Day 7 of the 30 day book talk..

Most under rated book

Jo's choice

Beyond Black

My choice of under rated book is Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel. Although it was short listed for the 2006 Orange Prize for fiction , it was pipped at the post by On Beauty by Zadie Smith.
For all that it was short listed I have met very few people who have actually read and enjoyed it, and yet I think it is one of Hilary Mantel's better books....with the exception of Wolf Hall, of course, which won the Booker prize in 2009.

The book's central character is a medium called Alison Hart who travels around the Home counties of England with her darkly comic brand of  humour, and her psychic road show.  Her attempt to lay the ghosts of her own past is expertly done, and not without pathos. Alison Hart's halfway house between her own idea of  heaven, and what constitutes her idea of hell on earth is deliciously creepy, and gloriously atmospheric.


Jaffa's choice




A Hundred Ways for 
A Cat to Train its Human by Celia Haddon





This little book should be essential reading for all cats and is a vastly under rated piece of cat literature. It contains excellent advice....I quote...

" Allow your human to use the armchairs when you are out hunting or busy elsewhere in the house. Just make sure it gets off when you want to sit there ..."