Well, fittingly enough, I read this on the first official day of the RIP IV Challenge. I got an ARC from the lovely and obliging people at the Regal Literary Agency (thanks, y’all! I was so, so pleased to have it!) on Monday, and read it all in one go yesterday evening. In Her Fearful Symmetry, due for proper release at the end of this month, Elspeth Noblin dies and leaves her London flat to her twin nieces, daughters of her own estranged twin Edie. They can have it on their twenty-first birthday, and must live in it for one…
25 CommentsReading the End Posts
Magic. I should have done this, like, much sooner. Except that I didn’t believe (despite ample evidence all through my blogroll to the contrary) that it was possibly possible that you could really truly genuinely say, “Excuse me, may I have a copy of that book, which I desperately desperately want, before it is released?” and then receive an actual copy of the book in the post. BEFORE IT IS OUT. And yet: Good, eh? I like this cover best – the American cover is a little too bluey and generic for me (generic but not spare like my copy…
13 CommentsI cannot hold out any longer! I know I was going to do the rereading thing, and not get any new books out of the library, but I cannot maintain in the face of everyone on my blogroll going on and on about the thousands of amazing spooky books they are thinking of reading, and having the pretty picture of the girl, and putting up covers of beautiful books all the time. I AM ONLY HUMAN. Eee, I’m excited. I can totally read four spooky books by the end of October! (she said optimistically) Definitely I am going to read…
23 CommentsFrederick Douglass is my hero. Him and Julian of Norwich – an unlikely pair, and I am not really sure what they would make of each other, but there you go. I have been saying for ages that we should put Frederick Douglass on our money. And bump Jackson. Jackson is the obvious choice to get bumped, but I also think we could get rid of Grant, in a pinch – it’s not that I hate him or anything, it’s just that, you know, he wasn’t that amazing a president, and we are already representin’ for the Civil War with…
6 CommentsMy sister has this magical ability to get people to do things for her. It is amazing. Everyone in my family does stuff for her even when we have just said, “No! Lazy! Do it yourself! My God you are so lazy!” Like, we’ll both be at my parents’ house, and I’ll be curled up comfortably on the couch reading something, and she’ll be all, “Why are you reading that? It looks stupid. What’s it about? Sounds stupid. You should be reading something with quality like Whatever Happened to Janie. Will you get me a bowl of ice cream? Please? …
13 CommentsCare of Care’s Online Book Club, who always makes me smile, has made a bold claim: She claims that she would brave a pack of raving zombie chickens in order to read my blog. This is a very nice thing to say because chickens are already really yucky and stupid, even without a craving for tasty brains. Consider that. I had to think about it very hard before passing it on, to Schatzi of the stacks my destination, and Jeane at Dog Ear Diary, and Jackie of Farm Lane Books. Inspired by Nymeth’s sterling example, and the fact that something…
11 CommentsThe other day I was reading through my blogroll, and the double-barrelled Elaine Simpson-Long – who reads L.M. Montgomery’s journals and so shall I soon, I dearly hope, and who lives in Colchester, my old Colchester, darling Colchester! – had received a cute pink copy of one of Ada Leverson’s books. From Bloomsbury which apparently has put it back into print as part of a series of delightful charming books that I want to read all of. (Pls ignore that sentence.) Ada Leverson is amazing. Out of all of Oscar Wilde’s friends, Ada Leverson is maybe my favorite. I do…
3 CommentsI recently reread this book, and I was planning to wait on writing about it until I could see the movie, but the people I see movies with are either like “Are you nuts? I saw it the first instant it came out!” or else “I can’t watch it! The book is too precious to me!” or else (more rarely) “Looks mushy. Let’s go see (500) Days of Summer instead.” (And we did. And it was excellent. But I am still curious about The Time Traveler’s Wife film, because I loved the book so much.) The Time Traveler’s Wife I…
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