Stacking The Shelves is a weekly meme hosted by Marlene of Reading Reality. It is all about sharing the books that you have recently added to your bookshelves. These books can be physical books, ebooks and of course audiobooks.
Hello and welcome to my first ever Stacking the Shelves post.
This week I spent a few days in my favourite place, Bath. This also meant I visited my favourite bookshops and went a little crazy on my book buying.
So here are the books and the bookshops I bought them from.
Persephone Books
I always love how Persephone Books have little descriptions of each book on the bookshelves so you can immediately see what the book is generally about. This also means that I found a lot of books I wanted to buy and read. I actually started to read The Victorian Chaise-Longue as soon as I got back to the hotel so that has already been read and reviewed.
Mr B’s Emporium Bookshop
I really want to see the film of this but I always love to read the book first so hopefully I will get reading this soon. I would have liked to have spent longer in this bookshop but unfortunately there was rather a nasty smell in the shop that rather put me off my book browsing.
Toppings and Company Booksellers of Bath
Now I will be honest I went a little crazy in Toppings and Company. Once I had filled my arms up with books I passed the books to my husband so when I went to the checkout the nice lady on the checkout had a bit of a shock. In fact she thought I had started Christmas shopping so she was even more surprised when I said they were all for me. In all honesty I am so excited to start reading all these lovely books I am not sure what to read first. What do you think I should read next?
So there are all my new books! I am returning to Bath in December so I really must be careful I don’t go book shopping crazy again.
Have you added any new books to your bookshelves recently?
It will soon be Halloween so I have chosen a poem from Roald Dahl’s book The Witches.
Down Vith Children!
Down vith children! Do them in!
Boil their bones and fry their skin!
Bish them, sqvish them, bash them, mash them!
Brrreak them, shake them, slash them, smash them!
Offer chocs vith magic powder!
Say, 'Eat up!' then say it louder.
Crrram them full of sticky eats,
Send them home still guzzling sveets.
And in the morning little fools
Go marching off to separate schools.
A girl feels sick and goes all pale.
She yells, 'Hey look! I've grrrown a tail!'
A boy who's standing next to her
Screams, 'Help! I think I'm grrrowing fur!'
Another shouts, 'Vee look like frrreaks!
There's viskers growing on our cheeks!'
A boy who vos extremely tall
Cries out, 'Vot's wrong? I'm grrrowing small!'
Four tiny legs begin to sprrrout
From everybody rrround about,
And all at vunce, all in a trrrice,
There are no children! Only MICE!
In every school is mice galore
All rrruning rrround the school-rrrom floor!
And all the poor demented teachers
Is yelling, 'Hey, who are these crrreatures?'
They stand upon the desks and shout,
'Get out, you filthy mice! Get out!
Vill someone fetch some mouse-trrraps, please!
And don't forrrget to bring the cheese!'
Now mouse-trrraps come and every trrrap
Goes snippy-snipp and snappy-snap.
The mouse-trrraps have a powerful spring,
The springs go crack and snap and ping!
Is lovely noise for us to hear!
Is music to a vitch's ear!
Dead mice is every place arrround,
Piled two feet deep upon the grrround,
Vith teachers searching left and rrright,
But not a single child in sight!
The teachers cry, 'Vot's going on?
Oh vhere have all the children gone?
Is half-past nine and as a rrrule
They're never late as this for school!'
Poor teachers don't know vot to do.
Some sit and rrread, and just a few
Amuse themselves throughout the day
By sveeping all the mice avay.
AND ALL US VITCHES SHOUT 'HOORAY!'
Roald Dahl
Tells the story of a young married woman who lies down on a chaise-longue and wakes to find herself imprisoned in the body of her alter ego ninety years before.
Review
A couple of days ago I went book shopping at one of my favourite bookshops Persephone Books in Bath and I came away with quite a few books. When I saw this book in the shop it really intrigued me so as soon as I got back to the hotel I started reading it and I was hooked.
Melanie is a young wife and recent mother in the 1950’s but sadly she is confined to her bed with TB. She has a rather patronising doctor and an equally patronising husband who both treat her like a small child. Her husband thinks she is silly and even tells her this and because she is petted and spoiled and told she is silly she acts like an over privileged spoiled brat.
Things soon turn rather sinister for Melanie after she dozes off on the chaise-longue. Melanie wakes up in a different room and the only constant is the chaise-longue, even her clothes and body are different but she is Melanie inside, on the outside however she is somebody else who is called Milly and Milly is from the Victorian period.
