Month: July 2011

Book Beginnings

Published on by Margaret11 Comments

Miss Arundell died on May 1st. Though her illness was short her death did not occasion much surprise in the little country town of Market Basing where she had lived since she was a girl of sixteen. For Emily Arundell was well over seventy, the last of a family of five, and she had been known to be in delicate health for many years and had indeed nearly died of a similar attack to the one that killed her some eighteen months before.

But though Miss Arundell’s death surprised no one, something else did. The provisions of her will gave rise to varying emotions, astonishment, pleasurable excitement, deep condemnation, fury, despair, anger and general gossip.

These are the opening lines of Agatha Christie’s Dumb Witness. And because it is an Agatha Christie book, it is obvious that Miss Arundell’s death should be cause for suspicion and that it was most unlikely to have been a natural death.

From the fact that the date of her death is specified in the first sentence makes me think that must be significant. And the surprising contents of her will also indicate that Miss Arundell had perhaps changed her it – why was that?

I’m still reading Dumb Witness and as the title indicates and the cover picture on my copy shows, a dog has an important part in the mystery – one which Hercule Poirot has to solve, with very little to go on.

Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Katy, at  A Few More Pages.

B is for British Writers Since 1945

Published on by Margaret17 Comments

I saw this list on Books and Bicycles who  found it at Musings from the Sofa and My Porch. It’s the Sunday Times list of ‘The 50 Greatest British Writers Since 1945.‘ So I thought I’d see how many I’ve read and it would be good for ABC Wednesday – B, a good choice for a Book Lover on a Book Blog.

1. Philip Larkin – I must have read some of his poetry but right now I can’t think of any.
2. George Orwell – yes, Animal Farm.
3. William Golding – Lord of the Flies – at school.
4. Ted Hughes – some.
5. Doris Lessing – no.
6. J. R. R. Tolkien  ‘“ read The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings trilogy.
7. V. S. Naipaul – no.
8. Muriel Spark – several novels, including The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.
9. Kingsley Amis – no.
10. Angela Carter – no.
11. C. S. Lewis – the Narnia books, plus some of his nonfiction.
12. Iris Murdoch – yes, several including The Bell and The Sea, The Sea.
13. Salman Rushdie – No.
14. Ian Fleming – No, but I have Diamonds Are Forever in my tbr piles .
15. Jan Morris – No.
16. Roald Dahl – Yes.
17. Anthony Burgess – No.
18. Mervyn Peake – The Gormenghast trilogy.
19. Martin Amis – No.
20. Anthony Powell – started A Dance to the Music of Time, but didn’t finish.
21. Alan Sillitoe – No.
22. John Le Carré – Not yet – have Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy waiting to be read.
23. Penelope Fitzgerald – No.
24. Philippa Pearce – who?
25. Barbara Pym – read some.
26. Beryl Bainbridge – read Master Georgie and According to Queeney – preferred this one
27. J. G. Ballard -Yes, loved Empire of the Sun.
28. Alan Garner – read several years ago, most recent was The Owl Service.
29. Alasdair Gray – who?
30. John Fowles – read The French Lieutenant’s Woman and The Magus – both really good.
31. Derek Walcott – Yes, for Open University course.
32. Kazuo Ishiguro – Yes – excellent, although I thought Never Let Me Go was so chilling.
33. Anita Brookner – Yes, years ago.
34. A. S. Byatt – Yes, but still haven’t read The Children’s Book.
35. Ian McEwan -Yes, love his books
36. Geoffrey Hill – Yes, for Open University course.
37. Hanif Kureishi – who?
38. Iain Banks -No – have The Wasp waiting to be read.
39. George Mackay Brown – who?
40. A. J. P. Taylor – No.
41. Isaiah Berlin – No.
42. J. K. Rowling – Yes.
43. Philip Pullman – Yes – great books.
44. Julian Barnes – Yes,  Arthur and George.
45. Colin Thubron – No.
46. Bruce Chatwin – Not yet, have On the Black Hill waiting to be read.
47. Alice Oswald – who?
48. Benjamin Zephaniah – who?
49. Rosemary Sutcliff – Yes, as a child.
50. Michael Moorcock – who?

I’ve read books by nearly half of these authors and haven’t heard of quite a few of them! Clearly there are loads of books out there I haven’t read, so plenty to choose from if I ever get through the books I own that I still haven’t read.

Teaser Tuesday – Blonde

Published on by Margaret7 Comments

Currently I’m reading Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates. I’ve been reading it for a while as it’s a long book of over 700 pages. I’m about a third of the way into it. It’s a fictionalised account of Norma Jeane Baker – also known as Marilyn Monroe and it is absolutely fascinating.

