. A Book every Six Days .

REVIEW:- Audrey NIFFENEGGER - “The Night Bookmobile“ - And a comment on Graphic Novels

2012-01-28T10:02:00.025Z

Year Published: - 2010
Where the book was from:- My own copy (2nd hand - ex Highland Libraries)
ISBN: - 978 0224 089 524
Pages: - 40pp
Genre: - Graphic Novel
Location:- Chicago
How I came across it: - Reading reviews
Rating: - ***** ***** (But see below re whether it is a novel)

One sentence summary:- A cartoon format short story about a woman, the books she reads and an unusual mobile library.

Describe the plot without giving anything away:-
A haunting tale of a girl who has an argument with her boyfriend and while wandering the streets afterwards, in the middle of the night, finds a strange mobile library with an unusual librarian.

General comments:- I've never read a 'Graphic Novel' before and I'm not sure that a graphic novel differs much from a cartoon or comic book. So does Asterix count as a novel? I don't really think so. According to Wikipedia “a graphic novel is a narrative work in which the story is conveyed to the reader using sequential art in either an experimental design or in a traditional comics format. The term is employed in a broad manner, encompassing non-fiction works and thematically linked short stories as well as fictional stories across a number of genres. Graphic novels are typically bound in longer and more durable formats than familiar comic magazines, using the same materials and methods as printed books, and they are generally sold in bookstores and speciality comic book shops rather than at newsstands. Such books have gained increasing acceptance as desirable materials for libraries which once ignored comic books.” Even by this definition 'The Night Bookmobile' is at best a Graphic Short Story rather than a Graphic Novel.

With that reservation I have to agree with Neil Gaiman who says “The Night Bookmobile is a love letter, both elegiac and heartbreaking, to the things we have read and to the readers that we are. It says that what we read makes us who we are. It's a graphic short story, beautifully drawn and perfectly told.”
If only one could have one's own night bookmobile to explore in the middle of the night when sleep won't some. How would we react to seeing all those forgotten books; the ones which we didn't finish and the well-thumbed pages of those we have re-read many times? Paradise is a night bookmobile.

AUTHOR Notes:- Audrey Niffenegger was born in 1969 in the USA. debut novel sold nearly 5 million copies worldwide and has been translated into thirty-three languages to date. She is also a widely exhibited artist. She lives in Chicago.

More TBRs

2012-01-26T20:30:00.000Z

More books I want to read as a result of reading reviews in We Love This Book - issues 2 and 3

James Jackson – Perdition

Lisa Genova – Still Alice

Lynn Shepherd – Tom-all-alone

Roman Krznaric - The Wonderbox: Curious histories of how to live

Steve Roud – The Lore of the Playground

Julie Coleman – The Life of Slang

Kathryn Erskine – Mockingbird

Lloyd Shepherd – The English Monster

Wendy Jones – The Thoughts and Happenings of Wilfred Price

Susanna Jones – When Nights were Colld

The Slow Cooking Bible

Courtney Watson McCarthy – M C Escher Pop-ups

Cressida Cowell – How to Train your Dragon

Cornelia Funke – Dragon Rider

Stef Penney – No Room to Roam

Erin Morgenstern – The Night Circus

Morag Joss – Across the Bridge

Madeline Miller – Achilles

Christopher Priest – The Islanders

(To quote from the review - “To call Christopher Priest a science fiction author is true but doesn't quite get it – it's like calling Jane Austen a big name in chick-lit.)

Conn Iggulden – Conqueror (Genghis Khan pt 4)

(Also recommended for Daughter-who-takes-photos who, I think, like me, has read the other three)

Elly Griffiths – A Room full of Bones

(Also recommended for Daughter-who-loves-food)

Donovan Hohn – Moby Duck

(Also recommended for Son-in-law-and-friend-who-loves-Otters)

Recommended for Son-in-law-and-friend-who-loves-Otters & Daughter-who-takes-photos:-

Chris Seay – A Place at the Table

Toby Musgrove & Clay Perry – Heritage Fruit and Vegetables

REVIEW:- Molly COCHRAN & Warren MURPHY - “The Forever King“

2012-01-25T00:31:00.001Z

Year Published: - 1992
Where the book was from:- My own copy- ex-library
ISBN: - 1 857980182
Pages: - 364pp
Genre: - Fantasy adventure
Location:- Chicago, Somerset
How I came across it: - Serendipity - On library sale table
Rating: - ***** ***

One sentence summary:- An original take on the Camelot legend as magic is let loose in the twentieth century.

Describe the plot without giving anything away:- An ex-FBI agent gets involved in protecting a 10 year old boy and his aunt after the boy accidentally stumbles across a metal cup, dropped by bank robbers in Chicago. Meanwhile, in Hampshire, a prisoner with no name escapes from a secure unit for the mentally unstable and seems to have a whole army of supporters. The boy inherits a piece of real estate in Somerset and that is where the action begins to really unfold as an old man with white hair becomes another ally.

General comments:- "A fresh and exciting view of the Arthur legend" (Robert Jordan, author of The Dragon Reborn). "Books like this don't come along very often." Marion Zimmer Bradley.

There are two more books in the series:-

1. The Forever King (1991) (with Warren Murphy)

2. The Broken Sword (1997) (with Warren Murphy)

3. The Third Magic (2003)

Quotations:- nil

AUTHOR Notes:-

Born in Tokyo, Japan, Molly Cochran lived in Europe and was educated at the University of Pittsburgh and the Sorbonne in France. She has written 26 books, including 12 ghosted novels, and the non-fiction bestseller, 'Dressing Thin', before her own first novel, Grandmaster, was a New York Times Bestseller. Since then, she has written almost a dozen other suspense and fantasy thrillers. She also writes under the pen name of Dev Stryker. 'A Wilderness of Mirrors' is published by Tor Books. (I don't understand the principle of a ghosted novel. Ghosted 'autobiography' in which someone writes a life story on behalf of a celebrity is understandable but what is a ghosted novel? Do you write a new Terrry Pratchett on his behalf and publish it under his name for him?

Warren Murphy was born in Jersey City, where he worked as a reporter and editor. After the Korean war, he drifted into politics, "but when everybody I worked for went to jail, I thought God was sending me a message to find a new line of work." Warren Murphy writes screenplays and his film credits include 'Lethal Weapon 2'. The first Destroyer novel followed soon after. Murphy says he has "the usual passel of snot-nosed kids, Deirdre, Megan, Brian, Ardath and Devin, some of whom now have their own snot-nosed kids." He has been an adjunct professor at Moravian College, Bethlehem, PA, and has also run workshops and lectured at many other schools and universities. His hobbies are golf, mathematics, opera and investing. He lives in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

New or unusual words:- ...the hardscrabble earth still sprouted clumps of hearty weeds... hardscrabble means returning little in exchange for great effort; characterized by chronic poverty and hardship.

REVIEW:- Simon MASON - “Rough Guide to Classic Novels“

2012-01-24T20:16:00.000Z

Year Published: - 2008
Where the book was from:- Pensby Library
ISBN: - 978 1 84353 516 4
Pages: - 368pp
Genre: - Non-fiction - Literature
How I came across it: - Serendipity
Rating: - ***** **

One sentence summary:- One of the Rough Guides series this lists over 200 of the 'world's best fiction ever written'.

General comments:- Each book has information about the plot, style and author and whilst any such choice is bound to be subjective this collection is quite traditional in its approach.

AUTHOR Notes:- Simon Mason is the author of the Quigleys series and four novels - The Great English Nude (1990); Death of a Fantasist (1994); Lives Of The Dog Stranglers (1998); and Moon Pie (2011).

REVIEW:- Nick RENNISON - “100 Must-read Historical Novels“

2012-01-24T04:32:00.007Z

A Bloomsbury Good Reading Guide

Year Published: - 2009
Where the book was from:- Pensby Library
ISBN: - 978 1 408 11396 7
Pages: - 176pp
Genre: - Non-Fiction - Literature
How I came across it: - Browsing Library shelves
Rating: - ***** ****

One sentence summary:- An interesting selection of historical novels that 'should be read' including a brief description of the plot and the author.

General comments:- This, sensibly, does not claim to represent the best ever historical novels since that would be such a subjective view. Rennison takes a gap of 60 years between the events and the writing as a minimum which excludes some that I would consider obvious candidates but he had to draw the line somewhere. In addition to the principal 100 there are a selection of 500 'read-on' recommendations. The few small 'themed categories' are inadequate but the idea is a good one.

AUTHOR Notes:- Nick Rennison is a writer, editor and bookseller with a particular interest in the Victorian era and in crime fiction. He is the author of many books including The Bloomsbury Good Reading Guide to Crime Fiction, 100 Must-Read Crime Novels and Sherlock Holmes: An Unauthorised Biography. He is currently working on his own crime novel set in nineteenth century London.

To Be Read - Historical Novels

2012-01-23T00:29:00.002Z

To Be Read - Historical Novels

Peter Ackroyd – The Clerkenwell Tales

Peter Ackroyd – Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem

Maragret Atwood – Alias Grace

Tracy Chevalier – The Girl with a Pearl Earring

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – White Company (re-read)

Michael Faber – The Crimson Petal and the White

Ken Follett – The Pillars of the Earth

Ford Maddox Ford – Ladies Whose Bright Eyes

Margaret George – Helen of Troy

Philippa Gregory – A Respectable Trade

Matthew Kneale – Sweet thames

Charles Palliser – The Unburied

Charles Palliser – The Quincunx

Iain Pears – An Instance of the Fingerpost

Sharon Kay Penman – Here be Dragons

Sharon Kay Penman – The Sunne in Splendour (re-read)

H F M Prescott – The Man on a Donkey

Steven Pressfield – Gates of Fire

Michele Roberts – Fair Exchange

Sir Walter Scott – Rob Roy

Anya Seton – Katharine

Belinda Starling – The Journal of Dora Damage

Rosemary Sutcliff – The Eagle of the North

William Makepeace Thackeray – Barry Lyndon

Rose Tremain – Restoration

Barry Unsworth – Morality Play

Sarah Waters – Fingersmith

Sarah Waters – Tipping the Velvet

(This list was compiled as a result of reading Nick Rennison's '100 Must Read Historical Novels')

REVIEW:- Sarah WINMAN - “When God was Rabbit“

2012-01-22T00:58:00.002Z

Year Published: - 2011
Where the book was from:- Kindle edition
ASIN: B004MPRDZ4
Pages: - 352pp
Genre: - General / romance / family life
Location:- London, Cornwall, New York
How I came across it: - Recommended by a fellow blogger (wish I could recall who so as to thank them!!)
Rating: - ***** *****

Three sentence summary:- A book about life that defines the cliché word 'unputdownable'. This is the book I wish I had written. Buy it!

Describe the plot without giving anything away:- Elly, the writer of the story, begins as a small child but at no time is she short of experience of life. The key relationship which the book explores through her eyes is that with her brother but the themes of friendship, growing-up, family, being gay and being guilty are among many others which are brilliantly exposed. It would be hard to describe the plot without spoiling it for you and I really think this book should be on everyone's TBR list.

General comments:- Despite being full of unconventional relationships and a marvellously novel approach to writing almost all the characters are recognisable as people I've met and known. Like the very best 'first person' books there comes a time when you wonder just how much of Elly is Sarah Winman herself. Whether she had experienced some of the situations or not they are all wonderfully credible and the book, like her life, is a book of two halves. The first half is gently humorous with some black undertones and hidden secrets. When God said 'Ouch. S**t that hurt.' I was in stitches. Elly's decision to vary the script of the school play had me in tears of laughter. The second half is darker and my tears were not of laughter but of sympathy as disaster struck.

Quotations:-
“He who has a why to live for, can bear almost any how,” I said solemnly. “That's Nietzsche,” I continued with emphasis.

“You said I could be anything I wanted when I was older,” I said.
She smiled and said, “And you can be, But its not very easy to become Jewish,”
“I know,” I said, forlornly, “I need a number.”
And she suddenly stopped smiling.

My mother was beautiful. She had lovely hands that lifted the conversation when she spoke, and had she been deaf, her signing would have been as elegant as a poet speaking verse. I looked at her eyes: blue, blue, blue; same as mine. I sang the colour in my head until it swamped my essence like sea water.
(Fancy being able to write English like that - Hilary Mantel won a Booker Prize and this book got nothing. Life is unfair.)

He could never understand what Nancy saw in her, and all she ever said was that K.H. Had amazing inner beauty, which my father said must be extremely hidden, since an archaeological dig working round the clock would probably have found it hard to discover.

… suddenly veering away from the script. …. (I can't put this one in without spoiling it for you but it's the quote of the book for me!!)

She darned our socks, patched our jeans, and even the tooth fairy refused to reimburse me for a particularly painful molar, even when I left it a note saying that every additional day accrued interest.

Three months before, he’d fallen in love with a holiday-maker from Beaconsfield and had stopped his (therapy) sessions immediately, giving credence to the myth that love cures everything (except perhaps the settlement of an outstanding bill).

And I wrote about what I’d lost that morning. The witness of my soul, my shadow in childhood, when dreams were small and attainable for all. When sweets were a penny and god was a rabbit.

AUTHOR Notes:- Actress Sarah Winman grew up in Essex and now lives in London. She attended the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art and went on to act in theatre, film and television. When God Was a Rabbit is her first published novel though not the first she has written. Come on, someone, publish her as yet unpublished first book, please. And Sarah – we need more from you please..

New or unusual words - nil

Review:- P G WODEHOUSE- various

2012-01-21T12:30:00.000Z

Year Published: - see below
Where the books were from:- Kindle editions
ISBN: - -
Pages: - -pp
Genre: - Humour
Location:- Shropshire /London, England
How I came across them: - reading my way through some Wodehouse for the second or third time.

Something Fresh (1915) Rating: - ***** ***** Print Length: 256 pages
Leave it to Psmith (1923) Rating: - ***** *** Print Length: 256 pages
Summer Lightning (1929) Rating: - ***** **** Print Length: 256 pages
Pigs have Wings (1952) Rating: - ***** *** Print Length: 276 pages
Aunts aren’t Gentlemen (1974)Rating: - ***** ** Print Length: 196 pages

General comments:- Typical Wodehouse humour and light-hearted looks at Blandings Castle, its occupants and visitors with a bit of Jeeves thrown in for good measure... One of the best Wodehouse quotes of all times appears at the start of ‘Summer Lightning’
"A certain critic – for such men, I regret to say, do exist – made the nasty remark about my last novel that it contained ‘all the old Wodehouse characters under different names’. He has probably by now been eaten by bears, like the children who made mock of the prophet Elisha: but if he still survives he will not be able to make a similar charge against Summer Lightning. With my superior intelligence, I have outgeneralled the man this time by putting in all the old Wodehouse characters under the same names. Pretty silly it will make him feel, I rather fancy."
As Marian Keyes commented about Wodehouse:-
‘The ultimate in comfort reading because nothing bad ever happens in P.G. Wodehouse land. Or even if it does, it’s always sorted out by the end of the book. For as long as I’m immersed in a P.G. Wodehouse book, it’s possible to keep the real world at bay and live in a far, far nicer, funnier one where happy endings are the order of the day.’

Quotations:-

From ‘Something Fresh’

Science, with a thousand triumphs to her credit, has not yet succeeded in discovering the correct reply for a young man to make who finds himself in the appalling position of being apologized to by a pretty girl. If he says nothing, he seems sullen and unforgiving. If he says anything, he makes a fool of himself. Ashe, hesitating between these two courses....

The singing in the bathroom was increasing in volume, but Lord Emsworth heard it now without wincing. It was amazing what a difference it made to a man’s comfort, this fair prospect of getting his younger son off his hands.

He was as completely happy as only a fluffy-minded old man with excellent health and a large income can be.

Ashe drifted out. He was conscious of a wish that he understood girls. Girls, in his opinion, were odd.

This odd impulse to leap across the compartment and kiss Joan was not love. It was merely the natural desire of a good-hearted young man to be decently chummy with his species.

‘Well, as Mr Peters’ valet, I suppose you will be rather a big man.’
‘I shan’t feel it.’
‘However large the house-party is, Mr Peters is sure to be the principal guest, so your standing will be correspondingly magnificent. You come after the butler, the housekeeper, the groom of the chambers, Lord Emsworth’s valet, Lady Ann Warblington’s lady’s maid—’
‘Who is she?’
‘Lady Ann? Lord Emsworth’s sister. She has lived with him since his wife died. What was I saying? Oh yes. After them come the Hon. Frederick Threepwood’s valet and myself, and then you.’
‘I’m not so high up then, after all?’
‘Yes, you are. There’s a whole crowd who come after you. It all depends on how many other guests there are besides Mr Peters.’
‘I suppose I charge in at the head of a drove of housemaids and scullery-maids?’
‘My dear Mr Marson, if a housemaid or a scullery-maid tried to get into the Steward’s Room and have her meals with us, she would be—’
‘Rebuked by the butler?’
‘Lynched, I should think. Kitchen-maids and scullery-maids eat in the kitchen. Chauffeurs, footmen, under-butler pantry-boys, hall-boys, odd man and steward’s room footman take their meals in the Servants’ Hall, waited on by the hall-boy. The still-room maids have breakfast and tea in the still-room and dinner and supper in the Hall. The housemaids and nursery-maids have breakfast and tea in the housemaids’

A fruity voice, like old tawny port made audible, said ‘Come in.’

Mr Beach was too well bred to be inquisitive, but his eyebrows were not. Ah!’ he said. ‘?’, cried his eyebrows. ‘? ? ?’

Lord Emsworth belonged to the people-like-to-be-left-alone-to-amuse-themselves-when-they-come-to-a-place school of hosts. He pottered about...

From ‘Summer Lightning’
‘He is grossly inefficient. And,’ said Lady Constance, unmasking her batteries, ‘I consider that he spends far too much of his time mooning around you, my dear. He appears to imagine that he is at Blandings Castle simply to dance attendance on you.’ The charge struck Millicent as unjust. She thought of pointing out that she and Hugo only met occasionally and then on the sly, but it occurred to her that the plea might be injudicious. She bent over the spaniel. A keen observer might have noted a defensiveness in her manner. She looked like a girl preparing to cope with an aunt.

The advance guard of the company appeared, in the shape of a flock of musicians. They passed out of the stage door, first a couple of thirsty-looking flutes, then a group of violins, finally an oboe by himself with a scowl on his face. Oboes are always savage in captivity.

He still thought Pilbeam should not have been wearing pimples with a red tie. One or the other if he liked. But not both.

A psychically gifted bystander, standing in the hall of the block of flats, would have heard at this moment a faint moan. It was Sue’s conscience collapsing beneath an unexpected flank attack.

But there had been a decade in his life, that dangerous decade of the twenties, when he had accumulated a past so substantial that a less able man would have been compelled to spread it over a far longer period.

‘Oh?’ said Millicent dully. She had dropped into a chair and picked up a book. She looked like something that might have occurred to Ibsen in one of his less frivolous moments.

Statistics relating to madness among coots are not to hand, but we may safely doubt whether even in the ranks of these notoriously unbalanced birds there could have been found at this moment one who was feeling half as mad as he did.

That grey, threatening sky had turned black by now. It was a swollen mass of inky clouds, heavy with the thunder, lightning and rain which so often come in the course of an English summer to remind the island race that they are hardy Nordics and must not be allowed to get their fibre all sapped by eternal sunshine like the less favoured dwellers in more southerly climes.

But the milk of human kindness, of which the butler was so full, had not yet been delivered on Baxter’s doorstep.

Before, he would gladly have murdered Beach and James and danced on their graves. Now, he would have been satisfied with straight murder.

Hugo squeezed her fondly and with the sort of relief that comes to men who find themselves squeezing where they had not thought to.

From Leave it to Psmith:-
‘Are you really broke?’
‘As broke as the Ten Commandments.’

…That low moaning sound you hear is the wolf bivouacked outside my door.

Go to her and say, “Susan, you are a very pretty girl. What would you do if I were to kiss you?” If she is a detective, she will reply, “How dare you, sir!” or, possibly, more simply, “Sir!” Whereas if she is the genuine housemaid I believe her to be and only sweeps under bureaux out of pure zeal, she will giggle and remark, “Oh, don’t be silly, sir!” You appreciate the distinction?’

A depressing musty scent pervaded the place, as if a cheese had recently died there in painful circumstances.

From Pigs Have Wings:-
‘He is stout, this Parsloe?’
‘He certainly gets his pennyworth out of a weighing machine.’

Left alone, Lord Emsworth sat for a while savouring that delicious sense of peace which comes to men of quiet tastes when their womenfolk have said their say and departed.

He rebuked himself for having allowed his thoughts to wander in such a dubious direction. He had received his early education at Harrow, and Old Harrovians, he reminded himself, when they have plighted their troth to Girl A, do not go about folding Girl B in their arms. Old Etonians, yes. Old Rugbeians, possibly. But not Old Harrovians.

I appreciate your surprise. Strongly anti-traditional, you are feeling. Butlers, you say to yourself, don’t kiss guests. Chauffeurs, perhaps. Gamekeepers, possibly. But butlers, never. In extenuation of his odd behaviour, however, I must mention that he is her uncle.

and on one cheek of that dark, saturnine face was a long scar. Actually it had been caused by the bursting of a gingerbeer bottle at a Y.M.C.A. picnic, but it gave the impression of being the outcome of battles with knives in the cellars of the underworld.

From Aunts Aren't Gentlemen:-
I would gladly have continued our conversation, but I knew he must be wanting to get back to his Spinoza. No doubt I had interrupted him just as Spinoza was on the point of solving the mystery of the headless body on the library floor.

AUTHOR Notes:- See Ring for Jeeves

New or unusual words:-
“…pleasure grounds and messuages.” A messuage in property law is a dwelling house together with its outbuildings, curtilage, and the adjacent land appropriated to its use.
“Gravamen.” The essence or most serious part of a complaint or accusation; the substance of a charge.
“No jimcrack work here..” Jimcrack or gimcrack means shoddily built.
“so we decided we’d just slide off and spring the news in our bread-and-butter letters.” A bread-and-butter letter was a thank you letter written to people with whom one had been staying upon arriving home.

Help!

2012-01-20T12:56:00.002Z

I am reading a number of books on my Kindle. As a result I no longer have page numnbers and, more importantly, I have no total number of pages. The ability to vary the size of the font (and in my case use a big one to make it easier on my double vision problem) means the number of 'pages' can vary enormously - even if one could count them. I wanted to add up my number of pages read in 2012 and future years but how to do it. Any suggestions?

