RIASS stuff:

A review of Witch Week by Diana Wynne Jones, in which the author is in (as usual) fine form. (Rating: 4 out of 5 stars)

A guest post with best-selling author Diane Chamberlain about balancing writing and a second career.

Only a day left to enter our giveaway of Barry and the Fairies of Miller Street!

Other bookish stuff:

Are libraries doomed? “Our librarians will find a way to make life better for us.  Their working in a library building as we know such is doubtful.  There won’t be a library for us to go to. We’ll be ordering e-books and other media from them by computer.  They’ll send them to us by computer. Will do everything by computer.  Probably we’ll never see a librarian face to face.  In fact, the process may be automated. I’m optimistic.  I’m all for progress. But I’m glad I won’t see this progress.  I treasure my memories of my good times in public libraries big and small, near and far.  Good times beyond count.”

Read no evil – Senior censor defends work, denies playing Big Brother: ”Always during each [Kuwait] Book Fair, the media writes about banning hundreds of books from being sold. And they blame us for this. The committee that decides the ban consists of members in high positions from outside and inside the Ministry of Endowments and the Ministry of Information. The censor is not responsible for the ban. He only reads and gives his opinion according to the law.”

Jennifer Miller on writing The Year of the Gadfly: “I love the creativity involved in creating specific images and feeling simply by putting words on the page. I love language–particularly the sound of words. I also love creating a unique world out of thin air. I think writing fiction is a little bit like acting. As the author, you have to inhabit different characters and try to see the world through their eyes–and speak like them, which isn’t easy. But it’s so rewarding when you do it well. You’re tricking readers (and yourself) in believing that fictions exist. How much fun is that!”

Should Faulkner’s “The Sound and the Fury” be colour-coded by viewpoint? ”The Sound and The Fury is acknowledged as one of the masterpieces of 20th-century literature. It takes the modernist narrative devices of stream-of-consciousness, time-shifts and multiple changes of viewpoint to an unprecedented level of sophistication. Faulkner was well aware that readers would find it difficult, and employed italic and roman type to convey its ‘unbroken-surfaced confusion’, but when his agent attempted to standardise and simplify the system this prompted an angry objection from Faulkner. He quickly jotted down eight time-levels in Benjy’s section, ‘just a few I recall’, and wished that it could be ‘printed the way it ought to be with different color types’, but he concluded pessimistically, ‘I don’t reckon … it’ll ever be printed that way’.” Wrong!

An interview with author Carole Matthews: “My latest book – my twentieth novel – is about Nell McNamara. It’s a warm, funny story about someone who, against the odds, wants to follow their dreams…I think a lot of women will empathise with this character and will be cheering her on as she pursues her dream. It’s based on the life and experiences of my good friend, Helen Rochfort, who is a successful and accomplished handbag designer. So I hope it has a really authentic feel.” (see also our reviews of Carole’s work)

Peter Brown on connect with a young audience: “Outside of regular book tours, I go to spend entire days at an elementary school to talk in detail about my process, so at the end of the day’s there’s 400 kids out there, and it’s invaluable to see their reactions. I get to observe my readers up close and personal. I get to see what lines make them laugh and where I’m losing their attention. So when I write my next book, I’ve learned my lesson and try to incorporate that.”

MJ Hearle on how The Wizard of Oz both terrifies and inspires: “By the end of the movie I was a mess. My imagination seethed with images of gnarled trees reaching with clawed hands, winged monkeys diving from the stormy heavens to wreck havoc, growling blue-skinned henchmen swarming through a castle brandishing spears and Oz’s ultimate terror – the Witch herself. She took root in my nightmares and resides there still.
I went to bed in a fever sweat. My stomach muscles were clenched with anxiety, my gaze roamed the dark corners of the room searching for green-skinned apparitions in pointy black hats.” (see our review of The Wizard of Oz)

Jeffrey Eugenides on literary plot devices and how they evolve over time: ”It [the marriage plot] was impossible because conditions have changed so much for women. I liked those novels but I did know that they still played a big role in our minds because of reading them and the kinds of expectations of romance that they still give to people, especially young women, but everyone really – romantic ideals. It was more a question of trying to see how those novels affected the present more than recreating a novel that would actually be a marriage plot.”

The power and range of the graphic novel memoir ”For graphic novel memoirists like Bechdel, Spiegelman, and Satrapi, the form serves a critical storytelling function — to highlight and enhance the emotionally fraught images with words, and vice versa.”

Minimalist book covers

You know you want this iPhone app

For all your lucky Americans: registrations for BEA have opened.

