Mr Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan

It's been a lo-ong time since I posted to this blog, but six years later I thought I'd try it again - partly inspired by something written at the end of this book.

Your life must be an open city, with all sorts of ways to wander in.

For various reasons I've ended up with a few too many roadworks in my city, and it really is time that they finished what they were doing, packed up and let the roads open again - so let's see how we go. :)

I can't remember where I came across this book - maybe on a Wordery post, or just via an algorithmic recommendation somewhere - but I'm glad I did. It sounded like just what I needed, which, in general, is books about fabulous bookshops, and it turned out to be that and something else and something more, and it all worked. :)

Faery Tale by Signe Pike

I came across this book when I was browsing the Mind Body Spirit section in Foyles, a lovely giant of a bookshop that I try to visit when I'm in London, though it's dangerous territory,  purse-wise... *g*  The blurb explained that it was the story of a woman's search for the truth behind fairies - did they really exist?  I flicked through, and Pike begins by explaining that the magic had gone out of life - and I thought me too! And I thought that I'd like to know what she found when she was looking for fairies, because a little enchantment is a lovely thing.  And there was a chapter on fairies in the Isle of Man!

I really liked the idea of someone looking for fairies - not expecting them to be the real fluttery things of Victoriana, but beginning with Mexican myths about fairies, which turn out to be Los Aluxes, which I'd never heard of, but which were fascinating. I was actually peering carefully at shadows the night I read this chapter.  But...

The Court of the Air by Stephen Hunt

I gave up, I'm sorry... I just couldn't quite like any of the characters, and couldn't even be interested in them... isn't that awful?  I'm sure it's a very good story, and I can see that it's a very clever world, just... not for me.

I should at least try and say why though, shouldn't I...  It's been a while since I returned it to the library, so I'm a bit hazy, but what I remember feeling was that the book was all about the world rather than being about the characters, and that the characters were really only there in order to move through the world so that we could see it.  I tend to read books not just to find out about worlds, but because I'm interested in the individuals who live there, and how they relate to the world - how they feel about it, and each other and cope with... the morals of that world, you could almost say, the philosophies of it...  And that was what I didn't find in Court of the Air...

Bog Child by Siobhan Dowd

I don't always adore books that have won this or that prize or medal, but when they're "young adult" books it's far more likely, and all I can do is join the millions of people who seem to have loved this book...  It's a story about the life of Fergus McCann, who is studying for his "A"-levels, trying to keep out of the Provos way, to fall in love, to keep faith with his brother in Long Kesh (the Maze) and to find out why a young girl seems to have been buried in a bog, thousands of years ago... All he really wants is to run, to pass his exams, and to go away to university and become a doctor - but life is never quite that simple.

Coming Home for Christmas by Patricia Scanlan

I'm terrible, I really am - I have books that I'm reading and say I'm reading, and then I pick up other books entirely... in fact I started reading two other books in between the ones I said I was reading - and this is one of them!  It was a last minute grab as I passed the "quick pick" shelf on the way to check out my books at the library, and I'm not really sure why I went for it - except that every now and then it's nice to read fluff, and the cover was all Christmas and snow and stars, and who can resist that really?

Anyway - it was just what the cover promised.  Alison is an Irish girl in New York who's just been made redundant from her high-powered job and moved into a tiny studio flat.  Luckily she meets another new tenant, and he's a man from her own world - JJ, a carpenter and bespoke furniture maker who's had his own tragedy in life. Alison finds herself leaving their new friendship to go back home for her mother's seventieth birthday - long arranged - and is surrounded again by her family and all their warmth and love.

The Deeping Secrets by Victor Watson

I'm just going to rush straight into this one - I loved this book!  I loved Paradise Barn too, but if it's possible I liked The Deeping Secrets even more.  Watson's characters are all so gorgeously human that I felt for each and every one straight away - Molly and Adam and Abigail, and new characters Edward and Joe, and even the villain of the piece. (I didn't like him, but I could feel what he felt, so I felt for him...)  I think, for me, this is the most important thing about a story - if I'm pulled into not just the world, but the characters themselves, then I'm beautifully, wonderfully lost in the words and I'll want to read forever...

Victory by Susan Cooper

At the end of this book, Cooper writes "Sam Robbin's encounters with Admiral Nelson are not historical; they come out of my imagination, and I loved writing them. Perhaps I wrote this whole book only for the chance of meeting one of my greatest heroes, just as I was lucky enough to  meet Shakespeare in a book called King of Shadows and Merlin, long ago, in a sequence called The Dark is Rising. Writers are fortunate people. "

Highland Fling by Katie Fforde

Every now and then I fancy something that looks like an easy, frothy read, and since I'd just read Going Dutch by Katie Fforde, which mixed "chicklit"-type romance with a story about people living on and working with narrowboats, and quite enjoyed it, I thought I'd give Highland Fling a go when I saw it in the library.  It's about Jenny Porter, who is a Virtual Assistant but has taken on a more hands-on role for a particular client (who of course she's never met).  She also uses her working trip to Scotland to re-consider her current relationship with Henry, but it isn't long before she seems to be doing just as Henry predicted: everything that anyone asks of her. Before she's even reached the house where she'll be working, she's all but taken on the running of a mobile tea and butty van, she eventually takes over cooking at the Dalmain's, agrees to organise a dinner party for sixteen people, and of course she's saving the village via saving it's ailing woollens mill. Of course there's also a dashingly annoying tall dark stranger for her to deal with...  And it was an easy read, and it was frothy, and I did quite enjoy it, but...

King of Shadows by Susan Cooper

I adore Cooper's The Dark is Rising series, and I'd swear I've read other stories she's written, though I can't think what right now, but I was really interested to read King of Shadows when I found it in the library, especially when I read the blurb.

Nat Field is an American boy on a trip of a lifetime - as one of a special group of young actors, he is visiting England and preparing to play the part of Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream in the Globe Theatre itself - or at least the reconstructed building.  Whilst in London, however, he comes down with some kind of fever, and when he next wakes he finds himself in 1599.  He is still Nat Field, and still preparing to play the part of Puck - alongside William Shakespeare himself, and Richard Burbage. 

Paradise Barn by Victor Watson

Molly and Abigail are best friends who live in the little village of Great Deeping in Norfolk, and in September 1940 their skies are filled with aircraft battling and bombing to win the war.  The war brings other things into their lives too - an evacuee boy called Adam, who should have got off the train in Kings Lynn, but decided he wanted to live in their village instead; new lodgers to Molly's mum's guesthouse; and not least of all - a dead body in the lane.  Abi sets out to solve the mystery - who was the man, and why was he killed? - with the help of Molly and Adam.

Just a little book blog...

I've been reading some fab books lately, and I thought it might be nice to keep track of them somewhere - so here I am... will be... soon... I'm not sure what else I want to do with this special book blog, or how deeply I might go into listing/reviewing/commenting.  I know that there are reading challenges, which I always think sound like fun, but I'm quite the butterfly reader, flitting from one thing to another, so I'm not sure how far I'd get with those - I'll no doubt try at some point, anyway!  I think mostly I'd like to discover new stories - all sorts: even though I'm talking about this as my book blog, I suspect it will turn out to be a story blog, with rambling about stories from all sorts of places.