Review:- Wilkie COLLINS - “No Name”

2012-01-19T17:13:00.009Z

Year Published: - 1862
Where the book was from:- Kindle Edition
ISBN: - -
Pages: - -pp Print Length: 392 pages
Genre: - Classic fiction
Location:- England
How I came across it: - Inspired by reading ‘The Moonstone’ I am tackling more of Wilkie Collins’s works
Rating: - ***** ****

One sentence summary:- A rollicking good yarn with a moral and some really believable characters.

Describe the plot without giving anything away:- The Vanstone family is a happy one – Mr Vanstone is a gentle and genial sort and his wife equally loving to their two daughters – the traditional and sensible Norah and her younger sister, the head-strong Magdalene. When their parents die tragedy hits in more ways than one – the girls find out their parents were not married and consequently they are not entitled to any inheritance and are turned out of their home. As bad as that is the fact that they are not entitled to use the name Vanstone. They are illegitimate, have no name. While Norah settles for the prospect of being a governess, Magdalene decides to tackle her wicked uncle and his son head on…

General comments:- This novel, about the stigma of illegitimacy, was initially rejected as immoral by the critics of its day, but is now seen as a work of social insight, showing Collins at the height of his powers.

Quotations:-

“Norah,” he said, after an interval, “you needn’t wait for me. Magdalen, my dear, you can go when you like.” His daughters rose immediately; and Miss Garth considerately followed their example. When an easy-tempered man does assert himself in his family, the rarity of the demonstration invariably has its effect; and the will of that easy-tempered man is Law.

Nothing in this world is hidden forever. The gold which has lain for centuries unsuspected in the ground, reveals itself one day on the surface. Sand turns traitor, and betrays the footstep that has passed over it; water gives back to the tell-tale surface the body that has been drowned. Fire itself leaves the confession, in ashes, of the substance consumed in it. Hate breaks its prison-secrecy in the thoughts, through the doorway of the eyes; and Love finds the Judas who betrays it by a kiss. Look where we will, the inevitable law of revelation is one of the laws of nature: the lasting preservation of a secret is a miracle which the world has never yet seen.

As a father, he regarded his family of three sons in the light of a necessary domestic evil, which perpetually threatened the sanctity of his study and the safety of his books.

When the boys went to school, Mr. Clare said “good-by” to them – and “thank God” to himself.

Few men of forty would have resisted her at that moment. Frank was twenty last birthday. In other words, he threw aside his cigar, and followed her out of the greenhouse.

To Miss Garth’s horror, Magdalen’s arm was unmistakably round Frank’s neck; and, worse still, the position of her face, at the moment of discovery, showed beyond all doubt that she had just been offering to the victim of Chinese commerce the first and foremost of all the consolations which a woman can bestow on a man. In plainer words, she had just given Frank a kiss.

I wonder who first picked out a mule as the type of obstinacy? How little knowledge that man must have had of women!

AUTHOR Notes:- Wilkie Collins (William Wilkie Collins) was born in 1824 and died in 1889. He is considered the author of the first detective novels in English. Although he studied to become a barrister it was never his intention to practise and by 1848 he had turned to writing, a number of short works appearing in Charles Dickens' periodicals "Household Words" and "All the Year Round". A first novel, “Iolani”, may have been written as early as 1844 but was rejected by publishers (and published for the first time in 1999). Collins’s second novel, “Antonina” (1850), set in fifth-century Rome, was a popular success, before his first venture into crime fiction with “Basil” (1852). Collins became hugely popular with the reading public thanks to his great novels which appeared in the 1860s - “The Woman in White” (1860), “No Name” (1862), “Armadale” (1866), and “The Moonstone” (1868). Unafraid of the criticism of Victorian society, he maintained two families, living with both Caroline Graves and Martha Rudd, neither of whom he married. In later life, he became addicted to opium and from 1870 his novels became less skilfully contrived.

To Be Read

2012-01-18T10:03:00.001Z

This is my current ‘TBR’ list. I shall aim to read all before 2012 is out – this is my personal challenge!

Christopher Paolini – Eldest
Christopher Paolini – Brisingr
Christopher Paolini – Inheritance
Anthony Trollope - Linda Tressel
Sarah Winman – When God was a Rabbit
Karin Alvtegen – Missing
Harold Begbie – The Bed-book of Happiness

Laura Childs – Death by Darjeeling
Wilkie Collins – The Woman in White
P G Wodehouse – Blandings Castle and Elsewhere
Mary Elizabeth Braddon – Birds of Prey
Aravind Adiga – The White Tiger
Henri Alain-Fournier – The Lost Estate (Le Grand Meaulnes)
David Bellos - Is That A Fish In Your Ear?: Translation and The Meaning of Everything
Tad Williams - The Dragonbone Chair

Stieg Larssson – The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Mark Forsyth – The Etymologicon
Haruki Murakami - 1Q84
S J Watson - Before I Go to Sleep
Simon Van Booy - Everything Beautiful Began After
P G Wodehouse - Do Butlers Burgle Banks?
Audrey Niffenegger – The Adventuress
Peter Ackroyd - Hawksmoor

Audrey Niffenegger - The Night Bookmobile

More about 2011

2012-01-15T09:39:00.001Z

With thanks to Words and Peace for all these additional ideas on summarising my reading year.

I read an average of 7.4 books per month. In 2012 I shall total the pages (though how to do this with Kindle editions I am not yet sure).

Books by the same author: - 2 each by Muriel Barberry, Elizabeth Gaskell, Khaled Hosseini, Charles Dickens, Hilary Mantel, Terry Pratchett, Anthony Trollope, and 3 by Margaret Oliphant, David Dickinson, and Thomas Hardy.

Re-Reads: Various non-fiction but only two fiction (I think) – P G Wodehouse – “Ring for Jeeves” ; and Terry Pratchett – “Once more ** with footnotes".

Favourite character of the year: Jacob de Zoet

Which author was new to you in 2010 that you now want to read more of? Mary Elizabeth BRADDON, Wilkie COLLINS, Helen DUNMORE

Best title: “The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce - a novel in four vintages”

In 2012 I shall also count up – Books coming from: my personal bookshelf; the library; borrowed from family; Kindle editions.

And now to a fun wrap up:-

- When I was younger I was : The Immoralist
- People might be surprised to discover that I’m: Not Quite a Geisha
- I will never be: The Rector
- At the end of a long day I need: A Thousand Splendid Suns
- Right now I’m feeling: Fludd
– Someday I want to: Ring for Jeeves
- At a party you’d find me: (looking for) The Skeleton in the Closet
– I’ve never: (been) The Mayor of Casterbridge
- I really don’t enjoy: Love Letters of Great Men and Women
- My advice is to: (be) The Observant Traveller
– In my next life I want to be: Lady Audley’s Secret
- If you could go anywhere, where would you go: North and South
– Your favourite form of transportation: A Pair of Blue Eyes
- Your best friend is: The Assassin’s Cloak
- You and your friends are: The Doctor’s Family
- Favourite time of day: A Shadow on the Glass
- If your life was : A Farmer's Year
- What is life to you: Vanity Fair
- Your fear: Wives and Daughters
- What is the best advice you have to give: (follow) Dead Man’s Footsteps
- Thought for the Day: They saw it happen
- How I would like to die: An English Murder
- My soul’s present condition: The Light of Other Days

2011 - A Summary

2012-01-01T21:14:00.044Z

During 2011 I read (or at least I recorded myself as having read - I may have missed a couple) 62 fiction and 27 non-fiction.

This compared very poorly with the previous year, 2010 - 137 fiction and 32 non-fiction (not 125 and 32 as previously recorded) but I have the excuse that 2010 was exceptional since I was laid up for a while after my heart by-pass.

The 2011 total figure was also down on 2009 when I read at least 89 fiction but the non-fiction were up on that year's 21.

NON-FICTION AWARDS

Six of the non-fiction that I read in 2011 got ten stars :-

David Verey (Ed) – “The Diary of a Victorian Squire” (re-read)

Joan POWERS (Ed.) - "Eeyore's Gloomy Little Instruction Book" (re-read)

Ronald Blythe -"The Penguin Book of Diaries" (re-read)

Scouse Press – "An Everyday History of Liverpool" (re-read)

E & M A Radford - "The Encyclopedia of Superstitions" (re-read)

William Plomer (Ed.) - "Kilvert's Diary 1870-1879" (re-read)

Since they were all books I had read before it seemed inappropriate to make a 'Best of non-fiction award' for 2011 though if I were pressed I would give it to Kilvert's Diary which is one of those books one could read and re-read a dozen times and still enjoy.

FICTION AWARDS

The SCRIPTOR SENEX PRIZE FOR FICTION for 2011 is divided into three sections – Victorian fiction, 20^th Century Fiction and 21^st Century Fiction.

The Victorian Fiction that got ten stars were:-

Charles DICKENS – "Dombey & Son" (1848)

Elizabeth GASKELL - "North and South" (1855)

Mary Elizabeth BRADDON - "Lady Audley's Secret" (1862)

Anthony TROLLOPE - “Rachel Ray“ (1863)

Joseph Sheridan Le FANU – “Uncle Silas ” (1864)

Margaret OLIPHANT - "Miss Marjoribanks" (1865)

Wilkie COLLINS – “The Moonstone” (1868)

And the VICTORIAN PRIZE was shared jointly by an obscure scribbler called Charles John Huffam DICKENS for "Dombey & Son" (1848) and Mary Elizabeth BRADDON for "Lady Audley's Secret" (1862). Unlike Dickens,whowrote little and faded into obscurity, Braddon was an extremely prolific writer, producing more than 80 novels with very inventive plots. The most famous one is "Lady Audley's Secret" which won her recognition as well as fortune. The novel has been in print ever since its publication, and has been dramatised and filmed several times. Unfortunately neither of the above responded to my e-mails asking them to collect their prize.

No 20^th Century books that I read in 2011 got ten stars so no Prize was awarded in that category!

The 21^st Century fiction that got ten stars were:-

Helen DUNMORE - “The Siege“ (2001)

Khaled HOSSEINI – “The Kite Runner” (2003)

Terry PRATCHETT - “Once More * *with footnotes” ( 2004) (re-read)

Alice HOFFMAN – “The Ice Queen ” (2005)

Khaled HOSSEINI – “A Thousand Splendid Suns ” (2007)

Muriel BARBERY – “The Elegance of the Hedgehog” (2008)

Paul TORDAY - “The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce - a novel in four vintages" (2008)

David MITCHELL – “The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet ” (2010)

Terry PRATCHETT - “Snuff“ (2011)

Like the Victorian Prize the 21st CENTURY PRIZE was shared. This time by David MITCHELL for “The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet ” (2010) and Khaled HOSSEINI for “A Thousand Splendid Suns ” (2007). Both deserve all the praise that has been heaped upon them and I recommend them to you most heartily. They are books not only to read but to buy and keep for ever.

If either of those gentlemen would care to contact me I shall be happy to forward a printed certificate and a tin of my delicious cornflake crunch.

What was the best book you read in 2011?

REVIEW:- Anthony TROLLOPE - “Rachel Ray“

2011-12-30T00:31:00.023Z

Year Published: - 1863
Where the book was from:- On my Kindle

ISBN: -
Pages: - pp
Genre: - Classic Victorian fiction
Location:- Devon
How I came across it: - Reading the Trollope's that I have not previously read – in chronological order.
Rating: - ***** *****

One sentence summary:- Rachel Ray offers a masterly and entertaining evocation of a small community living its life in mid-nineteenth-century England.

Describe the plot without giving anything away:- Innocent Rachel Ray is wooed by a visitor to their village but her widowed sister, Mrs Prime, is very suspicious and the community is given reason to dislike him. Rachel's mother, swayed by Mrs Prime, discourages Rachel. But whose judgement is right?

General comments:- An excellent Trollope - all one could ask from a Victorian romance.

Quotations:-
The prettiest scenery in all England - and if I am contradicted I will say in all Europe – is in Devonshire on the southern and south-eastern skirts of Dartmoor ...

There are women who cannot grow alone as standard trees--for whom
the support and warmth of some wall, some paling, some post, is absolutely necessary-
-who, in their growth, will bend and incline themselves towards some such prop for their
life, creeping with their tendrils along the ground till they reach it when the
circumstances of life have brought no such prop within their natural and immediate
reach.

I think there was much in the hardness of the weeds she wore. It seemed as though Mrs
Prime in selecting her crape, her bombazine, and the models of her caps, had resolved
to repress all ideas of feminine softness--as though she had sworn to herself, with a
great oath, that man should never again look on her with gratified eyes.

"A hundred years ago there wasn't all this writing between young people, and these
things were managed better then than they are now, as far as I can understand."
and it was Cherry's voice that she first heard, "A penny for your thoughts," said
Cherry. "Oh, you have so startled me!" said Rachel. "Then I suppose your thoughts were
worth more than a penny. Perhaps you were thinking of an absent knight." And then
Cherry began to sing--"Away, away, away. He loves and he rides away." Poor Rachel
blushed and was unable to speak, " (I wonder how old the expression 'A penny for your thoughts' is?)

All this she said, in a voice not so soft as should be the voice of woman to her betrothed.

"We have always advocated", said one of these articles, "the right of absolute freedom of choice for every borough and everycounty in the land; but we trust that the day is far distant in which the electors of Englandshall cease to look to their nearest neighbours as their best representatives."

"My own dear child!" said Mrs Rowan again; "for you know that you are to be my child
now as well as your own mamma's." "It is very kind of you to say so," said Mrs Ray. "Very
kind, indeed," said Mrs Prime; "and I'm sure that you will find Rachel dutiful as a
daughter." Rachel herself did not feel disposed to give any positive assurance on that
point. She intended to be dutiful to her husband, and was inclined to think that
obedience in that direction was quite enough for a married woman.

AUTHOR Notes:- Anthony Trollope – see Orley Farm

New or unusual words:- Mrs Tappitt had frequently offered to intromit the ceremony when calling upon his generosity for other purposes, but the September gift had always been forthcoming. Intromit – introduce; admit; allow to enter; grant entry to.

REVIEW:- Terry PRATCHETT - “Snuff“

2011-12-29T23:40:00.000Z

Year Published: - 2011
Where the book was from:- My own copy (although I bought the hardback for my collection I read it on the Kindle so as to be able to have the font bigger while my eyes were bad).
ISBN: - 978 0385619264
Pages: - 378pp
Genre: - Fantasy
Location:- Discworld
How I came across it: - I never miss reading a new Pratchett
Rating: - ***** *****

One sentence summary:- The 39th Discworld novel sees Sam Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch slightly out of his depth as he holidays in the innocent countryside.

Describe the plot without giving anything away:- Commander Sam Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch is on holiday in the pleasant and innocent countryside, but not for him a mere body in the wardrobe. There are many, many bodies and an ancient crime more terrible than murder. He is out of his jurisdiction, out of his depth, out of bacon sandwiches, and occasionally snookered and out of his mind, but never out of guile. Where there is a crime there must be a finding, there must be a chase and there must be a punishment. They say that in the end all sins are forgiven. But not quite all...

General comments:- Probably the best Discworld novel for a while.

Quotations:-
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a policeman taking a holiday will barely have time to open his suitcase before he finds his first corpse.

Ramkin Hall... Apparently it had a mile of trout stream and, Vimes seemed to recall from the deeds, a pub. Vimes knew how you could own a pub but he wondered how you could own a trout stream because, if that was your bit, it had already gurgled off downstream while you were watching it, yes? That meant somebody else was now fishing in your water, the bastard!

...weather as cold as charity and rain coming down so fast it had to queue up to
hit the ground.

And so he grinned and bore it while they fluttered around him like large moths, and he waved away yet more teacakes, and cups of tea that would have been welcome were it not that they looked and tasted like what proper tea turns into shortly after you drink it.

And now, if you will excuse me, I’m going down to the pub.’ Automatically, his wife said, ‘No, dear, you know drink doesn’t agree with you.’ The colonel was all smiles. ‘This evening I intend to settle my differences with drink and make it my friend.’

Of course, the white marble lovelies were dignified with urns, bunches of marble grapes, and the ever-popular length of gauze which had, happily, landed in just the right place to stop art becoming pornography.

Thus satisfied, he waited for the onset of sleep, against a chorus of howls, shrieks, mysterious distant bangs, surreptitious rustlings, screeches, disconcerting ticking noises, dreadful scratching sounds, terrible flappings of wings very close, and all the rest of the unholy orchestra that is known as the peace of the countryside.

AUTHOR Notes:- See Nation

Review:- P G WODEHOUSE – “Ring for Jeeves”

2011-12-29T17:41:00.021Z

Year Published: - 1953
Where the book was from:- My own copy
ISBN: - 9780099513926
Pages: - 240pp
Genre: - Humour
Location:- England
How I came across it: - Read (for the second or third time) as part of a challenge to read a book from each year of my life
Rating: - ***** ****

One sentence summary:- Classic English humour from the classic English humourist.

Describe the plot without giving anything away:- Jeeves is on loan to the Ninth Earl of Rowcester while Bertie Wooster is learning how to cope with life without a man servant. The Ninth Earl is somewhat impoverished but a plan to make money as a bookie goes awry when they (temporarily) find it necessary to cheat a big game hunter. It hardly spoils the plot to advise you that all comes right in the end!

General comments:- “You don’t analyse such sunlit perfection, you just bask in its warmth and splendour.” Stephen Fry.

Quotations:-

“The Oaks, Madam.”
“And what are the Oaks?”
It seemed incredible to the waiter that there should be anyone in England who could ask such a question, but he had already gathered that the lady was an American lady, and American ladies, he knew, are often ignorant of the fundamental facts of life. He had once met one who had wanted to know what a football pool was.

Its architecture was thirteenth-century, fifteenth-century and Tudor, its dilapidation twentieth-century, post-World War Two.

Monica regarded her husband with that cold, wifely eye which married men learn to dread.

“Coming out! The dear old getting-ready-for-market stage! How it takes one back. Off with the glasses and the teeth-braces.”
“On with the things that push you in or push you out, whichever you needed.”
This was Rory’s contribution, and Monica looked at him austerely.
“What do you know about it?”

“Potty what?”
“The lady does appear to diverge somewhat from the generally accepted norm, Sir Roderick.”

Arriving in the living room, he found that the number of ladies available for being jouined there had been reduced to one – reading from left to right, Jill.

“Socialistic legislation has sadly depleted the resources of England’s hereditary aristocracy. We are living now on what is known as the Welfare State, which means – broadly – that everybody is completely destitute.”

… was a skinny stripling of some sixteen summers on whom Nature in her bounty had bestowed so many pimples that there was scarcely room on his face for the vacant grin which habitually adorned it.

He thought nostalgically of his young manhood in London at the turn of the century… Butlers had been butlers then in the deepest and holiest sense of the word.

“I suppose what’s happened is that you’ve had one of these lovers’ tiffs.”
Jill did not intend to allow without protest what was probably the world’s greatest traghedy since the days of Romeo and Juliet to be described in this inadequate fashion.

At the sight… no fewer than three hairs of his left eyebrow quivered for an instant, showing how deeply he had been moved by the spectacle.
… Four hairs of Jeeves’s right eyebrow stirred slightly, as if a passing breeze had disturbed them.

AUTHOR Notes:- P G Wodehouse (1881 - 1975) Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse was an English humorist, whose body of work includes novels, short stories, plays, poems, song lyrics, and numerous pieces of journalism. He enjoyed enormous popular success during a career that lasted more than seventy years and his many writings continue to be widely read. Despite the political and social upheavals that occurred during his life, much of which was spent in France and the United States, Wodehouse's main canvas remained that of pre-war English upper-class society, reflecting his birth, education, and youthful writing career.

Pelham (Plum) Grenville Wodehouse was born in 1881 in Guildford, Surrey. Having spent his early years in Hong Kong he was sent to Dulwich College and worked as a banker and journalist before embarking on a career as a prolific and popular writer. He became an American citizen in 1955 and was knighted in 1975 a few weeks before his death in Southampton, New York.

An acknowledged master of English prose, Wodehouse has been admired both by contemporaries such as Hilaire Belloc, Evelyn Waugh and Rudyard Kipling and by modern writers such as Stephen Fry, Douglas Adams, J. K. Rowling,and Terry Pratchett.

New or unusual words:- A word one doesn’t hear nowadays – bally - adjective, adverb British Slang - damned (euphemism for bloody ).

REVIEW:- Gina OCHSNER - “The Russian Dreambook of Colour and Flight”

2011-12-28T00:35:00.010Z

Year Published: - 2009
Where the book was from:- My own copy – ex-library
ISBN: - 978 1 84627 007 9
Pages: - 370pp
Genre: - General fiction
Location:- Russia
How I came across it: - Serendipity
Rating: - *****

One sentence summary:- A strange and disturbing account of some of the problems of poverty, war and the unreal approach to life in post Soviet Russia.

Describe the plot without giving anything away:- In the yard of a crumbling apartment building in post-Soviet Russia, there’s a corpse who won’t keep quiet. Mircha fell from the roof and was never properly buried, so he sticks around to cause hassle to the living including Azade, keeper of the Little Necessary; Olga, a disillusioned translator/censor for a military newspaper; Yuri, a young army veteran who always wears an aviator’s helmet and thinks he’s a fish; and Tanya, a student of hope, words, and colour.

Tanya carries a notebook everywhere, recording her dreams of finding love and escaping her job at the All-Russia All-Cosmopolitan Museum, a place that holds a weird and wonderful collection of rubbishy art replicas created with the materials at hand, from foam and chewing gum to lollipop sticks and tomato juice. When the museum’s director hears of the visit of an American group seeking to fund art in Russia, it looks as if Tanya might get her chance at a better life, if she can only convince them of the collection’s worth. Enlisting the help of her strange assortment of neighbours with their different backgrounds and cultures, Tanya scrambles to save her dreams.

General comments:- A nominee for the Orange Prize for Fiction

Quotations:-

When a man loses his dream, he ceases to be a man, he ceases to be alive.

He was a good man in a tangential way. You could feel that behind the vitriol, the bile, and rage, really he meant well.

Outside, darkness settled on rooftops, gathered in corners.

Patience is what you get when you divide the number of days you’ve gone without eating by the temperature outdoors.

Faith was not about knowing where the path led, but believing the path led somewhere.

AUTHOR Notes:- Gina Ochsner’s stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Best American Non-required Reading, Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, and many other magazines, and have received awards such as the Raymond Carver Prize and the Chelsea Award for Short Fiction. Her first collection of short stories, The Necessary Grace to Fall, won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. It also won the Oregon Book Award for Short Fiction and the PNBA Book Award for short stories and was an Austin Chronicle Top Ten Pick.

