A very happy weekend to you! Hope you are spending it well, and not panicking about the fact that we are somehow almost halfway through the year even though I’m pretty sure it only just began? Quell the existential angst with the usual round up…
1.) The blog post – I love Jacqui’s list of books set in hotels, and the comment section is filled with brilliant additions. I’m already looking forward to her boarding house list.
2.) The book – Louise Finch’s The Eternal Return of Clara Hart would sound right up my street even if I hadn’t been to school with Louise. We haven’t seen each other since then, but Facebook is great for these updates – and when she mentioned that her young adult novel would be published in August, I looked it up. The synopsis sounds very up my street. I love the time loop concept, and this one is about a boy called James trying to prevent the death of Clara Hart at a party…
3.) The link – 10 books about things going horribly wrong on islands. Because why not? I’ve read numbers 6, 9, and 10 – you?
The only ‘island’ book in the list I have read is The Magus & that was years ago & cannot recall liking it all that much … anyway here we are living in England, an island …
Of the ‘hotel’ novels I have Grand Hotel here which I bought years ago because I like the film so much ( the 1932 one with Garbo & Barrymore), I have The Feast here, have yet to read it, have read Hotel Du Lac read ages ago when I bought many of her novels but found the grey feeling they gave me rather discouraging … I have the Bowen & the Taylor here in the unread stacks, the Wm Trevor is going to be purchased soon (today?) as I think he is near to faultless …
The boarding house list sounds so encouraging … a closed domestic atmosphere with persons not related to one another where anything can happen, in the open or on the q.t. …
Thanks so much for the link to jacqui’s blog post Simon. I enjoyed it very much.
I’ve read two on that list – and you can probably guess which!!
I enjoyed that list of island books – I haven’t read any of them, but I’m in the middle of a classic Japanese mystery, Death on Gokumon Island, at the moment!
I had to google Death on Gokumon Island but it sounds great, I will have to try and get a copy once it’s reprinted this summer! I haven’t read much Japanese literature in translation but I would really like to read more.
Thanks so much for sharing a link to my ‘literary hotels’ post, Simon, very kind of you. I’ll have to do some work on the boarding house version soon! Lovely to see the ‘things going wrong on islands’ selection too. Like you, I’ve read 9 and 10, along with number 7, Ogawa’s The Memory Police – an excellent book!
I think the only one I may have read is Moominpappa at Sea, but it was many, many years ago so it’s possible I haven’t actually read it as I was at the mercy of the local library and poorly stocked bookstore, with no special orders or internet! I really should reread the Moomin books someday.
4, 7 and 10 on the “island list” and enjoyed them all.