No doubt I’ll be writing more about this book. For now here is a little teaser quotation:

Her problem wasn’t she was a dumb blonde, it was she wasn’t a blonde and she wasn’t dumb. (page 232)

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly event hosted by MizB of Should be Reading.

Agatha Christie Reading Challenge Carnival

Published on by Margaret

The July edition of the Agatha Christie Reading Carnival is available here.

This month there are 10 contributors providing 16 blog posts with reviews of Agatha Christie’s books and posts about her.

You can join the Carnival too, sign up, then read at your own pace, write a review on your blog then go to the Carnival collecting space, and put in your URL, your details and a comment about the post.

My Sunday Selection

Published on by Margaret10 Comments

Today I’m looking at my recent selection of library books.

When I went to my local library this week the librarian had just finished processing a pile of new additions and passed them over to me to look at. I love new library books, so clean and fresh. I chose two out of the pile and then browsed the rest of the books. These are the ones that I brought home:

The two new books are:

Great House by Nicole Krauss. I have her earlier book, The History of Love in my to-be-read piles and I’ve read one or two reviews of this book on book blogs recently and thought it sounded interesting. It’s a story centred around ‘a desk of many drawers that exerts a power over those who possess it or give it away‘ (taken from the book cover).

Being Polite to Hitler by Robb Foreman Dew. I’ve never heard of this book, or the author but the title caught my attention and I wondered what it could be about. It’s set in Ohio in mostly the 1950s and follows the experiences of a widowed schoolteacher and those around her. Described on the book cover as a ‘moving, frank and surprising portrait of post- World War Two America.’

I had gone to the library, specifically to look for books by Nigel Tranter, a Scottish author whose books I’d read many years ago. Reading Katrina’s post on Pining for the West about Right Royal Friend by Nigel Tranter reminded me how much I’d enjoyed them and I wondered if I’d still like them. Tranter wrote very many books, mostly historical fiction based on real people and events. There were several of his books on the shelves and I chose Envoy Extraordinary, set in the 13th century following the lives of Patrick III, Earl of Dunbar and Alexander III. Patrick played a major part in Scotland’s affairs, although he was more interested in the welfare of his people and ‘encouraging the wool production of his sheep-strewn Lammermuir Hills‘. I chose this book because the Lammermuir Hills are not too far from where we live.

The other two books I chose are:

Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch, a book that had Annie of Senior Common Room ‘hooked’. She wrote:

Aaronovitch brings just the right amount of cynicism about both the police service and the current social climate to his writing and as a result the book is not only very funny but also, despite the magic, recognisably about the world in which we live.  It is also, if you happen to know the parts of London about which he is writing, very well researched.

It’s a mixture of crime and fantasy – Detective Constable Peter Grant is also a trainee wizard, dealing with ‘nests of vampires, warring gods and goddesses of the River Thames and digging up graves in Covent Garden.‘

A Kind Man by Susan Hill, another one of her novellas, described as ‘a parable of greed and goodness and an extraordinary miracle.’ It’s set in an unspecified time period, but before the National Health Service was set up. I know from the book cover that it is the story of the marriage of Tommy Carr and his wife Eve. Tragedy strikes when their little daughter dies.

Saturday Snapshot

Published on by Margaret20 Comments

A few weeks ago I posted a photo of my grandfather on Alyce’s Saturday Snapshot. Today I’m posting a photo of his older sister Sarah, known to my grandfather as ‘Our Sal’ and to me as Aunty Sally. She didn’t live near me and my family when I was growing up but came to stay with us for a week each year. I used to love her visits.

This is how she looked when I knew her:

and this is her taken when she was a young woman:

and also:

Aunty Sally was born on 26 August 1878 in Mold, Flintshire, Wales. She died on 15 April 1967 aged 88. For many years she had been Matron and Housekeeper at Wellingborough School, a private school in Northamptonshire. She had worked until she was 78 and until she became ill she had visited the school chapel each week to arrange the flowers.

She had trained as a nurse in a London Hospital and had worked for a while in Chile as a children’s nurse. She first went to Wellingborough in 1940 as a member of the staff of Weymouth College which was evacuated to Wellingborough School.

By the time that I knew her she was an old lady or at least she seemed so to me, but she was great fun with loads of energy and interested in everything we were doing. She and my father used to sit up late at night, talking and sharing cigarettes, long after we’d all gone to bed. She bought us lovely presents, which were always different – not just an Easter Egg but a large Easter Chick, probably made of papier-mâché and decorated with glitter, containing small chocolate eggs. I’d never seen anything like it before and after I’d eaten the eggs I kept the chick for years afterwards until it fell to pieces. I wish I knew more about her.