Showing considerable restraint I brought one book and one video home from the library yesterday. I am going to try and only borrow what I realistically think I can read (or watch) in a three week check out period, but that will only last until the books I've requested start showing up. Hopefully this won't happen all at once. I've been wanting to read Judith Koll Healey's The Rebel Princess, since I first spotted it on the new books list, so it came home with me. I enjoyed her first novel, The Canterbury Papers, though it's been quite a while since I read it and (as always) the details of the story have faded from my mind. Her second novel seems to have gotten rather uneven reviews, but I'll give it a try. When it comes to historical fiction some readers are very sensitive to any anachronisms they spot in a text. As this is set in the Medieval period, I may not even catch them (I'm not so well versed in the Medieval period), unless the inaccuracy is glaringly obvious. I tend to take most fiction (historical fiction especially) with a grain of salt anyway, so if an author just tells a good story I'm generally happy. (Hm. As a reader of much historical fiction maybe I shouldn't admit that).
The movie I brought home is the Peter Ustinov version of Death on the Nile by the way. I've put my Netflix subscription on hold as I don't seem to be watching as many movies as I used to. Besides, why pay money when I have access to so many movies for free via the public library and the library where I work.
As for what I'm reading. Too much probably to mention here, but I'll give you a few highlights. I finally properly started reading Elaine Dundy's The Old Man and Me. Initially I wasn't quite sure about this one. I tried the first few pages and it didn't seem to click with me. Was it going to be too hipster-ish with no actual story to speak of? A few chapters in now and I am sort of hooked. It is pretty hipster-ish in its own way, but I'm also curious about Honey Flood and just what she's in London looking for. It's set in Soho in the 1950s by the way.
I've also started reading the Slaves next book, Dawn Powell's Dance Night, which is set in a small Ohio town in the 1920s. It's more about character than plot, and she has me very interested in the inhabitants of Lamptown, OH. There's a grittiness to her story that I like, about average people stuck in impossible situations dreaming to get out. You're welcome to read along and join us for our discussion.
Whoever recommended I read Josephine Tey's The Franchise Affair, and there were several of you, you were right. It's an excellent read. Why didn't I pick it up before? In case you've not read it, this is an unusual mystery. A young woman accuses two women, an older lady and her middle-aged daughter, of kidnapping her and locking her in an attic room of their house. Their motivation, she says, was to make her their domestic servant. When she wouldn't agree they beat her, but in the end let her go. That's the accusation anyway. The ladies hire a lawyer to be present when the girl is brought round by the police to identify the ladies and the house. The thing is she has every detail so perfectly remembered that the police more or less believe her. The ladies deny it, of course, and their lawyer gets involved trying to uncover just what really happened to the girl. All very clever and I'm trying to decide what the catch is.
Although I'm reading some others, I'll just mention two more books as I am enjoying them both so thoroughly. I just love Rosamunde Pilcher's Coming Home. It's such a complete comfort read and I grab for it more often than I probably should. It's close to 1,000 pages, but that doesn't bother me a bit for once (am nearly halfway through). It's a warm, cozy blanket of a book and I totally escape into 1939 (at the moment) England each time I pick it up. Sophia's Secret is my other escapist read. I take it to the gym with me as it is one of the few books that is so absorbing (not that the rest of the books I'm reading aren't, but some simply require more concentration and a quiet environment) that I can almost push out the dreadful music that is invariably always being played (loudly) in the room where I work out. It's a story with parallel plotlines set in contemporary and 18th century Scotland, and I am liking both equally well.
I need to pick just a couple of books to really focus on so I can finish something, but all my books are so good right now I can't stop at just one and go back and forth between stories. This week may be a little light on posts about just one book unless I can actually complete something. So I hope you don't mind "filler posts" (like this one). I can always ramble on about books, though I'm not sure how interesting it all is to the world at large.
So why don't I make this interactive and you tell me which book you simply can't put down at the moment?