was so pleased that I finished reading The Princess Bride because I decided to read it as part of a readalong hosted by Chrisbookarama. I have done attempted a couple of readalongs before but I tend to get lost along the way. For example, the first book in the Lord of the Rings trilogy is still sitting by the side of my bed despite the fact that I started a readalong early this year.

The book that I read for the Year of the Historical was the excellent Confessions of Catherine de Medici by CW Gortner and this book also counts as my final read for the French Historical Challenge as well.

The two books by Pratchett counted for the Terry Pratchett challenge.

As at the end of October, I have read 88 books of the 100 that I was aiming for in the Support Your Local Library challenge, so it looks like I will make that target.

There are still a number of challenges that I am not making a lot of progress on, but that doesn't mean that I won't be starting to think about next years challenges soon.

TSS: Footnotes

Have I mentioned lately that I am reading War and Peace at the moment? I may have done once or twice mainly because I am pretty pleased with myself for giving this a go!  I am not surprised that I am enjoying it, because I know that I liked Anna Karenina, but it still took a while to get to the point of wanting to read the next Tolstoy novel.

One of the things that I have been thinking about whilst reading it is the use of notes related to the text. Just recently I was also reading Mort by Terry Pratchett, who is a contemporary author who loves to use footnotes in his Discworld novels, as does another favourite novelist of mine, Jasper Fforde. Now to put Tolstoy, Pratchett and Fforde in the same post may seem like a bit of a stretch, but I am going to do it anyway.

In classics the use of notes, whether they be footnotes, or notes that are at the back of the book (what are they called when they are at the back of the book anyway?), is very prevalent. A lot of the time they are there to explain contextual points that the original audience would have already been familiar with and would have understood but that for the modern reader have been lost in the sands of time.

Today's post really is a question about how people read footnotes/annotations. I tend to put the bookmark at the page where the relevant notes for this section are so that I can easily flick back and forward and I read the note as soon as I see it mentioned the number annotating that there is a note in the text. Is this what other readers do as well, or do you read to the end of the paragraph and then go back and read the notes?

Do you prefer your notes to be at the back of the book or to be at the bottom of the page? For the translation I am reading of War and Peace there wasn't really an option to put the notes at the bottom of the page, because there is quite a lot of the text that was originally written in French, and a little bit of German, and it has been left as French and German in the translation, and therefore at the bottom of the page there is the English translation.

So how do Pratchett and Fforde fit into this discussion? Both of the authors like to have what I think of as almost asides in the footnotes. Some times in Pratchett's case they could be notes that go off on a tangent or just a funny comment.

I have often wondered how audiobooks deal with the footnotes. Is it different for the contemporary novelist than it is for the classics?

So, on this cool wintery Sunday (for me at least), let's talk footnotes.

TSS/Currently Reading: Book Pricing or Why I love the Book Depository

One of the truths about being a book lover in Australia is that books here are expensive, so I thought it would be interesting to do a comparison of the price for a specific book. This post is also doubling up as a Currently Reading post, because I did actually start reading this book on Friday. Yes, I am 2% of the way through War and Peace by Tolstoy! I signed up for the Classics Circuit (White Nights on the Neva: Imperial Russian Literature tour)and my post is due on 15 July 2010, although I was very clear when signing up that it was more likely to be a progress post rather than a review as such.

Originally I borrowed the book from the library, but then I realised that there was no way I would be able to get through it and read other books as well, so I decided to buy it.

So my comparison basis for this exercise was that it was the same translator, and I was only looking at the paperback copy of the novel. All the sources are also the online stores, I haven't actually moved from my chair to do this comparison. The cover on the left is the US cover and the one on the right is the UK cover. All prices are in Australian dollars, and were based on the exchange rate the day that I did the comparisons (so may have changed a little since then).

Book Depository UK $17.01 (free postage)
Book Depository US $23.84 (free postage)

Borders Australia (US version) $30.95 (free postage)
Borders Australia (UK version) $23.95 (free postage)
Dymocks (UK Version) $29.95 (plus $6.50 postage)
Angus and Robertson (US Version) $40.95 (plus $6.00 postage)
Amazon.com $16.03 (plus $11.94 postage)


One other thing that probably needs to be taken into consideration is that fact that ordering online means that you can't have that instant gratification. There are still days when I will go to the book store and buy a book, but generally I will either get it from the library or I will order it from overseas.The shipping cost for Amazon was for Standard International Shipping (averages 18-32 days), but there are faster shipping options available but they cost more. In my experience I generally get orders from the UK Book Depository within a week or so of ordering.

The final factor is that often there are books that I see mentioned around blogs that I really want to read, that just never make it into the stores here, so by buying from overseas means that I get access to a lot of those books.

It seems ridiculous really that it costs me significantly more to buy from an Australian bookstore than it does to buy a book from the UK or the US, but that's the way it has consistently proven to be for this Australian book buyer. I would love to be supporting Aussie business, but when the prices are not really even competitive it is hard to do that.

TSS: Define book blogger

Last week I announced the Australian Book Blogger Directory so this week's TSS is going to be a bit of an update on that project, but the main focus for today is going to be around definitions. Does your blog have to be all books all the time to be considered a book blog? How about author blogs? Their focus is on books, admittedly usually only their own books, but still?

First up though an update! After one week we have nearly 50 Aussie book blogs registered which is totally awesome, and a fantastic start! My plan is to spend tomorrow getting all the entries I currently have up on the blog.

Some of the most pleasing aspects of this first week is that after the first few days it was probably 50/50 in terms of the numbers of new to me blogs versus the Australian blogs I already knew about. My Google Reader isn't thanking me, but I am loving finding all these new blogs. Now I just have to carve out more blog hopping time to keep up with them.

