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my 2017 shelf: Book lists: Challenges for 2017 
Crossing the Line and sci fi wrap-up 

A word or two about my final book. 

Posted by Cath at 14:40 10 comments: 
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close 

Posted by Cath at 13:50 11 comments: 
Library Loot 

So these are are the four books I picked up today: 

Posted by Cath at 14:20 9 comments: 
A meme and recent buys

Pat at Here there and everywhere did this meme a couple of days ago and I couldn't resist nabbing it from her to do myself.

Quickly name a unique item you have in your house:
My grandchildren's artwork on the fridge.

What are your two favorite names?
Jack and Gregory. (I don't really have a favourite girl's name.)

What do you consider a necessary luxury?
My computer. Although I'm not completely certain it passes for a luxury these days.

What type of car would you like to drive?
I am so not interested in cars. I mean *really* not. Truthfully, I would love a bicycle...

What is your favorite color and has it changed over the years?
Blue. And no, it's always been blue. I put it down to being born and brought up by the sea.

What quality do you most admire in a man?

In a woman?

What is something you long for?
For people to stop fighting over religion... or anything at all to be honest.

If money were no object what would you buy yourself?
A library. Well... not a ready made one... a place where I could create my own.

What charity would you donate a million dollars to?

What book have you just finished reading?
The Forbidden Tower by Marion Zimmer Bradley.

Name one book that made an impact and why?
Not So Quiet by Helen Zenna Smith because it underlined the fact that some women also went through hell at the front in WW1.

Name one liquid always in your fridge?
Cranberry and pomegranite juice.

Name one food item always in your fridge?

What could you eat everyday?
My homemade onion, celery and potato soup.

Everyday I drink…
A Dr. Pepper. (And yeah... I know I really shouldn't.)

TV Guilty Pleasure:
Strictly Come Dancing.

TV Show I Don’t Miss:
Masterchef (starts again on Wed, wooohooo!)

Name a favorite fictional character from a book.
Just one? Oh Lord. Uh... Sherlock Holmes.

From a movie:
John Book from 'Witness'.

What phrase or motto do you over use?
Not sure about 'over use' but I often say, 'What goes around, comes around'.

I own a lot of:
Books. Jigsaw puzzles. Jazzy socks. DVDs.

I collect:
See last answer...

I try to avoid:
Soap Operas. (And am completely successful in this.)

One thing I know:
My family means everything to me.

Everyday I:
Look out at the view from our house and think how fortunate I am to live in such a beautiful part of the country.

The last time I wrote a letter and mailed it was:

Dog or cat?
I'm allergic to both but if I wasn't - cat.

And lastly some book porn and a jigsaw puzzle: (click twice to see properly) These are part of the two science fiction series I want to read this year. Three books from the Wess'har series by Karen Traviss and two from the Darkover series by Marion Zimmer Bradley. To me all these covers shout, 'Read me!' And the pic on the jigsaw, you'll hardly need telling, is an American bluejay, a bird we don't have in the UK. It reminds me of a meal we had with some dear friends near Pittsburgh. The restaurant was on a level with the tops of the trees and they fed the birds too, so all you could see outside were loads and loads of bluejays. For a birdwatcher like me that was just magic.

Posted by Cath at 11:55 10 comments: 
The Forbidden Tower

It's over a week since I posted here and it's not that I haven't been reading, I just haven't had a chance to blog about the three books I read in that time - too busy. Anyway, my main read this last ten days has been The Forbidden Tower by Marion Zimmer Bradley. I've been reading this for Carl's Sci Fi Experience and this is my second book for that. Goodness, where to start? Well. The book takes place on the planet of Darkover and concerns four people: Andrew Carr, a Terran, twin sisters Callista and Ellimir, and Damon Ridenow, an exile from the tower of Arilinn and a member of one of the ruling caste. They are all telepaths. Damon and Ellimir are engaged to be married and so are Andrew and Callista. Andrew and Callista met in the previous book when Callista was captured by the catpeople and buried alive - Andrew was the only person who could communicate with her telepathically. They fell in love without actually meeting.

