The Death and Life of Charlie St.Cloud by Ben Sherwood

Pages 269

Published in 2005 by Picador.

I believe in miracles.
Not just the simple wonders of creation, like my new son at home nursing in my wife's arms or the majesties of nature, like the sun setting in the sky. I'm talking about real miracles, like turning water into wine or bringing the living back from the dead.

When Charlie St. Cloud was just a boy, he was involved in a car crash. He died on the spot, but was brought back to life by the paramedics. Unfortunately his younger brother Sam, didn't survive the crash. Years later, we meet up with Charlie again, he is now the caretaker of the local cemetery and his life seems to have been at a standstill since his brother died. He is strongly attached to the cemetery and cannot leave. He only begins to change his ways when he meets Tess Carroll, a yachtswoman, who is about to sail the world. On meeting her, Charlie's life begins to change and he must make a decision between living with the dead or the living.

I absolutely adored this book. This is the most beautiful ghost story I have come in contact with since the film Ghost.  It is not scary at all, it is poignant and wonderfully written. giving you hope that when you reach the pearly gates, there might be another life waiting for you on the other side.

Charlie is a fantastic character, one that you cannot help but fall in love with. He is unable to leave his brother and night after night he meets with him to play catch. He comes across as strong, but caring, manly but warm. I can almost see why they chose Zak Efron for the part in the new film (and I am so not a Zak Efron fan!)

This book is definitely about taking the chances that are sent your way. If opportunities arise, you should take them, run with them and watch your life blossom into the one you have always dreamed of. I would like to believe that their is something to go onto after we die and this book gives you the tiniest bit of hope.

To me, this book had elements of Flatliners and The Field of Dreams entwined in it. If you have the belief that ghosts exist, then this is definitely a book for you. A real comfort read.

The November Novella Challenge

As I have a really busy month coming up in November, after committing to NaNoWriMo, I knew I wouldn't have a lot of time for reading, so when I saw this challenge I thought it was ideal, as I had planned to concentrate on reading novellas, through November.

So here are the details of the challenge which has it own blog called The November Novella Challenge

The idea is simple: read novellas in November.


There are a few different levels to choose from:

Level I: Read one (just one!) novella by November 30, 2010

Level II: Read four novellas (one each week, mayhaps?) by November 30, 2010


Level III: Read eight novellas (two a week?) by November 30, 2010

Level IV: AKA, the As Many As You Freakin’ Can level: Read as many novellas as you freakin’ can by November 30, 2010


I am going for Level Three as I had hoped to read at least two a week.

I did go to the library to pick up a few novellas to read. Excluding Three Men In A Boat, I picked up three to read.

1) The Prisone of Zenda by Hope

2) The Time Machine by H.G. Wells

3) Artic Summer by E.M. Forster.

I have also downloaded two novella's to hubby's IPad.

1) The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

2) The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving.

I do have a little dilemma with this challenge and I wondered if you could help me. I am a little confused as to the size of a novella. How many pages should it be in order to still be considered a novella rather than a novel? Any one have any ideas? I have a few books in my collection that I think could fit , but I am struggling to work out whether they fit into this category or not.

If you feel brave, come and join the challenge.

Really Random Tuesday

Really Random Tuesday is a meme created by Suko at Suko's Notebook which is a way to post odds and ends--announcements, musings, quotes, photos--any blogging and book-related things you can think of.

On Saturday we went to Brighton to do a little clothes shopping. The whole family were in desperate need of some winter clothing, so we spent all day there shopping. As we approached Brighton we became aware of how fierce the sea was. The waves were coming in fast and furious and I have never seen them so high.

 My pictures don't really do them justice as they were almost taller than me.

 Our shopping trip was so long and tiring, that we needed to have lots of refreshment stops. One of our stops was at the new Krispy Kreme outlet, which had just opened in Brighton.

 The choice of doughnuts was immense. Lots of Halloween themed doughnuts. My girls went for chocolate ones, hubby had an apple cinnamon one and I went for a lemon meringue one.

 I had to take a picture of this Halloween book too whilst we were in Brighton. Isn't it fabulous.

The best thing about it is that it is edible. It is made completely from chocolate and is on sale at the chocolate shop in Brighton. Yummy!

I don't really have a lot of bookish news to tell you this week. I did finish Her Fearful Symmetry and I have to say I loved it. I can't review it until after my book club meeting, so it will be about a month before I let you know all my thoughts.

