Category: Books

Teaser Tuesdays – Hearts and Minds

Published on by Margaret7 Comments

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.

Share a couple or more sentences from the book you’re currently reading. You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your ‘teaser’ from €¦ that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given!

I’ve just started to read Hearts and Minds by Amanda Craig. I bought this book last year, attracted by the description on the back cover which describes it a contemporary novel which is entertaining and asking questions about the way we live. It’s about five people, all immigrants living in London, an illegal mini-cab driver from Zimbabwe, an idealistic supply teacher, from South Africa, a miserable dogsbody at a political magazine, from New York and a teenager trafficked into sexual slavery.

I remembered it when I saw that it’s on the Orange Prize for Fiction longlist and thought it was time I read it.

My teaser is from page 7.

Polly thinks gratefully of Iryna overhead. Bill has teased her about the way her life is dependent on cheap foreign labour, and she is conscious of the irony that, while her professional life often consists of helping refugees and illegal immigrants, her ability to do so depends upon exploiting them.

More teasers can be found here.

Breaks In Reading?

Published on by Margaret11 Comments

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Do you take breaks while reading a book? Or read it straight through? (And, by breaks, I don’t mean sleeping, eating and going to work; I mean putting it aside for a time while you read something else.)

I have three books on the go right now. Sometimes I have more. I have tried sticking to one book, but it just doesn’t work like that for me, I seem to need the variety. I’ll be reading one book and find myself wanting to read something different, which is why I often have one book of non-fiction and a variety of fiction at hand to turn to. But there always comes a point in each book where that book takes over and I read it through to the end without interruption from the others. At the moment it’s The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters that is taking precedence, closely followed by Raven Black by Ann Cleeves, with Being Shelley by Ann Wroe trailing behind in third place.

It can become difficult if I have put a book aside for a while and then I have to start reading it again from the beginning! It gets even more difficult when I’ve been to the library and want to start all the books I’ve just borrowed.

And so it goes on …

Weekend Cooking

Published on by Margaret8 Comments

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs.

This week I’m writing about chocolate – or more precisely Green and Black’s Chocolate Recipes.  On the front cover:

Chocolate makes otherwise normal people melt into strange states of ecstasy. (John West)

Described as the “ultimate chocolate cookbook”, this book is filled with recipes from Chocolate Soup, Swedish Chocolate Coffee Lamb, Chilean Chocolate Sausages to Chocolate Drop Scones, Chocolate Cakes and Biscuits, Mousses and Truffles and many more.

Green and Black’s produce organic chocolate from cacao from the Mayan Indians in Belize. Throughout the book there are photos of not only the recipes, but also of the beans and the people who grow them with information about the growing and cultivation process.

There are chapters such as “Magic”, “Melting”, “Licking the Bowl”, “Mystical”, and “Wicked”. In the “Mystical” chapter there is this recipe called Dark with Coffee. It’s made with:

  • 150g dark chocolate, minimum 60% cocoa solids, broken into pieces
  • 2 tablespoons filter coffee
  • 60g unsalted butter
  • 3 large eggs separated
  • 3 tablespoons castor sugar
  • Cocoa powder

Melt the chocolate with the coffee and butter in a heatproof bowl over a pan of barely simmering water. Remove from heat (let it cool a bit) and stir in in egg yolks until smooth. Whisk egg whites into soft peaks, add sugar and whisk until stiff and glossy. Fold a ladleful into the chocolate and then add the rest of the egg whites carefully retaining as much air as possible until no white spots remain from the meringue.

Spoon into a serving bowl or individual dishes and chill for at least six hours. Dust with cocoa powder before serving.

This will serve  up to six people, or unless you are like my husband, who made this recipe and spooned the mixture into two chocolate cups (but we didn’t eat it all in one go!) – truly a chocolate treat.

The Orange Prize for Fiction Longlist

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

The Orange Prize for Fiction is awarded annually for the best fiction novel written by a woman. Here is this year’s longlist:

I have just two of these books – Hearts and Minds by Amanda Craig and Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, which won the 2009  Man Booker Prize – will it win this one? And I’ve currently borrowed The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters, which was shortlisted for the 2009 Man Booker Prize.

