1. I’ve a lot going on at the moment. Today marks one month until I get married, so things are slightly hectic on that front; we have had quite a few houseguests over the last few weeks (that isn’t a complaint, I should point out); I’ve not been feeling at my tip-top best ever since I was in hospital; I also have the usual demands of a full time, busy job.

2. All of this leads to another thing: less time to read. In July I only finished two books, while starting and abandoning more. Two book thoughts posts in a month does not good blogging make.

3. I’m feeling less engaged with the blogging community than I did. There are individual exceptions to this, of course, and I’m still reading a lot of blogs, but sometimes I feel like many blogs sort of merge into one. This isn’t a comment on anyone in particular, by the way, just a general feeling I’ve had for a while. The peak of this came when it felt like every blog in the world – by amateur bloggers such as myself and the more “professional” blogs linked to publications – was featuring Solar. What I love about the blogosphere is the fact that I can pick up odd recommendations that I wouldn’t have found otherwise, and when everyone is writing about the same books that can become diminished. Now, I’m as guilty of this as the next person, which is another reason why I need to examine exactly what it is I’m doing here.

So, where do I go from here?

Well, the first thing I’m going to do is put Other Stories on temporary hiatus. I stress the temporary. As I said, I have one month to go until the wedding, so I’m going to be very busy, and I think it reasonable that I give myself one less thing to think about until then. I’m also just going to spend some time thinking on my own terms, try to reconnect with the reason I started this blogging lark in the first place.

But mostly, I just want to get on with reading books without having half an eye on how I’m going to blog about them. What I’m hoping is that the natural urge to talk about what I’ve read will return – the urge that made me start book blogging in the first place – and all can start afresh. Fingers crossed, I’ll come back in a month or two, give Other Stories a new lick of paint, and have something more valuable to say than I feel I do at the moment. In the meantime, I’ll be bumbling about reading blogs, maybe occasionally commenting.

Until then, I send the bloggy love to my bloggy friends, and I’ll see you on the other side.

 And the winner of yesterday’s prize draw is… Verity! Congratulations – I’ll be dropping you a message shortly.

Well, the good people of Canongate have recently reissued the novel with a shiny new cover, and kindly sent me a copy of it. Now, of course, I already own a copy – a signed copy I might add! – so I have no need for another one (not that it’s stopped me accumulating multiple editions of Jane Eyre, but somehow that’s a different thing). I though, therefore, that I would share the Crimson Petal love, and Canongate have agreed to let me give the new copy away here on the blog.

For those of you unfamilar with the book, here’s the blurb:

Gripping from the first page, this immense novel is an intoxicating and deeply satisfying read. Faber’s most ambitious fictional creation yet, it is sure to affirm his position as one of the most talented and brilliant writers working in the UK. Sugar, an alluring, nineteen-year-old whore in the brothel of the terrifying Mrs Castaway, yearns for a better life. Her ascent through the strata of 1870’s London society offers us intimacy with a host of loveable, maddening and superbly realised characters. At the heart of this panoramic, multi-layered narrative is the compelling struggle of a young woman to lift her body and soul out of the gutter. The Crimson Petal and the White is a big, juicy, must-read of a novel that will delight, enthral, provoke and entertain young and old, male and female.

I love, love, LOVE this book, and I hope whoever wins it does as well. So, to win, please put your names in the comments, and random.org will choose a winner at 12pm UK time tomorrow. Good luck!

I am a confirmed fan of Margaret Atwood’s novels and short stories, but the problem with admiring a writer with a fairly prodigious backlist is that somehow I always find myself trying to play catch-up. There always seems to be another book that people are shouting about, another classic I’m woefully lacking. I don’t know about you but sometimes it can feel like an impossible climb, and one that it’s easier just to quietly ignore than to tackle. Wilderness Tips, then, was a bit of an impulse read, and a real delight too, because it reminded me just how much I love her writing.