REVIEW:- Marian BABSON - “Not quite a Geisha“

2011-12-27T17:09:00.000Z

Year Published: - 2003
Where the book was from:- My own copy - ex-library
ISBN: - 1-84119-596-0
Pages: - 206pp (206 too many)
Genre: - Cosy crime
Location:- London and Brighton
How I came across it: - Serendipity
Rating: - ***

One sentence summary:- Strange!

Describe the plot without giving anything away:- Evangeline Sinclair and Trixie Dolan, long-time stars of stage and screen, are surprised when their friend's dear departed Pekinese is going to be stuffed. Unfortunately the taxidermist turns into a corpse which is more than a Japanese Bobtail Cat does – being rescued from the shop just before it explodes...

General comments:- Sadly the book doesn't explode and goes downhill from the start. I like some light refreshment with my cosy crime but this wasn't my cup of tea.

Quotations:- nil

AUTHOR Notes:- Marian Babson (Ruth Stenstreem) was born in 1929 in Salem, Massachusetts, but has spent most of her adult life in London. She is a full-time writer and has published over thirty mystery novels.

New or unusual words - nil.

REVIEW:- Barbara PYM - “Excellent Women“

2011-12-27T11:00:00.014Z

Year Published: - 1952
Where the book was from:- My own copy
ISBN: - 978-1-84408-451-7
Pages: - 288pp
Genre: - Humour
Location:- England
How I came across it: - As part of challenge to read a book from each year of my life
Rating: - ***** ***

One sentence summary:- Hilarious, silly and endearing novel of a clergyman’s daughter’s attempts to involve herself with her neighbours (or not involve herself as the case may be).

Describe the plot without giving anything away:- Mildred Lathbury – the sort of capable woman who tends to be taken for granted, gets hopelessly involved with her neighbours, the glamorous Napiers, especially as she has more than a soft spot for Rockingham Napier.

General comments:- Barbara Pym has been described as the most under-rated novelist / humourist of the 20th century.

Quotations:-

I suppose an unmarried woman just over thirty, who lives alone and has no apparent ties, must expect to find herself involved or interested in other people’s business, and if she is also a clergyman’s daughter then one might really say there is no hope for her.

“I have to share a bathroom,” I had so often murmured, almost with shame, as if I personally had been found unworthy of a bathroom of my own.

“Rockingham does most of the cooking when we’re together,” she said, “I’m really too busy to do much.” Surely wives shouldn’t be too busy to cook for their husbands, I thought in astonishment.

“A little learning can be a dangerous thing, Mildred.” “Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring,” I went on, pleased at being able to finish the quotation.

“Anyway, widows nearly always do marry.” “Oh, they have the knack of catching a man. Having done it once I suppose they can do it again. I suppose there’s nothing in it when you know how.”

…but I felt I wanted to be alone, and what better place to choose than the sink, where neither of the men would follow me?

…it occurred to me that if I ever wrote a novel it would be of the ‘stream of consciousness’ type and deal with an hour in the life of a woman at the sink.

There can be no exchange of glances over the telephone, no breaking into laughter. After a few more insincere regrets and apologies we finished and I hung up the receiver, thinking that the telephone ought never to be used except for the transaction of business.

AUTHOR Notes:- (1913-1980) Barbara Mary Crampton Pym (1913 –1980) was an English novelist. In 1977 her career was revived when two prominent writers, Lord David Cecil and Philip Larkin, nominated her as the most under-rated writer of the century when the Times Literary Supplement asked authors/critics to name the most underrated authors of the past 75 years. She was the only asuthor nominated twice. Her novel ‘Quartet in Autumn’ (1977) was nominated for the Booker Prize that year, and she was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

REVIEW:- Gustave FLAUBERT - “Madame Bovary“

2011-12-26T12:54:00.011Z

Year Published: - 1857
Where the book was from:- My own copy
ISBN: -
Pages: - 357pp
Genre: - Classic Fiction
Location:- Rural France
How I came across it: - Re-reading (first read c 1970)
Rating: - ***** *****

One sentence summary:- This examination of life in rural France in the 1850s well deserves its classic status and is noteworthy as an examination of Emma Bovary for whom the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.

Describe the plot without giving anything away:- The story focuses on a doctor's wife, Emma Bovary, who has adulterous affairs and lives beyond her means in order to escape the banalities and emptiness of provincial life. Though the basic plot is rather simple, even archetypal, the novel's true art lies in its details and hidden patterns.

Emma is the novel's protagonist and is the main source of the novel's title (Charles's mother and his former wife are also referred to as Madame Bovary). She has a highly romanticized view of the world and craves beauty, wealth, passion, and high society. It is the disparity between these romantic ideals and the realities of her country life that drive most of the novel, most notably leading her into extramarital love affairs as well as causing her to accrue an enormous amount of debt. Convinced that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, Emma does not realize that extreme joy, even for the wealthy and powerful, comes rarely.

Although fairly intelligent she never has a chance to develop her mind and as an adult, Emma's capacity for imagination is far greater than her capacity for analysis. She not only believes in the false fronts other people present to her, but she despises the very few people who are exactly as they appear to be.

General comments:- Madame Bovary (1856) was Flaubert's first published novel and is considered his masterpiece.

The novel was attacked for obscenity by public prosecutors when it was first serialized in La Revue de Paris between October and December 1856, resulting in a trial in January 1857 that made the story notorious. After the acquittal in February 1857, it became a bestseller when it was published as a book that April, and it now stands virtually unchallenged not only as a seminal work of Realism, but as one of the most influential novels ever written.

Quotations:-
Emma was leaning out at the window; she was often there. The window in the provinces replaces the theatre and the promenade….

Self-possession depends upon its environment. We don’t speak on the first floor as on the fourth; and the wealthy woman seems to have, about her, to guard her virtue, all her bank-notes, like a cuirass, in the lining of her corset.

She was the mistress of all the novels, the heroine of all the dramas, the vague ‘she’ of all the volumes of verse.

…a demand for money being, of all the kinds that blow upon love, the coldest and most destructive.

AUTHOR Notes:- Gustave Flaubert (1821 - 1880) was a French writer who is counted among the greatest Western novelists. He is known especially for his first published novel, Madame Bovary (1857), and for his scrupulous devotion to his art and style. Flaubert was notoriously a perfectionist about his writing and claimed always to be searching for le mot juste ("the right word").

New or unusual words (in this particular translation) –
list (as an adjective to describe shoes) – meaning unknown;
tatterdemalion - n. A person wearing ragged or tattered clothing; a ragamuffin. adj. Ragged; tattered.

REVIEW:- Andre GIDE “The Immoralist“

2011-11-25T16:38:00.010Z

Year Published: - 1902
Where the book was from:- My own copy
ISBN: - 978-0-141-18299-5
Pages: - 124pp
Genre: - Classic French novel
Location:- France and Tunisia
How I came across it: - Re-reading to see if I liked it better
Rating: - ***** *

One sentence summary:- I read this in French in my early twenties and didn't enjoy it – my re-reading, an English version, did not endear me to it any more though parts are eminently quotable.

Describe the plot without giving anything away:- Michel is ignorant of love when he marries Marceline out of a sense of duty to his father. They honeymoon in Tunisia where Michel becomes very ill. Marceline nurses him and during his recovery Michel is amused by an Arab boy who awakens him both sexually and morally – or immorally.

General comments:- “L'Immoraliste confronts 'the fundamental eternal problem of the moral conditions of our excistence.'” Alan Sheridan.

Quotations:-
I present this book for what it I worth. It is a fruit filled with bitter ash, like those colocynths which sprout in the most arid deserts; rather than quench your thirst, they scorch your mouth even more, yet against their backdrop of golden sand they are not without a certain beauty.

I believe that any heightened sensitivity can be a source of pleasure or pain, depending upon the strength or weakness of one's constitution.

I likened myself to a palimpsest. I felt the joy of a scholar who discovers, beneath newer writing, a more ancient and infinitely more precious text inscribed on the same piece of paper.

Nearer to the sky than it is to the sea, Ravello stands on a steep hill overlooking the flat, distant coast of Paestum.

The finest works of mankind are universally concerned with suffering. How would one tell a story about happiness.

Oh, these honest Swiss. Where do their good manners get them? They have no crime, no history, no literature, no art... They are like a sturdy rosebush without thorns or flowers.

AUTHOR Notes:- André Paul Guillaume Gide (1869 – 1951) was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1947. Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars.

New or unusual words - colocynth

REVIEW:- Helen DUNMORE - “The Siege“

2011-11-23T16:05:00.010Z

Year Published: - 2001
Where the book was from:- My cope- ex-library
ISBN: - 9780670897186
Pages: - 291pp
Genre: - Historical novel
Location:- Leningrad, 1941
How I came across it: - Serendipity
Rating: - ***** ***** (I originally graded this as nine stars but later decided it merited ten)

One sentence summary:- The residents of Leningrad are under siege from the Germans who have surrounded the city resulting in a struggle not only to avoid the shells but to fight starvation and, in the process, hope for love.

Describe the plot without giving anything away:-
The besieged people of Leningrad face not only shells and starvation but also the biting Russian winter. This tale interweaves the love affairs of two generations. The Levin family struggle to stay alive during this terrible winter and the realistic plot is a genuinely moving account of the horrors that war can inflict on people's lives.
The Beige was nominated for the Whitbread Prize and the Orange Prize for Fiction.

General comments:-
I've only just discovered that Helen Dunmore wrote a sequel in 2010 – The Betrayal. I promptly ordered it from Amazon!

Quotations:-

I stood for a long time, looking at Kutuzov's statue... There were just the two of usd, Kutuzov and me. It's all very well for you, I thought. I may even have said something aloud. You are stone. You are safe inside history. But we are still flesh, trapped in a [present we don't understand, and being shoved towards a future we can't predict. The times are scared, and so are we. If only I could forget what human blood smells like.

“We could die out here!” Katya cried ghe first time the planes came over. She stated in horror, as if it had never occurred to her. Someone is trying to kill me, me, Katink, with my top grades in physics and chemistry, me, with my ambition to be a doctor, me, with my new summer dance-dress waiting at Gostiny Dvor.

Even if the high-up ones went completely crazy, they couldn’t stop apples growing on apple trees.

AUTHOR Notes:- Helen Dunmore was born in the UK in 1952. She has published six novels with Viking and Penguin, including A SPELL OF WINTER, winner of the Orange Prize. She is also a poet and a children's novelist. She lives with her family in Bristol.

New or unusual words - nil

REVIEW:- Peter JAMES - “Dead Man's Footsteps“

2011-11-22T06:29:00.009Z

Year Published: - 2008
Where the book was from:- My own copy - ex-library
ISBN: - 978-1-4050-9204-3
Pages: - 467pp
Genre: - Crime thriller
Location:- New York, Brighton
How I came across it: - Serendipity
Rating: - ***** *

One sentence summary:- One of a series of crime novels involving Detective Supt. Roy Grace with a cleverly twisting plot and sub-plot.

Describe the plot without giving anything away:- Using the chaos of 9/11, failed businessman and rogue, Ronnie Wilson decides to disappear and re-invent himself elsewhere. Six years later a frightened girl is being hunted down in Brighton and a woman's body turns up in a drain nearby. It's up to Supt. Grace to find the connection.

General comments:- I didn't really take to the policemen in this book – they were not entirely believable. By contrast, the description of 9/11 was all too believable. I'm not sure I'm happy about fictional books which describe recent disasters so clearly – but I suppose anyone directly affected by the event would simply avoid them.
Thrilling and with great little twists to the plot.
The other Roy Grace works, though I doubt I'll bother seeking them out, are:-
Detective Superintendent Roy Grace
1. Dead Simple (2005)
2. Looking Good Dead (2006)
3. Not Dead Enough (2007)
4. Dead Man's Footsteps (2008)
5. Dead Tomorrow (2009)
6. Dead Like You (2010)
7. Dead Man's Grip (2011)
Peter James has also written a large number of individual crime novels.

Quotations:- nil

AUTHOR Notes:- Peter James is the author of several very successful thrillers, two of which have been made into successful TV films. More are in production now. He was born in 1948 and educated at Charterhouse. He lives in Sussex near Lewes.

New or unusual words – nil.

REVIEW:- Thomas HARDY - “Life's Little Ironies“

2011-11-20T06:14:00.000Z

Year Published: - 1888-1893
Where the book was from:- My copy – bought new
ISBN: - 978-1-85326-178-7
Pages: - 180pp
Genre: - General Fiction – Short Stories
Location:- Wessex
How I came across it: - Researching Victorian literature
Rating: - ***** ***

One sentence summary:- A collection of Hardy's short stories – the title 'Life's Little Ironies' having been coined by Hardy for his third collection of short stories.

Describe the plot without giving anything away:- Various stories of life in Hardy's rural Wessex as the Nineteenth Century draws to a close.

General comments:- Describing a vanishing world in his usual brilliant prose, Hardy tells tales as might the man in the inn or, as is the case with “A Few Crusted Characters” , travellers on a carrier's van. In a way there is nothing to the stories but, as a certain comedian once said, “It's the way I tell 'em”.

Quotations:-
nil

AUTHOR Notes:- Thomas Hardy – see A Pair of Blue Eyes

New or unusual words I came across – nonce; totties.

REVIEW:- Paul TORDAY - “The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce“

2011-11-19T06:28:00.000Z

REVIEW:- Paul TORDAY - “The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce - a novel in four vintages“
Year Published: - 2008
Where the book was from:- My copy - ex-library
ISBN: - 978-0-7538-2315-6
Pages: - 308pp
Genre: - General Fiction, psychology, autism
Location:- London / Yorkshire
How I came across it: - Serendipity
Rating: - ***** *****

One sentence summary:- A cleverly crafted look at a man who sells his computer software company to buy a wine cellar and what happens next (only it's actually what happened before).

Describe the plot without giving anything away:- The book is in four parts 2006, 2004, 2003 and 2002 and cleverly takes one back from the outcome to its origins. The outcome is the 'inheritance' of a wine cellar and the consumption of too much of it by Wilberforce, a man generally acknowledged as being strange but remarkably talented in creating computer software. The history of how it all came about gradually unfolds and the novel becomes more and more poignant as it goes on.

General comments:- As the Daily Telegraph commented - “Remarkably, given the bleakness of both subject and hero, it is an incredibly good read.” A must for any wine buff it takes one on a tour of red wines with the occasional white thrown in for good measure. From the first moment we are introduced to him we want to know more about Wilberforce and what makes him tick. At times an upsetting tale of alcoholism and at others a story of a sick and lonely man which wrenches at the heart-strings. A great read.

Quotations:-

Thinking about sipping the wine made me look at the clock on the bedside table, and I saw it was eleven in the morning. By now on any normal day I would be at least halfway through my first bottle. That was another reason it was wrong to describe me as an alcoholic: an alcoholic wouldn't care whether his wine came form a box or a bottle.

When I say wine, I am speaking of red Bordeaux – or claret, as some of us who drink it still call it.
I know you don't believe in God but He believes in you.

I knew how to talk to people, but I had never got to the point of doing it for fun.... The possibility that people could spend time together with no other object in mind than enjoyment of one another's company was a new idea to me.

I used to wash and dry the foil cartons in which my takeaways came and keep them in neat piles, in case they could be of use some day. I rearranged the piles of cartons now and then. I found it soothing.

AUTHOR Notes:- Paul TORDAY was born in 1946 and read English at Oxford. He spent 30 years working in engineering and industry before concentrating on his writing. His first novel Salmon Fishing in the Yemen was published in 2006 and was an instant success. He lives in Northumberland and has often visited the Middle East.

New words I came across – eidetic; encomium

More dedications

2011-11-17T06:50:00.000Z

A school prize to Richard - I never won a school prixe, ever!

Bibles often have dedications in them - perhaps that is why we end up with so many Bibles in the house, being loath to get rid of one with a dedication in it.

This one was given to my grandmother by a family friend and her godmother - Miss Ellen Dee, the then postmistress at Shipton-under-Wychwood in Oxfordshire where Nana was brought up. A lot of our family seem to have been christened around Christmas even though they may by then have been months old.

I shoudln't really include a pamphlet on my book blog but this one was given to me by its author - Judith Flint.

Guilty Secrets

2011-11-15T06:44:00.001Z

Bibliophiliac recently blogged about the ten books that have been on her shelves – unread – the longest. So, despite having nine book reviews to do, I decided upon this frivolous post instead as I look at the ten fiction that have been on my shelves the longest without being read. I shall try to justify (to myself at least) why they are still there.

Rummer Godden – The River. I think this has been neglected because it is in that category of books I ought to read rather than books I want to read.

Virginia Woolf – Orlando. I cannot excuse myself. I loved Virginia Woolf when I read her books in the 1960s/1970s and I cannot understand why I missed this one. This little Penguin has sat on my shelves for years.

Captain Marryat – The Children of the New Forest. I love the Stuart period and this romantic children's book should be ideal 'cosy read time' material and yet I've never opened it. I wonder why?

Thomas Hughes – Tom Brown's Schooldays. This sat on my shelves for so long I eventually gave it away – unread. Recently I put it on my Amazon wishlist and Helen and Ian bought it for me. This time I must read it!

Vladimir Nabokov – Lolita. Judging by Bibliophiliac this may be on everyone's unread shelf so I may not need to justify it...

Jane Stevenson – London Bridges. A fairly ordinary looking detective novel and yet it has just sat there while others – less worthy I am sure – have been read. Perhaps I am subconsciously saving it for a rainy day.

Allan Mallnson – The Sabre's Edge. It is 1824 and Captain Hervey is in India. When I read the previous one of the series I was quite enthusiastic about this young man's progress in the Dragoons but it has tailed off.

Bill Richardson – Bachelor Brothers' Bed and Breakfast. I actually started this and quite enjoyed the brief bit I read and yet it has never been picked up since.

Alexander McCall Smith – Love Over Scotland. I have fallen out with McCall Smith's style. Initially it seems wonderful but it palls after a while

George Du Maurier – Peter Ibbetson. This was one of Mum's books – first published in 1891 – and I've always meant to read it. One day – perhaps....

What are your guilty secrets?

Review:- Cyril HARE - “An English Murder“

2011-11-06T16:07:00.001Z

REVIEW:- Cyril HARE - “An English Murder“ (also published as 'The Christmas Murder')

Year Published: - 1951
Where the book was from:- My own copy
ISBN: - 9781842623695
Pages: - 269pp (Large Print Edition)
Genre: - Cosy Crime
Location:- Fictional English county of Markshire - early 1950s
How I came across it: - My 1951 work for the Books Published in the first years of my life challenge.
Rating: - ***** ****

One sentence summary:- Perfect cosy crime set in the era when men were men, women were women and butlers were butlers!

Describe the plot without giving anything away:- Warbeck Hall is an old English country house and the scene of an equally classic English murder at Christmas. All the necessary ingredients are there and the crime is cleverly undertaken. We have an assortment of family members and 'friends' thrown together in a snow-bound country hall with tea and cake, a faithful butler, a peculiar foreigner, snow falling and the church bells at Midnight. Although one of the persons marooned there is a policeman the detective work is far from conventional.

General comments:- Excellently written. Not only does the hall and its inhabitants come to life – despite the cold – but the plot is decidedly novel (or is it?). If you are fortunate enough to read it you will see why I put the 'or is it' in brackets. Thoroughly recommended for any cosy crime enthusiast and as na example of simple but excellent English in the style of the early 1950s.

Quotations:-

“His lordship is better, thank you. He is up but not yet down.”

“Up, but not yet down,” repeated Dr Bottwink thoughtfully. “Up, but not down! English is a beautifully expressive language.”

“I have never been greatly interested in politics, sir.”

“Oh, Briggs, Briggs,” said the historian, shaking his head in regretful admiration, “if you only knew how fortunate you were to be be able to say that.”

(Bearing in mind the novel was written in 1951, just six years after the War ended. Dr Bottwink, a Jew, had been pushed / fled from country to country and been in a concentration camp.)

Lord Warbeck, waking from the light sleep of an invalid, saw from his window his lawns and garden with the parkland beyond and he Markshire Downs in the far distance uniformly white. The fine details of the landscape gone, the outlines smoothed and thickened by the covering of snow. It would all have looked exactly the same, he reflected, to anyone lying in that bed on such a morning at any time since Capability Brown remodelled the plantations in the park, nearly two hundred years before.

“Indeed I'm relying on you to tide me over Boxing Day. Nothing could be more ill-bred in a host than to choose such a moment to expire.”

The room seemed to be suddenly full of women. The quiet, masculine atmosphere of the library, redolent of wood smoke and old calf bindings, was charged with a new, disturbing element, made up of feminine scents and sounds.

“Very good, madam.”
Briggs' voice was completely devoid of expression. By no movement of limb or feature did he give the smallest indication that the order was anything but a perfectly normal one. A well-trained butler is schooled to repress his feelings on such occasions. None the less, by some occult means he contrived to convey to every person in the room that he was outraged by the proposal. How he did it, it was impossible to say. Such subtle means of communication are the secrets of telepathists and well-trained butlers.

AUTHOR Notes:- Cyril Hare was the pseudonym of Judge Gordon Clark. Born at Mickleham near Dorking in 1900, he was educated at Rugby and New College, Oxford. At the bar his practice before World War II was largely in the criminal courts. During the War he was on the staff of the Director of Public Prosecutions; but afterwards, as a County Court judge, his work concerned civil disputes only - and his sole connection with crime was through his fiction. He turned to writing detective stories at the age of thirty-six and some of his first short stories were published in Punch. Hare went on to write two series of detective novels, starring Inspector Mallet or Francis Pettigrew. He also wrote two independent novels – 'An English Murder' and 'The Magic Bottle'. Gordon Clark died in 1958.

REVIEW:- Katherine Hall PAGE - “The Body in the Bookcase“

2011-11-05T06:29:00.000Z

Year Published: - 1998
Where the book was from:- My own copy - ex-library
ISBN: - 978 0 7090 8332 0
Pages: - 222pp
Genre: - Cosy crime
Location:- A Massachusetts town
How I came across it: - serendipity
Rating: - ***** *

One sentence summary:- A string of burglaries and the death of a friend lead Faith Fairchild to once again investigate what is going on, especially when the parsonage is burgled as well.

Describe the plot without giving anything away:- Faith Fairchild, the minister's wife in a quiet Massachusetts town gets involved in trying to discover the murderer of her friend and the burglar whole stole all her jewellery and family silver. A trip around local pawnshops and antiques dealers lead to some surprising results while all the time trying to cope with the capricious demands of a bride-to-be on her baking and catering business.

