Banned Books Week

In the USA it is Banned Books Week...

"Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas. The source of better ideas is wisdom. The surest path to wisdom is a liberal education." -- Alfred Whitney Griswold, Essays on Education

"There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them. " -- Joseph Alexandrovitch Brodsky

"Don't join the book burners... Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book." -- Dwight D. Eisenhower

"Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings." -- Heinrich Heine

"To prohibit the reading of certain books is to declare the inhabitants to be either fools or slaves." -- Claude Adrien Helvetius, De l'Homme, Vol. I, sec. 4

"Children deprived of words become school dropouts; dropouts deprived of hope behave delinquently. Amateur censors blame delinquency on reading immoral books and magazines, when in fact, the inability to read anything is the basic trouble." -- Peter S. Jennison

"Books and ideas are the most effective weapons against intolerance and ignorance." -- Lyndon Baines Johnson

" The crime of book purging is that it involves a rejection of the word. For the word is never absolute truth, but only man's frail and human effort to approach the truth. To reject the word is to reject the human search. " -- Max Lerner

"The burning of an author's books, imprisonment for an opinion's sake, has always been the tribute that an ignorant age pays to the genius of its time." -- Joseph Lewis, 'Voltaire: The Incomparable Infidel', 1929

"Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but unlike charity, it should end there." - -Clare Booth Luce

"Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it." - - Mark Twain

Quotation

Books are never far from a scholar's hands, just as songs are never far from a singer's lips. - Chinese proverb

Review – John MORTIMER – “The Anti-social Behaviour of Horace Rumpole”

Publ: 2007
Pensby Library
ISBN: 978-0-141-03064-7
Genre: Legal fiction; humour
Pages: 200p
Found by Serendipity
Rating: ***** *


What led you to pick up this book?
The delightful cover illustration by Tony Healey – a caricature of the late Leo McKern who played Rumpole so brilliantly on TV.

Describe the plot without giving anything away.
A twelve year old boy is given an ASBO (an Anti-social Behaviour Order) for playing football in the street in Britain’s latest fight against major criminals. Rumpole sets out to defend the boy (and a murder suspect) whilst himself running the risk of getting and ASBO in his chambers.

What did you think of the characters and style?
This is the first Rumpole novel I have read though I watched the television series with great enjoyment years ago. Without having Rumpole’s character already fixed in my mind from Leo McKern’s brilliant performances I’m not sure how I would have viewed this. Despite all the characters being ‘over the top’ the TV makes them credible and great fun. In this book, Rumpole alone stands out as the character of any depth though She-who-must-be-obeyed tries quite hard to join him (in more ways than one).

What did you like most about the book?
Rumpole’s sarcastic ‘what I didn’t say’ asides.

Was there anything you didn't like about the book?
No.

Thoughts on the book jacket / cover.
Excellent – see above.

Would I recommend it?
I would certainly recommend reading one Rum;pole novel to get the flavour and see if you like them. Personally I’d rather have Henry Cecil’s style of highlighting the absurd contradictions of the English legal system.

Totally irrelevant side note:
Restaurant and food critic Pru Leith measures the quality of food by whether it is worth the calories. I suppose a similar measure for books would be whether they are worth the time. This little volume (200pages of large print) didn’t take long but it is still a borderline case. Watching a couple of hours of the TV series would be a better use of that time.

Quotations:

‘The meeting had begun by our client refusing Bernard’s offer of a cigarette, a normal way of putting prisoners at their ease, with a long lecture on the dangers of smoking. An odd sort of attitude, I thought, from a man accused of inflicting the far greater danger of manual strangulation.’

‘The test of democracy is the tolerance shown by the majority to minority opinions.’

‘What did my darling old sheep of the Lake District say? We come into the world trailing clouds of glory and then terrible things begin to happen.’


JOHN MORTIMER (1923 - 2009) was a novelist, playwright and former practising barrister. Among his many publications were several volumes of Rumpole stories and a trilogy of political novels featuring Leslie Titmuss - a character as brilliant as Rumpole. John Mortimer received a knighthood for his services to the arts in 1998.

