Books, books and more books

I've done my usual trick and bought too many books while I've been in the UK.

From the top, 'Writing a Children's Book' by Pamela Cleaver was a prize from Tam's blog. Hoo Rah. Very pleased to win that and thanks for sending it to me Tam.

'Rosemary's Baby' by Ira Levin: a first edition appears in my story. I want to quote a line from it (I think obtaining permission can cause all kinds of problems, but that's not a problem to worry about now.)

Three more Daphne Du Maurier books because I loved 'Rebecca.' I can't buy them in Bangkok so I had to buy them here! Honest.

'Incendiary' by Chris Cleave: because I so loved 'The Other Hand' and I saw the film of Incendiary without connecting them and that too was totally brilliant.

'The Reinvention of Ivy Brown' by Roberta Taylor. I picked this up 'blind.' I read the blurb and thought I'd like it.

'Hunger Games: Catching Fire' by Suzanne Collins is for Son. Haven't been able to buy it in Bangkok.

'The Beacon' by Susan Hill. Because I like her.

'Thin Blue Smoke' by Doug Worgul: I admired the cover at my Industry Day. Will Atkins of Macmillan New Writing said I could take it. He told me he's 'evangelical' about the book. I thanked him and told him in exchange I would review it on my blog.

'Small Wars' by Sadie Jones: I loved 'The Outcast' so I bought this without reading the blurb.

And I'm off to Waterstones again today to get some reading material for my Dad, so who knows what I'll come home with!

From Utah State Prison to Bangkok...

In my final report my mentor said:

“I have recently re-read Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca and suggest it might make a useful model for you as your novel has certain key features in common with it. Both novels revolve around a mysterious death in a family and feature the destructive power of jealousy, and both also attach great significance to a house as a metaphor for the site of conflict. Du Maurier uses a lot of circumstantial detail, but always as a means of creating a mood and building tension. If you do not already know the book … or have not read it for a long time, I urge you to read it with the aim of unpicking the way du Maurier tells her story.”

I have read it - as an adult because it was one of those gaps in my reading I was trying to fill in - but not recently enough to remember much about it (other than the opening line: “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.”) I certainly hadn’t made any connections to my own novel…

I finally found a second hand copy in Bangkok, at Dasa* books. It’s not a particularly nice copy: it has a tacky red silk background and small text (oh dear, how old I am getting) but it’s a copy. When I got it home I noticed that in a previous life it had resided at Timpanogos Library, Utah State Prison. I had a look at USP’s website and it looked a grim place. Not worse than any other prison and I’m not making any kind of statement about what it should or shouldn’t be like … but really, I hope some of the inmates enjoyed the book. There are notations by the text and passages underlined and it made me wonder if someone used it to study from…

I'm still wondering how it arrived in Thailand. More to the point, who did it and how did it escape the US prison system? Was it smuggled out?

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*BKK readers: Dasa books has moved... only a few doors down (past the posh piano shop) but don't assume it's closed down. Keep walking down Sukhumvit and you'll find it... and you may need to reward yourself with one of their chocolate brownies, served warm with cream....