Bookish videos:

Trailer for Frankenstein (A Monstrous Parody), written by Rick Walton and illustrated by Nathan Hale

Trailer for Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death by James Runcie:

Trailer for Burn Mark by Laura Powell:

With more than twenty novels under her belt, Diane Chamberlain seems as though she’s spent her entire working life as an author. However, this isn’t actually the case: for many years Diane’s focus was on social work, completing her postgraduate studies in the field and going on to work as a hospital social worker before beginning a private psychotherapy practice working with teenagers. With such a hectic work schedule, Diane found her writing relegated to her spare time–until she began to get serious about being published. But when her publishing dream became reality, Diane had to make a difficult decision regarding balancing her social work and her writing life. Today Diane chats with us about how closing her private practice influenced her writing, and whether she has any regrets about doing so:

When I first started writing, I’d hoped to continue my private practice, but as the demands of my writing career grew, it quickly became clear I would have to pick one or the other. I loved them both, but my dream of being a writer went back to my childhood. Plus, I knew how hard I’d worked on my books and how fortunate I was to be published. I couldn’t give that up.

It was very hard to end my practice. I’d published three books by that time, but my identity had still very much been connected to being a clinical social worker. Plus, my practice had been primarily with adolescents and I would miss working with them so much. Many of my clients touched my life as much as I touched theirs. I still hear from a few of them and it’s wonderful to see them grow into a happy adulthood and know I had a small part in that.

Obviously, I believe in following your dreams, but I also believe in making enough money to keep a roof over your head and food on the table. In my case, my husband of twenty years was willing to carry the main financial burden as I built my writing career—or so I thought. The very week that I ended my practice, however, he told me he’d fallen in love with someone else, and just like that my “perfect marriage” was over and with it, my financial support. It was a panicky time in many ways. However, I signed a wonderful new contract and for the first time, I actually could support myself writing. That was sheer luck, though, and I don’t advise quitting your day job without a safety net. The bottom line for me is that I feel very blessed to have had two careers that have allowed me to touch people in a positive way.

Diane’s latest book is The Good Father, which I’ll be reviewing later today. Until then, here’s a snippet from the book and some more information about it to tide you over.

Excerpt:

“I’m fine,” she said. “I picked up an OJ for Bella.”

I knew–and had known from day one–that it was Bella she was into and not me. That was fine. Perfect, actually. “Okay,” I said. “Thanks.”

I ordered my coffee and a muffin and a cup of water for Bella. When I went to pick up the water from the counter, I knocked the damn thing over with my not-so-fine tremor.

Blurb: A beloved daughter. A devastating choice. And now there’s no going back. Four years ago, nineteen-year-old Travis Brown made a choice: to raise his newborn daughter on his own. While most of his friends were out partying and meeting girls, Travis was at home, changing diapers and worrying about keeping food on the table. But he’s never regretted his decision. Bella is the light of his life. The reason behind every move he makes. And so far, she is fed. Cared for. Safe. But when Travis loses his construction job and his home, the security he’s worked so hard to create for Bella begins to crumble…. Then a miracle. A job in Raleigh has the power to turn their fortunes around. It has to. But when Travis arrives in Raleigh, there is no job, only an offer to participate in a onetime criminal act that promises quick money and no repercussions. With nowhere else to turn, Travis must make another choice for his daughter’s sake. Even if it means he might lose her.

 Support Read in a Single Sitting by purchasing The Good Father from

Amazon | Book Depository UK | Book Depository USA | Booktopia | The Nile

See also our other Diane Chamberlain reviews

Find Diane Chamberlain online at her website | Facebook | Twitter

Diane will also be chatting about her new book The Good Father on the BookTrib website on the 31st of May. See  below for more information!

All I can say is that I would have found it rather more interesting if when I was in high school my peers hadn’t passed notes about their crushes and packed lunches, but rather notes that said things like ‘someone in 2Y is a witch’.

Of course, in my school, this probably would’ve just resulted in a bit of reprimanding or a snide remark about not being of the proper character to study law or medicine (the horror!). But at gloomy and oppressive Larwood House, this little note causes a good deal more of a kerfuffle. Witchcraft is a serious, burnable-at-stake offence, after all. It doesn’t, therefore, take long for word to get out about this concise little accusation, and since popularity is negatively correlated with one’s likelihood of being a witch, the attention promptly turns to the class outcasts.

What ensues is a terrific muddle of witchcraft gone wrong, brilliant epistolary asides, hilariously terrible inquisitions (imagine Monty Python-esque roleplays in which characters are asked to play the role of a witch in order to assess their true witchiness), and a sad and sorry subplot of utterly pathetic unrequited love that will have you feeling quite the socially suave individual in comparison.

Against a backdrop of disappearing school shoes, the current class knitting fad and terrible school lunches, Wynne Jones explores in-group and out-group belonging and how easily people clump together against a perceived outcast in order to preserve their own standing. (There’s a brilliant examination of this pecking order provided by one of the characters in a journal entry, where the idea of ‘real’ and ‘unreal’ boys and girls is posited, as well as the sheer danger of overstepping the boundaries allowed by one’s social rank.)