The other pleasing thing was that I was able to see new connections being made between people who hadn't discovered each other's blogs before, finding other people with similar tastes in reading. That was one of the aims I had for the directory so I am very hopeful that this will continue.

Before I move onto definitions, I just wanted to say thank you to those of you who posted about the Australian Book Blogger Directory. I don't want to forget anyone so I am not going to name names, but thank you for your support! I really appreciate it, and also to Violet for making a button for the directory.


So this leads me to my questions for today.

When I announced the creation of the Book Blogger Directory I got a couple of emails in particular asking what kind of blogs can be included. Which really is what is a book blogger? Here's a quote from one of those emails:

I would love to spread the word but need to know what your criteria are for "book blog". I am on an Aussie writer list and am happy to tell them about it. Some review books so that's easy. Some review books and write about writing. Some review books occasionally. Some don't review books but they write books! Are you happy to let them decide if they belong to the book blogging fraternity and apply to join the directory? I do think of myself as a book blogger, but also an education and parenting blogger. I have several Australian followers who are mombloggers. If they review books sometimes, can they join?

For the purposes of ABBD, I am really interested in connecting people with similar interests and who will be keen to meet up with other book bloggers in future, so I suspect that my definition might be a bit looser than some other peoples might be. Personally, if someone wants to call themselves a book blogger (and there is some bookish content on their blogs) then I am happy for them to join up, but then again, I actually don't see ABBD as my blog, but rather a community project, so will be happy to discuss other blogger's ideas.

So, what do we all think? Is an author a book blogger, or do they need to at least be chatting about other people's books as well as their own to qualify? What about other types of bloggers who occasionally talk books? What about blogs that are attached to bookstores? Often there are reviews amongst their posts, but really the aim is to try to get people to buy from the store.

Is there a definition somewhere of what a book blogger is or isn't? Does anyone who has signed up for the ABBD have strong opinions as to who should and shouldn't be included?

So, my question to anyone who wants to respond is "How do you define the term book blogger?"

TSS: Announcing.... something for the Aussies

I've been working on a new project for the last little while, and today is the day that I can share the details. First though, I thought I would talk about the whys and then give the detail.

For quite a long time, I have been thinking about Aussie bloggers and wondering about how many there are and how to connect with more. Some times I have been reading a blog for a few weeks and then suddenly they will post something and the penny will drop and I realise that they are an Australian! I am sure that there are loads of Australian book blogs that I either don't realise or Aussies or who I haven't come across before!

Reading about all the fun that everyone had in New York connecting with each other in real life at BEA was the next prompt, as was the acceptance that there appeared to be from the big published house towards bloggers at BEA.

So, an idea was born.

Today, I am pleased to announce the creation of

Australian Book Bloggers Directory

The idea behind the directory is that it is a place where people can register their blogs, plus a few details like what genres you like to blog about, and a general idea of location. Then hopefully we will be able to easily find other Australian bloggers with similar reading interests that you might not already know about, or other bloggers who may live in your area.

The second aim in setting up the directory is with a view to starting to get blogger meet-ups happening, at this stage probably in the capital cities, and maybe aligned with some of the major bookish festivals. In due course, assuming enough interest, we will look towards trying to set up a national book blogger event.

The third aim in setting up the directory is to try and raise the profile of Australian book blogging with some of the major publishers here. I don't know if I am just not aware of it happening, but I can't think of many examples where Australian publishers are working with book bloggers in the same way as it happens in other countries.

So are you an Australian book blogger? If yes, and it doesn't matter if you are a kids lit book blog, or a romance blog, or YA, or any type of book blogger really, head on over and add your details. Hopefully you will be able to connect with other bloggers who share your interests.

I would really appreciate people would help spread the word, to try and make the directory as comprehensive as possible. Also, if anyone has any graphic skills and would like to make some kind of badge that we could use both on the website and maybe to display on our blogs let me know! I do not have any skills in that area at all. Finally, if anyone has any suggestions on how to make the directory better, then I will be glad to hear them.

I would like to say specific thanks to Kerrie from Mysteries in Paradise, Amanda from Desert Book Chick and Kat from Bookthingo who were all very helpful in checking out the site and giving suggestions to help make it as easy and user friendly as possible.

TSS - Getting voice right

Before getting into my post proper, I want to quickly say thank you to the bloggers who got together and organised Armchair BEA. I had so much fun over the last week, and I know that I still have a ton of posts to read from the event! I really hope that we get to do it all again next year!
 
Now, to what I wanted to talk about today. A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that I was reading The Help by Kathryn Stockett.

In the author's note for that book, Kathryn Stockett wrote:

I was scared, a lot of the time, that I was crossing a terrible line, writing in the voice of a black person. I was afraid I would fail to describe a relationship that was so intensely influential in my life, so loving, so grossly stereotyped in American history and literature.

and further on

What I am sure about is this: I don't presume to think that I know what it really felt like to be a black woman in Mississippi, especially in the 1960s. I don't think it is something any white woman on the other end of a black woman's paycheck could ever truly understand. But trying to understand is vital to our humanity.

Reading this book had me thinking about voice, and what it is made up of. Firstly, when you are reading a book where there are different types of voices, there could be differentiation in terms of the words that are used, the spelling and grammar which could be used to indicate race or ethnicity or level of education, but other factors that go into giving a character voice, and in particular in giving the reader a sense of authentic voice can also include attitude. As much as we like 21st century attitudes is it realistic to expect to see that attitude in a 19th century woman. Usually not. This is an area that does tend to crop up particularly in relation to those feisty women who defy convention in fiction, but in reality there were so few women who did act against societies norms. The ones who did are exceptional and it is fantastic to read about them, but the numbers of those type of women portrayed compared to the number of women who would have actually acted in this way is definitely disproportionate.

