A Work in Progress

Leaving Rock Harbor by Rebecca Chace

Some books seem to get all the attention when they are released while others sit quietly on the shelves at bookstores or lurk on Amazon's virtual pages waiting to be discovered, which is how I came across Rebecca Chace's Leaving Rock Harbor, a historical novel about America's Lost Generation that tried to find its way after WWI.  This is a fairly slight novel that follows three close friends as they come of age in the tumultuous early decades of modern America.  Although domestic and world events move swiftly in the background, they're less a backdrop than a force that shapes Frankie Ross and the two young men who will influence and impact her life.

"I thought Rock Harbor was the place to be in 1916, and I wasn't the only one.  Everyone was making money in the war years."

Rock Harbor, Massachusetts is meant to provide the Ross family a new start after Frankie's father slits his wrists in the bath and nearly dies.  An engraver by profession, the family moves from Poughkeepsie where he can find good work in one of the town's booming cotton mills.  At fifteen Frankie is thrust into a new school filled with the children of immigrants who come and go as quickly as their parents' jobs last in the mills, and where she feels like an outsider.  But she is befriended by Joe Barros, whose Portuguese ancestry is overlooked thanks to his abilities on the basketball court, and Winslow Curtis, the son of a wealthy politician.  The two are unlikely friends as Joe works in the mill owned by Winslow's family, but they're inseparable and Frankie becomes wrapped up in their friendship acting as a balance as well as a diversion.

For Frankie her relationship with Joe and Winslow is freeing as she is exposed to lifestyles and social classes well outside her own conservative and somewhat oppressive middle class family nucleus.  The corset comes off, her hair is let down and then cut off as the country moves toward the inevitability of war.  Joe ships off for France but Winslow is rejected for his flat feet.  And as Joe sends Frankie soul searching letters that she responds to with an equal passion, she falls in love with Winslow.

The lives of the three friends don't always run parallel, mostly they diverge and cross at unexpected moments.  An unconventional beginning for Frankie turns into a commonplace life where she is left wondering what she is supposed to be doing and who she is supposed to be.  A wife and mother she becomes, but she is also disillusioned and and feels ineffectual and wonders if she chose the right path in life when it seemed so clear in her youth.  The war ends but it doesn't bring peace and prosperity to the residents of Rock Harbor, or to Frankie.  On the contrary, Rock Harbor and Frankie's life are both thrown into an upheaval and fortunes that were made are now lost.  However, Frankie paves her own path to happiness and fulfillment breaking the rules along the way.

I quite enjoyed Leaving Rock Harbor and am happy to have come upon it even if only by accident.  The characters seemed very natural in their setting, none of which felt forced, and the descriptions were tantalizing with the story's coastal setting.  Frankie is an entirely likable, if flawed, character who you can't help but root for.  Chace does a marvelous job evoking the pains and pleasures of the era and the sense of loss and disenchantment with life after the war.  If I had one quibble it is only that I wish the story had been longer.

Coastliners by Joanne Harris

I really love Joanne Harris's work.  I've read three of her books now, one of them multiple times.  I count Chocolat as one of my favorite all time reads and for a while was rereading it nearly every year, and Gentlemen and Players was simply brilliant in my opinion.  I know her style doesn't appeal to everyone, and she can be seen as uneven in her execution by those who do read her, but I thoroughly enjoyed Coastliners, which I couldn't put down last weekend and found myself racing to the end yet was sad to turn that last page.  For me it was a perfect summer read.

No doubt the setting, a small island off the coast of France, had a lot to do with the appeal of this story for me.  The place descriptions were so evocative I almost felt like I was there, too.  The island became almost a character in itself.  Of the books I've read Gentlemen and Players is a bit of an anomaly, but her books with French settings have a magical quality to them that I find hard to resist.  They seem to take place in small, tight knit communities where life has become monotonous and rather drab with people stuck in their everyday routines until someone, a stranger usually, comes along to shake things up.  Not surprising in these small villages religion plays a role in the lives of the people, yet always there are superstitious beliefs that underpin how they think and interact with each other.

It's as though time stands still on the small island of Le Devin.  Generations of islanders follow in the footsteps of their fathers and grandfathers relying on fishing to make their living, following the rhythm of the sea and hoping  Sainte-Marine-de-la-Mer, the island's patron saint, will smile kindly on them and bring prosperity.  Unfortunately luck seems to be in short supply for those living in the village of Les Salants.