But it’s not only the crowd mentality that gets explored in Witch Week, but also the impact of deficit thinking. Where one of the accused is strident in renouncing his possible witch-hood, another finds herself of the mindset that if people are going to accuse her of being a witch, well, why not indeed be a witch?

There is so much clever, witty stuff going on here, and beneath the humour and zaniness is a very intelligent examination of social structures and how they come to be impressed upon us. Up until the very last few chapters (and I’m going to get spoilery here, but you’re big kids, you can take it) I was having a tremendous time. But of course, this being part of the Chrestomanci series, Chrestomanci must makes his deux ex machina appearance. And what comes next is something I’m rather torn over. It’s brilliant, but it’s also disappointing in a way, in that it negates the very existence of everything we’ve just read.

Still, this quibble aside, Witch Week is Diana Wynne Jones in top form, and I recommend picking up a copy if you haven’t already.

Support Read in a Single Sitting by purchasing Witch Week from

Amazon | Book Depository UK | Book Depository USA | Booktopia | The Nile

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars (excellent)

See our other Diana Wynne Jones reviews

Other books by Diana Wynne Jones:

RIASS stuff:

RIASS is being redesigned! The site is currently in the hands of a graphic designer, and I should have something more beautiful and user-friendly for you soon.

A giveaway of Barry and the Fairies of Miller Street (Aus only, ends 20 May)

An excellent post from author Sue Bursztynski on whether there’s a growing division between boys’ fiction and girls’ fiction

Other bookish stuff:

An interview with Kate Summerscale: ”I don’t think it’s just an accident of fate that I’m writing non-fiction rather than fiction. It suits my way of working and thinking. But I do love reading novels. I’m far more influenced as a writer by my novel reading than by my history reading; to me, the pleasure of reading a novel is the real pleasure of reading.”

Marcus Sedgwick on his new book Midwinterblood, a book written entirely without spaces(kidding, kidding)! “The inspiration for the book is a painting, and I’d first seen this painting 5 years before [writing it]….It depicts a scene, from Norse Sagas, of the sacrifice of King Domaldr during a time of famine and infertility. It’s a masterpiece, and it’s huge. 14 metres wide, you have to crick your neck to gaze at it, far above your head in Stockholm’s National Museet. The central trio of figures are bigger than life-size, and capture the true genius of the painting, that what it shows is not the violence of the sacrifice itself, but the moment just before that violence. The first time I saw it, I knew it told a story and I knew I wanted to write a book inspired by it. But because I didn’t just want to retell what I saw going on in the painting, it took me those five years to wait for the right approach.”

Oi, writers, get a move on! “It used to be that once a year was a big deal,” said Lisa Scottoline, a best-selling author of thrillers. “You could saturate the market. But today the culture is a great big hungry maw, and you have to feed it.”

Salman Rushdie on censorship: “When censorship intrudes on art, it becomes the subject; the art becomes “censored art,” and that is how the world sees and understands it. The censor labels the work immoral, or blasphemous, or pornographic, or controversial, and those words are forever hung like albatrosses around the necks of those cursed mariners, the censored works. The attack on the work does more than define the work; in a sense, for the general public, it becomes the work.”

Andy Robb, author of Geekhood on writing characters: “I’d heard other authors say that characters write themselves – something I’d never really believed. But, as Geekhood started to unfold, I started to see what they mean. I guess it’s a little bit like acting. When you’re doing a theatre show, you sometimes do something differently one night. You’re not changing things because you’re showing-off or being a pain, but because it suddenly makes sense in a way that may not have come to you in rehearsals. These are known as “shadow moves”. These moves may not have anything to do with the script, but they happen because your knowledge of the character deepens with each performance, and you get more comfortable in your character’s shoes.”

Did you just say ‘digital publishing’? Go and wash your mouth out with soap! ”Unfortunately, markets and companies have a lot of control over the direction a word takes, like labelling the non-print versions of books digital. Alternative adjectives include ‘enhanced’… [But] is it helpful to call both ‘enhanced’ ebooks and reformatted print books ebooks? Ebook doesn’t indicate anything about the content or form, nor much about their delivery or technical compatibilities (Amazon or EPUB, DRM or non-DRM for instance).”

Speaking of digital, Truman Capote is heading that way.

The real competition for publishers, booksellers and so on? It’s not Amazon. It’s not reading. “Libraries have, for a very long time, been battling competition from not reading. They’re experts in this area – which is why they made such consistent inroads as an early competitor to booksellers and a thorn-in-the-side of publishers. The not reading competition is now beyond libraries, however…”

Harlequin gives us a handy-dandy glossary of all things erotica (you might want to wait until your boss is out of the room before reading this one)

Melbourne’s iconic Astor is at risk of being shut down. Support the Astor by signing this petition (or by signing up to become a Friend of the Astor. It’s cheap, and it’s awesome!)

