Month: October 2010

Sunday Salon – Book Connections

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

The Sunday Salon is the place to meet and blog about the books we’re reading.

This morning I read some more from Agatha Christie’s book An Autobiography. It’s now 1917 and Agatha is working in a hospital dispensary in Torquay and also studying to take her Apothecaries Hall examination so she could dispense for a medical officer or a chemist. As part of her training she had instruction from a proper commercial chemist – a Mr P, one of the principal pharmacists in Torquay. She described him as

… a rather funny-looking little man, very roundabout and robin redbreast looking, with a nice pink face. There was a general air of childish satisfaction about him. (page 261)

He once showed her a piece of deadly curare that he carried around with him in his pocket. Curare once it has entered the bloodstream paralyses and kills you. He said he carried it in his pocket because it made him feel powerful. Agatha often wondered about him afterwards. In spite of his cherubic appearance she thought he was possibly a dangerous man and years later used her memory in writing The Pale Horse.

I then picked up H R F Keating’s book A Detective at Death’s Door and started reading it, whilst drinking a cup of coffee. I had intended reading one of my own books but this library book was closer to hand than any of my own books. In this book Superintendent Harriet Martens is just recovering from a nearly fatal dose of aconitine. Her husband, John recognised the symptoms from reading their description in an imaginary Agatha Christie book, Twisted Wolfsbane – aconitine is also known as wolfsbane.  Then a few pages later I came across this coincidence – Harriet quoted the passage in Agatha Christie’s An Autobiography about the chemist carrying round a piece of curare – the same passage I’d read half an hour or so earlier.

Saturday Selection

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

A few ‘new’ books came into our house this week.

click to enlarge

Some came from Barter Books in Alnwick. For a while now I’ve been trying to make some space on the bookshelves. I find it very hard to let any books go, but as I have a large number of unread books I decided to be ruthless and think about the books I have read and whether I would I ever read them again. I managed to weed out 25 books and on Tuesday we took them to Barter Books, one of the largest secondhand bookshops in Britain. It is housed in a huge old railway station, built in 1887 and closed to passengers in 1968. Now it’s a bookshop that works on a swap system – you take books in and if they accept them you receive a credit and can then use that to get more books. You can, of course, just go and buy books as well. They accepted 22 of our books and I came away with just 6, so I have achieved a small amount of shelf space.

The books I ‘bought’ were three Ian Rankin Inspector Rebus books to complete our set (I have read these already), and an early novel of his, Watchman, which I haven’t read. The other two books were gardening books:

  • Ground Force: Practical Garden Projects by Tommy Walsh. This was published to accompany the TV series – as long ago as 1997! I remember it well, as it was one of those programmes that actually demonstrated how to do things.
  • Collins Outdoor DIY Projects in a Weekend by Albert Jackson and David Day.

Both these books were my husband’s choice. They are full of practical things to do and make such as making a bird table, building a cascade, making a compost bin, laying paving stones and decking etc.

And he  found this book on Amazon, The Stream Garden by Archie Skinner and David Arscott, all about creating and planting your own natural-looking water feature. The reason behind his choice is that we want to improve the little stream that runs through our garden. I posted a video of its current condition on my other blog Margaret’s Miscellany last Sunday. I’d love our stream to look something like this:

Books to read next:

I finished a couple of books this week – The Rain Before It Falls by Jonathan Coe, which I wrote about earlier and Salmon Fishing in the Yemen by Paul Torday, which I’ll write about soon. Reading Coe’s book reminded me of Mary Webb’s Gone To Earth, so I got that down off the shelf and I’m thinking of reading it this week. I read it several times as a young teenager and loved it. I’m curious to find out what I think of it now.

I had to move all my to-be-read books out of the living room this week because we’re having a wood-burning stove installed and I didn’t want the books to get covered in brick dust etc. This got me looking at what I have in waiting, as it were, and I think I’ll choose one of these books to read next:

The Rain Before It Falls by Jonathan Coe: Book Review

Published on by Margaret2 Comments

These days I seem to be choosing books by their titles as well as by their authors. And  it was a combination of both that drew me to The Rain Before It Falls by Jonathan Coe. I knew of the author, although this is the first book of his that I’ve read and I couldn’t imagine what the title means, which seemed a good enough reason at the time to borrow the book from the library.

