Month: November 2009

Categories
1930s Chick Lit

The Nutmeg Tree – Margery Sharp

Jane from Fleur Fisher Reads recommended Margery Sharp, as an author who should be read by more people. I struggled to find any of her books as they are now out of print, but then I struck gold and found three all together!

The Nutmeg Tree was first published in 1937 and was probably the 1930s version of chick-lit on its release. It was a lovely, light entertaining read – the perfect antidote to all the depressing books I’ve been subjecting myself to recently.

The story centres on Julia who is widowed after a very short marriage. She decides to leave her daughter, Susan, in the care of her in-laws to pursue a career on the stage. She has no contact with her daughter and is surprised to receive a letter from her twenty years later, begging her to come and visit the family in France.

The point is that I want to get married and Grandmother objects. 

Julia decides to be reunited with her daughter and travels to France at the first opportunity.

The Nutmeg Tree is a heart warming book, packed with details of an English way of life that just doesn’t exist any more. The plot isn’t the best thing I’ve ever read, but it did make me smile!

I would normally have a problem with a character that abandoned her daughter, but for some reason this didn’t really come into it – I loved Julia’s character and just accepted that things were different back then. Julia is such a bold character who finds herself in all sorts of sticky situations – I loved the ingenious ways in which she wormed her way out of trouble and her courtship behaviour was very entertaining.

This book will appeal to fans of Persephone books, and I hope that one day they reprint one of her books as Margery Sharp does deserve to be rediscovered.

stars41

Have you ever read anything by Margery Sharp?

Can you recommend any other forgotten authors who are worth seeking out?

Categories
2009

The Magicians – Lev Grossman

I wanted to read The Magicians the moment I saw Diane’s review. An adult version of Narnia really appealed and further comparisons with Harry Potter made it all the more interesting to me. I then started to see some more negative and mixed reviews and began to suspect that I might not love this book as much as I first thought.

The Magicians begins with a boy turning up for a Princeton University entrance exam. He finds his interviewer dead and then a mysterious note leads him to into a strange new world, where he finds himself studying magic at Brakebills University. 

Unfortunately I quickly realised that this book wasn’t going to live up to my expectations. It lacked emotion and the plot felt like Harry Potter with the sparkle removed. There was none of the humor or imaginative detail that made Hogworts special and I quickly became bored with the book. The plot was slow moving and I felt there was too much waffling and unnecessary information.

That August the Physical Kids straggled back from summer vacation early. They spent the week before classes camping out in the Cottage, playing pool and not studying and making a project out of drinking their way jigger by jigger through an old and viscous and thoroughly disgusting decanter of port Eliot had found at the back of a cabinet in the kitchen. But the mood was sober and subdued.

I waded through the first 200 pages before finally deciding that life was too short to finish it. This book has been very popular this year, so I’m pleased that I picked it up and am able to join in the conversations about it, but it is a shame that a book with such a promising premise failed to contain any magical writing.

stars1 (DNF)

Did you enjoy The Magicians?

Does the premise appeal to you?

Categories
Chunkster Other

Chunkster Challenge Complete!

I love reading long books – they tend to have more depth, and a more interesting plot, so I really enjoyed completing the Chunkster Challenge.

The books I completed for this challenge were:

The 19th Wife – David Ebershoff (608 pages)  stars3h

Perdido Street Station – China Miéville (867 pages) stars3h

The Moonstone – Wilkie Collins (464 pages)  stars41

Gone with the Wind – Margaret Mitchell (1024 pages)

2666 – Roberto Bolaño (912 pages)  stars51

I read many more 450+ page books, but they were lighter thrillers so didn’t really feel like long books.

What is your favourite chunkster?

Categories
2000 - 2007 Books in Translation

Norwegian Wood – Haruki Murakami

I love Murakami so much that Kafka on the Shore is in my all time top ten. Norwegian Wood seems to be one of his lesser known books. I had heard very little about it before I started to read, but had been warned that it would be depressing.

Norwegian Wood is primarily set in a Japanese University during the 1960s. It is a coming of age novel that has a strong resemblance to The Bell Jar. In both novels the issue of suicide is prominent, but Norwegian Wood is slightly darker. 

