Tag Archives | books i’ve been reading

Action Susie, Canyonista

By on September 21, 2009 in books i've been reading, films, holidays

Grand Canyon

Generally, I like to stay at home with a nice cup of tea and my laptop, attempting to think literary thoughts while watching Gilmore Girls reruns.  But once in a while I like to sleep in a tent, build a campfire, and locate a hill to yomp up (or down: down is nice) – and since my sister T likes to do that sort of thing too, off we went.  Zion, Bryce, Grand Canyon (plus a little Las Vegas on the side for, erm, sleeping in, mostly).  2 small Welsh ladies with great big backpacks.  109°F.  Rucksack-eating squirrels.  Thunderstorms and tent floods.  Possibly my summer holiday this year involved more lizards, pit latrines, heat exhaustion and Barry Manilow than the average, but – I’ve hiked the Grand Canyon.  Lifetime ambition achieved.  Blimey.

Sincerely, it’s taken me so long to update because it’s hard to stop myself evangelising: the extraordinary, almost dusty-seeming night sky in canyon; the sobering effect of being in a place where humans are so plainly ill-equipped interlopers; the sense of pushing yourself absolutely to the edge of what you think you’re capable of.  It makes it sound like torture, but it was the best holiday ever.

Of course, I maintained my usual devastating commitment to style while I did it.  Mhmm.  Foxy, no?

Action Sus!

book_mini All the Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy, because it seemed appropriately sweaty and knackered.  Stupendous – plus my copy is now shredded mess of unpeeling pages, which I’ll forever remember reading at Phantom Ranch, ankle-deep in the creek, as the mule train passed in pink cowboy hats and sunburn.  Now I’m back to rain and Blighty, it’s Josephine Tey’s The Franchise Affair (I literally woke myself up with wanting to reread it), which is even more well-written than I remembered.

pencil_mini I am PLANNING.  Please give me a gold star, because I’m usually repulsively lazy when it comes to this bit – but what I have in mind needs to be a lovely tightly-knotted unfurlable thing. I’m already ridiculously excited about it all.  It’s like Heathers with ice-cream.  And, um, fewer murders.  OK, it’s not at all like Heathers.  ICE-CREAM, though!  Evil ice-cream.  Oh yes.

rocrastination_mini Lying on the floor while my back decides to conk out; having a glorious time eating fry-ups with my writing group and plotting Italian shenanigans; loving District 9.

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Girls (and dad) Meet Cakes

By on August 16, 2009 in books i've been reading, girl meets cake, holidays, kids' books i've been reading, my invisible boyfriend, other writers

tea party!

How lucky am I?  Not only do I get to write books about cake, but this week I got to have afternoon tea with one of the people who reads them!   The utterly lovely Paige won the Mizz magazine ‘Tea with Susie’ star prize, and she and her family joined me and a few of the divine Scholastic ladies at the Wallace Collection in London.  Much tea, cake, book-talk and giggling was had – not to mention cartwheels in the sunshine (confession: I left that bit to Paige).  Keep up the dancing, Paige, and I hope you’re all having a lovely summer holiday this week!

Susie and competition winner Paige

book_mini  Judy Blume, Meg Cabot, and, um, Margery Allingham.  Plus Justine Larbalastier’s original version of this blog post, expressing her frustration at Bloomsbury’s choice of a shockingly disingenous cover for her YA novel Liar.  I’m thrilled to see that sanity has prevailed – and have the utmost respect for her courage in speaking out.

pencil_mini  Ooh!  Aah!  I shall have to be infuriatingly vague (since at the moment it’s still at the back-of-an-envelope stage and I haven’t even decided on the main character’s name yet), but I’m about to start my next book.  (Well, I’m about to go on holiday and do no work on it at all, actually – but after that, workiness will ensue, I promise.)  For the ultra-curious: think Groundhog Year.  Hmm… *plots*

rocrastination_mini  Frolicking around the Tower of London; building slightly less impressive towers for baby M to knock over; having pretty pictures taken for the My Invisible Boyfriend jacket by my super-talented friend Justa Mili; practising putting up my tent!