Events:

In Sydney this weekend? Head along to this great workshop with award-winning YA author Mal Peet (and stay tuned for our interview with Mal)

Swing by for the announcement of the winner of the Finch Memoir Prize 2012 (worth $10k) and a panel discussion chaired by Fiona Scott Norman and including Susan Duncan, Richard Glover, Jacqueline Kent and the winner.
Date and Time: 19 May, 11:30 – 12:30. Entry is free, no bookings
Venue: Sydney Dance 1, Pier 4/5, Hickson Road, Walsh Bay

Videos:

Brian Kibby of McGraw Hill on the future of ebooks

The book trailer for Archie (aww)

Today’s guest post is kindly provided by author and teacher-librarian Sue Bursztynski

These days there seems to be more division between boys’ and girls’ fiction, at least in the YA category, than when I was growing up or even only a few years ago. Think about books such as John Marsden’s Tomorrow series, which had a huge fandom of both sexes and then think of how many books of which you can say that now.

Harry Potter, certainly, though the last of that series came out a while ago. The Hunger Games books, perhaps, although all of the current borrowers of that series in my own library are girls. They’re adventures and much more, and there’s plenty in them to discuss. The Ranger’s Apprentice series seems to have plenty of fans of both sexes and you can see why. The main character is a boy, but the female characters are all strong and intelligent and, let’s face it, the humour is for everyone – those books are funny! His strong world building also makes it of universal appeal, and perhaps that explains the appeal of other books that are enjoyed by boys and girls alike.

Much of the YA fiction I have encountered recently seems to be for girls. Twilight does have some male fans, but is mostly female-oriented. I remember hearing one boy who’d read it complaining,”Those vampires should be flaming or falling apart in the sun or something and instead they sparkle!” Paranormal romance is – well, romance. These books descend from the Gothic romance of the nineteenth century, with its Byronic hero. And we all know how popular that was and still is. There is so much of it on the market these days, for the benefit of young female readers, but honestly, how can a real boy compete with the modern version of Heathcliff or Rochester and would he want to read a book which reminds him of that?

There are some paranormals seen from the male viewpoint; I’m thinking in particular of Beautiful Creatures, which is about to become a film. In this one, the paranormal teen is the girl, whose boyfriend tells the story. But it is still, oddly, for a female audience.

The dystopian YA novel of today usually has a female protagonist. She is a fighter, has special powers or at least, like the heroine of Veronica Roth’s Divergent, finds she’s very good at something very quickly. She has two or three boys fighting over her and, after she has saved the world, settles down with whichever boy has survived. But the fact these books are for girls is often made clear by the girl in a formal gown on the cover (and that is a topic for a whole other post).

Yet it’s not so much that the novels are about girls as that they’re romances – and the romance is seen from her viewpoint, not his. Gareth Nix’s Old Kingdom trilogy has three strong heroines, but I’ve “sold” those both to boys and girls.  Actually, now I think of it, I’ve had more male takers for these female-led novels than girls! Michael Pryor’s steampunk Laws Of Magic series has gone over well in my library with both sexes. The protagonist is male, but there are also plenty of strong women in the books, young and older. And they are just such entertaining stories! There is some romance, but it doesn’t overwhelm the adventure. So it’s win-win.

Interestingly, Jack Heath’s Hit List is a nonstop adventure thriller with a team in which the girl is the action hero and the boy she cares about is her support geek. I haven’t had it in the library for long, but the current reader is a boy, a reluctant reader.

When I set out to write my novel Wolfborn, I wasn’t thinking of a specific gender for my audience, but I got both. The narrator is a teenage boy caught up in an adventure that could get him killed: the rescue of his lord, who is trapped in wolf shape. I don’t know what readers expecting a standard werewolf urban fantasy romance thought when they opened up something based on a medieval lay; the book’s ratings on Goodreads vary between one star and five, with every rating between. I have been accused of “tacking on” the romance and complimented on my mature unselfish teens who just don’t have time to stop for “lovin’ ” (not much, anyway). There are comments that the action was non-stop and that not enough happened in the first few pages, that there was too much dialogue and not enough, that it was unputdownable and that the reader stopped after eight pages. Dear, dear! I must be doing something right. On Goodreads, it’s been 99 per cent women so far, though I have had some reviews from male bloggers, including a very nice one from Oliver Phommavanh, whose writing couldn’t be more different from mine, but whose day job involves teaching children of both genders.

