Burma Chronicles - Guy Delisle

This is the third book I have read for the Non-Fiction Five challenge and, like Maus, it's a graphic novel. I'm really enjoying reading non-fiction graphic books - I think it allows a much lighter touch with more freedom than a prose book on the same topic would.

Guy Delisle is a very talented illustrator/author originally from Quebec, Canada and his wife works for Médecins Sans Frontières. The Burma Chronicles as written as a result of her being posted to Burma in 2005 and Guy accompanies her with their infant son, Louis, in tow. The challenges he faces as a stay at home father are probably the most delightful snippets within the book and the opening sequence of the book where he covers the journey to get there is genuinely funny. He certainly manages to sum up the horror of long-haul travel with an infant very effectively...

The book is made up from a series of snapshots covering his attempt to adjust to ex patriot life in Rangoon and his experiences include the challenges of shopping, meeting local people, getting to know the other stay at home parents (who all seem to be female) and his efforts to join the nirvana that is the Australia club.

Alongside this, there are sections covering the political situation in Burma and his observations as he accompanies his wife on trips into the field a couple of times. The statistics on heroine addiction and related AIDS infection rates are absolutely horrifying and one imagines that the situation can only have worsened in the years since 2005. In sprite of the sometimes difficult subject matter, Delisle's ability to tamper even the bleakest of observations with understated humour make this book very easy to read whilst remaining thought provoking.

NYMag have a "sneak peek" from the book covering the pages where Delisle first attempts to visit imprisoned Nobel Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi. This gives a great over-view of his gentle style and I hope that it tempts readers to read this book! Guy Delisle has also written earlier books covering his solo travels in Pyongyang and Shenzhen and I look forward to experiencing his observations on life in North Korea and China.

J is for Jokes!

Thinking of a J alphabet weekend activity was surprisingly hard especially as I was slightly hampered by our pre-existing weekend commitments. Jazz - no events this weekend. Jousting - unable to work out how to arrange this in Norfolk. Jelly - a bit lame. Learning the Jitterbug - no teacher with availability in the tight time slot I had. Eventually inspiration hit and I decided to try for Jokes and victory was mine!

Having "accidentally" slipped up and revealing, via email, that we were off to a Jam Making course being run by the local branch of the Women's Institute last night, Mr B was extremely relieved to discover, when he met me in Norwich after work, that I had in fact bought tickets to the Comedy Store's mini-festival being held at the Unthank Arms instead. Good of him to turn up to be honest as he was reasonably confident that his wife was random enough to have actually booked a jam making session.

We had dinner before heading up to the pub and I succeeded in getting the start time completely wrong so as we sneaked into the marquee that the pub had erected in the garden, the MC took the opportunity to make several jokes about women making men late. Aided by Mr B's supportive palming all blame off on me... The overall line up was very strong and the second comedian, Mike Gunn, was very funny indeed although I suspect you really had to be there!

(PS - inexplicably I failed to post this last week having written the whole thing! Weird)

The Hazards of Hunting a Duke - Julia London

In what is becoming a recurring theme of my reading pattern at the moment, Julia London is another author of historical romances who I first heard about over at The Book Smuggler's blog. I happened to see one of her books on the just returned trolley at my library and, in spite of the very 80's looking cover, thought it would be worth a try.

"Ava and Phoebe Fairchild and their cousin Greer, popular young ladies of the ton, discover they're destitute when their mother dies. Their stepfather has absconded to Paris with their mother's fortune, leaving them with a miserly stipend and under the watchful eye of his sister, an austere spinster. In order to maintain the lifestyle they are accustomed to Ava, the eldest girl, hunts down handsome Jared Broderick, the Earl of Middleton and heir to a dukedom, and marries him. Only after their passionate wedding night does Ava realize Jared had ulterior motives for marrying her. He intends for Ava to serve as his socially-acceptable wife so his very proper father will not disown him for pursuing a love affair with a beautiful, sophisticated widow."

This is the first in a trilogy of books featuring Ava, Phobe and Greer called the "Desperate Debutantes". Now I realise that there is a certain amount of freedom allowed to a book in a historical setting* given that the story needs to appeal to a modern audience but for me, this book could have been vastly improved with some decent research and the removal of several unnecessary Americanisms that jarred horribly.

A really simple example to illustrate what I mean - calling the hero Jared Broderick just felt wrong and as though he should be a cowboy rather than an Earl. I felt that neither him or Ava acted in a convincing way based on their places in society (or the ton as it was referred to far too often) and the social framework of the day. Frankly, Jared would have been more likely to make Ava his mistress than his wife and I wouldn't have blamed him and I'm not entirely sure what she could have done about it either. It is quite possible that I am over-thinking this one but I had to wonder why bother setting this book loosely in this era if you're not going to bother accurately applying research that I would presume did take place? I notice that the synopsis of the book featuring Greer (another odd choice of name) includes reference to the Prince of Powys. Suspect I'd better avoid that one if I want authentic history as a backdrop!

Perhaps I have read too many historical romances back to back now but I found myself a little disappointed in this one but to be fair only for the reasons above. The characters themselves were fine and the plot much as expected. Maybe I've not chosen the right Julia London book to read first, and am being overly picky, but I just didn't enjoy this book as much as I have the other books I've been reading recently so don't think I'll bother reading any more of hers unless I hear otherwise!

*For example, just how many Dukes and Earls did Great Britain have in the 1800s to feature as husband material in all the novels of this genre I've been recently reading?