After living for a decade in Paris, Madeleine (Mado) Prasteau arrives back in her native village during the saint's festival.  Mado left with her mother who has since died, and she is now estranged from her father.  GrosJean Prasteau receives a shock when he spots her in the crowd, dropping the statue of the saint into the sea, a sign of how life in the village has been since Mado's departure.  Les Salants seems a sad shadow of its sister village, La Houssinière, which boasts a thriving tourist trade and beautiful, pristine beaches.  The coastline along Les Salants has eroded and is slowly disappearing, land is flooded, the fishing is bad and morale is worse.  The Salannais are bitter and envious of their more prosperous neighbors and fighting amongst themselves over long forgotten grievances. 

Mado's reappearance after so many years is viewed with mistrust and derision.  She has always felt an affinity with her father and his love of the island, but it was obvious as she was growing up that he would have preferred boys and not the two daughters he ended up with.  Adrienne married a Houssin boy and couldn't wait to leave home, but Mado is pleased to be back and ready to make amends with her father.  GrosJean remains aloof, however, turned in on himself and harboring secret tragedies that have drained him of all his words.

Mado is passionate and headstrong, sweeping in and ready to turn the tides, quite literally, and the fortunes of the Salannais.  But the villagers are so mired in their defeatist attitudes no one will listen to her.  Help comes from an unlikely corner--from the mysterious stranger, a stranger who is more readily accepted on the island than Mado after her long absence.  Flynn, an outsider and drifter, has somehow made his way to Le Devin from England and gets caught up in Mado's plotting.  Together, along with the help of Sainte Marine, they work a little magic in the lives of the villagers of Les Salants who begin to believe that maybe their tiny world can be changed for the better once and for all.

Harris knows how to create wonderfully enchanting worlds even if the island of Le Devin was filled with discord and animosity at the start.  The sea is tumultuous and unpredictable and it mirrors the lives and emotions of the island's inhabitants who must reinvent their world just as the tides refashion the island's coastline.   And the beauty of the story is how they undertake the solution to their problems, which include a few twist and turns and surprises.  Coastliners is a story of love and rivalry, family ties, reconciliations, and perhaps most of all of self-discovery.  And if you want to imagine the swish of the incoming tide and the feel of sand between your toes and a warm, gentle breeze on your face Harris manages that pretty well, too.  I already planned on reading more of Joanne Harris's work, but this just makes me want to pick up another novel sooner than later. 

The Bed I Made by Lucie Whitehouse

I was quite happy to get my hands on a copy of Lucie Whitehouse's suspenseful tale, The Bed I Made, which unfortunately has no set publishing date as yet in the US.  It's a perfect summer vacation or beach read, and fit very nicely with my own beach/seaside reading that I like to do when the weather turns warm (must revamp that list).  The Isle of Wight off the southern coast of Britain is the setting of the novel and the place Kate flees to in seeking refuge from a relationship gone wrong.  While the story opens during summer's sultry days, Kate makes her way to the island when it empties of tourists and braces for winter's more inhospitable behavior.

Maybe it would never had happened if Kate wasn't so involved in her work as a translator and at a place in her life where she was alone so much of the time.  Abandoned by her mother at a young age she became close to her brother and father, but they now make their home in the States, so she is in a sense particularly vulnerable living alone in London.  A chance encounter with a devastatingly handsome man in a bar throws Kate's life into complete upheaval.  Kate spends a wild, alcohol-soaked night with Richard and finds she can't stop thinking about him, much to the displeasure of her friend Helen.  Richard is a risk taker, both in his business as a property developer and in relationships.  And Kate is captivated by him.  But odd things start happening and Richard becomes jealous and possessive.  He pulls Kate in with words of love but just as soon pushes her away suddenly cold and calculating.  When Kate realizes Richard's true nature, he's not going to willingly give her up, so she returns to a place from her childhood.  The Isle of Wight was were her family retreated after her mother left and she holds happy memories of the place.

