Behind the scenes at A Work in Progress . . . this year's reading has been wonky. My reading may well be all over the place and I am not finishing as many books of late as starting (though actually I have finished a number of books and so it is time to choose a new one), but other than a few small transgressions, I have mostly been reading from my own stacks.
I've picked a stack of rather summery, beachy, blockbuster sorts of reads and have pulled a number of books that look like entertaining reads. But how to decide. One of these might well be going with me on my upcoming mini-vacation, and I could see any of these as being just perfect 'long drives must find a good book to pass the time' sorts of reads. Some of these are so old I had forgotten I even owned them--hence my desire to 'read from my own stacks'!
But which to choose? Have you read any of these?
Legend in Green Velvet by Elizabeth Peters -- "Susan loved all things Scottish. So, when the opportunity presented itself, there was no question in her mind but that she would go in the archaeological dig in the Highlands. It was everything she could have wanted. And more. Much more."
Losing Julia by Jonathan Hull -- ". . . an astonishing story that will span almost a century, a story of memory and desire, history and destiny--and of the people who slip from our grasp, only to hold us forever . . . "
An Outrageous Affair by Penny Vincenzi -- "Moving from wartime Suffolk to Fifties Hollywood, from glitzy Madison Avenue to London's theatrical aristocracy and the machinations of cheque-book publishing, An Outrageous Affair explores the extraordinary, sometimes fatal consequences of truth."
Lots of Love by Fiona Walker -- "After thirteen years, all passion spent, Ellen and Richard have called it a day. With her life in suitcases and boxes, Ellen agrees to help her parents sell their unoccupied Cotswold cottage--then she plans to travel the world. Little does she know that idyllic Oddlode contains the world's sexiest hell-raiser, and she finds herself travelling uncharted waters to unknown territory--headlong into love."
Paris Never Leaves You by Adréana Robbins --"Setting her take in glamorous France and Spain, exotic Morocco, and the seductive Mediterranean, Adréana Robbins carries her readers on a passional journey into the lives of an impressionable young woman in contemporary Paris and of a controversial, hot-blooded man in the wild City of Light of the 1930s and World War II."
Foreign Fruit by Jojo Moyes -- "Merham is a well-ordered 1950s seaside town: the kind of town in which everyone knows there place (and those who don't are promptly put into it). Lottie Swift, an evacuee who has grown up with the respectable Holden family, loves Merham, while the Holdens' daughter Celia chafes against the constraints of the town. When a group of bohemians takes over Arcadia, a stark Art Deco house on the seafront, the girls are as drawn to its temptations as Merham's citizens are appalled by them. They set in place a chain of events which will have longstanding and tragic consequences for all concerned."
The Chestnut Tree by Charlotte Bingham -- "It is the summer of 1939, and the residents of the idyllic fishing village of Bexham are preparing for the war."
They all sound so delightfully juicy, how will I ever be able to decide?