Review – David NORMAN – “Birds in Cheshire and Wirral”

Publ: 2008
Pensby Library
ISBN: 978-1-84631-152-9
Genre: Non-fiction - Birds, natural history
Pages: 654p
Seen in a bookshop and ordered from the library
Rating: ***** ***


What led you to pick up this book?
I’m interested in natural history, birds and the local area – this combines all three and includes maps showing the various tetrads in which each bird species has been recorded.

What did you like most about the book?
Checking which bird species could be found in my immediate area. The photos and text were fascinating though I have to confess to only skimming the text. This is really a book to keep on your bookshelves for reference.

Was there anything you didn't like about the book?
Not somnething I didn't like but something I would have preferred - Many amateurs like myself are more interested in the divisions over time – i.e. over the years – rather than between winter and summer but I appreciate a comprehensive work like this is probably designed for the more serious birder than I am.

Thoughts on the book jacket / cover.
A very pleasant painting by David Quinn.

Would I recommend it?
Yes. It’s suitable for all folk interested in birds in the Cheshire area. It can be used as a comprehensive guide or for a simple flick through looking at the more interesting species.

Review - Bernard CORNWELL – “Azincourt”

Publ: 2008
Pensby Library
ISBN: 978 0 00 727122 1
Genre: Historical Fiction
Pages: 453pp plus a lot of addenda
Cornwell is one of my favourite authors
Rating: ***** *****


What led you to pick up this book?
Cornwell is one of my favourite authors. Add that to seeing the great cover in the local bookshop and this was an automatic read.

Describe the plot without giving anything away.
The Battle of Agincourt was an English battle against a much larger French army in the Hundred Years' War. The battle occurred in a muddy field on Friday 25 October 1415 (Saint Crispin's Day), in northern France. Henry V led his troops into battle and actually participated in hand to hand fighting. The battle is notable for the use of the English longbow, which Henry used in very large numbers, with longbowmen forming the vast majority of his army. The battle is the centrepiece of the play Henry V, by William Shakespeare.
This novel centres around the activities of just one of those longbowmen, Nick Hook. It is the first novel to have been written about Agincourt for a hundred years and is a worthy work to hold that title.

What did you think of the characters and style?
Great characterisation and, of course, one of the best historical novelist styles in the present era. Cornwell makes it quite feasible that Hook, a common archer, interacts with the king and some of the lords of the land whilst retaining his simple attitude to life.

What did you like most about the book?
For once I’m going to say the end and not mean that insultingly! The novel itself is followed by a number of addenda – a historical note; comments on the longbow; Shakespeare’s Henry V speech; the Agincourt Carol; and a conversation between Bernard Cornwell and Mark Urban that gives an insight into the way the author’s mind worked and the reason he chose to take the novel in the direction he did.

Was there anything you didn't like about the book?
It finished all too soon...

Thoughts on the book jacket / cover.
A great piece of simple but effective artwork by Larry Rostant.

Would I recommend it?
Absolutely. An essential part of the historical fiction reader’s bookshelves.

Quotations (from the Cornwell / Urban conversation and the end note on the longbow):
“...archers are not peasants. As you said, they’re yeomen. They have a certain level of prosperity, I mean, many of them have trades. And they practise by law, there was actually a law passed that actually forbade football which seems very sensible considering how it’s turned out. Because it took people away from practising archery.”
“if you have a rifle, and you line up back-sight, fore-sight and Frenchman, pull the trigger, the world is suddenly a better place. But you can do it with the eye, right. You are aiming with the eye. With a longbow you draw it to the ear so the arrow is in fact slanting across your vision.... The arrow is pointing to his left and it was necessary to learn how to compensate for that offset. So shooting a longbow becomes an instinctive process in which the brain makes a calculation about range and offset, and that calculation only came with a lot of experience.”

Bernard CORNWELL see Sword Song
http://bookeverysixdays.blogspot.com/2007/12/bernard-cornwell-sword-song.html

Review – Tony HILLERMAN – “The Blessing Way”

Publ: 1970
My copy – kindly given to me by Canadian Chickadee
ISBN: 978 0 06 100001 0
Genre: Crime fiction
Pages: 306p
Recommended by another blogger
Rating: ***** **


What led you to pick up this book?
Recommended by another blogger, it sounded like an unusual form of crime fiction.

