Janet

I hope you enjoy it when you do.

Ah yes, it's definitely very dangerous reading other members' blogs!

I'm sure that's not true! Thanks though. I must have a catch up on your and other people's Reading Blogs tomorrow - I have loads of unread posts!

Invitation to the Waltz by Rosamond Lehmann The ‘blurb’ A diary for her innermost thoughts, a china ornament, a ten-shilling note, and a roll of flame-coloured silk for her first evening dress: these are the gifts Olivia Curtis receives for her seventeenth birthday. She anticipates her first dance, the greatest yet most terrifying event of her restricted social life, with tremulous uncertainty and excitement. For her pretty, charming elder sister Kate, the dance is certain to be a triumph, but what will it be for shy, awkward Olivia? Exploring the daydreams and miseries attendant upon even the most innocent of social events, Rosamond Lehmann perfectly captures the emotions of a girl standing poised on the threshold of womanhood. Invitation to the Waltz is a gentle coming-of-age novel, set in the 1920s, about a young girl called Olivia who has been invited to her first ball just after her seventeenth birthday. Neither she nor her sister, Kate, is worldly-wise and both worry that they will be wallflowers – left standing at the side of the room, hoping that at least some of the slots on their invitation cards might be filled in. They had invited their mother’s Godson so that they would have someone to dance with but he doesn’t turn out to be the godsend they’d hoped for. As the evening wears on, Kate finds her dance card full and so Olivia is left somewhat to her own devices and, as the evening wears on, she dances with all kinds of different people and tries her best to enjoy her first proper evening out. I enjoy social commentary books – most of those I’ve read have been about people from the lower end of the social scale from Olivia and Kate – people whose lives are lived in abject poverty. Olivia’s life is different. Although the family aren’t as well-off since their father returned from the First World War, their slightly reduced circumstances simply mean that Kate has had to give up horse riding lessons! Despite the very different social scale I did enjoy the class aspect of this book. It’s difficult to imagine today going to a dance and having to have an invitation card with you and to wait for someone to fill in a vacant slot! I’m not sure who I’d recommend this book to – it’s a very gentle story and I enjoyed the characterisation but some might feel the story unsatisfactory but I enjoyed it despite the slow pace – I think Lehmann’s characters are all believable and enjoyable and Rosamond Lehmann is an author whom I will definitely try again and I will definitely be reading the sequel. The Weather in the Streets.

Petals in the Ashes by Mary Hooper The ‘blurb’ After the city suffered such terrible losses during the Plague, London is recovering and Hannah convinces her parents that, with her younger sister Anne's help, she can return to the city and manage the sweetmeats shop on her own. The girls are thrilled to be back in London, and Hannah starts to look for her old beau, Tom. But before long her newfound happiness is short-lived as fires begin to spring up around the city and quickly move closer to their shop. I thoroughly enjoyed the prequel to this book and this picks up where that left off. Sarah and Hannah have fled from London by using a health certificate belonging to a dying woman and her servant, taking with them a baby girl in order to deliver her to her Aunt’s house in far away Dorchester after her family have perished in the plague. But Hannah has left behind her sweetheart Tom and can’t wait to get back to London. After visiting their family in Chertsey, it is decided that Sarah will stay on to help her mother who is expecting a baby, and so Hannah persuades her mother and father to let her take her younger sister, Anne, to help out in the shop. However, disaster strikes when a fire takes hold in the city, and starts to spread. As the Londoners try in vain to contain the fire, Hannah and Anne find themselves in grave danger, and Hannah once again risks losing all that is dear to her. This was as good as, if not better than, At the Sign of the Sugared Plum. Once again Hooper writes in a way that captivates the reader and draws them in. Her descriptions are excellent and one can almost feel the heat and fear of the terrible events of 1666. A great read for children and adults alike.

Tess of the d’Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented by Thomas Hardy The ‘blurb’ Set in Hardy's Wessex, Tess is a moving novel of hypocrisy and double standards. Its challenging sub-title, A Pure Woman, infuriated critics when the book was first published in 1891, and it was condemned as immoral and pessimistic. It tells of Tess Durbeyfield, the daughter of a poor and dissipated villager, who learns that she may be descended from the ancient family of d'Urbeville. In her search for respectability her fortunes fluctuate wildly, and the story assumes the proportions of a Greek tragedy. It explores Tess's relationships with two very different men, her struggle against the social mores of the rural Victorian world which she inhabits and the hypocrisy of the age. In addressing the double standards of the time, Hardy's masterly evocation of a world which we have lost, provides one of the most compelling stories in the canon of English literature, whose appeal today defies the judgement of Hardy's contemporary critics. I had always thought that Hardy would be difficult to read (in terms of language, not content) but when my husband’s choir went on tour to Dorset in 2011 we added on an overnight stay on the way home in Dorchester, so it seemed to me to make sense to read The Mayor of Casterbridge whilst there and I found that I loved it. The language, far from being difficult was simply poetical and beautiful. Tess is a similarly tragic novel to ‘Casterbridge’. Tess Durbeyfield takes part in a May Day celebration with the girls of the village, whilst they wait for the men to finish work. A young stranger appears and dances with many of the girls, but not with Tess, although she wills him to and she feels rather slighted by him. Meanwhile, her ne'er-do-well father is told by the village priest that he is descended from the wealthy but extinct d’Urberville family. The idea of this goes to his head, and Tess is sent to ‘claim kin’ with a family of that name in the vicinity, little realising that the family had bought the surname as a pretension. But Tess comes to rue the day she meet Alec d’Urberville as he treats her deplorably and her fortunes change for the worse. Eventually she meets up with the man from May Day all those years ago, Angel Clare. She initially resists him but soon falls in love with him and prepares to spend her life with him. However, against her mother’s advice, Tess makes a confession to Angel which will send her life back on a downward spiral until she hits rock bottom. I expect many of you know the story so I won’t go into detail and I don’t want to give it away, but suffice it to say that despite the fact that Tess is not an uplifting novel I really, really enjoyed it – it’s such a great story. Hardy addresses the terrible double-standards of Victorian society in telling Tess’s tale and I can’t wait to try some more of his novels. Hardy’s grave at Stinsford, Dorset (His heart is buried here – his ashes in Westminster Abbey) The Hardy Monument, Dorchester

Oooh, these sound right up my street! </Off to investigate> ETA: Free on Kindle - even better!

