'Page to Screen' starts in ONE WEEK

Attention readers, passers-by, hangers-on - and my lovely guest bloggers, of course!  It's official, Page to Screen is launching here on Thursday 7 July.  It's my first big event here so I'm looking to all of you guys to show it some love!  I haven't set a finish date yet because I - and my guest bloggers - am still writing, but I'll keep you updated on that one...  It's great timing because both my blogoversary AND my bookshop's 2nd birthday are coming up this week, so this is a kind of triple celebration really!

Here's just a tiny taste of what's to come:

• An international giveaway running right through the event, where winners can choose from a prize pool of books that have made the leap onto the big screen.  The giveaway launch will kick things off on Thursday, and the winner will be announced on the final day of the event.
• Double reviews of some amazing books and their screen adaptations
• A post on great biographical films about the authors BEHIND the books
• A guest post on the hype surrounding the upcoming Hunger Games movie
• A look at the good and the bad in the world of movie tie-in book covers
• ... and loads more!

Guest bloggers - that gives you a rough idea of a deadline (I have enough to cover for a few more days already) - do get in touch if there's any problem!  Everyone else - see you on launch day!  *bustles off to hang up some more bunting*

In for a penny, in for a pound

A Kindle yesterday, and today I joined Twitter!  This, my friends is called 'being dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century'.  I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing, mind - but I've managed two whole tweets (*pats self on back*) and followed, like, five people, so I'm on my way!

Anyway, if you want to follow me hit the button over in the side bar where all my blog subscription and following options are and that should work.  See you over there!

It's Mailbox time!

Welcome to another round of IMM!  It's a glorious sunny day here in TouristTown - it's going to be a real scorcher, I think!  The leaves are glittering in the sunshine, the second round of baby ducks are appearing on the river, and the church bells are ringing across from the steeple on the hillside.  *sigh*  It's so nice to see the sun at last after days of cloud and rain!

So, to the books!  All of these come from one box of books I ordered with some of my birthday money.  There's a nice selection, I think, and I treated myself to a couple of the more expensive non-fiction hardbacks I've been drooling over, so I'm very happy!  First up, one I saw reviewed on one of my favourite blogs (I can't find it now!): Kraken: The Curious, Exciting and Slightly Disturbing Science of Squid by Wendy Williams.  I'm a sucker for a narrative non-fiction on a quirky subject, so this sounds great!  I also bought Cleopatra: A Life, Stacy Schiff's Pulitzer prize-winning biography, which has the most beautiful cover and sounds fascinating.

A couple of fun novels next, for a little light relief.  How I Became a Famous Novelist by Steve Hely is apparently a hilarious journey through one man's quest to write a stratospheric bestseller, with plenty of wry insight into the world of publishing thrown in for good measure.  Jacqueline Susann's Valley of the Dolls probably doesn't need too much introduction (hey, no giggling at the back!), but I've never read it and it's on my Gilmore Girls list, so I threw that in as well!

Two feisty ladies appear in this batch, in the form of Dorothy Parker and Caitlin Moran.  I've been after a volume of Dorothy Parker's writing for ages, her being such an Oscar Wilde-esque barbed wit and all, so The Collected Dorothy Parker was one of the first books into the basket.  Caitlin Moran's How to Be a Woman, her autobiography-with-a-heavy-feminist-slant, was released this week and since I love her newspaper columns (her TV reviews and op-ed pieces leave me weeping with laughter on a near-weekly basis - her column about her crush on Aslan!  *giggles*) that got thrown in too. 

And finally, a bunch of classics.  Dangerous Liaisons by Choderlos de Laclos for some seduction and bad behaviour, Fitzgerald's The Beautiful and Damned for some more spoiled rich folk and, er, bad behaviour, and Hemingway's Death in the Afternoon because there's no better way to round out a box of new reads than with a sun-scorched book on bullfighting...

 As well as these, of course, I've also had the new Kindle to play with!  It's now fully charged 'n' loaded, in its nice leather case, and I've somehow already managed to acquire about thirty books on it!  Many of them are free classics (wheeeee!), including things like Little Women, The Coral Island, The Turn of the Screw and Three Men on the Bummel.  I also bought a handful of other books, including Susan Hill's Howards End is on the Landing, Graham Greene's Brighton Rock, Jane Green's Jemima J and Anna Godbersen's Bright Young Things.  I think that's enough to be going on with for now!

So, that's it for this week!  Hopefully with all my print books and the shiny new toy, I might not be buying as many new 'real' books from now on - though there are still some beautiful non-fiction books that I wouldn't want to read on the Kindle.  After that I'm hoping to buy 'one-read' books for the Kindle instead (crime, chick lit, most YA, that kind of thing) and reserve my bookshelves for non-fiction, translated classics and my favourite books.

Now it's over to you - have you read and enjoyed any of the books that have fallen in through my door of late?  And more importantly, what's in YOUR mailbox this week?

Saturday odds and ends

Happy weekend, readers!  A few bits and pieces today...  First up, as of this morning (or last night?) I've hit 200 followers here on the blog, which is lovely!  And good timing, since it's also my one-year blogoversary in a few days AND our shop's second birthday to boot...  I'm not holding a giveaway to celebrate, since I just had my birthday one , but I've got another one lined up for the 'Page to Screen' event in a week or two, so watch out for that!

