Lazy days

I've had a long lazy spell - just lazed about reading and finishing my growing pile of books. Last week was the Big Bad Wolf Sale and as usual I over spent. But I'm quite satisfied with my haul - I got a total of 60 books for a total of RM333! If that is not cheap I dont know what is. Most of the books were romance - tried a few other writers besides my usual Nora Roberts.  I also went in for a number of fantasy stuff by R. A Salvatore and a few others. There were two good finds among the lot - Shadow of the Wind and The Angel's Game, both by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. I also managed to bag a few books by A. S. Bayatt, who was ranked No 2 in last year's Booker. I finished reading Shadow of the Wind and completely fell in love with it. I love the way the writer described books - he's a book lover's writer:

"This is a place of mystery Daniel, a sanctuary.Every book, every volume you see here has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived it and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens."

These words were told to Daniel, a 10 year old boy by his bookseller father. That day Daniel was taken to this secret place - the cemetry of books, where books which were forgotten or which were obsolete were sent to. Daniel was asked to choose one book and it would be his forever. And the book he chose was called  The Shadow of the Wind by Julian Carax.

But there is something fishy about this book because the moment people know that he has it, there are offers from strangers who want to buy it. Daniel is pulled into the mystery and is even threatened if he did not give up the book. Daniel becomes piqued by this interest in his book and intends to find out more about Julian carax. But as he grows older he realises there is more to the mystery than meets the eye and what begins as mere literary curiosity becomes a life and death search for the truth behind the writer's death (or life?)

I found this book tremendously enjoyable - there's mystery, humour, horror and romance and for the book lover, beautifully written.

Other gems I unearthed at the sale were Emma by Jane Austen (beautiful cover), Alice in Wonderland (hard cover edition with illustrations by Sir John Tenniel) , Mansfield Park (my old one is really really old and shows it) and lots of chick lit stuff. I also got a few young adult fiction which I had wanted to read before but didn't get because of other priorities but were now being sold for a mere RM8/-. I was in book heaven! And the R.A Salvatore were also hard back editions, books worth keeping! My husband too got what he wanted - lots of books on travel as well as some on colonial life in Malaya. He loves books like that so the ones that I bought for him kept him really happy. I think this lot will keep me happily occupied - at least for now.

Sophia

Sophie and Pixel (in one of her better moments)

Sophie with her grandfather on raya day

She's getting better now - at least she'll answer when I call her on the phone. The other day she said, "Nenek, I'm going back to Singapore already..." which is a vast improvement on our phone conversations. Previously she would only say "Bye!"

This and that

Am sitting here at the Nissan service centre waiting for my car to be serviced. Quite a long queue since tomorrow is Deepavalli and the beginning of  a long weekend. Luckily I've got Mary Balogh's book with me - One Night For Love.

Neville Wyatt, Earl of Kilbourne, is about to get married. His future wife is a step cousin and he has known her all his life. Suddenly just as the music is about to start, a young woman in ragged clothes rushes to the altar and says she is his wife! And true enough Neville is shocked to see that it is indeed Lily, his beloved wife whom he had married when he was in the army. But she had been shot and believed to have died. Neville himself saw the bullet going into her chest just before he himself was shot. Lying in hospital later and being told that Lily had indeed died made him realise that soldiering was not for him. He went back to his estate after his father died to resume his duties as a nobleman.

Lily meanwhile had not died. She was captured, first by The French and later by Spanish partisans who treated her badly. After the war Lily went back to Portugal to trace her husband to arrive just in time to prevent him getting married. But will they live happily ever after? What about Lauren, Neville's jilted bride? Can Lily be the mistress of Kilbourne Abbey?

Like her other novels about Regency and Victorian England, this book shows a fairly wide knowledge of life and society of the time. Mary Balogh does not shy away from the more gruesome stories of war like so many other writers who write about the era. Her women characters are strong and sometimes quite independent, even wilful at times. Lily is no less. When she discovers that her marriage to Neville was not legal she insisted on leaving him, in spite of the fact that Neville loves her and begs her to stay. Actually there are times when she gets on my nerves and I wish she would be less stubborn but it's a heartbreaking story and well written. When,  Lilly leaves Kilbourne she lives with Elizabeth, Neville's aunt who takes her under her wings and trains her to become a noble woman and one who can be with Neville as his equal.The  story takes a sudden twist when Lily is threatened with murder. There are lots of twists and turns in this story of thwarted love and is quite un-put-downable.