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feather_ghyll
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| Had quite a good shopping day today - I had to pick up my bag with both arms by the end of the afternoon. It was nice to be outside and not get wet. One of my purchases included 'All That Katy Did' an omnibus edition of the first three Katy books - I've been looking for a hardback edition of 'What Katy Did at School' to replace a paperback, but this will take up less space than the three all together. I also got an Ibbotson and a Cabot that I'll no doubt read and review eventually, and a book by Mrs George de Horne Vaizey in an antiques shop, where I got to name my price. In hindsight, I should have lopped fifty pence off my offer, which was accepted with alacrity. Apparently, the owner hadn't sold any books for many a year - there weren't many there and nothing else took my fancy. I don't always bother to look for books in antique shops.
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| | Tags: | authors: i, authors: o, discussion: subgenres, eva ibbotson, katherine l. oldmeadow, links, links: authors, links: discussion, links: resources, links: reviews, overview: author, overview: subgenre | | Security: | | | Subject: | LINKS or a gratuitous icon post, you decide | | Time: | 10:08 pm |
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| Some biographical information on Katherine L. Oldmeadow and a review of Princess Prunella here, which I first read when I was young enough that going to France did seem like a remarkable event to me.
Lyzzybee has written an enthusiastic review of Eva Ibbotson's Journey to the River Sea that doesn’t give too much of the plot away but gives a good idea of what to expect and why you should read it (if you haven’t).
Mystery subgenres explained in the Washington Independent Review of Books.
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| I have a tag labelled: genre: career story. It’s a genre that fascinates me, covering at least two subgenres, which I talk about here, although, in the post, I’m concentrating on Girl’s Name, Job Title in Exotic Sounding Adventure serial mysteries and not the ‘straight up career girl stories’ as I describe books like the one I’m about to review. Actually, I’m not sure that that’s the best name for the subgenre.
Kate in Advertising : Ann Barton. The Bodley Head, 1961.
This is a standalone book (as far as I know) about how a girl progresses in her job, although as I hope to show, calling it a career story isn’t precisely right. However, Kate Wilson, Copywriter certainly girl has no time to be a Part-Time Sleuth!
By the by, I wonder whether career stories for boys have ever been a feature – I tend to gloss over most boys' own books at best and get annoyed when there’s a heap of them and no female counterparts on the bookshelves or bookheaps of second hand book shop, so I wouldn’t know. I suspect there might be of the Part-Time Sleuth variety.
This second impression in 1961 of a fifties story for girls is typical of its subgenre, good enough at doing what it sets out to do, except it’s already out of date, as the author’s note apologetically makes clear, thanks to the growing influence of television. In the book, TV sets were still exotic and print spearheaded any advertising campaign.
( Read more... )
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| | Tags: | ally carter, authors: c, book-shopping, genre: romance, genre: school story, genre: spies, josephine elder, meg cabot, review: book, review: carter, series: gallagher girls | | Security: | | | Subject: | REVIEW: I'd Tell You... | | Time: | 09:35 am |
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| I had a good book shopping expedition yesterday, and after a few wasted expeditions, I needed one. Two girls own books and one annual (with a contribution by Josephine Elder), a few murder mysteries and the next book in a series I'm reading that I'd have been happy to pay full price for, but didn't have to, because charity shops can be wonderful.
I’d Tell You I Love You, But Then I’d Have To Kill You: Ally Carter Orchard Books 2009
The first in the Gallagher Girls series has definitely left me wanting to read more. Cleverly, the promotional blurb in the opening pages doesn’t quote other writers, but girls from the target audience. And what girl wouldn’t love to read a story about a boarding school for girls who are training to be spies? I would have, and though I’m not a girl any more, I enjoyed this.
( Read more... )
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| Elizabeth at Grayling Court: Margaret W. Griffiths. Warne, 1947
When you start reading a book with the above title and the first thing that happens is a discussion about whether a girl named Diana is to go to school, you’re entitled to some shock. Even to double check the cover and flick through the pages. ( Read more... ) Apparently there’s a prequel about Elizabeth’s life in Canada, which I’ll be happy to read if it comes my way.
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| Of course I caught a cold for the Easter holidays, but I did little more than read. I'll be posting fuller reviews of books about murder, heroic new girls, a school for spies and why advertising was the perfect job for a girl in the fifties while she decided whether she wanted to be a career woman or a married housewife.
I also read a generic family inherits a property about which there is a mystey story by Francis Cowen, where the family was pretty lucky that the heroine had finished school and was willing to take care of them all until she was old enough to train as a nurse (Mystery Tower) and a book that's about the production of a 'book' or collection of stories by friends (A Job for the Jays) for another chum. Each chapter contains one of these stories, which the friends all criticise e.g. for contrivance. I couldn't make out if these were stories the author was trying to get rid of somehow because they hadn't sold off. It didn't seem to me as if each stories was saying much about the supposed author, as I couldn't differentiate between the Jays (all girls with names starting with 'J'.) Peculiar. (A Job for the Jays).
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| Rainbow Valley: L.M. Montgomery Harrap 1956
A few years ago, I bought Rilla of Ingleside in the mistaken, belief that I was completing my collection of Anne books. (I see that I didn't review it). Of course, I eventually realised that I didn’t own this but came across this hardback in my travels, although the illustration on the dustjacket gives away the ending, rather and is misleading in a way.
For, to my surprise, ( Read more... )
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