Will these three be on the shortlist when it is announced on 20 April?

Sunday Salon – Reading And All That …

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

Today is Mother’s Day and I’ll be spending some time reading my present from my son – Amos, Amas, Amat … And All That by Harry Mount. It’s been on my wishlist for some time now! And a nice change it will make from all the crime fiction I’ve been reading recently. From the back cover:

 In this delightful guided tour of Latin, which features everything from a Monty Python grammar lesson to David Beckham’s tattoos and all the best snippets of prose and poetry from 2000 years of literary history, Harry Mount wipes the dust off those boring primers and breathes life back into the greatest language of them all …

Not that the crime fiction I’ve been reading is boring – far from it. My reading has been a real treat and is way ahead of my reviews of these books:

I finished reading A Fatal Inversion by Barbara Vine at the end of last week and was so pleased after not liking her book The Birthday Present to find that this book about the discovery of the bones of a young woman and a baby in an animal burial ground was very different. There is a real air of mystery surrounding the several unlikeable characters – anyone of whom could be the guilty party.

 The Careful Use of Compliments by Alexander McCall Smith was a complete surprise to me as I had no idea when I borrowed it from the library just how much I was going to enjoy it. From a somewhat slow start I soon got used to the rhythm of his writing and was greatly intrigued by the character of Isabel Dalhousie.

Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? by Agatha Christie is a light-hearted mystery featuring Bobby Jones and Frankie (Lady FrancesDerwent) as they investigate a murder. This is a highly fantastical tale which I read at break-neck speed and thoroughly enjoyed.

Dead in the Morning by Margaret Yorke is the first book in her Patrick Grant series, first published in 1970. Set in an English village this is about an English family upset by the death of their housekeeper. All sorts of family secrets are revealed with plenty of red herrings along the way but the ending is predictable.

I’ll be writing in more detail about each one soon.

Next week my choice of reading is between these books, which I have on the go:

  • The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson which I started a few weeks ago and put to one side.
  • Being Shelley by Ann Wroe – ongoing reading
  • Stratton’s War by Lorna Wilson. I’m not sure if I’ll finish this as I feel little inclination to pick it up at the moment.

I’m tempted to start a new one. Maybe another Agatha Christie or Ian Rankin, or The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters, which I’ve read is very good, or Maggie’s Tree by Julie Walters – her first novel, described as “dark and very funny”, which I found at the library.

Illustrious – Booking Through Thursday

Published on by Margaret10 Comments

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How do you feel about illustrations in your books? Graphs? Photos? Sketches?

I think illustrations are essential in some books and not in others. Non-fiction cries out for them. They enhance biographies for example. Cookery books without photos are just not as explanatory, they demonstrate how the cooked dish should look. Imagine travel books without photos or drawings – each reader would ‘see’ different places in their mind’s eye; or gardening books without examples.  And art books – impossible without illustrations.

I’m not so good at interpreting graphs and diagrams, though. I need words as well.  I’m not so keen on the tips in boxes that are dotted about such books as the Complete Idiot’s Guide series. I find them irritating and distracting. Maps are better – I love maps and plans in fiction as well as non-fiction.

As for fiction. I like it plain. Although, just this week I’ve been tempted to read The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana by Umberto Eco. This has a generous helping of illustrations  – photos, drawings, extracts from newspapers and magazines sprinkled thoughout. And it looks as though they are essential to the plot.

(Click on the photo to see a larger and clearer picture.)

All of which brings me to graphic novels. I haven’t read any. Each time I look at the selection in a library or bookshop I can’t find any that appeal and yet other bloggers have written reams in praise of graphic novels. I loved comics as a child and liked reading the comic strips such as The Gambols and Shultz’s Peanuts with Charlie Brown. Those of you who love graphic novels – please recommend a good one to get me going, bearing in mind that I’ve looked at and discarded graphic novels of Jane Austen and other classics.