My Week In Books II

So, Friday has come around again, and yet again I'm working tomorrow so please forgive me if I am unable to sustain this particular series of blogs quite as regularly as I would like, a busy life is a happy life...apparently...

So, this week I've squeezed in a limited amount of reading, but I'm into the follow up to Laurie Lee's "As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning",... "A Moment of War". following on directly from the last autobiographical piece, the book has a much darker feel immediately, it being the story of Lee's time in Spain during the Spanish Civil War. His purple prose style still hits the right notes, however, with his graphic ability to define the visual moment is not diminished by that moment having less welcoming images and fearful consequences. This work was written some three decades after the events described, and hindsight is a wonderful but sometimes flawed mistress. Lee describes his experiences with style and clarity that may not have been available to him at the time, but it is, so far, a very enjoyable book. 

I have a habit of keeping a book on the go on iBooks, that I can read when cut off from real books and only have my iPhone to fall back on in times of an emergency reading requirement.. (I defy you to travel on public transport without one occurring...) And currently my "emergency" read is "The Poisoned Island" by Lloyd Shepherd.
The last novel by Shepherd, "The English Monster" featured in my blog earlier in the week of Top Ten Historical Fiction Books  and so far "The Poisoned Island" is living up to it's predecessor. Worth a look if you've read the previous story, in my opinion.



A few new acquisitions have ended up in my personal library this week, as always, (I know I'm never going to get through the entire library before I die at the rate I add to it, but I will make a valiant effort...)...

As you can see, I'm having a bit of a Penguin phase to my collecting habits, regardless of some of them being a little tatty by now, there's nothing more sexy than a bunch of Penguins on your bookshelf in my opinion. The majority of these came from Brown & Bunting  in Northcote where the very charming assistant today made me feel very welcome, (the best ones always do). And nothing cost more than $8. You really have no excuse, at those prices to not have an interesting and attractive collection in your home!!

Finally this week, my co-book-lover Baju and I are working on designing bookmarks to give away both in bookshops and at Clunes Booktown in May. Watch this space for how they're going to look:-) We'd love to meet up with some of you there, so if you are thinking of going, or like what we're doing here, share our site with your friends, spread the word about us and enjoy your reading this week:-)