Lent III

Well here we are, dear readers, the beginning of the third annual Lenten Read. I have not timed this year very well as I am half-way through a memoir that is so exquisitely written that I certainly don't want to rush it but equally I have no intention of putting it aside until Easter Sunday. This makes figuring out my daily page quota a bit more of a challenge but nothing insurmountable with the help of a pencil and a scrap of paper. An additional mathematical quandary is the number of pages in one of books as it has yet to arrive. And so The Read begins not so much with a bang as with a slightly distracted shuffle, but with no less enthusiasm for some good stories!

Earlier this week the 2011 Bisto Children's Book of the Year Shortlist was announced and for all the talk of posters, bookmarks etc being sent out to bookshops, I humbly contest that the best way booksellers can support the authors & illustrators nominated is to read the books. My first foray into the shortlisted novels is Taking Flight, described as "a fast-paced story full of conflict, jealousy and courage." Yes please!

Going through a box of secondhand books last week, my eye was caught by Helen Dunmore's Your Blue-eyed Boy: "Blackmail doesn't work the way I always thought it would, if I ever gave it a thought. It doesn't smash through the clean pane of a life like a stone through a window. It's always an inside job, the most intimate of crimes" and suddenly I found I'd read four pages without even realising it and wanted more.

I believe that the enjoyment of a book largely comes down to expectations. I am actually nervous about starting Swamplandia! because my expectations are so high. Listening to an interview with the author, Karen Russell, only made it worse. Several years ago, I read her story St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves so my anticipation isn't entirely baseless - she writes the kind of prose that resonate with me, knows how to spin a good yarn, and what a yarn this promises to be.

"high drama evolving out of avarice and lust" could sit comfortably alongside a bare-chested Fabio-wannabe on the cover of a cheesy bodice-ripper, however A Reliable Wife purports to be a dark, gothic tale, one I've been meaning to read for ages. A deceitful, murderous, wholly unreliable wife? That will do very nicely indeed, thank you. The opening sentence: "It was bitter cold, the air electric with all that had not happened yet."

Updates will be tweeted daily as, for the next six weeks, I get my forty a day, accompanied by the lovely Elaina O'Neill, managing editor of Little Island who published Taking Flight along with a host of other great kids books last year. And for anyone else who wishes to rise to the challenge, bonne chance à tous!

~Louisa