Category: Books

Six in Six: 2015

Published on by Margaret7 Comments

Jo at The Book Jotter  is running this meme again this year to summarise six months of reading, sorting the books into six categories ‘“ you can choose from the ones Jo suggests or come up with your own. The same book can obviously feature in more than one category.

Here is my version for 2015, with links to my posts on the books where appropriate. I’ve not listed the books in order of preference and some of the books could just as well fit into more than one category:

  • Six books I loved
  1. The Stranger You Know by Jane Casey
  2. A Question of Identity by Susan Hill
  3. Gaudy Night by Dorothy L Sayers
  4. Have His Carcase by Dorothy L Sayers
  5. Harbour Street by Ann Cleeves
  6. The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton
  • Six new authors to me:
  1. The Book of Lost and Found by Lucy Foley
  2. Wreckage by Emily Bleeker
  3. Turn of the Tide by Margaret Skea
  4. The Lost Garden by Katharine Swartz
  5. Brooklyn by Colm Toibin
  6. A Game For All the Family by Sophie Hannah
  • Six authors I have read before
  1. Towards Zero by Agatha Christie
  2. Dreamwalker by James Oswald
  3. Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope
  4. The Zig Zag Girl by Elly Griffith
  5. Dacre’s War by Rosemary Goring
  6. Gaudy Night by Dorothy L Sayers
  • Six crime fiction books 
  1. The Betrayal of Trust by Susan Hill
  2. The Murder Room by P D James
  3. Gray Mountain by John Grisham
  4. Dry Bones That Dream by Peter Robinson
  5. The Last Girl by Jane Casey
  6. Gently North West by Alan Hunter

Six From the Non-Fiction Shelf

  1. Wilkie Collins by Peter Ackroyd. (Biography)
  2. Spilling the Beans by Clarissa Dickson Wright (Autobiography)
  3. Burying the Typewriter: Childhood Under the Eye of the Secret Police by Carmen Bugan (Autobiography)
  4. Nothing To Be Frightened Of by Julian Barnes (Memoir, philosophy, reflection on the fear of death, belief)
  5. H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald (Memoir, Falconry, Goshawk, T H White)
  6. Poirot and Me by David Suchet (autobiography, Agatha Christie’s Poirot)
  • Six authors I read last year ‘“ but not so far this year and their books that I have sitting on my shelves waiting to be read
  1. John Steinbeck – Sweet Thursday
  2. Iain Banks – The Wasp Factory
  3. Frances Brody – A Medal for Murder
  4. Isabel Allende – City of Beasts, The House of Spirits, The Sum of our Days
  5. David Mitchell – The Thousand Autumns of Joseph de Zoet
  6. John Buchan – The Power House

This Week in Books: 8 July 2015

Published on by Margaret6 Comments

This Week in Books is a weekly round-up hosted by Lypsyy Lost & Found, about what I’ve been reading Now, Then & Next. A similar meme is run by Taking on a World of Words.

Now: I’m still making slow progress with Stephen Hawking: His Life and Work. Goodreads tells me I’ve read 62%. It’s slow reading in the ‘work’ sections and much quicker in the ‘life’ sections.

Blurb:

Stephen Hawking is one of the most remarkable figures of our time, a Cambridge genius who has earned international celebrity as a brilliant theoretical physicist and become an inspiration and revelation to those who have witnessed his courageous triumph over disability. This is Hawking’s life story by Kitty Ferguson, who has had special help from Hawking himself and his close associates and who has a gift for translating the language of theoretical physics for non-scientists.

Twenty years ago, Kitty Ferguson’s Stephen Hawking: Quest for a Theory of Everything became a Sunday Times bestseller and took the world by storm. She now returns to the subject to transform that short book into a hugely expanded, carefully researched, up-to-the-minute biography.

Then: I’ve finished reading The Golden Age of Murder by Martin Edwards ‘“ the story of detective fiction written by the authors in the Detection Club between the two World Wars. This is a fascinating and detailed account of the lives and work of the members of the Detection Club elected between 1930 and 1949.

My review will follow in due course (I’m a *bit* behind with writing reviews at the moment). For now I’ll say that I haven’t read many books by the authors, apart from Agatha Christie’s and a few of the others mentioned, so much of the information is new to me and consequently there’s so much to take in. It will be a good reference book for me in the future, I’m sure.

The other books I’ve finished recently and have yet to write about are:

The Day of the Lie by William Brodrick. I enjoyed this book but it is immensely complicated and I think I need to re-read it before I can attempt to write down what I made of it.

