Cat Sense:The Feline Enigma Revealed by John Bradshaw

Penguin UK

29th August 2013

Like all cats lovers I am constantly on the lookout for a definitive book which contains everything I need to know about the enigmatic creature called Jaffa who shares my home. 

John Bradshaw's interesting and entertaining book goes a long way to satisfy my curiosity and has some really interesting snippets of information. The book is divided into well ordered chapters which cover cats in all walks of life, from the feral hordes who have to scavenge for survival, through to the pampered and cosseted world of the adored domestic feline.

The chapters are many and varied and begin by covering the history of the cat and cat archaeology before going into more specific detail about the domestication of the cat and the way in which we humans fit into the cat’s world. There are also some lovely black and white drawings interspersed amongst the narrative and lots of useful diagrams and charts.

The author has a real fondness for the feline and has used his skill and knowledge to good effect and has produced a book which is entertaining but which is also informative and a real delight to read.

My thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Books UK for my digital copy to review.

Review ~ Bellman and Black by Diane Setterfield

Orion
October 2013

Bellman and Black is a quietly reflective novel which explores the Victorian’s morbid fascination for death, and in doing so, uncovers an unusual story about the pain of bereavement.

William Bellman is brought up by his widowed mother. He is an average sort of child, not given to flights of fancy, and yet as a small boy he commits a despicably cruel act, which will have far reaching consequences. As he grows to adulthood, William is offered the chance to better himself by working at his uncle’s mill, where he soon proves to be a valuable asset. Blessed with a charmed life, William Bellman is the epitome of Victorian prosperity, until misfortune introduces him to a mysterious man in black whose macabre hold over William’s life forms the basis for this interesting and compelling story of Gothic obsession.

When I first started Bellman and Black, I thought that it was a rather unassuming book as nothing much seems to happen for a good third of the novel. However, there is a stealthy quietness to the story which sneaks up on you, and as the morbid fascination for the ritual of death starts to evolve, the sparseness of the narrative becomes more absorbing and offers a disturbing insight into the Victorian fascination for death and dying. 

With great precision, the author has captured the very essence of Victorian funereal etiquette, from the intense and varied quality of the black bombazine used for mourning clothes, to the voyeuristic observation of unseemly grief. There is an almost hypnotic quality to the story and a distinct creepiness which seeps into your mind. Reading the story late at night you sense a chill in the air, and almost without realising it, you start to observe rooks in a whole new light.

Diane Setterfield’s first book The Thirteenth Tale was a distinct success; however, my feeling is that this one will be a bit of a slow burner, not because the book lacks appeal, but because the brooding nature of the narrative may not be to everyone’s taste.

I have a huge fascination for dark Victorian Gothic literature - so I'm firmly ensconced in the loved it camp.

My thanks to Lovereading.co.uk for the opportunity to read this book in advance of its

 October Publication.

Take a look at what other advance readers thought of Bellman and Black

Bellman and Black is to be published by Orion on the 10 October 2013

available at Lovereading or will be waiting on a shelf at a bookstore near you.

Review ~ Love on a Midsummer Night by Christy English

Sourcebooks Casablanca
6 August 2013

Anything is possible in the moonlight

Arabella, Duchess of Hawthorne is recently widowed, but when her dead husband’s duplicitous nephew makes his dishonourable intentions clear, Arabella realises that she has no choice but to flee London. In desperation, Arabella seeks help from her previous love, the dissolute roué Raymond, Earl of Pembroke, who still retains an echo of the man she once loved and lost. Both Raymond and Arabella have dark secrets which threaten their future happiness, and yet bubbling beneath the surface is a story of thwarted passion and unrelenting danger. 

The skilful storytelling of this delightful author brings to life this lovely Regency romance which is a continuation of the story she started in How to Tame a Willful Wife, loosely based on Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew. In this second book of the series - Love on a Midsummer Night, the author brings to life A Midsummer Night’s Dream. There is always a danger when retelling a classic story that it can become a bit of a caricature of the original, but I found that I was completely beguiled by the ‘will they, won’t they’ love affair between Arabella and Raymond, and hoped that they would be able to reconcile their differences. 

It’s really not necessary to read the books in order as they confidently stand alone, however, because some of the characters overlap, it is perhaps more interesting to start with book one and enjoy the series from the beginning.

If you like historical romantic fiction then do give this author a try.

My thanks to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Casablanca for my ecopy of this book.

More about Christy English and her books can be found on her website.

Shakespeare in love #1

Book Beginnings on Fridays..

Hosted by Gilion at Rose City Reader

Book Beginnings on Fridays as stated by the host was started:

 "to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires."

You can share on Google + and social media , please post using the hash tag #BookBeginnings

and there's also a Mr Linky on the host's blog.

Book Beginning : Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O'Farrell

Tinder Press
February 2013
An imprint of Headline Publishing Group

Highbury, London

The heat, the heat. It wakes Gretta just after dawn, propelling her from the bed and down the stairs. It inhabits the house like a guest who has outstayed his welcome: it lies along corridors, it circles around curtains, it lolls heavily on sofas and chairs. The air in the kitchen is like a solid entity filling the space, pushing Gretta down into the floor, against the side of the table.

...I am intrigued by this opening paragraph and need to understand why heat is inhabiting the living space and I wonder why Gretta feels so overwhelmed that she has to sink to the floor.....