The next thing to mention is Judith's Literary Giveaway Blog Hop, hosted over at Leeswammes' Blog, which is in full flow from today.  There are nearly 75 blogs taking part with loads of amazing books up for grabs, so go check it out.  I'm midway through visiting all of the participants and I've already found a couple of new blogs to follow and written down some great book recommendations!

It's the Day of Dance here in TouristTown today - and the farmer's market - so business has been fairly steady.  You never really know on a day like this whether it's going to be packed (because of all the people in the gardens next door watching the festivities) or empty (because everyone stays in the gardens next door then heads back along the river to the chippie).  Not too bad thus far, so we'll see - plus we get to the enjoy all the music and fiddling and foot-stomping (lots of European tap-style and Irish dancing so far!) from the comfort of the shop since it's right over the wall.

We've had a revolting family in this morning, two whining kids and their grumpy parents.  They obviously assumed that we had a loo their little girl could visit and weren't too happy when I said we didn't (come on, the shop's tiny!).  The dad, who'd been browsing up until this point, bellowed across the busy shop, "They don't have a toilet?  What do the staff use, a bloody bucket?"  Charming, thanks for that.  I told them it was on the top floor and it was like Fort Knox trying to get up there through all the locked doors, so off they went to the public ones, chuntering under their breaths the whole way.  *sighs*

Other than that, my Kindle and its case arrived (I've opened the box and cooed over it a bit, but that's all so far),  and I've been buying a few bits and pieces to download to it when I plug it in later.  A bunch of free classics, a 70p YA novel (!) and a couple of other things.  The postman told me off for buying more stuff for myself (he always tells me off when he has to drag yet more parcels over here with my name on them!) which made the customers laugh.  And loads of people have been eyeing up The Princess Bride, which is sitting on the desk, and telling me how amazing it is!  A good choice, apparently... 

Speaking of the Kindle, I also have an interesting article to share with you.  It's from The Independent, and includes not just the writer's perspective on ebooks, but an interesting discussion of the ways in which a physical library can say so much about the reader who built it.  It includes interviews with home stylists who use their clients' libraries to sell houses or project a certain image.  Read more about it HERE.  Tying in with the article is a link to the The Guardian Flickr group which is heaving with photographs of readers' bookshelves - book porn for the biblioholically-minded!

Happy reading for the weekend, all - and see you back here tomorrow for IMM!

Hopping towards the second half of 2011

Welcome hoppers!  As you might have gathered from the blog name, I'm a young bookseller, and I run a second-hand bookshop in a quaint little town with my mum.  We're in the build-up to summer now so things will be getting hectic around here pretty soon - though at the moment the weather's keeping the hordes at bay so it's been scarily quiet...  As for the blog - well, it's a bit of a mixed bookish bag really - reviews, updates on my rampant book-buying addiction, the odd meme, all mixed in with a few random titbits on life in general - food, movies, swoonworthy TV characters, our cats... well, you get the picture!  I read a bit of everything so there should be something for everyone here - check out my 2010 and 2011 pages and review archive for a better idea... 

What's been going on here this week?

Quite a bit - some actual books being finished and reviewed and everything!  *pats self on back proudly*  I reviewed New Scientist's kooky Does Anything Eat Wasps? early on in the week, just to get me back into the swing of things.  Then in the last couple of days I've posted rather more involved reviews for the ever-wonderful Daphne du Maurier's My Cousin Rachel, and Lauren Kate's new novel Passion.  There's a collection of pretty cool books to show off in Sunday's In My Mailbox, where I've also related my fairly embarrassing encounter with one of the Grumpy Old Men off the telly.  Yesterday I posted about Stupid Posh Customers and confessed to my inner To Kindle or Not To Kindle debate - which, by the way, the Kindle won before the day was out, spectacularly, and with some scary photos of how books are overrunning my flat in their papery form!  And finally, I kicked off my 'Music Love' with Adele's amazing live performance of 'Set Fire to the Rain'.  Well worth watching!

I'm currently reading:

I'm still very much enjoying Sara Nelson's So Many Books, So Little Time: A Year of Passionate Reading, which I think MAY have just catapulted itself up above Anne Fadiman's Ex Libris (though still below Tom Raabe's Biblioholism) on my list of awesome books about books.  This is a re-read but I like it more this time.  After finishing my other fiction books this week I've picked up The Princess Bride by William Goldman to read next.  I've been really looking forward to this one, so I have high hopes!  I've only read the 'introduction' so far but it's already made me giggle on every page, so it's looking good...

So, back to the Hop - don't forget to leave me a link in the comments so I can return the visit...

