Teaser Tuesday

"The secret we both protected during my administration is now the subject of some very serious questions. The person referred to in the matter is now deceased and can no longer come to harm."

(Page 397, The Girls Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson)

I'm down to the last instalment of Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy and I will be very sad to close the last chapter. It's a real pity Larsson passed away and we will not be recipients of any more of his very interesting and engrossing work. Next step, watch the movies...

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

1. Grab your current read
2. Open to a random page
3. Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
4. BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
5. Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

The Cloud

(picture from La Repubblica)

What BA didn’t manage, an almost forgotten volcano in Iceland did: to stop the flights all over the UK and most of Northern Europe.

The Planet will have a slight reprieve with no flights leaving the UK and less pollution and Co2 being pumped into the air. It is very impressive how Mother Nature can ground polluting flights.

I’m not an expert in the field, but I cannot help thinking that all those underground nuclear tests probably have destabilized the Earth crusts so much that earthquakes will be the norm in the near future. Hopefully I’m wrong.

Where is Spring?

If this is spring, why am I so cold? The few Easter days were wet, windy and cold and all the expected sunshine was out for just a handful of minutes just to make us yearn for spring and warmth even more. I know that talking about the weather (especially the bad weather!) is not only a British habit, but I cannot remember to have dwelled so much on the weather forecast before moving to Britain. Anyway, to console myself (and you as well, I hope), I’d like to post a wonderful picture of my favourite flower, the mimosa (which is actually a shrub and its official name is ‘acacia dealbata’).

I’m also posting my favourite Spring poem, one of the first poems I learnt in the English language.

Lines Written in Early Spring, William Wordsworth

I heard a thousand blended notes,

While in a grove I sate reclined,

In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts

Bring sad thoughts to the mind.

To her fair works did Nature link

The human soul that through me ran;

And much it grieved my heart to think

What man has made of man.

Through primrose tufts, in that green bower,

The periwinkle trailed its wreaths;

And ’tis my faith that every flower

Enjoys the air it breathes.

The birds around me hopped and played,

Their thoughts I cannot measure:--

But the least motion which they made

It seemed a thrill of pleasure.

The budding twigs spread out their fan,

To catch the breezy air;

And I must think, do all I can,

That there was pleasure there.

If this belief from heaven be sent,

If such be Nature’s holy plan,

Have I not reason to lament

What man has made of man?

And if in the meanwhile you encounter Spring, please send her up to Yorkshire!!!

The Easter Bunny's giveaway draw ...

Hi dear Friends, my personal Easter Bunny has just drawn the winner of the book giveaway and because she’s a lovely and generous Bunny, she’s drawn the names of TWO lovely ladies, instead of one:

Congratulations Jane and Jan! Please choose one of the books in the photo below and e-mail me your postal address.

Have a lovely Easter!!!!

What a Shambles!

A few weeks ago The Shambles in York was named Britain's most picturesque street winning the Google Street View Award. The Shambles is a cobbled street lined with shops in overhanging timber-framed buildings, some dating back to the fourteenth century - the sort of place that the shopping street in Harry Potter might have been modelled on.

It was once a street of butchers and was known as The Great Flesh Shambles (from the Anglo-Saxon Fleshammels - flesh shelves) referring to the shelves that butchers used to display their meat. Some of the shops still have meat hooks hanging outside and shelves.

The Shambles beat the Royal Crescent in Bath and Grey Street in Newcastle, which came second and third in the poll asking people to vote for the most picturesque street.


As much as I like it, I don’t think I have been there more than a handful of times in all my years in York as I find it a bit too narrow and even daunting. Stonegate, also shortlisted, would have had my preference, being a Roman-Viking street lined with fantastic buildings from different ages and leading to the beautiful York Minster.

(A Google Street View of The Shambles)

Also, looking at the Google street view (above), they must've shot that at some ludicrously early hour of the day because most of us York residents avoid the Shambles due to it being completely mobbed end to end by tourists.

Meet Kate ...(and book giveaway)

…as in Kate Atkinson. Unfortunately she’s not a friend of mine but I wish she were, as she seems to be to the kind of woman I admire and respect. She’s intelligent, clever, witty, without any false modesty and above she is a writer.

Kate Atkinson is a well known author from York who moved up to Scotland many years ago. She became well known for her book Behind the Scenes at the Museum, a story which follows a few generations of a family living in the centre of town and touches on how it feels like living in a museum when you live in York, but is more a tale about families and their peculiarities. Kate describes the sense of history with great affection in the first pages of the novel:
“Guy Fawkes was born here, Dick Turpin was hung a few streets away and Robinson Crusoe, that other great hero, is also a native son of this city. Who is to say which of these is real and which a fiction?”
But the book that has really conquered my absolute devotion to Kate is her last one “When Will There Be Good News” the third installment of the Jackson Brodie’s detective stories, although you don’t need to have read the previous two ones, Case Histories and One Good Turn, to enjoy the last one.
Last Thursday evening I had the pleasure to attend one of her readings/talks at York St John University, an event of the York Literature Festival. I love going to authors readings and meeting my favourite authors, if only for a few fleeting moments, but this time I was hoping not to be disappointed as I like Kate’s novel o much. Of course I wasn’t.
After reading an excerpt from her still unpublished new novel, which will be out in August, she talked about her beginnings in York and her first steps as a writer, where she gets her ideas from, how she creates her characters, etc. all in her own very wry English humour. She then answered all our questions and ended up with a book signing.

I told her how much I love her writing as, when you read her stories, you don’t want to rush to the end, but you also really appreciate her language, her “nice sentences” as she calls them. Kate’s stories encapsulate her wit and pathos as a writer of fiction, and the joy that she takes in reading it aloud proves her own claim to be a ‘cheerful writer’.

To celebrate Kate, I’m giving away one of her books and because I have already had a giveaway on my friend Maria Grazia’s blog FLY HIGH and I don’t want to repeat myself, I’m offering the winner to choose among these four books that I love:

Behind The Scenes at the Museum, Case Histories, Human Croquet and When Will There Be Good News. Just leave a comment below and the Easter Bunny will pick the winner on Easter Eve.

Teaser Tuesday

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:-

1. Grab your current read

2. Open to a random page

3. Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page

4. BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)

5. Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

My teasers today:

"For some reasons I found myself shivering. There was something taut and undisguisedly vital about the athletic figure sitting opposite us, something of the tiger about to spring."

(Page 87, The Past is Myself by Christabel Bielenberg)

An Englishwoman's life in Berlin under the Nazis