#2: A wolfy Hallowe'en read

REVIEW: THE LAST WEREWOLF (4*)

by Glen Duncan (Canongate Books, 2011)

I bought this book in the middle of a tide of rave reviews from my fellow book bloggers - and happily, the hype turned out to be justified.  It isn't the best book I've ever read, but it IS beautifully written, deftly plotted and extremely compelling.

It is written in the form of an ongoing memoir belonging to Jake Marlowe, and begins at the moment he discovers another of his kind has just been killed, officially making him the last living werewolf on earth.  Throughout his life the Hunt has been gradually chasing them down, one by one, and now, 200 years old, lonely and sick of the endless running and monthly bloodbath, Jake is ready to give up and go willingly.  But before the next full moon arrives, when he plans to walk into his own death at the hands of the Hunt's top agents, everything is turned upside down.  His friend is murdered, devious supernatural schemes start to surface, and he falls in love for the first time in his werewolf life.  Suddenly he has something to live for - and he'll do anything to hold onto it.  After all, life is all there is...

If you pick this book up looking for teen romance and high-school thrills, you'll be sorely disappointed.  This is literary fiction all the way - and definitely for the adult reader!  It's bloody, provocative and downright filthy, yet it's written in the most exquisite, poetic language that flows like water.  The only thing I didn't like was the repeated use of the 'c' word, not because of any moral objection, but because in sexual references it just sounds so horrible.  A male-writer thing, perhaps.  That aside, this is a fantastic, gripping read that expertly walks the fine line between gritty and gorgeous to build a novel that really sets itself apart from the supernatural pack (*groans*).  Highly recommended.           

Notable quotables:

• "When you need a plan and don't have one a retarded giddy indifferent faith takes over.  Improv comics know this, criminals, soldiers too.  Self dissolves into the flow and will reassemble on the other side of the job - or not.  Either way you're doing it."
• "We lay near each other but not touching, silent recipients of Pan's globally ignored dawn suite, a soft exhalation through turf and leaf, the whirr of small wings, the introspective clambering of beetles, the shiver of water.  The world, Lula was thinking, is oozing, teeming, crawling with miracles.  And we live in the opaque plastic bubble of television and booze."

A little Air Ambulance haul

You can't keep an avid reader down, can you?  Today I popped into town for a kettle from a little electronics store, and came back with four books and a DVD from the Air Ambulance charity shop instead.  I guess I'll be boiling water in a saucepan for a while longer...

Anyway, someone had obviously been clearing out their YA collection, which is always a good opportunity to pick up some bargains.  To my delight, I found a nearly-new copy of Paranormalcy by Kiersten White and a slightly battered copy of Raised by Wolves by Jennifer Lynn Barnes, both long-time wishlist books, for £1.45 each.  I know they've both been around forever and a day, but as usual, I say better late than never! 

 I also found Cecily von Ziegesar's Gossip Girl prequel, It Had to be You, for a miniscule 95p.  I haven't read any of the books yet, but I'm now hooked on the TV series (thanks Freeview!) and very much looking forward to the new series which starts TONIGHT!  Yippee!  So yes, anyway, now I can try the original...

Aside from these YA delights, I also found a beautiful copy of Mark Carwardine's Last Chance to See.  I missed the television series, but basically it involved zoologist Mark Carwardine and the all-knowing Stephen Fry travelling to different locations around the world looking for some of the world's rarest animals, following in the footsteps of their late, great friend Douglas Adams.  This is the book version!

And finally, I came across a copy of V for Vendetta on DVD.  This has been on my wishlist since my Page to Screen event, when guest blogger David wrote a wonderful double review of the book and movie.  Now I can finally watch it for myself!

Sooo, I may have legs of stone today (after a rather giddy trip to Alton Towers yesterday) AND a splitting headache (unrelated, probably) but I am now one happy bunny.  I guess I'll get stuck into The Last Werewolf for a while, followed by Hush, Hush I think...