Here's this week's Hop question:

"When did you realize reading was your passion and a truly important part of your life?”
 I don't know how to answer that!  I remember the revelatory moment where I first mastered the art of reading silently, and since then books have ALWAYS been a huge factor in my life.  I was the kid who was reading Enid Blyton when other kids were learning their ABCs; the kid who crammed the car seat backs with so many books for every trip that my poor mum could feel the corners poking through into her back; the kid with ten index cards for her school reading list instead of one; the kid who loved bookish TV programmes and movies more than anything else; the kid who baffled the librarians by taking out stacks of books every single week.  When I was halfway through my A-levels I decided that I wanted to do English Literature at university and turned my school life upside down to make it happen, getting tutoring for my missed year and taking AS and A-level English exams in the same week.  Then when I left uni so unfortunately, all my mum and I wanted to do was open a bookshop.  Now I'm a book blogger too!  I guess for me it was just an ongoing passion, from 'c-a-t' right through to all the amazing books I read now!  

NOTE:

The Book Blogger Hop is hosted by Jennifer at Crazy For Books.

Bowing to the mighty Kindle

You persuaded me!  Between the lovely Jess whispering sweet Kindly nothings by email and all the e-book converts who commented on my 'do I or don't I' post, I couldn't hold out any longer!  *holds arms out defiantly*  Come on, throw the rotten tomatoes now, I deserve it for my sheer hypocrisy!  I'll have to make a special effort to buy my paper books from the indie bookshop in town to make up for it.

Soooo, yes, there's a Kindle out there right now with my name on it.  I'm getting the WiFi and 3G version in the UK's graphite colour (why is there no white option on sale here?  I wanted graphite anyway, I was just wonderin'...), plus the 3-year warranty in case I drop it or sit on it or something.  Ironically, the hardest thing for me was choosing a case!  After reading about all the problems people were having with battery drainage and screen malfunctions with the Amazon brand ones (plus I couldn't decide on a colour!) I ended up finding the most beautiful one by Tuff-Luv.  It's brown saddleback leather, sturdy but not at all bulky, and it has a fold-out stand on the back so that I can read hands-free at mealtimes - how cool is that?!

I also found a couple of really cute skins - but I'm not sold on the idea of sticky-back plastic covers costing £17 so they're on hold indefinitely...

What finally pushed me over the edge?  Looking around my house and seeing this!



See what I mean?  This is when books go from being lovely shiny things to play with to an absolute pain in the ass!  You start with the lovely neat bookshelves... then you turn a little to the right and there are books eating the coffee table... then you turn to the right again and they're breeding right there on the floor.  And those boxes?  Yeah, they're full of books too.  Into the kitchen and they're on the table, on the shelves, on the chairs and - in the bottom right hand corner of the photo - in several big plastic boxes.  Manoeuvre to the left and before you hit the microwave, BOOM!  Bags of books, still waiting for shelf space!  There are still four shelves' worth in my sister's room and a good batch of classics in my bedroom too.  Ridiculous.   It's driving me slowly insane!

Suddenly that Kindle's looking a whole lot rosier, don't you think...?

Of Stupid Customers and Tempting Kindles...

Stupid Customer of the Week

One thing that really, really irks me as a bookseller is the Stupid Posh Customer.  Being a tourist town we get everyone in here, from holidaying Japanese students and their cameras to seasoned intellectuals to local families - but the Stupid Posh Customer is one of the few that has an effect on me something akin to running fingernails down a chalkboard.  The Stupid Posh Customer is usually in her late teens or early twenties, and traipses lightly in through the door, wearing tights and an oversize scarf.  Her giddy male friend will have geek-chic glasses and an Edward Cullen hairdo.  Sometimes there will be a whole gaggle of them.  And they will be loud.  Obnoxiously, upper-clarse loud.  But in their minds, you just know that they think they're exuding 'whimsy and intelligence'.  Er, no.

We had two such individuals in the shop yesterday afternoon and they drove me BONKERS for a good half an hour before they finally bought a book and buggered off.  After lots of posh-tit blathering about classics and nice covers and Wuthering Heights, this girl wandered over to the counter and plonked down two attractive volumes of Rudyard Kipling's Kim - one little old one, and one more recent leatherette reprint.  Here we go, mumbled my inner Bernard Black.  'Er, what's the difference between these two books?' she said.  ??????!  'What do you mean?'  'Well, why is one of them so small and this one bigger?'

Jesus Christ.  'It's the same book!' I said, trying not to laugh.  Or cry.  'They're just different editions.'  'Different... editions?' she murmured, as if this had never occurred to her.  'Yeeees... this one's an old edition, this is a newer one, that's all.  They have different publishers, different dates... '  I tailed off.  'Oh!' she brayed, suddenly right back on form, and skipped away back to her friend.  'I do ask the silliest questions, don't I?'  Thank heavens she was round in the classics section and couldn't see me beating my head against the wall and miming topping myself to Mum, who was grimacing even as she filled up the cookery books and legged it back into the office...  *sigh*

To Kindle or Not To Kindle?

Here's a confession for you: your favourite second-hand bookseller (hey, come back, that's me!) and ardent advocate of the print book is possibly about to become a DIRTY FILTHY SELLOUT!  I don't know what it is, but it's like a light bulb has turned on somewhere down in the stubborn recesses of my brain, and suddenly I really want a Kindle.  *claps hands over mouth and looks around, horrified*  AFTER EVERYTHING I'VE WRITTEN TO THE CONTRARY!  *rocks quietly* 

See, the other day I was idling on the computer and ended up on Amazon.  There, on the homepage, was that eponymous banner advertising the latest Kindle.  'Bugger it,' thunk I, 'I've got a few minutes to kill - let's go and see what LAUGHABLE STUFF Amazon's going to throw at me to make me think that this OVERSIZE CALCULATOR is the second coming of Christ.'  Ten minutes later, I was still scrolling... and people... THE SEEDS OF DOUBT HAD BEEN SOWN.  When the words, 'Well, actually...' start to whisper in the back of your mind, the damage has already been done.

