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Margaret Oliphant: "A Beleaguered City and Other Tales of the Seen and the Unseen" (Re-read) - Supernatural stories.
Extract from 'A Beleaguered City':
This recalled me to myself, and I followed Lecamus, who stood waiting for me holding the door a little ajar. He went on strangely, like - I can use no other words to express it - a man making his way in the face of a crowd, a thing very surprising to me. I followed him close; but the moment I emerged from the doorway something caught my breath. The same feeling seized me also. I gasped; a sense of suffocation came upon me; I put out my hand to lay hold upon my guide. The solid grasp I got of his arm re-assured me a little, and he did not hesitate, but pushed his way on. We got out clear of the gate and the shadow of the wall, keeping close to the little watch-tower on the west side. Then he made a pause, and so did I. We stood against the tower and looked out before us. There was nothing there. The darkness was great, yet through the gloom of the night I could see the division of the road from the broken ground on either side; there was nothing there. I gasped, and drew myself up close against the wall, as Lecamus had also done. There was in the air, in the night, a sensation the most strange I have ever experienced. I have felt the same thing indeed at other times, in face of a great crowd, when thousands of people were moving, rustling, struggling, breathing around me, thronging all the vacant space, filling up every spot. That was the sensation that overwhelmed me here - a crowd; yet nothing to be seen but the darkness, the indistinct line of the road. We could not move for them, so close were they round us. What do I say? There was nobody - nothing - not a form to be seen, not a face but his and mine.
Note: I think I should mention that these aren't really "horror" stories, but stories about life, and death, and the demarcation between - or, as Margaret Oliphant would put it, the seen, and the unseen.
Colin Dann: "The Animals of Farthing Wood" (Re-read) - When their home is about to be destroyed, the animals of Farthing Wood band together and set out on the dangerous and adventurous journey to find sanctuary in White Deer Park. A childhood favourite that I enjoyed revisiting.
Betsy Byars: "Bingo Brown and the Language of Love" (Re-read) - The second book about Bingo (the first being "The Burning Questions of Bingo Brown"). Delightful.
Bingo lay on his Smurf sheets. He had always been able to count on a peaceful night's sleep on his Smurf sheets. But last Tuesday Billy Wentworth had come over, looked at his unmade bed, and smiled condescendingly at the Smurfs. After that, Bingo had not been easy on them.
Right now he was as uncomfortable as if he were lying on real Smurfs. However, he knew tonight was not a good time to ask his mother for more manly sheets.
Hello!
I've just entered this forum and I'm going through the threads and links and I found this, and I thought "since my username is larnark, I should recommend the book Lanark: A Life in Four Books".
From Wikipedia:
Lanark, subtitled A Life in Four Books, is the first novel of Scottish writer Alasdair Gray. Written over a period of almost thirty years, it combines realist and dystopian surrealist depictions of his home city of Glasgow.
Its publication in 1981 prompted Anthony Burgess to call Gray "the best Scottish novelist since Walter Scott".[1] Lanark won the inaugural Saltire Society Book of the Year award in 1982, and was also named Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year.[2] The book, still his best known, has since become a cult classic. In 2008, The Guardian heralded Lanark as "one of the landmarks of 20th-century fiction."
This is one of my favorite books and since I'm not very creative with usernames, I tried to think about some character's name. Lanark was the first to come to my mind.
Hello, welcome, lanark! I hope you are enjoying your browsing of the forum.
Also, as for unimaginative user names... I'm using my initials, my imagination is so bad.
Originally Posted by LRK
Hello, welcome, lanark! I hope you are enjoying your browsing of the forum.
Also, as for unimaginative user names... I'm using my initials, my imagination is so bad.
Thank you, LRK!
I win for least imaginative name. My userid is my real name. And my parents were equally unimaginative. My first name is my mother's, and my middle name is my grandmother's.
well...
At least I can remember it.