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Stop! Hammocktime

By on June 27, 2009 in books i've been reading, cooking, girl meets cake, internet, kids' books i've been reading, my invisible boyfriend, telly

hammocktime

I’ve wanted a hammock since the summer after my GCSEs, when I spent an entire week at a French campsite refusing to budge out of one, while reading Dune.  (Truly, there cannot be more compelling evidence of the comfortableness of hammocks.  Sorry, sci-nerds, but that’s a 750-page turd of a book.)

Today the sun shone, I read the weekend Guardian cover to cover, and there were raspberries, and much tea.   Bliss.

book_mini  Nomnomnombooks. Lately I’ve read Scarlett Thomas’ PopCo, which is marginally less weird than The End of Mr Y, despite being about commercial globalisation, treasure-hunting, and complex mathematical formulae. Brilliant, though: the ideas are magnificent but it’s the characters I still miss, weeks later. Then Nicola Upson’s An Expert In Murder: faux 30s detective fiction, starring actual 30s detective fiction author Josephine Tey (do you see what she did there?), who gets embroiled in a series of murders connected to her play about Richard III.  Being a Tey geek, I adore the concept more than is reasonable, but the execution is a disappointment: in lieu of narrative urgency the point of view wanders from character to character, including to the killer – who conveniently happens not to be thinking “hmm, wish I hadn’t committed that murder” at the time – and Tey is barely in it. I’d go and read Brat Farrar instead if I were you (or Allingham’s Dancers in Mourning, for genuine Golden Age theatreland intrigue). I’ve also finally read a Jaclyn Moriarty, Becoming Bindy McKenzie (YA), which I adored with the queasy reservations of one who recognises bits of her teenage self in the (profoundly unlovely) heroine. The denouement is bonkers, but there’s so much brilliance before that you don’t mind at all. It’s the 3rd of her Ashbury books, and I plan to eat the others as soon as the library lets me.

pencil_mini  I have proofs!  One last pass over the insides of My Invisible Boyfriend (the US title for Girl Meets Cake), which is going to look beautiful.  And I’m playing with a new Sooper Sekrit Project: only a few thousand words in, but I’m getting a wee bit excited.  If I can juuust get the voice right…

rocrastination_mini Becoming enthralled by the televisual loveliness that is Chuck; watching Don Juan De Marco (Johnny Depp is so young! Marlon Brando is so… many other things); being dead chuffed about Anthony Browne being the new children’s laureate; eating lasagne; still loving RebelliousPixels’ Buffy vs Twilight satire vid (just in case you missed it); wondering if I can bring the hammock indoors at the end of the summer so I don’t have to contemplate life without it…

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Eat, eat, as fast as you can!

By on May 19, 2009 in books i've been reading, cooking, doctor who, girl meets cake, kids' books i've been reading

60!

I am in awe of your collective gingerbread boyfriend-making skills, gentle readers!  Apparently inspired by having made 60 gingerbread personages (YEP! SIXTY!), the divine Rosie has produced a selection of mini-dress and monokini-ed gogo dancers, hippy chicks, and Nehru-jacketed Beatles, look!  Cor, etc.  Anna, meanwhile, has beaten me to the TARDIS with her spectacular selection of Gingerbread Doctors (and Donna too, hurrah) – not to mention some unidentifiable-by-me-but-probably-very-recognisable-if-you-know-who-they-are snooker players, who you will find in the Fabulous Bake-A-Boy Gallery along with many magnificent new pics! Applause all round to Tina, Jess, Alex, Cerys, Other Jess, James, Small Person, Josie, and anyone who volunteered to clean up the kitchen afterwards.  I hope your Gingerbread Beloveds were all as yummy as they looked.

I feel strangely hungry now.

book_mini  Sally Nicholls, Season of Secrets.  READ THIS BOOK.  I mean it.  Find yourself an enormous box of tissues first and someone to hug you at regular intervals, because it’s an unflinching look at the impact on a family of the death of a parent.  But don’t let that put you off, because – like her brilliant debut, Ways to Live Forever – it’s also extraordinary.  Like David Almond’s Skellig, a family tragedy runs parallel to a child’s encounter with an improbable saviour (in this case not an angel but the mythical Green Man), which represents all their fears regarding the terrifying fragility of life, but also offers the hope of renewal.  Unmissable and unforgettable.