Often times some of the biggest pitfalls relating to voice can come from trying to write a nationality other than your own. There may be certain words that people from certain places are expected to say as a result of cultural stereotypes, but in reality that could be something that isn't every day for every person. Seeing that mentioned several times could be jarring to the reader.

Let me give you an example. One of the things that have been used to promote Australia and that we have a kind of stereotyping about is that we all call everyone mate, as in 'G'Day Mate'. I can't remember the last time I said that to someone. Even just using the word mate is not something that I would use regularly. I remember having a conversation with Heather from Tales of a Capricious Reader not too long ago where we talked about this, and she used the example of the word Y'all, as in 'howdy y'all' and having a similar reaction. Now to be fair, there are some Aussies for whom calling someone mate is a part of everyday idiom. I used to work with a man who called everyone mate. The interesting thing is that he had immigrated to Australia as a teenager, and had lived in a couple of other cities, so maybe it is something that he had more exposure to than I did. So if I read a book where there is an Australian who constantly calls everyone mate to me it doesn't feel genuine at all.

Another example is accent. For example, when I hear that famous line from the Meryl Streep movie Evil Angels/A Cry in the Dark, where she proclaims that 'a dingo took my baby', every time I hear that it is jarring and I think that so does not sound like a genuine Australian (see the video below). Having said that, if you can find audio of Lindy Chamberlain talking, she has a much broader accent than I do so maybe regional differences account for at least some of this difference of opinions.

My point about all this in relation to The Help in particular is that I thought that Kathryn Stockett did a really good job in giving the white and black characters in distinctive voice by using different spelling, grammar, intonation and and in conveying their attitude. The thing is though, my impression is based on what I have seen in movies, in what I have read in other books, and not from personal experience. A quick glance at Amazon shows a small minority of one and two star reviews, and a lot of them talk about not liking the dialect and so obviously their personal experiences have obviously bought influence to bear upon their reading experience.

For me it felt authentic, and I thought it was an excellent read.

TSS: Armchair BEA

On a semi regular basis there are events that are happening that I would love to attend one day, but the fact of the matter is, the US or the UK are a long way to go to go to an event like a Historical Novel Society conference or a Romance Readers of America conference, or as is the case this week, Book Expo America.

I was very excited to hear in the last couple of weeks that some enterprising bloggers who also cannot make it to BEA this year have come up with the idea of Armchair BEA for the rest of us to participate in this week. In addition to BEA, there is also the Book Blogger's Convention, and so this has been included as part of Armchair BEA as well.

Anyone can participate and there will be suggested blogging themes, giveaways, discussions and more.

Here is the proposed schedule:

• Tues. May 25th - BEA Related Posts
  
• Wed. May 26th - Blogger Interviews (Sign-ups already closed)
• Thurs. May 27th - BEA Related Posts & Giveaways on Participating Sites
• Friday May 28th - BBC Roundtables

There are suggestions for themes to post about at the website, and I am sure there will be more in due course.

I have already started working on my posts, and have had fun revisiting an author signing I have previously attended, and will have a challenge for all those people who are good at deciphering unintelligible hand writing later in the week, and on Wednesday I am planning to bring you an interview with a new to me blogger.

I do have a couple of other ideas of things to post for BEA, but we'll see how inspired I get as to whether I actually do post them or not!

So, while I can't make it to BEA or BBC, I will definitely have an Empire State of Mind this week

TSS: You haven't read that?

This morning I started reading The Help by Kathryn Stockett. I know that if I was to say I must be the last person in blog land to read this book, there will be 10 comments that say "oh, I haven't read that yet either". There are however times when it feels as though it must be true, and not just about The Help.

Some times one particular book seems to be popping up everywhere. Maybe part of the reason for that is that as a blogger I tend to gravitate towards the blogs of people who I know have a similar reading taste to me. Some times though, that hype is more manufactured that organic and there are times when it isn't easy to tell the difference.

There are times when seeing the same book over and over again makes me want to go out and get it, and read it straight away, but there are times when it has the opposite effect.Can a book possibly be that good? What happens if I am the only person who doesn't get what the attraction is? It's not the kind of thing that I normally read? And yet, if I hadn't stepped outside of my comfort zone, I would have missed out on some of my favourite reads ever. Books like The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruis Zafon, and just this year The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss (the windy theme of the examples given are purely coincidental!) are both books that I wouldn't have necessarily thought that I would love but I did.

The Help then made several Best of 2009 lists outside of the book blogosphere as well, which bought even more attention to it. At the end of the day, the only way to find out for sure is to actually sit down and read the book to make up your own mind, so I think that is what I am going to do this afternoon. Before I do that though, I thought I would ask a few questions:

Does lots of hype around a book make you want to read it, or is it more likely to turn you off a bit?

Have there been books that everyone else seems to love that make you go meh?

What's the last really hyped book that you read and loved, and wished you had of read earlier?

Are there any new books out at the moment that are getting plenty of hype that you think people should go out of their way to read?

And now I am off to read.... or maybe sleep. You never can tell what is going to happen once I lay down on that couch!

TSS: When a new book isn't a new book

I am sure that I am not alone in having had this experience. You are avidly watching the listings for an author you like to read when finally a new title appears. Yes! A new book! That is until you take a closer look and think, that sounds similar to one I have already read. Or for international readers like me, you are checking Amazon UK and you see a title you have already read, and then you check Amazon US and there is a new book with a different title. Yes! A new book! Given that there are some times months or years between when a book is released in different countries, you have to have a close look at the synopsis to find out if it is the same book or a different book. As a reader, I find this very frustrating at times.

Just recently over at Historical Tapestry, we got sent an email about a book for an author who I have read and enjoyed two books from before. I have been keeping an eye out for any news of a new book, and so I was very excited. While I was reading the brief description provided, I was thinking that this book had a very similar setting to one of her previous books. It was only when I went to the website and read the whole synopsis that I realised that it was actually the same book with a different title. To be fair, the new title really works for the book, and I wish the author every success with their US release, but I was just a fraction disappointed when I realised that this wasn't a new book, but rather a repackaging of an old one.