‘Atwood deserves an adjective – Atwoodian – in recognition of her unmistakable style.’ Chicago Tribune

So it says on the front cover of my edition, and I think it’s absolutely true. She has a way of getting inside single moments and dissecting them, laying out the constituent pieces, and revealing motivations, feelings, and rationales. In many of the ten short stories in this collection, the transformative moments would be hard to see from the outside, and here lies Atwood’s skill in opening up the character’s emotional state, revealing those inner shifts that are only apparent to the person experiencing them, but which can change that person’s entire life. Or worse, not change it, leaving them to spend the rest of their lives outwardly going through the motions while internally suffering.

In ‘Isis in Darkness’, a man sits down to write a book about a girl he loved until one final, transformative meeting on the street. In ‘Uncles’ an ambitious journalist realises that the one friendship she thought she could count on is not what she believed it to be. In ‘True Trash’ a young woman who used to work at a boys’ summer camp bumps into one of the residents years later and it dawns on her that he doesn’t know something that would irrevocably change his life.

We also see the fall out of a transformative moment, years after the fact. In one story, ‘Death by Landscape’, we find a woman who has lived her life in the shadow of one appalling moment in the wilderness while she was a child. In another, ‘Weight’, we find a woman whose best friend was a victim of domestic violence, and who was eventually murdered by her husband. Our protagonist has spent the years since getting large cheques for a charity she set up in her late friend’s name, only the way she has been doing it is by sleeping with powerful men, then convincing them to write the cheques. This was, I thought, a particularly powerful story in the collection.

Funnily enough, the title story was, for me, one of the two weaker ones in the collection. The pace didn’t seem to settle, and in a short story I always think that a steady pace (whether than be slow or fast) is something to be valued, given that the writer has a smaller package to work with.

‘There are no backgrounds in any of these paintings, no vistas; only a great deal of foreground that goes back and back, endlessly, involving you in its twists and turns of tree and branch and rock.’ ‘Death by Landscape’

I do think, however, that the title ‘Wilderness Tips’ is perfect for the collection as a whole, for really that’s what all of these characters are dealing with. Not necessarily the literal wilderness (though it does figure in a couple of the stories) but life’s wilderness. These characters are dealing with huge moments, and they need to find out how to go on from there. For them there is only foreground going back and back and back, because now, at the very moments we are reading them, there is only That Moment; it all grows from there.

Wilderness Tips is classic Atwood, and it contains everything about her writing that I have adored since I was 16 years old: the strong females, the depth of character, the seemingly effortless way she deal with psychological landscapes, her turns of phrase, and the way that one sentence can cut through so very much: 

‘Freedom isn’t having a lot of men, not if you think you have to. Pamela does what she wants, nothing more and nothing less.’ ‘Wilderness Tips’

It’s a sentence that would be right at home in something by Natasha Walters – maybe she could add it as an epigraph on the reprint of Living Dolls.

Reading this has reignited my love of Atwood’s prose, and I have immediately gone on to The Robber Bride, another ‘classic’ novels of hers that has been sitting on my shelf unread for far too long.

Peter Carey: Parrot and Olivier in America (Faber and Faber)
Emma Donoghue: Room (Pan MacMillan – Picador)
Helen Dunmore: The Betrayal (Penguin – Fig Tree)
Damon Galgut: In a Strange Room (Grove Atlantic – Atlantic Books)
Howard Jacobson: The Finkler Question (Bloomsbury)
Andrea Levy: The Long Song (Headline Publishing Group – Headline Review)
Tom McCarthy: C (Random House – Jonathan Cape)
David Mitchell: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (Hodder & Stoughton – Sceptre)
Lisa Moore: February (Random House – Chatto & Windus)
Paul Murray: Skippy Dies (Penguin – Hamish Hamilton)
Rose Tremain: Trespass (Random House – Chatto & Windus)
Christos Tsiolkas: The Slap (Grove Atlantic – Tuskar Rock)
Alan Warner: The Stars in the Bright Sky (Random House – Jonathan Cape)

Some big names included, but some big names excluded too (no Amis, no McEwan) and from what I’ve heard, I’m unsurprised to see former winner Yann Martel on the list.

There are some that I’ve been meaning to read for a while (Skippy Dies; The Long Song; Trespass) and no doubt I’ll fancy one or more of the books I’m not familiar with. However, I’ve decided that list-ticking isn’t for me, so I won’t be embarking on any sort of Bookerthon this time around. I have enough to contend with! I will be keeping my ear to the ground, though, and will be interested in what everyone else has to say about the list.

