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...and welcome to the website for Raven Books, Blackrock. You'll find a variety of books, book-related news, a posting celebrating writers and writing, and plenty of suggestions for what to read next.  We hope you enjoy browsing! (This site is best viewed using Firefox)


February 4th

Today is the birthday of Russell Hoban, born in Pennsylvania in 1925.  After serving in the Philippines and Italy during WWII, he worked as an illustrator and as an advertising copywriter before writing and illustrating the first of many children's books, including his series about Frances, a temperamental young badger.  In 1969 he moved to England where he remained until his death last December. Most of his adult novels were set wholly or partly in contemporary London.  Often described as a fantasy or science fiction writer, only two of his novels, Turtle Diary (1975) and The Bat Tattoo (2002), were without supernatural elements.  A common theme for Hoban was the development of a relationship between two characters, drawn together over a mutual obsession or artistic interest.  Turtle Diary, adapted for the screen by Harold Pinter, revolved around two lonely Londoners - played by Ben Kingsley and Glenda Jackson - who decide to release giant sea turtle from London Zoo and return them to the ocean.

On February 4th, Hoban's fans celebrate his birthday by writing down favourite quotes from his books on sheets of yellow A4 paper and leaving them in public places, so far recorded in 46 cities across 14 countries.




Waiting For Sunrise,
William Boyd

Vienna. 1913. It is a fine day in August when Lysander Rief, a young English actor, walks through the city to his first appointment with the eminent psychiatrist, Dr. Bensimon. Sitting in the waiting room he is anxiously pondering the nature of his problem when an extraordinary woman enters. She is clearly in distress, but Lysander is immediately drawn to her strange, hazel eyes and her unusual, intense beauty.

Later the same day they meet again, and a more composed Hettie Bull introduces herself as an artist and sculptor, and invites Lysander to a party hosted by her lover, the famous painter Udo Hoff. Compelled to attend and unable to resist her electric charm, they begin a passionate love affair. Life in Vienna becomes tinged with the frisson of excitement for Lysander. He meets Sigmund Freud in a café, begins to write a journal, enjoys secret trysts with Hettie and appears to have been cured.

London, 1914. War is stirring, and events in Vienna have caught up with Lysander. Unable to live an ordinary life, he is plunged into the dangerous theatre of wartime intelligence – a world of sex, scandal and spies, where lines of truth and deception blur with every waking day. Lysander must now discover the key to a secret code which is threatening Britain’s safety, and use all his skills to keep the murky world of suspicion and betrayal from invading every corner of his life.

Moving from Vienna to London’s west end, the battlefields of France and hotel rooms in Geneva, Waiting for Sunrise is a feverish and mesmerising journey into the human psyche, a beautifully observed portrait of wartime Europe, a plot-twisting thriller and a literary tour de force from the bestselling author of Any Human Heart, Restless and Ordinary Thunderstorms.



The Detour,
Gerbrand Bakker

A Dutch woman rents a remote farm in rural Wales. She says her name is Emilie. She is a lecturer doing some research, and sets about making the farmhouse more homely. When she arrives there are ten geese living in the garden but one by one they disappear. Perhaps it's the work of a local fox.

She has fled from an unbearable situation having recently confessed to an affair with one of her students. In Amsterdam, her stunned husband forms a strange partnership with a detective who agrees to help him trace her. They board the ferry to Hull on Christmas Eve.

Back on the farm, a young man out walking with his dog injures himself and stays the night, then ends up staying longer. Yet something is deeply wrong. Does he know what he is getting himself into? And what will happen when her husband and the policeman arrive?

Gerbrand Bakker has made the territories of isolation, inner turmoil and the solace offered by the natural world his own. The Detour is a deeply moving new novel, shot through with longing and the quiet tragedy of everyday lives.
Ramblings

Think On This

I must get some Evening Primrose Oil or else we’ll all suffer from her foul temper. Now that she’s coming home to stay, we’ve got to take all necessary steps.... read on


And I Quote...
Let us read and let us dance - two amusements that will never do any harm to the world ~ Voltaire



In Consent of the Networked, Rebecca MacKinnon investigates how the governments and corporations that control the digital world can impinge on civil liberties.


You wouldn't necessarily think of a cancer support group as a place where teens meet and fall in love  in The Fault in Our Stars, the latest from author John Green.


Why it's healthy to move outside you reading comfort zone and try a new author.



Where do I write best? Out – where someone’s keeping an eye on me - author of The Art of Fielding, Chad Harbach on his writing habits.



John Lloyd reviews four books on Russia, and Putin’s grip on power.


  Poetry Corner

Of The Terrible Doubt Of Appearances
by Walt Whitman

Of the terrible doubt of appearances,
Of the uncertainty after all, that we may be deluded,
That may-be reliance and hope are but speculations after all,
That may-be identity beyond the grave is a beautiful fable only,
May-be the things I perceive, the animals, plants, men, hills, shining and flowing waters,
The skies of day and night, colors, densities, forms, may-be these are (as doubtless they are) only apparitions, and the real something has yet to be known,
(How often they dart out of themselves as if to confound me and mock me!
How often I think neither I know, nor any man knows, aught of them,)
May-be seeming to me what they are (as doubtless they indeed but seem) as from my present point of view, and might prove (as of course they would) nought of what they appear, or nought anyhow, from entirely changed points of view;
To me these and the like of these are curiously answer'd by my lovers, my dear friends,
When he whom I love travels with me or sits a long while holding me by the hand,
When the subtle air, the impalpable, the sense that words and reason hold not, surround us and pervade us,
Then I am charged with untold and untellable wisdom, I am silent, I require nothing further,
I cannot answer the question of appearances or that of identity beyond the grave,
But I walk or sit indifferent, I am satisfied,
He ahold of my hand has completely satisfied me.


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