A couple of days later, and here I am, debating white vs. graphite, WiFi vs. 3G, looking at pretty cover colours and eyeing up warranties.  Lest you think I've lost it completely, NO!  There are still many questions floating around my devious little brain and I haven't quite reached 100% go-go-go capacity yet...

The pros

• It will allow me to finally start downsizing my paper collection to a manageable and meaningful size.
• It'll hopefully mean a lot less weight to lug around when we finally get around to moving house.
• If we really downsize in our next move I'll have less paper books to try to condense from a whole flat into what might potentially be one bedroom.
• Less clutter will mean less stress, less hassle - and less dusting.
• The books are quite often cheaper - and there are all those free classics!
• I can still buy paper books for nice non-fiction titles and things I really want to keep in a hard copy.
• I can request titles from NetGalley without knowing I'll have to read the books through the glare of my laptop.
• If and when I finally get out and about again in a wider sense than just the local towns, I'll be all set without lugging around bags of books!
• I don't have destroy loads of trees to fund my book-buying addiction.
• I'm just plain curious as to what all the fuss is about!

The cons

• I'm worried that as soon as technology moves on and the Kindle becomes defunct my books will be worthless.
• Plus, in terms of its own technology, what if the battery dies - how do I replace it?  And I'm a tad worried about the fault a lot of people seem to be having where the screen keeps freezing and resetting, which Amazon doesn't seem to be dealing with all that well.
• It's such a thin, flimsy thing, I'm worried I'll drop it or sit on it or something, or it'll get bashed about in my bag and get broken.
• I wouldn't want dodgy free translations of foreign classics (Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Leo Tolstoy etc.) which limits me a bit in that area.
• It's quite a big lay-out in terms of initial cost - £152 plus a case and warranty, about £200 in all - and that's before I've even started buying books!
• As Mum pointed out, I couldn't really use it at work, which limits me pretty much to home for now until e-books become still more mainstream.  It's not exactly a ringing endorsement of my business if I'm sitting there reading on a Kindle, is it?!
• None of the tactile pleasures - seeing my library on my shelves, turning pages, seeing and touching a new book, browsing through it, feeling its weight and bulk, smelling the distinctive book scent...
• I'm not sure about all the bells-and-whistles stuff - taking notes, sharing passages, all that jazz.  It's a bit complicated for me!
• I'm once more supporting Amazon in its bid to take over the world.

Any of the Kindle readers out there - help!  What do you like most or least about your Kindle?  Do you agree or disagree with my points?  Should I take the plunge?

'Passion'? Sorry, for me it was more like 'Mixed Feelings'...

Another review for you all!  Passion is released tomorrow and should be available in all good bookshops - and much as I squirm at passing this information on, for UK readers, Amazon has it at better-than-half-price until Sunday night, as one of its Deals of the Week.  Oh, and in case you missed it, you can read my blog-tour interview with Lauren Kate HERE.

REVIEW: PASSION (3.5*)

by Lauren Kate (Doubleday, 2011)

*WARNING - SPOILERS FOR 'FALLEN' AND 'TORMENT'!*

I have mixed feelings about this one. I hate to say it, but I think Passion might turn out to be Lauren Kate's New Moon - the installment that's more filler than thriller. As fans of the Fallen series will be aware, Torment ended with a tremendous battle of angels vs Outcasts. At the last moment Luce hopped into an Announcer in her attempt to start working out how to break the curse hanging over her - with Daniel, Cam, Shelby and Miles hot on her heels, of course.

Passion picks up at that moment, plunging the reader straight into Luce's quest for understanding. The novel is a hop, a skip and a jump backwards in time through a selection of Luce's many lives, as she seeks answers by immersing herself in each Lucinda's world, watching her past selves interact with Daniel, and ultimately, watching each of them die the same fiery death that she herself has so far managed to escape. Daniel hops along behind for a while before realising that he has his own answers to find before he catches up with her again.

The book definitely gets better as it goes on. Some of the earlier jaunts - to Moscow, for example - are fairly forgettable, because the reader is just as clueless as Luce at that point! There is also one terribly clichéd jaunt to the Globe Theatre, where she and Daniel just happen to be pals with Shakespeare himself - that jarred a bit. Other 'lives' are more interesting and fascinating to read, including a thrilling chapter set in the Mayan city of Chichén Itzá, and a spectacular ringside view of the Fall itself. Once Daniel stops blindly following Luce, we also get more insight into him as a character, which was very welcome for me; finally, in this book, he becomes less 'enigmatic man-angel' and more human.