Kids, on the other hand, have loved it, boys and girls alike. One girl at my school has read it five times and her mother three! There’s a boy who bought his own copy and read it twice before the summer was over, then got it as an ebook and read it some more. Currently there are two boys reading and enjoying it at my school. If I’d made it the tale of a mortal girl and her demon lover or a supernaturally gifted girl and her mortal boyfriend it would have appealed only to girls.

Somehow I seem to receive far more review copies of books for girls than for boys. And looking at what’s on the YA fiction blogs, the girls’ books vastly outnumber those for young men or both.

Pity about that. Hey, wanna buy a book for your fantasy-loving son or daughter?

About the author:

Sue’s blog, The Great Raven, can be found here; she’s also on Twitter. She lives in Melbourne with plenty of pot plants, but no cat. And she think werewolves are much more cuddly than bloodsuckers!

You can purchase Sue’s book Wolfborn from Booktopia | The Nile | Book Depository UK | Book Depository USA | Amazon. More information about the book can also be found on the publisher’s page.

NB: bookshop image taken from here; original source not attributed.

RIASS Stuff:

RIASS is being redesigned! The site is currently in the hands of a graphic designer, and I should have something more beautiful and user-friendly for you soon.

Book review: Out of Sight, Out of Time by Ally Carter, which I thought sacrificed plotting for the sake of pacing. (Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars)

A giveaway of Barry and the Fairies of Miller Street (Aus only, ends 20 May)

Other bookish stuff:

RIP renowned Mexican author Carlos Fuentes

A Twitter bot that tweets in iambic pentameter (now why didn’t my computer nerd husband come up with that?)

John Updike Society buys the author’s childhood home

The Bookseller Awards (UK) have been, er, awarded.

Are these the best-read cities in the US…or merely those who spend a lot of time shopping online?

Hilarious and mostly accurate (needs more drinking) infographic of how a book is born

Megan Burke sums up the brilliant Jeffrey Eugenides event we attended last night courtesy of the Wheeler Centre. My take home gem? That a work is finished when further edits make it worse, not better. My own wrap-up to come later today.

Ian Irvine blogs about the inspiration and process behind his new fantasy novel Vengeance: “Why am I writing a brand new epic fantasy series when my long-suffering readers are constantly asking for the next episode in the Three Worlds saga? I’ve spent two-thirds of my writing life on that 11-book sequence, and by the time I finished the last book, The Destiny of the Dead, in 2008, I was creatively exhausted. I didn’t want to grind out another series, full of reluctance and angst, and let my readers down with a story that wasn’t good enough. When I do write the next episode – the one that finally tells what fate befell Karan and Llian after The Way Between the Worlds – I want to be white-hot with enthusiasm. Also, at the end of each big fantasy series I like to write something completely different, so as to freshen and rejuvenate my writing.”

Getting up close and personal with food with crime novelist Quentin Bates: “Food is a hugely valuable device for a writer. There are few better ways than evoking those aromas and to nail down a sense of location. You can understand why crime writers set their work in exotic locations; India, France, Italy, South Africa, Turkey, South-East Asia. It’s warm pretty much all year round and the food is great. Britain, well… there are chips, sausages and pies, spotted dick, custard, warm beer. That’s not quite true. We Brits do see decent food, contrary to what the rest of the world believes and laughs about, but you have to search it out.”

On adapting books to the big (or small) screen: “All novel-to-screen adaptations engage in the act of condensing narrative. Any book is going to have more room to depict the interior lives of its characters than any film or TV show, and books also aren’t going to be hemmed in by the pesky constraints of budgeting. This usually means that incidents are shorn off from the narrative, or two or three characters are combined into one in the adaptation.”

Jobs and opps:

Have no qualms about skewering some of the world’s greatest literature in the name of fame and fortune? Corrupted Classics wants you!

Heading to RWA in Brisbane in August? Time to get that elevator pitch ready.

Audio:

Anne Sebba, author of That Woman, interviewed on ABC Radio National’s Late Night Live

An interview with Jonah Lehrer about Imagine: the science of creativity

Jeanette Winterson on the Bat Segundo show

Book chat with feminist writer, commentator and tweeter Clementine Ford

Videos:

An interview with Lev Grossman (link via Jami @ Absurdly Nerdly)

The official trailer for Lauren Kate’s Rapture:

Alison Booth discusses A Distant Land:

Animated Shakespearean Insults:

Note: this book review may contain spoilers for other books in the series

When it comes to speedy pacing, I suspect that Ally Carter has few rivals: Rick Riordan may get a look in and Michael Scott may be able to sneak a peek, but by the time they did so Carter would’ve moved on. If you like to wallow in beautiful details and clever subtleties, Carter’s books likely aren’t for you. If, on the other hand, you’re a child of the Twitter generation, struggle to sit through anything longer than a commercial, and got through high school by reading abridged versions of classics, well, you’re probably in your element.