The shortlist is to be announced on September 7.

It’ll be happening right here in lovely Oxford on Saturday 25 September. I’m hoping I’ll be able to go, as I’ll be back from honeymoon by then, but it’s not yet definite.

If you are a book blogger who can get yourself to Ox on that day then you would be very welcome. Simon of Stuck in a Book is the man with the plan, so for more details do email him.

The Tapestry of Love is Rosy Thornton’s fourth novel, and is about Catherine Parkstone, a divorcee with grown up children, who decides the time has come for her to upsticks from England and move somewhere new. Inspired by childhood holidays in the region, she moves to the Cévannes mountains in France. There she enjoys (though occasionally battles with) rural living and starts her tapestry and upholstery business, supplying locals with new curtains, covering divans, and even repairs the church’s processional banner.

Of course it’s not all quite as idyllic as it suggests. French bureaucracy and extreme weather are difficult to cope with, and then there is the mysterious neighbour Patrick Castagnol to contend with… not least when he starts sleeping with Catherine’s visiting sister Bryony.

This book isn’t just another English-woman-struggles-with-French-life novel. Rosy Thornton instead makes Catherine’s occasional travails humorous without mocking anyone, and the result is a warm, affectionate, and gentle story that manages to be simple and easy to read without insulting anyone’s intelligence (and that, I find, can be surprisingly hard to do). The latter chapters of the book – I won’t go into detail for fear of spoiling it – are written particularly well, dealing as they do with Catherine’s emotional state as she finds herself torn between England, where she has to return for a time, and her new home in the Cévannes.

Two years ago I read Rosy’s second novel, Hearts and Minds, and loved it, although I had harsh words for whoever chose the cover. This time round, though, they’ve got the cover pretty well bang on. I do have one (minor) complaint though: the title. I mean, it works, it says what the book is about, but I can’t help feeling that it doesn’t quite do the novel justice. It sounds too much like a chick-litty book for my taste, and the novel really is so much more than that. I’m afraid I have no better suggestions, so perhaps I should stop being so picky, but there you go.

But yes, perfect summer reading. A simple, straight-forward story, but written so very well. It’s gentle and lovely but still compelling (I want to know more about Tom and Mo! I think I want to hang out with them) and what’s more, it’s made me want to keep bees. Don’t think it’d work as well in the middle of Oxford and it does in the French mountains, but a girl can dream, right?

These are the two newest releases from Victorian Secrets, the small publishing house set up by my friend Catherine to bring forgotten 19th century books back from bibliographic obscurity. Not only is it a friend that has (re-)published these titles, but I also proof-read them. So, if in the interests of balance you now think that whatever praise I heap upon the books is irrevocably skewed and biased, then possibly best to look away now, even though I hereby give my word that the following is my own honest opinion.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Sitting comfortably?

Then we will begin.

Henry Dunbar was Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s eighth acknowledged novel, originally published in 1864, two years after the 3 volume publication of her most famous novel, Lady Audley’s Secret. It is the story of the eponymous Henry Dunbar, who returns to England from India after having been banished there decades previously after some dodgy dealings with questionable cheques. Waiting for revenge after all this time is Joseph Wilmot, the young man severely wronged in the process by Dunbar. When, after a confrontation, Wilmot’s dead body is discovered, his daughter Margaret begins a campaigned of retribution upon Henry Dunbar.

Of course, it’s not all quite as straight-forward as that, being as this is a classic example of mid-Victorian sensation fiction. Murder! Intrigue! Mistaken identity! Train crashes! Fraud! It’s all terribly exciting, and if you’re looking for a rip-roaring read then I absolutely recommend it. It’s the kind of book that will certainly get you through a long train journey (though I hope yours doesn’t end up like the one in the novel…).

My favourite of the two novels, though, is Florence Marryat’s The Blood of the Vampire. Here’s the blurb:

Harriet Brandt is the daughter of a mad scientist and a mixed-race voodoo priestess. Brought up on her parents’ Jamaican plantation, she is forced to flee to Europe after the slaves revolt. Although everyone is initially attracted to Harriet, people who get close to her seem to sicken and die.