Describe the plot without giving anything away.
Jo Leaphorn is a Navajo Tribal Policeman and the action takes place on the Navajo Reservation. Many folk blame a supernatural killer when a young man is killed and Leaphorn finds himself in pursuit of a Wolf-Witch.

What did you think of the characters and style?
This was an eye-opener to me as I learned much about a wholly different culture which lives on in the USA. The characters and style were nothing overly special – solid and down-to-earth - but the plot was good and the setting fantastic.

What did you like most about the book?
The setting.

Was there anything you didn't like about the book?
No.

Thoughts on the book jacket / cover.
OK

Would I recommend it?
Yes as a crime thriller or to anyone interested in learning about the Navajo culture.

Quotations:
“Begay had deliberately postponed thinking about this, because the Navajo Way was the Middle Way, which avoided all excesses – even of happiness.”
“But Navajos didn’t hurry. In fact, there was no words in the Navajo language for time.”


TONY HILLERMAN was born in Oklahoma in 1925. He joined the US Army in 1943 and won the Silver Star, the Bronze Star with Oak Leaf Cluster and the Purple Heart after being wounded. After the war he attended the University of Oklahoma and worked as a journalist, eventually becoming editor of the New Mexican. In 1963 he went to graduate school at the University of New Mexico and joined the journalism faculty there in 1966. His first Navajo mystery, The Blessing Way, was published in 1970. He died in 2008.

Review:- Anita SHREVE – “The Weight of Water”

Publ: 1997
Pensby Library
ISBN: 0 349 10911 7
Genre: General fiction
Pages: 146p
Continuing to read books by this author
Rating: ***** ***


What led you to pick up this book?
Continuing to read books by this author.

Describe the plot without giving anything away.
A century after two women were murdered on a small island off the coast of New Hampshire, another woman goes to the island to shoot a photo essay about the crime. The original events and the almost equally dramatic events of the present day become intermingled as the book progresses.

What did you think of the characters and style?
Two lots of completely different characters are portrayed side-by-side as the novel progresses and the way in which the two plots are linked is – in my experience – very unusual. It doesn’t swap from one timescale to other by chapter but back and forth within the chapters – almost mirroring the thought processes of someone living their own life while researching the events of a century earlier. I found it rivetting.

What did you like most about the book?
The constant switching of the scene could have been annoying if less well done but I found it quite fascinating and compelling.

Was there anything you didn't like about the book?
No

Thoughts on the book jacket / cover.
Less than average. Deserved better.

Would I recommend it?
Yes.

Totally irrelevant side note:
This was a nominee for the Orange Prize for Fiction.

Quotations:
“There is no trace of the Mid-Ocean Hotel. It has passed into recorded memory, historical fact, with no life except in sentences and photographic emulsion. If all the sentences and photographs about the hotel were to be swept into the sea that surrounds Smuttynose, the Mid-Ocean – Hawthorne’s stay there, an immigrant’s abbreviated pleasantries – would cease to exist. No one can know a story’s precise reality.”

ANITA SHREVE – see “Resistance”

Review:- Candace ROBB – “A Spy for the Redeemer”

Publ: 2000
My own copy
ISBN: 0 09 927797 2
Genre: Historical fiction
Pages: 386p
Kindly given me by the Canadian Chickadee
Rating: ***** **


What led you to pick up this book?
Kindly given me by the Canadian Chickadee. This is the seventh Owen Archer mystery and about the fifth I have read.

Describe the plot without giving anything away.
In 1370 Owen archer is away in Wales but his attempts to get home to York are thwarted by a mysterious suicide. Meanwhile, his wife Lucie has to cope with problems at her father’s manor as well as within the apothecary that she runs.

What did you think of the characters and style?
Candace Robb qualifies as cosy historical crime and this was just the sort of book I wanted to turn to after reading a few general works of fiction. As always there was lots of mystery, intrigue, murder and adventure in this tale. The historical detail is not extensive in Candace Robb’s books but certainly enough to conjour up the world of the 14th century.

Thoughts on the book jacket / cover.
An appropriate sort of cover but compared to the Cadfael series nowhere near as good.

Would I recommend it?
Yes, especially to any fan of cosy historical fiction and medieval crime.