This seems to happen to some authors more than others. For example, when Ariana Franklin's medieval mystery series featuring a female medical examiner was initially released, the first book was called Mistress of the Art of Death both in the US and the UK. The second book was known as The Serpent's Tale in some countries, but in others it was The Death Maze. This difference in titles continued with the third book, known as Grave Goods in some places and Relics of the Dead in others. Yet the fourth book appears to be known as A Murderous Procession everywhere. Talk about confusing!

Not too long ago, there was a Nora Roberts novel released under the name of Big Jack. What wasn't particularly clear was that this work had previously been released as the first half of Remember When, which was a novel where half had been written as Nora Roberts and the other half was written as part of the In Death series that she writes as J D Robb. If I had been buying her books only to realise that this was a poorly publicised re release I would not have been happy.

And yet I am sure that there are valid reasons for having different titles, but often those reasons are not clear to the reader. Not too long ago, I read a piece on Elizabeth Chadwick's blog where she talked about the reasons why her next US release will have a new title. Instead of being known as The Time of Singing, the book will be called For the King's Favor. If I can find the piece I will link to it. Part of the reason given was that there was some confusion for readers - some times they talked about A Time for Singing, A Time of Singing, The Time of the Singing etc, (and yes, I was guilty of getting the title wrong more than once) and so I get why it might be a good idea to have a different title, and it was interesting to read why that decision has been made. A lot of the time though, there are no reasons given. Just decisions made and the reader has to figure out for themselves that this really isn't actually a new book but one that they have already invested time and money into it.

Is this something that bothers other readers, or is something that people aren't really aware of? Have you ever found yourself reading a book that you have already read because you didn't realise that it had a new title?

TSS: April Reading Roundup

I have had such a good month in April, not because I read the most books for the year this month, because I didn't, but because for the most part I read my own books! I was particularly reminded that there was a reason why I go out of my way to buy the books that these particular authors write - because I really, really enjoy their work! Given that the month started with an emergency dash to the other side of the country I am pretty pleased with my reading month in most ways, including how many books I got through! The surprising thing was that reading my own books also was really beneficial for my library check outs as well - temporarily at least. I have already started rerequesting some of those books I had to return unread so we will see how that goes in the future!

Here is a list of the books that I read in April:

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins (4.5/5)
Tangled Webs by Anne Bishop (4/5)
When Twilight Burns by Colleen Gleason (4/5)**
The King's Favourite by Susan Holloway Scott (4/5)
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson (4.5/5)
The Duke of Shadows by Meredith Duran (4/5)
Tempt Me At Twilight by Lisa Kleypas (4/5)
The Endless Forest by Sara Donati (5/5)
Within the Hollow Crown by Margaret Campbell Barnes (3.5/5)

**Doesn't count for ROOB as I had started it before 1 April.

First things first, here is a recap of the rules of  the Reading Our Own Books Challenge that I was participating in. (You can read the full post here)

Each type of book you read will be assigned a value and the person with the lowest score wins.

The points values are:

• −5 points for reading a book from your TBR stack (owned before 15 March)
• −3 points for reading a review copy (review promised in April)
• −2 points for reading a library copy
• +6 points for reading a new book (owned or borrowed after 15 March)

So for this month I managed to read 7 books that I owned and 1 library copy, so my score was -38. In order to even out the variables like the fact that some of us read faster than others, or have more reading time, or like to read chunksters, in order to equalise the playing field, the score is divided by the number of books read, so my final score would be -4.5. Turns out that was enough for me to win, which I was very excited about! And my prize....more books! LOL!


I want to give a huge shout out to my fellow ROOB players. We had a lot of fun chatting through the month about how we were all going! So thanks to

• Vasilly (Natasha) from 1330v
• Carrie from Books and Movies
• Jennifer from The Literate Housewife Review
• Sarah from Puss Reboots
• Michelle from GalleySmith
• Beth from Beth Fish Reads

Honorary member: Jen from Devourer of Books

The good news is that we are talking about doing the challenge again in October, and we are currently talking about ways to include other people, and maybe a little tweaking of the rules to make it better for things like really old review books etc. Watch this space for more details!

So how did all this reading of my own books work out for all my ongoing challenges?

This month I watched the first couple of episodes of The Pacific, and so I made some progress on the Period Drama Challenge. I am looking forward to seeing more of the series and finding out what happens to the characters. I also have another Period Drama out from the library so I may even be able to complete this challenge. Actually, I might already have finished. Should check that out really!

I made no progress on a number of challenges. I don't actually expect to do any better on the Harry Potter Challenge before it finishes in July. I really should just declare challenge fail and be done with it on that one!

The book that I used for the Year of the Historical challenge for April was Colleen Gleason's book When Twilight Burns, which also counts towards the Vampire Series Challenge. This book and Tangled Webs by Anne Bishop both also counted as reads towards the Once Upon a Time IV challenge.

I made progress on the Romance Reading Challenge with the Meredith Duran book Duke of Shadows and Lisa Kleypas' Tempt Me at Midnight, and on the Chunkster challenge by reading The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest by Stieg Larsson and The Endless Forest by Sara Donati. The King's Favourite, The Endless Forest and Within the Hollow Crown all counted for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge with the latter two also counting for the Pub 2010 challenge.

I have passed halfway for the 100+ Reading Challenge, but the one downside of ROOB was that I didn't make much progress on the Support Your Local Library Challenge!

So there you have it. My April reading month in review. Did you have a good reading month in April?

