December 2021 – Page 3

Six Degrees of Separation: from Ethan Frome to Beneath the Surface

Published on December 4, 2021 by Margaret20 Comments

It’s time again for Six Degrees of Separation, a monthly link-up hosted by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. Each month a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six other books to form a chain. A book doesn’t need to be connected to all the other books on the list, only to the one next to it in the chain.

The chain this month begins with Ethan Frome, a novella by Edith Wharton, which I have read and loved. Set in the fictitious town of Starkfield, Massachusetts, this is a tragedy about a farmer trapped in an unhappy marriage. Their lives are changed when his wife’s cousin comes to live with them to help in the house.

My first link is to another book by Edith Wharton, Xingu and other stories, one of my TBRs, There are five short stories – about jealous husbands, spinsters who have wasted away their lives, and bored ladies infatuated with money and aspirations.

My second link is to another book of short stories, which I’m currently reading. It’s The Birds and Other Storie s by Daphne du Maurier, a total of six stories. Hitchcock based his film on du Maurier’s horror story of a farmhand, his family, and his community who are attacked by flocks of birds.

My third link is Corvus: My Life with Birds by Esther Woolfson, which is part memoir and part nature study. Corvus’ is a genus of birds including jackdaws, ravens, crows, magpies and rooks. The specific birds Esther Woolfson looked after are a rook, a young crow, a cockatiel, a magpie, two small parrots and two canaries.

My fourth link is to the word ‘raven‘ in Raven Black by Ann Cleeves, the first book in her Shetland series – Inspector Perez. It begins on New Year’s Eve as Magnus Tait is seeing the new year in on his own, until two teenage girls knock on his door to wish him a Happy New Year. A few days later one of the girls is found dead in the snow not far from Magnus’s house, strangled with her own scarf.

My fifth link is to a novel that also begins on New Year’s Eve – The Nine Tailors by D L Sayers, as Lord Peter Wimsey is driving through a snow storm and ends up in a ditch near the village of Fenchurch St Paul in the Fens. He is taken in for the night by the vicar and helps the bell-ringers ring in the New Year. A few weeks later Wimsey is asked back to the village to help solve the mystery of the dead man found by the sexton whilst he was opening up Lady Thorpe’s grave to bury her husband.

My sixth link: is to Beneath the Surface by Fiona Neill, which is also set in the Fens, where Patrick and Grace Vermuyden and their two daughters, teenager Lilly and ten year old Mia, are living in badly built, damp and draughty house.This is an emotionally charged novel about the burden of keeping secrets and the effects that misunderstandings and lies can have.

Beginning with a novella by Edith Wharton about a family tragedy my chain travels to another family in an ever decreasing spiral of disastrous events, thus making the chain into a circle and linking together short story collections, stories about birds, books beginning on New Year’s Eve and books set in the Fens.

Next month (January 4, 2022), we’ll start with a story that also begins on New Year’s Eve (what a coincidence!)– Rules of Civility by Amor Towles, a book I haven’t read.

Book Beginnings & The Friday 56: The Dogs of Riga by Henning Mankell

Published on December 3, 2021 by Margaret7 Comments

Every Friday Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Gillion at Rose City Reader where you can share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading. You can also share from a book you want to highlight just because it caught your fancy.

i’m still reading Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror and the Light and am stuck in the middle of the book where the narrative is so slow as Cromwell reminisces about his childhood and early adult years. I’m also reading The Count of Monte Cristo, such a long book, but it is moving along swiftly and although it’s a bit confusing with all the aliases that Dantès uses I think I’ve now got them straight in my head, and I’m really enjoying it.

But it’s time I started something new – so I picked a book at random off my bookshelves and began reading The Dogs of Riga by Henning Mankell, the second book in his Kurt Wallander series.

The Book Begins:

It started snowing shortly after 10am.
The man in the wheelhouse of the fishing boat cursed. He’d heard the forecast, but hoped they might make the Swedish coast before the storm hit.

Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice. *Grab a book, any book. *Turn to Page 56 or 56% on your ereader . If you have to improvise, that is okay. *Find a snippet, short and sweet, but no spoilers!

These are the rules:

Grab a book, any book.
Turn to page 56, or 56% on your eReader. If you have to improvise, that is okay.
Find any sentence (or a few, just don’t spoil it) that grabs you.
Post it.
Add the URL to your post in the link on Freda’s most recent Friday 56 post.

Page 56:

‘Bjork grabbed hold of the newspaper again and read aloud, “‘Soviet death patrols. The new Europe has exposed Sweden to crime with a political slant.’ What do they mean by that? Can anyone explain? Wallander?’

Summary:

Sweden, winter, 1991. Inspector Kurt Wallander and his team receive an anonymous tip-off. A few days later a life raft is washed up on a beach. In it are two men, dressed in expensive suits, shot dead.

The dead men were criminals, victims of what seems to have been a gangland hit. But what appears to be an open-and-shut case soon takes on a far more sinister aspect. Wallander travels across the Baltic Sea, to Riga in Latvia, where he is plunged into a frozen, alien world of police surveillance, scarcely veiled threats, and lies.

Doomed always to be one step behind the shadowy figures he pursues, only Wallander’s obstinate desire to see that justice is done brings the truth to light.

I read the first Wallander book, Faceless Killers several years ago and have been wanting to read more, so this book was a lucky random pick from my bookshelves this morning.

What have you been reading lately?

Throwback Thursday: The Perfect Summer

Published on December 2, 2021 by Margaret3 Comments

Today I’m looking back at my post on The Perfect Summer by Juliet Nicolson a book I loved. I first reviewed it on October 29, 2009. It focuses on the period from May, when King George V was crowned, to September, describing the minutiae of everyday life of both the rich and the poor.

My review begins:

The Perfect Summer: Dancing into Shadow in 1911 by Juliet Nicolson is a fascinating look at life in Britain during the summer of George V’s Coronation year, 1911.

When I finished reading this book I decided that the summer of 1911 was not “the perfect summer”. It was one of the hottest years of the twentieth century, making life most uncomfortable at a time when most people had no means of getting out of the sweltering heat. Even a trip to the seaside for working class people meant they donned their Sunday best clothes and spent the day standing because they couldn’t afford to hire deck chairs!