Out of Sight, Out of Time, the fifth instalment in Carter’s best-selling Gallagher Girls series, features all of the frenetic pacing, jokes about disabling operatives using nothing more than an empty tube of toothpaste and a choice phrase in Swahili, and double, triple and quadruple crossings that we’ve come to expect these books. However, despite its breathless pacing, it also shows a more mature side of Carter as an author, with improvements in characterisation and thematic depth.

Where its predecessors followed fairly similar plot progressions not unlike those of the Harry Potter books, Out of Sight, Out of Time differentiates itself immediately by picking up not within the hallowed walls of the Gallagher Academy, but rather in a monastery in the Alps, where protagonist Cammie Morgan has just woken from a coma. This set-up opens up the narrative possibilities available to the author, and makes for a refreshing–albeit not always successful–change in approach.

Carter plays up the coma element with a camp amnesia/sleeper-agent subplot: upon awakening from said monastery, Cammie realises that she’s lost all memory of the past summer, and is determined to retrace her footsteps to fill in the gaps. The result is various around-the-world jaunts, explorations of secret hiding places, revelations about special bits of jewellery and bets being made on whether it’s possible to be a quintuple agent and, if so, what the pay would be like (okay, I made up that last one, but there is at the very least a triple agent in this book, and you’d want some serious danger money coming in if you were in this person’s shoes).

But yet, this outwardly different plotting approach is actually a decoy, with the end result being something akin to Memento: kind of cool when played backwards, but when pieced together, actually a fairly straight-forward narrative. Tricksy! As might be expected given the previous books, the plot can eventually be summarised thusly: the dastardly Circle is out to get Cammie, who must use all of her wiles to remain a step ahead of them at all times whilst simultaneously trying to figure out whom to trust and what on earth happened to her missing father.

It’s fun, and it’s zippy, but even with the amnesia element thrown in, it’s so very familiar. Though the latter few books in the series have offered some welcome character growth, I can’t help but feel that the plot arc is stagnating, offering us only the tiniest of reveals (and the inevitable cliffhanger) upon the completion of each outing. This is particularly true in the case of this volume, which culminates with only the most incremental of plot arc advances.

Moreover, though perhaps it’s the cautious old lady in me, I can’t help but think that a world-renowned organisation of spies would be, oh, just a wee bit more careful when it comes to undertaking their super-secret spy missions. How is it possible that Cammie, despite being in a safe house and surrounded by a half-dozen top-notch spies, is able to end up sleep-walking the streets of Rome? (And indeed, how is this possible even without all of the above security?) Why on earth is Cammie so willing, when raiding a bank vault for an uber-important clue, perfectly willing to trust a random guy who appears out of nowhere (and who may as well have uttered the line, “Why hello there, trusting young girl. I am not at all a suspicious man who wishes to kill you.”)? I understand that Cammie is suffering from memory loss, but goodness, does this go hand in hand with utter disregard for self-preservation*?

The Gallagher Girl books are without a doubt cheery, breezy reads, and I do appreciate the fact that Carter’s characters are diverse, supportive and feminist–and that the love interest is actually a nice chap rather than a moony, oppressive stalker–but I can’t help but feel that a little more rigour needs to be applied in terms of the advancement of the plot.

*If these are the sorts of people heading up our intelligence agencies, it’s no surprise that this case of this MI5 bloke being found zipped up in a suitcase was labelled as “potentially suspicious” only after trying to re-enact the event 300 times.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars (not bad)

With thanks to Hachette Australia for the review copy

 Purchase Out of Sight, Out of Time from

Amazon | Book Depository UK | Book Depository USA | Booktopia | The Nile

See our other Ally Carter reviews

The Gallagher Girls books also appear on our list of YA books about spies

Other books by Ally Carter:

RIASS stuff:

A review of Single Girl Abroad by Kelly Hunter (Rating: 2 out of 5 stars), a romance novel packaged in a chick-lit jacket.

A giveaway of Barry and the Fairies of Miller Street (Aus only, ends 20 May)

Other bookish stuff:

Rebecca Solnit talks The Hunger Games, real and fictional: “So skip work, flip a bird at the Capitol, commit your deepest love and solidarity to the young whose lives are being gambled away, feed the hungry, take a long look at how beautiful our planet still is, find your way into solidarity and people power, and dream big about other futures. Resistance is one of your obligations, but it’s also a pleasure and a way of stealing back hope.”

Q&A with Glenn Orgias, author of Man in a Grey Suit, and chap who totally jumped the shark: “I wanted it to be evocative and honest, and, to be frank, I wanted it to be a compelling read that was written well. I never wanted to write a memoir, but then I got attacked by a shark, and the opportunity seemed to be right up in my face. So, I hoped I could write a decent memoir and use it as a springboard into writing novels.”