The story focuses on Toru, who has a complex, but touching relationship with Naoko, the girlfriend of his best friend, Kizuki, who tragically committed suicide.

People looking for Murakami’s amazing imaginative narrative may be disappointed by this book, as it is a straight, simple story, that many people speculate as being largly autobiographical. As with The Bell Jar, I didn’t find it as depressing as I expected – I was never moved to tears, and I felt that the novel focused on hope, rather than tragedy.

Murakami’s skill for character development is evident, and I found it very easy to empathise with Toru’s difficult situation. I loved the complexity of the emotion present in this book – it more than made up for the simplicity of the story.

Murakami’s wisdom is scattered throughout the book. One quote that particularly stood out for me was:

If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.

Overall, I felt that this was a well written book, but I prefer the uniqueness of Murakamis’s more imaginative books.

stars41

 

What did you think of Norwegian Wood?

Which is your favourite Murakami book?

Categories
Blogging Other

The importance of branding your book blog

When I started blogging I didn’t give branding a moments thought. I assumed that you only needed to worry about that sort of thing if you were a business, trying to sell a product. It is only in the past few weeks that I have realised how important it is to create a brand for your blog.

I subscribe to 200+ blogs and browse through many more over the course of a month, but if you asked me to name all the ones I subscribe to I think I’d get to about 30 before I started to struggle. The problem is that so many blogs have similar names and so I start to confuse them. This problem was highlighted recently when I wanted to thank a blogger for recommending a book. I went to Jackie’s Bookshelf  instead of Jackie’s Book Blog (blog names have been invented to protect the people concerned, but illustrate the point) and only realised my mistake when I couldn’t find the post I was looking for. I hadn’t even noticed there were two different blogs – I had combined them in my mind.

The importance was further illustrated when someone on Twitter wanted a recommendation for a blog about horror books. I immediately thought of It’s Dark in the Dark, despite the fact that I have only been to the blog once or twice. I think that the majority of book blogs take about 20+ visits for me to get a feel for them and remember their name, whereas this one did it instantly.

Another great example of branding in the book blogging world is Fizzy Thoughts. Her site is so well designed and I remembered it from the very first visit. She also uses the same images consistently across all platforms (twitter, blogger, gravatar etc) ensuring that anything she writes is instantly recognisable as her.

I have realised that I am not doing a very good job of branding my blog. Although I am lucky in that I chose a fairly different name to other book bloggers I need to work on using the same image everywhere, as I think every picture is different at the moment. If anyone knows a great, simple drawing of a farm lane – let me know!

I don’t think it matters that we aren’t trying to sell things. If you want people to remember they’ve visited your blog, and therefore come back, you need to think about branding.

There are lots of great posts on the Internet to help. Some of the best I’ve found are: 

10 Step Beginners Guide to Blogging Your Personal Brand

How to Shape Your Blogs Brand

A Blogger’s Guide to Branding with Social Media

10 Personal Branding Predictions for 2010

Have you thought about branding your blog?

Who do you think does a great job of branding their book blog?

Are there any other things that you should think about when branding?

Categories
Blogging Other

What persuades you to buy a book?

basketBook bloggers are continually adding to my wish list, but it takes something special for me to be persuaded to run out and buy the book straight away.

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I recently realised that I am far more likely to buy a book based on a one line recommendation in the comment section of my blog, than when I see a full review somewhere else. The most extreme example of this was my recent Science Fiction Challenge post, which resulted in me buying three books.

I also find that I am persuaded to buy books based on tweets directed at me. If a trusted person sends a tweet similar to the one below I am highly likely to get hold of a copy.

Book A is the best book I’ve read this year, and I’m sure you’ll love it.

It doesn’t make sense that I am more likely to buy books when I have such little information about them, but I think it is the passion behind the message that makes it so powerful. The fact that this person I trust for book recommendations selects just one book and champions it above all others, specifically to me, makes it something very hard to ignore.

What is most likely to persuade you to buy a book?

Do you find your own comment section a valuable source of book recommendations?

Or, do you need to know much more about a book before deciding to purchase it?