{"id":3356,"date":"2013-05-19T09:13:46","date_gmt":"2013-05-19T08:13:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/janetgover.com\/?p=3356"},"modified":"2013-05-19T09:13:46","modified_gmt":"2013-05-19T08:13:46","slug":"my-month-uumm-months-in-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/?p=3356","title":{"rendered":"My month\u2026 uumm…. months in books."},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s been a while since I did a look back at books I have been reading \u2013 which means there are rather a lot of books to look back at… so I’m going to hit the highlights.<\/p>\n

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A fun read<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I’m starting with the book I just finished \u2013 The Runaway Actress by my good friend Victoria Connelly.<\/p>\n

This book was shortlisted for the RNA’s Romantic Comedy of the Year award and I can see why. It’s delightful. \u00a0I read it in about a day and a half, when I should have been doing useful things like housework. The characters really came to life for me right form page one \u2013 and Victoria managed to make the Scottish setting real, without resorting to over-use of dialect or descending into clich\u00e9.<\/p>\n

This is a great escapist read \u2013 and would make a fabulous film. I see the delectable David Tennant ion the lead \u2013 after all, he already has the accent.<\/p>\n

This month, at long last, I finally managed to sort out the books I had in storage while I was away. They are alphabetised and now I can find all these books that I own that I haven’t seen for a long time. Sorting them involved a lot of sitting on the carpet and flicking through old favourites.<\/p>\n

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A classic<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I rediscovered that I have a fabulous collection of old pulp sci-fi. (I know – it’s a strange thing for a romance writer to say). All the masters are there \u2013 Asimov, Clarke, Silverberg\u2026. And so are all those amazingly corny but wonderful covers.<\/p>\n

I spent a lovely couple of days re-reading To Live Forever, by Jack Vance. It was his first published novel \u2013 and it’s easy to see why he went on to become a significant writer in the genre.<\/p>\n

The book is nothing about the science \u2013 it’s all about the people. The title gives you a pretty good clue what his theme is, and it is still relevant today. That’s why it’s a classic.<\/p>\n

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I first read and loved this when I was about 16 years old<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As part of my trip down memory lane, I re-read Penmarric, by Susan Howatch.<\/p>\n

This is one of those big fat multi-generation family sagas. I read this years ago and loved it. Loved it again this time.<\/p>\n

There’s a big gothic house and a family so dysfunctional that it makes Bart Simpson’s brood look positively normal. I always loved the big gothic house and brooding damaged hero books \u2013 Victoria Holt was another favourite. Daphne Du Maurier too.<\/p>\n

Does anyone still write these books? \u00a0If so \u2013 let me know and I’m there\u2026<\/p>\n

While sorting books, I was stopped in my tracks when I discovered I had a Nora Roberts trilogy I had bought but not yet read.<\/p>\n

This was the In The Garden series \u2013 which of course I immediately started reading.<\/p>\n

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Another great NR read<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

These NR trilogies are a tad formulaic in that there are three women whose stories are intertwined, and each book centres on one of the woman. I don’t care that it’s formulaic \u2013 with Nora at the keyboard the formula works.<\/p>\n

I think I have said before that I really like her books \u2013 and I do.<\/p>\n

I also discovered the Twilight books by Stephanie Meyer as I did my sort. I re-read the first one.<\/p>\n

There was a reason these books (and the movies) made such a splash. This first book really is very good.<\/p>\n

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I only re-read the first one - too many books and not enough time<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There is much about it that I would say is not really ‘my type of book’ \u2013 but the fact remains that I re-read it cover to cover in a couple of days. I guess that says it all\u2026<\/p>\n

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Re-reading Twilight immediately sent me back to re-read my favourite vampire book of all time.<\/p>\n

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THE best vampire book of all time<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

George R R Martin has suddenly been shot to the top of the best-seller lists by the fabulous TV series based in his Game of Thrones novels. Long before GoT, George wrote a book called Fevre Dream \u2013 which was the first time I read a book where the vampire was a good guy \u2013 the hero.<\/p>\n

I loved it. Still do. So, I guess this is my book of the month award. \u00a0But a word of caution \u2013 it’s pretty gruesome.<\/p>\n

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And finally \u2013 on the subject of books\u2026 I hope to be able to announce some very good news about one of my books on this blog in the next week or two. Stay tuned!!!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s been a while since I did a look back at books I have been reading \u2013 which means there are rather a lot of books to look back at… so I’m…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reading"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7g6jm-S8","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3356\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}