January 2015 – Page 2

The Best Laid Plans …

Published on January 15, 2015 by Margaret8 Comments

I tend not to plan my reading – my plans often go awry! I was looking forward to reading my current books – Green Darkness, The Needle in the Blood and Anthony Trollope’s Autobiography) but my thoughts keep turning to what to read next.

I think it’s because I’m not that enthralled with the two historical novels, although Anthony Trollope’s Autobiography is very interesting. I’ve read Green Darkness by Anya Seton before, although now I’m reading it I’m beginning to think I just dreamt I read it as it’s like reading a new book. It’s my book group choice for January and although there are parts that I think are very good (the historical part set in 16th century Tudor England) I’m finding it too long and well a bit boring in parts.

And I was confused as I began reading The Needle in the Blood by Sarah Bower, set just after Harold’s death at the Battle of Hastings. This may just be because my historical knowledge of this period is very vague, but I think it should be easier to work out whether ‘Lady Edith’ and ‘Queen Edith’ are different people and are there two people called Gytha?

This book has been on my shelves for 7 years! and picking it up this time I realised why I hadn’t read it before now – it’s written in the third person present tense, which I find awkward. I’m hoping all will get clearer if I read on – but I haven’t been tempted to read much further as yet – the tense isn’t helping me.

These are just a few of the options I have for what to read next:

From my shelves:

Innocent Traitor by Alison Weir – because Lady Jane Grey features in Green Darkness and I fancy reading more about her.
The Betrayal of Trust by Susan Hill – because it’s the next one for me read in her Simon Serrailler series and I’ve borrowed the one after this (A Question of Identity) from the library, so I’d like to read them in order.
Turn of the Tide by Margaret Skea – about feuding clans in 16th century Scotland.

From the library (just a small selection):

A Question of Identity by Susan Hill – after I’ve read The Betrayal of Trust.
Catching the Eagle: Book I of the Regency Reivers series by Karen Charlton – I found this on my library’s list of books by local authors. It’s described as a fictionalized account of a trial that devastated a family after a robbery at Kirkley hall in Northumberland, and it’s based on the true story of the author’s family’s notorious ancestor, Jamie Charlton.

On my Kindle:

No Name by Wilkie Collins – having just read Peter Ackroyd’s biography I’m keen to read at least one of Wilkie Collins’ books this year.
Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope – inspired by reading his autobiography.
Black Roses by Jane Thynne – I saw this reviewed on another book blog – can’t remember which one – and thought it sounded good, set in Berlin in the 1930s.

Now, whether I will read these after I finished my current books remains to be seen – I may be drawn to something completely different.

Wilkie Collins by Peter Ackroyd

Published on January 10, 2015 by Margaret12 Comments

On Thursday I finished reading Wilkie Collins by Peter Ackroyd and it was also the anniversary of his birth – he was born in Marylebone at a house in New Cavendish Street on 8 January 1824.

I’ve read just two of Wilkie Collins’ books – The Moonstone and The Woman in White, and this year I hope to read more. I knew that he was a friend of Charles Dickens, but that was about all I knew of him. Peter Ackroyd’s biography looked as though it could be a good book to start with. And it is – it’s short, just over 200 pages, very readable and a clear and concise account of Collins’ life and work.

Wilkie’s father was William Collins, an English painter, a member of the Royal Academy, who specialised in landscapes and seascapes. He was christened William Wilkie – Wilkie after his godfather, the painter Sir David Wilkie.

Ackroyd’s account may be brief but he gives details of Wilkie’s childhood, his schooldays – the books he liked as a child – The Arabian Nights, Robin Hood and Don Quixote, books by Sir Walter Scott and he admired Byron. He moves on through Wilkie’s struggle to become a writer, his friendship with Charles Dickens, his travels abroad, his unconventional life style, never marrying but living with Caroline Graves for thirty years whilst having a liaison with Martha Rudd, his ill health and reliance on laudanum, his tour of America, his relationships with and views about women and their place in society, as well as discussing his short stories, articles, novels and plays.

Wilkie Collins died on 23 September 1889 after a year in which he had suffered from neuralgic attacks, a stroke that paralysed his life side and affected his brain, and a bout of bronchitis, but he had still carried on writing.

I marked several passages as I was reading. Here are just a few of them:

He was essentially liberal in his social and political views, averse to coercion and conflict; he showed some sympathy with the principles of socialism as it was then understood, and was instinctively on the side of the oppressed. (page 46)

He might best be described as a Christian humanist who accepted Christ as his Saviour but detested all formal and outward shows of religion. He preserved his particular wrath for evangelicals. … he was not an atheist. He rarely entered a church, and his actual beliefs are hard, if not impossible, to unravel. (page 47)

He may have believed with Charles II that God would not punish him for a few sins of pleasure. (page 47)

He lived through a period in which the audience for fiction was rapidly widening, and the novels themselves were increasing in importance. … Novels had become the repository of dreams and ideals, the fantasies and the speculations, of the nation. (page 81)

