Reading the End

You know what I love, Internet?

Published 10 Jun 2009 by Jenny Hamilton

Internet, I will tell you what I love. I love stories set in Britain right before, during, between, and right after the World Wars. I LOVE THEM. Cf. The Little Stranger, The Shooting Party, The House at Riverton, Baltimore, Those Who Hunt the Night, Love Lessons, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, The Night Watch, etc. If you say “Britain” and “World War” in your synopsis of a book, I tend to bump it way up on my reading list. If you also say “aristocracy” and “disintegrating way of life”, I tend to put a hold on it…

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The books I bought in London

Published 6 Jun 2009 by Jenny Hamilton

First trip to Foyle’s The Ordinary Princess, M.M. Kaye My review of this book is here. I recently bought it in hardback at Bongs & Noodles, but I really hate the cover, and when I saw a paperback at Foyle’s with a proper cover, I couldn’t resist getting it. I mean, how could I? Compare them, and you will see how right I was. I was going to offer the hardback to you lovely people, but then my sister asked for it, so I’m giving it to her when she gets back from law school. I know, right? Sheesh. White…

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Booking Through Thursday

Published 5 Jun 2009 by Jenny Hamilton

I like this one: This can be a quick one. Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you’ve read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes. So here are my fifteen books that will always stick with me, more or less in the order in which they entered my life: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte Emily Climbs, L.M .Montgomery Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card Macbeth, William Shakespeare The Chosen, Chaim Potok The Color Purple, Alice Walker Harry Potter and…

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The Little Stranger, Sarah Waters

Published 5 Jun 2009 by Jenny Hamilton

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…

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The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Muriel Barbery, Alison Anderson (trans.)

Published 5 Jun 2009 by Jenny Hamilton

So this is a really good translation. It sounds French, if that makes any sense – the words from the people sound like things that would come out of the mouths of my French friends (if they felt like talking about Tolstoy, which so far they have not shown any particular inclination to do) – but without the awkwardness that bugs me in so many translations of foreign novels. The Elegance of the Hedgehog is about a concierge who has spent her life pretending to be stupid so that nobody will notice her. She is fairly isolated, as you can…

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The House at Riverton, Kate Morton

Published 5 Jun 2009 by Jenny Hamilton

I am not able to steer myself away from books that deal with the dying aristocracy in Britain before and during and after the World Wars. Or just books set in Britain before and during and after the World Wars (recently before and recently after, obviously; otherwise that would comprehend the whole of British history). I love them. I love books set in Britain in this time period even more than I love books set in the Victorian times. At least more reliably – there are some books with Victorian settings that are shocking tedious crap. The House at Riverton…

6 Comments

Ella Minnow Pea, Mark Dunn

Published 4 Jun 2009 by Jenny Hamilton

I actually wrote this review at the end of May – May 19th, if I recall correctly (as of course I unfailingly do) – but I couldn’t post it because I was planning to send a copy of the book to my good friend tim for her birthday (which was May 15th – yes, I’m a bad friend), and I couldn’t remember whether she read this blog or not, but I didn’t want to take any chances. I wanted her to be joyously surprised by the arrival of her book. Um, yeah, Ella Minnow Pea is awesome. I will just…

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The Dragonfly Pool, Eva Ibbotson

Published 31 May 2009 by Jenny Hamilton

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. …

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The Tales of Beedle the Bard, J.K. Rowling

Published 29 May 2009 by Jenny Hamilton

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…

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Milk, Sulphate, and Alby Starvation, Martin Millar

Published 29 May 2009 by Jenny Hamilton

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…

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Reading the End Posts

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