Kate is on the island when the novel opens.  Already unsettled, she's present when an overturned boat is brought into the harbor by a lifeboat.  The owner is missing and presumed drowned which she begins obsessing about, so the tone is set and it's an eerie one.  The story is then related in a series of flashbacks--both her affair with Richard and subsequent meeting of the drowned woman just days before her death.  Both plotlines are woven together and revealed little by little in a way that's somewhat unnerving for the reader as it all builds to a crescendo.  Another reviewer called it a slow-burn sort of story, and it is, as nothing is rushed until the final few pages.  People often tend to paint themselves into corners when they are involved in unhealthy relationships, and it was troubling that Kate never revealed to her best friend, Helen, the full extent of her fears and experiences with Richard, put off no doubt by her friend's critical attitude toward him.  So Kate was well and truly on her own.  A sitting duck, if you will, but it played well into the suspense of the story.

The Bed I Made has all the right elements for a good suspense tale--a wildly romantic affair that turns sour and then terrifying, a wonderfully atmospheric setting dictated by the whims of nature, and a character on edge and alone and only inches away from falling into a frightening abyss.  I really enjoyed it and thought it well done, but it felt like a really good novel rather than a great novel.  I'm not sure that I can put my finger on what made it feel so--maybe it was the ending, which felt just a tad anticlimactic.  You knew it was coming and it happened as expected.  I think it would be hard to create a really spectacular ending with a nice unexpected twist, but I suppose that's what I was hoping for.  Still, I thoroughly enjoyed it and think Whitehouse has a lot of potential when it comes to thrillers.  She's whetted my appetite and now I want more.  I've heard mixed things about her first book, The House at Midnight, but as I have it on my TBR stack I'll pick it up at some point.  It seems like it might be less of a thriller and more a gothic sort story?  I'll be looking for a good edge of your seat thriller as well, though I'm not sure who to pick up.  Maybe it's time to try Sophie Hannah?   I'm sure I'll enjoy digging through my bins looking for a good nail-biting sort of story to read soon.

Teaser Tuesday: Two for the Price of One

Why only one teaser when you can have two.  Since I am still in my beach book mode I thought it would be fun to share the books I picked (neither being on yesterday's list I'm afraid) to start out with.  One is a library book and the other I've had on my TBR pile for years and I think it's time to read it.

I'm not really sure what to think yet of Ellen Block's The Language of Sand.  That's not to say I'm not enjoying it and find myself reaching for it quite often.  It's just that it's sort of quirky and I'm not clear where the author is going with the story.  Abigail Harker is a young woman who's burdened with heavy grief after the death of her husband and child.  She decides a change of scenery is the best thing and takes a job as caretaker of a lighthouse on Chapel Isle in North Carolina's Outer Banks.  Contrary to what she was led to believe the lighthouse and adjoining  cottage are completely ramshackle and perhaps even haunted and the island appears filled with an assortment of unusual characters.      

Lottie is one of the quirkier characters so far in the novel, the real estate agent who has organized Abigail's (or Abby's as she takes to calling her) stay.  Likeable enough, she is also loud (in every sense of the word) and overly fond of bric-a-brac.  Here's the spiel she gives Abigail about the lighthouse:

"The Chapel Isle Lighthouse was built in 1893.  It took more than nineteen months to complete.  Our magnificent spiral staircase has one hundred and two steps to the turret.  We've got original Fresnel glass.  Top of the line.  Made specifically for lighthouses to ensure they would have the clearest, longest beams.  We're the twenty-third-oldest standing lighthouse in the country, and the number of vessels guided in safely while the beacon was in service is estimated in the thousands.  The Chapel Isle lighthouse is a bona fide piece of Americana."

In theory it sounds pretty nice, but I could never live in the wreck that is the caretaker's cottage.  Threadbare carpet, no heat but a fireplace, everything coated in a layer of dust, and not even a working washing machine.  I'm curious to see how Abigail deals with it all.

I've only just started reading Colette's The Ripening Seed, but it is about as different than the Block book as can be.  Ever since I read and loved Cheri and the Last of Cheri, I've wanted to read more of Colette's work.  I expect this deceptively slim novel to be far deeper and complex than it appears.  Vinca and Philippe are friends who return every summer with their families to the seacoast in Brittany.  Now fifteen and sixteen respectively, this is a coming of age tale, or more specifically a tale of their awakening sexuality and involves also an older woman.

The description notes that the seacoast pervades almost every page, so how could I pass it up?

