Tag Archives: writing

#BookReview ‘Dark Aemilia’ by Sally O’Reilly #historical

Shakespeare, tick. Possible identity of the Dark Lady, tick. Supernatural, witches and demons, tick. Stinking, plague-ridden London, tick. The Globe, white-faced boy actors dressed in velvet, smoke, whistles and special effects, tick. This is Dark Aemilia by Sally O’Reilly. Based on a foundation of history, O’Reilly tells the fictional story of real-life Aemilia Bassano and her love affair with William Shakespeare. There is no documentary evidence that this affair took place, but O’Reilly’s imagination conjures a rich story in which the setting of Elizabethan London is vibrant and believable. Wherever Aemilia goes – in an apothecary’s shop, in the audience at The Globe or standing at the edge of a plague pit – you can see, smell and hear her London.
Aemilia is something of a feminist, in that she struggles against men her whole life for the freedom to live her own life. Orphaned at 12 she becomes mistress to Lord Hunsdon [readers of Philippa Gregory’s The Other Boleyn Girl will be interested to know that Hunsdon was the real-life Henry, son of Mary Boleyn] but during an affair with Shakespeare, Aemilia falls pregnant. Hunsdon arranges a marriage for her to her cousin Alfonso Lanyer, and so Aemilia’s destiny is determined at each stage by men. Father, protector, husband, lover and son.
She is a fascinating character, a woman of her time or before her time? As a poet and a lover, her influence on Shakespeare is at the core of this book. But then with her son dying of the plague, she turns to witchcraft and so the wilder element of the story takes off. I admit to skipping some of these sections. For me, the interesting plot was Aemilia, Shakespeare, the Globe and the writing of Macbeth and consequently for me the book could have been shorter.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK AT AMAZON

If you like this, try:-
‘The Quick’ by Lauren Owen
‘The Taxidermist’s Daughter’ by Kate Mosse
‘A Dangerous Business’ by Jane Smiley

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview DARK AEMILIA by Sally O’Reilly via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1RK

A poem to read in the bath… ‘Runaways’

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Today’s poem to read in your bath is from Red Tree, the debut poetry collection by Yorkshire poet Daniela Nunnari.

[photo: valleypressuk.com ]

Because of copyright restrictions I am unable to reproduce the poem in full, but please search it out in an anthology or at your local library.

‘Runaways’

Run away with me.

We’ll drive down roads
With old stone walls.
We’ll close our eyes
By waterfalls,
And listen.

You’ll how me how to skim a stone
And how to pick the perfect one.
I’ll catch the icy river ripples,
Frozen like February, in my phone.’

So evocative of new love, the exhilaration and freedom of getting away from it all. The countryside and nature feature in examination of the fantasy/reality elements of a daily relationship.

My other favourites in this edition? ‘Optrex’, ‘Buoy’ and ‘There’s Something in the Trees’.

For more about Daniela Nunnari and publisher Valley Press, click here.

‘Red Tree’ by Daniela Nunnari [UK: Valley Press]

Read these other excerpts and find a new poet to love:-
‘Cloughton Wyke I’ by John Wedgwood Clarke
‘Alone’ by Dea Parkin
‘Sometimes and After’ by Hilda Doolittle

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
Daniela Nunnari’s RUNAWAYS http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1HI Today’s #poem to read in the bath: chosen by @SandraDanby

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First Edition: Watership Down

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It is a book which begun as a tale told by a father to his two daughters. Surely everyone has read Watership Down by Richard Adams.

[photo: Wikipedia]

The story
In Southern England lives at Sandleford Warren, a community of rabbits. They live in their natural environment but anthropomorphized so they have their own voices, culture, language, proverbs and mythology. This is a book which rewards re-reading. Fiver, the runt of the litter, is also a seer. When he forsees the destruction of their warren, Fiver and and his brother Hazel try to convince the other rabbits to flee with them. Unsuccessful, they set out on their own with 11 other rabbits to search for a new home. Hazel, previously an unimportant member of the warren, finds himself leader of the group. Fiver has visions about a safe place to settle, and so they find Watership Down. But still, they are not safe.

First UK edition The first UK edition was published in November 1972 by Rex Collings. At the time, Collings famously wrote to an associate, “I’ve just taken on a novel about rabbits, one of them with extra-sensory perception. Do you think I’m mad?”