General comments:- A most enjoyable romp through New England but perhaps not enough depth for me.
Series
Faith Fairchild
1. The Body in the Belfry (1989)
2. The Body in the Kelp (1990)
3. The Body in the Bouillon (1991)
4. The Body in the Vestibule (1992)
5. The Body in the Cast (1993)
6. The Body in the Basement (1994)
7. The Body in the Bog (1996)
aka The Body in the Marsh
8. The Body in the Fjord (1997)
9. The Body in the Bookcase (1998)
10. The Body in the Big Apple (1999)
11. The Body in the Moonlight (2001)
12. The Body In The Bonfire (2002)
13. The Body in the Lighthouse (2003)
14. The Body in the Attic (2004)
15. The Body in the Snowdrift (2005)
16. The Body in the Ivy (2006)
17. The Body in the Gallery (2008)
18. The Body in the Sleigh (2009)
19. The Body in the Gazebo (2011)
20. The Body in the Boudoir (2012)

Quotations:-
...I really haven't had a spare minute.”
...II Faith had awakened that morning, fully intending to make some. She'd been filled with the kind of vernal energy that impels some women to attack the grime on their windows and dust bunnies under the radiators – or the ironing, which, in Faith's case, threatened to erupt like Mount Vesuvius from the spare-room closet, flow down the stairs and out the front door, entombing hapless passers-by for eternity.

AUTHOR Notes:- Born in 1947, Katherine Hall Page's first mystery involving Faith Fairchild – The Body in the Belfry – received the Agatha Award for best first mystery novel. She lives with her husband and son.

REVIEW:- Kate ELLIS - “A Cursed Inheritance“

2011-10-30T06:32:00.000Z

Year Published: - 2005 Piatkus Books Ltd
Where the book was from:- My own copy - ex-library
ISBN: - 0 7499 0725 8
Pages: - 360pp
Genre: - Crime
Location:- Annetown (Jamestown), Virginia, and Devon
How I came across it: - Serendipity
Rating: - ***** **

One sentence summary:- A brutal massacre at a Devon hall was 'obviously' carried out by the housekepper who then killed herself but twenty years later a reporter investigating the crime seems to have other ideas – and gets murdered for them.

Describe the plot without giving anything away:- The hall in which the massacre took place has become a New Age healing centre which DI Wesley Peterson suspects is not all it seems – nor are its visitors. The hall was already notorious for a crime committed centuries earlier and the novel tracks the history of that piece of villainy as well, leading Peterson's friend Neil to the ruined remains of an English settlement in Virginia.

General comments:- This was the ninth in the Wesley Peterson series:-
Wesley Peterson
1. The Merchant's House (1998)
2. The Armada Boy (1999)
3. An Unhallowed Grave (1999)
4. The Funeral Boat (2000)
5. The Bone Garden (2001)
6. A Painted Doom (2002)
7. The Skeleton Room (2003)
8. The Plague Maiden (2004)
9. A Cursed Inheritance (2005)
10. The Marriage Hearse (2006)
11. The Shining Skull (2007)
12. The Blood Pit (2008)
13. A Perfect Death (2009)
14. The Flesh Tailor (2010)
15. The Jackal Man (2011)
16. The Cadaver Game (2012)

I enjoyed this book - especially with its flashbacks to the 1600s - but I'm not sure I'll actually seek out any more Wesley Peterson novels. The plot was good but I didn't particualrly identify with the hero.

AUTHOR Notes:- Kate Ellis was born (1953) and brought up in Liverpool and she studied drama in Manchester. She worked in teaching, marketing and accountancy before first enjoying writing success as a winner of the North West Playwrights competition. Crime and mystery stories have always fascinated her, as have medieval history and archaeology which she likes to incorporate in her books. She lives in North Cheshire, England, with her husband, two sons and an overweight cat called Vivaldi!

REVIEW:- Terry PRATCHETT - “Once More * *with footnotes”

2011-10-27T20:03:00.001+01:00

“Once More * *with footnotes”
Year Published: - 2004
Where the book was from:- My own copy
ISBN: - 1 886778 57 4
Pages: - 280pp
Genre: - Humour (mixture of fiction and non-fiction)
Location:- Somewhere in Terry's brain
How I came across it: - Sorting out the loft – decided it was time I re-read it.
Rating: - ***** ***** * (Yes, I know my system only goes up to 10 but anything Terry touches can be magical)

One sentence summary:- A selection of Terry's early writings, short stories, speeches and bits and bobs with occasional thoughts about fantasy and more than occasional bits of fantasy.

Describe the plot without giving anything away:- What plot? Although there is a definitely Discworld bias and a lot of witches. SOME CHAP IN A SKULL MASK puts in an appearance as well.

General comments:- Some serious comments on writing and the place of fantasy in entertainment and education together with little glimpses of what Granny Weatherwax does to people when she's nice to them. A must for any Pratchett fan and a darned good read for anyone interested in fantasy writing and mythology – with a little bit of the nuclear power industry thrown in for good measure. Probably the most important four pages are 187-190 – The Orangutans are Dying' but they get rather lost among the humour. Perhaps they would have been better as the last four pages...

Quotations:-
Michael has... impressed me by having a sense of humour while nevertheless being an accountant, an achievement of such magnitude that it almost certainly earns him an honorary degree in magic.

History records a great many foolish comments, such as, “It looks perfectly safe”, or “Indians? What Indians?” and Dogger added to the list with an old favourite which has caused more encyclopedias and life insurance policies to be sold than you would have thought possible.
“I suppose, he said, “that you'd better come in.”

It works best if your culture includes at least folk memories of Punch and Judy, a glove puppet show depicting wife-beating, child abuse, cruelty to animals, assault on an officer of the law, murder, and complete and total disrespect of Authority. It is for children, of course, and they laugh themselves sick.... It can only be a matter of time before an anger management consultant is included among the puppets.

If people didn't think very carefully about warning signs, a dead and buried nuclear reactor would make the classic cursed tomb; not long after breaking into it people would dies mysteriously.

The Wind in the Willows... I know now, of course, that it is totally the wrong kind of book for children. There is only one female character and she is a washerwoman. No attempt is made to explain the social conditioning and lack of proper housing that makes the stoats and weasels act they way they do. Mr Badger's house is an insult to all those children not fortunate enough o live in a Wild Wood. The Mole and Rat's domestic arrangements are probably acceptable, but only if they come right out and talk frankly about them...

...the world's second oldest profession (priest) became a growth industry (the oldest is 'flint-knapper' no matter what you may have heard).

Fantasy should present the familiar in a new light... And, at its best, it is truly escapist. But the point about escaping is that you should escape to, as well as from. You should go somewhere worthwhile, and come back the better for the experience.

Go with publishers to a fish and chip supper. Ah, but this is Doyles Fish Restaurant, where they serve barramundi and chips, and a barramundi is what a cod becomes if it's been a good cod in this life.

America got the '50s – all those juke boxes, rock 'n' roll, and Cadillacs with fins... In fact we weren't even allowed any '60s until 1964, when we were allowed to keep them until they were exported to the West coast of the USA in 1968. To be honest, they only happened to about 250 people in London, in any case. The rest of us read about them, and picked up the pieces.

In fact the whole book is so quotable you should go out and buy it!

AUTHOR Notes:- TERRY PRATCHETT OBE - Terry Pratchett, born 1948, is one of the most popular authors writing today. He lives behind a keyboard in Wiltshire and says he 'doesn't want to get a life, because it feels as though he's trying to lead three already'. He was appointed OBE in 1998. He is the author of the phenomenally successful Discworld series and his trilogy for young readers, The Bromeliad, is scheduled to be adapted into a spectacular animated movie. His first Discworld novel for children, The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents”, was awarded the 2001 Carnegie Medal. I have read the whole of the Disworld / Bromeliad and Johnny Maxwell series (in most cases reading them three times).

Review:- Joan POWERS (Ed.) - "Eeyore's Gloomy Little Instruction Book"

2011-10-19T06:12:00.019+01:00

Year Published: - 1997
Where the book was from:- My own copy
ISBN: - 0 416 19420 6
Pages: - 35 pp
Genre: - Humour
Location:- The Hundred Acre Wood (Five Hundred Acre Wood; in Ashdown Forest)
How I came across it: - I cannot recall
Rating: - ***** *****

One sentence summary:- Good things come in small packages and these 35 pages are some that I come back to time and again since I got it years ago; I love Eeyore and the choice of quotations from A.A.Milne and of the illustrations byE.H.Shepherd is excellent.

General comments:- A set of cynical comments from one of children's fiction's most loveable characters. A perfect little gift book for the pessimist in your life. , Eeyore's Gloomy Little Instruction Book is the very thing for those who see the glass as half-empty. In his lugubrious style, Eeyore offers wisdom of a gloomy nature on subjects ranging from food and friendship to what to do when one's tail is missing. Line drawings throughout.

Quotations:-
I could quote the whole book, it is so delightful!
“This writing business – pencils and what-not – is overrated. Silly stuff. Nothing in it.”

AUTHOR Notes:- Joan Powers is also the author of Henny Penny (a read along with me book).

BOOKS PUBLISHED IN THE FIRST YEARS OF MY LIFE CHALLENGE – 2011

2011-10-16T05:28:00.002+01:00

Sadly I missed this challenge set by Words and Peace when it came out last December and have only just come across it. It has various levels:-
- 3 years = Toddler
- 5 years = Kid
- 10 years = Pre-Teen
- 15 years or more = YA

You have to choose one book per year and read it between 1^st January and 31^st December 2011.

(To find books published in a specific year, google: ‘Books published in… ‘, and you’ll find several links. The one Words and Peace and I prefer is the Goodreads’ ones: ‘Most popular books published in…’ The list displays 200 books, including fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama, for each year. But be careful some are re-prints or new editions of older books.)

Since I’ve only got a couple of months in which to do it I shall merely go for ‘Kid’ level – to the age of five.

My five chosen books are:-

1949 – The Story of Language by Mario Andrew Pei

1950 – Fifth Chinese Daughter by Jade Snow Wong

1951 – An English Murder by Cyril Hare

1952 – Excellent Women by Barbara Pym

1953 – Ring for Jeeves by P G Wodehouse

(I read the last one in my teens and fancy having a bit of light reading to finish off the challenge – probably over Christmas!)

Dedications

2011-10-12T19:56:00.000+01:00

I'm going through the loft at the moment and among the hundreds of books up there are some with dedications in them.

These two, for example, celebrate quite significant friendships in the family. On the left is a little French dictionary which Dad gave to Uncle Eric during the War while Uncle Eric was serving abroad.

The dedication reads:- I hope you will be back before you can make good use of this dictionary. Morris. 16.3.43

On the right is an Apocrypha given to Mum. The dedication reads:-

A Simple Token January 5th 1953 for my Dear Friend Flora Edwards from John Dowd With great gratitude for the Special help she has given from time to time.

John Dowd was our next door neighbour and his wife was mentally unstable. Mum gave him
not only friendship but acted as a mediator in his stormy marriage.

The follwing dedication was in a Margery Lawrence book of Mum's.

Pixie was Mum and Fairy Queen was a former office colleague of hers though which one I have forgotten (and nowadays have no way of finding out).

What does one do with books like this? I have no use for an out-of-date (and tiny) French Dictionary or an Apocrypha or a novel I shall never read and yet to throw them away seems somehow sacrilegious. No doubt they'll go back in the loft...

REVIEW:- - Anthony TROLLOPE - “Orley Farm“

2011-10-11T06:17:00.001+01:00

Year Published: - 1861/2 – initially serialised
Where the book was from:- Doewnloaded to my Kindle
ISBN: -
Pages: - pp
Genre: - Victorian novel
Location:- England
How I came across it: - Reading the Trollopes I have not read before – in chronological order.
Rating: - ***** ****

One sentence summary:- Lady Mason inherited Orley Farm twenty years ago after a court case to decide upon her husband's will but history is now raising its ugly head again.

Describe the plot without giving anything away:- Lady Mason's son inherited Orley Farm from his father twenty years ago after a court case to decide upon her husband's will but history is now raising its ugly head again. The other claimant from the 20 year old court case has received evidence from a wily solicitor that while the will was genuine the codicil which gave Orley farm to his son was forged. Was it? And will the fact that Lady Mason is still attractive work in her favour or against her as friends support her unconditionally but her solicitor's wife gets jealous. Her son, now grown up, wants to take on all claimants in the most forceful way possible but Lady Mason would rather the whole affair went away.

General comments:- I just love Trollope's style and he rarely disappoints. I have come to think of him as a friend – both when in need and when simply wanting a quiet time of relaxation.
Although this novel appeared to have undersold (possibly because the shilling part was being overshadowed by magazines, such as 'The Cornhill', that offered a variety of stories and poems in each issue), Orley Farm became Trollope's personal favourite. The house in the book became a school, which was originally supposed to be the feeder school to Harros. This is called Orley Farm, Trollope having allowed it to be named after his book. (www.orleyfarm.harrow.sch.uk)

Kindle Comment: - I think this was the first book I read in its entirety on the Kindle. I downloaded the whole of Trollope's work for 99p. The contents page was easy to master and could be out in alphabetical or chronological order. I find it almost unbelievable that for less than a pound I have access to the complete Trollope! I enjoyed the reading experience and having downloaded my 'Highlights' onto the computer I found it easy to cut and paste the quotations I wanted for this review. As a result – and as a result of the quality of Trollope's imagery – there are a lot of quotations. The disadvantage of a Kindle edition is not being able to judge how long a book is. 'Locations' are the Kindle substitute for pages but I have yet to judge the length of a work by this means.

Quotations:-
...... a good English gentleman-like resolve to hunt twice a week, look after his timber, and live well within his means.

She was plainly dressed, without any full exuberance of costume, and yet everything about her was neat and pretty, and everything had been the object of feminine care. A very plain dress may occasion as much study as the most elaborate, - and may be quite as worthy of the study it has caused. Lady Mason, I am inclined to think, was by no means indifferent to the subject, but then to her belonged the great art of hiding her artifice

They say that the pith of a lady's letter is in the postscript,

His nose--for I should do Mr. Kantwise injustice if I did not mention this feature--seemed to have been compressed almost into nothing by that skin-squeezing operation. It was long enough, taking the measurement down the bridge, and projected sufficiently, counting the distance from the upper lip; but it had all the properties of a line; it possessed length without breadth. There was nothing in it from side to side. If you essayed to pull it, your fingers would meet.

"But if success in life means rampaging about, and never knowing what it is to sit quiet over his own fireside, I for one would as soon manage to do without it."

….........young as he was, knew that the marital shoe was pinching the lady's domestic corn, and he made haste to change the subject.

"Ask them from me whether they know how to make coffee. It does not consist of an unlimited supply of lukewarm water poured over an infinitesimal proportion of chicory. That process, time-honoured in the hotel line, will not produce the beverage called coffee. Will you have the goodness to explain that in the bar as coming from me?"

"Think of him! Am I bound to have thought anything about him by this time?"
"Of course you are;--or at any rate of course you have. I have no doubt that you have composed in your own mind an essay on the character of everybody here. People who think at all always do."

Mr. Furnival was very wrong to swear; doubly wrong to swear before his wife; trebly wrong to swear before a lady visitor; but it must be confessed that there was provocation.

"I ask you to answer me fairly. Is not additional eating an ordinary Englishman's ordinary idea of Christmas-day?"
"I am only an ordinary Englishwoman and therefore cannot say. It is not my idea."
"I believe that the ceremony, as kept by us, is perpetuated by the butchers and beersellers, with a helping hand from the grocers. It is essentially a material festival; and I would not object to it even on that account if it were not so grievously overdone.”
(Wonderfully aposite to the present day as I write this in early autumn having seen a department store with its Christmas tree and decorations all aglow on 5th October.)

He wished that he knew the truth in the matter; or rather he wished he could know whether or no she were innocent, without knowing whether or no she were guilty.

The body dries up and withers away, and the bones grow old; the brain, too, becomes decrepit, as do the sight, the hearing, and the soul. But the heart that is tender once remains tender to the last.

(At the Hunt) - I know no place in which girls receive more worship and attention; but I am not sure but they may carry their enthusiasm too far for their own interests, let their horsemanship be as perfect as it may be.

Dance with a girl three times, and if you like the light of her eye and the tone of voice with which she, breathless, answers your little questions about horseflesh and music--about affairs masculine and feminine,--then take the leap in the dark. There is danger, no doubt; but the moulded wife is, I think, more dangerous.

“You couldn't have a better man than old Solomon Aram. But Solomon Aram is too far east from you, I suppose?"
"Isn't he a Jew?"
"Upon my word I don't know. He's an attorney, and that's enough for me.”

Lady Mason was rich with female charms, and she used them partly with the innocence of the dove, but partly also with the wisdom of the serpent.

(Not to be married -) "I mean any girl whose father is not a gentleman, and whose mother is not a lady; and of whose education among ladies you could not feel certain."

A man in talking to another man about women is always supposed to consider those belonging to himself as exempt from the incidents of the conversation. The dearest friends do not talk to each other about their sisters when they have once left school;

When Augustus told Graham that he had gifts of nature which made him equal to any lady, he did not include his own sister.

If young gentlemen, such as Augustus Staveley, are allowed to amuse themselves with young ladies, surely young ladies such as Miss Furnival should be allowed to play their own cards accordingly.

There be those who say that if a man be anything of a man, he can always insure obedience in his own household. He has the power of the purse and the power of the law; and if, having these, he goes to the wall, it must be because he is a poor creature. Those who so say have probably never tried the position.

Her idea of a woman's duties comprehended the birth, bringing up, education, and settlement in life of children, also due attendance upon a husband, with a close regard to his special taste in cookery.

And then he took it out again, and observed upon the cover the Hamworth post-mark, very clear. Post-marks now-a-days are very clear, and everybody may know whence a letter comes. (Trollope spent his working life in the Post Office, reaching a fairly senior position before he was enabled to retire because of his authorial income.)

There is great doubt as to what may be the most enviable time of life with a man. I am inclined to think that it is at that period when his children have all been born but have not yet began to go astray or to vex him with disappointment; when his own pecuniary prospects are settled, and he knows pretty well what his tether will allow him; when the appetite is still good and the digestive organs at their full power; when he has ceased to care as to the length of his girdle, and before the doctor warns him against solid breakfasts and port wine after dinner; when his affectations are over and his infirmities have not yet come upon him; while he can still walk his ten miles, and feel some little pride in being able to do so; while he has still nerve to ride his horse to hounds, and can look with some scorn on the ignorance of younger men who have hardly yet learned that noble art. As regards men, this, I think, is the happiest time of life;
but who shall answer the question as regards women? In this respect their lot is more liable to disappointment. With the choicest flowers that blow the sweetest aroma of their perfection lasts but for a moment. The hour that sees them at their fullest glory sees also the beginning of their fall.

AUTHOR Notes:- Anthony Trollope (24 April 1815 – 6 December 1882) was one of the most successful, prolific and respected English novelists of the Victorian era. Some of his best-loved works, collectively known as the Chronicles of Barsetshire, revolve around the imaginary county of Barsetshire. He also wrote penetrating novels on political, social, and gender issues, and on other topical conflicts of his day.

Reviews

2011-10-07T04:46:00.002+01:00

I'm quite behind in entering my reviews – especially the books I've read on my Kindle. These include Trollope's Orley Farm and others by him and Wilkie Collins wonderful 'No Name'. “Real books” I have yet go review include Barchester Pilgrimage by Knox, George Eliot's Journals, and a few others. I am promising myself I shall get heir reviews done a.s.a.p.

Review:- Muriel BARBERY – “Gourmet Rhapsody ”

2011-10-01T16:48:00.000+01:00

Year Published: - 2000
Where the book was from:- My own copy
ISBN: - 978-1-933372-95-2
Pages: - 156pp
Genre: - General Fiction
Location:- Paris
How I came across it: - Bought it because I enjoyed ‘The Elegance of the Hedgehog’ so much.
Rating: - *****

One sentence summary:- A great disappointment, nowhere up to the standard of ‘The Elegance of the Hedgehog’.

Describe the plot without giving anything away:- It’s hard to describe the plot of this almost plotless little novel. A great food critic is dying. Reviled by some and revered by others the novel revolves around his search for a special flavour – one divine taste of excellence.

General comments:- Perhaps of interest to culinary experts it describes a variety of flavours as the supercilious Arthens thinks over his experiences. If the comments on the web about the excellence of this little book are to be believed I have obviously missed something somewhere!

Quotations:- What is writing, no matter how lavish the pieces, if it says nothing of the truth, cares little for the heart, and is merely subservient to the pleasure of showing one’s brilliance?

AUTHOR Notes:- Muriel Barbery was born in 1969. Barbery entered the École Normale Supérieure de Fontenay-Saint-Cloud in 1990 and obtained her agrégation in philosophy in 1993. She then taught philosophy at the Université de Bourgogne, in a lycée, and at the Saint-Lô IUFM (teacher training college). L'Élégance du hérisson was her second novel. The first, Une Gourmandise, which appeared in Anderson's English translation as Gourmet Rhapsody in 2009 also briefly featured Renee. L'Élégance du hérisson (translated into English by Alison Anderson as The Elegance of the Hedgehog) topped the French best-seller lists for 30 consecutive weeks and was reprinted 50 times. It has sold over 2 million copies.

Review:- David DICKINSON – “Death and the Jubilee ”

2011-09-30T00:25:00.009+01:00

Year Published: - 2003
Where the book was from:- My own copy
ISBN: - 1-84119-584-7
Pages: - 344pp
Genre: - Historical Fiction
Location:- Victorian England – 1896/7
How I came across it: - Bought it so as to read all the series
Rating: - ***** ***

One sentence summary:- The second of the Lord Francis Powerscourt novels and a rattling good cosy historical crime.

Describe the plot without giving anything away:- London is preparing for Victoria’s Jubilee but the Germans are and Irish are planning surprises. When a headless corpse is discovered in the Thames Lord Francis Powerscourt is called in to investigate in this second novel of the series.

General comments:- A fairly standard and slightly predictable Powerscourt mystery but it would probably have been better if I had read the series in order.

Quotations:- There is a lovely line which laughs at modern government policy – bearing in mind it was written in 2003 or earlier, before the government rescue of RBS etc. – it is the PM speaking:
“It is not and cannot be the business of government to bail out financial concerns whose imprudence or wickedness has left them unable to meet their obligations. I do not need to tell you, Rosebery, the outcry that would erupt in the House of Commons if members felt that taxpayers’ money was being used for these purposes.’

AUTHOR Notes:- David Dickinson was born in Dublin. After receiving a first class honours degree in Classics from Cambridge he joined the BBC where he became editor of Newsnight and Panorama as well as being series editor on Monarchy, a three part programme on the current state and future prospects of the British royal family. David now lives in Barnes, South West London, Somerset or France according to which source you read!

