Month: January 2013

Turn of the Century Salon – Introduction

Published on by Margaret12 Comments

This year Katherine at November’s Autumn is hosting the Turn of the Century Salon to discuss works from authors written between the 1880s and the 1930s.

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Katherine has asked a few questions as an introduction:

What draws you to read the Classics?
That’s both a difficult question to answer and yet an easy one – I love reading. But why the classics? Well, I suppose it’s because they’re great stories, with memorable characters. They’re from the past so it’s like entering a different world and yet it’s still a fairly familiar world. They’ve stood the test of time and they’re books that you can read and re-read, and come away feeling satisfied.

What era have you mainly read? Georgian? Victorian? Which authors?
I’ve read mainly Victorian authors,Thomas Hardy, Charles Dickens, the Brontes and Elizabeth Gaskell for example and Jane Austen from the Georgian era.

What Classics have you read from the 1880s-1930s? What did you think of them?
I love Thomas Hardy’s books and have read most of them. I like their depiction of tragic characters battling against their passions and the restrictions of Victorian society. Charles Dickens, of course, is also highly critical of much of the society in which he lived and his books have strong plots and interesting characters. D H Lawrence whose books I find quite varied – some like Sons and Lovers and Women in Love I first read many years ago and found them quite challenging. I’d like to revisit them and see whether I think the same. I’ve also read some of Virginia Woolf’s books and liked her stream of consciousness style of writing and her explorations of her characters’ emotions and motives.


Name some books you’re looking forward to read for the salon (in no particular order):
  • The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf – her first novel, first published in 1915
  • Women and Writing by Virginia Woolf, essays first published between 1904 and 1934.
  • Parade’s End by Ford Madox Ford, first published between 1924 and 1928.
  • The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy, published between 1906 and 1921.
  • The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, first published in 1920.
  • Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton, first published in 1911.
  • The House of Mirth by Edith Frome, first published in 1905.
  • Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, first published 1899.
  • An Autobiography by Anthony Trollope, first published 1883.
  • Of Human Bondage by W Somerset Maugham, first published 1915.
  • The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle, first published 1892.
  • The Thirty Nine Steps by John Buchan, first published in 1915.
  • All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, first published in 1928.
  • The Making of a Marchioness by Frances Hodgson Burnett, first published in 1901.

Reading Resolutions

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Any reading resolutions for the new year? Reading more? (Reading less?) Reading better books? Bigger books? More series? More relaxing books?

It’s been a while since I wrote a Booking Through Thursday post – this week’s question seems appropriate.

This year I’m aiming to read as slowly as possible to try to absorb more of the book, because I often race through, eager to know what happens and after a day or two I can’t remember much about it. I want to take time and think about what I’m reading.

I also want to read as many books as I can from my own shelves, because I have a lot of unread books. My difficulty with this is that I’m always tempted by new books, or books other bloggers recommend.

In 2012 I read 105 books but this year I’m undecided about setting a target (such as the one on the Goodreads Reading Challenge which I did last year), because although I like keeping records and statistics, I think they don’t actually mean much €“ it’s the reading that counts for me. Setting a target makes me anxious especially when Goodreads tells me how many books behind my target I am. So my target at the moment is to read what I feel like, as and when I want and never mind the numbers.

I began this blog to record at least a short note about each book I read, but that doesn’t seem relevant to me any more, and it has become a chore, so this year I’ll only write about a book if I feel like it.

In short, I’m looking forward to a year full of lots of carefree reading.

Best Crime Fiction 2012

Published on by Margaret8 Comments

Kerrie of Mysteries in Paradise is collecting our best crime fiction reading for 2012.The titles can have been published any time, but must be crime fiction.

I read 61 crime fiction books in 2012 – see the full list here.

My top ten are as follows. (Inevitably this post includes six of the books I’ve already identified as my ‘best’ books read in 2012.)

Books with 5 stars:

  1. After the Funeral by Agatha Christie, first published in 1963. Poirot investigates the death of Cora Abernethie, who had announced at the funeral of her brother Richard that he had been murdered.
  2. The Crimson Rooms by Katherine McMahon, published in 2010 – historical crime fiction set in London in 1924, with Britain still coming to terms with the aftermath of the First World War. Evelyn Gifford, one of the few pioneer female lawyers takes on two cases, one child custody case and the other a murder case.
  3. Fatherland by Robert Harris, published in 2009,  a fast-paced thriller set in Germany in 1964, a murder mystery, beginning with the discovery of the naked body of an old man, lying half in the Havel, a lake on the outskirts of Berlin. The homicide investigator is Xavier March of the Kriminalpolizei (the Kripo) and the victim is Josef Buhler, one of the former leading members of the Nazi Party who had been instrumental in devising €˜the final solution’.
  4. Silent Voices by Ann Cleeves, published in 2011, a Vera Stanhope mystery, set in Northumbria. It begins with Vera’s discovery of a dead woman in the sauna of her local gym.

Books with 4.5 stars:

  1. The Chalk Circle Man by Fred Vargas, published in 2010, a very cleverly constructed and quirky murder mystery set in Paris  where strange blue chalk circles start appearing on the pavements. Only Commisaire Adamsberg takes them €“ and the increasingly bizarre objects found within them €“ seriously. 
  2. Hickory Dickory Dock by Agatha Christie, a Poirot mystery, first published in 1955, set in a London students’ lodging house where death strikes. There are plenty of suspects and red herrings and some interesting reflections on crime and the psychology of behaviour.
  3. The Girl on the Stairs by Louise Welsh, published in 2012. It’s set in Germany, a dark, psychological thriller, full of atmosphere and claustrophobic tension.
  4. One, Two, Buckle My Shoe by Agatha Christie, first published in 1940, in which Hercule Poirot and Inspector Japp investigate the apparent suicide of Mr Morley, Poirot’s Harley Street dentist, who was found dead in his surgery, shot through the head and with a pistol in his hand.
  5. The Redeemed by M R Hall, published in 2011. Coroner Jenny Cooper investigates the death of a man found lying outside a Bristol church with a sign of the cross gouged into his flesh, It looks to her like another grisly, routine suicide, but the unexpected arrival of an enigmatic Jesuit priest reveals deeper levels of mystery.
  6. The Sixth Lamentation by William Brodrick, published in 2010, it looks back  to the Second World War in occupied France, telling a dramatic tale of love and betrayal, full of suspense, and interwoven stories.

What's In a Name 5 Challenge Completed

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I always enjoy this Challenge – my thanks to Beth for hosting the event. I’ve read a mixture of fiction and non-fiction, including three crime fiction books and two memoirs.

The categories and the books I’ve read are as follows:

A book with a topographical feature in the title: The Hanging Valley by Peter Robinson (crime fiction).

A book with something you’d see in the sky in the title: Blue Lightning by Ann Cleeves (crime fiction).

A book with a creepy crawly in the title: The Parasites by Daphne du Maurier.

A book with a type of house in the title: Death at the President’s Lodging by Michael Innes (crime fiction).

A book with something you’d carry in your pocket, purse, or backpack in the title: A Card from Angela Carter by Susannah Clapp (memoir).

A book with something you’d find on a calendar in the title: The Day Gone By: an Autobiography by Richard Adams.