Review – J L CARRELL – “The Shakespeare Secret”

(Also published as "Interred with Their Bones")
Year Published: - 2007
Where the book was from:- My own copy
ISBN: - 978 0 7515 4035 2
Pages: - 479pp
Genre: - Thriller; Shakespeare
Location:- Across the globe
How I came across it: - I’ve forgotten
Rating: - ***** ****
One sentence summary:- A first class, globe-trotting thriller which uses Carrell’s extensive research to put forward theories about whether Shakespeare wrote the plays that are in his name.

Describe the plot without giving anything away:- A Shakespearian researcher who has altered her career to direct a Shakespearean play gets caught up in a deadly hunt to identify whether Shakespeare wrote the plays with which he is credited. Corpses are left behind left, right and centre as the action wanders across the globe. This is well worth reading for the arguments about the various potential authors. Add a clever and non-stop thriller with a background mystery as to who is the serial killer and you have a first class story.

General comments:-
The big book at the 2005 Frankfurt Book Fair - with rights now sold in seventeen countries. Jennifer Lee Carrell's Shakespearean thriller (also sold under the title "Interred with Their Bones") was the most eagerly anticipated debut thriller of 2007.
Here are some of the reviews :-
'Plot twists worthy of The Da Vinci Code dominate this agile first novel from Carrell...this spirited and action-packed novel delivers constant excitement.' Publishers Weekly ;
"A gripping page-turner, an erudite account of contemporary Bard scholarship and the plays and poems that made Mr Shakespeare, whoever he was, the man he is today. Perfect" Daily Express;
"A hide-and-seek chase of murder and mayhem...Carrell omits [Dan Brown's] ridiculous howlers but follows his penchant for twists, turns and incessant violence" The Times;
"Her extensive research is both accurate and impressive" RTE Guide
Quotations:

JENNIFER LEE CARRELL (born 1962) holds her Ph.D. in English and American Literature from Harvard University, as well as other degrees in English Literature from Oxford and Stanford Universities. She won three awards for distinction in undergraduate teaching at Harvard, where she taught in the History and Literature Program and directed Shakespeare for the Hyperion Theatre Company. Jennifer is the author of The Speckled Monster, a work of historical nonfiction about battling smallpox at the beginning of the eighteenth century, which USA Today praised as being written "in a compelling, almost novelistic voice." She has also written a number of articles for Smithsonian magazine. She lives in Tucson, Arizona.

Review – E D H JOHNSON – “The Poetry of Earth”

Year Published: - 1966
Where the book was from:- My own copy
ISBN: - -
Pages: - 423pp
Genre: - Natural History; Diaries;
Location:- England
How I came across it: - Bought in a library sale years ago
Rating: - ***** ****
One sentence summary:- A wonderful collection of English Nature Writings from Gilbert White of Selborne to Richard Jefferies; illustrated by their contemporaries.

General Comments:
An ideal source for my nature diary researches and a great read. I have dipped into it frequently in the past but this is the first time I have read it cover to cover. Among the diarists quoted in this work are Gilbert White; Thomas Gray; Dorothy Wordsworth; Samuel Taylor Coleridge; William Cobbett; John Clare; Gerard Manley Hopkins; and Francis Kilvert.

The illustrations range from Constable sto some little known artists but all are ideally suited to matching the text.

Review – Alan GARNER – “The Stone Book Quartet”

Year Published: - 1983
Where the book was from:- My own copy
ISBN: - 0 00 184282 X
Pages: - 224pp
Genre: - Children’s stories;
Location:- Cheshire, England
How I came across it: - Bought in a library sale
Rating: - ***** ****
One sentence summary:- A combination of four previously published books which together make up a wonderful dialect-laden story of crafts people and their roots in the earth.

General Comments:
“It is a miniature masterpiece and, like all great miniatures, is staggering in what its limits contain.” Signal.
The quartet of books that make up this anthology are The Stone Book; Granny Reardun; The Aimer Gate; and Tom Fobble’s Day. They were originally published between 1976 and 1978. I first came across Alan Garner when working in Page Moss library in 1974 – at which time I worked my way through a number of children’s authors. By the time these four came out I had moved on – in more ways than one – but am delighted to have rediscovered him. The language and style are unique, bringing a combination of earthy dialect and a succinctness of language that compresses many thoughts and ideas into brief phrases.

Alan GARNER was born in Congleton in Cheshire in October 1934. He was brought up on Alderley and now lives with his wife and family in a mediaeval timber-framed house near the Jodrell Bank Radio Telescope, between Congleton and Alderley. He went to Magdalen College, Oxford.

Cheshire and its mythology have had a profound effect on Garner's writing. His interest in history and archaeology, and his own local discoveries, have been the seed of many ideas he has worked out in his books. His first three books, The Wierdstone of Brisingamen, The Moon of Gomrath and Elidor have become children's favourites. But it was his fourth book, 'The Owl Service' that undoubtedly brought Alan Garner to everyone's attention. It won the Guardian Award and the Carnegie Medal . In 1995 'The Stone Book' was awarded the Phoenix Award by the Children's Literature Association in the USA.

Review - Wilson, D M & Wilson C J “Edward Wilson’s Nature Notebooks”

Year Published: -2004
Where the book was from:- My own copy
ISBN: - 1-873877-70-6
Pages: - 168pp
Genre: - Natural History
Location:- Mostly British natural history
How I came across it: - Second hand shop years ago
Rating: - ***** *****
One sentence summary:- A series of brilliant natural history illustrations and a brief but fascinating biography of Edward Wilson

General comments:- For anyone who enjoys natural history (and landscape) paintings this is a must. Every page has at least one illustration that will keep you captivated.

Dr Edward Adrian Wilson ("Uncle Bill") (23 July 1872 – 29 March 1912) was a notable English polar explorer, physician, naturalist, painter and ornithologist. He died with Scott on the ill-fated Antarctic expedition of 1912.

More Quotations about Books

"There are only a finite amount of books you can read in one lifetime, so spending time with one that you know within 50 pages is going to stink like two-day-old roadkill in the sun seems counter-intuitive. It makes far more sense to put it down and pick up something else from the ever-increasing to-read pile. Yet I feel somehow incapable of doing so." - Stuart Evers

“What she was finding also was how one book led to another, doors kept opening wherever she turned and the days weren’t long enough for the reading she wanted to do.”

“Books did not care who was reading them or whether one read them or not. All readers were equal, herself included.”
- Alan Bennett “The Uncommon Reader”

"All their deeds are in their books: every action, small or great, is noted down. The righteous shall dwell in gardens watered by running brooks, honourably seated in the presence of the Mighty King. " (The Qur'an, s54-the-moon)

"All good books are different but all bad books are exactly the same.” Robert Harris