Q&A with Jane Higgins, author of The Bridge: “I wanted him [Nik] to be of that unspecified ethnicity but I hope people realise he is brown. When you look at who are the marginalised – the refugees and asylum seekers – very often they have a brown face. I wanted to give the idea that Cityside was multicultural but actually people with brown faces were likely to be looked at twice.”

Canadians are into crime: “But Laukkanen is merely the hottest Canadian author in a season when the country’s mysteries and thrillers are a red hot commodity. The Canadian quotient is represented in a handful of authors this spring who are, like Laukkanen, first crime novelists, but more impressive is the number of homegrown writers with second crime novels on the market.”

Henry Miller on Originality: “And your way, is it really your way?…What, moreover, can you call your own? The house you live in, the food you swallow, the clothes you wear — you neither built the house nor raised the food nor made the clothes….The same goes for your ideas. You moved into them ready-made.”

Unexplored dystopias? Really, there’s such thing? (Notable highlights include Canada Rising and Micro-Managing Brother)

A free short story set in Marissa Meyer’s Cinder universe.

Jennifer Egan’s PEN book bag

Hey, look, that’s totally my TBR pile!

The Kibble Literary Award shortlist has been announced

Twitter to start emailing users the top stories from their feed.

A music playlist for The Year of the Gadfly

Win a John Green prize pack (Canadians only)

Audio:

What is steampunk anyway? See Michael Pryor’s discussion on Radio National.

Video:

Neil Grant discusses his novel The Ink Bridge:

Neil Gaiman on that oft-asked question–from where an author gets his or her ideas.

Cover reveal: Protecting Truth by Michelle Warren, author of Wanderdust

Michelle has also kindly let us know that she’s offering a special deal on the first in the trilogy–for a limited time, the Kindle edition of Wanderdust (see below for the trailer) is only 99c.

Michelle can be found online at her website; on Facebook; on Goodreads and on Twitter.

The more I review, the more I realise how important a book’s cover is. Not simply because I’m the kind of reader who equates a beautiful cover with a brilliant read (I’ve been burnt a few times for succumbing to that particular lure), but because a cover is such an integral part of branding. Particular cover designs are associated with particular types of books, and heavily influence a reader’s expectations. When a cover fails to effectively communicate what the book is about, the reader suffers from a disconnect in terms of the product they thought they were buying, and the one actually purchased.

This is my long-winded way of saying that although Kelly Hunter’s Single Girl Abroad looks for all the world like a chick-lit novel, it’s not at all. Though in tone it features some of the elements of a chick-lit, structurally it’s a contemporary romance. More bewilderingly, as I found out halfway through the book, it’s actually a two-in-one.  Despite the blurb breezily and blithely describing Aussie Madeline Delacourte as a lass who’s “having the time of her life in Singapore…young free, and absolutely single…rich-as-rich-can-be [want wanting] for nothing, especially not an annoyingly complicated relationship”, the book has nothing to do with Singapore Slings and the Raffles Hotel, and everything to do with our heroine committing to a monogamous relationship with a view to marriage.

Madeline is indeed exceptionally wealthy, but she’s deeply ambivalent about her wealth, seeking instead the possibility of love and acceptance in the arms of another rather than her bottomless bank account. Upon meeting Luke Bennett (on page two, which was my first clue that this was indeed a romance novel, and not a chick-lit), a fellow Aussie who spends his days brawling with his karate instructor brother and, er, defusing bombs, she’s quite promptly struck by Cupid’s arrow, and various shenanigans in lifts and anywhere with a moderately comfortable surface follow. What, however, threatens to tear the two apart is not the fancy-free existence the blurb would tell us that Madeline leads, but rather her fear that Luke’s line of work will have a less than pleasant outcome–not to mention the fact that blokey Luke feels emasculated by Madeline’s wealth. It’s a larger than life story featuring a good deal of witty repartee, foodie descriptions,  and sports cars, but suffers from a setting that’s depicted in broad-brush strokes and from black and white, caricature-esque characterisation.

Still, the romantic tussle between Madeline and Luke is a good deal more fun than that which follows in the second story in this volume. This latter story follows Luke’s dojo-owning brother Jacob and his estranged wife Jianne as they try to extricate Jianne from the sights of a creepy stalker, whilst most certainly not rekindling their steamy relationship in the meantime. While the dynamics between Jacob and Jianne feature all of the back-and-forth (ahem, mind out of the gutter) characteristic of a romance novel, the romance element of the book is undermined by the slightly ridiculous machinations of the Mr Stalker Man, who expresses his love through such methods as sending Jianne a wedding dress and sending Jacob a Thai kung fu master to take his classes and kick his butt. If you’re scratching your head after reading that, well, I’m afraid we had a similar reaction. Where Madeline and Luke’s story is campy and silly but able to be taken with a cup or two of salt, this one stretches things rather too far, leaving the reader rather wishing to return to some semblance of reality.