One thing that really shone through for me was how much Lauren enjoyed writing this book. You can tell that she had fun playing around with the time travel element and the forays into major civilisations across the world - though at times, I have to say, it became quite predictable. Shakespeare's London? Check! Ancient Egypt? Check! 18th century Versailles? Check! I also missed the grounding humour of characters like Shelby, Cam and Arriane, who in previous books were a great counterfoil for the intensity of the very inward-looking romance.

All in all, I think Kate has laid a solid foundation in this novel for a truly epic finale to the series (Rapture, out next year) in which all of the characters will have an opportunity to really stretch their wings - no pun intended! The questions raised by the last two books are starting to pull together, and she ends with a real 'how the hell are they going to get out of this one?' cliffhanger which already has me excited for book four. I definitely recommend this to fans of the series - I didn't like it as much as the previous two novels but I think the star-cross'd lovers really needed this journey through their pasts to set the stage for THE BIG ONE!

Note: Many thanks to Random House Children's Books, who sent this book for review. 

Music Love (1) - Set Fire to the Rain

Since I love listening to music (and singing along at full volume!) almost as much as I love reading and watching movies, I thought it was really about time I started sharing some music love around this place.  It might settle into being a weekly thing on a certain day, or it might just be a spur-of-the-moment thing whenever the feeling strikes - whatever happens, here's a cracker to start things off!

ADELE - Set Fire to the Rain

Until now I've been relatively take-it-or-leave-it when it comes to Adele's music.  I always thought she seemed a bit... boring?  But then everything changed.  I love The Graham Norton Show - so funny! - and a few weeks ago Adele was one of the guests.  Well, what a revelation!  She was such an 'every girl', with an earthy attitude and a filthy sense of humour - I loved it!  And then... she sang.  Bearing in mind that she had just confessed to having been on a 'four-day bender' right before the show, AND SHE STILL SANG LIKE THIS!  In a sure-fire path to my iPod, it gave me chills, brought tears to my eyes, and has been stuck in my head, on and off, ever since.  Check it out for yourself!



Bloody hell, right?!  *shivers*  Definitely one of the most electrifying - not to mention pitch-perfect - live performances I've ever seen.

Like being back at Manderley, only less breathless

REVIEW: MY COUSIN RACHEL (4*)

by Daphne du Maurier (Virago Modern Classics, 2003)

This book has been sitting unread on my shelves for years - ever since I saw a theatre adaptation in my early teens - and I have no idea why.  Since it was plucked down off the shelves it seems to have taken forever to plough through - and I have no idea why!  This is du Maurier at her best: a gloomy house filled with the bitter secrets of an enigmatic woman; the briny scent of the Cornish sea air; a tormented man seeking love...  Oh, wait, does this sound familiar?

Perhaps that's one of the reasons it took me so long to read it - although it's beautifully written and completely brilliant, it is basically a not-quite-as-good version of Rebecca.  Where Rebecca was impossible to put down, sent chills down the reader's spine and was deeply rooted on the Cornish coast, My Cousin Rachel takes longer to work up to its denouement, invites more questioning and pondering from the steady reader, and spreads its wings to encompass a good dose of Italian influence.

It is narrated, not by an innocent damsel, but by young Philip Ashley, who inherits a sizeable estate when his beloved cousin Ambrose dies during an extended stay in Italy.  In his feverish letters to Philip prior to his death, he implicates his new wife - Philip's cousin Rachel - in his illness.  So when Rachel arrives in England to visit the estate and her young cousin, Philip expects a black widow and is completely unprepared for how he feels as he gets to know this beautiful, exotic woman.  But all may not be as it seems, and Philip is determined to find out the truth once and for all before he becomes a victim in turn.

As always, du Maurier excels at making the reader question their assumptions every step of the way with her spectacular use of the unreliable narrator.  Who is the predator, and who the prey?  Is Philip's mind twisting events out of shape, or are his perceptions going to turn out to be correct?  What really happened in Italy, and who can we trust to be telling the truth - or are Rachel and Philip both too enmeshed in the situation to think and speak honestly?

There is also a wealth of very pointed social observation about national stereotypes and the role of women.  Philip, living before the delights of cheap Ryanair flights to Europe, frequently seems to believe that his cousin and her advisor Rainaldi may be scheming, or insane, or extravagant, simply because they are Italian.  With the exception of the kindly servants who attend to him when he visits Italy, there is no room for manoeuvre in Philip's assumptions that Italians are, by their very nature, not only more sensual and hypnotic than the English, but also far more lax in morals of every kind. 

The role of women is also important.  One of the central themes might be said to be property: the whole novel revolves around Philip's inheritance of the estate.  Throughout the book there are very few occasions when Rachel is referred to as anything but 'my cousin Rachel'; she has become an extension of the property Ambrose has transferred to his young ward.  She is tied down and held hostage by the men in her life.  With Ambrose's new will left unsigned in the cloud of doubt that surrounded his death, she is left with nothing but Philip's charity.  Although a hugely independent character, she can never truly be independent while she must have the permission and goodwill of the men in control for everything she does.   

This is really an incredibly complex novel that, for me, is a cross between Rebecca - which I adored - and Madame Bovary, which I didn't like nearly as much in itself, but which was a really fascinating read in terms of its exposure of contemporary social conventions.  I alternated between feeling deeply for Rachel's predicament and wondering whether Philip might be right in his fear of her.  The beautiful crystal-clear writing drew me deep into the pages, and even though I remembered the ending from my theatre visit (thus destroying much of the suspense) I was still swept faster and faster towards the final pages with that familiar du Maurier thrill racing up my spine.  How on earth did I manage to make such a wonderful book last such a darn long time?!