A tiny misunderstanding...

Our favourite customer, David, called in today.  He's the little chap who drops by every week just to chat, and brings us custard creams.  He was our first ever customer, dropping in to say hello and place an order with us before we'd even finished decorating the shop!

He said that he loved my new hairstyle, then looked very concerned and asked if he was allowed to say that because he didn't want to sound like he was flirting.  To my delight, he said I "look like one of those singing ladies on the stage in the twenties".  All I needed was a drop-waisted dress and a headband, he said.  I was so chuffed, because that's exactly what had crossed my mind when I first left my new short locks to dry curly instead of straightening them into submission.

What followed was a marvellous moment where I called down the shop to Mum, "Awww, David thinks I look like a flapper!"  Immediately all my elderly customers snapped to attention and turned to look at me in horror.  I was a little taken aback - until I realised that they may have misheard...  Priceless.  :) 

#1: A ghostly Hallowe'en read

REVIEW: HAUNTED (4*)

by James Herbert (New English Library, 1989)

This was my first James Herbert novel, and it won't be my last.  It may have been a short book, but it packed quite a spooky punch!  Its basic plot centres around the good old haunted house - is it or isn't it? - but Herbert throws in enough thrills and chills to make it a genuinely scary read.

Its central character is David Ash, a Psychical Research Institute investigator with a raging alcohol problem and a deeply sceptical attitude.  Of course, things run deeper than they seem...  When he is sent to Edbrook, a supposedly 'haunted' house in the countryside, he is determined to prove, as always, that the spooky goings on have a rather more prosaic cause. 

Within three days, his life will have been turned upside down.  Three nights of nightmarish horror that even he can't explain.  Three days of struggling to understand the Mariell family: beautiful Christina, mischievous Simon and paternal Robert, and their downtrodden Nanny Tess.  What is going on in this house?  Who is the ghostly girl in white?  Is he falling for Christina?  And why do dreams of the strange night before his drowned sister's funeral continue to plague his sleep?  This is a story of secrets and games, mayhem and madness.

Herbert does a wonderful job of creating suspense and repeatedly ripping the rug out from under the reader's feet.  I found my mind working over and over everything that had happened so far, trying to work out what was going on, and even the fact that I'd semi-suspected the big twist didn't make it any less shocking.  There are a few flashback scenes, some dark, some not, but rather than detracting from the pace they had just the right balance of intrigue and information.  In finest horror style, even the last page threw a final punch that left me reeling a little bit.

Though it lacked the deeper themes and sickly horror of Stephen King, this was a pithy, exciting little novel that kept me gripped, gave my mind a work-out, and will stay with me for a while yet.  Recommended.

Reading going slow? All you need is a power cut!

Yes, we all know my reading has been practically non-existent.  The good news is that it's been well and truly kick started over the last couple of days!

I had Tuesday and Wednesday off this week, and finished my first Hallowe'en read over pizza and popcorn on Tuesday.  My review for the spooky Haunted by James Herbert will be up soon!  That's the ghosts sorted...

Then yesterday our power was suddenly cut off at about 1pm.  A little calling around on our precious mobiles confirmed that there had been a huge explosion and fire at the local substation, and several thousand properties were without power.  Great.  So what did I do?  Correct!  I got well and truly stuck in to Glen Duncan's The Last Werewolf!

As the day went on it became apparent that we were going to be surviving the evening in the dark.  By this point 15,000 homes were still electricity-free.  There wasn't much to do except wrap up in a cosy blanket and go sit in front of the fire down in the main house with my book.  After that I was getting too sleepy so I played rummy by candlelight with Mum, then went back to the flat and tried to do a su doku with a booklight and a mug of cup-a-soup.