I began reading The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud and fell in love with that from the first page. It is a wonderful book for this time of year and definitely worth a read.

This week, I hope to spend some time planning for NaNoWriMo next week. My trial run is still going strong and has got much easier as the week's have passed. It will need a lot of rewriting, but I am pleased to have nearly all the basic story done.



I did receive The Persephone Biannually magazine this week and I hope to make a purchase soon.  Claire over at The Paperback Reader is organising a Persephone Secret Santa for bloggers. If you click here, you will be able to read all about it.

Speaking about bloggers, I really did want to send my deepest sympathy  and my biggest hugs to Dar over at Peeking Between The Pages. Anyone who reads Dar's blog, will know all about her beautiful companion Buddy, who passed away this week. For the past two years, in fact since the very first day I started blogging I have loved reading all about Buddy's antics, so it was so sad to hear that he had gone. If you haven't been over to Dar's blog this week and missed her eulogy for Buddy, then please go over and show her your support.

That's is all my randomness this week. I look forward to hearing all the random things that happened to you too.

Monday Mail

Mailbox Mondays is being hosted during the month of October by Avis of She Reads and Reads.

I have had a bit of a book buying splurge this week after feeling a little down and already fed up with the cold. I absolutely hate the cold and I am stocking up on comfort reads for the winter ahead. I plan to spend a lot of evenings, once my writing is done, curled up under a blanket on the sofa, with a good book. I am very anti social during the winter. So I went off to the charity shops and the bookstore and came back with this lovely stack of books.

1) Angel by L.A. Weatherley. This is the book I featured on Friday Finds and I knew I would have to buy it after reading the review. I am such a sucker for angels.

2)The MacGregor Brides by Nora Roberts. I am determined to spend December wrapped up in cheesy Christmas films and comfort chick lit Christmas books. I want to immerse myself in Christmas and come out covered in tinsel and glitter.

3) The Christmas Cookie Club by Ann Pearlman - another guilty Christmas pleasure but with cookie recipes too!

4) Tatty by Christine Dwyer Hickey - This book caused quite a stir when it was originally published in Ireland in 2004. It tells the story of Tatty and her alcoholic family.

5) The Bed I Made by Lucie Whitehouse - this is Lucie's second book after 'The House at Midnight.' Lucie's books have been described as having a Gothic feel which as you know really appeals to me.

The three books above were bought from the library.

1) The Summer Book by Tove Jansson - how excited was I to get this. I do love Tove Jansson and I can't wait to read this one about a young girl and her grandmother who tell their dreams and memories whilst on an island in the Gulf of Finland.

2) The Silver Sword by Ian Serrailler. This is a book that I remember vividly from my childhood. I can remember being in my last year at junior school and my teacher, Mrs Fairchild, reading this every afternoon before we went home. So finding this book really took me back and I can't wait to read it. The book tells the story of four children moving through war torn Europe.

3) The Silent Sin by Anna Sicking. This is a Dutch translation.This is a book about obsession.

 This is a real find for me. I have moaned about wanting to read W.Somerset Maughan and look what I found in the charity shop. A book containing six of his stories and including The Painted Veil, which is one I have been desperate to read. I am over the moon about this find.

What books did you find this week?

Friday Finds

Friday Finds is hosted by MizB at You Should Be Reading and you can find it here. MizB does a fantastic job with this meme every week, so do pop over and pay her a visit.

1) Extraordinary by Nancy Werlin.

I found this one over at Meg's blog Write Meg!

Here is the blurb from Amazon.

Phoebe finds herself drawn to Mallory, the strange and secretive new kid in school, and the two girls become as close as sisters . . . until Mallory's magnetic older brother, Ryland, shows up during their junior year. Ryland has an immediate, exciting hold on Phoebe but a dangerous hold, for she begins to question her feelings about her best friend and, worse, about herself.

Soon she'll discover the shocking truth about Ryland and Mallory: that these two are visitors from the faerie realm who have come to collect on an age-old debt. Generations ago, the faerie queen promised Pheobe's ancestor five extraordinary sons in exchange for the sacrifice of one ordinary female heir. But in hundreds of years there hasn't been a single ordinary girl in the family, and now the faeries are dying. Could Phoebe be the first ordinary one? Could she save the faeries, or is she
special enough to save herself?

 2) Woman in Black by Susan Hill

I found this one over at Book Chick City. This is quite an old book dating back to the 80's which is having a bit of a revival at the moment.

Here is the blurb from Amazon.

Set on the obligatory English moor, on an isolated causeway, the story has as its hero one Arthur Kipps, an up-and-coming young solicitor who has come north to attend the funeral and settle the estate of Mrs. Alice Drablow of Eel Marsh House. The routine formalities he anticipates give way to a tumble of events and secrets more sinister and terrifying than any nightmare: the rocking chair in the nursery of the deserted Eel Marsh House, the eerie sound of pony and trap, a child's scream in the fog, and, most dreadfully, and for Kipps most tragically, the woman in black.

3) The Art of Disappearing by Ivy Pochoda

I found this over at Chaotic Companions

Here is the blurb from Amazon

When Mel Snow meets Toby Warring in a dusty roadside bar, she is instantly drawn to the brilliant magician who can pull roses from thin air and conjure castles out of desert sands. They marry two days later, and begin a life together in the shadow of Las Vegas, where Toby hopes to make it big. Mel knows that magicians are a dime a dozen, but Toby is different—his magic is real.

But as Toby’s renown grows and Mel falls more and more in love with his wonderments, she starts to realize that Toby's powers are as unstable as they are dazzling. She learns that he once made his assistant disappear completely, and couldn’t bring her back. And soon she begins to wonder if the love they share is genuine or merely a fantasy, conjured up by a lost magician looking to save himself from being alone.

4) Angel by L.A. Weatherly

I found this over at Clover's blog Fluttering Butterflies.

Here is the blurb from Amazon.

Willow knows she s different from other girls. And not just because she loves tinkering around with cars. Willow has a gift. She can look into peoples futures, know their dreams, their hopes and their regrets, just by touching them. She has no idea where she gets this power from... But Alex does. Gorgeous, mysterious Alex knows Willows secret and is on a mission to stop her. The dark forces within Willow make her dangerous and irresistible. In spite of himself, Alex finds he is falling in love with his sworn enemy.

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

Pages - 454

Published in 2010 by Scholastic.

My name is Katniss Everdeen. I am seventeen years old. My home is District 12. I was in the Hunger Games. I escaped. The Capitol hates me. Peeta was taken prisoner. He is thought to be dead. Most likely he is dead. It is probably best if he is dead......

This is the final book in the Hunger Games Trilogy.  The revolt against the Capitol has begun and Katniss has become the rebels symbol of freedom. She is the Mockingjay and she intends to watch the Capitol fall and kill President Snow in the process. Peeta has been captured and is believed to have been tortured by the Capitol,and a rescue attempt successfully takes place, only to find Katniss now facing an enemy instead of a loved one as Peeta has turned nasty. Hell bent on destroying Snow, Katniss becomes part of  a mission to enter the Capitol and kill him. Unfortunately life never turns out the way you planned.

I loved the first two books in this series and I had waited eagerly and with rather little patience for the final part of the jigsaw. Unfortunately I was sorely disappointed. I know many of you have loved the final part of the trilogy, but it left me cold.  It took me forever to get into the story and I found that I no longer cared what happened in the Peeta/Katniss/Gale triangle as none of the characters had been left with any appealing characteristics. They all came across as flat and boring, no longer with any depth to their character.  Peeta had become a hateful beast after being brainwashed by the Capitol. I had found him so loving and caring in the other two books, that I could not recognise this abominable creature that had replaced him. Katniss became annoying and whingy like a spoilt child and Gale was just full of lust.  To be honest, I didn't recognise either Gale or Peeta in this book and I believe they may have both received a lobotomy  since the end of Catching Fire. Throughout this whole series you expect to see Katniss evolving as a person, but she never changes at all, even with the epilogue fifteen years later, she is still the same old Katniss.

The ending became like a killing spree and I found myself completely appalled by it. I don't like seeing the odd character killed off as it is, but to create a whole team of them and spend the last few pages trying to create different ways to kill them, that was awful. Luckily I felt nothing for them, as their were so many they were hardly recognisable.

I wish I could say nice things about this book, because Suzanne Collins is a very talented author in my eyes. The first two books were the most original I have ever read and left me breathless. This one left me speechless!