Review:- Hilary MANTEL – “Wolf Hall ”

2011-09-27T15:38:00.024+01:00

Year Published: - 2009 (Man Booker Prize Winner 2009)
Where the book was from:- My own copy
ISBN: - 978-0-00-723020-4
Pages: - 650pp
Genre: - Historical Fiction
Location:- England – Henry VII I’s reign
How I came across it: - I decided to read some of the Booker Prize winners

Rating: - ***** ***

One sentence summary:- When The Times called it ‘The most gripping story you’ll ever read’ they lied but it is a passable historical novel.

Describe the plot without giving anything away:- The story of the rise of Thomas Cromwell from a low-born boy to the most influential man in Henry VIII’s England.

General comments:- Wolf Hall is by no means the best historical novel I have read and the reason for its Booker Prize I have yet to fathom out.

In particular I really dislike Hilary Mantel’s use of the word ‘He’. I was taught that ‘he’ referred to the last male mentioned. Sometimes Hilary obeys that rule but equally frequently she uses it to refer to Cromwell even if he wasn’t the last person mentioned. It’s so confusing and whilst it may be a clever style it’s so difficult to follow at times that one has to re-read a paragraph to understand who the ‘He’ is. That may seem like a petty thing but when it goes from start to finish it’s very off-putting. Here’s an example –

Walter wipes his mouth. ‘How long?’

Madoc says, ‘God knows. Those fuckers can fly.’

He straightens up. Into his hand has floated a four-pound hammer.

Has the hammer been picked up by Madoc or Thomas Cromwell. (Only later when there is reference back to this moment do we learn it was Cromwell.)

A page earlier we have Behind Henry’s back, Gardiner makes a Gargoyle face at him. Is ‘him’ Henry or Cromwell.

There are two ‘he’s in this paragraph – the first relates to Francis Bryan (the man most recently mentioned) and the second to Cromwell;-

‘Why not go back?’ Risking dangerous slippage, he throws his hands out. ‘Which of the city wives is waiting for you? Do you have one for each of the twelve days of Christmas?’ He almost laughs, till Bryan adds, ‘Don’t you sectaries hold your women in common?’

The storyline is well researched and I learned a lot about Henry and his relationship with Katherine and Anne Boleyn – which is far as the story goes. That is another quibble I have with it – it doesn’t really finish in my view.

All in all I preferred 'Flud' though this gets an extra star for its research and historical interest.

Quotations:- The hunting season – or at least, the season when the king hunts every day – will soon be over. Whatever is happening elsewhere, whatever deceits and frustrations, you can forget them in the field. The hunter is among the most innocent of men; living in the moment makes him feel pure. When he returns in the evening, his body aches, his mind is full of pictures of leaves and sky; he does not want to read documents. His miseries, his perplexities have receded, and they will stay away, provided – after food and wine, laughter and exchange of stories – he gets up at dawn to do it all over again.

She turns her head away, but through the thin film of her veil he can see her skin glow. Because women will coax: tell me, just tell me something, tell me your thoughts; and this he has done.

My husband used to say, lock Cromwell in a deep dungeon in the morning, and when you come back that night he’ll be sitting on a plush cushion eating larks’ tongues, and all the gaolers will owe him money.

AUTHOR Notes:- Hilary Mantel CBE (born Hilary Thompson) was born in Hadfield, Derbyshire, in 1952 and spent her early years at the same village school as her mother and grandmother. She then went to a Cheshire convent school (which obviously gave her much material for ‘Fludd’), the LSE and Sheffield University. She lived in Africa and the Middle East for ten years and published her first novel ‘Every Day is Mother’s Day’ in 1985.

Review:- Khaled HOSSEINI – “A Thousand Splendid Suns ”

2011-09-24T13:39:00.000+01:00

Year Published: - 2007
Where the book was from:- My own copy
ISBN: - 978 0 7475 8589 3
Pages: - 418pp
Genre: - General Fiction
Location:- Afghanistan
How I came across it: - So impressed by The Kite Runner I wanted more Hosseini
Rating: - ***** *****
(but only because I haven’t got an 11* category)

One sentence summary:- The four comments on the cover of my copy say it all – “A suspenseful epic”; Unforgettable”; “Heartbreaking”; and “ “A masterful story”.

Describe the plot without giving anything away:- Mariam is only fifteen when she is sent to Kabul to marry the middle-aged Rasheed. Her future and that of a local academic’s daughter, Laila, are bound together over the next two decades as the rule of Afghanistan changes, each successive change being harder and harder upon the womenfolk.

General comments:- I defy anyone with a heart to read this tale without having tears in their eyes. Even finer than The Kite Runner, this is Hoseini’s tribute to the women of Afghanistan. Powerful, gripping, and all the other words one can use about a first class story apply here. This is not only the best book I have read this year but for some years past. It should be essential reading for those who want to know how a story is crafted and for anyone who has even the vaguest of interest in world affairs or the role of women in society.

Quotations:- Strangely for a book of such importance and enjoyment and significance I made a note of no quotations – perhaps I was too engrossed in the story to make notes!

AUTHOR Notes:- Khaled HOSSEINI was born in Khabul, Afghanistan, in 1965 and his family received political asylum in the USA in 1980. He is a doctor and lives in California. The Kite Runner was his first novel.

More Quotations

2011-08-22T20:27:00.000+01:00

It is a man’s duty to have books… A library is not a luxury, but one of the necessaries of life. H W Beecher

Books are the windows through which the soul looks out. H W Beecher

Except a living man there is nothing more wonderful than a book. Charles Kingsley

Give me books, fruit,
French wine and fine weather
And a little music out of doors
Played by somebody I do not know.
Keats

Few books bear second reading - comb your bookcase for salvage. Second World War government injunction. (I hope not too many people did this!)

A good book is the best of friends, the same today and for ever,
Martin Tupper "Proverbial philosophy"

Books can be dangerous

2011-08-16T08:30:00.002+01:00

Books can be dangerous. The best ones should be labelled “This could change your life”. = Helen Exley

Books

2011-08-13T10:02:00.000+01:00

…..Anyway, a book will tell you if you want to find out. The whole world is in books.

libraries are full of Books –
old books and new books
red books and blue books
sad books and gay books
work books and play books
- Waiting for you to read them,

For more quotations from Murray McCain “Books” see my earlier posting.

Some Quotes about Literature

2011-08-10T20:38:00.006+01:00

Literature and butterflies are the two sweetest passions known to man.
Vladimir Nabokov

Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.
C. S. Lewis

Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourses of my book friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness.
Helen Keller

The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself.
Jim Rohn

Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.
Gilbert K. Chesterton

It has become almost a cliche to remark that nobody boasts of ignorance of literature, but it is socially acceptable to boast ignorance of science and proudly claim incompetence in mathematics.
Richard Dawkins

Medicine is my lawful wife and literature my mistress; when I get tired of one, I spend the night with the other.
Anton Chekhov

Develop an interest in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music - the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.
Henry Miller

Review:- David Mitchell – “The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet ”

2011-08-06T14:56:00.000+01:00

Year Published: - 2010
Where the book was from:- My own copy - Thousand Reader’s Edition
SBN: - 978 0 340 92158 6
Pages: - 560pp
Genre: - Historical fiction
Location:- Nagasaki, Japan 1799
How I came across it: - Sent it free by “We Love This Book”
Rating: - ***** *****

One sentence summary:- I’m not especially interested in the history of Japan or Dutch colonists and 1799 is between my favourite periods but this book is so excellent that one becomes absorbed in Jacob’s story from the first pages.

The Blurb:-
The back cover of my edition reads as follows:-

In your hands is a place like no other: a tiny, man-made island in the bay of Nagasaki, for two hundred years the sole gateway between Japan and the West. Here, in the dying days of the 18th century, a young Dutch clerk arrives to make his fortune. Instead he loses his heart…
“A new book with its pristine pages and smooth spine is a beginning. Anything can happen, and some of it will. Provided your tastes and my writing are compatible, and assuming I’ve done my job properly, the slinky cat of fiction will now (I hope) settle on your lap and persuade you that Jacob, Orito and Ogawa are real people and that de Zoet’s lodgings in Dejima, the cells of Mount Shiranui and Penhaligon’s cabin aboard the HHMS Phoebus are as real as the rooms of your house.”
David Mitchell

Who could fail to read a book that introduced itself in such a manner?

Describe the plot without giving anything away:- The year is 1799, the place Dejima, the "high-walled, fan-shaped artificial island" that is the Japanese Empire's single port and sole window to the world. It is also the farthest-flung outpost of the powerful Dutch East Indies Company. Jacob de Zoet, a young, devout and ambitious, but very honest, clerk must spend time in the East to earn enough money to deserve the hand of his Dutch fiancée. But Jacob's intentions are thrown into doubt when he meets Orito Aibagawa, the beautiful but badly scarred daughter of a Samurai, trainee doctor and midwife Nagasaki’s magistrate. In this world where East and West are linked by one bridge, Jacob sees the gaps shrink between pleasure and piety, propriety and profit.

General comments:- The latest good book one has read tends often to ‘the best read for ages’ and so this has proved to be. One sign of a good book is that you miss it. Days after finishing it you want to carry on reading about the characters and enjoying the style. You want a sequel, even if it has to move on to the next generation and events of later years. Brilliantly written in a unique and compelling style, a superb mix of historical research and imagination, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is a big and unforgettable book that should be on everyone’s ‘to read’ list. It was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2010 and would have had my vote.

Quotations:-
‘”Aiba” is “indigo”, her pride in her name is plain, ‘and “gawa” is “river.’

I wish, he thinks, spoken words could be captured and kept in a locket.

‘My pronounce,’ Miss Aibagawa asks, ‘is not very good?’
‘No, no, no; you are perfect in every way. Your pronounce is perfect.’

Jacob reverberates with the parts and entirety of Orito, with all the her-ness of her.

‘We have a proverb.’ The interpreter pours himself a bowl of tea. ‘”Nothing is more costly than item that has no price.”’

‘The soul is a verb… not a noun.’

The wind passes through Flag Square, soft as a robe’s hem.

‘I have performed upwards of fifty lithotomies and lost four. Two were not my fault. The two were… well we live and learn, even if our dead patients cannot say the same.’

Once, Shiroyama’s father taught him, nobility and samurai ruled Japan…. But now it is Deception, Greed, Corruption and Lust who govern.

If only, Shiroyama dreams, human beings were not masks behind masks behind masks.

AUTHOR Notes:- David Mitchell was born in 1969 and grew up in Worcestershire. After graduating from Kent University he spent several years teaching in Japan before settling in Ireland with his wife and two children. His first novel, ‘Ghostwritten’, was published by Sceptre in 1999 to great acclaim and won the Mail on Sunday / John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. His second novel, ‘Number9dream’ (2001) was shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. He was chosen as one of Granta's 20 Best Young British Novelists 2003.

Jung Chang – Wild Swans

2011-08-06T14:29:00.000+01:00

Helen has just finished reading Jung Chang’s ‘Wild Swans’, a book I read not long after it came out in the early 1990s and which GB read a couple of years ago in one go on a plane from New Zealand to England (or vice versa). It’s the one book which inspired me to write the author (and I got a very pretty reply despite her no doubt having an inordinate correspondence to deal with – it sold 10 million copies in 30 languages despite being banned in China).

It has reminded me that I really must do a list of the best non-fiction – my perception of the best, of course, which may differ entirely from everybody else’s. One day…

Review:- Elizabeth FERRARS – “The Cup and the Lip ”

2011-08-04T09:19:00.000+01:00

Year Published: - 1975
Where the book was from:- mine
ISBN: - 0 00 231146 1
Pages: - -186pp
Genre: - Cosy Crime
Location:- England
How I came across it: - Charity stall
Rating: - ***** *

One sentence summary:- Typical Elizabeth Ferrars easy-read with guessable conclusion but the usual fun en route.

Describe the plot without giving anything away:- Why, on a wet and stormy night, did the not only old, but very ill novelist Dan Braile decide to take a walk? The problems really begin when he doesn't come back. Most of his family wouldn't be sorry to see him disappear. Added to that are claims he'd made about someone trying to poison him.

General comments:- Good old-fashioned cosy crime.

Quotations:-
“Nobody really wants to be a cabbage.”…
“Oh, such joy! But to remember joy can be a great sorrow. I would very happily be a cabbage. A cabbage without knowing it, that would be best of all.”

AUTHOR Notes:- Elizabeth Ferrars was a pseudonym of Morna Doris MacTaggart Brown. She was born in Rangoon, Burma in 1907. She died in 1995. .

Review:-M C Beaton – “The Skeleton in the Closet”

2011-08-04T08:11:00.000+01:00

Year Published: - 2001 (USA); 2011 (UK)
Where the book was from:- Mine
ISBN: - 978-1-84901-608-7
Pages: - 262pp
Genre: - Cosy crime
Location:- Worcestershire
How I came across it: - On offer, Waterstones
Rating: - *****

One sentence summary:- Rather dated in both ideas and style, this was not up to M C Beaton’s usual standard.

Describe the plot without giving anything away:- When Fellworth Dolphin inherits an unexpected fortune from his miserly, cold-hearted mother, he sets out to discover the source of the money, which could be linked to a train robbery in which Fell's late father may have taken part.

General comments:- Disappointing and uninspired but adequate for a brief read when not in search of anything taxing.

Quotations:- nil

AUTHOR Notes:- A pseudonym used by, Marion Chesney, M C Beaton is the author of the highly acclaimed Hamish Macbeth mystery series. Born in Scotland, she now lives in the Cotswolds.

Review:- David DICKINSON – “Death on the Nevskii Prospekt”

2011-07-16T16:55:00.012+01:00

Year Published: - 2006
Where the book was from:- Pensby Library
ISBN: - 9781845296711
Pages: - -pp
Genre: - Historical Crime
Location:- St Petersburg 1906
How I came across it: - Continuing the series
Rating: - ***** ****

One sentence summary:- Another in the fine Dickinson tradition of mixing the real atmosphere of the place and time with a rollicking good mystery.

Describe the plot without giving anything away:- Lord Francis Powerscourt has been retired for a while at the request of Lady Lucy who wasn't happy seeing him so nearly killed last time out. He needs no coaxing out of his retirement once Lady Lucy is convinced of the error of her weays and Powerscourt heads for St. Petersburg, where a British diplomat has been discovered dead on a bridge spanning Nevskii Prospekt. It would seem the man knew a secret — and it proved fatal. As Powerscourt paces the Winter Palace and ponders the mystery, other matters press in on him. With Russia on the brink of revolution, he must make his escape, before time runs out on him too.

General comments:- The sixth in the series. I am currently reading Death of a Pilgrim and then only have Death of a Wine Merchant and Death and the Jubilee to read. I’ve ordered these two from Abebooks having been unable to get Death and the Jubilee via the library.

Quotations:- (Took back to library before remembering to copy them out)

AUTHOR Notes:- see Death on a Holy Mountain

Missing quartet

2011-07-16T04:16:00.001+01:00

Notwitstanding my efforts to keep a complete list of books read, I've found that I have missed at least four books from my list of books read earlier in the year:-

Mary Elizabeth Braddon "The Doctor's Wife" ***** ***
Margaret Oliphant "Miss Marjoribanks" ***** *****
Margaret Oliphant "Hester" ***** ***
Michael MacIlwee – "The Gangs of Liverpool" ***** *

Having smacked myself across the knuckles with a spoon I am resolved to be more diligent in the future.

Review:- David Verey (Ed) – “The Diary of a Victorian Squire”

2011-07-15T03:58:00.003+01:00

Year Published: - 1983
Where the book was from:- My own copy
ISBN: - 0 86299 055 6
Pages: - 242pp
Genre: - Non-fiction – Victorian Diary
Location:- Gloucestershire, Leeds et al
How I came across it: - Part of my diary collection
Rating: - ***** *****

One sentence summary:- Even had Victoriana and diaries not been of particular interest these extracts from the diaries of Dearman Birchall and the letters of his wife, Emily, would have rated very highly as an excellent diary with most days being succinct but interesting.

General comments:- Dearman Birchall was a Quaker cloth merchant from Leeds who bought a country house in Gloucestershire and became integrated into the local squierarchy. He pursued the fashionable life, spent the season in London and wintered abroad. The diaries go from 1865 to 1898 and we get glimpses of the servant problem, the pleasures of tricycling, Emily’s letters from their six-month honeymoon abroad, and the whole panoply of upper middle class Victorian life.

It is unusual to have the advantage of the diary of one partner and the letters of the other to give a broad perspective to the events of an era. David Verey, Dearman’s grandson, is to be congratulated on the choice of extracts and on making his introduction and comments brief but informative.

Quotations:
I have a whole collection of quotes from Dearman’s diaries. Far too many to put in here, suffice it to say it is eminently quotable.

AUTHOR Notes:- David Verey is the grandson of the Birchalls.

Review:- Jim KELLY – “The Water Clock”

2011-07-14T13:20:00.001+01:00

Year Published: - 2002
Where the book was from:- My own – ex-library
ISBN: - 9 780141 009339
Pages: - 313pp
Genre: - Crime
Location:- Cambridgeshire Fens
How I came across it: - Serendipity
Rating: - *****

One sentence summary:- An atmospheric crime thriller in which forensic evidence links a modern murderer body from a car winched from a frozen river and a corpse from the 1960s.

Describe the plot without giving anything away:- The setting is bleak and snowbound and the characterisation quite good as local reporter Philip Dryden investigates the link between a body discovered in a frozen river and a corpse of an apparent suicide found near the top of Ely Cathedral as refurbishment work is undertaken.

General comments:- Enjoyable and kept me interested but the villain was slightly predictable.
This was the first of a Philip Dryden series
1. The Water Clock (2002)
2. The Fire Baby (2004)
3. The Moon Tunnel (2005)
4. The Coldest Blood (2006)
5. The Skeleton Man (2007)

Quotations:
Kathy invaded his personal space – on Dryden’s case as area slightly smaller than Norfolk.
The town was insular and insulated. A multicultural event in the Fens was a phone call from London.

AUTHOR Notes:- Jim Kelly is a British author born in 1957.

Review:- William Bryant LOGAN – “Oak – The Frame of Civilization”

2011-07-13T20:47:00.013+01:00

Year Published: - 2005
Where the book was from:- Borrowed from Helen
ISBN: - 0 393 047773 3
Pages: - 335pp
Genre: - Non-Fiction -
Location:-
How I came across it: - Suggested by Helen
Rating: - ***** **

One sentence summary:- Ink, ships, bread, works of art, houses, swords, saddles and a wide variety of other things have at some time had their origins in the oak tree and this book traces the relationship between the Oak tree and humans.

General comments:- A fascinating and highly enjoyable account from which I learned a lot. I had not, for example, appreciated that acorns were probably the staple food of many early cultures.

Quotations:

…What is special about oaks?... ‘Nothing’ … oaks never overspecialized… . The persistent, the common, the various, the adaptable has value in itself. The oak’s distinction is its insistence and its flexibility. It specializes in not specializing.

Since the glaciers last retreated… there have been but two versions of the world: the world made with wood and the world made with coal and oil. One lasted twelve to fifteen millennia; the other has lasted about 250 years so far.

To discover the world that made us, look at what it has left us – half-timbered houses; Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings executed in oak gall ink; Viking Age oaken ships buried with the dead; Bronze Age oak log coffins; ancient barrels, casks, vats, and tuns; wine corks and truffles; fossil leaves from thirty million years ago that just might be from the first oaks; layers and layers of what botanists call “pollen rain”; living oaks over five hundred years old and the black hulks of oaks that drowned beneath the rising seas ten thousand years ago, trees that don’t have even a branch until ninety feet up the trunk.

AUTHOR Notes:- William Bryant Logan is a certified arborist and the author of three books, including ‘Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of Earth’ which has been made into a feature documentary.

Review:- Ian Irvine – “A Shadow on the Glass”

2011-07-12T13:53:00.012+01:00

Year Published: - 1998
Where the book was from:- My own copy – ex-library
ISBN: - 1 841 49 003 2
Pages: -572 pp
Genre: - Fantasy
Location:- Fantasy
How I came across it: - Serendipity
Rating: - ***** *

One sentence summary:- The first part of ‘The View from the Mirror’ involving the peoples of three worlds and the balance between them.

Describe the plot without giving anything away:- Karan, a sensitive with a troubled past, is forced to steal an ancient relic in payment for a debt. When chased across country she is befriended by a brilliant chronicler, Lliam, who has been expelled from his college for uncovering a perilous mystery.

General comments:-
Whilst I enjoyed it I’m not sure I shall bother with the rest of the View from the Mirror series -
1. A Shadow on the Glass (1998)
2. The Tower On the Rift (1998)
3. Dark is the Moon (1999)
4. The Way Between the Worlds (1999)

Quotations:

AUTHOR Notes:- Ian Irvine is an Australian born author, born 1950.

Review:- Khaled HOSSEINI – “The Kite Runner”

2011-07-10T12:43:00.000+01:00

Year Published: - 2003
Where the book was from:- My own copy
ISBN: - 978 0 7475 6653 3
Pages: - 324pp
Genre: - General Fiction
Location:- Afghanistan / Pakistan / USA
How I came across it: - Serendipity
Rating: - ***** *****

One sentence summary:- An unforgettable novel of 1970s Afghanistan setting the adventures of a young boy against the background of a rapidly changing environment.

Describe the plot without giving anything away:- Twelve year old Amir is desperate to win the local kite-fighting contest and he and his loyal friend – his father’s servant’s son – look set to have a good chance. But that afternoon their lives are totally changed by an event that happens to Hassan. After the Russians invade Amir’s family flees to the US only to return under the rule of the Taliban to find redemption for what he did that afternoon many years earlier.

General comments:- One of the lessons I learned from this novel was the answer to a question I have often posed. How is it that people who welcome one regime one minute can end up on the streets demonstrating a change of regime in net to no time. I have always thought it was a bit fickle of ‘the masses’. But this story made me realise it is not that the populace is fickle but that its hopefulness always exceeds what the changed regime delivers.

Quotations:

I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975. I remember the precise moment, crouching behind a crumbling mud wall, peeking into the alley…

“Ah a storyteller,” the General said. “Well people need stories to divert them at difficult times like this.”

It may be unfair, but what happens in a few days, sometimes even a single day, can change the course of a whole lifetime.

We’re a melancholic people, we Afghan, aren’t we? Often, we wallow too much in ghamkhorio and self-pity. We give in to loss, to suffering, accept it as a fact of life, even see it as necessary. Zendagi migzara, we say, life goes on.