I read The Red Tent just before Christmas and though it was great. I'd never have picked it up if it wasn't for the fact it was my book club book. I read this one for book club too. I thought the comparison to Birdsong on the cover was a bit misleading (Birdsong had more... omph) but I very much enjoyed it as a good yarn.

Thanks, Frankie. I look forward to discussing books with you throughout the coming year. It was easy for me as I’d kept previous spreadsheets of purchased books – and I don’t have too many compared to other people. Of course I don’t mind if you live it through me. No, I haven’t managed to watch it yet. Actually, as soon as I’ve clicked on ‘add reply’ I’m going to go and find it (for some reason it’s upstairs in my bedside cabinet) and put it on the DVD shelf so I don’t forget all about it. Thanks. I’ve actually downloaded Treasure Island onto my Kindle now as I can’t find the book! Wouldn’t life be boring if we all liked the same things?! Differences of opinion can make for good discussion, can’t they?! I must get on with writing my review of it. Thanks for posting, frankie.

For a spoiler, you can either type the text you want in tags, highlight it and then click on the blue and green stripy square in the tool bar at the top left-hand side of the reply box and select spoiler from the drop-down box, or, if you can't remember that, merely type [ spoiler] at the beginning of the text you want to hide and [/ spoiler] at the end, but without the space before the word spoiler. Hope that helps.

Some books were so good that they became classics - books by authors like Dickens, Austen, the Brontë family, Eliot, Defoe... Some newer authors' books are now classed as modern classics - Steinbeck, Woolf, Orwell, Amis, Kafka... for example. It stands to reason, therefore, that some books from recent years will be considered classics in years to come. Books that instantly come to my mind (to name but three) are: The Book Thief by Markus Zusac The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini Mark Twain defined a classic as "a book which people praise and don't read.” Italo Calvino stated ‘A classic is the term given to any book which comes to represent the whole universe, a book on a par with ancient talismans’. My question to you is - if you were compiling a list of 'future classics', which contemporary books would you choose? For you, what will stand the test of time?

I've removed '2012' from the title of this thread as it's only on p2 and we're in 2013 now! No books abandoned this year... yet!

Oooops, your English is so good that I sometimes forget you're a crazy Finn! Rumbled is slang/colloquial language - it means... caught out, sussed (although I guess sussed is slang too! ).

There are rumours that he lives near Bath too!

I have way more books than I can ever hope to read! Towards the middle of last year I vowed to reduce my 'to read' pile, but it didn't happen! This year I am going to try not to buy too many new paper books (famous last words!) but will probably acquire new library books (for my World Challenge) and Kindle books (freebie classics - but Kindle books don't count!). Like Noll I have books that I know I'm unlikely to read - but when I try to get rid of them I just can't do it!

Nice to see you back, Judy. I watched the film of Hi Fidelity at the cinema - I don't remember much about it, apart from the fact that I didn't enjoy it.

Nice to see you back, carm. Sorry about your news. Rebecca is one of my all-time favourite novels. I've read it quite a few times, listened to an audio version and seen a stage play (where 'Dot Cotton' played Mrs Danvers - excellently if I might say so). I've never seen the Laurence Olivier film, but I did watch the ITV version with Emilia Fox, Charles Dance and Diana Rigg that aired in 1997. I can't remember if it was a faithful adaptation - I have it on DVD (it came free off a newspaper a few years ago) but I haven't got round to rewatching it yet. I've just started Invitation to the Waltz by Rosamond Lehmann. I'm not very far in so I can't really gauge how I feel about it yet!

Last year I read 15/76 books on Kindle - so about a fifth of them. I imagine I'll maybe read more on it this year (although I'm counting Tess as a paper book seeing as it was a gift). I still don't like paying for books on it - especially if they're cheaper in paper form. I'm glad I have it, but I still don't see it replacing books in my life!

Thanks, VF. My copy of Tess was 403 pages long, but it was a 'Wordsworth Classics' version so the print was small (I read some of it on Kindle too, but the book was a birthday present so I read some of it in book form as it would have felt wrong to read it all on Kindle when someone was kind enough to buy it for me!) - the Penguin Classics version is around 600 pages, although I imagine some of that is analysis. Alex - I read part 1 on Kindle (it was a 99p daily deal last summer) - I read part two in an omnibus edition that I got from the library. They're great books as they are YA but not told in a patronising manner. I hope you enjoy it.

Finished book #2, Petals in the Ashes by Mary Hooper, which is the sequel to her book At the Sign of the Sugared Plum. Review for this (and 'Tess') to follow.

Yes, library pictures, please!

My kids went to London with their Godmummy and her partner last summer and they met him too. Like you, they didn't get a photo and wished they had!

I hope you enjoy it. It's not the most uplifting of novels, I agree. However it is a cracking story!

My son went to see the film - he said it was the longest however long the film is of his life! Mind you, he doesn't have the best attention span...