TSS: Anzac Day 2010

Today is Anzac Day, a very important day in the psyche of Australians and New Zealanders. On this day in 1915, our soldiers were sent onto the beaches of Gallipoli and were slaughtered. For both countries it was the first time we had fought under our own flags, and it is a day where the nation's identity was cemented into the national psyche, and many of the things that Aussies proud themselves on came from these days and the days that followed. Things like mateship, being a bit of a larrikin, bravery and strength in adverse conditions.

Over the last fews years when I have posted about Anzac Day, I have talked about a few different topics, but today I wanted to talk mainly about reading fiction set against a background of war, but initially about my grandparent's experiences whilst they are still fresh in my mind.

If you recall, earlier this month I had to do a mercy dash across to Perth because my grandmother was very ill. It gave my sister and I a chance to talk to my grandfather a little. Whilst he now does have a tendency to tell the same story over and over and over again, we were able to inject a new story into the mix about how it was that he didn't have to go to war.

He talked of all the young men in the district being taken to a hall, and basically separated into groups. Those who would go and those who would stay. Because he was a shearer, they said to him that he was man-powered, which meant that he had to stay.He was given an area that he had to shear the sheep in, and there was something like 20,000 sheep in that area. Even the best shearers (using the equipment they had then) could only do 200 a day so the task was impossible, but even so he was glad to have to do that rather than go off to war. When war broke out against Japan he was in the middle of building a house and basically all building had to cease. Instead he had to do a lot of manual labour at the local airbase.  (Over the course of his life he did an incredible amount of physical jobs. I was actually in awe as he talked about some of them this time.) They were constantly fearful that there would be a Japanese attack on the air base which was very close to where they lived. He had brothers and friends who went, and cousins who were lost at Gallipoli so in his generation he knew plenty of people who were lost to war.

My grandmother was in hospital at the Royal Perth Hospital, and she talked about being required to spend a night up on top of the newly built hospital (which was not in use yet) on the look-out for what she called yack-yack fires - spotting for a Japanese attack on Perth that thankfully never eventuated.

Anyway, once again I am writing a post and digressing from my main topic. Not the first time, and certainly not the last.

My love of reading fiction set against a background of war started for real in my late teens. My aunt came to visit us and lent me a couple of books by an author by the name of Noel Barber. The first of his books that I read was called Tanamera - a novel set in Singapore, opening  in 1935 in the heady colonial days and including the fall of the island to the Japanese, and then the subsequent guerilla battles as they fought for freedom of the colonial rule they were shackled under. As their world turns to constant danger, the two main characters fall in love, and then are torn apart by the circumstances and war and have to find their way back to each other.  In the late 80s this book was turned into a mini-series and you can view the trailer on Youtube. (I would embed it, but the promo trailer was actually a little bit racy which surprised me).

I then went on to devour everything I could read from Barber. His other books were:

• A Farewell to France (1983) (1930s France through WWII)
• A Woman of Cairo (1984) (Egypt during their battles for independence through to WWII)
• The Other Side of Paradise (1986) (Pacific before and during WWII)
• The Weeping and the Laughter (1988) (Russian emigres in Paris through 1920s to WWII)
• The Daughters of the Prince (1990) (Italy just before and during WWII)

These books are the kind of epic, sweeping, romantic novels that we just don't see very often any more! Forbidden love, passion, spies, war. I just went and got all his books off of my bookshelf and I am seriously tempted to just sit down and start reading one of these books. They are chunksters and I have distinct fond memories of each of them.

One of the reasons I like reading these kinds of books so much is finding out things that I just didn't know about. For example, a few years ago I read Black Diamonds by Kim Kelly, where she talked about the role that some of our miners played during WWI. These mens were taken from the mines, and sent to the Western Front, where they then tunneled under the ground until they were close to enemy positions and then set up explosives in order to destroy those enemy positions. It was dirty, and incredibly dangerous, and the men who performed these tasks were incredibly brave.

Since reading this book, I have seen the work of the miners mentioned in news reports, and in documentaries. This year, there is a new movie out which looks back at the jobs that these men did.




There are so many other books that I could focus on that I have read over the years, and I know that there are so many more to come. Click here to see just some of the books I have reviewed over the years that were set in WWII (in particular).

Reading books set against the background of war is just one more way that we can remember them.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old.

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them

Lest we forget.

TSS: Reading Series

I have a confession to make – I am a series junkie. The only thing better than reading a good book is finding out that there is another book set in the same world, featuring either the same characters or at the very least characters you have met before.

So far this year I have read 52 books. Of those, only 21 have been stand alone. I have started 10 new series, finished 4 series, and I have 5 series where I have read the last book in the series that is available and I am waiting for the next book to be published.

There are some advantages and disadvantages to reading series though and I thought for today's post that I would list some of those using series that I am reading or have read as examples.

So here are the advantages of reading a series


Characters and world that you are familiar with -Once you begin to get to know characters and connect with them and their world, the idea of coming back and seeing what they are up to now is so comforting. For example, Diana Gabaldon writes such door stoppers, and the last couple haven't been as good as they had been previously, but I will always come back to read more about Jamie and Claire from the Outlander series. I can't imagine stopping now. I've invested too much time and emotion to not find out what happens in the end.


Knowing what to expect - Some days you just want a certain type of read. You want to be fairly sure that you will pick up the book and really enjoy the contents. Knowing the characters, the world and the author's style of writing helps with this assurance, especially if there is a long history of consistent quality. For example, with the J D Robb series, the quality of the writing has been very consistent from book one. Yes, some books are better than others, but even the worst J D Robb book is better than many other books I have read.


Character development – although it doesn’t always seem to happen – Stephanie Plum is a perfect example of books that continue to be written without much character development happen. Watching a character move through from one point to the next and seeing their growth can be very satisfying.


