Sharing my Birthday Book Blurbs: Part 2

So here we are, on the second post about the Books Wot I Got For My Birthday. Here are the four books I got from my lovely husband…

birthday books 2

 

The Humans by Matt Haig

What appealed: I sometimes wander on to Matt Haig’s blog and often catch his articles here and there. As a writer I shouldn’t use clichés, so I daren’t say I like his ‘refreshing honesty’ (but I do). The premise of The Humans interested me and writers I like liked it, which seemed a fair recommendation:
“Excellent . . . very human and touching indeed” (Patrick Ness)
The Humans is tremendous; a kind of Curious Incident meets The Man Who Fell to Earth. It’s funny, touching and written in a highly appealing voice” (Joanne Harris).

It was also compared to the work of authors I already liked: “This is a tender, funny novel about the often irrational ways humans behave, written in accessible prose, and invites comparison with Mark Haddon and Patrick Ness.” (The Independent on Sunday).Oh, and it’s set in Cambridge – and I live in Cambridgeshire. Do I need any more reasons?

Blurb 

HERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME.

OR IS THERE?

After an ‘incident’ one wet Friday night where Professor Andrew Martin is found walking naked through the streets of Cambridge, he is not feeling quite himself. Food sickens him. Clothes confound him. Even his loving wife and teenage son are repulsive to him. He feels lost amongst a crazy alien species and hates everyone on the planet. Everyone, that is, except Newton, and he’s a dog.
What could possibly make someone change their mind about the human race. . . ?

I Let You Go by Clare Mackintosh

What appealed: Clare is an ex-police officer who answers questions on police procedures and related topics for Writing Magazine. She was kind enough to answer a question of mine and we sometimes have twitter chats about the chaos of the writerly life on crazily busy days. That’s not why I chose her book though;let’s face it, not all of the fellow writers you ‘meet’ on the internet will write stuff you’re interested in. But the book blurb below grabbed me. The setting – a remote cottage in Wales – appealed, as did the idea that the main character is making a fresh start (I like books about fresh starts. I like that inherent optimism). Also, Clare’s book sounds darn intriguing and has got some amazing reviews – most of which mention a mind-blowing twist! I can’t wait!

Blurb

A tragic accident. It all happened so quickly. She couldn’t have prevented it. Could she?

In a split second, Jenna Gray’s world descends into a nightmare. Her only hope of moving on is to walk away from everything she knows to start afresh. Desperate to escape, Jenna moves to a remote cottage on the Welsh coast, but she is haunted by her fears, her grief and her memories of a cruel November night that changed her life forever.
Slowly, Jenna begins to glimpse the potential for happiness in her future. But her past is about to catch up with her, and the consequences will be devastating . . .

The Distant Hours by Kate Morton

What appealed: I’d been  aware of Kate Morton because her books kept coming up in articles and blog posts about slipstream novels. She was often mentioned in the same breath as Kate Mosse, and that can only be a good thing. I read through all her book blurbs to pick a first one to try, and this is the one – after a bit of dithering – that I picked!

Blurb

The Distant Hours by Kate Morton, author of the best-selling The House of Riverton, is a heart-breaking story of love and loss with a devastating secret at its heart.

Edie Burchill and her mother have never been close, but when a long lost letter arrives with the return address of Milderhurst Castle, Kent, printed on its envelope, Edie begins to suspect that her mother’s emotional distance masks an old secret.

Evacuated from London as a thirteen year old girl, Edie’s mother is chosen by the mysterious Juniper Blythe, and taken to live at Millderhurst Castle with the Blythe family.

Fifty years later, Edie too is drawn to Milderhurst and the eccentric Sisters Blythe. Old ladies now, the three still live together, the twins nursing Juniper, whose abandonment by her fiancé in 1941 plunged her into madness. Inside the decaying castle, Edie begins to unravel her mother’s past. But there are other secrets hidden in the stones of Milderhurst Castle, and Edie is about to learn more than she expected. The truth of what happened in the distant hours has been waiting a long time for someone to find it . . .

