Nobody was waiting for Clare Clark's Savage Lands when I initially borrowed it from the library, having requested it weeks ahead when the Orange Prize longlist had been announced. So I was really surprised when it came time to renew it and I found that it had a hold queue,
Mary McAlpine's The Other Side of Silence: A Life of Ethel Wilson Harbour Publishing, 1988 I came across this bit in David Stouck's biography before I even had a copy of Mary McAlpine's book in my hands and it raised a string of questions that niggled and nagged until I
Click the beautiful image for the Challenge Site Hiromi Goto's The Water of Possibility Coteau Books, 2002 A few weeks ago, I re-read Janet Lunn's 1981 children's novel The Root Cellar. In her novel, the root cellar is a portal to another time and Rose's travels through it
Alberto Manguel's The Library at Night Random House, 2006 I've borrowed this from the library so many times that it's embarrassing (although it feels strangely appropriate too, given its title). But bookishly embarrassing, the kind easily masked by raising your current read to hide your face. Nonetheless, Alberto Manguel's book
Sarah Waters' The Little Stranger Virago, 2009 When I saw this one with Barbara Kingsolver's The Lacuna on this year's longlist, I was both tremendously excited and a bit sad, too, because I knew this was going to pluck them both off the Rainy Day Reader's shelf. (The one which