One of the characters in ‘The Diary of Anne Rodway’ said -‘what I want is something that seizes hold of my interest, and makes me forget when it is time to dress for dinner – something that keeps me reading, reading, reading, in a breathless state to find out the end.’ That is precisely the excitement Collins conveys to his readers. (page 88)

Collins was writing about mysteries ‘deep under the surface’ three decades before Freud began his own enquiries. He was concerned with doubles and double identity, with monomania and delusion. He traced the paths of unconscious associations and occluded memories. (page 93)

It was believed that the ‘detective element’ disqualified the novel as a work of art, when in fact it opened up the way for an entirely new direction in English literature. There had been earlier exercises in the genre, but all of them are inconsiderable besides the over-whelming power and authority of ‘The Moonstone’. Collins’s novel, since its publication in 1868, has never been out of print. (page 132)

There is an awful lot packed into this short biography! And it’s an excellent stepping stone into Wilkie Collins’s novels.

Hardcover: 208 pages
Publisher: Chatto & Windus (23 Feb. 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0701169907
ISBN-13: 978-0701169909
Source: a Christmas present

Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2015

Published on January 8, 2015December 22, 2017 by Margaret5 Comments

I’ve been looking out for this challenge after Historical Tapestry announced that they were no longer running it and there is a new host this year – Amy at Passages to the Past. I hadn’t seen Amy’s blog before, but it looks very interesting, full of historical fiction reviews etc.

The challenge runs from January 1st to December 31st 2015 and there are six different levels to choose from:

20th century Reader – 2 books
Victorian Reader – 5 books
Renaissance Reader – 10 books
Medieval – 15 books
Ancient History – 25 books
Prehistoric [ 50+ books

Any type of historical fiction is accepted including sub-genres such as Historical Romance, Historical Mystery, Historical Fantasy and Young Adult.

Historical fiction is one of my favourite genres and last year I met my target level reading 26 books – just over the Ancient History level. I’m tempted to aim for the Prehistoric Level, but as I want to be more relaxed about challenges this year I’ll be aiming for the Ancient History level again, and if I read more then so much the better.

Towards Zero by Agatha Christie

Published on January 7, 2015October 21, 2017 by Margaret10 Comments

Towards Zero

Towards Zero, first published in 1944 (my copy is a 1972 impression), is an intricately plotted murder mystery featuring Superintendent Battle, the last of the five novels he appears in. Agatha Christie dedicated this book to Robert Graves, author of I Claudius, who was her neighbour in Devon during the Second World War and the two had become friends. She wrote:

‘Dear Robert, Since you are kind enough to say you like my stories, I venture to dedicate this book to you. All I ask is that you sternly restrain your critical faculties (doubtless sharpened by your recent excesses in that line!) when reading it. This is a story for your pleasure and not a candidate for Mr Graves’ literary pillory!”

It was received well at the time reviewed in the 6 August 1944 issue of The Observer:

“The new Agatha Christie has a deliciously prolonged and elaborate build-up, urbane and cosy like a good cigar and red leather slippers. Poirot is absent physically, but his influence guides the sensitive inspector past the wiles of the carefully planted house party, and with its tortuous double bluff this might well have been a Poirot case. How gratifying to see Agatha Christie keeping the flag of the old classic who-dun-it so triumphantly flying!”

It begins with a prologue in which a group of lawyers discuss a recent case at the Old Bailey. Mr Treves, a retired lawyer puts forward the idea that murder is not the beginning of a detective story, but the end, that murder is the culmination of causes and events that bring together certain people, converging towards a certain place and time, towards the Zero Hour – ‘towards zero’. The idea presupposes that there is an inevitability – that once events have been set in motion then the outcome is determined.

And in line with this idea, an unnamed person is seen planning a murder:

The time, the place, the victim. … Yes everything planned – everyone’s reaction foretold and allowed for, the good and evil in everybody played upon and brought into harmony with one evil design.

But the story begins with Angus MacWhirter recovering in hospital after a failed attempt at suicide, assured by a nurse that the mere fact of his existence could be of great importance, perhaps even save someone’s life one day. It then moves on to Superintendent Battle whose daughter has confessed to pilfering at school, even though she hadn’t stolen anything. The relevance of this episode is made clear later in the book.

And it is only later in the book that the murder is carried out, giving plenty of time for all the characters to be introduced, defined and their thoughts and relationships explored – Nevile Strange, a sportsman, good looking, wealthy, married to his beautiful second wife, Kay, Audrey Strange, Nevile’s first wife, Thomas Royde, Audrey’s distant cousin returning from Malaya, who hopes to marry her, and Ted Latimer, Kay’s friend who all converge at Gull’s Point, a large country house on a cliff above the River Tern where Lady Tressilian and Mary Aldin, her cousin and companion live.

The murderer could be any of them and as solution after solution is proposed I was completely bamboozled. All the clues are there, but subtly hidden, buried in layer upon layer. As was Superintendent Battle for a while. I like Battle, described as

‘solid and durable, and in some way impressive. Superintendent Battle had never suggested brilliance; he was definitely not a brilliant man, but he had some other quality, difficult to define, that was nevertheless forceful.