Anthony Trollope: "Ayala's Angel" (Re-read)
When Egbert Dormer died he left his two daughters utterly penniless upon the world, and it must be said of Egbert Dormer that nothing else could have been expected of him. The two girls were both pretty, but Lucy, who was twenty-one, was supposed to be simple and comparatively unattractive, whereas Ayala was credited - as her somewhat romantic name might show - with poetic charm and a taste for romance. Ayala when her father died was nineteen.
Kenneth Grahame: "The Wind in the Willows" (Re-read)
The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home. First with brooms, then with dusters; then on ladders and steps and chairs, with a brush and a pail of whitewash; till he had dust in his throat and eyes, and splashes of whitewash all over his black fur, and an aching back and weary arms. Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing. It was small wonder, then, that he suddenly flung down his brush on the floor, said 'Bother!' and 'Oh, blow!' and also 'Hang spring-cleaning!' and bolted out of the house without even waiting to put on his coat. Something up above was calling him imperiously, and he made for the steep little tunnel which answered in his case to the gravelled carriage-drive owned by animals whose residences are nearer to the sun and air. So he scraped and scratched and scrabbled and scrooged, and then he scrooged again and scrabbled and scratched and scraped, working busily with his little paws and muttering to himself, 'Up we go! Up we go!' till at last, pop! his snout came out into the sunlight, and he found himself rolling in the warm grass of a great meadow.
'This is fine!' he said to himself. 'This is better than whitewashing!' The sunshine struck hot on his fur, soft breezes caressed his heated brow, and after the seclusion of the cellarage he had lived in so long the carol of happy birds fell on his dulled hearing almost like a shout. Jumping off all his four legs at once, in the joy of living and the delight of spring without its cleaning, he pursued his way across the meadow till he reached the hedge on the further side.
It is not a book that I want to recommend today, but the works of a photographer.
"Many people take it for granted that they can “pick themselves up by their bootstraps” and better themselves, but for a large portion of America, that just isn’t true. A look at a working-class community in New Jersey."
If It Rained an Ocean. Photographs and text by Danna Singer.
Danna Singer's website
Now that the Olympics are ending, I can get back to reading. And hopefully this thread will pick up again.
I enjoy a wide range of books. I'll happily read anything on the bestseller list and good historical fiction.
My favorite read for 2017 was Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen. If you're a Bruce fan, it's a must-read. Beautifully written, funny, poignant, sad, fascinating.
My second favorite was a Jeff Shaara series about WWII starting with "The Rising Tide". Picked it up at a library sale because I had read one of his Civil War books years ago. This one was in the "couldn't put it down" category. Pointed out, sadly, how little I know about WWII details but I was so interested that I Amazon'd and read the other two in the trilogy..
I do commit to reading (just) one classic every summer.....I guess it's so I can enjoy my guilty-pleasure beach reads with a cl arer conscience -
What is your favorite book of all time? Your favorite from the last year or two?
My favorite of all time is Water for Elephants, then A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford's first and best!)
Hope to hear from others soon!
Robert Westall: "The Christmas Cat" - It's 1934 and 11 year old Caroline has been sent to spend Christmas with her uncle, something she hasn't exactly been looking forward to. And at first things certainly don't get off to a great start. But then she makes a few friends, and things change…
Warm & funny, marvellous & magical.
If you're looking for a breezy, easy and fun read I'd recommend Crazy Rich Asians (there's actually 3 books) and a movie coming out soon by Kevin Kwan
I'd also really recommend The Everything Store (Jeff Bezos and the age of Amazon) - one of the best business books
If you're a fan of YA:
I really enjoyed the entire series by Susan Ee called Penryn and the End of Days (there are 3 books) and the series by Laini Taylor (Daughter of Smoke and Bone series - 3 books)
Margaret Mahy: "The Riddle of the Frozen Phantom" - Quirky, charming & quite delightful.
I just finished Beartown by Fredrik Backman, the author of A Man Called Ove. It's about a small dying town in Scandinavia that lives and breathes ice hockey. I loved it, as did my husband. Not light reading, though, some heavy stuff.
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