It’s not all bad, however: there are a couple of secondary characters, such as the young street boy Po and the cranky housekeeper Yun, who inject some fun into all of the drama, and it’s a somewhat welcome relief to read a reversal of the typical billionaire male magnate and female subordinate love match. I would’ve liked to have seen the Singapore setting put to better use, and to have seen a more thoughtful and believable approach to the stalker element in the second volume, however. (And a side note: one can’t help but wonder whether the phrase “said quietly” was globally replaced by “murmured”, as I have never in my life seen the word used so many times in a single book. We’re talking up to three times a page here.)

Single Girl Abroad is a light read that offers plenty of humour and some sizzling romance, but potential readers should note that the book’s packaging is not at all representative of what’s inside: this is a contemporary romance (well, two) through and through.

Rating: 2 out of 5 stars (okay)

With thanks to Mills & Boon for the review copy

Support Read in a Single Sitting by purchasing Single Girl Abroad from

Amazon | Book Depository UK | Book Depository USA | Booktopia | The Nile

Other books by Kelly Hunter:

RIASS stuff:

A giveaway of Barry and the Fairies of Miller Street (Aus only, ends 20 May)

A review of Margaret Drabble’s The Millstone, an examination of unmarried motherhood in 1960s England. (Rating: 4 out of 5 stars)

Other bookish stuff:

Adrienne Kress on female characters (aka “characters”): “A female character is seen as female first, person second.  I realised this while working on Waiting for Godot (I was playing Vladimir). The role I was playing was typically played by a man, and had a male name, and clearly was meant originally to be performed by a man.  But it didn’t matter if it really was a man.  There was no discussion in the play about being a man, about manliness (whatever that is).  He was a cypher for ideas.  He was an everyman.  Almost more of a thing than a gender.  And I wondered, could such a character exist and just happen to be female?”

Why are attics so appealing to authors? ”So just what does an attic do that other rooms can’t? A dining room, for example, or a nice ground floor lounge? An attic is more than just a useful storage space…I’ll be honest. As a child, the thought of being able to creep from house to house through the upper loft space was somehow appealing. Illegal? Likely. Sinister? Maybe. But breathtakingly appealing, nonetheless.”

The always brilliant historical YA author Mary Hooper goes exploring gravestones: “When we moved to our present house I was very happy to find that it overlooked a church, because one of my favourite things to do is trail around a churchyard reading the epitaphs on the stones. I don’t much like new graves, mind you, I find them too stark and shiny, too suburban. What I like are mouldering stone, avenging angels, covered urns and broken columns with a few twists of ivy – just enough to reveal an epitaph which will give a frisson of fearful anticipation.”

The Maurice Sendak tributes continue, this one from Art Spiegelman: “I think Sendak invested his work with the understanding that the distinction between children and adults is probably one of hypocrisy more than anything else. And ultimately what has become important to me over the years is watching the line between adulthood and childhood being erased in our culture. And whatever class anxiety, status anxiety that might have come with feeling like, ‘Oh, gee he wasn’t getting to be a full grownup by being an artist working for children’—obviously, Sendak didn’t have contempt for the work he was doing, he made it fully, and now it can be seen fully.”

Broadthink launches Broadlit: “Broadthink, a boutique branding and new business development media company, is bringing the world of vintage and new romance content to the underserved target market of women through its newest company BroadLit. By combining the popular genre of romance with the emerging world of new media technology BroadLit is putting a new slant on romance and delivering it to today’s women. With the launch of its online romance hub TruLOVEstories.com, BroadLit is featuring ebooks, casual digital games, customised avatars, licensed merchandise, and other features to fulfil every romance seekers desire for more.”

Rachael Johns on editing for the international market: “What I find most fascinating about my Carina edits is the words/phrases I’m asked to change because they are too Aussie. It’s strangely fascinating because I’d never have thought of myself as having a particularly Aussie slang dialogue – my family is British and I think this has influenced a lot of my speaking habits, at least I thought it had.”

Charlotte from Charlotte’s Library gives us her favourite cat books

This year’s Aurealis Award winners have been announced

Visualising the meals in Murakami’s 1Q84 (see also our review)

Are these the 10 best historical novels?

It’s been announced that the thirteenth and final book in the Sookie Stackhouse series is titled Dead Ever After, and will go on sale May 2 2013.

Bookish videos:

M&B editor Flo talks us through her latest adventure with Medical Romance book, The Nurse’s Not-So-Secret Scandal by Wendy S. Marcus

The trailer for Mary Hooper’s Velvet (see also our review):