Month: December 2010

New-To-Me Authors Read in 2010

Published on by Margaret10 Comments

The other day I read Bernadette’s post about books by authors new-to-her, which of course made me think about the books I’ve read by new-to-me authors. There are 43, out of the 97 books I’ve read so far this year. Some I found by reading other blogs, some by browsing in bookshops and some from the library. Some have become favourite authors and I’ll be reading more than one of their books. Others were less to my liking and I doubt I’ll read any more by those authors. Some are début authors and some are well established authors who I’ve just never got round to reading before.

I don’t put my ratings on my reviews but just do it for my own records (and on LibraryThing too), but I’ve left them on this post for once. The asterisks indicate crime fiction. Three of the books get my highest score (I am quite generous with my ratings; I often give 5/5 and very rarely go below 3, because if I really don’t like a book I don’t finish it and don’t mark it). If you want to read my reviews I think I’ve indexed them all in my Author and Title Indexes (see the tabs above).

  1. Drood by Dan Simmons 3/5
  2. Be Near Me by Andrew O’Hagan 3/5
  3. Losing You by Nicci French 4.5/5 *
  4. The Music Room by William Fiennes 4/5
  5. Can any Mother Help Me? By Jenna Bailey 5/5
  6. Fallen Gods by Quintin Jardine 4/5 *
  7. The Warrior’s Princess by Barbara Erskine 3.5/5
  8. Poetic Lives: Shelley by Daniel Hahn 3.5/5
  9. The Careful Use of Compliments by Alexander McCall Smith 5/5
  10. Heartland by John MacKay 3.5/5
  11. A Loyal Character Dancer* by Qui Xiaolong 5/5
  12. The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters 4/5
  13. Raven Black by Ann Cleeves* 5/5
  14. Pariah by Dave Zeltserman* 4/5
  15. The Widow’s Tale by Mick Jackson 3.5/5
  16. Hearts and Minds by Amanda Craig 3.5/5
  17. King Arthur’s Bones by The Medieval Murderers 4/5
  18. Semi-Detached by Griff Rhys Jones (library book) 4/5
  19. Faithful Unto Death by Caroline Graham 4.5/5 *
  20. 100 Days on Holy Island: a Writer’s Exile by Peter Mortimer
  21. Revenge Served Cold by Jackie Fullerton* 3/5 (ARC)
  22. The Very Thought of You by Rosie Alison 3.5/5
  23. Snapped in Cornwall by Janie Bolitho* 3.5/5
  24. Agatha Christie and the Eleven Missing Days by Jared Cade 4/5
  25. Hector and the Search for Happiness by Francis Lelord 3.5/5
  26. The Crossing Places by Elly Griffiths* 4/5
  27. The Man Who Planted Trees by Jean Giono 3.5/5
  28. Bad Science by Ben Goldacre 4/5
  29. The Border Line by Eric Robson 4/5
  30. Portrait of an Unknown Woman by Vanora Bennett 4/5
  31. Whatever You Love by Louise Doughty 4/5
  32. The Gourmet by Muriel Barbery 3.5/5
  33. Thirteen Hours by Deon Meyer * 5/5
  34. Seeking Whom He May Devour by Fred Vargas *4.5/5
  35. Flodden by Niall Barr 4/5 (scan read part)
  36. The Tent, the Bucket and Me by Emma Kennedy 4/5
  37. Quite Ugly One Morning by Christopher Brookmyre * 5/5
  38. Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman 3/5
  39. A Detective at Death’s Door by H R F Keating *3/5
  40. Missing Link by Joyce Holms* 4/5
  41. All Bones and Lies by Anne Fine 3/5
  42. Seeing Things: a Memoir by Oliver Postgate 5/5
  43. Frozen Moment by Camilla Ceder *4/5

Sunday Scene – More Snow

Published on by Margaret12 Comments

We woke up this morning to yet more snow, as in most of Britain.

The birds were flocking to the feeders – which now need replenishing. Today the woodpecker stayed long enough for me to take some photos.

The tits are bolder and come up onto the decking outside the kitchen.

This one landed in the snow and nearly sank.

Lucy, who hasn’t ventured outside since the snow first came at the end of November, sits and watches the birds as they come near the window.

This is what she wished she could catch

Missing Link by Joyce Holms: Book Review

Published on by Margaret1 Comment

A few weeks ago I quoted a short extract from Missing Link by Joyce Holms in a Tuesday Teaser post. This book is the 9th in the Fizz and Buchanan series, but it does stand well on its own and I had no difficulty in sorting out the relationship between the two main characters – Fizz Fitzpatrick and Tam Buchanan.