**

A bit of the blurb
 thanks to Goodreads

It's July 1976. In London, it hasn't rained for months, gardens are filled with aphids, water comes from a standpipe, and Robert Riordan tells his wife Gretta that he's going round the corner to buy a newspaper. He doesn't come back. The search for Robert brings Gretta's children — two estranged sisters and a brother on the brink of divorce — back home, each with different ideas as to where their father might have gone. None of them suspects that their mother might have an explanation that even now she cannot share.

**

I've chosen this book to read now as we've had a reasonably hot summer in the UK, which these days is something of a rarity - our summers are now notoriously rainy. I remember very clearly the long hot summer of 1976 - I was just out of school and in a serious romance. The whole hot summer stretched endlessly ahead of me - long lazy days, skies the colour of blackbirds eggs and a summer of love.....

.......and yes, reader , I married him !

The Season is Coming : 20:08:2013

Published 20 August 2013
Bloomsbury

The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon

Welcome to Scion: No safer place

Set in 2059, in a dystopian future where London is a hot bed of intrigue and moral turpitude, nineteen year old Paige Mahoney, is a dream walker and clairvoyant, working as part of an elite criminal underworld in the notorious Seven Dials area of Scion London. On a rainy day, and due to a catastrophic error of judgement, Paige is kidnapped, drugged and taken to the secret city of Oxford, where she is assigned to a Rephaite, who becomes her master, and who is as mysterious, as he is deadly. In this whole new world, complete with its own syntax and idiom, Paige must learn to curb her natural instincts, or risk the consequences.

The Bone Season is unlike anything I have ever read before, and so far out of my comfort zone, that I am at a loss to know where to start to evaluate the story, but I can’t do the author or the story a disservice by describing all that happens. Heck, even after finishing the book, I still don’t know half of what happens, but what I do know, is that this is a remarkably good debut novel. The strength of imagination needed to control a world within a world is finely explored, and the inspired use of original and highly inventive terminology adds authority to a story which ultimately takes you by surprise and leaves you, in the end, wanting more. Thankfully, there is a wonderful glossary which reveals a vocabulary which gets to be so utterly familiar, you find that you want to drop the vernacular into your own life; I mean who can resist a good Flash House?

There are going to be the inevitable comparisons made between The Bone Season and recent trends in popular fiction, and yes, it does have some of the magical elements of Rowling’s Harry Potter, the otherworldliness of Pullman’s His Dark Materials, and some of its own shades of grey in the relationship between keeper and voyant , but ultimately, what’s important is that you should read the book on its own merits, and judge it against none – merely enjoy a good story, settle in and take your seat for a ride to Scion London.

My thanks to Chloe at thinkjam.com and Bloomsbury for my ARC of this book and to the author for an introduction to a whole new world. 

More about the Author

Samantha Shannon wrote this novel when she was nineteen. The Bone Season has already been sold into 18 languages and Andy Serkis (Lord of the Rings) and Jonathan Cavendish (Bridget Jones’s Dairy) have optioned film rights through their British production company, the Imaginarium Studios.

I have one copy of The Bone Season for one lucky UK reader in this great giveaway.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Through my letterbox this week.

.....This fine selection of books to read and review have arrived since the beginning of August....

I think that there's enough to keep me going for the next week or so

and this doesn't include an equal amount of e-books which have been downloaded onto my kindle from indie authors and NetGalley..

Thank you  for trusting your work with me .

The Husband's Secret by Liane Moriarty 

~ with thanks to Penguin~

*

Dance the Moon Down 

~ with thanks to the author R L Bartram ~

*

The Night I Danced with Rommel by Elisabeth Marrion

Princes in Exile by Richard Denning

~ with thanks to the Historical Novel Society~

*

Never Coming Back by Tim Weaver

~with thanks to Real Readers~

*

Bellman and Black by Diane Setterfield
~with thanks to Lovereading,co.uk~

*

The First Blast of the Trumpet

~ with thanks to the author Marie MacPherson~

*

The King's Exile by Andrew Swanston

~with thanks to Transworld~

***

The Knitted Teddy Bear by Sandra Polley

Anova Books
Collins and Brown
This edition 29th July 2013



Who could be uninterested in this picture of two adorable teddy bears?

They just scream "knit me". 

The book is divided into several different projects which range from patterns suitable for those with minimal experience, to those bears which need time, patience and a whole heap of know-how. The bears range from heirloom bears with moveable joints, to those teeny tiny bears which can be made from scraps of wool over the space of an afternoon. 

Some have wardrobes of clothes to get to grips with; whilst others are happy to wear just a sweater. In all the patterns, the instructions are clear and concise and each step is well explained. There also some nice pictures which really bring the bears to life. 

As terminology varies between the US and the UK regarding wool type, it’s nice to have a combination of instructions regarding the type of yarn. All the wool used is fairly standard and should be available from good wool stockists. 

There are also instructions about creating bears from recycled yarn as “Teddy bears aren’t fussy and can be made from oddments left over from other projects”. 

The pattern designer, Sandra Polley, is an experienced crafter and has used this knowledge to create some truly special bears. This is a lovely book for anyone who loves knitting teddy bears, and is equally lovely for those who like to look at good-looking bears, and then maybe persuade someone else into making them. 

My thanks to NetGalley and Anova Books for my ecopy of this book.