Sunday Salon

It's a strange thing when you read a book whilst trying to imagine the awe and wonder of the child reader and essential to my reading of The Battle for Gullywith by Susan Hill today was the presence of my tortoise (not a real one I hasten to add.)
This will all become clear when you read the book.Mine has green jewel eyes when they should really be topaz but needs must.
I hunted high and low and eventually found it on the shelf right by my desk just as I was about to head loft-ward.
The Tinker bought me this when I was about six, perhaps seven and to say I adored it would be an understatement.So it has sat there in front of me all day, looking suitably chipped and battle-worn, as I read a book that is going to be in the bookshops in April and one I will write more about on the blog soon.
Suffice to say this has been a completely satisfying reading day and this book over the last few days an absolute joy.It deserves to do very well indeed and I'm sure it will. In fact thinking about it, just look what a mess I've made of that proof copy, it could have been worth a fortune one day.
But how awful if it had been terrible? What would I have said? Hmm, quite good, nice story.
In fact with this and Elizabeth Baines my first Sunday Salon day could have gone horribly wrong and left a load of blank space on here.
However I know Susan well enough now to have said so, nicely, she does indeed have the broadest shoulders I've ever met this side of an American football pitch ( well, authorial shoulders, you know what I mean ) and she would have expected no less.
As The Battle for Gullywith reached its nerve-jangling and very exciting denouement I needed a break...or really I actually didn't want it to end, so I made a good start on The Equivoque Principle by Darren Craske and published by The Friday Project and this one has huge promise after just thirty pages so it's onto my next week's reading pile.So much mystery and intrigue has been floated around already and all based around Victorian London and the arrival of Dr Marvello's Travelling Circus, plus talk about characters! A memorable eight foot tall mute giant who hasn't been able to utter a word and an Inuit called Butter.
It's been an exhausting day flouting the evil forces and even Dancing on Ice would be too tense for me to watch now, but I've had a wonderful first week in The Sunday Salon, I'm sure I'll be a regular from now on, and whoever made that sponge cake, it was lovely.