As the story develops it soon becomes clear that Milly is also a very sick woman but because of the lack of medical knowledge in the Victorian period Milly is not doing as well as Melanie was. It also becomes clear that Milly has a dark secret and something sinister happened in her past.
The trapped Melanie soon realises that this new world she finds herself in is the polar opposite to the one she comes from. Melanie is used to comforts, to being petted and spoiled and never hearing a harsh word. Milly is not used to comforts and is harshly treated and spoken to. Milly’s world is coarse to Melanie’s soft.
I loved the contrasts in this book and how Melanie tries to work out how to escape this body she finds herself in. The book explores themes of mental health, physical health and developments in medical treatments. It also looks at the roles of women in the 1950’s and 1860’s. As the reader I desperately wanted to know more about Milly’s past and find out her story because we get hints of it and some of those hints are rather worrying and scary.
This book is rather creepy and a perfect read for the month of October. I flew through the book and could have happily read it in one sitting if I wasn’t having so much fun on my holiday. I know the not knowing added to the atmosphere of the story but it did leave me frustrated and it is because of this I only give the book 4 out of 5 Dragons. I will definitely be reading more by Marghanita Laski though.
(All purchases made using one of the above affiliate links gives a small percentage of money to myself with no extra cost to yourself. All proceeds go towards the upkeep of this blog. Thank you ever so much, your support is gratefully received.)
About the author
Marghanita Laski (1915-1988) was an English journalist, radio panellist and novelist. She also wrote literary biography, plays and short stories, and contributed about 250,000 additions to the Oxford English Dictionary.
Goodreads Monday is now hosted by Budget Tales Book Club. All you have to do is show off a book from your TBR that you’re looking forward to reading.
Hello!
Happy Monday! I hope everyone has had a good start to the week so far.
My chosen book to feature today is one that I have always wanted to read because it has always sounded like a rather fun read.
Gulliver’s Travels describes the four voyages of Lemuel Gulliver, a ship’s surgeon. In Lilliput he discovers a world in miniature; towering over the people and their city, he is able to view their society from the viewpoint of a god. However, in Brobdingnag, a land of giants, tiny Gulliver himself comes under observation, exhibited as a curiosity at markets and fairs. In Laputa, a flying island, he encounters a society of speculators and projectors who have lost all grip on everyday reality; while they plan and calculate, their country lies in ruins. Gulliver’s final voyage takes him to the land of the Houyhnhnms, gentle horses whom he quickly comes to admire – in contrast to the Yahoos, filthy bestial creatures who bear a disturbing resemblance to humans. This text, based on the first edition of 1726, reproduces all the original illustrations and includes an introduction by Robert Demaria, Jr, which discusses the ways Gulliver’s Travels has been interpreted since its first publication. Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) was born in Dublin.
Please drop me a comment if you have taken part in Goodreads Monday and I will head over for a visit.
Well blogging has not gone well over the last week. Basically I just haven’t had the energy to blog or even read much because of illness. I have been backwards and forwards to the doctors and even had to go to the doctors on my birthday which wasn’t brilliant, oh well, hopefully I am on the mend now.
Due to all the enforced resting I have at least been working on and doing some planning for my Etsy shop because I thought it was high time to get prepping for Christmas. I say my Etsy shop, it is meant to be Lyra’s but she is proving to be pretty useless when it comes to work.
This Advent Calendar contains Christmas books and books to be read all year around. Each book is individually wrapped and numbered so you can count down with your little one to Christmas Day.
Goodreads Monday is now hosted by Budget Tales Book Club. All you have to do is show off a book from your TBR that you’re looking forward to reading.
Hello!
So sadly my Blogtober has been ruined because I missed Saturday and Sunday due to feeling too ill to blog. I’m still feeling rather rough but have made the effort to blog today and I hope to manage the rest of the month.
My chosen book for the week is another off my Classics Club list.
So Melville wrote of his masterpiece, one of the greatest works of imagination in literary history. In part, Moby-Dick is the story of an eerily compelling madman pursuing an unholy war against a creature as vast and dangerous and unknowable as the sea itself. But more than just a novel of adventure, more than an encyclopaedia of whaling lore and legend, the book can be seen as part of its author’s lifelong meditation on America. Written with wonderfully redemptive humour, Moby-Dick is also a profound inquiry into character, faith, and the nature of perception.
Please drop me a comment if you have taken part in Goodreads Monday and I will head over for a visit.
My chosen poem today is a little different but something that means a lot to me. It is quite often used as a blessing and is a traditional Irish Gaelic prayer.
A Prayer for Travellers
May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face;
The rains fall soft upon your fields.
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of His hand.
Anon
Lady Book Dragon 