The love triangle that had kept us on the edge of our seats through the last two books was dealt with like a last minute detail, an afterthought  or a forgotten storyline shoved in at the end.

This book is darker than the last two and shows the true nature of war, it was far too realistic for my liking, even the cover was a turn off, reminding me of eerily of the swastika.  This book is more focused on the war than anything else and I find that rather disappointing. We all loved the characters from the first two books an we wanted to see them grow and develop, all we get to see is blood and guts, war and disaster.
I am totally put off by this book and find that I cannot recommend it.

I know a lot of you loved it and I would like to add your reviews to mine. Unfortunately Google Reader (grrrr!) is still giving me hell and I can't access past reviews, so please put a link in the comments and I will add them to mine. I am perfectly happy to be criticised for my views on this book and I will duck down low as you throw books at me. Please don't hate me!

Really Random Tuesday

Really Random Tuesday is a meme created by Suko at Suko's Notebook which is a way to post odds and ends--announcements, musings, quotes, photos--any blogging and book-related things you can think of.

Halloween is approaching fast and in our house it is a big deal. Roll on next Friday, when my hallway becomes a haunted mansion, my beautiful girls become evil witches, I become something out of The Witches of Eastwick and the neighbourhood children become something to be feared. I have started preparing early and bought extra decorations and music to give an eerie atmosphere. I am soooo excited. I have even had my nails painted Halloween style. Do you like my spider's webs?

We brought the girls some serious bubbles this weekend and they have been creating havoc in the garden with them.

 
On the bookish news, the lovely Kate Kerrigan popped over to my blog on Friday to comment on my post about Ellis Island. I was thrilled to have her visit. It turns out that Kate has her own blog and you can visit it here. It is definitely worth a visit.
 
I managed to finish Mockingjay over the weekend and I have to say I was rather disappointed with it. It really didn't leave me enthused at all, which is such a shame as I loved the first two books. More on that tomorrow though.
 
I am planning to read a lot of rather thin books over the coming month, as with NaNoWriMo coming up, I know my reading time will be slightly diminished and yet I still want to be able to review books. So books with a smaller page count will be the norm until the end of November.
 
My writing this month has really taking a good turn. I am so involved in the story that I struggle to pull myself away from the computer. I am definitely on target to finish the first draft by the end of September. I am presently fleshing out the story idea for November with the help of my lovely hubby. He will only help if I make sure I credit him with helping me with the idea if I ever get it published. He is so easily pleased.
 
Well that is all for my really random Tuesday post. Do pop over to Suko's site to see what she has been up to?

Monday Mail

You have to excuse the curtain less window behind, we are in the process of having our bedroom decorated and at the moment, curtains appear to be bathroom towels at night, as we can't find the curtain poles we want. Very attractive huh!

Had a bit of a book splurge this week, as hubby won the Euro Millions, well he won £90 on the Euro Millions and once I had bought the girl's some new swimming costumes, lunch and some Christmas stamps to make Christmas cards with, I had enough money left to get some cheap books.  The bottom three were three  books for a fiver, from a wonderful English shop we have called The Works.

1) The Vampire's Assistant by Darren Shan. This actually contains the first three books from the series about vampires and I have been wanting to read this for ever.

2) The Haunting of James Hastings by Christopher Ransom ( of The Birthing  House fame) another scary book for the Halloween season.

3) The Frost Fair by Edward Marston - this book is set in London in 1669 and shows London when the Thames used to freeze over and markets stalls would be set up on it. It is a murder mystery, where London architect Christopher Redmayne and his friend, Constable Jonathan Bale find a body in the Thames and they must prove that Redmayne's brother was not involved.

The other three books are the first three books in Charlaines Harris's series.  The books tell the story of Harper Connelly who had a lucky escape when she was hit by lightning and lived to tell the tale. But sometimes she wishes she had died, because the lightning strike left her with an unusual talent: she can find dead people.Just my cup of tea!

So they are my new books this week, what did you get?

Ellis Island by Kate Kerrigan

Pages -357

Published in 2009 by Pan Books

The first time I fell in love with John, I was eight and he was ten.
One day, Maidy Hogan called down to the house with a basket of duck eggs and asked my mother if I could play with her nephew. His parents had both died of TB and he was sad and lonely, she said. But for his aunt coming to ask for me in the way she did, my mother would never have let me out to play with him. My mother didn't approve of boys, or playing, or of very much at all outside of cleaning the house and protecting our privacy.

