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Kay Sexton

goodreads author profile

gender

female

website

http://writingneuroses.blogspot.com

member since

June 2007

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books by Kay Sexton

avg rating: 4.62 | 16 ratings | 2 reviews | 3 distinct works | 1 fan

	Two Tall Tales and One Short Novel: Anthology of Shorter Fiction by Lucy Fry, Kay Sexton (Goodreads author) , Heidi James avg rating 4.50 — 8 ratings — published 2007	my rating:
	Tell Tales: The Anthology of Short Stories: v. 3 by Joe Shooman, Niki Aguirre (Goodreads author) , Kay Sexton (Goodreads author) avg rating 4.71 — 7 ratings — published 2006	my rating:
	Crimewave 10: Now You See Me by Charlie Williams, Mick Scully, Joel Lane, Lisa Morton, Murray Shelmerdine, Simon Avery, Nicholas Stephen Proctor, Alex Irvine more... Darren Speegle, Kay Sexton(Goodreads author) [close] avg rating 5.00 — 1 rating — published 2008	my rating:

* Note: these are all the books on Goodreads for this author. To add more, perform a search.

Kay's writing

Britpopping (Literature & Fiction)

1 chapters — updated Jul 31, 2007 01:25PM

description: A journey through the underworld of british aesthetics ...

Two Tall Tales and One Short Novel (Literature & Fiction)

0 chapters — updated Jun 21, 2007 12:54PM

description: Anthology

Kay is currently reading

	02/25 Kay is currently reading: DC Universe: The Stories of Alan Moore (Paperback) by Alan Moore bookshelves: currently-reading	my rating:
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	02/12 Kay is currently reading: Exit Music (Paperback) by Ian Rankin bookshelves: currently-reading	my rating:
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	02/06 Kay is currently reading: My Sister's Keeper (Paperback) by Jodi Picoult bookshelves: currently-reading	my rating:
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Kay's recent updates (rss)

May 16

Kay gave

to:
Wolf Hall (Hardcover)
by Hilary Mantel

my rating:

read in May, 2009

Kay said: "Like many another of Mantel's dedicated readers, I let Wolf Hall sit for a few days before opening it. Could she move back to historical fiction after so many years and would she have the magisterial power that she'd demonstrated in A Place Of Greate...more "

1 comment

April 02

Kay said "yes" to attending the event: The Book & The Rose - Reading.
date: April 26, 2009 12:00PM
location: Jubilee Square (in front of Jubilee Library), Jubilee Square, Brighton , The United Kingdom
description: Writers from two of Hove's newest writing groups read ultra-short fiction and poems. The Book & The Rose also features bookstalls, flower stalls, great food and lots of fun!

March 03

Kay gave

to:
The Visible World (Hardcover)
by Mark Slouka

my rating:

read in October, 2008

Kay said: "There are those who say 'good books' must be difficult to read. In general I don't agree with that, but in this case, this book is both good, in several senses, and difficult to read, in several senses.

The difficult part is both structura...more There are those who say 'good books' must be difficult to read. In general I don't agree with that, but in this case, this book is both good, in several senses, and difficult to read, in several senses.

The difficult part is both structural and moral - the first third of the book is written as a memoir: the son of a woman who is clearly emotionally troubled and distant from her husband and child begins to explore her past in the hope of discovering what has caused her to behave so painfully. His discovery is of a love affair, back in the Second World War, in Prague and its terrible, beautiful, tormented progress and eventual disastrous conclusion makes up the other two thirds of the book.

This makes the book uneven. The first part is strongly disassociated and both nostalgic and diffident, the rest is immediate and powerfully emotional. The child, grown to a man, is a little pathetic and often uninteresting to the reader, while the mother and her lover are strongly delineated and morally acute. Sometimes, reading the second section with the first in mind, it's like having one shoe on and one foot bare, it just feels very odd.

But the good parts of this book more than repay the effort the reader makes. The issues involved: maternal love versus the love of equals, the morality of wartime, the passion that people can feel when their lives are under threat, the several forms of acute courage displayed by various characters, the evocation of Prague ... all these are masterly but never bravura. The tone of the book is gentle, and this gentle and quiet pace allows an accretion of tension that is so subtle that you don't realise you're feeling it until you stop reading for a moment and feel how tightly you're holding the pages and know that you have to keep reading to find out what happens.