"They were swimming side by side, his head round and black under his wet hair and his skin the whiter, hers the light gold that fair skin turns, a blue foulard round her head.  The daily plunge, joy silent and complete, restored them to the peace and childhood they were in danger of losing at their difficult age.  Vinca floated on her back, spouting water into the air like a young seal.  Beneath the twisted foulard peeped two delicate pink ears, hidden by her hair during the day, and, on either temple, two clearings of white skin that saw the light only at bathing time.  She smiled at Philippe, and under the eleven o'clock sun the delicious blue of her eyes took on a greenish reflection from the sea.  All of a sudden he dived down, seized one of her feet, and dragged her under the water.  They 'drank a draught' together, and came to the surface again spitting, spluttering and laughing, as though forgetting their age, she her tormented fifteen years of living her childhood companion, he forgetting his sixteen years of domination, his debonair disdain, his precocious lordliness and his unreasonable demands."

Even though this is a very short book, it's one I am not trying to rush through and find myself rereading passages as I go. 

The nice thing about my own interpretation of 'beach books' is that they might be light and fluffy or they might be serious and somber or somewhere in between--as long as the setting makes me feel the sand between my toes and hear the roaring of waves!

Is it too soon to be thinking about beach books?

I'm a little early posting this, but my mind is already turning towards warm summer days and the need for a little escapism.  Unfortunately today is cool and rainy, so no nice photo next to my flower pots.  This is this year's pile of 'beach reads'.  Last year I read a couple from this stack and I hope to read even more from this pile of books (or maybe some new find even).  For me 'beach reads' mean something a little different than what you would normally expect.  It's not likely I am going to get anywhere near a beach this summer (I had hoped I might squeeze in a little vacation, but my porch is in dire need of repair after such a hard and heavy winter, so I can already see my savings dwindling as I pay carpenters for some much needed work).

My beach reads aren't necessarily something you might read at the beach (though a lot of them would probably work nicely), but rather books where the beach features heavily as a setting.  A beach, a coastline, the ocean, summer or not, maybe tropical, even a lighthouse might come into play.  The book might be a straightforward novel or maybe a mystery or a thriller or even a classic as long as you get a strong sense of place. 

For some time now I've wanted to live somewhere on one of the coasts (would sort of like to visit again sometime at least), and maybe that wish might someday come true, but in the interim books are the next best thing to being there.  So I went to my shelves and started pulling out titles that might work.  I don't expect to read all or even most of these, but it's nice to have a stack to choose from depending on my mood.

Return to Sullivan Island, Dorothea Benton Frank- Reviews appear to be rather iffy on this one, but when I saw "best enjoyed under a beach umbrella, well within sight of the ocean, to the background of the lapping tide" it sort of sold itself to me in one fell swoop.

Beachcombing, Maggie Dana - Katie Fforde called this "A wonderfully uplifting story about a woman on her way to fulfillment."  The story moves between the Connecticut coast and London.

Coromandel Sea Change, Rumer Godden - I have wanted to read more Rumer Godden every since I fell in love with her Greengage Summer.  This is set on the Coromandel Coast--not sure of the period but the book is compared to E.M. Forster for its social comedy.

Remarkable Creatures, Tracy Chevalier - I've heard so many good things about this from lots of people.  A novel of fossil hunting  among the cliffs by two Victorian women.

The Beach Street Knitting and Yarn Club, Gil McNeil- I like the sound of this one--about a woman making a fresh start--moving from London to a sleepy seaside town where she takes over her grandmother's wool shop.  It sounds like a nice read with a happy ending, and everyone needs those once and a while.

Beaches, Iris Rainer Dart- I saw the movie adaptation of this years ago, and remember sobbing at the end.  I have a feeling the book will have the same effect, but I still want to read it.  It's set in the 1950s and charts the friendship of two very different girls as they group up.

The Summer Book, Tove Jansson - I really want to read this one this summer.  The book is a series of vignettes by a Finnish author who was born into the country's Swedish-speaking minority.  A grandmother and granddaughter explore the coastline yet it's more than just a book of pretty views, as they discuss "life, death, the nature of God and love."  Sounds lovely.

High Tide at Noon, Elisabeth Ogilvie - Ogilvie wrote a whole series of books set on Bennett's Island, Maine.  The Novels, written in the 1940s, evoke the author's own experiences on the small island where she spent her summers growing up.

Beach Music, Pat Conroy - This novel covers a lot of ground, from Rome to the American South and spans several generations.

