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30 Days of Book Blogging - Fiction - Day 3
Sep. 3rd, 2010 11:38 pmDay 03 - Your favorite recent book
Uh, if that means favourite of books I've read recently ... A Stitch in Time by Penelope Lively. It's been drifting around the house for a few years and I kept thinking, must read that, then getting side tracked but I picked it up for something short and light after reading the Dracula omnibus. I finished it in one evening. I loved it.
I don't know how to convey the wonderful atmosphere of the book. It's ... Lively writes about time, about how the physical world changes yet endures longer than any person. How memories are often tied to a place and how those memories can survive. How growing up as the only child of reserved parents can be difficult but growing up the eldest of a boisteruous family has its own difficulties. How much having a friend to talk to can mean to a child. How a summer can always be a part of you but you'll never again be quite the same person you were in that time.
I really liked Maria, right from page 3.
... Maria hoped there would be something to talk to at this holiday house her parents had rented for the month. You can always talk to people, of course. It's usual, indeed. The trouble with people is that they expect you to say particular things, and so you end up saying what they expect, or want. And they usually end up saying what you expected them to. Grown-ups, Maria had noticed, spent much time telling each other what the weather was like, or wondering aloud if one thing would happen, or another.
She's a very acute observer, even while she's still trying to work things out. I can see how some adults might not know how to deal with her but something I really liked about these book was that no one was demonised. Everyone has their flaws, it doesn't necessarily make them bad people.
The writing in this is beautiful and ... I don't know. It's an easy book to read but it has ideas you want to go back and think about, descriptions that make you want to linger and a lead character I could truly identify with. I love this book.
( The rest of the days )
Uh, if that means favourite of books I've read recently ... A Stitch in Time by Penelope Lively. It's been drifting around the house for a few years and I kept thinking, must read that, then getting side tracked but I picked it up for something short and light after reading the Dracula omnibus. I finished it in one evening. I loved it.
I don't know how to convey the wonderful atmosphere of the book. It's ... Lively writes about time, about how the physical world changes yet endures longer than any person. How memories are often tied to a place and how those memories can survive. How growing up as the only child of reserved parents can be difficult but growing up the eldest of a boisteruous family has its own difficulties. How much having a friend to talk to can mean to a child. How a summer can always be a part of you but you'll never again be quite the same person you were in that time.
I really liked Maria, right from page 3.
... Maria hoped there would be something to talk to at this holiday house her parents had rented for the month. You can always talk to people, of course. It's usual, indeed. The trouble with people is that they expect you to say particular things, and so you end up saying what they expect, or want. And they usually end up saying what you expected them to. Grown-ups, Maria had noticed, spent much time telling each other what the weather was like, or wondering aloud if one thing would happen, or another.
She's a very acute observer, even while she's still trying to work things out. I can see how some adults might not know how to deal with her but something I really liked about these book was that no one was demonised. Everyone has their flaws, it doesn't necessarily make them bad people.
The writing in this is beautiful and ... I don't know. It's an easy book to read but it has ideas you want to go back and think about, descriptions that make you want to linger and a lead character I could truly identify with. I love this book.
( The rest of the days )