I wasn’t disappointed. The Rain Before It Falls is full of description, which for me is a good thing; descriptions of people, places and events. It is a story within a story as Gill discovers family secrets she never knew before, after her aunt Rosamond died. Rosamond left half her property to her cousin’s granddaughter Imogen and half to Gill, but no one knows very much about Imogen or her whereabouts. Rosamond has recorded tapes for Imogen telling her about her mother and grandmother through describing a number of photographs (Imogen is blind) and asked Gill to find her.

It’s a story of tragedy as Rosamond describes the relationship she had with her cousin, Beatrix, who had abandoned her own daughter, Thea and the effects this had on all three of them and subsequently on Imogen. The predominant theme is of the inevitability of impending tragedy, although there are moments when happiness seems within reach. At one point the child Thea states she likes the rain before it falls, even though Rosamond points out to her that there is no such thing. Thea responds that, that is why she likes it, saying,

Something can make you happy can’t it, even if it isn’t real? (page 162)

Gill looks in vain for a pattern that makes sense of their lives but realises that it never existed – it was like the rain before it falls , a ‘figment, a dream, an impossible thing.’ (page 278)

There is much that appealed to me in this book, not least the little philosophical thoughts, such as the reflection on watching children squabble over simple things like where to sit at the dinner table or in the back of the car (so true to life):

Endless, small-minded territorial disputes. You could understand the whole, sorry history of human warfare just by observing their behaviour for half an hour. (page 182)

I also like the references to the novel Gone to Earth. Rosamond and Beatrix were extras when the book was filmed in Much Wenlock near to their family home in 1950. Rosamond describes the book as

… an overheated rustic melodrama …  the story of an ignorant country girl who marries the village chaplain but meanwhile gets caught up in a torrid affair with the local squire, while quite sensibly preferring her pet fox to either of them. … at the time I loved it, for being rooted in the Shropshire landscape, saturated with the colours and contours of its hills and the author’s feeling for nature is still what I remember best. (page 102)

I too, had read and loved Gone to Earth by Mary Webb, many times as a young teenager, completely absorbed in the story and loving its descriptions of the countryside. I’ll read it again one day.

Booking Through Thursday – Foreign

Published on by Margaret14 Comments

Today’s Booking Through Thursday’s question is:

Name a book (or books) that you love from a country other than your own (in my case the UK).

Where to start? There are so many! My choices are books that came to mind today – another day I could choose many other books and other countries.

I think the first one is a book from Switzerland – one  from my childhood. It’s Heidi by Johanna Spyri. I loved this book and the sequels, Heidi Grows Up and Heidi’s Children both written by Charles Tritten. It was first published in 1880. Johanna Spyri was born and lived in Switzterland. In the story Heidi goes to live in the Swiss Alps with her grandfather who lives on his own isolated from the other villagers. At first he doesn’t want Heidi there at all but she gradually softens his heart. I haven’t read it for years and would probably find it terribly dated and sentimental, but it lives in my mind as a beautiful book.

Next, a book from the USA – Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner. This book won the Pullitzer Prize for fiction in 1972. It is the story of Lyman Ward, a wheelchair bound retired historian who is writing his grandparents’ life history and also gradually reveals his own story. It’s the story set in the wilderness of the American West – of Oliver Ward’s struggles with various mining and engineering construction jobs, contrasted with Susan Ward’s efforts to support him against great difficulties. This is made more difficult when she compares her life with that of her New York society friend, Augusta.

One of the reasons I chose this book is my fascination with the Wild West.

Margaret Atwood is favourite author who is Canadian. Which book to chose? I’ve decided to highlight the first one that I read – The Blind Assassin.

I think it may have been one of the first books I read that contains a story within a story and it’s about writers and readers as well as about the lives of two sisters, one of whom apparently committed suicide.

Another favourite author is the Australian Colleen McCullough. I’ve loved her books – the Rome series – The First Man in Rome and so on. I first came across her books many years ago with the TV series of The Thorn Birds and then read the book, but my favourite has to be Morgan’s Run. This is an historical novel based on the history of Botany Bay centred on the life of Richard Morgan who was transported from Britain to New South Wales. Again it’s my fascination for history that made me enjoy this book so much.

Finally, a book from China. I read A Loyal Character Dancer by Qiu Xiaolong last year and it’s another favourite. Qiu Xiaolong was born in Shanghai and was a member of the Chinese Writers’ Association, publishing poetry, translations and criticism in China. Since 1989 he has lived in the United States, his work being published in many literary magazines and anthologies. His first crime novel, Death of Red Heroine, won the AnthonyAward for Best First Crime Novel. A Loyal Character Dancer is his second book featuring Chief Inspector Chen Cao, of the Shanghai Police Bureau. Apart from the story which is crime fiction there is a lot about China in it – life, the country and the impact of the Cultural Revolution.

Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman: Book Review

Published on by Margaret6 Comments

I finished Practical Magic a few days ago. It’s one that has been on my to-be-read shelves for some time, so it was good to read it. It’s a light easy read, about the Owens sisters, Sally and Gillian. I have to admit that one of my reasons for choosing this book in the first place is that my mother’s maiden name was Owens and her aunt was called Sally. The resemblance ends with the name as my Sally Owens was nothing like this Sally Owens.

Sally and Gillian were orphaned when they were very young and went to live with their eccentric, elderly aunts in New England. Generations of the Owens women have lived in the house for more than two hundred years and have a reputation as witches. Everything that goes wrong in the town is put down to them. Yet women come to their door at night looking for remedies, particularly for love potions. Sally and Gillian grow up and both move away from their aunts to make their own way. Gillian, the younger wayward sister, has lots of love affairs ending up with Jimmy. Sally, the sensible one, meanwhile has two daughters and is a widow. When Gillian lands up on her doorstep with a dead Jimmy in the car, Sally’s life is turned upside down as she tries to cope with the situation. In the end it is the aunts who are called upon for help.

This is the first book by Alice Hoffman that I’ve read and whilst I thought it was OK I shan’t be rushing out to find more of her books. It has the feel of a fairy tale, mixed up with reality which I liked. There was enough suspense to keep me wondering how it would end and I liked how the characters interacted – Sally and Gillian were both well-drawn. I wasn’t that keen on the love stories, which seemed to be of the type of instant attraction with disastrous consequences. Interestingly, for me at any rate, I didn’t mind that it’s written in the present tense, most of the time I didn’t even notice it.

I didn’t identify this as a book for the RIP Challenge, but it fits in well, I think.

Exit Music by Ian Rankin: Book Review

Published on by Margaret9 Comments

Exit Music: an Inspector Rebus Novel

Paperback: 496 pages
Publisher: Orion (7 Aug 2008)
Language English
ISBN-10: 0752893513
ISBN-13: 978-0752893518

Exit Music is the 17th Inspector Rebus novel.  The Crime Thriller Award for  Author of the Year 2008 was awarded to Ian Rankin for this book. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Having read all the Rebus books in sequence I feel I’ve come to the end of an era as Rebus comes to the end of his career. Actually I felt that he was overdue for retirement, much as he was dedicated to his job he was also weary and disenchanted. At the beginning of this book Rebus is 10 days from his retirement and is anxious to tie up all the loose ends in his current cases, trying to get DS Siobhan Clarke interested in them. So when the body of the dissident Russian poet Alexander Todorov is found dead this is Rebus’s last case. He throws himself into the investigation, desperate to take his mind off the end of his career.

Was it a senseless mugging or was it politically motivated? The Russian Consulate want  Todorov’s death to be seen as a mugging gone wrong but a group of Russian businessmen in Scotland are concerned that the attack was racially motivated. Scottish MSP Megan Macfarlane is also concerned that nothing jeopardised the links and relationships between the two countries.

Todorov had been giving a poetry reading earlier in the evening and was found with his head bashed in. A trail of blood lead to a car park where he’d been killed. Later the body of Eric Riordan, the sound recordist at the poetry reading is found burnt to death in his house. Are the two deaths connected? Various links with the Edinburgh gangland boss, Cafferty further complicate the case.

Rebus is his usual obstinate and difficult self ending up being suspended from the investigation three days from his retirement and it is left to Siobhan to lead the case. Rebus, of course pursues his own investigations regardless -argumentative, opinionated and relentless to the end. He is also obsessed with his battle to take Cafferty down:

Cafferty, he realised, stood for everything that had ever gone sour – every bungled chance and botched case, suspects missed and crimes unsolved. The man wasn’t just the grit in the oyster, he was the pollutant poisoning everything within his reach. (page 170)

It appears that Cafferty is reformed and is now involved in legitimate business transactions with the Russian, but Rebus doesn’t believe it.  When Cafferty ends up in intensive care after a lonely meeting with Rebus on a canal footbridge, Rebus is suspected of attacking him. Has Rebus gone too far in his desire to bring Cafferty to justice?

Exit Music, in which the worlds of crime, politics and business interconnect, provides a fitting end to Rebus’s career, although somehow I don’t think this is the last we’ll see of him. Rebus is the perpetual outsider, and the job has been his whole world. It had cost him his marriage, friendships and shattered relationships and he feels he will just become invisible. But will he?