Sullivan's Island, Dorothea Benton Frank - The setting is a beachfront house in South Carolina's Lowcountry.

The Ladies Lending Library, Janice Kulyk Keefer - "A portrait of women caught between countries, cultures, and aspirations--a bittersweet tale, set in the 1960s, of mothers, daughters, friends and lovers during one unforgettable summer."  The setting is a riverfront community.

Castle Ugly, Mary Ellin Barrett - "Against the glamorous backdrop of Long Island's summer luxury set, where the rich and careless play out their strange private games of love and destruction, Mary Ellin Barrett has spun a hypnotic tale of passion, intrigue, and murder that will hold you spellbound from first page to last."

Ross Poldark, Winston Graham - This is set in 18th century Cornwall, the first book of a series that has been recommended to me.  I'm not sure how much the coast features in this one, but Cornwall is always appealing to me.

I've made lots of lists like this before: here, here, here, and here (yes, this really is a favorite subject/setting), but I am always on the look out for new books that would fit this category, and you know I am always happy to take more suggestions.  If you can think of any other 'not to be missed' books with seaside settings, do please share.  I've already started a book set in a lighthouse, which I will write about soon.

The Forgotten Island

Sasha Troyan's The Forgotten Island is a moody, tense sort of read, an altogether different kind of beach book, but one I enjoyed very much. This time around an island off the coast of Italy is the setting.  Bella Terra catches not only the cool mistral winds of the north but the hot siroccos from Africa blow through as well adding to the atmosphere of the story.  The winds bring an almost electrical charge with them putting pressure on the characters and how they act and react.

Eleven-year-old Helen narrates the story.  Although American, her family has lived so long in France that when she reads the newspaper reports about the disappearance of a young American girl, she almost doesn't realize it's her sister they're describing, but I'm getting ahead of myself.  Every summer Helen and her family return to Bella Terra, also known as the forgotten island.

"The water was so clean you could see from the plane right through to the white sand.  My parents built a villa on the side of the hill.  Painted ocher, the same color as the rock out of which it had been carved, the villa would have blended completely into the hillside had it not been for the brilliant purple bougainvillea covering its roof, the streams of amanti del sole and white gardenias that ran from the veranda to the stone wall at the bottom of the garden."

The island is an idyllic retreat for Helen and her older sister, Lea, full of natural wonders and eccentric neighbors.  Helen is really still only a child, but Lea is on the cusp of young womanhood.  She strains the barriers to see just how far she can go, how much she can get away with.  Parental oversight is on the lax side as they are dealing with marital issues of their own, so Lea and Helen get into mischief as they explore the island.   A nearby neighbor, Mr Peters, captures their attention with his paintings and bohemian manners.  Added to the mix are the Ashtons, Prue and her husband, old friends of Helen's mother who come to stay at the villa.

Helen is not the most ideal observer of the events that will occur this particular summer, though in some ways she's privy to some happenings the adults aren't.  Still, Helen doesn't yet have the sophistication to understand all the nuances of the snatches of conversations she overhears or the often bewildering interactions between the adults, including at times Lea.  It makes for an interesting story, however; one filtered through the eyes of a child.  The hot sirocco sweeps over the island for days on end leading up to a fateful afternoon on the beach when Lea wanders off never to be seen again. 

The Forgotten Island is a slender novel full of secrets and sisterly antagonisms, betrayals and a loss of innocence never again to be regained.  Troyan's prose is as lush and evocative as her descriptions of a very sensuous yet sinister Bella Terra.  The ending isn't especially surprising but it's altogether satisfying.

Last time it was Ferris Beach in South Carolina, this time Bella Terra off the coast of Italy.  Next I'm off to the village of Steerborough and seaside beyond in Suffolk.  I may not get to a real beach this summer, but I'm making the rounds to a few imaginary ones.

Miscellanea

 

I swear to you I am not going to spend the entire summer complaining about the weather.  Can I just take a few sentences to whine, though?  It's really hot here right now--yesterday's air temperature was 97, but if you calculate in the humidity it felt more like 105 and it's going to be this way all week.  Despite that clear blue sky and bright sun, it wasn't pretty.  It was even less amusing when we turned on our air conditioning unit only to discover there's something wrong with it.  I spent the afternoon sweating (no need to even move--the humidity does all the work for you!) as I was waiting for the technician to come and take a look at our AC.  He never came, but at about 4:45 someone called to apologize and reschedule (after I took half a day off work--I might add half a day away a very nicely air conditioned building!).  Oh, I might mention that for a second time in a week the power went off in my neighborhood.  What to do when the lights go out?  Luckily since it was daytime I read for a while and then stitched.  Just as I was starting to nod off (intense heat has that sort of soporific effect on me), the power came on and the fan started rotating again.  Yay.  So, please cross your fingers that the AC can be fixed today (another afternoon off work).  