This morning I tried to get on my Kindle to hop online but the battery had died on that too, so back to my book I went again.  My phone battery was nearly dead, we couldn't check the shop email for orders, and things were getting a bit desperate.  We'd arranged to pop to the shop (torches in hand) to pick up some packing materials for a book we'd already sold, then we were going to head over to Dad's to use the internet and charge everything up before we headed home again.  But lo!  The shop's electricity is just fine!

So here we are, completely unprepared and dressed in scruffy 'day off' clothes, waiting for customers.  We bought mocha over the road and fortunately I had brought my book with me for while we were sitting around waiting for our phones to charge up.  So I guess I'll be reading some more.  There are still 5,000 properties waiting for electricity to come back on, including ours, so I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that by the time we head home I'll have use of a kettle and a hot shower again.  Everybody's running off mobile generators because the substation's pretty much destroyed, so we can't go mad, but it'll be nice to have lighting and heating again!

Anyway, the point of the matter is, it's been good for my reading sluggishness.  I've finished a GHOST book, and am now halfway through and going strong through a WEREWOLF book... after that I'm probably tackling angels.  Which will be nice.  Reviews coming soon! 

Second-hand bookshops: just not 'choice' enough...

Wow, what a kick in the teeth.  Today we were alerted to the fact that one of the glossy local-interest magazines had just published a massive leading article on retailers in our town, and rushed out to buy a copy straight away.  Would it be about a couple of the long-standing shops in town?  About the mixture of establishments?  Would we be mentioned at all?

The straight answer to that is no.  No, we weren't mentioned.  Not by name, not even just a passing mention of a second-hand bookshop.  Which is incredible, given that just about every other trader in this tiny town IS mentioned, along with a sentence or two about what they do and in many cases, a lovely glossy photo of their shop.  These traders range from the posh men's outfitters and a famous whisky boutique to the pasty shop and some of the market stall holders.  Yes, that's right, they saw fit to mention - and photograph - a market stall selling rolls of cloth, but not us.

Right at the end of the article there's a final kick where it hurts - a disclaimer that with all these mentions, all this exploration and choice, the writer in question has only covered the 'choicest' establishments in the town.  Again, can I point out that a stall with ROLLS OF CLOTH fell into that category, but not us.  We didn't even know the article was being written, we weren't approached to advertise in the magazine (usually a sure-fire thing if a town article is being published), nothing.  Nada.  Zilch.

Being in this town is starting to feel very much like being back in high school.  It's not just this - we've also been lumped in as a 'discount bookshop' by one boutique seller in town on a local trader forum we're  a part of, and it was implied that we dragged down the 'upper class' town image.  The popular clique in the middle happily boost each other and look down on those of us on the outside.  It's like when you're at school and the popular girls are outside being loud and superior while you're sitting in the corner of the library eating chocolate.

Seriously, what is it about the words 'second-hand bookshop' that people seem to find so distasteful?  The old ladies prefer the charity shops because they can get a book for practically nothing - and boy, do they like to tell us about it.  But charity shops, however fun to look round, are NOT amazing things to have thronging a town.  They survive and multiply because independent traders aren't taking their place - and they pay reduced rents, don't pay their volunteers or buy their books, and can therefore make life very difficult for 'real' bookshops like us.  Every time we hear the words 'JUST a bookshop' or 'Ohhhh, it's a second-hand bookshop now', uttered in tones bordering on despair, we wonder what the hell we can do to satisfy these people!

At the same time, we're not selling brand new books at rock-bottom prices like Amazon or The Works.  We're usually well below Amazon's prices when you factor in the price of postage even on the Marketplace, but still.  People look at a book these days and see a small object that they don't want to pay for; they don't consider that for £2 they're getting several hours' reading pleasure.  That's about a sixth of the price of a DVD, for at LEAST two or three times more enjoyment time-wise.  They just don't understand the concept of value when it comes to books.  And that makes me sad.