I was interested in reading this book after I saw it in the library, not long after reading Brooklyn by Colm Toiben.  I had convinced myself that basically both books contained the same story. Young Irish girls goes to New York to live a new life and make money.  To an extent both books were very similar, as both followed an almost identical journey. The only part I found to be really different were the endings.

In Ellis Island, Ellie goes to work in New York in order to pay for her husband John's operation. John was heavily involved in the IRA and was shot during the War of Independence, resulting in such a serious injury that without an operation he wouldn't be able to walk again. Ellie has no qualms about going to live in America or about travelling there alone and you cannot help but admire her braveness.

Once Ellie settles into servitude in New York, she quickly falls in love with the country and wants to stay there permanently. She is a very determined lady and soon rises up the career ladder. Her original plan to stay one year is dashed as she stays a further three. Ellie tries to encourage her husband to come and live with her, but he has no wish to and the distance puts a strain on there marriage.  She soon falls for the charms of an American aristocrat, but romance is dashed, when she is summoned back to Ireland where her father lays on his death bed.

I found this a lovely book to read. I admit that the story really didn't take off for me until Ellie moved to New York, but after that I couldn't put it down. It reminded me a little of  Breakfast At Tiffany's with it's vivid descriptions of life in New York during the Jazz Age.

As soon as Ellie was summoned home to Ireland, you watch as the poor girl's life changes dramatically. She goes from having it all to living with the bare minimum. To have it all, then to have experience sheer poverty would be hard on anyone. No electricity, no running water, no modern technology at all, which she had loved and grown to expect in America.  However Ellie is a strong and feisty character and does overcome her losses,going onto become a much better person. Not content to stay at home as a housewife, she opens a shop, which soon becomes the most popular one in the village.

I did feel that this book expanded on my historical knowledge. Kerrigan's finely crafted story brought to life the details of emigration to America, as well as the plight of the Irish during the beginning of the century. It left me craving for more information on this topics. 

This is a wonderful romantic historical drama, which makes a great accompaniment to Brooklyn by Colm Toiben.

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

y

Pages - 704
Published in 2006 by Time Warner Books

My dear and unfortunate successor:
It is with regret that I imagine you, whoever you are, reading this account I put down here. The regret is partly for myself - because I will surely be at least in trouble, maybe dead, or perhaps worse, if this is in your hands. But my regret is also for you, my yet-unknown friend because only by someone who needs such file information will this letter someday be read. If you are not my successor in some other sense, you will soon be my heir - and I feel sorrow at bequeathing to another human being my own, perhaps unbelievable, experience of evil.

This story begins when a young girl finds an ancient book and a cache of letters hidden amongst her father's books in his library. This discovery takes her on a journey which unravels secrets from her father's past as well as the story of her mother's life and her fate.

What the book doesn't tell you from the cover is that this is really the story of Dracula/Vlad the Impaler and once I realised that I was lost within the story.  When I recall this book, I consider it a story within a story within a story, as you begin reading at one layer, before being transported into another and then another. You begin with the author's story about finding a rare book in her father's library, which then moves you onto the stories of her father about his adventures trying to find his mentor Rossi. The book then progresses into the letters of Rossi and his attempts to discover the hiding place of Dracula.

This book is full of Gothic charm on the go, the adventure and the chase spilling out on either side as you ride the rollercoaster through the story.  The book is a real chunkster at 704 pages, but you quickly get lost amongst the pages of the book and immersed in the history of Dracula/Vlad the Impaler.  It is surprising that I didn't faint from asphyxiation as I kept holding my breath for long periods of time during the intensely dramatic chases.  If I had to put this book in a genre, I would really struggle as it contains so many different elements from a range of genres.  There is romance, adventure, myths and legend, as well as epistolary features.

This book took my love of vampires to a completely different level.  In this book there is such an aura around the stories of Dracula and the vampire is seen as mythical and unreachable until he reveals himself near the end of the book. I loved walking along the fine line of truth and fiction within this book.

The character of Helen Rossi, annoyed me a little during the book. She was always so cold and aloof, that I couldn't possibly consider her to have mothered a child. Her personality never altered throughout the book and I would have liked to see her character soften as the story progressed.

