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Looking at my list of books read, I'm quite far behind on talking about books of interest. Here's a quicky update on some of them:

Josephine Tey’s The Franchise Affair was another excellent mystery. This one is about a country solicitor whose peaceful life is interrupted when he called in to help two local women who are accused of kidnapping a girl. The girl can describe the women and their house accurately, and her story appears to be without any holes, but the solicitor is convinced the local women are innocent. It didn’t press as many of my personal buttons as Brat Farrar but was still a great read where the central mystery was well mixed with descriptions of country life and a little romance.

As I’ve already told some of you, I took Sherwood Smith’s King’s Shield with my on my holidays and was dismayed by how the story sucked me in – I finished it far too quickly and had to scrabble around for new books! So I guess it’s obvious that I enjoyed it greatly. Less piratical activity but lots of battles and hints of interesting things ahead!

I’m giving up on Elizabeth Goudge’s adult romances. The middle window was so treacly sweet that I think I only finished due to its relatively short length (apologies, gauroth - although I think you liked this as a teen?). It’s amazing how heavy handed the sentimentality is in her adult books compared to her children’s ones.

By contrast, the final Elizabeth Enright Melendy book, A spiderweb for two was sweet but tempered with a good eye for realistic family relationships. This featured the two youngest Melendys, who are desolate at being left at home as their older siblings attend boarding school. But the year passes quickly after they receive a series of clues on a treasure hunt around their house, garden and local countryside. As with the other books in the series (a great find of this year) a comfortable, enjoyable read.

OK, my break from blogging about books has resulted in me now wanting to write about lots of books but knowing I won’t have time! And everything has been mad enough this week that I think it’s safest to start with some quick thoughts on a very disparate bunch and write more entries (hopefully!) over the next few days.

First up is The Secret Policeman by Kate Thompson. This Irish children’s fantasy novel won the Guardian’s children book prize and the Whitbread Children's prize in 2005 (hey, better to read it a few years late than never). The secret policeman starts by describing a world that is running out of time. Children don’t have time to relax, adults don’t have time to get everything done, even the school bus is always late despite the best efforts of its driver. Soon it becomes apparent that there are faeries involved. I enjoyed the folklore feel of the novel but didn't really feel overly attached to the characters. One unusual touch, that I assume would be even cooler if I were a musician, is pieces of music at the front of each chapter. Overall, I enjoyed it but wouldn’t have been my first pick for the prizes.

And onto a different type of secret in Diana Peterfreund’s Secret Society Girl. This book tells the story of 20 year old Amy, who is unexpectedly tapped for an exclusive secret society of her Ivy League (fictionalised Yale) college and soon faces a range of challenges. The story is fun but not particularly suspenseful in itself - this would be a great holiday read particularly for people who enjoy reading about college experiences as Peterfreund added in lots of background detail. What probably made the book most enjoyable to me was the extreme sarcasm of the main character!

I undestand now why everyone is squeeing about Elizabeth Enright’s The Saturdays and its sequels being in print again. I can see why it became a classic childhood read for so many people. The situation in The Saturdays is something I would have loved as a child: four siblings decide to pool their pocket money so every fourth Saturday one of them will have enough money to go and do something they really want to do. They get to do it alone (this idea alone would have sucked me in, I loved my younger sisters, but a day out without them? So special!) and don’t even have to tell the others what they did. This book was reminiscent of Nesbit without the fantasy, maybe because of the close-knit yet realistic family and the generally old-fashioned feel.

Writing fiction is a tricky business. When you write a novel, you're writing a lie, but it has to seem real to be considered good.

And authors can lie about their identities, too. Writers have long used pseudonyms. This type of "lie" is a literary tradition for certain types of novels--novels that touch on real people, novels that address hot topics like sex and drugs, novels that are controversial in subject-matter.

So what happens when an author writes a novel that seems totally real, uses a pseudonym, and starts attracting a lot of attention? If she makes the mistake of pretending to be the pseudonymous person, she can get sued for fraud. WashingtonPostReportsOnJTLeroy

And made to pony up the expenses paid by the company that bought the movie rights to the book. KTVUreports

The pseudonym was supposed to be a young boy, sexually exploited, telling his fictionalized account, but turns out to be a woman, who was sexually exploited, telling her fictionalized account.

I'm all for the truth, but somehow, writing a NOVEL and using a pseudonym, doesn't seem sufficient to entitle a company to think that it's buying something that is true, and then sue and win on a fraud claim.

But there's a lesson for all writers here. That line between fiction and truth--it can be blurred, must be blurred, for the novel, but it better be bright and clean on the signed contract.