Harefield Library played host to Anna Jacobs on Tuesday 17th May by inviting her and some of our lovely residents over for a very special afternoon tea.
Anna came along with a suitcase full of books and some of her famous Lancashire wisdom for all 25 guests who attended the event in the Harefield Library Hall.
The library staff went all out providing traditional afternoon tea on bone china, with scones, sandwiches, cakes, strawberries and meringues! Well such a special lady deserves a special treat and as Anna is about to turn 75, she has just released her 75th book! Not bad for a lady who started
writing in her 50’s. The talk she delivered was called “Behind the Scenes with Anna Jacobs” and she talked about her life before she started writing, what inspired her to start her writing career and where she gets all her ideas from.
She made it clear that she does not write “literary” novels but “stories for entertainment”. She wants to write tales to make people feel happy and that why she insists that all of her books have a happy ending. While she may not win any prizes this way she certainly does have a lot of fans.
Anna had a previous career as an editor and while her first draft is often very dirty she admitted that she spends a lot of her time polishing it until it gleams. “If there’s one thing I’m good at it’s polishing” directing the audience to a book that she had published on editing called “Plotting and Editing” that is available as an e-book online.
The audience were very interested in how many more books Anna wants to write and she insisted she would keep on writing until she physically can’t do it anymore, as she is addicted to it now. She claimed to be a “heroine” addict and once her characters start telling her their stories all she can do is to write them down.
After the talk there was tea, cake, book signings and lots of memorable conversations with all who attended. The sun decided to come out too – just to round off the day.
If you like the look of this event and would like to know more about the other events Hillingdon Libraries are running please click on this LINK.
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A visit to Tenneson’s website reveals a vast portfolio of ethereal portraits, mostly of women. The image on the cover of The Dovekeepers is from her Light Warriors series, a selection of women in a variety of rustic costumes staring intently into the lens. I love these images, the women appear strong, defiant almost, and I want to know their stories.
cover of the week.
Hellboy, the comic series by Mike Mignola, describes the adventures of a red, nearly hornless ‘demon’ conjured up after World War 2, who finds himself in America with the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense (BPRD), combating an array of supernatural foes. He is a giant, wise-cracking cigar-chomping guy with a soft heart underneath. Think of Ron Perlman who plays him in the movie versions, and you have it. So much for the character himself. There are two things that raise these graphic novels above the usual superhero fare. The first is the artwork. Hellboy is one of the few graphic novels where the colour black is used to such great effect.
Mr Faulks – NB rhymes with ‘folks’ not ‘forks’! – was not a writer I’d tried until Engleby was recommended by a colleague. And, knowing that he had fairly recently taken up the 007 franchise challenge with Devil May Care (2009), I was weary of liking him, for obvious if elitist reasons! However, I loved Engleby, although it was a pretty self-indulgent read for me. The author is not much older than myself, and has filled the narrator’s life with much of what could be inferred to be Faulks’s own experience of Britain from the 50s to more or less the present day, i.e. it’s a ‘my time’ novel! Thus, I was particularly pleased to find mention of specific beers, pubs, bands, musical tunes and many more exact cultural references, which both pinned the tale and its protagonist to his times and delighted me with a gleeful nostalgia of my own discoveries as a youth, young adult and then…er…adult! In terms of genre, it is a first person account of Mike Engleby’s university days in the early 70s, which brings him his childhood and previous education and then moves on to his career out in the great world. The political, socio-historical and cultural mores of each decade are nicely sketched in, and the whole thing fits together and convinces very nicely, indeed.
Thud! was the first Terry Pratchett book I ever read. It is, perhaps, an odd one to start with. Pratchett’s fantasy books have explored a wide variety of subjects including cinema, rock music and Shakespeare through fantasy and comedy. The more ambitious Thud! tackles race relations and extremism, finding parallels to real life issues in the form of trolls and and dwarves. The anniversary of the Koom Valley battle is coming up and that spells tension. Sam Vimes and his Night Watch struggle to try to keep the peace in this hostile environment. Thud is more serious and darker than Terry’s usual works. Reading it again, and particularly following Terry Pratchett’s passing, I’m reminded of Neil Gaiman describing his friend not as the “jolly old elf” people presumed him to be, but rather as an “angry” man” whose anger fuelled him to write. In Thud!, more than any other Pratchett book, you can feel his frustration with the world and how it has led to the development of a gripping read. There’s still comedy there but it feels more serious in its intent.
Poppet: An endearing sweet or pretty child or a small figure of a human being used in sorcery and witchcraft. I kept looking at this book in the library and to be honest the picture alone scared me. (A china doll type cat figure which reminded me of ‘The Great Gabbo’ a black and white film with a ventriloquist dummy that comes to life) This is the 6th book featuring detective Jack Caffery, but this novel can be read as a ‘stand alone’.
This is a teen series by Michael Grant. I fell upon this book by accident when I was trying to read Gone Girl and I absolutely loved the series.The book is about Perdido beach and a world where all the adults disappear and the main characters are Sam, Astrid,Edilio, Albert and Caine. Some of the young people have super powers.
I decided to read this book as it was recommended to me as a thought provoking and good read. I was a bit unsure as I do not normally read any Sci Fi, however I found this novel accessible as it is set not in a mythical world but in the very near future; where being fat is practically a crime. It was an enjoyable read and once I started I did want to read on to find out what happens to the three main characters. I think the plot was well devised in the way the characters stories linked together. I didn’t find there was a lot of depth to the characters but I could picture them as I read the novel and sympathized with some of their struggles. The chapters with the anorexic character were particularly hard hitting.
A Jonathan Franzen novel is an ‘event’, and after The Corrections and Freedom this was much anticipated. For me it was slightly disappointing, lacking the brilliant wit which suffuses both previous books. Only occasionally does a memorable or humorous phrase emerge. It is as if the author didn’t want his prose style to distract from his themes. These include identity, since Purity, the eponymous heroine, grows up not knowing her father’s name, or (spoiler alert), as it turns out, her mother’s. Other threads are the scope and limits of the internet, and the ethics of organisations such as Wikileaks. It’s never less than absorbing, but could have been much more so.