The Husband’s Secret by Liane Moriarty

What appealed: Letters fascinate me, and I love books of letters and books about letters. So this tagline grabbed me: ‘At the heart of The Husband’s Secret is a letter that’s not meant to be read…’

Blurb:

Mother of three and wife of John-Paul, Cecilia discovers an old envelope in the attic. Written in her husband’s hand, it says: to be opened only in the event of my death.

Curious, she opens it – and time stops. John-Paul’s letter confesses to a terrible mistake which, if revealed, would wreck their family as well as the lives of others.

Cecilia – betrayed, angry and distraught – wants to do the right thing, but right for who? If she protects her family by staying silent, the truth will worm through her heart. But if she reveals her husband’s secret, she will hurt those she loves most . . .

Perfect for fans of Jodi Picoult, or anyone who enjoyed One Moment, One Morning or The Midwife’s Confession, The Husband’s Secret by Liane Moriarty is about the things we know, the things we don’t, and whether or not we ever get to choose. Above all, though, it’s about how we must live with the consequences of our actions – whether we like it or not.

So, what do you think to these four then? Read them? Want to read them now? 🙂

Sharing my Birthday Book Blurbs: Part 1

Lucky me! I had a birthday recently (21 again – obviously), and when I put time aside to jot down a few book titles on my birthday list, I saw that one of them was in that angel/devil Amazon’s 3 for £10 offer. Whoops. That sent me looking for others in the same offer…

Lucky me again, because I got all seven books on my list. So I thought I’d bore you with why they appealed to me and then make you buzz with booky excitement by sharing their blurbs.

In this post: The three books my teens bought me.

birthday books 1

Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey

What appealed: The title, the tagline (‘How do you solve a mystery when you can’t remember the clues?’), the fact that it’s about lost memories (something I’ve have in mind to write about since wandering around Chloe Meineck’s fascinating and touching Memory Box ‘Identity’ exhibition at The Design Museum in London back in 2013), and the blurb…

Blurb 

Maud is forgetful. She makes a cup of tea and doesn’t remember to drink it. She goes to the shops and forgets why she went. Sometimes her home is unrecognizable – or her daughter Helen seems a total stranger.

But there’s one thing Maud is sure of: her friend Elizabeth is missing. The note in her pocket tells her so. And no matter who tells her to stop going on about it, to leave it alone, to shut up, Maud will get to the bottom of it.

Because somewhere in Maud’s damaged mind lies the answer to an unsolved seventy-year-old mystery. One everyone has forgotten about.

Everyone, except Maud . . .

The Girl in the Photograph by Kate Riordan

What appealed: This came up in a search for slipstream fiction (on Goodreads, I think). The blurb says it’s ‘for fans of Kate Mosse‘ (excuse me while I fangirl) ‘and Kate Morton‘ (give me time. Guess whose book will feature in Birthday Book Blurbs Part 2?). My son was very intrigued by the blurb, so without further ado…

Blurb 

A haunting novel about two women separated by decades but entwined by fate.

When Alice Eveleigh arrives at Fiercombe Manor during the long, languid summer of 1933, she finds a house steeped in mystery and brimming with secrets. Sadness permeates its empty rooms and the isolated valley seems crowded with ghosts, none more alluring than Elizabeth Stanton whose only traces remain in a few tantalisingly blurred photographs. Why will no one speak of her? What happened a generation ago to make her vanish?

As the sun beats down relentlessly, Alice becomes ever more determined to unearth the truth about the girl in the photograph – and stop her own life from becoming an eerie echo of Elizabeth’s . . .