I loved the story and loved learning more about the legend of Dracula/Vlad. In a morbid way, I have always found the stories quite fascinating and am intrigued to learn more. I hold my hands up and admit to never having read Bram Stoker's Dracula, which features heavily in this book, but I do plan to read it before the end of the year. Perhaps I should stay up on All Hallows Eve to read it with a couple of Jack O Lanterns grinning fiendishly at me whilst I read. Oooh I am getting the shivers.

Really Random Tuesday

Well this week, finds me looking forward to a quieter week than last.  What with the book club, lots of children coming to tea, an art day at school and a whole day at the weekend spent in search of the elusive swimming costume, I have cleared this week free in order to concentrate on my writing.

What is with swimming costumes, we move into the month of October and you can't find one anywhere! The girls are taking top up swimming lessons at school and had to wear appropriate swimwear. I assumed bikinis would be out of the equation and spent all day Saturday trying to find them sensible swimwear. It was a tough search, but eventually we ended up with rather sensible navy blue ones, much to the girl's disgust. They were hoping pink, purple or even a nice multicolour pattern, but oh no, the matronly navy blue ones were all we could find.

We then spent Sunday at school ( I know school on a Sunday! Madness, I say, madness) participating in an Art Day.  We got to make lovely miniature scrap pages for the flying books which are making their way around West Sussex. They are no bigger than a pocket diary and each page has to be decorated by a different person according to the theme of the book. There were about 12 books and the themes ranged from A Book of Black and White, to A Book of Fashion and lots of others. It was really good fun and I am tempted to get a set for the girls to do at home with their friends. Unfortunately I forgot to take my camera, so I can't show you the ones we made, but if you click on flying books above, you will get a better idea of what they look like.

My writing was going well until the weekend when life just go too busy, so I am about 3,000 words behind in my writing. I hope to spread those out over the next few days in order to keep up and not lose momentum.  It is horrible, when you just don't have time and the words then accumulate onto the next day. It doesn't help the novelty and excitement for the first week is wearing off and every thing feels like an effort, but I refuse to give up. I made a commitment to myself to do this and I won't let myself down.

I have just started reading Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger, which is my book club read and all I can say is, why haven't I read this sooner. I have even put Mockingjay to the side, which is a bit of a shock as I have loved The Hunger Games series, but there are lots of twists already in the plot and I am desperate to know the truth.  I finished Ellis Island by Kate Kerrigan and really enjoyed it. I found the first part a little boring, but once the main character moved to New York, I was completely absorbed in the story.

Anyway, must crack on, I have a few thousand outstanding words to type.  Wish me luck.

The Chosen Book Was..........

......Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger. Well done to Suko, Naida and Alice for getting it right. 

The book club was an immense success on Thursday where eight of us were in attendance. We decided that we would meet up every six weeks instead of once a month, to give everyone time to read the book.  We organised a list of houses to visit and decided that who ever played hostess that time would be allowed to choose a selection of books to choose from for the next meet. We also decided to try and theme the reading selection, so the next one at my house will consist of Young Adult books, the one after that might be autobiographies, followed by classics. We thought this way, everyone would read a range of different genres. 

We were very organised with our  time schedule too and decided the meeting would last from 8pm to 10pm and wouldn't run over as people need to be up for work the next day. We also decided that the meeting would start with the choosing of the next book, before a discussion of the old book occurred.

Her Fearful Symmetry was one of three books we had to re vote on after the initial selection from six books. The Help and Sweetness at the Bottom of The Pie were the other two and they may come back into vote at future book clubs.

Thank you to everyone who had a go at guessing. I will keep you posted with all my book group events. If only you all lived nearer then you could come too.

Ooh I nearly forgot! I hope everyone who joined in with the Dewey readathon on the weekend, had a fabulous time and got to read lots and lots of books.

My Book Club Selection

You will have to excuse this post as it was written a couple of days in advance. I wanted to share with you the books that I have chosen to be selected from for my book club. I wanted to write the post before the event, as I didn't want to be biased towards the book chosen. If you are reading this post, then the book club would have occurred last night and I will tell you how it went next week. The idea of this post is for you to try and guess which book we chose.

Firstly let me tell a little bit about my book group. To be honest they range from all walks of life and vary in age from early thirties to retirement age. They all enjoy reading, but are looking to read outside their comfort zone.