AUTHOR Notes:- Khaled HOSSEINI was born in Afghanistan in 1965 and his family received political asylum in the USA in 1980. He is a doctor and lives in California. The Kite Runner was his first novel.

Currently Reading

2011-07-10T07:13:00.000+01:00

Having seen the sidebars of some of the other book blogs I decided to put in a picture of the book I am currently reading. I have mentioned before how I tend to have more than one book on the go but it was only when I went to get images for my ‘current reads’ that I realised how out of hand this has got. I have fifteen books on the go. And that is not counting the three on the Kindle and a few others that have found their way back on to my bookshelves with bookmarks in them, waiting to be finished some undefined day in the future. I’m not putting thirteen pictures down the side bar and I can’t see myself changing the sidebar every day or so as my books are finished or change so I’ll simply put the main one(s).

Just out of interest, here are the fifteen. I wonder if some of them would appear on a similar list in a year's time?

Review:- Thomas HARDY – “A Pair of Blue Eyes ”

2011-07-09T07:03:00.001+01:00

Year Published: - 1873
Where the book was from:- My own copy
ISBN: - 978-1-85326-277-7
Pages: - 305pp
Genre: - General Fiction – Victorian Romance
Location:- The West Country
How I came across it: - Serendipity
Rating: - ***** ****

One sentence summary:- A wonderful Victorian romance set in Cornwall with the standard love triangle plot enhanced by some bits of drama and a variety of quotable sections.

Describe the plot without giving anything away:- Eflride Swancourt, a pretty and innocent Rector’s daughter in a remote West Country parish, is courted by a ypouing and naive visiting architect. Having secretly engaged herself to him (because her father disapproves of his low origins) she then meets his friend and mentor, a writer and intellectual, and falls in love with him.

At one stage one of the characters is left hanging over the edge of a cliff for a couple of chapters leading to the use of the phrase ‘cliff-hanger’ for such dramatic episodes in Victorian (and subsequent) literature.

Unusually, in my experience, one’s sympathies do not automatically sit with one of the suitors but alternate back and forth as the story progresses.

General comments:- This was the first of Hardy’s novels to be published in his name – His previous two (Desperate Remedies and Under the Greenwood Tree) having been published anonymously.

The novel was created at a time when Hardy was torn between his career as an architect and his desire to change his metier to that of writer (particularly poet) and was therefore of considerable significance in his history.

Twenty years later Hardy was to describe ‘A Pair of Blue Eyes’ as being immature but admitted any attempt to re-write it, even were that possible, would lose it its freshness. In my view its freshness is its charm and what makes it one of his best works. It lacks much of the deep sombre thinking of his later works.

The Cover
I wonder how many books we read or reject because of the cover? This is the second copy of ‘A Pair of Blue Eyes’ I have owned; the first got sent to a charity shop after years of sitting unread ion my shelf. I’m sure the cover had something to do with it.

Mine – the Wordsworth edition – has a beautifully crafted cover by Robert Mathias using ‘The Seashore’, an oil on canvas by William Henry Margetson (1861-1940).

Some of the other editions have had covers which are nowhere near as attractive and/or fail to summon up the atmosphere of the book. My previous one was the Pengui Classics edition with the black and white picture of a girl’s face – a girl who was too old and battered to be the heroine and too young to be the villainous grieving neighbour (the only other woman with a substantial role in the book).

It is worth noting that the other Penguin Classics edition – with the girl and dog looking out over the sea - whilst quite attractive is inaccurate, there being no dog in the book. (Though Elfrida does look out to see from the cliffs with both her lovers). I do like the cover to have some semblance of reflecting the plot.

Quotations:

Every woman who makes a permanent impression on a man is usually recalled to his mind’s eye as she appeared in one particular scene, which seems ordained to be her special form of manifestation throughout the pages of his memory. As the patron Saint has her attitude and accessories in medieval illumination, so the sweetheart may be said to have hers upon the table of her true Love’s fancy, without which she is rarely introduced there except by effort; and this though she may. On further acquaintance, have been observed in many other phases which one would imagine to be far more appropriate to love’s young dream.

“Mamma can’t play with us so nicely as you do. I don’t think she ever learnt playing when she was little.”

I have learnt the language of her illegitimate sister – artificiality; and the fibbing of eyes, the contempt of nose-tips, the indignation of back hair, the laughter of clothes, the cynicism of footsteps, and the various emotions lying in walking-stick twirls, hat-liftings, the elevation of parasols, the carriage of umbrellas, become as ABC to me.

Probably there cannot be instanced a briefer and surer rule-of-thumb test of man’s temperament – sanguine or cautious that this: did he or does he ante-date the word wife in corresponding with a sweetheart he honestly loves?

In truth, the essayist’s experience of the nature of young women was far less extensive than his abstract knowledge of them led himself and others to believe. He could pack them into sentences like a workman, but practically was nowhere.

(on earrings)- Not if they were like the ordinary hideous things women stuff their ears with nowadays – like the governor of a steam-engine, or a pair of scales, or gold gibbets and chains, and artists’ palettes, and compensation pendulums, and Heaven knows what besides.”

It was to him a gentle innocent time – a time which, though there may not be much in it, seldom repeats itself in a man’s life, and has a peculiar dearness when glanced at retrospectively.

To such girls poverty may not be, as to the more worldly masses of humanity, a sin in itself; but it is a sin, because graceful and dainty manners seldom exist in such an atmosphere.

Bravery is only obtuseness to the perception of contingencies.

AUTHOR Notes:- Thomas Hardy, OM (2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) regarded himself primarily as a poet who composed novels His novels were written mainly for financial gain, his poems for pleasure and satisfaction. During his lifetime he was much better known for his novels, such as Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Far from the Madding Crowd, which earned him a reputation as a great novelist. The bulk of his fictional works, initially published as serials in magazines, were set in the semi-fictional land of Wessex (based on the Dorchester region where he grew up) and explored tragic characters struggling against their passions and social circumstances.

Even though Hardy's poetry, first published in his fifties, has come to be as well regarded as his novels and has had a significant influence over modern English poetry since the 1950s it remains less famous than his novels.

P.S. Looking for cover illustrations led me to a book blog I haven’t visited before – Words and Peace. Most enjoyable and worth a visit.

Review:- Susanna GREGORY – “The Body in the Thames”

2011-07-03T06:45:00.000+01:00

Year Published: - 2011
Where the book was from:- Pensby Library
ISBN: - 978 1 84744 253 6
Pages: - 468pp
Genre: - Historical Crime
Location:- Londond, 1664
How I came across it: - On the new crime books shelf
Rating: - ***** *

One sentence summary:- In the hot summer of 1664 a Dutch delegation is in London to treat for peace with England but when one of their number is murdered the talks look set to falter.

Describe the plot without giving anything away:- Thomas Chaloner, spy for the Earl of Clarendon, has just returned from abroad in time to get married but he is less than amused when a man is murdered during the wedding service. On the broader stage, the problems of Restoration England might recede into the background if the country were to go to war with the Dutch who are seen by the majority of Londoners as taking much needed trade from the country. When a Dutch delegation comes to sue for continued peace one of their number is murdered. Thomas Chaloner is set the task of finding his killer. For Chaloner it’s not just a job but a personal matter – the dead man was his brother-in-law.

General comments:- I much prefer Susanna Gregory’s Mathew Bartholemew series (set in the mid fourteenth century) to the Thomas Chaloner one.

AUTHOR Notes:- see A Plague on Both your Houses

We Love This Book

2011-07-02T00:50:00.007+01:00

We Love This Book

It's not often I put the same posting on more than one of my blogs but this deserves it so I've put it on both Rambles from my Chair and A Book Every Six Days.

If you live in the UK and have £8.95 to spare I strongly recommend you invest it in a year’s subscription to this new quarterly magazine (The Launch Issue can be picked up free at some booksellers). For the price of about four or five Sunday Newspapers you get a tremendous new magazine which contains reviews, a short story, feature articles, and just about everything bookish. Even the adverts are interesting.

Mind you, the Launch Issue has already made me add lots of books to my Amazon wishlist so perhaps it’s going to work out a lot more expensive than the £8.95 !

I also noticed a load of books that other members of the family might be interested to know about. Daughter-who-takes-photos and Friend-who-loves-otters might like to see if Alice Hart’s book ‘Vegetarian’ is in the library. It has 141 recipes celebrating fresh seasonal ingredients and the magazine shows one of the recipes as an example. They may also like to be aware that ‘Map of a Nation’, a biography of the Ordnance Survey by Rachel Hewett is now available in paperback.

In view of their intention of having clucky things in the garden, Food-loving-daughter and Son-in-law-who-cooks might be interested to know that in August there will be a book called ‘Keeping Chickens for Dummies’ published (authors Pammy Riggs, et al). The magazine even has ten tips for healthy chickens! Food-loving-daughter may also enjoy the article on Forensic Fiction in the launch issue while Son-in-law-who-cooks might like to check out the book ‘Free Radicals’ by Michael Brooks..

Brother-who-blogs will be pleased to hear there is a new 44 Scotland Street novel out by Alexander McCall Smith in August – ‘Bertie plays the blues’. ‘Precious and the Monkeys’ by the same author is described as a charming book for all ages and is also to appear in August while September sees an addition to his Isabel Dalhousie series - ‘The Forgotten Affairs of Youth’.

Partner-who-loves-tea should enjoy the sociology book ‘Join the Club’, a look at groups and the influence of peer pressure, by Tina Rosenberg. ‘The Psychopath Test’ by Jon Ronson also looks to be her sort of book but I need to be careful how I word that. I’m not suggesting Jo needs to take it but some of her clients might! It concerned me a little that this “entertaining, wry and insightful commentary on the ‘madness industry’” was listed under humour!

Having read the reviews I’ve added the following to my ‘to-be-read’ list:-
Kate Summerscale ‘The Suspicions of Mr Whicher’ (A Victorian crime novel so of especial interest to me).
David Nicholl ‘One Day’
Mark Twain 'Letters from Earth' (already bought for my Kindle)
Vanessa Diffenbaugh ‘The Language of Flowers’
Rebecca Makkai ‘The Borrower’
Hari Kunzru ‘Gods without Men’
Emma Donoghue ‘Room’
Shirley McKay ‘Time and Tide’
Tom Holt ‘Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Sausages’ (with a title like that it had to be a Tom Holt book!)
Charles Stross ‘Rule 34’
Ryan David Jahn ‘The Dispatcher’
Benjamin Black ‘A Death in Summer’
Lynn Knight ‘Lemon Sherbert and Dolly Blue’

Review:- Alice HOFFMAN – “The Ice Queen ”

2011-06-30T05:09:00.000+01:00

Year Published: - 2005
Where the book was from:- My own copy (ex-library)
ISBN: - 0 7911 7898 1
Pages: - 211pp
Genre: - General Fiction
Location:- New Jersey / Florida
How I came across it: - Serendipity
Rating: - ***** *****

One sentence summary:- A woman who prefers not to involve herself in the lives of others finds herself becoming a changed person – physically and mentally – after she is struck by lightning.

Describe the plot without giving anything away:- A little girl wishes for something but is devastated when it happens. Ever after she chooses to remain within herself, an icicle for a heart, not involving herself in the doings of others. When she is struck by lightning her whole life changes and against her better judgement she finds herself involved with fellow survivors.

General comments:- A haunting tale of grief, second chances and hidden passions.

Quotations:

Be careful what you wish for. I know that for a fact. Wishes are brutal, unforgiving things. They burn your tongue the moment they’re spoken and you can never taken them back.

To hell with human beings. I’d always felt safer with stories than with flesh and blood.

People hide their truest natures. I understood that; I even applauded it. What sort of world would it be if people bled all over the sidewalks, if they wept under trees, smacked whomever they despised, kissed strangers, revealed themselves? Keep a cloak, that was fine, the thing to do; present a disguise, the outside you, the one you want people to believe.

The truth was, I didn’t want to interfere. Why should it be up to me to touch anyone’s life, guide someone right rather than left, off the road instead of on? Who knows where your advice, interest, love, might lead?

Looking at the box, I realized I couldn’t let go; not even of this. I’d been that way all my life, holding on tight. I couldn’t let go of anything. Except for the things that mattered most.

AUTHOR Notes:- Alice Hoffman (born March 16, 1952) is an American novelist and young-adult and children's writer, best known for her 1996 novel Practical Magic, which was adapted for a 1998 film of the same name. Many of her works fall into the genre of magic realism and contain elements of magic, irony, and non-standard romances and relationships.

Review:- DAVID DICKINSON – “Death in a Scarlet Coat ”

2011-06-29T15:20:00.000+01:00

Year Published: - 2011
Where the book was from:- Pensby Library
ISBN: - 978-1-84901-459-5
Pages: - 342pp
Genre: - Historical crime
Location:- English counties, 1909
How I came across it: - Trying to catch up with this series
Rating: - ***** ****

One sentence summary:- Lord Powerscourt investigates the mysterious death of aster of the Hunt, Lord Candlesby, who arrived at the opening hunt of the season as a corpse draped across the back of his horse.

Describe the plot without giving anything away:- When Lord Candlesby arrives at the Hunt meeting dead only three people see the body and to avoid fuss the doctor is pressured into declaring it to be death by natural causes. In practice his death is caused by something far from natural and identifying what killed him is almost as hard as finding out whodunit. The Earl had so many enemies that Powerscourt is spoiled for choice when he is asked to start investigating.

General comments:- I think David Dickinson’s Powerscourt series is among the best historical fiction I have read. Whilst this was not the best of the series – and the culprit slightly predictable – it was nevertheless a most enjoyable read.

I am surprised that I have only read one of the Lord Francis Powerscourt Series since I started this blog – Death on a Holy Mountain. Prior to that I had read
1. Goodnight, Sweet Prince (2002)
3. Death of an Old Master (2004)
4. Death of a Chancellor (2004)
5. Death Called to the Bar (2006)
I therefore want to read -
2. Death and the Jubilee (2002)
6. Death on the Nevskii Prospekt (2006)
8. Death of a Pilgrim (2009)
9. Death of a Wine Merchant (2010)

Quotations:
Youth is always at a premium in the House of Lords. You know, people who can stand up unaided, walk without sticks, eat with their own teeth, that sort of thing.

Then he noticed that Disraeli had written some novels. That put a black mark against him in Richard’s book. Men should not write such things. If they had to be written, surely it was a job for a woman. Far better that they should not be written at all.

After a couple of days Lady Lucy would ask them about the men they had loved, the men they had married, the men they wished they had married, the men they wished they had never seen.

AUTHOR Notes:- see Death on a Holy Mountain

Review:- Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu – “Uncle Silas ”

2011-06-25T07:40:00.000+01:00

Year Published: - 1864
Where the book was from:- My own copy
ISBN: - 978 1 84022 171 8
Pages: - 418pp
Genre: - Victorian Gothic mystery
Location:- Derbyshire
How I came across it: - Reading Victorian literature
Rating: - ***** *****

One sentence summary:- A dramatic and suspenseful account of a young heiress who ends up in the care of her reclusive Uncle Silas, a man once accused of murder.

Describe the plot without giving anything away:- Young Maud Ruthyn is fascinated by her Uncle Silas but her father will tell nothing about him and forbids his name to be mentioned. Nevertheless, her father is one of the few convinced of his brother’s innocence and it is for his youthful lifestyle that he has been ostracised. Her father employs a terrifying French woman as Maud’s tutor and her life is made Hell for a while. Then circumstances put her in her Uncle’s household and more chilling things happen – deceit, greed and terror but who is doing the deceit is not obvious. Is Uncle Silas the villain or the hero. Only the denouement will make clear..

General comments:- A real page-turner, suspenseful. A tale of entertainment with a rattling good plot and wonderful use of atmosphere and characterisation.

Quotations:

It was winter – that is, about the second week in November – and great gusts were rattling at the windows, and wailing and thundering among our tall trees and ivied chimneys – a very dark night, and a very cheerful fire blazing, a pleasant mixture of good round coal and spluttering dry wood, in a genuine old fireplace, in a sombre old room. (The opening sentence).

There is no dealing with great sorrow as if it were under the control of our wills. It is a terrible phenomenon, whose laws we must study, and to whose conditions we must submit, if we would mitigate it… One of the terrible dislocations of our habits of mind respecting the dead is that our earthly future is robbed of them, and we are thrown exclusively on retrospect. From the long look forward they are removed, and every plan, imagination, and hope henceforth is a silent and empty perspective. But in the past they are all they ever were. Now let me advise all who would comfort people in anew bereavement to talk to them, very freely, all they can, in the way of the dead. They will engage in it with interest, they will talk of their own recollections of the dead, and listen to yours, though they become sometimes pleasant, even laughable. I found it so. It robbed the calamity of something of its supernatural and horrible abruptness….

So till tea-time I had poor Mary Quince, with her gushes of simple prattle and her long fits of vacant silence, for my companion. And such a one who can con over by rote the old friendly gossip about the dead, talk about their ways, and looks, and likings, without much psychological refinement, but with simple admiration and liking that never measured them critically, but always with faith and lo9ve, is in a general about as comfortable a companion as one can find for the common moods of grief.

It was now the stormy equinoctial weather that sounds the wild dirge of autumn, and marches the winter in…

Of course, a young lady of a well-regulated mind cannot possibly care a pin about anyone of the opposite sex until she is well assured that he is beginning, at least, to like her better than all the world beside; but I could not deny to myself that I was rather anxious to know more about Lord Ilbury than I actually did know.

For my part, I really can’t see the advantage of being the weaker sex if we are always to be strong as our masculine neighbours.

AUTHOR Notes:- Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu (28 August 1814 – 7 February 1873) was an Irish writer of Gothic tales and mystery novels. He was the premier ghost story writer of the nineteenth century and had a seminal influence on the development of this genre in the Victorian era.

Review:- Hilary MANTEL – “Fludd”

2011-06-20T21:51:00.000+01:00

Year Published: - 1989
Where the book was from:- My own copy
ISBN: -
Pages: - 186pp
Genre: - General Fiction, Comedy, Religion, Fantasy
Location:- A fictitious Derbyshire village
How I came across it: - Serendipity
Rating: - ***** **

One sentence summary:- The arrival of a new Roman Catholic curate in the 1950s Derbyshire village of Fetherhoughton causes a variety of mysterious changes, one might almost say miracles, to occur.

Describe the plot without giving anything away:- Father Angwin is a recalcitrant old bugger whose defiance of the Bishop appears to come to an end when he removes a host of statues from the church at the Bishop’s request. In the nearby convent Sister ‘Purpiture’ (i.e., Perpetua) is happily wielding her cane among the schoolchildren and her prodding forefinger among the nuns. Then along comes Fludd…

General comments:- ‘Fludd’ has sat for some years now on my ‘to be read’ shelf (and at times relegated to the ‘to be read’ boxes in the loft). At last I have got around to reading it. I can’t imagine what took me so long. At times hilarious, always mysterious, there is a moral in the tale somewhere. I think it is that love can transcend all, even in the darkest and strangest of universes.

Quotations:

The first event of autumn was the snowfall that blocked the pass that led through the moors to Yorkshire; this was generally accounted a good thing.

…the women liked to stand on their doorsteps. This standing was what they did. Recreational pursuits were for men: football, billiards, keeping hens.

Mother Perpetua would tell the children, with her famous, dangerously sweet smile: “We have no objection to Protestants worshipping God in their own way. But we Catholics prefer to worship Him in his.”

Purpit was a stumpy woman, of middle years – it is not proper to speculate about the exact age of nuns.

When Father Angwin saw the holes…he said to himself…if God knows our ends, why cannot he prevent them… Then he remembered that he did not believe in God…

In considering the life of Christ, there is something that has often made me wonder, did the man who owned the Gadarene swine get compensation?

And if you can accept the preposterous notion of a living creator who gives a bugger about every sparrow that falls, why jib at the rest of it? Why jib at rosaries and relics and fasting and abstinence? Why swallow a camel and strain at a gnat?

Up there (in Netherhoughton) they were still gossiping about the Abdication; not that of Edward VIII, but that of James II.

Christ died to free us from the burden of our sin, but he never, so far as she could see, lifted a finger to free us from our stupidity.

AUTHOR Notes:- Hilary Mantel was born inHadfield, Derbyshire, in 1952 and spent her early years at the same village school as her mother and grandmother. She then went to a Cheshire convent school (which obviously gave her much material for ‘Fludd’), the LSE and Sheffield University. She lived in Africa and the Middle East for ten years and published her first novel ‘Every Day is Mother’s Day’ in 1985. ‘Fludd’ was awarded the Winifred Holtby Prize, the Cheltenham Festival Prize and the Southern Arts Literature Award.

Review:- Margaret ATWOOD – “The Penelopiad”

2011-06-19T03:18:00.009+01:00

Year Published: - 2005
Where the book was from:- Mine - Library book sale
ISBN: - 978 1 84195 704 3
Pages: - 200pp
Genre: - Historical Fiction / Mythology
Location:- Greek kingdom of Ithica – circa 12th Century BC
How I came across it: - Serendipity
Rating: - ***** *

One sentence summary:- Penelope, now many centuries dead, speaks from the Underworld to tell her side of the story of the return of Odysseus from the Trojan Wars.

Describe the plot without giving anything away:- According to Greek mythology, Penelope, the wife of Odysseus, spent many years waiting for her husband to return from the Trojan Wars. He was too busy fighting Cyclops, making love to Goddesses, etc. to make his way straight home. His faithful wife, already upset that Odysseus had been lured off to war by the behaviour of her beautiful but wayward cousin Helen, then had to fight off a bunch of greedy and aggressive suitors who claimed Odysseus was dead.
The story is told from the modern day Underworld where Penelope is at last trying to set the record straight.

General comments:- I should have preferred Penelope to have spoken out straight away rather than wait for the modern era to do so. The reference by Penelope to waste-paper baskets when one comes across it on page 17 seems totally anachronistic.
Margaret Atwood is not to my taste and so far as I can recall this is the first of her books I’ve ever managed to finish. Her book sales run into millions so I am probably in the minority!

Quotations:

Now that I am dead I know everything. This is what I wished would happen, but like so many of my wishes it failed to come true., I know only a few factoids that I didn’t know before. Death is much too high a price to pay for the satisfaction of curiosity, needless to say.

The teaching of crafts to girls has fallen out of fashion now, I understand, but luckily it had not in my day. It’s always an advantage to have something to do with your hands. That way, if someone makes an inappropriate remark, you can pretend you haven’t heard it. Then you don’t have to answer.

