Category: Books

The Sunday Salon – Books I’d like to Read Right Now

Published on by Margaret6 Comments

Currently I’m reading The Right Attitude to Rain, the third Isabel Dalhousie novel  by Alexander McCall Smith. It’s the sort of book that makes me pause whilst I’m reading it and think about what I’ve read. It’s not a book to rush through at top speed to find out what happens, but rather a book to savour for its characters and settings, for its interaction bewteen the characters and the images it evokes.

It’s also the sort of book that reminds me of other books I’d like to read and this morning when I read Isabel’s and Tom’s discussion about Mary Queen of Scots I began to think of a couple of books I’ve been meaning to read and wanting to read them right now. These are:

I also want to read these books I’ve borrowed recently from the library:

  • The Man Who Planted Trees by Jean Giono, the story of an imaginary shepherd hoping to plant thousands of trees. I saw this reviewed on Simon’s blog and thought it looked good. It’s only52 pages, so I could read that right now.
  • The Crow Trap by Ann Cleeves, crime fiction set in the Pennines featuring DI Vera Stanhope. This is yet another long book (over 500 pages)
  • and, bringing me back to Alexander McCall Smith, the fifth Isabel Dalhousie novel, The Comfort of Saturdays.

I have to settle for the fact that I can only read one book at a time, so it’s back to The Right Attitude to Rain – right now, along with a cup of tea.

Long and Short of It – Booking Through Thursday

Published on by Margaret7 Comments

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Which do you prefer? Short stories? Or full-length novels?

Comparing short stories and full-length novels is like comparing a weekend away with a month long holiday. A few days away means that you can only skim the surface of a place, not really getting to know it very well, seeing the highlights and you can come home thinking you wanted to stay longer, wanting more. Short stories can be like that. Or a weekend away can be just right  – you’ve seen and done all there is to see and do, you’ve enjoyed it but don’t hanker after any more. Short stories can be like that too.

A month away means that you can settle into a place, explore it in more detail, get to know people and become immersed in it, so much so that you don’t want to go home. Novels can be like that, you never want a good book to end. On the other hand it can get boring, repetitive and tedious and you can’t wait to get home. Novels can be like that too.

In other words both can be right under the right circumstances, but if I had to choose between an enjoyable short break or a longer one then of course I’d go for the longer one.

Friday Finds

Published on by Margaret5 Comments

I went shopping today and found these three books in my local secondhand bookshop:

  • The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens, his unfinished last novel. I’ve been wanting to read this ever since I read Drood by Dan Simmons. Dickens’s daughter called this a tale of ‘the tragic secrets of the human heart.’
  • Dumb Witness by Agatha Christie – Hercule Poirot investigates Emily’s death from falling down the stairs, apparently caused by a rubber ball left there by her dog. I’m slowly reading my way through Christie’s books.
  • Elizabeth Gaskell: a Habit of Stories by Jenny Uglow, described in the blurbs as an’absorbing book’, portraying ‘Gaskell’s hectic life  so richly that you feel lost when the story suddenly stops’, ‘a long book you wish longer.’ I like both literary biographies and Elizabeth Gaskell’s books. I have high hopes for this book.

I also went to the library and borrowed:

  • The Rough Guide to Crime Fiction by Barry Forshaw. This looks an excellent source of information on the various sub-genres of crime fiction, from the Golden Age of classic mysteries through to Crime in Translation. I may have to buy a copy of this book.
  • Family Album by Penelope Lively, her latest novel (the 16th) about the secrets that lie beneath the surface of a seemingly ordinary family. I haven’t read all of her other books, but have greatly enjoyed the ones I have read. I hope this one will be as good.

Tuesday Teasers

Published on by Margaret8 Comments

I’ve come to a halt. I’ve finished the books I’ve been reading and can’t make my mind up what to read next. I have books out on loan from the library and plenty of books of my own that I want to read sometime. The problem is, which one should I read next?

So I thought I’d try a few teasers out on myself, taken from the opening chapters of books closest to hand.

The Honourable Schoolboy by John Le Carré, in which George Smiley has become chief of the battered British Secret Service at a time when the betrayals of a Soviet double agent have riddled the spy network.

Afterwards, in the dusty little corners where London’s secret servants drink together, there was argument about where the Dolphin case history should really begin. One crowd, led by a blimpish fellow in charge of microphone transcription, went so far as to claim that the fitting date was sixty years ago when ‘that arch-cad Bill Haydon’ was born into the world under a treacherous star. Haydon’s very name struck a chill into them. (page 15)

The Earth Hums in B Flat by Mari Strachan about Gwenni Morgan, who is inquisitive and bookish. She can fly in her sleep and loves playing detective.

Like every other night, I sped from the sea to drift along the road that winds its way down beyond the Baptism Pool and the Reservoir high into the hills behind the town. As I passed above the Pool I saw a man floating in it with his arms outstretched and the moon drowning in his eyes. (page 4)

The Mystery of the Blue Train by Agatha Christie in which Poirot investigates a complicated crime when the Blue Train steams into Nice and a murder is discovered.

