Good book

Domenica De Rosa's Summer School is like eating a box of chocolates and drinking a glass of wine while relaxing in the sun. It is about 7 ill assorted people attending a creative writing course in Tuscany. The characters are all believable and the dialogue is well written with touches of humour. The text is interspersed with extracts from diaries and pieces of creative writing. My favourite character was Mary - 74 years old spinster and retired civil servant, but all the characters are interesting including Patricia the owner of the castello where the event is held.

Some of the characters achieve their dream while others achieve things they could never even have dreamed of before the course. The book is almost as good as attending such a course yourself and there are lots of creative writing tips. I loved it. I think the overall standard of such books is improving and I seem to find more and more which are up to this high standard. The boundary between chick lit and literary fiction is becoming even more blurred - which can only be a good thing.

The Hit List

I finished reading Anne Brooke's 'The Hit List' last night. If you want something a bit different - though not in the same vein as 'Pink Champagne and Apple Juice' by the same author - then go for 'The Hit List'. Jamie is doing sterling work looking after his cantankerous elderly father and running his own business from home. His half brother, Mark, the apple of his father's eye, is working in Japan.
One of Jamie's friends from University returns to the village in Suffolk where he and his father live. But David appears to be gay, which he definitely never used to be - which worries Jamie - who soon adds him to his hit list of people he really needs to do away with to improve his quality of life. Then there is Robert - Mark's former boss - who turns up after six years away. The reason for his absence only becomes clear as the story progresses.
Naturally his father who is always comparing him unfavourably with Mark is top of the hit list. I was on tenterhooks wondering how and when Jamie was going to succeed in carrying out his list. The sexuality of many of the main characters is constantly in doubt which adds to the drama. It is not a comfortable book though there are many moments of comedy.

I am also reading - in complete contrast - Carole Matthews' 'The Chocolate Lovers' Diet'. This is chick lit though it does have a bite to it, apart from the chocolate, with a suicide because of huge debts, a drug problem and its effects on immediate family, and two gay men running a chocolate themed cafe . The book has a feel good factor to it with its emphasis on the power of female freindship.

What's next on the list to be read? John Cowper Powys 'A Glastonbury Romance'; Anne Brooke 'A Dangerous Man'; John Mortimer 'The Anti Social behaviour of Horace Rumpole', Erica James 'Tell it to the Skies' - the pile is growing ever taller. I know I buy books at a faster rate than I read them, so eventually I'm liable to disappear under a pile of unread books!! To stop that happening I'm off to decide what to read next.