Too many choices

I've been very restrained in my book buying lately. I do still have a few preorders from the Book Depository trickling in. Betty Miller's On the Side of the Angels arrived this week. I've been looking forward to this as I enjoyed her novel, Farewell Leicester Square, which is a Persephone. This is the story of the psychological facts of war on two families.

I have bought a few e-books though. They're invisible so they don't really count. I bought Rosy Thornton's More than Love Letters, her first novel & the only one I haven't read. Also a new book about Jane Austen,  Jane Austen's Cults & Cultures by Claudia Johnson, which was reviewed here along with John Mullan's book, What Matters in Jane Austen? I've just finished the Mullan book & will be reviewing it soon.

I was dismayed but not altogether surprised to discover that the Book Depository are no longer selling e-books. I couldn't find the e-books link on the website a few weeks ago & emailed them. I received a polite corporate speak reply saying that they didn't feel they were offering a good enough e-book service to their customers & preferred to concentrate on the physical books. Now I've received emails telling me that all the e-books I've bought from TBD & have in my order history (because you can have 3 downloads per title) will be disappearing on July 1st. This is just one of many changes that will probably happen at TBD now that they've been bought by Amazon. Amazon obviously don't want anyone buying e-books for any device except the Kindle. I don't have a Kindle (although I do have the Kindle app on my iPad. I prefer my e-reader though because it's so much lighter to hold) & TBD's prices were very reasonable. I bought all my Bloomsbury Reader e-books there for around $6AU each. I can't believe any bookseller is willingly ignoring e-books, it seems ridiculous to me.

I've also brought home a lovely stack of new books from work, all of which I'm desperate to read immediately. There's A Question of Identity, the new Rona Parish mystery from Anthea Fraser; Sidney Chambers & the Shadow of Death by James Runcie which has had some excellent reviews; a stand-alone romance from Cynthia Harrod-Eagles, Country Plot; Charles Dickens & the Great Theatre of the World by Simon Callow, one of the Dickens books I'm most looking forward to this year; Our Man in Rome by Catherine Fletcher which is about Henry VIII's ambassador to Rome during the period of his divorce negotiations; The Other Dickens by Lillian Nayder, a biography of Catherine & The Manor Reborn, the book of the TV series (which I haven't seen) about the restoration of Avebury Manor. The book is sumptuous & I would love the series to pop up on TV here one day - or even on BBC iPlayer Global (hint, hint!).

However, I'm not reading any of those at the moment. I've just finished A Modern Instance by William Dean Howells, which I was reading with my 19th century bookgroup. It's the story of a young couple in 1880s Boston & their marriage. Bartley Hubbard is an unscrupulous journalist & his wife Marcia is a very jealous woman. The ending of the novel was quite scandalous for the time. I couldn't sympathise with either Bartley or Marcia but I loved the book, it was a fascinating read.

Last night, I began Bring up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel, the sequel to Wolf Hall. Thomas Cromwell, Jane Seymour & the fall of Anne Boleyn. There's a long reservation queue for it so I must read it this week. I'm 30pp in & I love it. Can't wait to get back to it.

I'm a third of the way through Queen Anne : the Politics of Passion by Anne Somerset, a biography of an often overlooked monarch. Anne Somerset's books are always readable & based on excellent research & I'm enjoying this when I'm not reading

A Means of Escape by Joanna Price. I'm halfway through this mystery set in Glastonbury after reading about it on Eurocrime.

I'm also about a tenth of the way through Love in the Sun by Leo Walmsley. I tried to order a physical copy from TBD but it was never available so I downloaded it to my iPad. It's set in Cornwall & was warmly reviewed by Fleur Fisher. It's now back in print but not that easy to get hold of.

Finally, some exciting news from Persephone. Emma Bridgewater has been commissioned to produce a jug & bowl to celebrate Persephone's 100th book to be published later this year. This was on Facebook this morning & I can't wait to see the design. The colours won't be a surprise though. I just hope they're available worldwide. I have all the books & I must have the commemorative crockery as well!

Bloomsbury Reader

I was beside myself with excitement to discover Bloomsbury Reader, a new initiative of Bloomsbury Publishing to resurrect some fantastic authors in print on demand & e-book editions. Simon at Stuck in a Book posted about this last week & I couldn't wait to whiz through their list here. I'd read some months ago about Bloomsbury reprinting Monica Dickens who has enjoyed a little mini revival with Persephone reprinting Mariana & The Winds of Heaven in recent years. Then, when I saw the list & realised that I could download my choices onto my e-reader instantly, I was even more excited.

There are a few downsides to the Bloomsbury Reader website. There's no rhyme or reason to the listing. It's not alphabetical or any other order I can make out. There's no way to limit your search just to e-books so the same titles pop up twice in both formats but not together. There's no subject listing, not even fiction & non-fiction. You can search by author but you need to know who's there to do a usable search. There are no blurbs - well, there were no blurbs on any of the titles I looked at. With 57 pages to go through, it's a bit frustrating.

However, all is not lost. I pasted the ISBN into the search engine at The Book Depository & there are blurbs for most of the titles I was interested in. AND, the e-books are around 40% cheaper than the RRP so that makes them around $6.60AU. Much more reasonable than the print on demand physical books which I think are expensive at around $18 & I'd have to wait for them to arrive in the post. I can buy the Virago edition of Rose Macaulay's Told by an Idiot for $18 so why would I choose a POD edition instead?

So, I've had a little splurge & bought 9 titles. Personal Pleasures & Letters to a Friend by Rose Macaulay, Faster! Faster! & Late & Soon by E M Delafield, The Queens & the Hive by Edith Sitwell, Company Parade & The Road from the Monument by Storm Jameson, Kate & Emma by Monica Dickens & A Lighthearted Quest by Ann Bridge (because I read Fleur Fisher's review here & it sounds wonderful & if I enjoy it, the whole series is available from Bloomsbury Reader. So, quibbles about the website aside, I'm thrilled with this new venture & hope it's a success & that Bloomsbury keep adding authors to the list (in some sort of order & with blurbs please).

I'll leave you with a question. Margaret Irwin is one of the authors on the list & I loved her historical novels which I read many years ago. Does anyone know anything about another of her books called Still She Wished For Company? It looks contemporary rather than historical from the only cover I can find on the internet but I can't find anything on the plot. I'm also tempted by Phyllis Bentley's novels. I always remember her from Vera Brittain's diaries of the 30s. They had a tentative friendship wrecked by Vera's superiority & Phyllis's lack of self-esteem & touchiness. She was famous for her historical, regional saga, Inheritance, & there are more of her novels on the list. But, I have enough to be going on with at the moment. At least the tbr shelves on my e-reader are invisible.