CANDACE ROBB
see Vigil of Spies

Review:- Stef PENNEY – “The Tenderness of Wolves”

Publ: 2006
My own copy
ISBN: 978 1 84724 067 5
Genre: General fiction
Pages: 450p
Found by Serendipity
Rating: ***** ***



What led you to pick up this book?
The unusual title, the blurb and the promise of suspense.

Describe the plot without giving anything away.
In Canada in 1867 in an isolated settlement a man is brutally murdered and a woman sets out into the wilderness to find her missing son and clear his name.

What did you think of the characters and style?
I read this back in April and have largely forgotten it but I do recall I enjoyed it and found the description of the snowy landscape and the style excellent. The author is the master of the pithy phrase. I’m also fond of any author who finds me some new words for my Word Blog and I got about five out of this book.

Thoughts on the book jacket / cover.
Average

Would I recommend it?
Yes.

Quotations:
“News travels fast these days, thinks Thomas Sturrock. even where there are no roadas or railways, news, or its nebulous cousin rumour, travels like lightning over vast distances.”

“She considers herself a well-travelled woman, and from each place she has been to, she has brought away a prejudice as a souvenir.”

“..so Susannah became everyone’s darling: spoilt but slightly patronised, in need of protection from unpleasant facts of life like blocked sanitary closets and taxation.”

“Mutual need is what makes people co-operate; nothing to do with trust or kindness or any such sentimental notion.”

“Clearly the secret of happiness, he reflects quite cheerfully, is a variation on the general principle of banging your head against a wall, and then stopping.”



STEF PENNEY was born in Edinburgh in 1969 and took a degree in Theology and Philosophy at Bristol before turning to film-making – writing and directing two films. The Tenderness of Wolves was her first novel.

Review:- Anita SHREVE – “Light on snow”

Publ: 2004
My own copy
ISBN: 0 316 87733 6
Genre: General Fiction
Pages: 275p
Continuing to read Anita Shreve novels
Rating: ***** ***


What led you to pick up this book?
Continuing to read Anita Shreve novels

Describe the plot without giving anything away.
A twelve year old and her father go for a walk in the snow through the forest near their remote home and find an abandoned new born baby. The book explores the effect this unusual event has on them during the next few weeks and the reason why they live in such a remote place.

What did you think of the characters and style?
I am so impressed with Anita Shreve’s ability to get inside the heads of such a wide range of characters. Each book that I have read so far has been exceptional and her skill at drawing on the emotions is first class, as is her prose.

What did you like most about the book?
It’s credibility.

Thoughts on the book jacket / cover.
Not exceptional.

Would I recommend it?
Yes.

ANITA SHREVE see ‘Resistance’

Review - Iain GALE – “Four Days in June”

Publ: 2006
Pensby Library
ISBN: 978 0 00 720104 4
Genre: Historical fiction; war
Pages: 366p
Found by Serendipity
Rating: ***** **


What led you to pick up this book?
I’ve read a few books about Waterloo of late and this adding another interesting view.

Describe the plot without giving anything away.
The four days leading up to the Battle of Waterloo, June 1815. The story is told from the perspective of a Napoleon, Ney, a Prussian and two British officers.

What did you think of the characters and style?
Many novels which jump from one character to another can get a bit messy but this was pretty seamless. The characters were well drawn with each of their backgrounds introduced skillfully as memories as the battle progressed.

What did you like most about the book?
A concise and clever look at a most complex battle.

Thoughts on the book jacket / cover.
Attractive

Would I recommend it?
Yes to those who like their historical novels and fans of the Napoleonic wars.

IAIN GALE as always had a passion for military history. He is the Editor of the National Trust for Scotland magazine and Art critic for Scotland on Sunday. He lives outside Edinburgh with his wife and children. His first novel, Four Days in June, is a stand-alone military adventure set on the battlefields of Waterloo.

Review:- Sebastian FAULKS – “Charlotte Gray”

Publ: 2006
My own copy
ISBN: 0 09 939431 6
Genre: World War II
Pages: 496p
Continuing to read books by this author
Rating: ***** ****


What led you to pick up this book?
I was thoroughly enthralled by Birdsong and The Girl at the Lion D’Or and this is the third of Faulks’ French novels.

