gemkarita

Cliveden Literary Festival: History, Politics, and Decadence at Cliveden House

4th September 2017 by gemkarita Leave a Comment

Cliveden House Hotel (photo from Luxurious Magazine)

One of my many interests is visiting stately homes and historic residences. There’s a few of them in London, but the remarkably grand ones are outside the capital, far from any form of public transport. Palatial houses come with extensive grounds and beautiful gardens after all.

My husband and I keep a list of houses we want to visit but we’ve never come across Cliveden House. It is jointly owned and looked after by the National Trust and Iconic Luxury Hotels. The former handles the gardens and the grounds while the latter manages the house as a luxury hotel.

So why a literary festival at Cliveden House? That would involve some history-telling, so bear with me and I’ll try to keep this as short as possible!…

On The Nightstand: Mirror, Shoulder, Signal

23rd August 2017 by gemkarita Leave a Comment

Mirror, Shoulder, Signal was written by Danish author Dorthe Nors and translated to English by Misha Hoesktra for Pushkin Press. It was shortlisted for the 2017 ManBooker International Prize and tells the story of Sonja, a forty-year-old woman living in Copenhagen, single and away from family. Sonja was born in the rural area of Jutland and fled to the capital in an attempt to make something of herself, be something else other than the typical narrative of girls who were born and grown up in the area and has never left its confines.

I finished it in two to three days. Granted, I had an off day from work where I did nothing but read, but it is also a short book. With its bright tones and very relatable topic to most readers, is this the summer read to take with you to the beach?

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From the Publisher’s Desk: Yesterday

10th August 2017 by gemkarita Leave a Comment

Summer 2016 I hear about this book written by a female author from Southeast Asia with a very interesting concept:

There are two types of people in the world: those who can only remember yesterday (Monos), and those who can also recall the day before (Duos). You have just one lifeline to the past: your diary. Each night, you write down the things that matter. Each morning, your diary tells you where you were, who you loved and what you did.

Today, the police are at your door. They say that the body of your husband’s mistress has been found in the River Cam. They think your husband killed her two days ago.

Can you trust the police? Can you trust your husband? Can you trust yourself?

Felicia Yap grew up in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and studied biochemistry at Imperial College London, then earned a doctorate in history at Cambridge University. …

Books I Planned To Read For the First Half of 2017

4th July 2017 by gemkarita 1 Comment

Last week’s Top Ten Tuesday (which is sadly on holiday — how will we survive?!) was about the best books you’ve read during the first half of 2017. Unfortunately, I am unable to recall off the top of my head anything that absolutely stands out (I’m blaming depression and anxiety for this). I had to check my Goodreads shelves, and I don’t have enough to make a full list of ten books!

However, I have enough in my TBR list of books that have been published since January of this year here in the UK that I have been planning to read but still haven’t gotten to. (Is this a familiar story or what?) …

From the Publisher’s Desk: See What I Have Done

27th June 2017 by gemkarita 2 Comments

See What I Have Done is the debut novel of Australian author Sarah Schmidt about the famous axe murders in 1892 at Massachusetts, USA, famously thought to have been committed by a woman named Lizzie Borden, who was the victims’ daughter (and stepdaughter, if we want to be really technical). Lizzie was acquitted but remains to be the prime suspect — everyone is convinced she was the murderer, and it remains a subject of speculation more than a century after the events.

Sarah was inspired to tell write a book about this more than a decade ago from a pamphlet she found at a secondhand bookshop. …