I wanted to choose books that best reflected my reading choices as well as a little something for the season. I changed the books I had chosen quite a few times and finally decided on Wednesday which books I would choose. Here are my final six.

1) The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud was brought back to my attention after watching the adverts for the new film made about the book. Here is the blurb from Wikipedia.

Two brothers, Charlie (15) and Sam (12) decide to go to watch a baseball game. They "borrow" their neighbor's car. Charlie decides to chase the moon to let Sam have a good time. On the way there they cannot decide which CD to listen to. They get into an accident, and Sam is killed. Thirteen years later, Charlie has grown up and is working at the Marblehead cemetery. Every evening at dusk he goes to a nearby forest where he plays with Sam. Charlie has the gift of seeing ghosts. This serves him well as an undertaker, as he can talk with the deceased.

2) The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

I chose this one as I have been wanting to read Ishiguro for ages. I couldn't decide between this one and Never Let Me Go and decided that this one may be more well known due to the film released with the same title.

Here is the blurb from Wikipedia.

The story is told from a first person point of view. The narrator Stevens, a butler, recalls his life in the form of what appears to be a long letter to an unknown person – possibly another butler – while the action progresses through the present. Much of the novel is concerned with Stevens's professional and, above all, personal relationship with a former colleague, the housekeeper Miss Kenton.

3) Notes On A Scandal by Zoe Heller. As I have a couple of teachers coming to the book club, I thought this one might be of interest to them as it is set in a school.

Here is the blurb from Amazon.

When the new teacher first arrives, Barbara immediately senses that this woman will be different from the rest of her staff-room colleagues. But Barbara is not the only one to feel that Sheba is special, and before too long Sheba is involved in an illicit affair with a pupil. Barbara finds the relationship abhorrent, of course, but she is the only adult in whom Sheba can properly confide. So when the liaison is found out and Sheba's life falls apart, Barbara is there...

4) The Sweetness Of The Bottom Of The Pie by Alan Bradley

I liked this one as it is a mystery story set in the 50's and told from the point of view of a child.

Here is the blurb from Amazon.

It is June 1950 and a sleepy English village is about to be awakened by the discovery of a dead body in Colonel de Luce's cucumber patch. The police are baffled, and when a dead snipe is deposited on the Colonel's doorstep with a rare stamp impaled on its beak, they are baffled even more. Only the Colonel's daughter, the precocious Flavia -when she's not plotting elaborate revenges against her nasty older sisters in her basement chemical laboratory, that is - has the ingenuity to follow the clues that reveal the victim's identity, and a conspiracy that reached back into the de Luce family's murky past.

5) The Help by Kathryn Stockett. Over the last year I have developed quite a love of southern fiction, so I thought this would be a good one to reflect my reading interests.

Here is the blurb from Amazon

Jackson, Mississippi, 1962. Black maids raise white children, but aren’t trusted not to steal the silver. Some lines will never be crossed. Aibileen is a black maid: smart, regal, and raising her seventeenth white child. Yet something shifted inside Aibileen the day her own son died while his bosses looked the other way. Minny, Aibileen’s best friend, is by some way the sassiest woman in Mississippi. But even her extraordinary cooking won’t protect Minny from the consequences of her tongue. Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter returns home with a degree and a head full of hope, but her mother will not be happy until there’s a ring on her finger. Seeking solace with Constantine, the beloved maid who raised her, Skeeter finds she has gone. But why will no one tell her where? Seemingly as different as can be, Skeeter, Aibileen and Minny’s lives converge over a clandestine project that will not only put them all at risk but also change the town of Jackson for ever.

 

6) Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger - now we couldn't start a book club in October without a ghost story included, could we?

Here is the blurb from Amazon.

Julia and Valentina Poole are normal American teenagers - normal, at least, for identical 'mirror' twins who have no interest in college or jobs or possibly anything outside their cozy suburban home. But everything changes when they receive notice that an aunt whom they didn't know existed has died and left them her flat in an apartment block overlooking Highgate Cemetery in London. They feel that at last their own lives can begin ...but have no idea that they've been summoned into a tangle of fraying lives, from the obsessive-compulsive crossword setter who lives above them to their aunt's mysterious and elusive lover who lives below them, and even to their aunt herself, who never got over her estrangement from the twins' mother - and who can't even seem to quite leave her flat. With Highgate Cemetery itself a character and echoes of Henry James and Charles Dickens,

So there are the books we had to choose from. Which book do you think we chose to read for our book club? Which book would you have chosen, if you had been part of our club?