AUTHOR Notes:- Margaret Eleanor Atwood, CC, O.Ont, FRSC (born November 18, 1939) is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, and environmental activist. She is among the most-honoured authors of fiction in recent history; she is a winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award and Prince of Asturias award for Literature, has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize five times, winning once, and has been a finalist for the Governor General's Award seven times, winning twice.

Catching Up

2011-06-18T04:22:00.000+01:00

A note of some of the books I have read during the last few months:-

Anthony TROLLOPE – Ralph the Heir (Re-read; first read about 2004) - ***** *** (Comedy, politics and social criticism combine in this 1871 ‘novel of Trollope’s maturity’.)

Anthony TROLLOPE – The Two Clerks (Kindle Edition) ***** (Poorest Trollope I have ever read.)

Anthony TROLLOPE – The Way we Live Now ***** **** (Wonderful social satire from 1874/5)

Jane AUSTEN – Persuasion ***** *** (First time I have read this so far as I can recall. I certainly didn’t read it about six years ago when I had a spell of reading Victorian classics)

David Stuart DAVIES – Short Stories from the Nineteenth Century (978-1-84022-407-8) (Stories by Dickens, Hardy, Trollope, Doyle, Wells, Gaskell, Collins, Stoker, de Maupassant, Chekhov, Gilman, Lamb, O. Henry and Wilde.) Quote from Davies’s introduction – “Human nature with its nobility, its foibles, its reactions to love, death, fear and hate does not change, whether one wears a crinoline or a mini-skirt; and that’s what gives power to these stories.”

Michael D Everett "Victorian London Street Life" ***** *** 1986 0 906 933 05 6 64pp

Jules Verne "Around the world in eighty days" ***** * 1873 978 1 85326 090 2 161pp Re-read for the umpteenth time.

Mrs Henry Wood – East Lynne ***** **** 1860/1 978 0 19 953603 0 645pp

Mary Elizabeth Braddon – The Doctor's Wife ***** *** 1864 978 0 19 954980 1 431p

Michael MacIlwee – The Gangs of Liverpool ***** ** 2006 9781903 854600 262pp

Margaret Oliphant – Hester ***** **** 1883

Margaret Oliphant – Miss Marjoriebanks ***** **** 1866

Charles Dickens – Our Mutual Friend ***** *** 1864/

Charles Dickens – Dombey & Son ***** ***** 1846/8 (The best Dickens I have read –and will undoubtedly be one of my books of the year.)

There are a few more that I have since put in the loft without making a note of them. Once retrieved I shall bring the list up to date and hopefully shall not be so lax in the future. My aim is to return to doing proper reviews, however brief, of each book as it is read.

Review:- Helen EXLEY – “Wisdom for our Times”

2011-06-17T02:32:00.003+01:00

Year Published: - 1999
Where the book was from:- Jo’s (a gift from me)
ISBN: - 1-86187-514-2
Pages: - 138pp
Genre: - Non-fiction - Quotations, words of wisdom.
Location:- -
How I came across it: - Serendipity
Rating: - ***** ****

One sentence summary:- A delightful giftbook – each quotation having a beautiful picture accompanying it.

General comments:- It would have got ten stars but for one thing: the illustrations are listed at the back by page number but the pages themselves are not numbered. You therefore have to find an illustration you know and work forwards / backwards to identify any particular picture.

AUTHOR Notes:- Helen Exley has selected and arranged a number of similar gift books. See www.helenexleygiftbooks.com. Our average book, since we began over 3o years ago has sold over 150,000 copies. Four of our titles have sold over a million books and over fifty of our titles have sold over half a million copies. These numbers are important to us, because the whole raison d'etre of our business is to make a change in as many people's lives as we can. "My aim is to help families communicate, to find the words which they can use to express their love for those who are close to them", says Helen Exley. Very often the message of the books is simply, "I love You, and "Thank you for all that you are and have given to me."

2010 – A Belated Summary

2011-06-16T03:28:00.013+01:00

During 2010 I read 125 fiction and 32 non-fiction; a total of 157 books (assuming I didn’t fail to record any). That is an increase of 47 on the year 2009 - perhaps my being laid up after my triple bypass had a little to do with it but even so I am amzed at such a great increase.

My Book of the Year was –
Peter MARREN (author) & Richard MABEY (editor) – “Bugs Britannica”

My Top Ten Fiction of the Year (Not counting books re-read like the Discworld series and Barchester Chronicles):-

David DICKINSON – “Death on the Holy Mountain”
Sam SAVAGE – “Firmin”
Rachel KING – “The Sound of Butterflies”
Elliot PATTISON – “Water Touching Stone”
Terry PRATCHETT - "I Shall Wear Midnight"
Paul ADAM – “Sleeper”
Ann GRANGER – “A Rare Interest in Corpses”
Ariana FRANKLIN – “Mistress of the Art of Death”
Marina LEWYCKA – “A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian”
Richard DOYLE – “Flood”

My Top Ten Non-fiction of the Year

Peter MARREN (author) & Richard MABEY (editor) – “Bugs Britannica”
Matthew HART – “The Irish Game”
David ATTENBOROUGH et al – “Amazing Rare Things”
P J Harris 'The Movers and Shakers of Victorian England'
Fred H Crossley "Cheshire"
Henry Kelsall Aspinall 'Birkenhead and its surroundings'
James McCLINTOCK – “The Stonehenge Companion”
Aubrey MALONE - "Literary Trivia"
Tadg FARRINGTON – “The Average Life of the Average Person”
Wilson, D M & Wilson C J “Edward Wilson’s Nature Notebooks”

Review:- Wilkie COLLINS – “The Moonstone”

2011-06-15T21:14:00.011+01:00

Year Published: - 1868
Where the book was from:- My own copy
ISBN: - 978-1-85326-044-5
Pages: - 438pp
Genre: - Crime
Location:- England
How I came across it: - Reading Victorian literature
Rating: - ***** *****

One sentence summary:- Sometimes described as ‘the first ever modern detective story’ the plot concerns the search by the phlegmatic Sergeant Cuff for a missing diamond – the Moonstone.

Describe the plot without giving anything away:- The Moonstone is a priceless Indian diamond, stolen from its rightful place in an Indian temple and brought to England where it is given to Rachel Verrinder on her eighteenth birthday. Promptly stolen, the suspects include Rachel’s cousin Franklin Blake, a troupe of Indian jugglers, a housemaid, and even Rachel herself. Sergeant Cuff is called in and with the help of Betteridge the elderly household steward the mystery is finally solved.

General comments:- Mum always recommended this as a ‘good read’ and yet it is only with my search to understand Victorian literature that I have finally picked it up and read it. I was suitably rewarded. It is an excellent read and the plot transcends time.

Quotations:

There’s a bottom of good sense, Mr Franklin, in our conduct to our mothers, when they first start us on the journey of life. We are all of us more or less unwilling to be brought into the world. And we are all of us right.

What more could I possibly want to make me happy? Remember what Adam wanted when he was alone in the Garden of Eden; and if you don’t blame it on Adam, don’t blame it on me.

On hearing these dreadful words, my daughter Penelope said she didn’t know what prevented her heart from flying straight out of her. I thought privately that it might have been her stays.

The upshot of it was, that Rosanna Spearman had been a thief, and not being of the sort that get up Companies in the City, and rob from thousands, instead of only robbing from one, the law laid hold of her, and the prison and the reformatory followed the lead of the law.

Many men, many opinions, as one of the ancients said before my time.

A young lady’s tongue is a privileged member…

Her mouth and chin were (to quote Mr Franklin) morsels for the gods; and her complexion (on the same undeniable authority) was as warm as the sun itself, with this great advantage over the sun, that it was always in nice order to look at

…when they jumped from their saddles (without waiting to be helped), I declare they bounced on the ground as if they were made of india-rubber. Everything the Miss Ablewhites said began with a large ‘O’; everything they did was done with a bang; and they giggled and screamed, in season and out of season, on the smallest provocation. Bouncers – that’s what I call them.

A drop of tea is to a woman’s tongue what a drop of oil is to a wasting lamp.
People in high life have all the luxuries to themselves – among others, the luxury of indulging their feelings. People in low life have no such privilege. Necessity, which spares our betters, has no pity on us. We learn to put our feelings back into ourselves, and to jog on with our duties as patiently as possible

Let you faith be as your stockings, and your stockings as your faith. Both ever spotless, and both ready to be put on at a moment’s notice!

AUTHOR Notes:- Wilkie Collins (8 January 1824 – 23 September 1889) was a London-born, English novelist, playwright, and author of short stories. He was very popular during the Victorian era and wrote 30 novels, more than 60 short stories, 14 plays, and over 100 non-fiction pieces. His best-known works are The Woman in White, The Moonstone, Armadale and No Name.

Collins predicted the deterrence concept of mutually assured destruction that defined the Cold War nuclear era. Writing at the time of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 he stated, "I begin to believe in only one civilising influence - the discovery one of these days of a destructive agent so terrible that War shall mean annihilation and men's fears will force them to keep the peace."

Review:- Muriel BARBERY – “The Elegance of the Hedgehog”

2011-06-13T18:06:00.000+01:00

(Translated Alison Anderson)
Year Published: - 2006 in France as L’élégance du Hérisson
Where the book was from:- A Christmas gift
ISBN: - 978-1-906040-18-5
Pages: - 320pp
Genre: - General Fiction
Location:- Paris
How I came across it: - Read a blog review
Rating: - ***** *****

One sentence summary:- The concierge of a block of wealthy person’s flats lets us in on a little secret – despite her dowdy appearance, peasant background and grumpy manners she’s an autodidact who has found an ideal hiding place. Meanwhile (OK that’s two sentences!) a twelve year old would-be suicide in one of the flats is trying to find a purpose in life.

Describe the plot without giving anything away:- Renée, the fifty plus concierge of a Parisian apartment block, is a widow and appears to the residents as a typical example of her genre – uneducated, miserable and uncultivated. Once her door is closed and the TV is blasting away as her means of convincing them they are right (whilst she hides in her quiet back room) she enjoys her passions of art, culture, literature and the examination of the human condition. Her only friend is a Portuguese immigrant – an aristocrat by nature if not birth - who cleans a couple of the flats and shares tea with her. After many years thus hidden away she finds her mask slipping and begins to make a few mistakes which cause her employers to regard her in a new light. Fortunately a concierge only merits a momentary second thought so the slips are not too much of a problem at first.
In one of the posh flats above Renée, a twelve year old girl, Paloma Josse, has decided that the futility of life merits her ending it on her thirteenth birthday – and setting fire to the flat in the process.

Then the death of one of the privileged residents causes a revolution at number 7 Rue de Grenelle. (Grenelle means wooded area where rabbits live – no coincidence I feel).

General comments:- I defy anyone to read this book without being deeply moved. The skilful portrayal of humans with all their failings and the philosophy suggests there may be redemption to be found in literature, culture and, above all, human relationships. Just may be!
The translator, Alison Anderson, deserves a mention for the skill with which she has captured some of the original concepts without making them seem obviously translated and without losing anything of the

Quotations:

People aim for the stars and they end up like goldfish in a bowl. I wonder if it wouldn’t be simpler just to teach children right from the start that life is absurd.

Olympe takes a breath before reaching the best part of the story – ‘she displayed mildly haemorrhagic urine!’ Dear God, this is good. If she had said, There was blood in her pee, the story would have been over in no time. But Olympe, cloaking her cat doctor’s uniform with emption, has also adopted the terminology,. I have always found great delight in in hearing people speak like this…

And on the way home I thought pity the poor in spirit who know neither the enchantment nor the beauty of language.

I untie the string and tear the paper. It’s a book, a fine edition bound in navy-blue leather of a coarse texture that is very wahi. In Japanese wahi means ‘an understated form of beauty, a quality of refinement masked by rustic simplicity’. I’m not really sure what this means but this binding is most definitely wahi.

As far as I can see, only psychoanalysts can compete with Christians in their love of drawn-out suffering.

I still find it very difficult to believe that florists and hairdressers are not parasites, the former living off nature, which belongs to everyone, the latter performing with an outlandish amount of play-acting and smelly products a task which I can expedite in my own bathroom with a pair of well-shaped scissors.

Fine lingerie is already an interesting name. What else would it be – coarse lingerie? Anyway, what it means, in fact, is sexy lingerie; you won’t find your grandmother’s sturdy old cotton drawers in a place like this.

For the first time in my life I understood the meaning of the word ‘never’. And it’s really awful. You say the word a hundred times a day but you don’t really know what you’re saying until you’re faced with a real ‘never again’.

AUTHOR Notes:- Muriel Barbery was born in 1969. Barbery entered the École Normale Supérieure de Fontenay-Saint-Cloud in 1990 and obtained her agrégation in philosophy in 1993. She then taught philosophy at the Université de Bourgogne, in a lycée, and at the Saint-Lô IUFM (teacher training college). L'Élégance du hérisson was her second novel. The first, Une Gourmandise, which appeared in Anderson's English translation as Gourmet Rhapsody in 2009 also briefly featured Renee. L'Élégance du hérisson (translated into English by Alison Anderson as The Elegance of the Hedgehog) topped the French best-seller lists for 30 consecutive weeks and was reprinted 50 times. It has sold over 2 million copies.

Kindles and things...

2011-06-13T16:37:00.000+01:00

I haven't posted properly about the books I've read for months. I haven't even laisted the last few months though hopefully that will be remedied when I fiond where I put the lost! Until yesterday virtually all I had been reading was Nineteenth Century novels or non-fiction about the Victorian age. I branched out yesterday and read "The Elegance of the Hedgehog". It has really whetted my appetite for returning to the 21st Century.

Despite loving the feel and look of books I bought a Kindle back in February. Apart from all the known advantages the big one for me is the cheap and easy access to books which are no longer available, even second-hand. For years there have been a few Anthony Trollope books that I've wanted to read but haven't been able to get hold of them. Even the British Library doesn't have lending copies. Some of them could have been downloaded onto my computer but I don't think I could happily read a book on my computer – especially when I spend so much time on it doing other things. And now, at last I can access them all. And the price is ridiculous. I've just paid less than £5.00 for over 90 books.

The Latest Readings

2011-03-19T10:53:00.000Z

Ursula Doyle (Ed) "Love Letters of Great Men and Women" 2010
978 0 330 51513 9 308pp

Robin Gard "The Observant Traveller" 1989
978 0117012080 130pp

Norman and Jeanne MacKenzie "The Diary of Beatrice Webb"
Vol I – 12873-1892 9780860688464 384pp

T Charles Edwards & B Richardson "They saw it happen" 1958
310pp

E A Horsham "The Diary of Alfred Domett 1872-1885" 1953
312pp

David Verey "The Diary of a Victorian Squire" 1983
0 86299 055 6 242pp

Ed Clare Eagle - "William Mitchell -A Victorian Clergyman" 2010
978 0 9567263 0 8 x pp

Ed Countess of Ilchester "The Life and Letters of Lady Sarah Lennox 1745-1826" vol1 1901 322pp

Benjamin Disraeli "Sybil" 1845
1 85326 248 x 359pp

William Allingham – A Diary 1824-1889 1907
0 14 057025 X 404pp

Irene & Alan Taylor "The Assassin's Cloak" 2000
0 86241 920 4 684pp

Mary Elizabeth Braddon "Lady Audely's Sceret" 1862 (1997)
978 1 85326 726 0 362pp

Margaret Oliphant "Salem Chapel" 1865 (2011)
9 780559 438813 368pp

Margaret Oliphant "Chronicles of Carlingford – The Rector & the Doctor's Family" 1863 (2011)
978 1 4099 7207 5 158pp

Charles Dickens "The Mystery of Edwin Drood" 1870 (1982)
978 0 19 955461 4 239pp

Elizabeth Gaskell "Wives and Daughters" 2003
978 1 84022 416 0 596pp

John Clare (Everyman's Poetry) 1997
978 0 460 87823 4 112pp

William Makepeace Thackeray "Vanity Fair" 2001
978 1 85326 019 3 694pp

Another update

2011-01-17T03:43:00.001Z

Oh Dear! I seem to be far too busy (reading!) to do individual reviews which is a shame because some of these really merit it.

Ronald Blythe "The Penguin Book of Diaries" 1989 My copy ***** *****
0 14 012231 1     365pp

Scouse Press – "An Everyday History of Liverpool" My copy ***** *****

John Hussey - "The Light of Other Days" 2009 Pensby Library ***** *
978 1 9068233 22 1 311pp

Edward L Johns et al "Lucy's Diary – the journal of Lucy Rodd during her visit to England in 1870" My copy     ***** ****
978-09549137-8-6 144pp

Heather Creaton – "Victorian Diaries" 2001 My copy***** ***
1 84000 359 6 144pp

Cresswell, Wm. "Diary of a Victorian Gardener" 2006 My copy   ***** *
978 1 85074 988 4 176pp

Charles L Eastlake "Hints on Household Taste" 1868 My copy ***** **
0 486 25046 6 304pp

H Rider Haggard "A Farmer's Year" 1899 (1987) My copy   ***** ***
0 09 170841 9 500pp

E & M A Radford "The Encyclopedia of Superstitions" 1948 My copy ***** *****
1 85986 493 1 384pp

Geoffrey Best "Mid Victorian Britain" 1971 My copy   ***** ***
9 780007 2928 20 310pp

William Plomer (Ed.) "Kilvert's Diary 1870-1879" 1986 My copy ***** *****
0 7126 9397 8 288pp

Thomas Hardy – "The Mayor of Casterbridge" - second time - 1885 My copy ***** *
0 19 251042 8 404pp

Michael Anglo "Penny Dreadfuls and the Victorian Horrors" 1977 My copy ***** ****
0 904041 59 X 125pp

Elizabeth Gaskell "North and South" 1854/5 My copy ***** *****
978 1 85326 093 3 417pp

An update

2010-12-20T16:24:00.003Z

Help - I never realised ISBNs have the same number of digits and format as phone number and so if you want to dial an ISBN (not recommended) you might be surprised who you reach!!!

Bringing my reading list up-to-date. These are the bookd I have read since the last time I posted:-

Anthony Trollope – “The Warden” ***** ***** (for the second time)
First of the Barchester series

“Barchester Towers ***** **** (for the second time)

Dr Thorne ***** *** (for the second time)

The Small House at Allington ***** **** (for the second time)

Bernard Cornwell – “Redcoat” ***** ****

Thomas Hardy “The Mayor of Casterbridge” ***** ** (for the second time)

Thomas Hardy - “Far from the Madding Crowd” ***** **** (for the second time)

Paul Doherty – “Murder most Holy” ***** ***

One of the sorrowful Mysteries of Brother Athelstan

Veronica Stallwood – “Oxford Proof” ***** ***

Janie Bolitho – “Plotted in Cornwall” ***** ****

Ken Follett – “Paper Money” ***** ***

Pamela Oldfield – “The Great Plague” ***** *

Amanda Quick – “The Paid Companion” ***** **** Regency romance

Terry Pratchett – Truckers” ***** ****

Terry Pratchett – “Diggers” ***** ****

Terry Pratchett – “Wings” ***** ****

Terry Pratchett – “Carpet People” ***** ****

Emma Dent Diary Reardon Publishing, Cheltenham 1998 2nd ed 1999
ISBN 1 873877 28 5 56pp Selected writings from an exhibition at Sudeley Castle

Ronald Blythe "The Penguin Book of Diaries" 1989
0 14 012231 1 365pp

William Allingham 'A Diary 1824-1889' 1907
Introduced by John Julius Norwich. 0 14 057025 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 0 14 057025 end_of_the_skype_highlighting 404pp

Henry Kelsall Aspinall 'Birkenhead and its surroundings' 1903
373p

Margaret Harris & Judith Johnston – the Journals of George Eliot 1998
0 521 57412 9 448pp

P J Harris 'The Movers and Shakers of Victorian England' 2006
10 1 90562 406 9 160pp

Colin Twist "A History of Liverpool Parks" 2000
1 872839 06 1 72pp

Richard Whittington-Egan "Liverpool Murders" 2009
9781904438885 381pp

Fred H Crossley "Cheshire" 1949
376pp

Ian Boumphrey "Yesterday's Liverpool" c2007
1-899241-25-6 128pp

Frank O'Reilly "The Liverpool Firebobbies" 2008
Vol 1 978-1-906823-08-5 312pp

Peter Aughton "Liverpool – A People's History" 1990
0-948789-43-3 232pp

S G Kendall "Farming Memoirs of a West Country Yeoman" 1944
247pp

Valerie Porter "Times Past in the Countryside" 2009
978-0-276-44404-3 256pp

Andrew Kerr-Jarrett "Life in the Victorian age" 1993
0 276 42121 3 160pp

Helen Kelsall & Keith Kelsall "Diary of a Victorian Miss on Holiday" 1992
1-8747128-00-8 156pp

Review:- Ken FOLLETT – “The Third Twin”

2010-10-03T14:49:00.007+01:00

Year Published: - 1996
Where the book was from:- My own copy
ISBN: - 0 333 66809 X
Pages: - 503pp
Genre: - Thriller; genetics
Location:- Baltimore
How I came across it: - Library book sale
Rating: - ***** ***
One sentence summary:- In the course of her work a young woman comes across two men who appear to be identical twins and yet who have different parents and her investigations end up threatening her life – and those of others.

Describe the plot without giving anything away:- Jeannie Ferrami tries to trace how two boys from different mothers, born on different days and hundreds of miles apart can in all respects appear to be identical twins. Her investigations initially threaten only her job but soon she upsets folk enough for her life to be threatened.

AUTHOR Notes:- Kenneth Follett – see previous post.

Review:- Ken FOLLETT – “A Dangerous Fortune”

2010-10-02T11:41:00.012+01:00

Year Published: - 1993
Where the book was from:- My own copy
ISBN: - 0 333 58031 1
Pages: - 434pp
Genre: - Historical thriller
Location:- Victorian England (1866-1890)
How I came across it: - Library book sale
Rating: - ***** ****
One sentence summary:- The Pilasters, a great family of merchant bankers, are beset by greed and ambition in their bid for wealth and power but young Hugh Pilaster seems set to buck the Pilaster trend.

Describe the plot without giving anything away:- In 1866 a fellow pupil of Hugh Pilaster and his cousin Edward is drowned at their public school and the ramifications of this event affect the Pilaster family for many years to come. Meanwhile, as the Pilaster banking empire grows Hugh, a poor relation, has varied fortunes as he falls in love, works hard and fights the villainy of his relatives at every turn.

General comments:- An excellent ‘’family empire’ tale from a master storyteller.