I is for... Italy

After a very lazy Saturday (I finished one book, read another in it entirety and then started another...) I felt that we should actually leave the house today so this morning we went on a bit of a jaunt around the area that we're looking at buying a house in - driving around Barton Broad (including the village of Irstead) and then up through Smallborough/Dilham and on towards North Walsham. The more we explore Norfolk, the more I realise that we are so very lucky to live where we do. It is a really beautiful, and surprisingly rural, part of England and I am so glad that we're coming to know it better this year. Sadly, dogs are not allowed on the Norfolk Wildlife boardwalk at Barton Broad (we probably should have checked first!) so we didn't get to see the view across the Broad but as they were getting very hot and bothered, in spite of lots of water, perhaps that was just as well.

This week's alphabet weekend theme was I is for Italy. Sadly, Mr B did not actually whisk me away to Italy for the weekend (although he assures me that he looked into it!) but after getting back from exploring and dog walking, we went out for a very pleasant Italian lunch together, enjoyed ice creams and then watched the director's cut (at 2:47!) of Cinema Paradiso. This is a lovely Italian film from1989, that neither of us had seen before, which won an Oscar for Best Foreign Film and a Special Jury Prize at Cannes.

I'm already dreading my letter J for next weekend. The only time we can really do anything is Friday night or possibly during the day on Saturday. Jam making...? Eating Jelly...?

June breaks the record for number of books read and as a result I had great pleasure in making a £15 payment to Book Aid International.

Another really weird month of reading though with lots of romance (both human and faerie!), a bit of Sci-Fi, some more magic, superheroes and then several excellent books set during WW2. Looking back it really doesn't seem as if I can possibly have crammed so many books into what was a really busy month for me so clearly the answer is to pick books you are going to be able to effortlessly enjoy when you are feeling frazzled! The last six books of the month certainly fit that bill but hopefully I'll be back on track soon and feel able to tackle something a bit more challenging. Like most of my TBR pile!

Maus - Art Spiegelman
Speaker for the Dead - Orson Scott Card
Wicked Lovely, Ink Exchange & Fragile Eternity - Melissa Marr
Soon I Will Be Invincible - Austin Grossman
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society - Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
The Welsh Girl - Peter Ho Davies
Instructions For Living Someone Else's Life - Mil Millington
Miss Wonderful & Mr Impossible - Loretta Chase
Mine till Midnight & Blue Eyed Devil - Lisa Kleypas
Lord Perfect - Loretta Chase
Talon of the Silver Hawk - Raymond E. Feist

H is for Holkham Hall

Being a very decisive woman (!) I selected five Norfolk locations as "H'options" for Mr B to pick from for this weekend's activity. They were:

• "Behind Door 1, we have a 3000 acre country park with designated walks, resident herds of deer and a famous beach nearby.
• Behind Door 2 is a stately home - once that of our first Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole. The gardens are (apparently) famous and the park is home to over 1,000 head of white deer.
• Continuing the theme of large county houses, Door 3 is a hall with a beautifully landscaped fifteen acre garden. I know that will appeal...
• Behind Door 4 there is a 100 acre country park just a short walk from the historic Norfolk town of Holt.
• Finally we have Door 5 - behind which is the largest expanse of open water in the Broads system."

Who knew Norfolk had so many tempting attractions beginning with H and Hunstanton, Happisburgh Lighthouse, Horsey Wind Pump and the Holme Dunes didn't even make the short list!
Not very surprisingly, he chose Holkham Hall as our destination and, even though it was very overcast, we packed up the dogs, plenty of water and headed out. I am ashamed to say that I've never actually been to Holkham before even though it is one of the county's landmark buildings. Should also confess that we didn't take the opportunity to go into the house itself but then we did have the dogs with us...

It's free to enter and enjoy the grounds so we had a lovely walk around the 1 mile long lake followed by delicious ice-creams made on the estate. Well. We had ice-creams and the dogs had water! The plan was to then have a walk on the gorgeous Holkham Beach however one of our dogs is not well and she had clearly had enough of exercise for the day and as the sky had cleared it wasn't safe (or fair) to leave her in the car by herself whilst we took the other one for a romp.

I'd definitely like to return there but as it's a surprisingly long drive from Norwich perhaps we'll leave the dogs at home and stay overnight next time!

Lord Perfect - Loretta Chase

Well honestly. What is a girl to do when returning her stash of romance novels to the library but to "just check" to see if any other Loretta Chase books are on the shelf? Then to just borrow another one. Then read it very, very quickly indeed? Sadly the copy I borrowed did not have this wonderfully genre cover but I laughed so hard when I saw it online that I felt that I just had to use it to illustrate this post!

Lord Perfect is book three in the series and follows on the from events of Miss Wonderful and Mr Impossible. The eldest Carsington brother, and the Earl of Hargate's heir, Benedict Carsington is tall, dark, and handsome. He is known as "Lord Perfect" for his impeccable manners, good breeding and is a stickler for social rules.

That is until he meets the gorgeous Bathsheba Wingate, who is both recently widowed and a member of the notorious De Lucey family. She has a very high spirited daughter who lures Benedict's nephew into a quest for a legendary treasure and to recover the pair before scandal breaks they set off on a rescue mission. With predictable results.

Loretta Chase's wonderful sense of the absurd, in combination with a good sense of humour, made this book a joy to read. The dialogue between Benedict and Bathsheba was great fun and there are a couple of delightful scenes between that made me laugh out loud. In particular the scene in the bathroom but I am quite confident that I could not explain just why it made me chuckle.

Another very enjoyable read from Loretta Chase and with only one Carsington brother left unmarried I suspect he'll be next up! What fun.