Anyway, that's my piece for the day.  I don't like being shut out from a great town profile that could have really helped us.  I don't like being looked down on by various snooty traders in town who are actually just like us, only with ladies' clothes or hot pastries on their shelves instead of books.  I don't like feeling like I'm back in high school sitting on the outside watching the cool kids getting special favours.  I don't like the fact that when it comes to our target market, we seem to be between a rock and a hard place.  And I don't like the fact that only one or two customers every day really seem to appreciate what we've got here: the friendly atmosphere, the knowledge we have, the pittance we survive on for love of our books, and the promotion of the overarching value of reading.

Which is why I love my book-blogging friends so much, I guess!  :)    

Some spooky books for Hallowe'en 2011!

Well, my reading is still miserably non-existent, thanks to my morning routine of crashing out with Gossip Girl, Judge Judy and a muffin, my evening routine of crashing out with whatever's on E4 before getting a really early night, and my daytime habit of getting swept up doing stuff online...  Happily, I'm finally feeling a bit more motivated and ready to get stuck in to my TBR pile again at last!

With that in mind, I've decided to make an effort in October to commit to finishing a few spooky reads for the Hallowe'en season!  I'm (hopefully) going to the Alton Towers Scarefest in the middle of the month - made doubly scary for me by the fact that it'll be one of the biggest things I've done yet in the course of my agoraphobia-busting journey - so it'll be a good time for some macabre and gothic reading to get me in the mood...

Here's the uber-list of some of the creepier books on my TBR shelf, including a few classics, a handful of non-fiction, some series reads and a good smattering of YA fun.  I'd like to finish at least three before the Witching Hour on October 31 (not bad considering my shocking lack of bookish devotion of late)...

The (Not-So-Short) Shortlist. Maybe.

1. Halo - Alexandra Adornetto
2. Necropolis: London and its Dead - Catharine Arnold
3. World War Z - Max Brooks
4. Midnight Alley (Morganville Vampires 3) - Rachel Caine
5. Marked (House of Night 1) - P.C. and Kristin Cast
6. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
7. Undead and Unwed (Undead 1) - MaryJanice Davidson
8. Blue Bloods (Blue Bloods 1) - Melissa de la Cruz
9. The Last Werewolf - Glen Duncan
10. Jekel Loves Hyde - Beth Fantaskey
11. Hush, Hush (Fallen Angels 1) - Becca Fitzpatrick
12. The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman
13. Dead as a Doornail (Southern Vampire Mysteries 5) - Charlaine Harris
14. The Woman in Black - Susan Hill
15. Practical Magic - Alice Hoffman
16. Blood Trail (Blood Ties 2) - Tanya Huff 
17. Salem's Lot - Stephen King
18. The Shining - Stephen King
19. Christine - Stephen King
20. Carrie - Stephen King
21. The Historian - Elizabeth Kostova
22. Ghost of a Chance - Rhiannon Lassiter
23. Let the Right One In - John Ajvide Lindqvist 
24. Handling the Undead - John Ajvide Lindqvist
25. Wicked - Gregory Maguire
26. Some Girls Bite (Chicagoland Vampires 1) - Chloe Neill
27. The Vampyre - John Polidori
28. The Mysteries of Udolpho - Ann Radcliffe
29. The Science of Vampires - Katherine Ramsland
30. Interview with the Vampire (Vampire Chronicles 1) - Anne Rice
31. The Sorceress (Nicholas Flamel 3) - Michael Scott 
32. Flu - Wayne Simmons
33. The Strange Tale of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson
34. Dracula - Bram Stoker
35. A Brief History of Vampires - M.J. Trow
36. The Castle of Otranto - Horace Walpole
37. Angel - L.A. Weatherly
38. Bareback - Kit Whitfield
39. Dead Beautiful - Yvonne Woon
40. The Day of the Triffids - John Wyndham

Plenty to choose from!  So - what are you planning to read this Hallowe'en?  Are there any of these books you particularly recommend?  Comment and let us know!