IMM - and a Grumpy Old faux pas...

It's IMM time again!  It's been a tidy week for books this week, thanks to a little trip into town my grandmother and I made on Monday to scope out the new Air Ambulance charity shop. 

Happily for me as a book addict, it's lovely!  There's a big open space upstairs - the whole of the top floor - with a wall of bookshelves, including a couple of narrower bookcases for DVDs.  As an added bonus, the prices are amazing.  This is not, however, such happy news for us as a business, because it means there's yet another charity shop in town charging far less for their books than we can afford to.  Unfortunately, what people don't always appreciate is that we have, y'know, overheads and stuff.  Unlike the eponymous charity shops, we buy our books, we pay full rates and rent for our space, and in order to avoid annoying our utility companies back home we tend to aim for a paid working week these days!  We volunteered in our own business for over a year, unpaid, and it wasn't always easy to make ends meet!

So, charity shop panic aside, let's get down to the nitty gritty - what did I actually buy?  First up, two DVDs, one of which fits in with my Gilmore Girls read-and-watch project (The Boy in the Plastic Bubble) and one which might fit into the Page to Screen event, if I can figure out where the hell I put my copy of the book (Yes Man).  Anybody seen either of these?  Good, bad, indifferent?

Now, to the books!  From the Air Ambulance shop, I bought four books.  For my mum, an ardent Michael Palin fan, I bought a pristine hardcover copy of his second autobiography, Halfway to Hollywood, for a miniscule £1.95 (see why we're worrying?).  She wasn't really into Monty Python so I never bothered with the first autobiography, The Python Years, but I think she'll like this one.  For myself, I bought Liza Picard's Dr Johnson's London: Everyday Life in London 1740-1770 - for an even more miniscule 95 PENCE - which will go up on my shelves with her Victorian London.

  Two more autobiographies for my shelves, neither of which I might have bought otherwise but hey, what the heck.  I spotted Ruby Wax's autobiography How Do You Want Me and picked that up.  I'm pretty ambivalent about Ruby Wax - she's a funny lady, and clever, yet I never warmed to her that much - but I think her writing might be the way to go.  Takes away the mannerisms and volume and leaves the humour, if you see what I mean!  It looks hilarious anyway.  And lastly, James Frey's scandalous fantasy-turned-autobiography A Million Little Pieces.  I've heard a lot about it but never read it, on principle, because the explosion around it exposed him as such a total tosspot - amongst other things.  Oh well!

Right, that's it from that particular shop.  All for well under £10 - pretty awesome, huh?  However, since there's another charity shop, for the local hospice, right opposite, and since they are no doubt a bit peeved about having their thunder stolen by the shiny new place, AND since they know exactly who I am since I visit so often, I thought I'd better at least pop in so I didn't feel like I'd betrayed them!  Another three books fell into my shopper there: High Society by Ben Elton (which I'd already borrowed from the shop but in an unwieldy hardback edition), a pristine, cute little Penguin paperback copy of A Room With a View by E.M. Forster (which will be much easier to cart around than my leatherette Guild one) and a slightly bashed copy of the hard-to-find Dances with Wolves by Michael Blake.  I know it's hard to find because when one of my customers wanted it I had to order a copy from America to get it in any kind of decent condition.  Hooray!

In other news...

We had our first famous customer in the shop yesterday!  We always wonder if anyone well known will come in, because we're in such a gorgeous little honeypot town AND we're really close to Colin Firth's favourite hotel AND we work five minutes away from TWO stately homes that are really popular for filming period dramas for television and the cinema.  No, it wasn't Colin Firth.  No, I didn't make a superb impression.  And no, he didn't buy anything. 

Unfortunately I didn't know who it was at first, because the gentleman in question had a big black coat on, and a trilby over his eyes, and he was in here with a woman I assume was his wife.  I usually focus on the women when I greet customers because they're the most likely to smile and reciprocate.  Anyways, they arrived at five to five, just as we were about to close, and by nearly quarter past were still browsing and now the only customers in an empty shop.  I went over and just said, 'We're going to need to close in a few minutes, guys'.  Five minutes later, as I headed over to the door to let them out, he finally looked up.  I did a tiny double take (hopefully not too obvious) and smiled hastily as I opened the gate, and he kind of wrinkled his nose, half-smiled and nodded as they left.  

I went back inside and thought, oh my God, I've just harangued one of the Grumpy Old Men right out of the shop.  And called him and his wife/sister/friend/partner 'guys' - a colloquialism I'm not that keen on myself since it sounds so much more contrived in an English accent than in easy American.  We've only done the 'we're going to have to close in a minute' thing a handful of times over two years - why did it have to be today?!  And I couldn't even remember his name!  We all know the old regulars - Arthur Smith, et al - but this was a newbie.  A contributor to the New Year special, or one of the 'Grumpy Guides to...' crew.  Finally, after much Googling around vague search terms involving 'Grumpy' and 'Mark' (I remembered that much), I found him.

