On What Cathy Read Next last week
Blog posts
Monday – I shared my review of The Girl From Vichy by Andie Newton as part of the blog tour.
Tuesday – This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was Books That Would Make Great Movies. I also featured a memoir about the ups and downs of a family’s move to France, What Have We Got Toulouse? by Nikki McArthur.
Wednesday – It wouldn’t be “hump day” without WWW Wednesday, the opportunity to share what I’ve just read, what I’m currently reading and what I plan to read next…as well as have a good nose around to see what other bloggers are reading. I also shared my review of The Wanderers by Tim Pears, the second book in his Walter Scott Prize nominated West Country trilogy.
Thursday – I published my publication day review of A Little London Scandal by Miranda Emmerson.
Friday – I introduced my Buchan of the Month for August, A Prince of the Captivity by John Buchan.
Saturday – I published my review of The Music Shop by Rachel Joyce, book number 16 on my 20 Books of Summer list, the annual reading challenge hosted by Cathy at 746Books. It was also the last book I needed to complete the When Are You Reading? Challenge hosted by Sam at Taking on a World of Words.
Phew! What a busy week… As always, thanks to everyone who has liked, commented on or so generously shared my blog posts on social media.
New arrivals
Charlotte by Helen Moffett (Hardcover, courtesy of Manilla Press and Readers First)
Everybody thinks that Charlotte Lucas has no prospects. She is twenty-seven years old, unmarried, plain, and seemingly without ambition. When she stuns the neighbourhood by accepting the proposal of buffoonish clergyman Mr Collins, her best friend Lizzy Bennet is angry at her for undervaluing herself. Yet the decision is the only way Charlotte knows to provide for her future, and marriage will propel her into a new world, of duty, marriage, children, grief and ultimately illicit love, and a kind of freedom.
Jane Austen cared deeply about the constraints of women in Regency England. This powerful reimagining takes up where Austen left off, showing us a woman determined to carve a place for herself in the world. Charlotte offers a fresh, feminist addition to the post-Austen canon, beautifully imagined, and brimming with passion and intelligence.
Talland Houseby Maggie Humm (eARC, courtesy of She Writes Press and Random Things Tours)
Royal Academy, London 1919: Lily has put her student days in St. Ives, Cornwall, behind her – a time when her substitute mother, Mrs. Ramsay, seemingly disliked Lily’s portrait of her, and Louis Grier, her tutor, never seduced her as she hoped he would. In the years since, she’s been a suffragette and a nurse in WWI, and now she’s a successful artist with a painting displayed at the Royal Academy.
Then Louis appears at the exhibition with the news that Mrs. Ramsay has died under suspicious circumstances. Talking to Louis, Lily realizes two things: she must find out more about her beloved Mrs. Ramsay’s death (and her sometimes-violent husband, Mr. Ramsay); and she still loves Louis.
Set between 1900 and 1919 in picturesque Cornwall and war-blasted London, Talland House takes Lily Briscoe from the pages of Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse and tells her story outside the confines of Woolf’s novel – as a student in 1900, as a young woman becoming a professional artist, her loves and friendships, mourning her dead mother, and solving the mystery of her friend Mrs. Ramsay’s sudden death.
Talland House is both a story for our present time, exploring the tensions women experience between their public careers and private loves, and a story of a specific moment in our past – a time when women first began to be truly independent.
On What Cathy Read Next this week
Currently reading
Planned posts
- Blog Tour/Book Review: The Night of Shooting Stars by Ben Pastor
- Top Ten Tuesday: Questions I’d Ask Authors
- Book Review: The Bitch by Pilar Quintana
- Waiting on Wednesday
- Blog Tour/Book Review: The Night of the Flood by Zoe Somerville
- Blog Tour/Extract: Son of Escobar – First Born by Roberto Sendoya Escobar
- Buchan of the Month/Book Review: A Prince of the Captivity by John Buchan
What Cathy Read Next... 
Well, I’m not always sure about fan fiction for Austen, but still… maybe. The other one sounds great, though.
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