Shiny New Books: Issue 2!

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It is with excitement, pleasure, and pride that I announce that Issue 2 of Shiny New Books is now live! We have new colours, new images, a new competition, and – most importantly – lots and lots of new reviews and features.

Image borrowed from co-editor Annabel

I’m excited about reading it, because I’ve only seen the pieces I wrote, edited, or proofread – and there are over 100 posts to read in total. (If you’ve written for us, or sent a book, we’ll be in touch separately – but it might not be immediately, with so many lovely people to contact.)

I’ll be pointing towards things I’ve written over the next few weeks, and some other personal highlights, but for now – go and browse!

Once again, a hearty and affectionate ‘thank you’ to Annabel, Harriet, and Victoria, my co-editors – and equally hearty apologies that I napped through our Skype appointment yesterday, and final adjustments were thus made later than intended…

Your posts were brought by the letters…

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Long overdue, sorrrry, but here is a round-up of your posts following that meme I made up the other day! Sorry that I didn’t manage to comment on them individually (I really did mean to, but it was such a busy week) – I loved seeing them, and hope you all had fun.  It was only while putting this list together that I realised how far it had spread!  Every link went off to more and more… oh, and some are in the comments of the original post.

(I’ve based this off the comment section on that post and those I could find; if I’ve missed yours, let me know and I’ll add it. Or, if you’ve not put it up yet, let me know when you do!)

 A
Becky’s Book Reviews

 B
Nonsuch Book
Books as Food
My Reader’s Block

 C
Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings

D
Annabel’s House of Books 
Reading, Writing, Working, Playing

 E
Mrs Ford’s Diary
Colin’s Online Diary
With My Book and a Quilt

 F
Bookpuddle
Harriet Devine
Natalie Hearts Books

 G
Wordy Evidence of the Fact
Catching Happiness
The Captive Reader
Reading is not the Challenge

 H
So Many Books
LindyLit

 I
Dolce Bellezza
Our Vicar’s Wife

 J
For the Love of Stories

K
Anakalian Whims
An Adventure in Reading

 L
Books Please

M
Lakeside Musing

N
The Indextrious Reader
What’s With Today, Today?

 O
Lark Writes
The Emerald City Book Review

 P
Peacocks and Sunflowers
Q

 R
Travellin’ Penguin 

 S
Snow Feathers

T
A Work in Progress
Books and Buttons
Carol S

 U
Claire Thinking
Samara’s Thoughts

 V
Our Vicar (in comments section)

W
Angela Young
Little Thoughts About Books

 X

 Y

 Z
James Reads Books

Half a Century of Books

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Six months in, let’s assess where I am with A Century of Books. You may remember that at the three month point I had only read 22, and was a little behind.  Well, at halfway, I have read… 51!  Yes, ironically my Reader’s Block meant turning to Agatha Christie, and I can wolf those down in a couple of days, so she filled plenty of places in the century.

Let’s take a look decade by decade…

1914-1923: 6
1924-1933: 7
1934-1943: 6
1944-1953: 9
1954-1963: 4
1964-1973: 6
1974-1983: 5
1984-1993: 4
1994-2003: 1
2004-2013: 3

How are you getting on, if you’re doing the Century of Books?

A weekend away

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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.

Today’s post is brought to you by the letter…

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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…

Some photos from my camera…

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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

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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…)