The book took Adams two years to write and went on to win two children’s fiction awards for Adams – the Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize, one of only six authors to do the double.

The film In 1978 there was an animated film, well-known for two things: Hazel, voiced by John Hurt, and Art Garfunkel’s hit single Bright Eyes. Watch the trailer here.

The current UK edition
The current UK edition, published by Puffin Books in 2014, features illustrations by David Parkins. This [below] is the original 1973 Puffin paperback edition. Other books by Richard Adams
Tales from Watership Down – the sequel, published 25 years later.

The Plague Dogs [1977] – about two dogs which escape animal testing. The first edition features location maps by Alfred Wainwright, fellwalker and author.

Shardik [1974] – Kelderek is a young hunter who pursues a bear believing it to be Shardik, the giant bear god. Hunter and bear are unwillingly drawn into the politics of the Beklan Empire. Shardik, the height of two men, has curved claws longer than a man’s head.

‘Watership Down’ by Richard Adams [UK: Puffin] Buy here

If you like old books, check out these:-
‘Pride and Prejudice’ by Jane Austen
‘The French Lieutenant’s Woman’ by John Fowles
‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ by Lewis Carroll

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First Edition: WATERSHIP DOWN by Richard Adams #oldbooks via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Y4

A poem to read in the bath… ‘Elegy of a Common Soldier’

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We are all used to the ‘War Poets’ of the Great War, but perhaps not so aware of poets writing about the Second World War. Dennis B Wilson’s Elegy of a Common Soldier was written at a time between the trenches in Normandy and being in hospital in Swansea in 1944 and conjures up the horrible detail of war juxtaposed with nature and what was once normal. Quite arresting.

[photo: dennisbwilsonpoetry.com]

I was unaware of his work until I read an article in The Sunday Times Magazine about Mr Wilson’s reunion with a branch of the family he didn’t know existed: his father, novelist Alexander Wilson, had actually been married to four woman at the same time, producing numerous children. So in his late eighties, Dennis B Wilson discovered new relatives, including actress Ruth Wilson. She says of the poet: ‘As a wounded soldier in the Second World War, he bore witness to so many things, including the D-Day landings, all of which he wrote about in his poetry. I feel I have kindred spirits in my new-found family, I certainly do with Dennis. It may have taken this long to find each other, but I’m so pleased we have.’

If you have an online subscription to The Times, you can read the full article here.

[photo: dennisbwilsonpoetry.com]

‘Elegy of a Common Soldier’
The cold, unsheltered nights in dismal rain;
Exhausted men, who long for sleep in in vain;
Confusion, noise and smoke, foul-reeking mud,
And countless shattered bodies, oozing blood;
The pain before the final choking breath;
The vile decay, the sickly smell of death,
Which does not come triumphant or in rest
But suddenly, unheralded, or dress’d
In guise of hedgerow, tree or growing wheat,
Or lurks amid the flow’rs beneath your feet.

Because of copyright restrictions I am unable to reproduce the poem in full, but please search it out in an anthology or at your local library.

For more information about Dennis B Wilson’s poetry, click here for his website.

‘Elegy of a Common Soldier and Other Poems’ by Dennis B Wilson [UK: Kultura]

Read these other excerpts and find a new poet to love:-
‘Sometimes and After’ by Hilda Doolittle
‘Winter Song’ by Wilfred Owen
‘Name’ by Carol Ann Duffy

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
A #poem to read in the bath: ‘Elegy of a Common Soldier’ by Dennis B Wilson http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Ps via @SandraDanby

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#BookReview ‘The Language of Others’ by Clare Morrall #contemporary

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A young girl who prefers to be alone, who lacks the social skills to have friends, who marries young and rapidly becomes a mother. The Language of Others by Clare Morrall is the intense story of Jessica Fontaine who longs for the air in her house to be hers alone, who manages a difficult marriage and worries about how she is raising her son. This is a story of a lifetime of self-discover and self-acceptance. This description may make the book sound as if nothing happens but it does and, as in any Clare Morrall, subtlety is layered on subtlety. Jessica grows up at Audlands, a country house which is decaying around the family. Her father was a successful chocolate manufacturer and the house a symbol of his success. As he grows older and the company fails, so does the house. Jessica and her sister Harriet grow up side-by-side, loving the house, the dirt and cobwebs, but not really knowing or understanding each other. Only when Jessica discovers the piano does she find freedom.
This is a novel about Asperger’s and the autism spectrum and one woman’s acceptance of her own emotional issues and how they impact and intertwine with the emotional issues of her unpredictable husband Andrew and quiet solitary child Joel. As she grows older, through music and with a supportive friend, Jessica learns the tools to make life easier. ‘Pretence gives you room to get around obstacles without touching them, the space to observe that there are other sides to people, not just the abrasive, challenging attitude that you can’t cope with. You have to view people from new angles, see where the light falls, discover which edges have been worn down and softened with time. Otherwise you get so caught up in the negatives you can’t see anything else.’
There is a lot of wisdom in this book, insights in how to behave – and not behave – within relationships, and how to be forgiving of others.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK

Click the title to read my reviews of these other novels by Clare Morrall:-
AFTER THE BOMBING
NATURAL FLIGHTS OF THE HUMAN MIND
THE LAST OF THE GREENWOODS
THE MAN WHO DISAPPEARED
THE ROUNDABOUT MAN

Read the first paragraph of ASTONISHING SPLASHES OF COLOUR here.

If you like this, try:-
THE WHEREABOUTS OF ENEAS MCNULTY by Sebastian Barry
THE LAST RUNAWAY by Tracy Chevalier
GIRL RUNNER by Carrie Snyder

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
Clare Morrall’s THE LANGUAGE OF OTHERS #bookreview via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Pc

A poem to read in the bath… ‘Happiness’

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Happiness is a state we all aspire to but today there are heightened expectations of happiness, more children are said to be unhappy, depressed, disappointed, disaffected. This poem by the American Stephen Dunn [below] suggests a pragmatic approach to life.

[photo: stephendunnpoet.com]

Because of copyright restrictions I am unable to reproduce the poem in full, but please search it out in an anthology or at your local library.

‘Happiness’
A state you must dare not enter
With hopes of staying,
Quicksand in the marshes, and all

The roads leading to a castle
That doesn’t exist.

For more about Stephen Dunn and his other poetry, click here for his website. His collection Different Hours won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 2001.

‘Different Hours’ by Stephen Dunn [WW Norton & Company]

Read these other excerpts and find a new poet to love:-
‘Oxfam’ by Carol Ann Duffy
‘Digging’ by Seamus Heaney
‘The Cinnamon Peeler’ by Michael Ondaatje

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
A #poem to read in the bath: ‘Happiness’ by Stephen Dunn http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Mf via @SandraDanby

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My Porridge & Cream read: Jane Cable

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My guest today at ‘Porridge & Cream’ is novelist Jane Cable.

“If I say that my Porridge & Cream book is Long Summer Day very few people will recognise the title. If I say it’s the first volume of RF Delderfield’s Horseman Riding By trilogy most readers will know exactly the book I mean. jane cable
In all honesty this book has been with me so long I can’t remember the first time I read it. What I do know is it was after the BBC made the TV series in 1978, which I didn’t watch, being far more interested in punk music. At a guess it was while I was studying for my A-levels or my degree. I’m pretty sure it was a library copy, but I asked my father to buy me the whole trilogy for Christmas. The reason they don’t match in the photograph [below] is because I lost Long Summer Day in a house move and my father replaced it for Christmas in 1988.

I don’t often read books twice but A Horseman Riding By comes out if ever I’m ill. The last time was Christmas a few years ago when I caught flu and was too poorly to travel to my mother’s house. It was the first festive season my husband and I had actually been in our home and we spent it curled up with our noses in our books. Jane Cable The main thing which draws me to this book (okay, these books) is the setting. The trilogy charts the life of Paul Craddock from the moment he arrives in “the valley” in South Devon in 1902 until his death in 1965. But it’s not only his life and loves, but those of his family, his tenants and his neighbours woven into a wonderful tapestry which bridges the generations as English country life changes forever.”

Jane Cable’s Bio
Jane Cable is the author of the multi-award winning romantic suspense novel, The Cheesemaker’s House. In 2015 the book won Jane the accolade of Words for the Wounded Independent Novelist of the Year and she was signed by Felicity Trew at the Caroline Sheldon Literary Agency.

Jane’s latest book is The Faerie Tree, a second chance novel about Robin and Izzie who meet again twenty years after their brief affair and realise that their memories of it are completely different. But how can that be? And which one of them is right?

