Elizabeth Peters – under this pseudonym as well as her other one, Barbara Michaels – is one of my most favorite authors of all the authors. I like her because she writes the kind of book I like, but she does it (usually) tongue-in-cheek, and furthermore she has read all the same books I have read. Not just, like, Little Women, which everyone has read, but you know, Rafael Sabatini and The Sheik and trashy things like that. I appreciate this from Elizabeth Peters. The Love Talker and Devil-May-Care, both of which I read in the last few days, are…
5 CommentsCategory: Favored authors
My Cousin Rachel, Daphne du Maurier
Published 21 Jun 2009
by
Gin Jenny
Verdict: Not as good as Rebecca. Philip, the protagonist of My Cousin Rachel, has been raised by his bachelor cousin Ambrose. Ambrose goes away to Italy, marries there, and a few years later sends a letter to Philip intimating that he is in danger, and asking Philip to come to Italy straight away. When Philip gets there, Ambrose has died, and Rachel is gone. He conceives a hatred for her, believing that she was responsible for Ambrose’s death; but when she comes to stay with him in England, he falls for her straight away. Is she evil? Did she poison…
6 CommentsThe Little Stranger, Sarah Waters
Published 5 Jun 2009
by
Gin Jenny
I got The Little Stranger for my birthday! And read it on the plane back home yesterday. Not a good plane book; I should have read Changing Planes, which would have been much better, but by the time I thought of it, it was the last leg of the flight and I was trying to catch fifteen minutes of sleep so I wouldn’t die of exhaustion. The Little Stranger would be a perfect dark-and-stormy-night type of book. (Not that there’s any book I wouldn’t want to read at night all cozy with a thunderstorm outside – but some are more…
6 CommentsThe Dragonfly Pool, Eva Ibbotson
Published 31 May 2009
by
Gin Jenny
Lovely Darla at Books and Other Thoughts reviewed this book a while ago, and I was thrilled to find Eva Ibbotson had written a new book – I love her, and actually, I like her non-fantasy books best. Still I didn’t read it for ages, and then at Charing Cross Road the other day, I almost didn’t buy it. I’m glad I bought it! It was wonderful! Tally is a determined little girl who gets sent off to a boarding school called Delderton as Hitler’s growing power brings the threat of war to London, where she lives with her father. …
6 CommentsThe Tales of Beedle the Bard, J.K. Rowling
Published 29 May 2009
by
Gin Jenny
If you are about to ask, “Jenny, did you get this book for only two pounds at the Charing Cross Road Borders, along with a number of other kids’ books that were, at 3 for 2, absolutely irresistible?”, then the answer is yes. Yes, I did. And I was really pleased about it, I can tell you. And I also couldn’t resist buying a great big heavy book all about writing Doctor Who, because I am interested in how people write TV shows. I mean how the process works. All very interesting. The Tales of Beedle the Bard is another…
7 CommentsMilk, Sulphate, and Alby Starvation, Martin Millar
Published 29 May 2009
by
Gin Jenny
I hope Martin Millar never reads this blog post and decides that I’m a jerk, but I’m going to go ahead and say it anyway: Milk, Sulphate, and Alby Starvation is his first book and you can tell. I wish you could not tell – I love it when I can’t tell – but you could tell. You could also tell it was absolutely definitely Martin Millar and nobody else whatsoever, what with all the shifts in point of view, and the brief, brief little snippets of action at one time. (My short attention span thanks you for that, Martin…
2 CommentsA Pale View of Hills, Kazuo Ishiguro
Published 29 May 2009
by
Gin Jenny
Here is what I think goes on in A Pale View of Hills. I think. (There will be spoilers, sort of.) The frame story concerns the protagonist Etsuko receiving a visit from her daughter Niki, not long after her older daughter, Keiko, has committed suicide. Etsuko is remembering a friend she knew long ago, when she still lived in Japan, a woman called Sachiko and her young daughter Mariko. And I believe that what is going on is that Sachiko, actually, is Etsuko, and that Etsuko is trying to make her memories of having been a slightly careless mother to…
4 CommentsThe Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson
Published 26 May 2009
by
Gin Jenny
At last I have finished a novel by Shirley Jackson! I liked the short stories I read of hers in eighth grade (“The Lottery”, predictably, and “The Possibility of Evil”), but ignored her novels for years, and then I tried to read We Have Always Lived in the Castle when I got it out of the library at my university in Colchester, and hated it. I got about ten pages in and couldn’t imagine how it would be possible to go another page. I have to try it again, because I loved The Haunting of Hill House. I reluctantly bought…
8 CommentsThe Savage, David Almond and Dave McKean
Published 14 May 2009
by
Gin Jenny
Another book recommendation from Nymeth – since I just read Skellig, imagine how pleased I was to find that that same author wrote a book that Dave McKean illustrated. Dave McKean used to be my favorite living artist, before I bought my sculpture and discovered Cetin Ates and his genius, so now Dave McKean is my second favorite living artist. I do not love his work less than I used to love it, I just love Cetin Ates’s work even more than that. The Savage is about a young boy called Blue who recently lost his father. A teacher at…
3 CommentsHave His Carcase, Dorothy Sayers
Published 10 May 2009
by
Gin Jenny
Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane, together again, hooray! Harriet Vane has gone off for a vacation in a watering-place (watering-place. Brits are so weird.), and she happens upon a dead body, all throat-cut and bloody. The corpse is dancer Paul Alexis, who is engaged (slightly sordidly) to an extremely rich older woman called Mrs. Weldon, and appears to have been part of a strange Bolshevik type plot. All of the possible suspects have unbreakable alibis. Harriet will still not marry Peter, but he carries on badgering her to marry him anyway. I am mildly bothered by Peter’s continual badgering of…
3 Comments