This Year You Write Your Novel by Walter Mosley

Pages - 99


Published by Hatchette Books in 2007

The first thing you have to know about writing is that it is something you must do every day - every morning or every night, whatever time it is that you have. Ideally, the time you decide on is the time you do your best work.

I think from it's title and the paragraph written above, it is obvious what this book is about. Writing, of course. You didn't think I would write cold turkey without a little outside support. This is a rather short book that basically gave me the kick up the rear I needed to put pen to paper and fingers to the keyboard.  It reminded me how important it was to write every day. I know when  I make time to write every day it flows a lot easier and I get my writing quota written a lot quicker. I know that if I write every day, the story will take a life of its own and practically write itself as my mind takes over and plans the story as I do the mundane housewife tasks of ironing,cleaning and cooking.

This book also reminded me that every writer has awful first drafts. The first draft is about getting the bones of the story down. You fill in the meat of it afterwards during editing and rewrites.  The book also gives you a quick low down of the elements that need to be included in the story and then gently holds your hand as you start with your first draft.

I would recommend this book to anyone who is just starting out on their writing path, as it will give you a basic knowledge of what you need to know in order to start. From there on you can progress on to chunkier writing books which will explain the areas you are interested in with a lot more detail. For seasoned writers, this book can act as a quick reference guide to get you in the mood. It doesn't hold any information that you haven't read before in other books, but it might just spur you on to get back into your writing mode.

So not the best writing book that I have read, but a quick refresher book to get me motivated.

Did the book work for me?

I believe it did. I am running wild with my writing and actually feeling like I am getting somewhere. I think what has made the difference is that I make sure I write every day. This is the first time I have committed my self to writing every day and it feels good. Even if I have to sacrifice something else, then so be it. So occasionally I may take a day or two's break from blogging, but that is something I know I can afford to sacrifice, or perhaps I won't read one evening, I can live with that. Writing is important to me, it is something I want to do, something I have to do and I am not prepared to sit back and watch the world pass me by without achieving my goal. It may not get published, but at least I can turn around to people and say that I have written a book!

Really Random Tuesday

Really Random Tuesday is  a meme  created by Suko  at  Suko's Notebook which  is a way to post odds and ends--announcements, musings, quotes, photos--any blogging and book-related things you can think of.

Firstly folks, I thought I would share this photo with you of my girlies. They had to dress up for school yesterday as Victorian children.  Don't they look cute?  They even had to take their lunch packed in greaseproof paper and a cloth and were not allowed to bring crisps, chocolate or bottle drinks.  Rather authentic, don't you think?

The school hired an actor to play a Victorian headmaster and I have to say he was rather scary. He banished all the parents from the playground, you should of seen us shift!

Saturday was my first scrap day of the school year and I was so excited to get back into it.  I missed the last one as we were on  holiday and I found it quite difficult to get back into. Usually I make at least four pages, but I struggled on Saturday to make even two.

 I am still in the process of finishing last year's holiday album and have about five pages left to do.  I hope to try and get some made up during the week instead of waiting until my monthly scrap meet. The picture up above shows us feeding the fish, at a lovely little floating shop. It is one of our favourite things to do in Feuerteventura.

This layout shows us leaving the hotel to travel home. Everyone came out to see us off, all the wonderful Thomas Cook staff who I can proudly say I am still in contact with a year later.

A quick update on my writing. As you know I started my trial run of NaNoWriMo on Friday and I have to say so far so good. Each day I have managed to fit in my daily writing quota and if I keep going the way I shall have a 50,000 word draft written by the end of the month. I also need to start planning the story I want to write for the official NaNoWriMo in November. I have a germ of an idea, which I really need to flesh out, but I am feeling rather confident at the moment.

My first book club meeting is scheduled for Thursday evening. I have made a list of points raised from all your lovely comments in order to help us organise our fledgling group. I cannot thank you enough for providing me with so much information, you are all fabulous. I have picked out six books from my own collection which best reflect my reading style and on Thursday we will decide which one to read.  I shall  write a post on Friday showing you the six books we chose from and you can have a guess at which one we chose.

That's all from Really Random Tuesday.