Mark Steel - columnist, author, comedian and all-round stalwart of television and radio - I apologise for cutting short your browsing time.  And using the term 'guys'.  I can only say that being of the 'inner Grumpy' persuasion myself, even at the tender age of 24, all I really wanted to do at the end of a busy Saturday was go home for my dinner and a nice sit down.  And hey!  At least I didn't chivvy you out the door with a broom like we've occasionally done for REALLY late customers!  Readers - should you ever hear Mr Steel mentioning tutting shop assistants, 5 o'clock closing times and bookshops in the same sentence, you'll know why! 

I recognise that trilby...  Oooooops.

Okay, I think that's everything for now!  Oh, and I've finished My Cousin Rachel (finally) so there should be a review of both that and Passion in the next few days.  In the meantime, over to you!

Have you read or watched any of these books or movies - and did you like them?  Have I tempted you to check any of them out for yourself?  And most importantly - which books have arrived in YOUR life this week? 

Well, who knew? Er, New Scientist, obviously...

Finally, a review, I hear you cry!  Well, it's not a major book or anything, but it's a good step towards breaking free of my reading slump.  Thankfully, I tend to launch myself back into reading like a horse out of the starting gate, and right now I'm also literally five pages from the end of My Cousin Rachel.  I don't want to cry at the shop so I can't finish it yet!  I'll review that in the next couple of days, and in the meantime I've been working very hard rounding up my lovely guest bloggers and getting stuck into writing some of my own posts for the 'Page to Screen' event starting here in the next few weeks.  Hooray!

REVIEW: DOES ANYTHING EAT WASPS? AND 101 OTHER QUESTIONS (4*)

Edited by Mike O'Hare (Profile Books, 2005)

I've had a couple of these New Scientist compilations but I have to say, this first one is still my favourite. Like the others in the 'series' it is a collection of letters from the magazine's brilliant 'Last Words' page, where questions can be submitted for other readers to answer. These questions - and their answers - can be brilliant, serious, hilarious or pithy by turn.

Have you, for example, ever wondered how frost makes those pretty patterns on your window? Or why you feel more pain two days after exercising than you do the first day? Perhaps you've pondered why dark drinks give you a worse hangover than clear ones, or idly considered how long a head can still be said to be 'alive' after it is chopped off? The answers are all here! A brilliant little book for idling away an hour or two...

The new Breaking Dawn trailer is here!

This is it!  Two of the biggest movie franchises of modern times coming to an end.  What will we do without the next installments of Twilight and Harry Potter to look forward to?  Now, apologies to all the folks who are, like, so over Twilight (even though they devoured each book like ravenous not-quite-werewolves when they first came out) but I, for one, am quite unashamedly in love with this series.  It's a bit of fun, and there's romance and hot men and fast-paced vampy/wolfy fight scenes.  I read the books over four days off, on my bed with a tin of Roses and lots of tea.  And, I might add, since my crippling agoraphobia first struck a few years ago, the only films I've actually braved the cinema to see are Twilight, New Moon and Eclipse, year after year, without fail.

Soooo, bearing that in mind, I was rather excited when my sister told me that the new trailer for Breaking Dawn: Part 1 was out.  Hooray!  For anyone who's not seen it, here you go:

Pretty cool, huh?  I was trying to watch it in the shop and had to keep turning the volume up and down if anyone came in, but I think it looks good!  Not sure what the fighty bits were about - I could only make out Edward because it went a bit fuzzy - but the rest is just as I pictured it.  Angry Jake with his top off in the rain (again), a gaunt Bella and her baby belly, some naughty strong-man sex and, may I just say, a very beautiful wedding.  Don't she look purty?  In Carolina Herrera, no less - very nice!

Whaddya think?  Is it going to do the book justice - particularly since it's divided into two parts so as not to miss anything out?

P.S. Uber-haters beware, we're having happy time over here and I REALLY don't want to have to defend my own quiet brand of Cullen-love AGAIN...  Keep it civil, please!

A rather brilliant e-book debate for BTT

Hello, hello!  You'll be very glad to know, I'm sure, that despite currently reading with roughly the same speed as a snail crossing a forest, I am FINALLY within spitting distance of the end of an ACTUAL BOOK.  And feeling quite good about reading in general, instead of feeling that overwhelming urge to switch on the telly or go online (*pssst, forget you saw me here, okay?*).  Before long balance will be restored and there'll be a review or three over here, hooray!

In the meantime, I thought I'd do this week's BTT, since it's an interesting question and sure to provoke some lively responses...

With the advent (and growing popularity) of e-books, I’m seeing more and more articles about how much 'better' they can be, because they have the option to be interactive - videos, music, glossaries, all sorts of little extra goodies to help 'enhance' your reading experience, rather like listening to the director’s commentary on a DVD of your favourite movie.

How do you feel about that possibility? Does it excite you in a cutting-edge kind of way? Or does it chill you to the bone because that’s not what reading is ABOUT?

Let me start by stating, once again, that I'm not an e-reader kinda girl.  I can definitely understand how if you're living a minimalist life or travelling a lot they can be a blessing, but neither of those things applies to me at the moment so hey!  I guess I'm free to enjoy my paper copies for the time being.