Station Eleven by Emily St.John Mandel

What appealed: I read about this novel months ago, but naughtily I’ve got no idea where. Maybe it was recommended on someone else’s blog, or perhaps in a ‘must read’ column in a newspaper. I really like the sound of it,  anyway – I like it bit of apocalypse, me – but I had no idea that it won the Arthur C.Clarke award last month) at about the same time I put it on my list. I’m surprised it was on the 3 for £10, then! George R.R. Martin said: “One of the 2014 books that I did read stands above all the others, however: Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel . . . It’s a deeply melancholy novel, but beautifully written, and wonderfully elegiac, a book that I will long remember, and return to.” Now I’ve put that, I’m wondering if that’s how I heard about it – on a George R.R. Martin Top Ten Reads or the like… yes it was. He named it his favourite novel of 2014 here.

Blurb 

What was lost in the collapse: almost everything, almost everyone, but there is still such beauty.

One snowy night in Toronto famous actor Arthur Leander dies on stage whilst performing the role of a lifetime. That same evening a deadly virus touches down in North America.

The world will never be the same again.

Twenty years later Kirsten, an actress in the Travelling Symphony, performs Shakespeare in the settlements that have grown up since the collapse.

But then her newly hopeful world is threatened.

If civilization was lost, what would you preserve? And how far would you go to protect it?

Read any of these? What did you think? I can’t wait to get stuck in, but I have one book to finish (Matthew Plampin’s The Devil’s Acre) and another to read first.

Before We Say Goodbye To Christmas…

Before we say goodbye to Christmas, I thought I’d (somewhat belatedly) share one of my favourite projects this year – researching the Christmas Truce of 1914. The resulting article was my most syndicated yet, and appeared in more than 15 different magazines, which I was very chuffed with!

Christmas Truce Harpenden NowI particularly liked this layout used in Harpenden Now magazine, because I thought the image of soldiers used behind the text was very effective. The layout below is from The CM21 Connection, who seem to have bought the full length version rather than the edited one.

Christmas Truce The CM21 Connection

 

 

 

 

 

Christmas Truce handy mag
The Handy Mag designers used some charming Christmas imagery to illustrate the article, shown here on the left. I like the snowy background effect.

When researching the article I used many letter excerpts, including some from letters written by Henry Williamson – yes, the same man who went on to write Tarka the Otter, a book that made me cry when I first read it around age ten. If you would like to read letters from this period, I can heartily recommend the amazing Christmas Truce website, “borne out of research conducted by Alan Cleaver and Lesley Park in 1999 for a booklet on the Christmas Truce called ‘Plum Puddings For All'”.  Alan and Lesley became “aware of the vast resource lying dormant in newspaper archives: original personal letters from participants describing what happened and the effect it had on them”. Alan, Lesley and other volunteers have since made it their task to seek out and transcribe these records, and it’s a stunning resource, so do visit.

Several magazines had obviously noticed the emphasis on personal letter excerpts and the mention of carols sung by both sides, and chose to to illustrate Christmas Truce the article with letters or German music scores, as Community Spotlight did (see right). The photos used were very touching too and provide proof that it wasn’t all swept under the carpet; the Christmas Truce events were reported in the UK just days later, with letters and photos appearing in national newspapers. While there was some disapproval in the higher ranks, it wasn’t the national disgrace it’s sometimes made out to have been.

If the experiences of WW1 soldiers interests you then there are dozens of books to read, but some I’ve dipped into recently are The Soldier’s War  and The Quick and the Dead by Richard Van Emden, and also Mud, Blood and Poppycock by Gordon Corrigan. Corrigan’s book raised a few hackles when published due to his determination to bust what he saw as some of the most troublesome and persistent WW1 myths.

If you would like to read my article, you can find it here on page 52 of the digital version of Yes magazine – if you’re interested in vision correction, my article on that is in the same magazine on page 36!

De-stressed by The Teenage Guide to Stress

A new book coming through the post is always a reason to celebrate. But when it’s on your mat when you get home from an unexpected and rather stressful stint at work, it’s even better. And when it’s a book you’ve wonand it’s a good’un! – what could be better?