Describe the plot without giving anything away.
A Scottish girl travels south to help with the war effort and in so doing meets and falls in love with an airman. She is trained as a courier and when his plane is downed on the continent she goes in search of him.

What did you think of the characters?
Excellent.

What did you think about the style?
Very readable and everything seemed so true to life one could imagine oneself in wartime England and France. The conflicting emotions and politics that being in France evoked in its residents whilst under Occupation are very well drawn.

What did you like most about the book?
An excellent combination of action, romance, history and characterisation.

Thoughts on the book jacket / cover.
Average.

Would I recommend it?
Yes.

Quotations:
“I’ve got to have conversation lessons from some old dame...”
Borowski was laughing. “It doesn’t sound like you at all, Greg. Who is this French mistress?”
“French mistress, Borowski. In English we say French mistress. A French mistress is something else.”

Other people’s dreams, Charlotte remembered her father telling her as a teenager, are the most tedious conversational topic on earth.

I will wait until the war is over. Thins will be forgotten if we win. In fact, history is already being rewritten.

When you are forty you have no cell in your body that you had at eighteen. It was the same, he said, with your character. Memory isd the only thing that binds you to earlier selves; for the rest, you become an entirely different being every decade or so, sloughing off the old [persona, renewing and moving on. You are not who you were, he told her, nor who you will be.

Sebastian FAULKS see The Girl at the Lion D’Or.

Review:- Adrian MATHEWS – “The Apothecary’s House”

Publ: 2006
Pensby Library
ISBN: 978 0 330 44160 5
Genre: Mystery
Pages: 706p
Found by Serendipity
Rating: ***** **


What led you to pick up this book?
The cover which mentioned – ‘A looted painting... a secret code, a deadly pursuit...’

Describe the plot without giving anything away.
Set in modern Amsterdam the heroine, an art historian, gets involved with the rival claimants for a painting recovered from the Nazis after the Second World War. Her life and career are both threatened the more involved she gets. And who can she trust – her colleagues, the little old lady whose ancestor painted the picture, the family of her dead boyfriend or any of the new cast of characters she comes across as the plot progresses. The importance of the painting is gradually unraveled but only at the end do we learn who she might have trusted all along ,
Some aspects of the plot are a bit weak – most notably the reasoning behind the symbolic code.

What did you think of the characters?
Occasionally some of them became less than believable. If anything let the book down – for me – it was the characterization, despite his deep exploration of some of their actions. It is perhaps the price one pays for keeping one’s options open as to who the villain or villains might be.

What did you think about the style?
Very readable and although I fairly quickly concluded the plot was likely to be a bit weak in parts I enjoyed it. The humour – generally black – is at times brilliant.

What did you like most about the book?
Plenty of action, humour and great descriptions of Amsterdam.

Thoughts on the book jacket / cover.
Average.

Would I recommend it?
Probably not. Equivalent to 2 good sized books I can think of plenty to read instead.

Quotations:
It was some time since she’d consulted the real estate ads, but an approximate calculation was not beyond her. She was fairly confident, at any rate, about the number of zeros. She could almost afford it herself: she had the zeros – it was the other number that went in front she hadn’t got.

Up to now the elderly had hardly loomed large in Ruth’s preoccupations. Old person, distantly related to homo sapiens. Defining characteristic: takes in excess of twenty minutes to buy a stamp in the post office.

Problems?
The usual, Too much month left at the end of the money...

She... stood up and went over to the bookcase. She was intrigued by people’s museums of little objects, the things they’d been drawn to in life’s journey and that it pleased them to have around.
(NOTE – I’m in the middle of reading ‘Snoop’ a book all about this very subject!)

“Have you been having a difficult time, my dear?” Lydia asked.
“Story of my life. I was a breech birth – that’s when my troubles started.”
“Right from the beginning then?”
“Not exactly. I had nine clear months of relative peace before that.”

ADRIAN MATHEWS – born 1957, was born and brought up in London studying English at Cambridge before becoming a lecturer at London University’s British |institute in Oparis. He lives in France and is the author of non-fiction works on English literature as well as two previous novels one of which won the prestigious Silver Dagger Award in 1999.