Top Ten Tuesday: Good trends, bad trends

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish and I love it! This week is really interesting - it is Top Ten Trends You Would Like to See More or Less of!
So here's my list:

See more of:
1) Books being promoted in the blogosphere! I think it is so great the bloggers share their love of books and promote books that maybe wouldn't get the attention they deserve if it wasn't for the blogosphere. We love great authors and wonderful books and sharing that love is beautiful!

2) Young, female authors writing literary fiction and getting acknowledged for their hard work and talent - such as Téa Obreht, author of "The Tiger's Wife"

3) Authors being translated to English. There are so many great authors out there and they deserve to be translated - one example is Sofi Oksanen's fantastic novel "Purge" that has been translated into English and is really popular.

4) Dystopian and steampunk, great imaginative genres that deserve more attention and more bestsellers.

5) Wrapping up classics in beautiful, tasteful, cool covers such as these below. Personally I would really love for E. F. Benson's "Mapp and Lucia" to be given some more attention.





See less of:
1) Vampires and werewolves. Enough is enough people. I don't care if they are sparkling or have tattoos, I don't want anymore of them for a while. Please come up with something else to write about.

2) Less focus on incest/pedophilia as romance/love relationships. Though I really liked "Repeat It Today With Tears" by Anne Peile and liked "Tiger, Tiger" by Margaux Fragoso, I really do not like this topic...

3) Paranormal romance... girl and vampire, girl and werewolf, girl and angel... it is becoming ever so slightly tiring.

4) Celebrity novels, ghostwritten by some poor guy/girl who really needed the money. I am not talking about real biographies from politicians etc. but Katie Price as an author? Really? That's just plain wrong.

5) Awful covers that try to sell a book as something it isn't (...or try to trade off Twilight, such bad taste!!)

Review: "Repeat It Today With Tears"

When this one arrived in my mailbox, I was surprised by how slim it was. I am not sure why but I had expected it to be longer. Maybe because the topic is so controversial?

Let me tell you straight away that this book is not for all because it deals with the subject of what is essentially incest in a really strange, really different way. In a sense it takes the same approach to taboo as "Tiger, Tiger" by Margaux Fragoso, as it focuses on the love story aspect, not the abuse aspect, but in my opinion it handles the topic much better than "Tiger, Tiger" does. You can read my "Tiger, Tiger" review here by the way.

The story in "Repeat It Today With Tears" set in the 1970s and it is about a young girl who desperately lacks a father figure in her life. Susanna is a beautiful girl and a clever girl with a real academical flair - it looks like she will be going to a top university and break the social inheritance even though she has to work as well as go to school. She has grown up on a South London estate among drunkards, criminals and teenage mothers and her mother and sister are both very different from her. Her mother has had a tough life and her sister Lin seems to get pregnant a little too easily... For Susanna this is life as she knows it but something very substantial is missing. Susanna misses her father - her mother's boyfriend is no replacement - and though she has never known him, she goes searching for him. And then the drama starts because it is more or less love at first sight. For Susanna, it is an obsession, nothing is as important as the relationship with her new-found father and for her father it seems like he gets a second shot at youth when this young, beautiful girl gives herself to him. He has no idea that it is his daughter.
As their love grows and grows and grows, Susanna at no point feels that it is wrong. All she can feel is the love for the man that she is incredibly aware is her father. As a reader I found it disturbing but at the same time Anne Peile's beautiful writing makes the story come to life in a way so that it is impossible not to care for Susanna.
The second part of the story is strong, incredibly strong. Tears in my eyes strong. But I won't give anything away.

The strength if this book is Anne Peile's beautiful, delicate prose. The words flow from her, giving Susanna a voice and coating the story in a golden light of times gone by. London in the 70's come to life and the love story part is beautiful - so well-written that I kept forgetting the awfulness of the story. The girl who is so starved for fatherly love that when she has the chance to get to know her father, she takes over the role which her mother has once played maybe in a bid to create the happy family life that she has always been denied and create a right where her mother was wrong. It is a deeply disturbing story but beautiful nonetheless.

Read it if you like: London in the 1970's - or if you were disappointed by "Tiger, tiger".

Too many books at once - does it happen to you?

When I visit a bookshop, I am like a kid in a candy store. I want to grab everything and limiting myself to buying just one book - or buying none! - seems impossible. Luckily, I manage though, otherwise my home would be like a library... Lately though, I have been starting to read a lot of books, then losing focus and starting on another one. This really is a terrible habit and cannot be recommended. I will use this post to try and get an overview of which books I am currently reading and hopefully this will stop me from starting on more until I have finished these.
Here we go:

Schooling by Heather McGowan
I have been wanting this book for a long time and now finally got my hands on it. It is the story of 13-year old American girl Catrine who is sent to an English boarding school and it is written in a stream-of-consciousness style that is quite powerful.



Repeat It Today With Tears by Anne Peile
A stunning debut novel set in London in the 1970's where a young girl becomes obsessed with finding the father she has never known. So obsessed that she seduces him.



The Enchantment of Lily Dahl by Siri Hustvedt
A coming of age story about Lily Dahl, a Minnesota waitress and aspiring actress.



Horns by Joe Hill
This one was featured on Amazon's Best Books of March 2010 list and I have heard a lot of good stuff about it. Ignatius William Perrish (love the name!) wakes up after a night that he hardly remembers and have grown horns. And that is not all that has changed about him, people are now telling him those things that they are normally too embarrassed to share with others.



Now that I have summed it up, it doesn't seem so bad. I was sure that there were more on this list. Wonder if I have left any out...
What are you reading at the moment?