Not a lot (yes, that’s the right answer. You can put your hand down at the back). Coming home to a signed copy of Nicola Morgan’s The Teenage Guide to Stress on Monday was a great start to a busy week, and as you’ll see…

Teenage Stress

… Nicola sent three lovely signed postcards too, featuring her book covers; one for me and one each for ArtyDaughter and ConstructoBoy. I asked for the book to be signed to them because, well, they’re teenagers. I thought it might be very useful for them. ConstructoBoy was alerted to the book’s presence by TechieHusband muttering approvingly about it as he turned it over in his hands.

ConstructoBoy (glaring, jaw twitching, fingers drumming an irregular beat on the table): What? Why have you got us a book on teenage stress, hmm? So what are you saying? That I’m STRESSED?

Walks off stage, grinding teeth.

I jest. That’s artistic licence gone mad. He did make a fake unimpressed noise, though, and asked why I thought he needed it.

Of course, nobody needs a book on stress solely because they’re a teenager – and it’s not only teenagers that may need a book on stress, either! But I’ve already had a dip into several sections and read enough to know that firstly, it’s really good and full of sound, non-judgemental advice – I found myself nodding a lot – and that secondly, I wished I’d had a book like it when I was a teenager. When I was a teen, I didn’t know that I was stressed, but looking back, I’m not sure how I survived with my marbles intact (always open to debate, that one).

I do remember saying once that I wanted to go to the doctors because I thought I might be suffering from depression. I was asked what on earth I had to be depressed about. I didn’t mention it again.

Hopefully any teens out there experiencing similar problems to those I had (problems that unfortunately I can’t really go into here) will borrow, buy or download this book and not only be reassured, but steered towards getting the right information and help too.

The Teenage Guide to Stress is my favourite kind of non-fiction – the kind that genuinely helps, informs and makes the world a teensy bit better. If you want to scoop up a copy for yourself, try your local bookseller, or WHSmith, Waterstones, Play.com, the Hut… or those other South American river people if you must. You know who I mean.

If you’re in the Peak District, you could pop into the lovely Scarthin Books, which I wrote about here, to buy a copy. In the Marches/Herefordshire? Then pootle along to Aardvark Books instead (recommended here). You’ll get a warm welcome at both places and delicious food, too (plus, probably, several other books you didn’t budget for). What more could you ask for?

 

U is for Underrated: The Disney Film Nobody Knows

Underrated: rated or evaluated too low; underestimated.

A-ha! I remembered! Here we are at last on ‘underrated’, as promised in my E is for Enthralling: The Fantasy and Sci-Fi Books that Got Me Hooked post:

Lloyd Alexander: The Chronicles of Prydain 

They’re brilliant, and based on Welsh mythology. Never heard of them? Er… ever heard of the Disney film, The Black Cauldron? That’s not that surprising either. Taking its title from the 2nd book, yet loosely based on books 1 and 2, it was “the first Disney animated theatrical feature to receive a PG rating. It even had to be edited twice to avoid being released with a PG-13 or R rating” (IMDB).  It’s popularly known as ‘the film that nearly finished Disney’. I’ll explain why in my ‘U for Underrated’ blog post. 

See?

So let’s look at the film.

First, according to Wikipedia, ‘The Black Cauldron is notable for being the world’s first full-length animated feature film to incorporate the use of computer generated imagery in its animation.’ Well that sounds ok. 

Second, Lloyd Alexander, the author of the books on which the film was based, had an interesting complex reaction to the film in an interview with Scholastic about his books: 

“First, I have to say, there is no resemblance between the movie and the book. Having said that, the movie in itself, purely as a movie, I found to be very enjoyable. I had fun watching it. What I would hope is that anyone who sees the movie would certainly enjoy it, but I’d also hope that they’d actually read the book. The book is quite different. It’s a very powerful, very moving story, and I think people would find a lot more depth in the book.”

I have to agree there. But I think there are two reasons why the film wasn’t popular: the characters and story were too complex for the audience, and the story was too dark.

Because third: the story is very dark and this horrified just about everyone.

