Tag Archives: Joan Aiken

ULYSSES+ Quarterly Report

NYC has had its usual share of rainy weather since the start of the year, which means that I’ve been making good progress on my ULYSSES+ project. In just 3 months, I’ve read 5 of the 12 books-published-in-1922 chosen as … Continue reading

Posted in Am reading, Animal tales, Castles and towers, Classic, Fantasy, Humorous, Newbery Award, Poetry, ULYSSES+ | Tagged , , , , , , | 8 Comments

#WitchWeek2020 Day 3: The Graveyard Book

“It takes a graveyard to raise a child.” (back cover of The Graveyard Book, US edition) Appropriately for today, the Day of the Dead, we present you with a discussion of this year’s read-along book, a novel set in a cemetery. Four of us–Lory* … Continue reading

Posted in Gothic, Witch Week | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 14 Comments

There’s more than one kind of wolf

Today’s Witch Week post, from my WW2019 co-host, Chris at Calmgrove, is all about the despicable and heinous, the selfish and greedy — the altogether dreadful villains of Joan Aiken’s Wolves Chronicles. Whether you know Aiken’s series well, or are … Continue reading

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Girls Running from Houses…

Originally posted on Joan Aiken:
     What is behind all those fabulously lurid 1960s romance novel covers showing a beautiful young woman fleeing a dark, sinister house in the middle of nowhere? Not what you might expect…! Although the cover…

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Summer omnibus, part 2

More from my summer’s reading: Aaron Starmer, The Riverman (2014). In upstate New York, near the Canadian border, Alistair Cleary lives a normal life of taking dangerous dares and avoiding nosy neighbors. Then Fiona Loomis, not yet 13, asks him to write her biography. She tells him about an … Continue reading

Posted in Adventure, Classic, Graphic Novel, Historical fiction, short stories, YA Lit | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Found it!

It must be tough to compete for attention with people like Henry James and characters like EF Benson’s Mapp and Lucia. I went to Rye today, specifically to visit the former home of James, Benson and others, but also to look … Continue reading

Posted in Time travel, Travel | Tagged , , | 14 Comments

The anxiety of influence

… or, why I love Joan Aiken’s books, even though sometimes her writing is so good it makes me cry. I love to read. Given an option, I’ll choose reading over any other activity. If I were the sort of … Continue reading

Posted in Am writing, reading | Tagged | 5 Comments