That’s because our Harriet is a psychic vampire who feeds off the life-force of those around her! Now, there is much that is distasteful to the 21st century palette, mostly notably some quite stonking racism. It is no coincidence that Harriet, this prime example of the ‘other’, is half-Jamaican, and much is made of her mixed race-ness. That aside, though, she is also loaded with the attributes of the New Woman, those nasty feminist sorts who seemed to want independence (gasp!). From my point of view as someone who did their Masters dissertation on motherhood and the New Women, there is much to academically chew on here. The representative member of the established patriarchy, Dr Phillips, makes it very clear that no good can come of Harriet given her parentage, and she should never marry or procreate for fear of passing along her curse.

The Blood of the Vampire  is also very interesting due to the year in which is was published, 1897. As some of you may know, a rather more famous vampire novel was also published that year. Some similar themes appear in both, and I’ve been pondering re-reading Dracula since finishing the Marryat novel a few weeks ago.

Do pop over to the Victorian Secrets website and have a look at the other published and forthcoming titles. I think it’s a tremendous and very useful venture. But I would say that, wouldn’t I?

While I attempt to pull together thoughts on at least three books (Henry Dunbar by Mary Elizabeth Braddon; The Blood of the Vampire by Florence Marryat; In Cold Blood by Truman Capote), here are some other interesting things to read:

• Really interesting post/thread on Pharyngula about women in the atheist/skeptic movement. See also this great blog.
• More from Pharyngula, though less feminism, more squid willies. Morbid Squid Sex Story: “I’m impressed at both its endowment and the remarkably inappropriate timing of its deployment.”
• Things wot I did for work: Ethiopia Since Live Aid on OUPblog.
• Happy Birthday Frieda Kahlo
• Meerkats rock my world.
• A Child Free woman writes for Offbeat Mama: “I invited a Childfree-identified writer to share her perspectives on how offbeat mamas can better and more respectfully communicate with Childfree folks. (And yes: it would be awesome if Childfree worked at being respectful too, but I don’t run a blog for them, so not much I can do there.)”
• The Great American Novel… Still Great?
• On disturbing words.

Today, though, we aren’t back with a full new ’series’, but we have chosen eight top summer reads that we’d like to recommend to everyone. Rather than reading all of the books, this time we’ve chosen books that we have personally read already. I do know, though, that I will certainly be taking a look at a few of my esteemed colleagues picks.

So, without further ado, here is the Not the TV Book Group Summer Selection:

Lynne of Dovegrey Reader Scribbles

The Last Secret of the Temple by Paul Sussman (Bantam Press, 2006)
If summer holidays are about an exciting page-turner of a read in between dips in the sea and an ice cream (well that’s what we do in Devon) then this book is perfect. An intelligently written and well-researched archaeological adventure as Egyptian Arab detective inspector finds himself teamed up with a worryingly bigoted Israeli counterpart and a Palestinian journalist in the search for an ancient artifact that must not fall into the wrong hands. The story spreads across the broadest of historical canvases…from ancient Jerusalem and the Crusades via Vichy France and the Nazi holocaust right through to present-day tensions in the Middle East but never loses its focus. Edge of the seat reading and countless unexpected plot twists might just have your ice cream melting because you forget to eat it.

The Great Western Beach – A Memoir of a Cornish Childhood Between the Wars by Emma Smith (Bloomsbury, 2009)
Whilst you’re on the beach you might as well read about one, and if you happen to be in Newquay you can wander around Emma Smith’s childhood haunts too. Life in 1920’s Newquay was ordered,calm and pleasurable. There were social events, visiting and the tennis club to be enjoyed, dance classes and daily lessons with a local teacher, friendships to be forged amongst the children, a life by the sea to be enjoyed but hovering over all was Emma Smith’s war-damaged father. Emma Smith has retrieved those memories over seventy years later as if yesterday. It has to be a huge achievement to write a child’s voice memoir like this, without investing it with the wisdom and hindsight of adulthood. Even better not a hint of sliding down that slippery slope into Misery Memoir, a book you won’t want to end.