File:The Black Cauldron poster.jpg

According to IMDb’s notes, after changes in Disney management during production, ‘new studio chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg screened the mostly-completed film and was appalled by its darkness’ and asked the producer, Joe Hale,  to cut 10 minute of it. Joe and Roy Disney managed to cut 6 minutes that they thought would have little impact, But Katzenberg wasn’t happy. Despite their protests he ‘brought the film into an editing bay and began cutting it himself’. Joe Hale said that eventually [Katzenberg] cut out about 12 minutes, which really hurt the picture.” The cuts were very clumsy and the Horned King wasn’t much of a villain once his habit of zombie-making was glossed over.

It was supposedly Disney’s attempt to gather teen fans, but it backfired.

According to animation artist Michael Peraza Jr., when Disney started having screenings for the public at the studio theater to gather their reactions to the rough cut of this film, he knew that the “un-dead” section would most likely be revolting to some in the audience who would not expect to see a bunch of rotted corpses slowly fermenting. When the film reached the “un-dead” sections close to the end of the film, the doors opened and a mother was angrily leaving with her two wailing children. She was followed by another, and soon there was a sizeable exodus of crying kids and upset parents fleeing from the theater. The un-dead sections were quickly cut from the film. IMDb

With its dodgy editing, changes in animators and producers,  5 torturous years in production and the loss of the grittier and more compelling scenes, it was a massive flop financially and critical reviews were mixed but often negative. It took years of nagging to get a VHS release (1998), then a DVD release (2000). Finally in September 2010, Disney released a 25th Anniversary Edition DVD, which we own, with one of the deleted sections featuring The Fairfolk. Wkipedia

And we own it because it is underrated. Yes, it could be a lot better, but you do get a sense of the story and it’s refreshing not to be confronted by the  nauseating, weak ‘judge-me-by my-looks-because-I-don’t-have-any-brains, kiss-me-without-my-permission (or even my consciousness), save me, save me, I’ll-sacrifice-anything-for-you, marry-me-oh-my-hero’ Disney Princesses. It was a great book and the film does have a dark charm.

So should you get the chance, I recommend a watch.

 

Q is for Quaint:

Quaint: ‘having an old-fashioned attractiveness or charm; oddly picturesque.’

Yep, that’s what I envisage quaint to mean in a nutshell.

But I’ve always been interested in the history of words (etymology), and when I was visiting other A to Z bloggers yesterday, two were blogging about etymology. So when I fed in ‘quaint’ to google today, this entry from the online etymology dictionary caught my eye.

c.1200, cointe, “cunning, ingenious; proud,” from Old French cointe “knowledgeable, well-informed; clever; arrogant, proud; elegant, gracious,” from Latin cognitus “known, approved,” past participle of cognoscere “get or come to know well” (see cognizance). Modern spelling is from early 14c. 

Later in English, “elaborate, skillfully made” (c.1300); “strange and clever” (mid-14c.). Sense of “old-fashioned but charming” is first attested 1795, and could describe the word itself, which had become rare after c.1700 (though it soon recovered popularity in this secondary sense).

So what things do you call ‘quaint’ today? For me I suppose it would be village tea-rooms, thatched cottages, wild flower gardens with winding stone paths, wishing wells… that kind of thing.

If we were back in the 13th century, what would I use quaint for? A saddle, perhaps, or a sword. In the 14th? Perhaps The Forme of Cury, a cookbook:

The Forme of Cury is the first English text to mention olive oil, cloves, mace and gourds in relation to British food. Most of the recipes contain what were then luxurious and valuable spices: caraway, nutmeg, cardamom, ginger and pepper. There are also recipes for cooking strange and exotic animals, such as whales, cranes, curlews, herons, seals and porpoises.

Apparently one of the recipes is a kind of porpoise haggis… nice. Now that’s put me right off my cream tea in the little cottage garden, attached to the crumbling but still beautiful thatched tea-room, with roses (naturally) climbing around the door…

Quaint.