About The Faerie Tree by Jane Cable
How can a memory so vivid be wrong? In the summer of 1986 Robin and Izzie hold hands under the faerie tree and wish for a future together. Within hours tragedy rips their dreams apart. In the winter of 2006, each carrying their own burden of grief, they stumble back into each other’s lives and try to create a second chance. But why are their memories of 1986 so different? And which one of them is right? With strong themes of paganism, love and grief, The Faerie Tree is a story that will resonate with fans of romance, suspense, and folklore.

Read my reviews of Jane’s two novels The Cheesemaker’s House and The Faerie Tree

Jane Cable’s links
Follow on Twitter, through her Facebook page or at her website.

What is a ‘Porridge & Cream’ book? It’s the book you turn to when you need a familiar read, when you are tired, ill, or out-of-sorts, where you know the story and love it. Where reading it is like slipping on your oldest, scruffiest slippers after walking for miles. Where does the name ‘Porridge & Cream’ come from? Cat Deerborn is a character in Susan Hill’s ‘Simon Serrailler’ detective series. Cat is a hard-worked GP, a widow with two children and she struggles from day-to-day. One night, after a particularly difficult day, she needs something familiar to read. From her bookshelf she selects ‘Love in A Cold Climate’ by Nancy Mitford. Do you have a favourite read which you return to again and again? If so, please send me a message via the contact form here.

Discover the ‘Porridge & Cream’ books of these authors:-
Claire Dyer
Shelley Weiner
Lisa Devaney

‘Long Summer Day’ by RF Delderfield [UK: Hodder]

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
LONG SUMMER DAY by RF Delderfield is the comfort read of @JaneCable http://wp.me/p5gEM4-23Z via @SandraDanby #books

My Porridge & Cream read: Rhoda Baxter

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Today I’m delighted to welcome romantic novelist Rhoda Baxter.

“My ‘Porridge and Cream’ book is actually a series: my Terry Pratchett collection. I started reading them when I was around 16. I had moved from Sri Lanka to Yorkshire and was very lonely. I was lucky enough to make a friend who suggested I try one of the Discworld books. I think he lent me The Colour of Magic. I borrowed the rest of the series from Halifax Central Library. I loved the puns and the pseudo-science jokes. When Mort came out, my Physics teacher told me that Terry was doing a book signing. My Dad took me all the way to Leeds to queue up and get my book signed. It was the first time I met a REAL author. At uni, I bonded with people who knew that a million to one chances happened nine out of ten times and that Klatchian coffee made you knurd. We used Pratchettisms as a verbal shorthand. I still can’t read the phrase ‘per capita’ for example, without mentally adding ‘if not, decapita could be arranged’. When Sir Terry died, I felt as though I’d lost someone I’d actually known.

I read each book as it came out in paperback and slowly built up a collection. Several of the books have been signed by the man himself. I re-read them from time to time, picking a book off the shelf at random. Most memorably, I read them all from one end of the shelf to the other while breastfeeding my children. I had the book propped up on a cookbook stand, leaving my hands free for cuddling small baby. I could fall straight into the familiar world with minimal effort, as though the words were pouring straight into images without any processing (at 3am after weeks of sleep deprivation, they probably were!).

I read them now and I can feel echoes of all those other times. I like that. If you forced me to choose one, I’d go for The Nightwatch, which is a wonderful time slip novel. If you’ve never read any of the series before, I’d suggest that one. If you consider yourself a person who doesn’t really read fantasy, try Nation. It’s not set in the Discworld, there aren’t any silly jokes, and it’s an incredible exploration of why people find strength in religion. It’s also a story about a boy on a tropical island. It will make you cry – but in a good way.’

Rhoda Baxter’s Bio
Rhoda Baxter likes to write about people who make her laugh. In real life she studied molecular biology at Oxford, which is why her pen name takes after her favourite bacterium. She has a day job working in intellectual property and writes contemporary romantic comedies in whatever spare time she can grab between day job, kids and thinking about food.

About Please Release Me by Rhoda Baxter
What if you could only watch as your bright future slipped away from you?

Sally Cummings has had it tougher than most but, if nothing else, it’s taught her to grab opportunity with both hands. And, when she stands looking into the eyes of her new husband Peter on her perfect wedding day, it seems her life is finally on the up.

That is until the car crash that puts her in a coma and throws her entire future into question.

In the following months, a small part of Sally’s consciousness begins to return, allowing her to listen in on the world around her – although she has no way to communicate.