Kirsty of Other Stories

The Loudest Sound and Nothing by Clare Wigfall (Faber, 2007)
This is one of my very favourite short story collections. If you’re not going away over the summer, then you can travel in your imagination with these stories. Never have I read a collection which spans so many places, times, ages, and backgrounds. Never have I read an author who is as comfortable writing in the dialect of a remote Scottish island as she is in the drawl of the southern states of America. In part, this might be one of the benefits of Wigfall’s life to date: according to the dust jacket, she grew up between London and California and now lives in Prague. A wonderful collection to dip in and out of throughout the summer.

Rachel Ray by Anthony Trollope (Oxford World Classics, 2008 – originally published in 1863)
I always think that long summer holidays are the perfect time to lose yourself in a nice, fat Victorian novel and novels don’t come fatter than those of Anthony Trollope. However, this time I’ve plumped for one of his shorter efforts, Rachel Ray. Despite there being important and serious themes running through the novel – the political, religious, commercial, and class warfare that permeates a community – it is also a funny book. Many of the characters have that slight Dickensian caricature about them, and many have wonderfully evocative names that would in no way be out of place in a Dickens story: Mr Prong, Miss Pucker, Mr and Mrs Tappitt (the brewers), Rev Comfort. Rachel Ray is a book rich in descriptions, and rich in characterization. There are shades of grey in everyone; everyone has good and bad qualities (don’t we all?) and there is hardly a character that doesn’t evoke both sympathy and frustration at various points. This is a great introduction to Trollope’s work.

Kim of Reading Matters

The Tortilla Curtain by TC Boyle (Bloomsbury Classic Reads, 2004)
If you like your summer reads to be entertaining but also meaty, with plenty to chew over and keep you turning the pages, then TC Boyle’s 1996 novel will fit the bill perfectly. Set in California, it’s a tale of the haves and have nots. There are two view points throughout, told in alternate chapters, which reveal the contrasts between the protectionist middle classes who live with a fortress mentality and the poverty-stricken illegal immigrants (from Mexico) who struggle to put food on their plate on a day-to-day basis despite the obvious and abundant wealth around them. The subject matter sounds heavy, but Boyle has such a lightness of touch and such a wicked sense of humour, that amid the tears there’s also plenty of laughs, too. This is the type of book that stays with you long after you’ve reached the final page…

Valley of Grace by Marion Halligan (Allen & Unwin, 2009)
This exquisitely designed book will make you look tres cool by the swimming pool this summer – even if you don’t read it. However, the content is equally divine: think Parisian streetscapes, chocolate shops, Antiquarian bookshops, beautiful gardens and crumbling old houses in need of tender loving care. Oh, and babies. This is a gorgeous collection of interwoven short stories set in modern day Paris. There’s a fairy tale quality to the writing, which makes Valley of Grace seem like a light, frivolous read, but scratch the surface and there’s a lot going on here, about hope and children and the ties that bind us together. Delicious.

Simon of Savidge Reads

Peyton Place – Grace Metalious (Virago Press, 2009 – originally published in 1956)
I know people always say that the summer months are for reading something lighter, something easier and many people might think Peyton Place is one such book because of its ‘trashy’ tag that it sadly gained. It’s not trash at all but an insightful, gossipy and most importantly of all well written novel about the goings on behind closed doors in a picturesque New England town. You will be gripped both by some of the dark storylines and their twists and turns but also by the wonderful characters. It’s pure escapism, but very well written escapism. Perfect for curtain twitcher’s or people watchers who want a little something salacious in the summer months and one that’s wonderfully written.

Mudbound – Hillary Jordan (Windmill Books, 2008)
It always amazes me that this book isn’t better known because it’s bloody marvellous! I am always a fan of authors who can take to a vast amount of places, through some unique characters and push you through several emotions all in a short space of time and with Mudbound Hillary Jordan does that and more (I actually gasped and cried at this book I am unashamed to say). Set in the Mississippi Delta in 1946 we meet Henry and Laura McAllan take over a cotton farm, just as they are burying someone. Intrigued, you should be. What then follows is an epic (if you can have such a thing in 330ish pages) tale of war, slavery, racism and a love that shouldn’t be. This ticks all the boxes for a meatier summer read and will resonate with you long after, it’s a must read any season.