Have also just read Joanna Nadin’s My So-Called Life, the first of her Rachel Riley series, which is very very funny (though there was a disappointing lack of Jordan Catalano), and made me feel really quite relieved I’m not 13.

pencil_mini  I’m currently writing a comedy/romance/sci-fi/musical set in Oxford/space/The Future/1832, in which a girl/boy/wisecracking armadillo sidekick have to save the cheerleader/save the world/save the Wispa bar all over again, and also fight crime/some Conquistadors/each other! with hilarious consequences.  It’s a Choose Your Own Adventure kind of thing.  Maybe.  Oh, all right, I’m not writing that really.  I quite want to now, though.  Who doesn’t love a wisecracking armadillo?  In the meantime, here’s my interview with the lovely Jenny at Wondrous Reads.

rocrastination_mini Being startled by how much I loved the new Star Trek (Gingerbread Kirk, Spock and McCoy? oh, I think so); cooking feijoada, mmm; getting overexcited by muppets all over again.

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Bake 7

By on April 6, 2009 in books i've been reading, girl meets cake, kids' books i've been reading, telly

I have no idea at what point the Fabulous Bake-A-Boy Challenge turned into the Fabulous Bake-the-entire-cast-of-Blake’s-7 Challenge, but I suspect Heidi from GIRL MEETS CAKE would approve.  And they are rather adorable…

Bake 7

Clockwise from the left: Cally, Avon, Vila, Jenna, Servalan, Gan, with Blake in the middle.  Before hordes of fellow nerds beat me over the head – yes, I know Servalan isn’t actually one of the 7, but Gingerbread Orac was beyond even my skills.  Vila is a bit rubbish, alas, but I am terribly proud of Blake – and Gan was sort of accidental, but actually the resemblance is uncanny.  (Here’s the real Team Blake demonstrating what sleeves will be like in The Future: personally, I can’t wait.)  I still have a few distressingly naked gingerbread men left in the kitchen, so I may have to make Tarrant and Dayna and Soolin.  Or possibly a nice crickety Fifth Doctor…?

And yes, this is a perfectly sensible way to spend one’s time.  Ahem.  Feel free to join in, anyway: the Bake-a-Boy gallery needs more gingerbready lovemuppets!

book_mini  I’ve just finished Luisa Plaja’s brand-spanking-new Extreme Kissing, which I’m happy to report is every bit as sweet, funny and clever as Split By A Kiss.  Bethany and Carlota are best friends, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have secrets from each other.  Bets is terrified she might be pregnant, while Carlota’s not quite the girl everyone assumes – and their day of ‘Extreme Travelling’ (every move dictated by the random pages of a magazine) isn’t the escape from their troubles they’d hoped for.  The story whizzes along, alternately narrated by ‘good girl’ Bets and ‘wild child’ Lots, and even if you have a sneaking suspicion you’ve worked out Carlota’s secret, there might just be another one underneath… This is Plaja’s real gift: there’s a sense of absolute authenticity about her characters, whose lives (family, school, friends, boyfriends, past relationships, future hopes and fears) are so convincingly fleshed out that you really do end up caring about their multiple worries – and their triumphs too.  And of course, the whole thing feels effortlessly witty: Carlota’s ‘Reverse Goth’ fashion crusade, her tendency to knit under stress, the numerous moments where the girls completely misunderstand one another.  Perfect for Louise Rennison fans who like a little angst in with their teenage escapades!

pencil_mini  It’s publication day!  Girl Meets Cake is properly out in UK shops.  I’m celebrating by eating leftover cake from yesterday’s tea party while writing notes for The Becky Book (which isn’t called The Becky Book at all, obviously, but it’ll do for the minute).  Nom nom *pause for typing* nom.

rocrastination_mini  baking, baking, looking at pictures of Blake’s 7 costumes, baking… :D

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