Fizz and Buchanan are an interesting pair. Fizz  is a lawyer, working for Buchanan and Stewart and Tam has recently left the law firm to work as an advocate.  Mrs Sullivan asks Fizz for help to prove that she is the person who killed Amanda Montrose, despite the fact that Terence Lamb has been convicted of the murder. Fizz immediately thinks that Tam is the person to investigate, even though she doubts Mrs Sullivan’s story:

Daft as the whole story line appeared on the surface, there was something about the old lady’s matter-of-fact delivery that precluded too confident a rebuttal. She was delusional of course, there could not be the slightest doubt about that. Sane, mature and reasonably intelligent people, such as Mrs Sullivan obviously was, simply did not bash someone with a hammer. Not hard enough to kill them. … So Mrs Sullivan was probably fantasising about that at least, if not the whole damn incident. All the same she had Fizz well hooked and willing to hear the rest of her crazy story, if only for the pleasure of relating it to Buchanan at a later date. (page 23)

It had me well hooked too.

I liked the relationship between Fizz and Tam, colleagues, like brother and sister, but may be more than that? And Fizz certainly lives up to her name, a real live wire. The characters are well-drawn, even the lesser ones like Justin, the decorator who can cook delicious meals. Just how reliable is Mrs Sullivan? She seems physically incapable of  killing anyone with a hammer and then dragging  the body and pushing it over a sheer drop into a ravine below. But why when she appears to be gentle, motherly and sincere would she want to confess to a murder she hadn’t committed?

This is a well- paced novel, full of twists and turns and plenty of tension. The plot is well thought out and had me guessing nearly all the way to the end, in fact the whole answer took me by surprise. This is a book I thoroughly enjoyed from beginning to end.

The Victorian Literature Reading Challenge

Published on by Margaret13 Comments

Completed – see end of post.

Following on from my decision to take part in more reading challenges in an attempt to reduce my tbr list I’ll also be taking part in the Victorian Literature Challenge in 2011. This is hosted by Bethany at words, words, words.

Bethany writes: Queen Victoria reigned from 1837-1901. If your book wasn’t published during those particular years, but is by an author considered ‘Victorian’ then go for it. We’re here for reading, not historical facts! Also, this can include works by authors from other countries, so long as they are from this period.

Choose from one of four levels:

Sense and Sensibility: 1-4 books.
Great Expectations: 5-9 books.
Hard Times: 10-14 books.
Desperate Remedies: 15+ books.

Again, I’m choosing my books from my tbr list. All these were written in the Victorian period. I’m aiming for the Sense and Sensibility level and if I complete that I’ll go for the next level and so on.

  • An Autobiography by Anthony Trollope
  • Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope
  • Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
  • The Coral Island by R M Ballantyne
  • David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
  • East Lynne by Mrs Henry Wood
  • The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
  • Lorna Doone by R D Blackmore
  • Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell
  • The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
  • News from Nowhere by William Morris
  • The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens
  • Scenes of Clerical Life by George Eliot
  • Sylvia’s Lovers by Elizabeth Gaskell
  • The Tower of London by W H Ainsworth

That’s a lot of books, but I’ll be happy if I read just four of them during the year.

Update:

Teaser Tuesday: Weeds by Richard Mabey

Published on by Margaret9 Comments

I love gardens but I’m not a good gardener and I’ve always thought that I can grow weeds much better than any other plants. I read somewhere that weeds are just plants growing in the wrong place. My experience is that they are extremely hardy, grow exceptionally well and need little if any help from me – leave them to themselves and they’ll quickly fill any spaces and more on any type of soil.

I have spent hours, days, years even trying to get rid of bindweed and ground elder. No matter what I’ve tried – digging them out, which seems impossible, smothering them or dousing them with chemicals, which worked for a while,- they always comes back and kill anything growing in the way. The only benefit I can see is that the flowers are quite pretty.

So, when I was sitting in the café in a bookshop the other week and I saw Weeds by Richard Mabey on display opposite where I was sitting I just had to have a look at it:

I haven’t read it yet, but I’ve dipped into it. Here is an extract that caught my eye as I browsed the pages:

Weeds thrive in the company of humans. They aren’t parasites, because they can exist without us, but we are their natural ecological partners, the species alongside which they do best. They relish the things we do to the soil; clearing forests, digging, farming, dumping nutrient-rich rubbish. They flourish in arable fields, battlefields, parking lots, herbaceous borders. They exploit our transport systems, our cooking adventures, our obsession with packaging. Above all they use us when we stir the world up, disrupt its settled patterns. It would be a tautology to say that these days they are found most abundantly where there is most weeding; but that notion ought to make us question whether the weeding encourages the weeds as much as vice versa. (page 12)

Is he saying we’d do just as well not doing any weeding?

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly event hosted by MizB where you share ‘teasers’. I’ve adapted it a bit in this post, to include more information about the book and longer teasers.