But Sally was never going to let a little thing like a coma get in the way of her happily ever after …

Rhoda will donate 50% of her royalties from Please Release Me to Martin House Children’s Hospice, because they do such amazing work. Watch the book trailer. Read my review of Please Release Me here.

Rhoda Baxter’s links
Rhoda can be found wittering on about science, comedy and cake on her website, Twitter and Facebook.

Discover the ‘Porridge & Cream’ books of these authors:-
Rosie Dean
Sue Moorcroft
Jane Cable

‘Nation’ by Terry Pratchett [UK: Corgi]

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
Why does @RhodaBaxter love the complete works of Terry Pratchett? via @SandraDanby #reading http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1QF

A poem to read in the bath… ‘Forgetfulness’

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The two first lines of this Hart Crane poem [below] grabbed me, will grab anyone in their middle years who starts to forget the odd thing, will grab anyone who has watched by as a loved on is taken by dementia.

[photo: poetryfoundation.org]

‘Forgetfulness’
Forgetfulness is like a song
That, freed from beat and measure, wanders.
Forgetfulness is like a bird whose wings are reconciled.
Outspread and motionless, –
A bird that coasts the wind unwearyingly.

Forgetfulness is rain at night,
Or an old house in a forest, – or a child.
Forgetfulness is white, – white as a blasted tree,
And it may stun the Sybil into prophecy,
Or bury the Gods.

I can remember much forgetfulness.

This is the first Crane poem I read, found in an anthology. He committed suicide in 1932 at the age of 32, but that hasn’t stopped him being hailed as ‘influential’. His most ambitious work is The Bridge, an epic poem described as being similar to TW Eliot’s The Waste Land.

‘The Complete Poems of Hart Crane’ by Hart Crane [Liveright]

Read these other excerpts and find a new poet to love:-
‘Cloughton Wyke I’ by John Wedgwood Clarke
‘Runaways’ by Daniela Nunnari
‘Lost Acres’ by Robert Graves

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
A #poem to read in the bath: ‘Forgetfulness’ by Hart Crane http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Ma via @SandraDanby

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A poem to read in the bath… ‘The Cinnamon Peeler’

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This is one of the most sensuous poems I have read, it conjures up love and desire and… cinnamon. By Michael Ondaatje [below], better known for novel and film The English Patient, it is an assault of the senses. I first read it in the anthology Staying Alive edited by Neil Astley [UK: Bloodaxe]. That’s why I love anthologies, I own all three of the Astley trilogy: Staying Alive, Being Alive and Being Human. All are excellent, a great way of finding new poets, great to dip in and out of.

[illustration: newyorker.com & Patrick Long]

Because of copyright restrictions I am unable to reproduce the poem in full, but please search it out in an anthology or at your local library.

‘The Cinnamon Peeler’
If I were a cinnamon peeler
I would ride your bed
And leave the yellow bark dust
On your pillow.

Your breast and shoulders would reek
You could never walk through markets
Without the profession of my fingers
Floating over you. The blind would
Stumble certain of whom they approached
Though you might bathe
Under rain gutters, monsoon.

To listen to The Cinnamon Peeler, read by Michael Cerveris for The Poetry Foundation, click here.

‘The Cinnamon Peeler: Selected Poems’ by Michael Ondaatje [UK: Bloomsbury]

Read these other excerpts and find a new poet to love:-
‘The Dead’ by Billy Collins
‘Elegy of a Common Soldier’ by Dennis B Wilson
‘Poems’ by Ruth Stone

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
A #poem to read in the bath: ‘The Cinnamon Peeler’ by Michael Ondaatje http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1M4 via @SandraDanby

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SANDRA DANBY'S BOOK REVIEWS

Sharing thoughts on the books I read, new authors, favourite authors, classics re-visisted

Tag Archives: writing

#BookReview ‘Dark Aemilia’ by Sally O’Reilly #historical

A poem to read in the bath… ‘Runaways’

First Edition: Watership Down

A poem to read in the bath… ‘Elegy of a Common Soldier’

#BookReview ‘The Language of Others’ by Clare Morrall #contemporary

A poem to read in the bath… ‘Happiness’

My Porridge & Cream read: Jane Cable

My Porridge & Cream read: Rhoda Baxter

A poem to read in the bath… ‘Forgetfulness’

A poem to read in the bath… ‘The Cinnamon Peeler’

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