And as he also knows Poirot, he is able to apply Poirot’s use of psychology to the case, keeping the suspect talking until the truth slips out.

Towards Zero has to be one of my favourite of Agatha Christie’s books despite a few reservations – Angus MacWhirter’s role seems superfluous, other than introducing the idea of pre-destination, and Mr Treves’ story of a child killer wasn’t really explained. I was surprised by the ending – not the denouement of the murderer, but the unlikely romance between two of the characters in the very last chapter which seemed just too far removed from reality. But, disregarding these points I really enjoyed this book.

The Book of Lost and Found by Lucy Foley

Published on January 4, 2015 by Margaret6 Comments

It’s so good to start 2015 reading a book I really enjoyed. It’s The Book of Lost and Found by Lucy Foley – due to be published later this month. I received my copy courtesy of Lovereading for review.

Summary from inside the front cover:

In many ways, my life has been rather like a record of the lost and found. Perhaps all lives are like that.

It’s when life started in earnest
HERTFORDSHIRE, 1928

The paths of Tom and Alice collide against a haze of youthful, carefree exuberance. And so begins a love story that finds its feet by a lake one silvery moonlit evening . . .

It’s when there were no happy endings
PARIS, 1939

Alice is living in the City of Light, but the pain of the last decade has already left its mark. There’s a shadow creeping across Europe when she and Thomas Stafford ‘“ now a world famous artist ‘“ find each other once more . . .

It’s when the story begins
LONDON, 1986
Bequeathed an old portrait from her grandmother, Kate Darling uncovers a legacy that takes her to Corsica, Paris and beyond. And as the secrets of time fall away, a love story as epic as it is life-changing slowly reveals itself . . .

Once I started reading it I didn’t want to stop; Lucy Foley is a great storyteller – it’s hard to believe that this is her first novel! It’s the story of Tom and Alice beginning in 1928 in Hertfordshire and moving backwards and forwards in time and place to 1986, from Paris, to London, Corsica and New York. It all revolves around Kate, whose mother, June, had recently died in a plane crash. When Kate is given an old line drawing in pen and ink, dated 1929, of a young woman, she initially thinks it is of June, but realises that it can’t be – the date is too early and the clothes and hair are all wrong. Thus the search for the woman in the drawing and the artist begins.

There is so much I loved in this book – the characters, the settings and the time periods, against the backdrop of years before, during and after the Second World War. It’s a love story, of course, as well as a story of loss, discovery and grief as the decisions we make impact not just on our own lives but on those of others too.

It is a beautiful book and one that I’d like to re-read one day – I’m sure that I would find things in it I missed this time in my eagerness to find out what happened next.

Lucy Foley studied English Literature at Durham and UCL universities. She now writes full-time, having worked for several years as a fiction editor in the publishing industry. She is now working on her next novel – I hope it’s not too long coming!

TBR Pile Challenge 2015

Published on January 2, 2015 by Margaret10 Comments

I’ve been dithering for some time now about taking on reading challenges because I really want to concentrate on reading without thinking whether the books I read fit any of the challenges I’ve joined, but I’ve decided that I’m not going to worry about that – if they do, they do and if they don’t it doesn’t matter and so here’s another challenge for 2015.

Adam from Roof Beam Reader is running his TBR Pile Challenge for the SIXTH YEAR!

I’ve not joined in before because I’ve been doing Bev’s Mount TBR Challenge, but this is slightly different because the books you read must have been on your bookshelf or ‘To Be Read’list for AT LEAST one full year and you have to list them in advance. This means the books cannot have a publication date of 1/1/2014 or later (ie any book published in the year 2013 or earlier qualifies, as long as it has been on your TBR pile ‘“ Adam will be checking publication dates!)

The Goal: To finally read 12 books from your ‘to be read’pile (within 12 months). Books have to be listed and reviewed so that you can link back to Adam’s challenge. You are allowed two alternates just in case you just can’t finish a book for whatever reason.

For the full run-down of challenge details, see Adam’s blog (click on link above).

I’m a bit doubtful that I’ll complete this challenge because I often find that planning in advance what I’m going to read doesn’t work for me – I seem to find reasons for reading other books instead of the ones on my list! But I’m going to give it a go anyway – here’s my list:

The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende (pub 1994 – on my TBR since 2008)
The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood (pub 1994 – on my TBR since 2009)
The Needle in the Blood by Sarah Bower (pub 2007 – on my TBR since 2007)
The Burning by Jane Casey (pub 2010 – on my TBR since 2013)
Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens (pub 1844 – on my TBR since 2007)
Zen there was Murder by H R F Keating (pub 1960 – on my TBR since 2012
Mrs Jordan’s Profession by Claire Tomalin (pub 1995 – on my TBR since 2011)
Fresh from the Country by Miss Read (pub 1970 – on my TBR since 2012)
The Interpretation of Murder by Jed Rubenfeld (pub 2006 – on my TBR since 2007)
Bad Land by Jonathan Raban (pub 1985 – on my TBR since 2011)
We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates (pub 1997 – on my TBR since 2011)
The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton (pub 2010 – on my TBR since 2013)