Friday 5 February 2010

Stuck-in-a-Book's Weekend Miscellany

Hope you've all had a good week - doesn't it go quickly? - here we are again with a book, a blog post, and a link to amuse and bedazzle you this weekend. (NB: bedazzlement not guaranteed.)

1.) The book - I've been meaning to read Grace by Alex Pheby for ages, ever since Two Ravens Press sent it to me... and that was quite some while ago. I'm still keen to read it, but it looks like it might not be in the very near future, and I think some of your lovers of quirky literature might quite like this, judging on the blurb. Peterman escapes a secure hospital, and wanders, half-delirious, into a nearby forest. Here he stays with an old woman and a young girl, and an extraordinary relationship develops between them. And so on.... Unreliable narrators, madness, apparently 'luminous, lyrical prose' - could be a winner. Having done a scout around, I see that almost exactly a year ago Lizzy Siddal reviewed Grace and interviewed Alex Pheby... It'll still probably be a while before I get to this book, but I'd love to hear from anyone who has read it, or plans to.

2.) The blog post - I don't usually pick straightforward reviews for this, as usually something a bit different has caught my attention, but I was rather struck by Harriet's review of My Lover's Lover by Maggie O'Farrell - find it here - and thought I'd make a change. I've only read one O'Farrell novel (The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox) but I will probably be spurred on to more now...

3.) The link - isn't remotely literary this week, but if (like me) you can't quite see the point of Twitter, and are quite fond of English eccentricity, then you could do worse than clicking on this link...

7 comments:

  1. If it's bedazzlement you're after, then Grace is the book to read. Don't leave it for another year ....

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  2. Hee, Big Ben amuses me. Another ludicrous and eccentric twitter feed is Marvin's Moan (as in Douglas Adams's Marvin the Martian).

    Two Ravens Press has been very much on my radar recently; I think the Universe is trying to tell me something.

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  3. Dear Paperback Reader The universe is trying to tell you what happened approximately 14 billion years ago! For an example have a read of this paper .

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  4. Being completely underwhelmed by the concept of Twitter, I laughed at Big Ben's report.

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  5. The Big Ben thing is great! I remain "twitter-less" and hope to forever. :)

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  6. Hahaha, Big Ben made me smile. Looking forward to seeing what you think about the O'Farrell - I loved Esme Lennox but for some reason haven't tried any of her others. (I think I'm afraid of finding them a letdown!)

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