Category: Book Beginnings on Friday

Full Tilt: Book Beginnings

Published on by Margaret9 Comments

One of the books I’m reading is Dervla Murphy’s Full Tilt: Dunkirk to Delhi on a Bicycle. It was first published in 1965 and is an account of her journey in 1963. I’m finding it slow reading because I’m constantly wondering about the places she describes, how they’ve changed since the early 1960s and looking them up.

Her journey took her through Europe, Persia (Iran), Afghanistan, over the Himalayas to Pakistan and into India. She travelled on her own, with a revolver in her saddle bag. It’s amazing.

It begins with her desire to cycle to India:

On my tenth birthday a bicycle and an atlas coincided as presents and a few days later I decided to cycle to India. I’ve never forgotten the exact spot on a hill near my home at Lismore, County Waterford, where the decision was made and it seemed to me then, as it still seems to me now, a logical decision, based on the discoveries that cycling was a most satisfactory method of transport and that (excluding the USSR for political reasons) the way to India offered few watery obstacles than any other destination at a similar distance. (page 1)

And that is what she did 21 years later.

So far I have travelled with her to Afghanistan, where she is on her way to Kabul via Khandahar. Needless to say I’m struck with thoughts about how much has changed in the world since then. I’m full of questions, not just about the current situation with all the places she describes, but also about how she managed it, how she found out where to stay, and how she communicated with people for example.

It’s very much a personal account, not so much about the actual cycling, although I was amused by her account of getting her cycle repaired in a Persian cycle shop where they would not use a screwdriver but hammered every screw into place. Not so funny, because a few days later the back wheel came off, as the relevant screw had been ruined!

Book Beginnings on Fridays is hosted by Gilion at Rose City Reader.

Standing in Another Man’s Grave by Ian Rankin

Published on by Margaret12 Comments

Yesterday I received Ian Rankin’s new book, Standing in Another Man’s Grave and it’s looking good.

It begins:

He’d made sure he wasn’t standing too near the open grave.

Closed ranks of other mourners between him and it. The pall-bearers had been called forward by number rather than name – six of them starting with the deceased ‘s son. Rain wasn’t quite falling yet, but it had scheduled an appointment.

The deceased is a retired policeman. The unnamed man, standing at the funeral had known him. He was desperate for a cigarette. After the coffin is lowered into the grave one of the mourners approaches him with a nod of recognition:

‘John’, he said.

‘Tommy’, Rebus replied, with another nod.

Rebus is back!

With the rain now falling he heads for his car, turns on the car’s CD player and Jackie Leven’s voice emerges singing about standing in another man’s grave. Except he isn’t – the track is called ‘Another Man’s Rain’.

I paused and decided to look for the track. Here it is:

I’m trying to read this book slowly, but the plot and Rebus is gradually pulling me in. I just have to keep turning the pages. So, it’s back to the book now.

Fro more Book Beginnings on Friday see Gilion’s blog Rose City Reader.

Book Beginnings …

Published on by Margaret8 Comments

I’m currently reading  Ian McEwan’s latest book, Sweet Tooth. At the moment I’m still quite near the beginning of the book.

It didn’t take me long to decide that I wanted to read Sweet Tooth. I like Ian McEwan’s books, although I wasn’t that keen on his previous book, Solar, but this one looked good when I picked it up from one of the display tables in a local bookshop. Set in 1972, it’s about Serena Frome, the daughter of an Anglican bishop, who is a compulsive reader of novels. She works for MI5 in a very junior position, until she is assigned to a ‘special mission’ called ‘Sweet Tooth’, which brings her into the literary world of a promising young writer.

I’m hoping it’s going to be as good as Atonement, one of my favourite books.  Like Atonement, Sweet Tooth is both a love story and a book about writing.

It begins:

My name is Serena Frome (rhymes with plume) and almost forty years ago I was sent on a secret mission for the British security service. I didn’t return safely. Within eighteen months of joining I was sacked, having disgraced myself and ruined my lover, though he certainly had a hand in his own undoing. (page 1)

For more Book Beginnings on Friday see Gilion’s blog Rose City Reader.

Book Beginnings: Before the Fact

Published on by Margaret12 Comments

I went to Barter Books yesterday and came home with several crime fiction books, plus a book on painting with pastels and a book on Northumberland’s coastal castles.

The book I’m writing about today is one of the crime fiction books, that I was quite excited to find, because I’ve never read anything by Francis Iles, the pseudonym of Anthony Berkeley Cox (1893-1970), a journalist and mystery writer from the Golden Age of crime fiction.

The book is his second novel written as Francis Iles, Before the Fact and it is a psychological study of a potential murderer as seen through the eyes of his intended victim. It begins:

Some women give birth to murderers, some go to bed with them, and some marry them. Lina Aygarth had lived with her husband for nearly eight years before she realized that she was married to a murderer.

I’m eager to read on …

For more Book Beginnings on Friday see Gilion’s blog Rose City Reader.

Book Beginnings: The Glass Guardian

Published on by Margaret7 Comments

Linda Gillard’s latest book The Glass Guardian came out on Kindle on 1 June. It begins:

When I was a child I nearly drowned. In a pond. Nothing dramatic, apart from the fact that I nearly died. I fell into a big pool at my Aunt Janet’s house on the Isle of Skye.

I fell from a wooden bridge over the pool. At least I think I fell. I don’t remember falling. All I remember is drowning – almost drowning – and then I remember being very cold and so sick, I thought I must have vomited up my insides.

I’ve read and loved Linda’s previous books and I have high hopes that this one will be no exception. It’s described as a ‘supernatural love story‘. When Ruth prepares to put her Aunt’s old house up for sale, she’s astonished to find she’s not the only occupant. Worse, she suspects she might be falling in love again.

With a man who died almost a hundred years ago…

Edited 9 June with the following information from Linda:

TGG originally began with Ch 1. The Prologue was one of the last parts of the book to be written. I started writing TGG pre-Kindle, but when I got one myself & downloaded & read many samples without buying the whole book, I realised the importance of grabbing the reader on p.1. So I decided to insert a Prologue which I hoped would keep readers’ thumbs clicking.

Thanks, Linda – I think it’s a dramatic opening that certainly did grab my attention and makes me want to find out more.

For more Book Beginnings on Friday see Gilion’s blog Rose City Reader.

Book Beginnings: Run by Ann Patchett

Published on by Margaret6 Comments

Way back in 2008 I read The Magician’s Assistant by Ann Patchett and because I enjoyed it I wanted to read more of her books. The Magician’s Assistant is about families with strongly drawn characters and from the opening of Run it looks as though it too has family as its theme.

Bernadette had been dead two weeks when her sisters showed up in Doyle’s living room asking for the statue back. They had no legal claim to it, of course, she would never have thought of leaving it to them, but the statue had been in their family for four generations, passing down the maternal line from mother to daughter, and it was their intention to hold with tradition. Bernadette had no daughters.

Further down the opening page it seems that Bernadette had an uncanny resemblance to the statue, which looked like her, ‘as if she had modeled in a blue robe with a halo stuck to the back of her head.’ The opening leads me into the story, making me want to read on.

Ann Patchett’s latest novel State of Wonder is shortlisted for this year’s Orange Prize for Fiction – the winner will be announced on 30 May. Her novel Bel Canto was the 2002 Orange Prize winner.

For more Book Beginnings on Friday see Gilion’s blog Rose City Reader.