And what happens is truly heartbreaking. What Slouka achieves with this constrained pace and palate is an overwhelming sense of inevitability that carries you through the end of the novel with absolute certainty that you've never read a better love story, or a greater tragedy.(less) "

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February 25

Kay gave

to:
100 Bullets Vol. 07: Samurai (Paperback)
by Brian Azzarello

my rating:

Kay said: "This was take or leave in story terms: not the best conjunction of a serialised story and a standalone, but the artwork was stonking - worth turning the pages just for the great illustrations and some really well thought out lettering. An excellent c...more "

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Kay gave

to:
Hellboy Volume 7: The Troll Witch and Other Stories (Paperback)
by Mike Mignola

my rating:

Kay said: "Hmm. As graphic novels go, this one left me feeling meh. Hellboy is not my cup of tea. "

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Kay is currently reading:
DC Universe: The Stories of Alan Moore (Paperback)
by Alan Moore

my rating:

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February 21

Kay gave

to:
The Memory Box (Paperback)
by Margaret Forster

my rating:

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February 19

Kay gave

to:
The Philosopher and the Wolf: Lessons in Love, Death, and Happiness (Hardcover)
by Mark Rowlands

my rating:

read in November, 2008

Kay said:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

"I wanted to like this book for many reasons but in the end, dislike of bad philosophy won out over sentiment.

Mark Rowlands buys a wolf cub on a whim. Brenin, the wolf, teaches him many things, but not to be a decent human being: that onl...more I wanted to like this book for many reasons but in the end, dislike of bad philosophy won out over sentiment.

Mark Rowlands buys a wolf cub on a whim. Brenin, the wolf, teaches him many things, but not to be a decent human being: that only comes after the wolf has died, having been dragged around America as a 'chick magnet' spent six months in quarantine, been transported to and fro in Ireland and France and generally not having had nearly as much benefit from their shared existence as Rowlands seems to have had. But even Brenin fares better than any dog owner who comes into their compass - it's okay for the wolf to terrify and physcially harm both dogs and owners because dogs are only 'pets' while Brenin is his own being (apart from the quarantine, the being traipsed around, the enforced vegetarianism that Rowlands embarks on for self and wolf etc).

But my objection to the book is not just the wolf welfare aspect of the narrative. 'Tending our own gardens' may be poor philosophy but at least we end up with cabbages, what Rowlands wants to achieve here is to teach other people how to tend their own gardens while his own is full of weeds. There's a fundamental flaw in his argument about the Hobbesian compact for example; while he says we (humans) cannot imagine a non-existing thing and therefore can't be said to have invested in a compact before its existence, he's spent the whole of an earlier chapter explaining how pet animals live in a magical universe in which previously non-existing things like lifts, food, telephones make existing things: rooms, full bellies, people's voices, appear. It seems to me that you can't have it both ways. If a wolf cannot comprehend a non-existing thing and yet the thing can exist and be classed as magic, surely a society can imagine a non-existing thing and class it as a social compact?

Enough carping perhaps. I didn't love the book and felt less respect for Rowlands than I'd hoped to. He may be right to say that what distinguishes the simian from the lupine is deceit, and that the wolf is nobler than the ape, but his arguments, drawn from one wolf and one drunk, don't make compelling philosophy and at best make maudlin memoir.(less) "

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February 15

Kay made a comment on Kay's review of Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard

Kay wrote: "Melwyk wrote: "This book is so wonderful! I've just read and reviewed it for Valentine's Day, since ...more "

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Books I Loathed — 1171 members — last activity 10 hours, 46 min ago
This is a public forum for people to kvetch (cleanly, please) about books they absolutely hated, and for others to respond. Though nonfiction is certa...more

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For people who especially love short stories, and don't care who knows it!

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Forum for discussing/recommending queer texts, open to the idea that the definition of "queer" is still in process. Interests in all genre...more

Fiction and Poetry Contests — 217 members — last activity Sep 14, 2009 09:57PM
A place to post deadlines and guidelines and purses and questions and encouragement re: contests and awards for fiction and poetry.

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A group to discuss and recommend books published by the independent presses. Fiction and poetry only.

What's The Name of That Book??? — 1240 members — last activity 3 hours, 16 min ago
Can't remember the title of a book you read a while back? Come post a description on our message board and we can try to help each other out.

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Discover new books for your shelf and read the reviews from Premium Promotional Services.

Authors, her...more

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The Turner Maxwell Books short story competition proved to the contest of the year.

Thirty-nine countries.
Seventy five thousand websi...more

Opium's Literary Death Match — 56 members — last activity Feb 17, 2009 09:24AM
Opium’s Literary Death Match is a competitive, humor-centric reading series that features four readers (who represent print and online literary conc...more

ISMs Press — 70 members — last activity Apr 12, 2009 11:18AM
Publisher of quarterly magazine 'Sein und Werden' - an art and literary journal that seeks to merge the horrors of Expressionism, the dream qualities ...more

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