The Man in the Wooden Hat and Last Friends both by Jane Gardam. These are sequel books to Old Filth, which I first read years ago. Again I need to think more about these books before writing about them – and I may re-read Old Filth before I do.

Now: I haven’t decided which book to read next. There are so many I want to read – Old Filth for one, one of the  books I wrote about in my Stacking the Shelves post, or one of my own TBR books. I shall have to browse around my shelves to see what takes my fancy.

First Chapter ˆ¼ First Paragraph

Published on by Margaret15 Comments

First chapterEvery Tuesday Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea hosts First Chapter ˆ¼ First Paragraph Tuesday Intros, where you can share the first paragraph, or a few, of a book you are reading or thinking about reading soon.

I read Old Filth by Jane Gardam in 2008 and loved it, without realising at that time that there were more books about Old Filth QC (Failed in London, Try Hong Kong). So I was delighted to find there are two more.

I’ve recently read the second book, The Man in the Wooden Hat, and I’m currently reading the third, Last Friends – nearly finished it actually.

 

It begins:

The Titans were gone. They had clashed their last. Sir Edward Feathers, affectionately known as Filth (Failed in London, Try Hong Kong), and Sir Terence Veneering, the two greatest exponents of English and International Law in the engineering and construction industry and the current experts upon the Ethics of Pollution, were dead. Their well-worn armour had fallen from them with hardly a clatter and the quiet Dorset village to which they had retired within a very few years of each other (accidentally, for they had hated one another for over fifty years) mourned their passing and wondered who would be distinguished enough to buy their houses.

My reviews of  Last Friends and The Man in the Wooden Hat will follow shortly.

Reading Challenges

Published on by Margaret5 Comments

Half the year has gone now and I think it’s a good time to see where I’m up to with the reading challenges I’m doing. At the end of last year I decided I would reduce the number of challenges I take part in, but, somehow I got drawn into doing lots again – too many really to keep track of them all! Hence, this post.

My aim is to read whatever takes my fancy and if the books fit into any of the challenges that’s good. If they don’t that’s also good.

Reading Challenges progress up to 30 June :

First an open-ended challenge:

The Agatha Christie Reading Challenge ‘“ 3 books. So far I have read 65.

Short-term challenges:

Once Upon a Time IX Challenge ‘“ This challenge ended on 21 June. I met my target of reading 1 book for the first stage – The Journey – and made a start on the second stage by reading 1 more book.

10 Books  of Summer – this runs from the 1st June 2015 to the 4th September 2015. So far I’ve read 3 and reviewed 1 of them.

Year-long challenges:

Mount TBR Reading Challenge ‘“ I’ve read17 of my own unread books. My target is 48.

TBR Pile Challenge – this is a list of 14 books I identified in advance as books to be read. It’s a sort of sub-challenge to the Mount TBR Challenge as these books all qualify for that challenge too.  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! So far I’ve 3 books out of the required 12 ( an additional 2 books are on the list as alternatives).

Read Scotland Challenge ‘“ 5 books. Challenge completed as I have reached my target of 4.

What’s in a Name 2015 ‘“ I’ve completed 4 of the 6 sections.

Historical Fiction Challenge ‘“ 9 books. My target is 25 books.

Colour Coded Challenge ‘“ 2 books. The target is to read 9 books in the different colour categories.

Non-Fiction Reading Challenge 2015 ‘“  I’m aiming at reading at least 12 books this year and so far I’ve read 7 ‘“ with two books currently on the go, which I should finish soon.

Victorian Bingo Reading Challenge 2015 – I’m not doing at all well with this challenge – 2 books read to fit into the bingo card. I can’t see myself completing this challenge.

Stacking the Shelves: 4 July 2015

Published on by Margaret13 Comments
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Stacking The Shelves is all about sharing the books you are adding to your shelves. This means you can include ‘real’ and ‘virtual’ books (ie physical and ebooks) you’ve bought, books you’ve borrowed from friends or the library, review books, and gifts.

I’ve added just a few books this last week. First an e-book – Crooked Little Lies by Barbara Taylor Sissel – a Kindle First Pick. The paperback is due to be published on 1st August 2015. A new-to-me author, but I see she has written five other books.

Blurb:

On a cool October morning, Lauren Wilder is shaken when she comes close to striking Bo Laughlin with her car as he’s walking along the road’s edge. A young man well known in their small town of Hardys Walk, Texas, Bo seems fine, even if Lauren’s intuition says otherwise. Since the accident two years ago that left her brain in a fragile state, she can’t trust her own instincts – and neither can her family. Then Bo vanishes, and as the search for him ensues, the police question whether she’s responsible. Lauren is terrified, not of what she remembers but of what she doesn’t.

