"Blackberry Winter" giveaway

An author friend of Nicole Baart's is hosting a giveaway of her novel, together with a blackberry-themed gift basket that includes such things as blackberry jam and a really delicious-looking blackberry tea. (Wow, now the word "blackberry" is beginning to sound foreign.)

I admit, my motivation for sharing this isn't entirely unselfish--a blog share counts as an extra entry! That delicious--ahem, elegant-looking novel will be mine.

"Tom!" No answer.

I like to read old-timey kid-and-teen books--or, as they were simply and sweetly known back in the day, "boys' books". They were, essentially, YA before YA was invented. The British ones were about how great boarding school is, and the American ones were about how great skipping class is. Which just goes to show you.

I've noticed that a lot of protagonists are named Tom. Between Tom Sawyer, Tom Brown, Tom Playfair, Tom Swift and Tom Denniston, it's all a little confusing.

Today and Tomorrow: Therese Heckenkamp's "Past Suspicion", Melissa Wiley's "The Prairie Thief"

Happy Monday, readers! (And happy Feast of St. Monica.) If you're looking for a few good books to take you through your week, look no further. I have two to recommend right now.

Both today and tomorrow, Therese Heckenkamp's Past Suspicion is available as a free Kindle download. I reviewed it here a week or two ago, so give it a look and go get it while it's up for grabs.

And tomorrow is the launch date of Melissa Wiley's The Prairie Thief. You may know Melissa as the author of two series of novels about Laura Ingalls Wilder's grandmother and great-grandmother. The Martha Years and The Charlotte Years were the stuff of my childhood, and I even clearly remember liking Martha better than Laura, though in Charlotte's case it was more of a tie. What I loved about Martha was that she lived in the Highlands and got to listen in on all the legends about brownies and sprites and Tam O' Shanter--and there were times when Martha's active determination to meet the wee folk blurred the edges and you wondered if the series was about to go from Historical Fiction to Historical Fantasy. You knew, of course, that it could never be, this being a straightforward and factually-accurate series published by HarperCollins, but you still couldn't help but hope--was our heroine ever going to befriend a brownie?

Well, in The Prairie Thief, that's exactly what (finally!) happens. I feel as if I'm witnessing something that's been in the cards for a long, long time. Get this book as soon as it's out, because it's probably going to be unlike anything you've ever read before, and you'll want to be in on it first. I'm personally going to be the first in my family to snatch that preorder off the doorstep.

Vacation Reading

If I had known this was the kind of vacation where you bring paper books, I would have brought paper books (to say nothing of my diary.) Clair knew. She, quite fortunately, had a couple John Greens and a collection of Robert Frost handy to line the shelves with. Even if you don't touch them, there's something sweet about knowing your books are around.

And I, never one to be taken unprepared, have my Kindle. This is the perfect place to polish off the last of Bulldog Drummond, and last night I scratched the surface of The Two Perfect Vacation Reads, which Fate clearly placed in my way for the purpose.

I'd been waiting for the day when Clair would request more Jeeves and Wooster and I'd had the feeling it would be on our August vacation (me having staved off them all summer), so when she looked at me sideways and said, "Do you have any more of those?" I had Right Ho, Jeeves ready for the purpose. We just read the first chapter, so hopefully it'll last us a bit, but I'm officially back in pre-series-finish mourning mode. (We still have a bunch of novels to go, but whaa, there'll never be enough books narrated by Bertie Wooster!) Since I'm told it's Shark Week, it's worth mentioning that apparently Bertie's cousin Angela nearly got eaten by a shark while they were all on a cruise together...and that's all we're going to hear about it. One of the many reasons I love this series, people. (I wish I had my copy of Thank You, Jeeves with me, too. It's partly about the potential perils of staying in a vacation home.)

That was directly after my friend Suzanne and I, who'd been excitedly texting each other about The Hunger Games, decided out of nowhere to start a cross-country book club. (Well, really it was her idea--I just texted her back in all-caps to display my enthusiasm.) For our first read she decided on Tana French's In the Woods, a mystery book no one's heard of, which she just happened to have on her shelf untouched. Thanks to the magic of Kindle, I was able to get myself a copy in seconds.