Funnily enough it is easier to think of disadvantages than advantages

Waiting for the next book – Some times that wait for the next book seems to take forever, especially when the author has ended the previous book with a cliffhanger as so many of them do. As an example, I can’t remember how many I can’t wait for Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins, and I know I am not alone there.

Series not being finished due to contract reasons or worse – The Millennium trilogy by Stieg Larsson is a classic example of this. I can’t remember where I saw it, but I am sure that I read somewhere that the original plan was that there would be more books in the series than the 3 we ended up with due to his untimely death.
Whilst the book felt finished in terms of an individual story, I guess I was reading with the expectation that the book wasn’t the end, and it certainly felt like there was plenty more to come, but unfortunately it is not to be.

There are also plenty of examples of series where the publishers do not want to continue publishing the series. One of the more notable examples of this recently has been Cynthia Harrod-Eagles Morland Dynasty series. The last book that will be released will be book 34, but the original plan was to continue through for another couple of books. As a reader I would be mightily annoyed if I had invested years reading a series that long and then found out that I wasn’t actually going to read the ending that the author wanted to write.

Authors finishing a series: There are a couple of series that I seriously wonder about whether the author will actually ever finish the series – Yes, Janet Evanovich and Diana Gabaldon I am looking at you! The Outlander series was originally slated to be something like 5 books. Now, every time a book comes out in that series, we also get the accompanying statement which says ‘no, this isn’t the last book’. For Evanovich there doesn’t really seem to be a way for her to finish the Plum series without seriously upsetting a large number of fans. As a cupcake, I am definitely hoping that when the Stephanie Plum series does eventually end, Stephanie Plum will end up with Joe Morelli, but there are plenty of passionate babes out there who would like to see her with Ranger at the end of the series. I guess the other option would be to either have her end up with someone other then either of those two characters, or to have her end up with no-one, but then the danger is that you actually alienate all your fans instead of just some of them.

The whole love triangle thing in a series is problematic in itself. For example, in Joanne Fluke’s Hannah Swenson series, Hannah is torn between dentist Norman, and policeman Mike. I haven’t read past the 8th book, mainly because I got bored of Hannah alternating between the two of them. Both of the men apparently felt so strongly about her that they both proposed, but Hannah didn't feel strongly enough about either of them to be able to accept either one, and so the threesome continues. To be fair, I am a long way behind in this series now, so perhaps things have changed. At least I hope so.

Another series that I wonder how it is going to end is J D Robb’s IN Death series but for different reasons. Eve and Roarke are one of my favourite literary couples, but how on earth the author is going to finish the series is something I wonder about, simply because it isn’t likely that murders in New York will suddenly stop in the year 2058. You would also think that there will be a point at some stage where Eve and Roarke may want to become parents and that isn’t really something that I would want to read about, simply because of the type of stories that have been written featuring these characters previously

Reading out of order – I really, really don't like reading a series out of order, and I will do as much as I can to avoid that happening. Sometimes though, it is not necessarily clear in the blurbs on books that it is part of a series, and it is only later that you find out that you haven’t started at the beginning. Some times it really doesn’t matter. Other times it is hard to see how someone who comes to a series part way through can really enjoy the book. Using the Larsson trilogy as an example, coming to the third book, if you hadn’t read the first two books in the series you would be left wondering exactly how it was that Lisbeth Salander started the book in hospital, why was Mikael Blomkvist fighting so hard for her and more.

Reading the last book: Thinking about this is actually one of the things that inspired this post. Sitting on my pile of books not too far away from me is The Endless Forest by Sara Donati. This is a book that I have anticipated for a long time, and yet for some reason there is a sense of apprehension at picking up that last book and knowing that this will be the last time I get to read something new about their lives And so I continue to look at the book, and thinking about reading it, but not quite ready to take that step and actually starting to read it. I think it is harder because Sara Donati is no longer writing and so there is no chance that in the near future there will be a new book from her at all.

This list is by no means extensive. I am sure there are many other pros and cons to reading series. Which ones have I not listed that you think are important? Do you like to read series, or do you prefer standalone novels?

TSS: The Reading Our Own Books challenge edition

You may have noticed that I read a lot of books from the library. I also get a few review books to read, and so I keep spreadsheets to help me keep track of when my library books are due back, and when reviews are due. The one thing that you may notice is missing is that I have not mentioned the books that I actually buy myself. When do I read them? Well, the short answer is I don't, or at least I don't often read them. In fact, if I look at the list of books that I have read this year, I had only read 2 books that I acquired myself.

I was lucky enough to be on Twitter (usually I miss all the good stuff) when a whole group of people were talking about exactly do you get around to reading the authors and books you wanted so much that you were prepared to buy them? And so, the Reading Our Own Books challenge was born! The idea is that in the month of April the participants will be trying to read their own books. Each type of book you read will be assigned a value and the person with the lowest score wins.

The points values are:

• −5 points for reading a book from your TBR stack (owned before 15 March)
• −3 points for reading a review copy (review promised in April)
• −2 points for reading a library copy
• +6 points for reading a new book (owned or borrowed after 15 March)

If you can read only from your own books then you have every chance of winning, but most of us have at least a couple of review books, or library books that we really want to read so I am sure it won't be that straight forward for any of us!

Only books started before 1 April and finished before 30 April count for the challenge.

So, if for example, I read 4 books from my TBR stack, 2 review copies, 3 library books, and 1 new book, here's how I'd figure my score:

(4 × −5) + (2 × −3) + (3 × −2) + (1 × 6) = −20 + −6 + −6 + 6 = −26

In order to even out the variables like the fact that some of us read faster than others, or have more reading time, or like to read chunksters, in order to equalise the playing field, the score is going to be divided by the number of books read, so my final score would be -2.6. (Thanks to bethfish for the example!)