Unable to trust herself and unwilling to trust anyone else, Lauren begins her own investigation into the mystery of Bo’s disappearance. But the truth can prove to be as shocking as any lie, and as Lauren exposes each one, from her family, from her friends, she isn’t the only one who will face heart-stopping repercussions.

Second a paperback – Thin Air by Ann Cleeves, the sixth in her Shetland series. I’ve read the other 5 books, so I just have to read this one too.

Blurb:

A group of old university friends leave the bright lights of London and travel to Unst, Shetland’s most northerly island, to celebrate the marriage of one of their friends to a Shetlander. But late on the night of the wedding party, one of them, Eleanor, disappears – apparently into thin air. It’s mid-summer, a time of light nights and unexpected mists. The following day, Eleanor’s friend Polly receives an email. It appears to be a suicide note, saying she’ll never be found alive. And then Eleanor’s body is discovered, lying in a small loch close to the cliff edge.

Detectives Jimmy Perez and Willow Reeves are dispatched to Unst to investigate. Before she went missing, Eleanor claimed to have seen the ghost of a local child who drowned in the 1920s. Her interest in the ghost had seemed unhealthy – obsessive, even – to her friends: an indication of a troubled mind. But Jimmy and Willow are convinced that there is more to Eleanor’s death than they first thought.

Is there a secret that lies behind the myth? One so shocking that someone would kill – many years later – to protect?

Ann Cleeves’ striking Shetland novel explores the tensions between tradition and modernity that lie deep at the heart of a community, and how events from the past can have devastating effects on the present.

And finally  these library books, all from the mobile library van that visits here once a fortnight:

I love the library visits and always find a good variety of books to choose from. From top to bottom they are:

  • Country Dance written and illustrated by Henry Brewis – a Northumberland author. This was first published in 1992 and is described on the back cover as a ‘contemporary fable, the story of a family farm being dismembered and ‘developed’, of newcomers face-to-face with the old peasantry.’
  • The Other Queen by Philippa Gregory – about Mary Queen of Scots, after she fled from Scotland and was imprisoned by Elizabeth I. When I first saw this I thought I’d read it – but then realised I hadn’t, I’d read The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory (a bit confusing having two similar titles).
  • A Possible Life: a Novel in Five Parts by Sebastian Faulks. This looks like five separate stories about five people at different times and in different places. At the moment I don’t know how they are linked.
  • This Is How It Ends by Kathleen MacMahon, set in 2008 in Dublin, where Bruno, an American, has come to search for his roots. He meets and falls in love with Addie, an out-of-work architect, recovering from heartbreak while looking after her infirm father.

Do let me know if you’ve read any of these and what you found to add to your shelves this week.

Mount TBR Checkpoint 2

Published on by Margaret14 Comments

Mount TBR 2015

The year is almost half-way over and it’s time for a second quarterly check-in post for Bev’s Mount TBR challenge. I’m answering three of Bev’s questions:

1. Tell us how many miles you’ve made it up your mountain (# of books read). 
I am way behind with my target of reaching Mt Ararat (that is 48 books) as I’ve read 17, which is nearly halfway up Mont Blanc (24 books). I’ll have to concentrate on reading more from my own shelves if I’m going to reach my target.
2 C. Which book (read so far) has been on your TBR mountain the longest? Was it worth the wait? Or is it possible you should have tackled it back when you first put it on the pile? Or tossed it off the edge without reading it all?

An Autobiography by Anthony Trollope has been on my mountain the longest – I’ve had this book for over 20 years. The reason it had sat unread on my shelves is that when I bought it I hadn’t read any of Trollope’s books and I thought it would be better if I knew a bit about his work before reading about his life. It was definitely worth the wait – a fascinating account of his life and also about how he went about his writing; he criticises his own books and writes about his fellow writers.

And:

My Day in Books

Use titles from your list to complete as many of the following sentences below as you can.  If you haven’t read enough books to give you good choices, then feel free to use any books yet to be read from your piles. I’ve given my answers as examples. Feel free to add words (such as “a” or “the” or others that clarify) as needed.

I began the day with [a] Three Act Tragedy
before breakfasting on Gem Squash TokoloshieOn my way to work I saw The Secret Keeper
and walked by The Dead Secret 
to avoid The Betrayal of Trust
but I made sure to stop at Barchester TowersIn the office, my boss asked me how to use The Book of Lost and Found
and sent me to research [the]Turn of the Tide

At lunch with The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
I noticed  The Dreamwalker
playing a game of Spilling the Beans

When I got home that night,
I imagined myself [in] Green Darkness
and wondered if [I’m]The Last Girl
Finally, I went to bed and dreamed about The Burning