A weekend away

It's been great fun seeing the letter meme travel around the blogosphere - I haven't had time to interact with anybody's list, but I will do so when I can.

I spent this weekend in the Lake District, going to my dear friend Epsie's wedding (Epsie is the nickname I use, rather than an unusal name... and she calls me Bill).  I managed not to take any photos of the wedding day (oops) but did take some of the Youth Hostel I was staying in, in Hawskhead.  It had pretty stunning views.

It was also - albeit very briefly - the residence of Francis Brett Young. It's not the first time I've stayed in this hostel, or the first time I've noticed this plaque, but I don't think I've ever mentioned him here.  He's one of those authors I see a lot in secondhand bookshops (particularly while hunting out E.H. Young) but have never read. Has anybody read anything by him?

I read 3.5 books over the weekend, with long train journeys, but in the hostel grounds I was reading a (probably, for this spate, final) Agatha - as I have it out of the library: Sparkling Cyanide (1945). An enjoyable premise, a slightly far-fetched conclusion, some interesting characters... not her finest, not her worst.

Reader's Block

Thankfully my Reader's Block is over, but I've written about it over at Vulpes Libris today...

Today's post is brought to you by the letter...

Here's something that should be fun - and do get involved in the comment section! - I'm going to kick off a meme where we say our favourite book, author, song, film, and object beginning with a particular letter. And that letter will be randomly assigned to you by me, via random.org. If you'd like to join in, comment in the comment section and I'll tell you your letter! (And then, of course, the chain can keep going on your blog.)  My letter is... M

Favourite book...

Miss Hargreaves by Frank Baker. This could hardly have worked out better for me, could it?  Promise I didn't cheat.

Favourite author...

This is all a bit suspicious, since I've managed to have my favourite novel and favourite author, A.A. Milne. Well, I might quibble over AAM being definitely my favourite author, but there's no doubt that he's my favourite whose name begins with 'M'.

Favourite song...



A trickier choice - I nearly went with Rachel Yamagata's 'Miles on a Car' - but Amelia Curran's 'The Mistress' is just so darn brilliant.  No idea where the bizarre image comes from...

Favourite film...

Yes, Mrs. Miniver is madly over the top, but it's a classic for a reason.

Favourite object...

Mugs, you are the bearers of tea, so you are my favourite M-objects.

That was fun! Do ask for a letter, if you'd like one, and I'll do a round-up post of your responses at some point...

Asleep in the Sun by Adolfo Bioy Casares

I'm over with the foxes at Vulpes Libris today, reviewing Asleep in the Sun by Adolfo Bioy Casares...

Some photos from my camera...

Every now and then I fancy doing a lazy picture post, to give you an impression of what I've been up to away from my blog. I spent last weekend at a wedding in Exeter, but sadly didn't take any photos... so that's not featured. The other pictures aren't all that recent, but they were waiting on my camera to be uploaded...

My housemate and I made a strawberry and blueberry meringue gateau.
There's not much left now...

My bro came to visit a few weeks ago
and we took silly photos.

(See?)

Me and some friends obscuring the beautiful
ceiling of the Royal Naval Hall in London.

No collection of photos would be complete without SHERPY.

Blurbs

A quick post, as near a rant as Stuck-in-a-Book is ever likely to get.  Blurbs!  I work in publishing, and I'm now used to writing content which needs to fulfil a purpose and tone, so I get it, I see why blurbs have to exist (although I try not to read them, as they give away far too much).  Today I found the worst blurb ever.

It's on the NYRB Classics edition of Adolfo Bioy Casares' Asleep in the Sun (more on that soon).  Well, it gives it enormous swathes of plot - including a major reveal which happens on p.161 of 173pp.  And, worse, it gets the plot wrong.  I don't want to spoil the book for you (unlike the writers of that blurb...) but basically it says that a big transformative event happens, and it doesn't.  A vaguely similar, but significantly different, event happens instead.

Having finished the book, I can see why someone might have skimmed it to write the copy...

What are your thoughts on blurbs?  Do you find them useful?  I always avoid introductions before reading a book, because they invariably give away far too much, but it looks like I'll have to add blurbs to that list - I usually decide whether or not I want to read a book (if it's entirely unknown to me) by flicking a few pages in and sampling the text, instead of the blurb.

And can you think of any terrible culprits of dreadful blurb-ing? (And, oh, how I have come to hate the word 'blurb' while writing this post...)

A review round-up

image source

As with 2012's Century of Books, there are some books which - for one reason or another - don't get their own blog post, but I still need somewhere to link to in my run-through of 100 books.  So... here is that place!  Or at least the first part of it.  Let's call them mini-reviews; that sounds better.

The Perfect Stranger (1966) by P.J. Kavanagh
A friend lent me this; it is a memoir of a young man's life - at Oxford, at war, and in love.  I certainly liked it, and it was rather moving, but that's about all I remember now.

The Sittaford Mystery (1931) by Agatha Christie
I think my Reader's Block is FINALLY over, and that means my Agatha Christie binge has probably come to an end too.  Whenever I read too many in a row, the plots have to be really good to impress me, and - well - I just read too many, I guess.  So I liked The Sittaford Mystery and I think it was probably quite artful, but I didn't appreciate it as much as I could have done.  I did very much like the feisty, no-nonsense, secretly-sensitive heroine who took on the role of quasi-detective.  I think her name was Emily?

Inclinations (1916) by Ronald Firbank
Mike Walmer kindly sent me a copy of this, but I'm afraid I didn't have a clue what was going on while I read it.  I love some books which are mostly in dialogue (I call Dame Ivy Compton-Burnett to the stand) but this one just baffled me.  Luckily Karen/Kaggsy enjoyed it more - read her review for more elucidation.

Riding Lights (1955) by Norman MacCaig
Green Song and other poems (1944) by Edith Sitwell
Every now and then I think I should try poetry. I don't remember anything at all about these.