Who knows if that would be enough to win! And what is the prize if you do win? Well, aside from bragging rights, each of the other players gets to send the winner a book from their TBR shelves!

The other players in this edition of the game are:

• Vasilly (Natasha) from 1330v
• Carrie from Books and Movies
• Jennifer from The Literate Housewife Review
• Sarah from Puss Reboots
• Michelle from GalleySmith
• Beth from Beth Fish Reads

Honorary member: Jen from Devourer of Books
Part of the reason that this is a closed group challenge is because of the prize aspect. However, if you want to play along please feel free to keep score. Maybe you will beat all of us. There is already some talk of doing the challenge again later in the year as well! And if you are interested you can follow our progress on Twitter by using the #roob tag.

When I started looking at the books that I might read for this challenge, I got so excited. I have already finished finished Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins, and started Tangled Webs by Anne Bishop, and other books that I might read include Jasper Fforde, Carlos Ruiz Zafon, Puallina Simons, Stieg Larssson, C S Harris, Patricia Briggs, Lisa Kleypas and many, many others!

The interesting thing is that this challenge has already had a beneficial effect on my library list as well, which I really wasn't expecting. The main reason for this is the heavy penalty associated with books acquired (even from the library) after 15 March so instead of automatically requesting books, I have been adding them to my list to request later! I will still be reading at least one library book, but for the most part I will be returning more than I borrow for a few weeks! Who knows I might even get my library list down below 40 again to a much more manageable level.

How do you juggle reading books from the library versus review books versus your own books? Do you just read whatever you feel like or do you have some method of juggling priorities?

TSS: Vacation reading

I know that I am not alone in that when I go on holidays, the issue about what clothes to take, or what supplies to pack pale into insignificance behind the most important question of all - what books am I going to take with me?

Do you take a couple of big chunksters, or do you take several smaller sized books, a mixture of both? Do you take something meaty that you can really concentrate on for a while, or do you take books that you can get lost in for a couple of hours, but it doesn't matter if you get interrupted. Do I take library books that are due back soon or only my own books in case they get lost?

Decisions, decisions.

The fact that I am contemplating these questions means that I am going on holidays myself, and I haven't taken my laptop with me, much to my son's disgust. The boy has recently joined Facebook, and is already playing games such as Farmville (one of the games that I have avoided playing) and he has been begging to take the computer with us. This is also so that his Puffles on Club Penguin don't die too, but I think I am going to be a mean mum and say 'die Puffles, die!'

Here are the books that I did decided to take with me, and so I could be relaxing by sitting in the sunshine reading any one of these books right this moment!

How do you decide which books to take on vacation with you?

TSS: Reading the awards

I am kind of still finding my way with this whole Sunday Salon thing and so I think that for the time being, I am going to keep unofficially participating in Sunday Salon and also officially participating in Muse in the Fog's Suddenly Sunday at the same time.

In case you hadn't noticed the longlist for the Orange Prize for Fiction was announced this week. It has been mentioned one or two times around the blogosphere, and yes, I am going to talk about it here. What I wanted to focus on though was what it means to a reader if a book is long listed for one of the big prizes, let alone wins one. First, here's the list of books that made the long list:

Rosie Alison: The Very Thought of You (UK)
Eleanor Catton: The Rehearsal (New Zealand)
Clare Clark: Savage Lands (UK)
Amanda Craig: Hearts and Minds (UK)
Roopa Farooki: The Way Things Look to Me (UK)
Rebecca Gowers: The Twisted Heart (UK)
M.J. Hyland: This is How (UK)
Sadie Jones: Small Wars (UK)
Barbara Kingsolver: The Lacuna (US)
Laila Lalami: Secret Son (Morocco)
Andrea Levy: The Long Song (UK)
Attica Locke: Black Water Rising (US)
Maria McCann: The Wilding (UK)
Hilary Mantel: Wolf Hall (UK)
Nadifa Mohamed: Black Mamba Boy (UK)
Lorrie Moore: A Gate at the Stairs (UK)
Monique Roffey: The White Woman on the Green Bicycle (Spain/UK)
Amy Sackville: The Still Point (UK)
Kathryn Stockett: The Help (US)
Sarah Waters: The Little Stranger (UK)


My initial thoughts when I first saw this list was 'oh my goodness I haven't read any of these'! I own Wolf Hall, I have The Help out from the library at the moment, and I have had The Little Stranger out as well, but I had to return it unread. I will borrow it again eventually I am sure. There are several others that I have been meaning to read as well, but haven't actually done anything about.

My second reaction was based purely on my affection for Historical Fiction as a genre. Of the twenty books that are listed, twelve of them have a historical setting, or at least are partially set in a different era! The Very Thought of You is set on the eve of WWII (so a must read for me)and Savage Lands by Clare Clark is set in 1700s Louisiana and sounds fascinating and The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver is set during the Mexican Revolution. I really loved The Poisonwood Bible and so this is already on my TBR list. The Long Song by Andrea Levy is about slavery and The Wilding by Maria McCann is set in the post English Civil War era (a time that I find fascinating too). Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel is a Tudor novel that has been garnering critical awards all over the place, and Black Mamba Boy by Nadifa Mohamed is set in 1930s Africa. I can't get enough of books set in Africa. The White Woman on a Green Bicycle by Monique Roffey is set in post Colonial Trinidad, which it is fair to say I have never read about before, and The Still Point by Amy Sackville is partially set at the end of 19th century. The Help by Kathryn Stockett (1960s American South) and The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters (post WWII UK) round out the list.

Then I saw the longlist for the Miles Franklin Literary Award, which is Australia's most prestigious literary fiction prize, and again, I hadn't read any of them. I had heard of some of the authors - let's face it, you can't be a reader in Australia and not have heard of Peter Carey and Tom Kenneally at the very least - and I have read Sonya Hartnett, and have been meaning to read Peter Temple for the longest time too. It is interesting to have a crime novel make the long list too. That's not something that you see that often.

