March Madness and/or The In-Shelf

Has anyone been following  The Tournament of  Books?   I only discovered it via a commenter on the blog and I have been wondrously entertained during the past month.  Despite having read only one of the books in question  I am quite delighted at my informed guesses.  Blog reading is good for me!   Not so happy with the fact [...]

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A Time For Gifts #2 – Bookbags now belong to …..

It seems you like the bookbags.  I’ve had more interest in these than in anything previously!    I now know what you like and shall bear it in mind for future reference. Without further ado, let’s put random.org to work. Here are your random numbers: 4 28 Timestamp: 2010-03-28 17:54:55 UTC Winners, please email your detail to lizzysiddal at yahoo dot [...]

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Fear(ful) Selected Stories – Stefan Zweig

 Pushkin Press has been busy commissioning new translations of Zweig novellas and stories and autobiographies during the last few years and Lizzy has been busy collecting and reading them.  Why?  For all the wrong reasons, if you give credence to this piece of vitriol.  Let me list a couple. 1) ”Nice paper and pretty formats”.   I see no problem with books as objets [...]

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The Long Song – Andrea Levy

How was Andrea Levy going to follow the mega award-winning literary milestone that is Small Island?  How was I going to react to the follow up?  Let’s start with the second question, for it is a biggie. I was the reader who forgot to go the rock concert, so engrossed was I in the last 200 pages of [...]

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A Time for Gifts – Giveaway #2 – Have book bag, will ….

book shop?  As if, anyone reading this needed prompting! Dovegreyreader brought this bag to my attention the other week. Lizzieeeeeee, it sang,  I was made for you!  I had to agree. I had placed an order before I’d finished my breakfast toast. A mixup has, however, meant that I received more than I should have. I [...]

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TSS: Why some challenges are more challenging than others

Well, one challenge in particular and it’s not one I was expecting to have any difficulties with. I’ve read two books for this challenge now but my local cinema has not shown either.  This doesn’t surprise me, actually.  It seems I have esoteric tastes when it comes to cinema. Not so, really but I’m definitely [...]

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A Time For Gifts – Giveaway #1 – Solar – Ian McEwan

I have a few giveaways coming up over the next week – so stay tuned.  This is giveaway 1 of 3.   To mark the official UK publication date, Random House have kindly offered a signed first edition of Ian McEwan’s new novel, Solar.  Now I know there are many McEwan fans out there, so as you put your name in [...]

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AyeWrite 2010 – Not the Orange Prize Longlist

I have no problem with the Orange Prize – in fact, I quite like it.  But as today the world will be full of the Orange Prize longlist, and this blog is talking about a different list entirely, I had to mention the Orange Prize somewhere! Namecheck accomplished, it’s time to talk about the TESCO BANK SCOTTISH [...]

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AyeWrite 2010 – Day 2 Event 2 – New Stories from the Mabinogion

The Mabinogion is the Welsh contribution to the canon of medieval literature; a collection of 11 prose stories first translated into English by Lady Charlotte Guest in the mid-19th century.   Immensely important to Welsh culture, The Mabinogion remains a syllabus text in Wales to this day and is now the focus of a new publishing project by [...]

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AyeWrite 2010 – Day 1 Event 1 – Jasper Fforde

Saturday 06/03/2010 Before I launch into my report of this year’s AyeWrite festival, there is one thing to note.  Yet again, I have found it impossible to get an in-focus shot of the authors.  There’s nothing wrong with my camera as you can see from the pictures it takes when there is no-one on the stage ….. [...]

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