Okay, whining over.  I promise to stop talking about the weather--I know many people live in far hotter places than I do and never say boo about it.  I have a low threshhold when it comes to dealing with extreme heat.  I never would have made it as a pioneer--I'll be the first to admit that.  Just imagine living before electricity and having to wear long skirts.  Eeek.  

Sorry, now I really am finished talking about the weather.  I did manage to add a few stitches to my needlework project.  I'm being optimistic that I will stick with it and finish it before the end of the year--I stitched in the date.  Usually I wait until the end to do that.  My initials will go on the other side.   

Over the weekend reference to D.H. Larwrence's Lady Chatterly's Lover came up in a book I was reading and in a movie I watched, which reminded me how much I want to read him, but never get around to it.  I know he is not a favorite with many readers, but I still would like to give him a try and see what all the fuss is about.  I pulled my copy from my bookshelves in contemplation of starting to read the book.  I wonder if it would raise a stir on the bus.  Probably not.  No one else ever seems to read. 

I was going to write more about what I'm reading at the moment, but frankly it's just too hot and I feel like I'm melting.  Maybe I'll go water my flowers.  I can attest to how cold the water from the outside faucet is right now--and you're never too old to play with the hose.  Happy reading everyone.

The First Day of Summer!

 

In honor of the first official day of summer, I thought I'd share a photo of some of the books I've accumulated so far thanks to all the wonderful suggestions I received.  I found a number of them through Bookmooch and the others I've been picking up here and there.  I've already linked to most of them here, in case you're curious what they are about.  These are all 'beach' books--literally books with some sort of seaside setting (though I'm sure they could be read at the beach if you're lucky enough to live near one).  I've already read Jill McCorkle's Ferris Beach and am working on Sasha Troyan's The Forgotten Island, which I'm greatly enjoying.  I've gone from South Carolina to an island off the coast of Italy.  I'm not sure where I'll end up next, but I obviously have lots of good books to choose from.    

Aren't my petunias looking nice and vibrant?  I can't guarantee that they'll look this nice at the end of July.  When the humidity really hits, I tend to have a pest problem--worms that eat the buds--they'll plow through one pot after another despite anything I do to try and stop them!  But they look pretty now.

By the way, I've now read five of the seven books I set out to read in June.  I'll be writing about two more of them this week.  I think I might actually manage to get the last two read by the end of the month.  July should be easy going--no more blog book tours planned, no more review copies with review dates attached to them and no book club books to read.  I'm even contemplating posting here a little less than normal (though I'm not sure yet about that).  It might be nice to not post on the weekends perhaps or to take a couple of days off each week.  We'll see.  I'd like to just enjoy the summer and be as laid back about things as possible.  What are your summer reading plans? 

New Books for Summer, Part 1

 

Yes, there is going to be a part 2!  I've been so bad lately when it comes to new (or at least new to me) books that I have to separate this post into two.  These are books that I got with my most recent Amazon credit.  I know I complain about Amazon sometimes, but I have to say I do like their associates program.  If someone clicks through my blog to their site and buys a book (or anything really), I get a small credit at the end of the month.  Usually it's enough to buy one or two books, and then I end up buying one or two more. Maybe that's not such a good thing, as it just gets me to order from them on a regular basis.  I can't say no to a free book, though. 

I've never read P.G. Wodehouse (well, have read one short story) though I have often thought of reading him and imagine I would enjoy his work.  When I was looking for comfort reads recently someone suggested that I pick up one of his books, which sent me off to Bookmooch, but there was not even one book of his there to mooch.  So then I went off to Amazon and perused the long list of titles.  I don't know where to start with his books, so I just randomly selected two novels.  They are not his Jeeves and Wooster books, but they sound like fun.  Normally I wouldn't choose to order cloth books, but these were actually cheaper than the paperbacks.  Apparently they are (or were) reissuing the books in these nice cloth editions. 