Figurehead, Patrick Allington (Black Inc. Publishing)
Parrot and Olivier in America, Peter Carey (Penguin Group)
The Bath Fugues, Brian Castro (Giramondo Publishing)
Boy on a Wire, John Doust (Fremantle Press)
The Book of Emmett, Deborah Forster (Random House)
Sons of the Rumour, David Foster (Pan Macmillan)
Siddon Rock, Glenda Guest (Random House)
Butterfly, Sonya Hartnett (Penguin Group)
The People's Train, Tom Keneally (Random House)
Lovesong, Alex Miller (Allen & Unwin)
Jasper Jones, Craig Silver (Allen & Unwin)
Truth, Peter Temple (Text Publishing)

So heres the thing. Apparently, despite the fact that in the past 15 months I have read approximately 150 books, I am not reading the books that are garnering the critical praise that comes associated with being nominated with these prestigious prizes. Coincidentally, this week also saw the launch of the third annual DWABAHA tournament, where popular romance novels that have been released in the previous 12 months are pitted against each other in brackets. Participants then vote, until finally there is one book left that is called champion! The initial list was 64 books long, and out of that list, I had read a miserly total of 4. This means that I am not reading the critically acclaimed books and I am not reading the popularly acclaimed books in the genres that I enjoy reading, so what the heck am I reading?

As I do every year, I have added the long listed books to my ever growing TBR list, and think about when I might possibly read some of them, so that I can continue my participation in the ongoing Orange Prize Project challenge at the very least.

Do you like to read the novels that are long listed for prestigious prizes? Some people try to read as many as possible of the long listed novels before the prize is nominated? If a novel does win one of these prizes, do you add it to your TBR list? Does seeing which books made the list attract your interest to those novels, or do prizes not matter to you at all? Perhaps some prizes mean more than others to you?

Let's talk prizes!

Suddenly Sundaying instead of Sunday Salonning

My post title should really be Suddenly Sunday night, and here I am still debating about what I should post about for my first Suddenly Sunday post.

If you are unfamiliar with Suddenly Sunday, it is a meme that was created by Muse in the Fog from Confessions and Ramblings of a Muse in the Fog as an alternative to Sunday Salon given that Sunday Salon is now closed off to new participants. Given that I was unofficially participating in Sunday Salon anyway, I am instead going to be Suddenly Sundaying instead of Sunday Salonning!

It has been a gorgeous autumn weekend here this weekend - sunshine both days and warm but not too hot temperatures. We spent yesterday afternoon discovering a new beach that isn't too far from us (which we will definitely be going back to), then last night I stood in my driveway to watch a relatively big fireworks display that was held as part of our local community festival, and today we spent time at the festival itself. Very pleasant all round.

Tonight, I tried out not one, but two new recipes with mixed success. I enjoyed both, but the boy didn't like the yoghurt and garlic dressing on the main course, and refused to try the dessert that he helped to make, but never mind. Both recipes were good because he was able to help make them. I have been craving berries and white chocolate for weeks now, and the Berry Meringue Smash that I had tonight really hit the spot. Hopefully that will be enough to satisfy the cravings, because I really, really need to go back on the diet and be sensible about what I am eating.

How about some bookish content for this post? I actually have several ideas for these posts, as well as others that I really should do at some point, but instead I am going to leave you with a bit of a reading update.

At the moment I am reading The Champion by Elizabeth Chadwick which I am enjoying. One of the good things about this book is that I suspect that this is the book where she got to know William Marshal, and then a few books after this one he featured in his own book, The Greatest Knight. That book is where I started reading Elizabeth Chadwick, and through subsequent reads, she has since become one of my favourite historical fiction authors. There is a new book coming out soon, but it still seems a long way away! (Is it May yet?)  I need to hurry up and finish this one as it was actually due back to the library last Friday but I am determined to not return it unfinished.

Normally I have two books on the go, but I seem to have a lot more at the moment. In addition to The Champion, I am also reading A Duke of Her Own by Eloisa James, the last book in her Desperate Duchesses series. This book is also overdue, so I need to hurry up. I did read a few pages of Mort by Terry Pratchett the other day as well, and just that little bit was enough to put a smile on my face, and then because I was feeling a bit adventurous a couple of nights ago I also started Master by Colette Gale. I am not quite sure what to make of this one yet, as I haven't really picked up what the story line is.  I assuming that there is a storyline, although so far it seems like it is moving from one sex scene to the next. I don't often read erotic romance, so maybe I am just a little out of my comfort zone here.

This week I am planning to post two Georgette Heyer reviews. The first one will be my H post for Historical Tapestry's Alphabet of Historical Fiction, and the second will be my post for the Georgette Heyer tour for the Classics Circuit. Given the two books are linked, it made sense to post about them close together. Of course, I probably need to start writing both posts in order to achieve this.

Speaking of Historical Tapestry, do you love the writing of Anya Seton, or perhaps do you know someone who does? And would you, or they, be interested in writing a guest post for us. There is loads of time before we would need it, so there is no deadline pressure. If yes, then please let me know!


My next reads will most likely be one of the following books:

Blue Smoke by Nora Roberts
The Book of Unholy Mischief by Elle Newmark
La's Orchestra Saves the World by Alexander McCall Smith
The Various Flavours of Coffee by Anthony Capella
The Stolen Crown by Susan Higginbotham
Young Bess by Margaret Irwin

Any recommendations on what should I read next out of that list?

P.S I was a little surprised when I did a spell check in Word before posting this, and it suggested that this sentence would be better if I changed the is to am. Some times I just have to scratch my head at the suggestions it gives!

I assuming that there is a storyline, although so far it seems like it is moving from one sex scene to the next.