AUTHOR Notes:- Ken Follett, born in Wales in 1949, was only twenty-seven when he wrote Eye of the Needle, the award-winning novel which became an international bestseller and a distinguished film. Before that, he had been a newspaper reporter and a publishing executive after studying philosophy at University College, London. He has since written ten equally successful novels and the non-fiction bestseller, On Wings of Eagles. Ken Follett lives with his family in London and Stevenage.

Review:- David DICKINSON – “Death on the Holy Mountain”

2010-10-01T09:35:00.000+01:00

Year Published: - 2008
Where the book was from:- Pensby Library
ISBN: - 9781845296032
Pages: - 312pp
Genre: - Historical Crime
Location:- Ireland, 1905
How I came across it: - Serendipity
Rating: - ***** *****
One sentence summary:- In 1905, Lord Francis Powerscourt investigates a series of art thefts from stately homes of the Protestant gentry in Ireland.

Describe the plot without giving anything away:- Powerscourt’s investigation is hampered by the fact that none of the gentry will reveal the contents of the blackmail notes he assumes they have received. Meanwhile, some local folk are building an oratory on the top of Croagh Patrick – hopefully in time for the annual pilgrimage to the summit. With his friend Johnny Fitzgerald Powerscourt slowly closes in but discover that their own patriotism is called into question.

General comments:- Humour, excellent writing, a wonderful summary of the Irish question and a cosy crime plot to boot – what more could one ask for from a book?

Lord Francis Powerscourt Series
1. Goodnight, Sweet Prince (2002)
2. Death and the Jubilee (2002)
3. Death of an Old Master (2004)
4. Death of a Chancellor (2004)
5. Death Called to the Bar (2006)
6. Death on the Nevskii Prospekt (2006)
7. Death On the Holy Mountain (2008)
8. Death of a Pilgrim (2009)
9. Death of a Wine Merchant (2010)
10. Death in a Scarlet Coat (2011)

Quotations:
And he knew that one of the many divisions into which the world’s population was split – those who can whistle and those who can’t, those who adore Venice and those who complain about the smell, those who can order drinks in theatre bars at the interval and those who can’t – was the distinction between those who can unwrap parcels neatly and those who can’t. Powerscourt knew his wife Lucy would have the thing open, the string tied neatly in a ball, the box itself virtually intact and the available for reuse in a minute or two.

He looked around the library once more, filled with words, millions of them. the most dangerous word in Ireland, he decided, inspecting critically a section devoted to theological works, was God. God or [perhaps Nation. On balance, he thought, God had it.

... genteel poverty, eking out the tea leaves for another afternoon, water the only drink in the house apart from the cheap whiskey which her father consumed to ease his sorrows. Even then he diluted it so heavily that the taste of the whiskey was like a noise heard far away, remote and distant as though a visitor was tiptoeing away from your house in the dark.

“No pain, no poem. I’ve never had much to do with the women myself,” he admitted, “too temperamental for me, but I’ve always understood that the one thing they’re good for is a bit of inspiration for the poetry writing classes when the normal things like drink have failed.”

“Too much history, that’s the trouble with Ireland,” said Powerscourt. “Pity you can’t sell bits of it off to some of these new places where they haven’t got any at all.”

AUTHOR Notes:- David Dickinson was born in Dublin. After receiving a first class honours degree in Classics from Cambridge he joined the BBC where he became editor of Newsnight and Panorama as well as being series editor on Monarchy, a three part programme on the current state and future prospects of the British royal family. David now lives in Barnes, South West London, Somerset or France accortding to which source you read!

Review: - Veronica BLACK – “Vow of Evil”

2010-09-29T12:09:00.009+01:00

Year Published: - 2004
Where the book was from:- My own copy
ISBN: - 0 7090 7690 8
Pages: - 224pp
Genre: - Cosy Crime
Location:- Cornwall
How I came across it: - Library sale
Rating: - ***** ***
One sentence summary:- Sister Joan of the Order of the Daughters of Compassion has a habit of finding bodies and following an outbreak of vandalism in the village it looks like she is about to find another one.

Describe the plot without giving anything away:- In addition to the vandalism, the devil is sighted in the churchyard and a dog is poisoned. The lack of new postulants in the order means that the postulancy is available for rent to a deserving family – but are they as deserving as they are made out to be.

General comments:- I haven’t read any Veronica Black before and was delighted to find a new cosy crime author. Definitely one to check out in the library.

AUTHOR Notes:- Veronica Black is a pseudonym of Maureen Peters (1935 - 2008) was born in Caernarvon, North Wales. She was educated at grammar school and attended the University College of North Wales, Bangor, where she obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree and a diploma of Education. For some time she taught retarded children, and then took up writing. She has produced many books and contributed short stories to many magazines. Her other pseudonyms include Catherine Darby, Elizabeth Law, Judith Rothman, and Sharon Whitby.

Review:- Alexander McCall Smith – “The Double Comfort Safari Club”

2010-09-27T11:42:00.000+01:00

Year Published: - 2010
Where the book was from:- Pensby Library
ISBN: - 978 1 4087 0105
Pages: - 248pp
Genre: - Cosy / General Fiction
Location:- Botswana
How I came across it: - New books shelf
Rating: - ***** *****
One sentence summary:- In the latest installment from the No 1 Ladies Detective Agency Mma Ramotswe searches for the beneficiary of a woman’s legacy and the fiancé of her assistant, Mma Makutsi, meets with a serious mishap. During the course of their investigations they visit a safari park in the Okavango Delta.

Describe the plot without giving anything away:- For those who don’t know the background to the No 1 Ladies Detective Agency series they are set in Botswana and Mma Ramotswe, a traditionally-built lady, is a philosophizing detective married to a typically hard-working and kind motor mechanic, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. McCall Smith’s love of Botswana, its history and its people is apparent on every page.

General comments:- This is the eleventh book in the series. According to my blog I’ve missed the tenth ‘Tea Time for the Traditionally Built’ so I must hunt it out soon.

Quotations:
“All these facts were indeed both incontestable and well known; whereas Mma Ramotswe’s pronouncements, to which she attributed the special status of being well known, were often, rather, statements of opinion. There was a difference, thought Mr J.L.B. Maketoni, but it was not one he was planning to point out; there were some things, after all, that it was not helpful for a husband to say to his wife and that, he thought, was probably one of them.”

“That was the way the world was; it was composed of a few almost perfect people (ourselves); then there were a good many people who generally did their best but were not all that perfect (our friends and colleagues); and finally, there were a few rather nasty ones (our enemies and opponents). Most people fell into that middle group – those who did their best – and the last group was, thankfully, very small. and not ,much in evidence in places like Botswana, where he was fortunate enough to live.”

AUTHOR Notes:- Alexander McCall Smith – see The Right Attitude to Rain

Review:- Sam SAVAGE – “Firmin”

2010-09-26T14:56:00.000+01:00

Year Published: - 2006
Where the book was from:- My own copy
ISBN: - 978 0 7538 2339 2
Pages: - 232pp
Genre: - General Fiction
Location:- Boston
How I came across it: - Found in a charity shop
Rating: - ***** *****
One sentence summary:- The brilliant tale of Firmin a self-educated rat who lives in a bookstore in the 1960s in a part of Boston scheduled for demolition.

Describe the plot without giving anything away:-

This is the remarkable tale of Firmin the rat – subtitled the adventures of a metropolitan lowlife. Born in a bookstore in a blighted 1960's Boston neighbourhood, Firmin miraculously learns how to read by digesting his nest of books. Alienated from his family and unable to communicate with the humans he loves, Firmin quickly realizes that a literate rat is a lonely rat. Following a harrowing misunderstanding with his hero, the bookseller, Firmin begins to risk the dangers of Scollay Square, finding solace in the Lovelies of the burlesque cinema. Finally adopted by a down-on-his-luck science fiction writer, the tide begins to turn, but soon they both face homelessness when the wrecking ball of urban renewal arrives.

General comments:-

“A wonderful celebration of the way reading enriches your life” (Guardian)

This described in my edition as Savage’s first novel but Fantastic Fiction shows he published a previous novel, “The Criminal Life of Effie O.”, in 2005.

Quotations:

“Obviously even at that early age I was already suffering from the catastrophic gifts of lexical hypertrophy, which has since done so much to mar the smooth course of what might otherwise have been a perfectly ordinary life.”

“I realized that this incredible disorder was one of the things that they loved about Pembroke Books.... They called it browsing, but it was more like excavation or mining. I was surprised they didn’t come in with shovels. They dug for treasures with bare hands, up to their armpits sometimes, and when they hauled some literary nugget from a mound of dross, they were much happier than if they had just walked in and bought it.”

“Unrequited love is bad. But unrequitable love can really get you down.”

“I always think everything is going to last forever, but nothing ever does. In fact nothing exists longer than an instant except the things that we hold in memory.”

“Mine was a large family, and soon thirteen of us were cruddled in its struins, to speak like itself, ‘chippy young cuppinjars cluttering round, clottering for their creams’...”

“Even though I consider myself lucky to have lived the liofe I did. I would not like to be that lucky twice.”

AUTHOR Notes:- A native of South Carolina, Sam Savage received his doctorate in philosophy from Yale.. He has worked as a bicycle mechanic, carpenter, commercial fisherman and letterpress printer. He now lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

Review:- Rachel KING – “The Sound of Butterflies”

2010-09-25T16:37:00.000+01:00

Year Published: - 2006
Where the book was from:- My own copy
ISBN: - 978 0 330 44916 8
Pages: - 354pp
Genre: - General Fiction
Location:- London and the Amazon rain forest, 1903
How I came across it: - Charity shop - serendipity
Rating: - ***** *****
One sentence summary:- In 1903, Thomas Edgar, a passionate collector of butterflies, is given the opportunity to visit the Amazon rain forest but he returns a totally changed and his wife must try to find out why.

Describe the plot without giving anything away:- Edgar’s main aim is to find a mythical butterfly with one yellow wing and one black wing. If successful he will name it after his wife, Sophie, with whom he is much in love. But the events that occur in the jungle are such that he returns unable to speak and Sophie has to resort to devious means to find out what occurred.

From the demure gentility of Edwardian England to the decadence and horrors of the Brazilian rubber plantations the book explores the passions of the collector and the beauties of the butterflies that he chases.

General comments:- A stirring book, beautifully written and deeply moving.

The cover is a real work of art.

AUTHOR Notes:- Rachael King was born in New Zealand in 1970 and lives in Wellington. Her father, Michael King (who died in 2004), was one of New Zealand's most prominent authors, and her mother, Ros Henry, is a publisher. After leaving school, Rachael embarked on a university education, but was distracted along the way playing bass guitar in several rock bands and touring the country. Rachel has worked in radio, television, and magazines and played bass guitar in several bands. She won the 2005/6 Lilian Ida Smith award.

Review:- Colin WATSON – “Coffin, scarcely used”

2010-09-22T00:20:00.000+01:00

Year Published: - 1958
Where the book was from:- My own copy
ISBN: - 1 84262 421 0
Pages: - 286pp
Genre: - Fun cosy crime
Location:- Lincolnshire, England
How I came across it: - Book sale at library
Rating: - ***** **
One sentence summary:- Following the funeral of Cllr Harold Carobleat the apparent;ly respectable inhabitants of Flaxborough discover that he is but the first of their number to require a coffin.

Describe the plot without giving anything away:- Inspector Purbright becomes involved and tries to work out how a series of adverts for antiques in the local newspaper impacts upon his case.

General comments:- The first in the series, this is the second Flaxborough book I’ve read – see The naked nuns

AUTHOR Notes:- Colin Watson (1920-1982)was a British writer of detective fiction and the creator of characters such as Inspector Purbright and Lucilla Teatime. He is most famous for the twelve 'Flaxborough' novels, typified by their comic and dry wit and set in a fictional small town in England.

Catching Up Again

2010-09-21T00:19:00.006+01:00

Some of the recently read books that I didn’t get around to reviewing (not that the recent reviews have been in any depth).

Victoria Hanley – The Healer’s Keep *****
Manda Scott – Boudica ***** ***
Stephen Leather – The Bombmaker -***** ****
Michael Jecks – The Tolls of Death ***** ***
Tina French – The Likeness ***** *
Dam Brown – The Da Vinci Code ***** ****

Review:- Cora Harrison – “Eye of the Law”

2010-09-20T00:15:00.007+01:00

Year Published: - 2010
Where the book was from:- Pensby Library
ISBN: - 978 0 7278 6873 2
Pages: - 219pp
Genre: - Historical crime
Location:- The Burren, Ireland, 1510
How I came across it: - Continuing the series
Rating: - ***** ***
One sentence summary:- Mara, Brehon of the burren, has to investigate a twenty year old secret when a young man turns up claiming that the wealthy Ardal O’lochl;ann is his father.

Describe the plot without giving anything away:- The young man and his uncle – from the Aran Islands arrive at a feast with their claim about the young man’s parentage. But the young man is soon killed and a murder investigation begins.

General comments:- I’m sure this is the third Mara novel I have read recently but there is only one other on this blog. Perhaps the other was ‘My Lady Judge’.
Burren Mysteries
1. My Lady Judge (2007)
2. Michaelmas Tribute (2008)
aka A Secret and Unlawful Killing
3. The Sting of Justice (2009)
4. Writ in Stone (2009)
5. Eye of the Law (2010)

AUTHOR Notes:- Cora Harrison

Review:- Terry PRATCHETT - "I Shall Wear Midnight"

2010-09-19T00:30:00.007+01:00

Year Published: - 2010
Where the book was from:- My Own Copy
ISBN: - 978 0 385 61107 7
Pages: - 345pp
Genre: - Humour
Location:- Discworld !
How I came across it: - Always get any new Pratchett as soon as published
Rating: - ***** *****
One sentence summary:- The fourth Tiffany Aching book in the Discworld series.

Describe the plot without giving anything away:- Tiffany Aching knows that being a witch is not the most rewarding of jobs but when people start viciously turning against her she realizes something is amiss. A tangled ball of evil and spite has woken up. Her friends the Nac Mac Feegles get involved (of course) and Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg turn up near the end to see what’s going on.

General comments:- Ostensibly the Tiffany Aching books are for younger readers but all are quite readable for adults and this, in particular, is quire worthy of simply being classed as a general Discworld book.

AUTHOR Notes:- Terry Pratchett – see catching up.

Review:- James McCLINTOCK – “The Stonehenge Companion”

2010-09-18T00:01:00.006+01:00

Year Published: - 2006
Where the book was from:- Helen’s
ISBN: - 10 1 90562 408 5
Pages: - 157pp
Genre: - Non-fiction; Stonehenge; myths; prehistory
Location:- Stonehenge, Wiltshire
How I came across it: - Browsing Helen’s bookshelves
Rating: - ***** *****
One sentence summary:- A dirst-class whistle-stop tour through the history, myth and magic of Stonehenge.

It sidetracks down every ley line available and ranges from white horses to the Waitapu stone circle in New Zealand.

Review:- Ed. Hilary McGLYNN – “Loads of Lists”

2010-09-17T00:55:00.004+01:00

Year Published: - 2001
Where the book was from:- Helen’s
ISBN: - 1 85986 360 4
Pages: - 539pp
Genre: - Non-fiction – lists; trivia
How I came across it: - Checking out Helen’s bookcases
Rating: - ***** ****
One sentence summary:- As it says on the cover – loads of lists to browse, dip into, skim or read from cover-to-cover (which I bet few people have).

1500+ thematically arranged lists to amuse, excite, entertain as much as to inform – covers the serious to the seriously whacky.

Review:- Roger ORMEROD – “Third Time Fatal”

2010-09-16T00:29:00.005+01:00

Year Published: - 1992
Where the book was from:- My own copy
ISBN: - 0 7089-4712-3
Pages: - 380pp (Large print)
Genre: - Cosy Crime
Location:-
How I came across it: - Serendipity
Rating: - ***** **
One sentence summary:- Philipa Lowe’s schoolfriend Heather is at last taking the plunge and getting married but there is a hitch...

Describe the plot without giving anything away:- When Philipa and her friend Oliver go to attend the wedding all goes awry, not least because the groom’s bed is occupied by another woman – naked and deceased.

Quotations:- This has one of the best dedications I have come across – “Dedicated with gratitude to Dorene for her invaluable advice on various aspects of the sex scene in Chapter four!”

AUTHOR Notes:- Roger Ormerod was born in 1920 and spent most of his life in the civil service. He has over 30 novels to his name.

Book Cycle

2010-09-15T00:45:00.005+01:00

Review:- Chips BARBER – “The Lost City of Exeter”

2010-09-14T00:53:00.006+01:00

Year Published: - 1982
Where the book was from:- Charity Shop
ISBN: -
Pages: - 152pp
Genre: - Non-fiction; topography
Location:- Exeter, Devon
How I came across it: - Serendipity
Rating: - ***** ***
One sentence summary:- A well-written guide book with lots of information about the immediate area surrounding Exeter.

It ranges from the heart of Exeter itself to the villages and suburbs now absorbed by its growth.

All fascinating stuff and illustrated with a number of black and white photos of Exeter as it was in olden days.

Review: - Kathy REICHS – “Bare Bones”

2010-09-13T12:50:00.008+01:00

Year Published: - 2003
Where the book was from:- My own copy
ISBN: - 0 434 01036 7
Pages: - 306pp
Genre: - Forensic crime
Location:- Charlotte & Mecklenberg, USA -
How I came across it: - Knew Reichs by reputation
Rating: - ***** ***
One sentence summary:- Dr Temperance Brennan, Charlotte-Mecklenberg’s medical examiner has the remains of a baby to examine before going on holiday but then other bodies start turning up.

Describe the plot without giving anything away:- A Cessna plane crashes into a rock increasing Tempe’s workload. A cache of bones then turns up in a remote corner of the county making her vacation slip even further. Well plotted, good characterisation and up to the standard I had expected of Reichs. I have read one some years ago but cannot recall what I thought of it.

AUTHOR Notes:- Kathy Reichs, born 1950, is forensic anthropologist for the Offices of the Chief Medical Examiner, State of North Carolina, and for the Laboratorie de Sciences Judiciaires et de M-decine L-gale for the province of Quebec. A professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, she divides her time between Charlotte and Montreal and is a frequent expert witness in criminal trials.

Review:- Paul DOHERTY – “The Mysterium”

2010-09-12T12:39:00.000+01:00

Year Published: - 2010
Where the book was from:- My own copy
ISBN: - 978 0 7553 5457 3
Pages: - 312pp
Genre: - Historical crime
Location:- London 1304
How I came across it: - Continuing to read this author
Rating: - ***** **
One sentence summary:- It is 1304 and London is in crisis following a succession of brutal murders when Walter Evesham, Chief Justice of the king’s Bench, falls from grace.

Describe the plot without giving anything away:- It appears the Mysterium, a killer once brought to justice by Evesham has returned. Sir Hugh Corbett is ordered to investigate.

General comments:-
This is the seventeenth Hugh Corbett mystery.

AUTHOR Notes:- See Paul Doherty

Review: Paul ADAM – “Sleeper”

2010-09-11T12:30:00.000+01:00

Year Published: - 2004
Where the book was from:- Exeter Library
ISBN: - 0 316 72432 7
Pages: - -
Genre: - Thriller, Crime
Location:- Italy and England
How I came across it: - Serendipity
Rating: - ***** *****
One sentence summary:- A brilliant story of the murder of an elderly violin-maker whose two friends (one a police officer) travel around Italy and England in search of a missing Stradivari that they believe caused the murder.

Describe the plot without giving anything away:- A fascinating account of violin-making and its history together with a well plotted crime story. Myth, music, mystery and murder all rolled into one. Definitely an author to follow in the future.

Quotations:-
“He has a reputation as a man who would not only sell his own mother, but put them out to tender.”
“In days gone by, the Venetians had a reputation for savage cruelty... still coontinue in a modified form in St Mark’s; not the garrote or the rack of yore, but something infinitely more subtle and pitiless – the cafe orchestra.2
“ Cremona is a bit like the appendix; people have heard of it, know vaguely wehere it is, but they can’t quite recall what it’s for.”

AUTHOR Notes:- Paul Adam (b 1958) is a journalist and the author of six novels. The blurb says “He has recently returned to the city of his birth after spending several years in Nottingham.” Unfortunately it doesn’t mention where the city of his birth was!

Review - Aubrey MALONE - "Literary Trivia"

2010-08-30T00:45:00.006+01:00

Year Published: - 2004
Where the book was from:- Helen's (Helen originally got it from me - I recognised the pencil marks in it!)
ISBN: - 1 85375 474 9
Pages: - 304pp
Genre: - Trivia, literature
Location: - -
How I came across it: - Meandering around Helen's bookshelves
Rating: - ***** *****
One sentence summary:- An excellent book of literary trivia and the weird and wonderful behaviour of the world's wordsmiths.

General comments:- Having commented about poor indices in other trivia books the first point I should make is that this has an excellent one.

There are lists of every type imaginable and some that you could never have imagined!

An ideal book for both dipping into or reading from cover to cover.

AUTHOR Notes:- Aubrey Malone has published a number of humorous volumes including The Cynic’s Dictionary.

Review:- Vivian COOK - "Accomodating Brocolli in the Cemetary"

2010-08-29T00:02:00.005+01:00

Year Published: - 2004
Where the book was from:- Helen's
ISBN: - 1 86197 623 2
Pages: - pp
Genre: - Orthography
Location: - British and American English
How I came across it: - Browsing Helen and Ian's bookshelves
Rating: - ***** ****
One sentence summary:- A great book for those who want to learn to spell better or who think they already know how (and may be proved wrong).

General comments:- A book that can either be dipped into or read cover to cover. As well as covering many of the rules of spelling, the differences between American and British English and word games this book has a wide variety of miscellaneous trivia related to spelling.
Annoyingly there is no index. What is it about these dip-into, trivia type books that they are either not indexed or poorly indexed. They are just the sort of book one wants to check things in.

Quotes:-
"It is a damn poor mind that can think of only one way to spell a word."
US President Andrew Jackson

AUTHOR Notes:- Vivian Cook is Professor of Applied Linguistics at Newcastle University.

Review:- James McClintock - "The Stonehenge Companion"

2010-08-28T10:30:00.002+01:00

Year Published: - 2006
Where the book was from:- Helen's
ISBN: - 10 1 90562 408 5
Pages: - 157pp
Genre: - Non-fiction; Antiquities; Miscellanea and trivia
Location: - Stonehnge
How I came across it: - Browsing Helen and Ian's bookshelves
Rating: - ***** ****
One sentence summary:- A miscellany of myths, theories, trivia and facts about Stonehenge and other antiquities.

General comments:- The index is annoyingly poor but that apart this is a great book to dip into or browse through at leisure.

AUTHOR Notes:- -