books | Nose in a book

Cambridge bookshops

October 3, 2012October 3, 2012 5 Comments

I know our holiday was a month ago, I have been meaning to post about this and kept forgetting/waiting for my photos to be developed.

One of the many nice things about Cambridge is its abundance of bookshops. In these times of bookshops, both independent and chain varieties, closing left, right and centre, it’s good to know they’re flourishing somewhere.

I particularly liked Heffers bookshop, which is owned by Blackwells and reminded me a lot of their very excellent Oxford branch. Sadly my photo of that storefront came out particularly badly.

Of course, we couldn’t resist buying something in each of several of these lovely lovely shops. I really must stop buying books for a long while now! Here are just some of our purchases. See if you can guess which are for me and which for Tim, though I should warn you that to be crafty some were for both of us. It’s good to share.

(Why yes, that is a first-edition Daphne there. In the classic yellow Gollancz jacket. That will have pride of place on my bookshelves, when I can get to them again.)

Musical interlude: The Bookshop Band

September 9, 2012

I have heard The Bookshop Band on the radio a couple of times now and I think they’re great. They’re actually local to me, brilliantly, so I will try to check them out live. But for now, here’s a video they made.

“A shop with books in” – a song inspired by bookshops, written for Independent Booksellers’ Week 2012 by The Bookshop Band from The Bookshop Band on Vimeo.

Sunday Salon: Books in series

June 17, 2012June 17, 2012 7 Comments

I have been thinking recently about how I review books in a series. I have not exactly been consistent up until now. Do you guys have any rules that you follow?

The thing is, different series throw up different problems. In some cases it is near impossible to discuss sequels without giving away spoilers from the earlier books. I found this a little with The Alexandria Quartet but I had so much to say about each book that I still gave each a separate post.

Sometimes spoilers aren’t an issue. For instance, the Claudine books reveal plot developments in their titles! But then the plot is hardly the point here.

In some cases there isn’t much new to say about successive books in a series, other than the new plot, so reviews get progressively shorter. I suspect this will be the case with the Philip Marlowe books, but I’ve only read the first two so we’ll have to see. It’s one of the reasons I haven’t yet published a review of the James Bond books (which I’m halfway through reading). I’ll probably write about one of them but I see no point discussing every one separately. (For exactly this reason, I have reviewed just one of the Modesty Blaise books I have read.)

With comic books/graphic novels I have tended to write a single post about the whole series. With Scott Pilgrim, I was so eager to read the whole series that I didn’t want to stop to make notes in-between. With Echo I would have run across the problem of spoilers, so my review really concentrated on the first book and overarching themes (I had both of these problems with Y: the Last Man, a review of which is coming later this week). With Southland Tales, I just didn’t think they were very good and so, though I had a lot to say, I saved myself from writing three separate negative reviews by just doing the one!

I am thinking about this because in the past couple of years I have read a fair few first titles in a series, and in some cases I really really want to read the rest (Tales of the City, for example) but I’m not sure I’ll be able to write much about it so I put it off. I know that’s silly, that this blog shouldn’t stop me from reading great books, but there we are.

Do you have any favourite book series? And do you review every book you read?

The Sunday Salon: Day of chocolate

April 8, 2012April 8, 2012 13 Comments

Ah, four-day weekend, piles of chocolate, plenty of time with my books. What could be better? Oh, and I threw in a bit more culture with a trip to the theatre just for good measure.

After spending Good Friday being thoroughly lazy reading and watching films, yesterday my Dad and brother came to visit and get me out of the house! We went to see the Bristol Old Vic’s excellent Pinter/Beckett double bill A Kind of Alaska/Krapp’s Last Tape. I didn’t know anything about either play but I figured with writers like those you can’t go wrong. Glad to say it was a brilliant show. Both plays are meditations on ageing, in different ways. Both had touches of humour but were overall contemplative pieces. The small cast (three in the first play, one in the second) was fantastic and the Old Vic’s little Studio space was ideally suited.

Today, friends told me there was a chocolate fair being held in the city centre so we headed down there and enjoyed a few free samples before pigging out on churros and hot chocolate.

While we were in the area, we had a quick browse of the weekly books, arts and crafts market on the harbourside, where obviously I could not help myself buying a couple of books (really I am proud it was just two. I was sorely tempted to pick up handfuls of secondhand PG Wodehouse). My TBR will never get smaller, will it?

And there’s still a day and a half stretching out before me with little to do other than read and sleep. Perfect.

Book booty

December 26, 2011

Job done

August 29, 2011August 29, 2011 11 Comments

Last year we had builders in to do various jobs and for longer than I was entirely happy about our dining room looked like this:

At new year, with the builders finally gone and the room freshly plastered, we were ready to start redecorating. We picked out colours,

braved putting up wallpaper,

(Tim worked speedy fast for me)

and started constructing my library.

In fact, a few months back we were mostly done and I blogged about my almost-finished library here. However, there were a few bits and pieces still to do. Between my sister’s wedding, my lupus flares and us generally wanting to have a life outside of DIY, it’s taken us a while, but today I can finally declare the library finished! And isn’t it beautiful?

Please return this book

July 19, 2011

Literary Giveaway Blog Hop: the winners!

June 30, 2011July 9, 2011 3 Comments

And the winners are…drumroll please!

Thanks to random.org, Col of Col Reads won Our Spoons Came From Woolworths and Tanya won Naked Lunch. Congratulations! I have e-mailed you both, please badger me if you don’t receive the e-mail!

Thank you to everyone who entered, I was surprised by how much of a response this got. I’m sorry I can’t give you all a little prize. However, I do plan to do another giveaway soon, so keep an eye out for it!

If anyone is completely confused and doesn’t know what all this is about, this was a blog hop giveaway with a literary flavour run by Judith of Leeswammes. Thank you so much Judith. Entries are now closed.

Out of this world: science fiction, but not as you know it

June 28, 2011 3 Comments

“Out of this world” is a free exhibition running at the British Library from 20 May to 25 September 2011. It’s an exploration and celebration of science fiction, centred around the library’s collection of first editions and other valuable copies of great books.

It’s a much bigger and frankly better exhibition than I expected. Like a typical museum show, there are themed cases containing numbered exhibits and a knowledgeable description of each exhibit. There’s also video, audio, interactive stuff and some random memorabilia, plus a series of related workshops. And it has its own mini-website, of course: www.bl.uk/sciencefiction.

It has clearly been designed by a team of people who love and respect science fiction and tease out not only the usual obvious questions that SF can deal with, but also some more obscure or difficult ones, such as “What is reality?” and “What does it mean to be human?”

Mostly I just geeked out on the beautiful old books and manuscripts (which tended to be on loan from authors or other museums) but I also added many many books to my wishlist. Highly recommended to anyone who can get to London.

Coming soon: Literary Giveaway Blog Hop (25–29 June)

May 27, 2011May 27, 2011 3 Comments

This blog hop with a literary flavour is being run by Judith of Leeswammes and I thought it looked like the perfect opportunity for my first ever giveaway.

I will be giving away at least one book, as well as some book-related bits and pieces so be sure to come back on 25 June and enter!

If you’re a fellow book blogger and you fancy joining in the fun, or you just want to find out more, you can click on the button above or follow this link: http://leeswammes.wordpress.com/2011/05/13/announcement-literary-giveaway-blog-hop-june-25-29/.