I can also understand why jazzing up an e-book might be an attractive idea for some people - it has novelty value and it can add extra understanding and meaning to certain concepts - but having read The Shallows by Nicholas Carr fairly recently I also appreciate how these interactive options can damage the reading experience.  Even for children who might gain something educational from the interactive element, I'd rather they kept the two things separate: that they played a game for that kind of stimulation and learned to read a book properly.  As Carr explains via his neurobiological research, reading an e-book containing hyperlinks and additional content is very much like reading a website.  You are much more inclined to skip backwards and forwards between pages, to stop reading to look at something else, and thus continue utilising the 'fast and furious' style of reading that people use while surfing the internet. 

In turn, this style of reading quickly becomes hardwired into your brain as your default setting - so not only are you focussing less, reading more shallowly, and ending up with a less complete understanding of what you're reading NOW, but deep reading will become far more difficult to sustain in the future too.  Which might be fine if you're reading the latest Sophie Kinsella novel, but not so good if you're trying to get to grips with a classic, a narrative history or a text for school or university.  You might get it away with it with a reference book where skipping to glossaries and definitions is just par for the course, I suppose...

And yes, the thought of 'Disney-fied' electronic books that have videos and links and soundtracks DOES make me die a little inside.  If I wanted that I could buy a DVD or go online - I don't want all that distraction while I'm trying to read a book!

What are your thoughts on the new idea of interactive e-books?  Are they helpful and educational, or just a nuisance?  Would you read an e-book that had videos, information sites or music included as interactive features? 

This week's (relatively restrained) incoming books!

Welcome to my first official IMM post - maybe this is your first visit here if you've found me via the IMM list, who knows?!  I know I usually post on Sundays anyway, but it seems silly to keep blazing my own one-woman trail of a weekend rather than joining in the IMM meme that's already tearing up the blogger jungle. 

Anyway, I don't have TOO many to share with you this week, especially given that yet more books have been making their way in the opposite direction as well...  I've been a pretty good girl actually, particularly if you don't count my tiny charity shop lapse this morning!  But more on that in a sec.

Let's start at the beginning, shall we?  The book I'm probably most excited about this week is Life by Keith Richards.  I'm no Stones fangirl - I don't know much about them at all, really, barring the occasional belting out of I Can't Get No Satisfaction and the odd joke at the expense of Mick Jagger's face - but this book looks so interesting I bought it anyway!  So many people have read it and loved it, and the supermarket just happened to have it RIGHT THERE, and, well, you know the rest...

A couple of fortuitous finds came my way at the shop this week.  A local author whose books we are always happy to buy - he has a wealth of natural history, photography, history and other books pouring in and out of his house on a regular basis - included in his latest box a 2010 ARC of Nick Crane's Coast: Our Island Story.  Call me a geek, but I love Coast on the telly - Nick Crane striding along clifftops in his walking gear, Miranda whats-her-face doing marine biology, Alice Roberts and her awesome hair making me want to learn stuff, and Neil Oliver standing on rocky outcrops with his enigmatic man-bag, L'Oreal locks blowing in the sea breeze - so I was happy to commandeer this one!  Then yesterday a girl brought two suitcases full of stuff, mainly kids books, but I spotted a copy of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire, and Other Plays and squirrelled it away.  Another book to tick off my Gilmore Girls wishlist, hooray!

I was very excited to find a copy of Insomniac by Gayle Green, her book on living with insomnia and the current research, science and techniques helping sufferers.  I've seen amazing reviews of this one around the blogosphere but it doesn't seem to be that widely available here, so it was one of those 'Yessssss!' moments...  I got a book from LibraryThing's Member Giveaway project too: Passions of the Dead by L.J. Sellers.  I haven't read the first few (three?) Detective Jackson books but it sounds like an interesting series so I'm quite looking forward to giving it a try! 



Just two more and then I'm done for the week, honest!  This morning I had a few errands to run in town before it started raining (the first drops fell as I got back and it's not due to stop until tonight sometime I don't think, the duckies will be so happy!) and accidentally popped into the Age UK charity shop.  What can I say, the local hospice shop wasn't open yet, and the shop I was hoping to visit/scope out - yet another charity shop just opened in the same little courtyard, great for buying books but not so good for our business and for the town as a whole, oh dear - is apparently closed on Sundays until it gets its full quota of staff and volunteers.  Anyways, aside from a £1.49 copy of Poseidon on DVD, which looks kinda cool and has the added advantage of Josh Lucas in a wet shirt, I found two more books to add to this week's pile.  First up, Erik Larson's Thunderstruck, which I bought on the the rather flimsy basis that he also wrote Devil in the White City, which I haven't read but really want.  I have no idea what it's about, other than that it's another murderous true-crime period romp!  I also picked up Alan Carr's Look Who It Is! which they were trying to sell for a crazy price a few weeks ago but which was down to £1.99 this week.  Bargain, methinks, and if it's half as good as his stand-up comedy I'll love it!

Not too excessive this week, huh?  Have you read any of these already, and what did you think?  And more importantly - what delectable titles have made their way into YOUR life this week?