A Damsel in Distress - "The Earl of Mashmoreston's lively daughter--the damsel of the title--thinks she is in love with one Geoffrey Raymond, but a cheerful American song-writer called George Bevan knows better.  After one meeting with her, when she climbs into his passing cab to escape from his pomous brother in London, George is dazzled.  He pursues her to the family seat in Hampshire and does battle for her hand with her brother, their snobbish aunt and a father who will do anything for a quiet life.  Love triumphs in the end with the unwitting help of a sporting butler, and a page boy with golden curls and no conscience, making this one of Wodehouse's most charming early comedies."  

Jill the Reckless - "When Jill Mariner is arrested for fighting over a parrot and then loses all her money on the same day, she is abandoned by her pompous fiancé and goes to stay with her rich relations on Long Island.  Uncel Elmer is delighted to see her--until he finds out that Jill is penniless.  Heading for New York, she ends up in the chorus of a musical comedy on Broadway where she eventually finds the man of her dreams.  A light romantic comedy in Wodehouse's most charming manner." 

The other two books are from my beach book list, which I'm hoping to read from over the course of the summer.  

The Sea House by Esther Freud - "The Sea House is the story of the village of Steerborough and the marshes and the sea beyond.  It is the story of one generation living in the footprints of another; of a landscape shaped by lives, and lives shaped by landscape."  This may have to be my next beach read.

Beach Music by Pat Conroy - "Spanning three generations and two continents, from the contemporary ruins of the American South to the ancient ruins of Rome, from the unutterable horrors of the Holocaust to the lingering trauma of Vietnam, Beach Music sings with life's pain and glory."  This novel is a nice, long sprawling sort of novel with close to 800 pages.  I may have to save it for the sunny, hot days of July when I'll be escaping from the humidity in the air conditioning!   

Reading Notes

I've finished three of the seven books I hoped to read in June.  I'm nearing the end of the fourth.  I'll be posting about Jennifer Epstein Cody's The Painter from Shanghai on Wednesday (part of a virtual blog tour).  I really liked it by the way.  If you enjoy historical fiction, this is the best I've read in a long time but will share more in a couple of days.

I'm nearing the end of Georgette Heyer's Cousin Kate.  It's been an interesting read--different than her other books.  I wasn't sure what I thought at first but the more I read the more I like it.  As soon as I'm done I'll be reading The Corinthian, which should be more traditional Heyer fare.  It's also much shorter than the last two books I've read (both over or close to 400 pages).  Once I've finished it will be a sigh of relief as there is no 'due date' for writing about the rest of the books on my pile.  As much as I love reading the books, due dates stress me out.  I still have review copies to work my way through, but I plan on reading them over the course of the summer in a more leisurely manner (and have been doing my best not to add to said pile).       

Alas, it's not all work and no play. Often when I know I have to read a book, I look longingly at my TBR pile or get it in my head I want to read a certain type of story.  Returning to a story I know I've enjoyed also seems to be something I'm doing more of this year.  I've been rereading Chandra Prasad's On Borrowed Wings on the sly.  I've been rationing it out, as given the chance I would happily sit down and just work my way through it without thought for any other book.  Set in the 1930s it's about a young woman who enters Yale at a time when women weren't allowed.  She enters under the guise of her brother who was supposed to attend but died in a tragic accident.  I loved it the first time I read it and am enjoying it equally as much this time around.  

My current 'beach read' (since I have such a great list to work from) is Sasha Troyan's The Forgotten Island.  I'm not very far into it yet, but it's set on an island off the coast of Italy in the 1970s.  The island sounds lush and lovely (almost so much that I could wish myself there) except there is something menacing about this story.  I don't expect it to be a nice, cozy sort of read, but then I was thinking I needed a story that was on the edgy side.  

I'm in the mood to read a really good Gothic novel that's chilling and atmospheric (though haven't given much thought to a book that would fit the bill) as well as a mystery and would love to get back to Nicola Upson's An Expert in Murder (or maybe even something else...).  I've been mostly reading one book at a time in order to make sure I do actually get through my June stack of books, but it reminds me how much I prefer dipping into a few different stories every day.      

Also, the choices for the next Slaves of Golconda read are now posted.  Please consider reading along with us.  The discussion won't be until the end of August, so you'll have the whole summer to get a copy of the book and read it!  You can vote through Friday.