Deceptions

If something looks easy but is actually difficult, is it "deceptively easy" or "deceptively difficult"? I had one of those moments when writing it the other day and now both alternatives look wrong in that way that anything does when you examine it closely. Anyway. A madly tenuous connection can be drawn between this, the post title and the first book here, or you can use it to refer to my equally tenuous belief that I can keep up in a remotely timely fashion with this blog.

( Michelle Magorian, Cuckoo in the Nest. )

( Naomi Novik, Black powder war Naomi Novik, Throne of Jade Naomi Novik, Empire of Ivory. )

( Betty Cavanna, Almost like sisters. )

( Matthew Reilly, Six sacred stones. )

Onwards

Any connections between the following are left as an exercise for the reader.

( Morris Gleitzman, Bumface. )

( Up with the Joneses, Penelope Balogh. )

( Gillian Bradshaw, Island of Ghosts (re-read). )

( Evelyn Waugh, Scoop. )

( EM Forster, A Room with a View. )

( Diana Gabaldon, Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade. )

and furthermore...

( Dick King-Smith, The Water Horse. )

( Michael Morpurgo, The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips. )

( Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe. )

( Thomas Disch, On Wings of Song. )

..in (temporary) conclusion

I should have paid more attention to the blurb on this, which uses the phrases "an intelligent boy on the edge of sexuality" and "a sensual world ruled by an alien intelligence" and translated them into "group sex with aliens on page 21", which would have stopped me from trying to read this at the hairdresser and having to rapidly abandon it for ageing issues of Hello. Anyway. Learn from my experience. ( Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Catalyst (more spoilers here than other reviews, because I had problems with it) )

( Ysabel S Wilce, Flora Segunda: Being the magickal mishaps of a girl of spirit, her glass-gazing sidekick, two ominous butlers (one blue), a house with eleven thousand rooms and a red dog. )

( Frank Beddor, The Looking-Glass Wars. )

( Stephen Donaldson, Fatal Revenant. )