I've read less than one percent of it in solidarity with Suzanne, who can't start it until the weekend, but about the amount I have read, I can only say that it is nothing short of breathtaking. It's one of those books I wouldn't have discovered on my own in a million years, and it's got a Ray-Bradbury-meets-gritty-thriller thing going on that I never would have guessed at from the cover or the title. (Suzanne, by the way, only just read the first book in The Hunger Games, and she's craving Catching Fire. I feel her pain. I had to make a bookstore run while on vacation two summers ago just to buy it. She's making me want to read it yet again.)

I've also been checking out my cousins' book of Stan Lee Spider-Man comics, which is one of the most entertaining superhero things I've ever read.

And vacation's only just started.

Look, I can't explain why I'm so excited about reading books in a summer house. Call it one of those charming Allie things.

Book Thoughts For the Day

I'm well aware that, as an up-and-coming young Classics major, I should have more significant concerns on the "ancient world" front than choosing between Camp Jupiter and Camp Half-Blood, but I can't help it. I'm delaying the decision. See, I live on Long Island, so Camp Half-Blood seems like an obvious choice, but I prefer Latin to Greek, so maybe I belong with the Romans. But then again, Camp Half-Blood has Percy Jackson. But wait! Camp Jupiter has Leo Valdez! And I prefer the Greek names for the gods, but my current favorite Shakespeare play, Julius Caesar, is set in Rome, and Camp Half-Blood is the original camp, but Camp Jupiter is better-run and more efficient, and . . . and . . . and . . .

~

Just in time to comfort me in my Psmith bereavement, someone found a couple of my other favorite offbeat obscure books just lying around somewhere in storage, and I'm tackling them again. Robert McCloskey's Homer Price, which I finished this morning, is always worth a reread. Maybe I'll review it later. Still left to look over: James Thurber's The Thirteen Clocks and Norman Lindsay's The Magic Pudding.

~

Wait, weren't Ransom and I on the immediate precipice of something huge? With Out of the Silent Planet seeming to be gathering all its forces, why did I leave it lying on its spine at the eleventh hour? Certainly not because I was bored. I was taking it in in gulps!

. . . You know what? I think that I'm scared. I think that I'm a little afraid of this fantastic runner-of-the-planet that Ransom is about to meet. How like me. But knowing Ransom, I bet he's afraid, too. Don't worry, Ransom, we'll get through this together. I will now plunk myself down on the porch and not lift my head out of the book until our journey is one hundred percent ended. (Well, maybe occasionally I'll lift my head out, but only to take notes.)

"The sixth of July. Your loving friend Benedick."

My sister Clair and I like to read books together. It seems strange to be telling that to a blog as if it's some new thing. At any rate, she and I somehow managed to finish the entire Sherlock Holmes canon in about two months, and not wanting to carelessly bolt the Jeeves and Wooster series down in a similar way, I got her on to the Psmith books.

Unlike Jeeves and Wooster, which is one of those things you love right away or not at all, the lesser-known Psmith series is definitely an acquired taste. If you wish to go about the business of acquiring it, I highly recommend securing a listener and reading the thing aloud. Psmith's monologues are that much more audacious when they're actually audible. (The jokes on Psmith's name are trickier when you can't see them in print, though; he says it's pronounced with a silent 'P', "as in pshrimp.")

For private reading, I've been tackling the rest of the Lord Peter Wimsey books. I like these books, but I can't put my finger on their appeal. Is it the mysteries themselves, the offbeat main character, the darkness lurking behind the humor, or merely the fact that I grin involuntarily every time Lord Peter uses the phrase "uncommonly awkward"?

Wimsey and Psmith accompany each other well; they have noticeably similar character traits and mannerisms. Also, I've had it spoiled that (SPOILERS! TURN BACK TURN BACK) each eventually acquires a wife, something you really wouldn't expect of either of them. Psmith has Eve Halliday, and Wimsey has Harriet Vane. Coincidentally, I happen to be one book away from meeting the love interest in both cases. I do hope those crazy boys are in good hands.

(OKAY YOU MAY LOOK AGAIN NOW)

And all this goes without even mentioning any of the Shakespeare. There's always Shakespeare. If I elaborated, this blog post would start to sound like one of those newsletter Christmas cards with a column for every member of the family, so I'll cut it short.

It's Summer, after all. This season's twenty times too short as it is.

Below: a Wimsey book basking among the beetles