busy busy busy

Before we do anything else, I need to tell you about this:

My next book has just been announced from One More Chapter, and I am quite giddy with excitement. LITTLE GIRLS TELL TALES is available for preorder now. Please do check it out.

ALSO! Me and a few friends have teamed up to make a podcast. It's called WELL RED and involves us drinking wine and chatting books. This month we're discussing FLOWERS IN THE ATTIC (the 40-year-old classic that I am ashamed to say I've never read until this year), and trying to decide which wine you should drink while reading it. If that sounds like your sort of thing, give it a listen on Anchor.fm or find us on Spotify. Ta.

Anyway, last week for Reading the Library, the book was THE GLASS LAKE by Maeve Binchy and, honestly, it was quite good.

It’s a big community-saga, following the ebb and flow of life in a small village in Ireland as people fall in love, fall out of love, fall in the lake, run away with shady men, and question whether true love is really all it’s cracked up to be. It’s got a perfect sheen of ‘real-life’ all over it – people occasionally make ridiculous decisions, things don’t always work out neatly, people have the same name as each other (I’m certain there were two Kevins), sometimes fate is cruel and random: just like in real life. This does become annoying sometimes (just like in real life) because there are loose ends which don’t fit with the story (did we really need the whole subplot about the fella who breaks into the car shop?), but that’s not really the point. This book is essentially a soap opera. You can cut it a lot of slack for that.

Plus the main(ish) character, Kit McMahon, has some wonderful moments – for example, when some boy starts telling people she slept with him, she promptly sues him for impunity her virtue, and wins. Hats off to you, missy.

Next week, we’re looking at the C-shelves:

25 of these buggers, including three that belong exclusively to Catherine Cookson.

The random number generator gives us shelf number 9:

Hmm. So it looks like my choice is Harlan Cohen or Jonathan Coe or... oh hey, what’s that?

Okay, this looks interesting. I’ve never heard of this book or this author (the inside flap says she was a scriptwriter on Shameless). Let’s give it a go then.