It all sounds hunky-dory but of course it's not. Callista has been in training for many years to take over as Keeper of Arilinn tower from Leonie. (The towers somehow run things on Darkover and there're about half a dozen of them.) She has to beg Leonie to release her. Leonie is not best pleased as she is now elderly, and anyway there are complications. The training subdues sexuality in ways not really known, or known only to Leonie.

The two marriages take place with the full knowledge that Andrew and Callista will not be able to consummate their marriage until Callista can be fully set free from the confines of her rigourous training. Physical contact is unbearable to her and if they try before she is ready, Andrew could be killed. Damon, himself almost a Keeper before he was exiled by Leonie, is the key to it all. Only he has the knowledge and the daring to free Callista. In the meantime the four, bound telepathically into a very tight-knit group, have to support each other through many trials and tribulations in order to discover exactly 'how' reliant they must be on each other in order to get through this.

Marion Zimmer Bradley's 'Darkover' series is quite well known I believe. There are over twenty books which all take place at various times during the planet's long history. This is my second Darkover book, the first being Darkover Landfall which told the story of how a group of Terrans crash-landed on the planet and what happened to them. I think it was the first book written but am not sure. I gather the books were all written to standalone and from what I can see this is the case. The Forbidden Tower is about in the middle of the series but I had no problem understanding what was going on... it seems like a series that is not actually a follow-on series in the true sense of the word.

Anyway, what this book does most successfully, imo, is make you think about the nature of sexuality. Just because we go the monogamous, 'pairing off' route on Earth, is that the only way... or indeed the 'right' way? Whatever your feelings on the matter it never harms to listen to other opinions. Ursula Le Guin did it brilliantly in her short story book, The Birthday of the World, I can't recommend that highly enough, and this is another book in that vein. Andrew is Terran and has firmly entrenched ideas and these ideas are almost as big a block to the new, fragile marriage as Callista's problems are. I must add that this is not an explicit book in any way shape or form, so anyone who dislikes that sort of thing need not fear.

This is not a hard-nosed science fiction novel. It's a story about how relationships work and have to be worked *at* to survive and thrive. But there is also conflict within the wider family and also between the rulers (towers) of Darkover and Damon Ridenow who wants change in respect of how Keepers are trained and how telepathy is used outside the towers. All this too made fascinating reading.

All in all, an excellent read. It's quite a dense, complicated novel, so not a quick read, but that was its charm for me. I read it slowly and savoured the good writing and twisty plot and enjoyed the strangeness of an alien planet but also the similarities. I have more Darkover books to read and *cough* two more on the way. I think I'm going to love this series to bits.
Posted by Cath at 11:12 6 comments: 
Library loot The last thing I should be doing is toodling off to another town's library to help myself to their booty and thus fuelling my pathetic addiction to library books. But well, it was a lovely afternoon yesterday so we chucked our grandson in the back of the car and off we pootled to South Molton, a town like our own, in deepest Devon. Sadly for our grandson there were absolutely no cows whatsoever to be seen, but many sheep, horses and various boy's toys in the shape of diggers and steam rollers working on the rural roads, so he was quite happy. And so was I (and Hubby!) with the excellent library loot I nabbed off the shelves of South Molton library: From the bottom:

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safron Zoer. I read about this book here on Stuck in a Book's blog and was so intrigued I reserved it from the library. I suspect it might be one of my more unusual reads of the year.

To Dream of the Dead by Phil Rickman. A survivor from my last library loot. I *will* get to this.

A Lost Lady by Willa Cather. A random grab, mainly because several people whose blogs I read love her books.

Auctioneer's Lot by Philip Serrell. The author is a regular expert on the BBC's Bargain Hunt programme so I thought this one might be fun to read... quirky stories etc.

Battles at Thrush Green, Return to Thrush Green, Gossip from Thrush Green by Miss Read. 'Nuff said. It's fairly obvious which series I'm enjoying at the moment...

A.A. Milne: His Life by Ann Thwaite. Totally random grab this one. South Molton library had a good selection of biographies (better than ours) and this one just jumped out for some reason.

So there you go. Bit of a mixed bag but all looking like good reads.

Posted by Cath at 13:07 17 comments: