Book Challenge Day 7

Day 7 of 7: I've accepted a challenge from Ali Williams who is obviously as nosey as I am about the books that people love! Each day for seven days, I will post the cover of a book I love with no explanation (well, maybe a little comment if I feel like saying something!)and no reviews. Each day I'm supposed to invite a friend to join the challenge. I'll pass on the 'tagging' bit of this because I know how sometimes it can be a bit too much to take on something else - but if any friend cares to join in (yes - I really am nosey, just dodging the issue!) the please tag me to let me know so that I can visit your Facebook page and satisfy my curiosity - and maybe collect a few new titles for my mountainous TBR pile - like that is something I really need!

The last book for the last day of this challenge . . . what can I choose? I could easily pick another 7 - or more - but this one is a personal pick for me. The blurb on the back says:

Passion for the Park is a celebration of the ordinary lover of the beautiful game, the dedicated lads who turn out week after week in the hope of beating another works team. In park football the kit is never washed, there is no spare ball, studs are never inspected, there are holes in the goal-netting, the referee is always looking the wrong way, and the only spectators are an old man and his dog. This funny and irreverent memoir charts the author's own undistinguished football career, playing for two Sunday league teams and idolising Don Revie's Leeds United, and his attempts to inspire steelworks apprentices with a love for English literature.

Why did I choose this one - well, in the words of a certain Bronte heroine - Reader I married him!🙂 And as August 1st is Yorkshire Day -- I thought I should mark it a little early with a book set in God's Own County.

Book Challenge Day 6

Day 6 of 7 - I've accepted the challenge from Ali Williams to post the cover of a book I love every day for 7 days than this one.

. Well, today there couldn't be any other book than this one:

I was just ten years old and living just a few miles away from Haworth where the Bronte sisters grew up when one day, at school, to distract us - appropriately enough - from the wild thunderstorm outside, the teacher started to tell us the story of Wuthering Heights. We only ever heard the start of the story - up to the moment when Heathcliff turned his back on Cathy and walked away to make his fortune - so I didn't know what happened until I found a copy on my mother's bookshelves and found out what happened in the rest of the book. I was hooked instantly - and have been hooked ever since.

If you read my post of a couple of weeks ago, you'll know that I was part of a panel on Romance and The Brontes for the Romantic Novelists Association- not that I think Wuthering Heights is a romance, it's a book about passion, power and possession - and that I wrote my MA thesis on the childhood writings of Emily and Charlotte and their influence on the adult books the sisters wrote. I even wrote my own tribute to Wuthering Heights as a Modern Romance called The Return of the Stranger.

So today there can really only be one book that I'm posting about. I do still have the small, dark blue Nelson Classics edition of Wuthering Heights - the one that saw me through both my degree and my MA - and was used by my mother in her degree studies too. It's full of scribbled notes by both of us - well it was a study aid! But today I'm posting the treasure that a very special friend gave me because she knew how much I loved the book. It was enough of an amazing gift 30+ years ago - but now of course it's over 30 years older and even more antique. In fact even this book is 160 years old this year!

Happy 200th Birthday, Emily Bronte! I just I had the time to sit and reread your amazing novel - and some of your magnificent poetry - to celebrate the big day., today there couldn't be any other book than this one.

Book Challenge Day 5

I forgot to post this yesterday when it was  due - though I put it on my Facebook page for Sunday.  So this is a little catch up before I post  the book for July 30th, which is a rather special one. 

Day 5 of 7: I've accepted a challenge fromAli Williams who is obviously as nosey as I am about the books that people love! Each day for seven days, I will post the cover of a book I love with no explanation (well, maybe a little comment if I feel like saying something!)and no reviews.

 Each day I'm supposed to invite a friend to join the challenge. I'll pass on the 'tagging' bit of this because I know how sometimes it can be a bit too much to take on something else - but if any friend cares to join in (yes - I really am nosey, just dodging the issue!) the please tag me to let me know so that I can visit your Facebook page and satisfy my curiosity - and maybe collect a few new titles for my mountainous TBR pile - like that is something I really need!

Today's book is more - well - today's author. I really didn't know how to choose one of Michelle Reid's books. But again I'm going to cheat - the first book A Passionate Scandal is the first book I ever talked about with Michelle - when I first met her over 24 years ago. The other - well, it's just a favourite. As are so many of Michelle Reid's romances. So I'm not really choosing a book - but an author and a friend.

Book Challenge 3

Day 3 of 7: I've accepted a challenge from  who is obviously as nosey as I am about the books that people love! Each day for seven days, I will post the cover of a book I love with no explanation (well, maybe a little comment if I feel like saying something!)and no reviews. Each day I'm supposed to invite a friend to join the challenge. I'll pass on the 'tagging' bit of this because I know how sometimes it can be a bit too much to take on something else - but if any friend cares to join in (yes - I really am nosey, just dodging the issue!) the please tag me to let me know so that I can visit your Facebook page and satisfy my curiosity - and maybe collect a few new titles for my mountainous TBR pile - like that is something I really need!
Today's book is a bit of a cheat - it's what I'd call my Desert Island book if I was ever put on Desert Island Discs and had to choose one book to take with me.

One book?! 😯

I would have to ask for the whole series to be in one collected volume so I could

take all six with me! I could quite happily read all 6 books through and then go back and start at the beginning. A complex historical novel with a complex and ambiguous hero - spying, intrigue, betrayal - kings, queens, Knights Templar, battles . . . . And at the centre of it all an amazing, heart twisting love story.

Remember those photos with friends and fellow authors posing as the heroine for my book A Proposal To Secure His Vengeance? Well now the editors are getting in on the act - Raoul Cardini had better watch out because Flo Nicoll is Senior Editor for Presents and she won't take any nonsense from any hero - alpha or not!

I thinks she works very well as  my heroine Imogen O'Sullivan because she's much as I have described  Imogen.

Book Challenge 2

From my Facebook page

Day 2 of 7: I've accepted a challenge from Ali Williams who is obviously as nosey as I am about the books that people love! Each day for seven days, I will post the cover of a book I love with no explanation (well, maybe a little comment if I feel like saying something!)and no reviews.

 Each day I'm supposed to invite a friend to join the challenge. I'll pass on the 'tagging' bit of this because I know how sometimes it can be a bit too much to take on something else - but if any friend cares to join in (yes - I really am nosey, just dodging the issue!) the please tag me to let me know so that I can visit your Facebook page and satisfy my curiosity - and maybe collect a few new titles for my mountainous TBR pile - like that is something I really need! 

The only comment I have (need to make) on this book is that it was old when I first read it - honest! Another decidedly ambiguous hero!!