It was close on midnight when a man crossed the Place de la Concorde. In spite of the handsome fur coat which garbed his meagre form, there was something essentially weak and paltry about him.

A little man with the face like a rat. (page 1)

Hector and the Search for Happiness by François Lelord about a young psychiatrist finding out whether there is such a thing as the secret of true happiness.

And yet Hector felt dissatisfied.

He felt dissatisfied because he could see perfectly well that he couldn’t make people happy. (page 5)

Well, I still don’t know what to read next. Has anyone read any of these? What would you suggest?

Sunday Salon

Published on by Margaret5 Comments

 

This week I’ve been reading  Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel and The Very Thought of You by Rosie Alison, both shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. I’ve finished both of them and can’t find any easy way to compare them. They are such different books, Wolf Hall – historical fiction about big events, full of characters based on real people, but written in such an intimate way that I felt I was there, versus The Very Thought of You – a quiet book about love in its various forms but written with so little dialogue and so much explanation of what the characters are thinking and feeling that I felt detached as though I was merely watching the events as they unfolded rapidly before my eyes. I enjoyed them both in different ways. I’ll be writing more about both books in later posts.

I haven’t written much here this week, more reading than writing! I wrote an Agatha Christie Reading Challenge Update which is included in The Latest Agatha Christie Blog Carnival out today with 30 contributions from 11 contributors in a bumper edition. It also includes my post on Christie’s Passenger To Frankfurt. This month’s carnival has a new feature – A Featured Blog kicking off with Margot Kinberg’s remarkable blog Confessions of a Mystery Writer. Every day Margot writes such interesting posts on various aspects of crime fiction which, of course, majors on Agatha Christie’s books.

I’m also reading Agatha Christie and the Eleven Missing Days by Jared Cade, which is not just about her mysterious disappearance in December 1926 but is also about her life as a whole. It’s fascinating reading. I’m not sure what to read next – the choice is too much, but I may start Agatha Christie’s autobiography or go for something completely different, such as Virginia Woolf’s The Voyage Out or John le Carre’s The Honourable Schoolboy.

Sunday Salon – Recent, Current and Future Reading

Published on by Margaret5 Comments

I keep a record of the books I read but it’s meaningless to think of them in terms of how many I read because that depends not only on their length but also on the nature and complexity of the books.  I’ve read three books so far this month:

But that is no indication at all of the amount of reading I’ve been doing. And this is mainly because one of the books I’m currently reading and have been reading for a while is the massive Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. I’m nearing the end now with just under 150 pages left to read. I read this morning that Henry has married Anne Boleyn, she has had her coronation and given birth to Elizabeth. Henry, of course, wanted a son and I wondered as I read this whether the words Mantel puts in his mouth were from a contemporary source or were her own in the light of her knowledge of future events. Henry is striding about the palace at Greenwich:

We are young enough, he says, and next time it will be a boy. One day we will make a great marriage for her. Believe me, God intends some peculiar blessing by this princess (my own emphasis). (page 485).

The other book I’m reading is The Very Thought of You by Rosie Alison. I’m torn between wanting to finish it and taking it slowly just because it’s so good. It’s very easy to read (it’s not written in the present tense, which helps enormously) and I could gallop through it at top speed, so different from Wolf Hall, where I sometimes have to flip back a few pages and re-read them to make sure I know what’s going on. The characters in The Very Thought of You are clearly delineated and I don’t have to wonder ‘now who is that?’  as I do in Wolf Hall – thank goodness that book has a Cast of Characters at the front and two family trees as well.

The Very Thought of You begins in 1939 and as I’m reading I’m becoming very aware that I know very little about that time or about the Second World War as a whole. I’ve been meaning to find out more and a while ago I bought Wartime Britain 1939-1945 by Juliet Gardiner, to fill in some of the gaps in my knowledge, so I keep dipping in to that as I read. It looks as though Alison has done her research well.

As for the books I have coming up next to read, I want to get back to reading more Agatha Christie – Death on the Nile for example and  also Set in Darkness, the next Rebus book in my reading of Ian Rankin’s series. But before that I have some review books to read. The vast majority of the books I read are my own or borrowed from the library or friends and family, but every now and then I receive books from publishers. At the moment I have three I haven’t read yet, although I have read the beginning of each one:

There is one more book that I’d love to read right now and that is The Border Line by Eric Robson (a library book). Robson is a broadcaster and he wrote this book about walking the modern border line between England and Scotland from the Solway Firth to Berwick-on-Tweed. It’s a mixture of history and anecdotes with descriptions of the landscape – the cairns, castles, battlefields and boundary stones along the way. This is the area we spent much time in last year when we were looking for a place to move to in the Borders and where we now live.