Category: Books

2009 Books

Published on by Margaret8 Comments

I’ve already written two posts on the books I read last year, with lists of my favourite books and top ten crime fiction reads. Several bloggers have published their reading statistics and I’ve decided to join in, but I don’t intend to list all 93 of the books I read last year here – they can be found under the tab “Books Read“, nor to analyse them in great detail.

Most of my reading is fiction and about half of it this year has been crime fiction. I only read 11 non fiction books and 6 of those were autobiographies, biographies or memoirs. About half the books were my own and the other half I borrowed from the library or friends. I read about 7 or 8 books a month, sometimes less, rarely more. But in December I finished reading only 1 book – moving house and Christmas severely affected my reading!

I enjoyed reading all the books, with only less than a handful that weren’t as good as the rest and there were just a few that I didn’t finish. I don’t say abandoned because one day I hope to finish Suite Francaise for example. I stopped reading that one months ago, when it became just too much to go on with it.

Of all the books I read last year these are the most memorable (the links are to the posts on the books):

  •  Fire in the Blood by Irene Nemirovsky
  • A Judgement in Stone by Ruth Rendell
  • Somewhere Towards the End by Diana Athill (I still haven’t written much about this)
  • Jane Austen by Claire Tomalin
  • After the Victorians by A N Wilson (still no post on this one either)

The Sunday Salon

Published on by Margaret8 Comments

tssbadge1I have finished reading Drood on this first Sunday of 2010, needless to say I read most of it in December! I feel relief at getting to the end and am looking forward to reading something else. I’ll write about once I’ve had more time to think it over as a whole.

Along with Drood I’ve been reading Be Near Me by Andrew O’Hagan.  This is about a English priest in a small Scottish parish; as he makes friends with some of the locals and experiences prejudice from others he reflects on his past life. I’m enjoying it. Hilary Mantel writes:

[O’Hagan] is a fine stylist, a penetrating analyst, a knowledgeable guide to high thinking and squalid living. This is a nuanced, intense and complex treatment of a sad and simple story. Read it twice.

My plan to have a box of books not in storage didn’t work out because there was no room in our car for them, so I’ve only had a few books around until Christmas Day when my husband presented me with this pile.

Xmas books 09

I think I’ll start with Paul Auster’s Invisible.

And for the rest of today I intend to unpack and sort some books and choose which one to read next.

Booking Through Thursday – 2009 in Review

Published on by Margaret9 Comments

btt button

It’s the last day of the year, and you know what that means €¦ nostalgia and looking back.

What were your favorite books of the year? (Books that were new to you in 2009, if not necessarily published this year.)

This year I’ve read more crime fiction than ever before in one year and I’ll be writing a post on “My Top Ten Crime Fiction Reads 2009” very soon. As usual it’s hard deciding which are my favourite books and I could easily list more than ten. These are what I have settled on – not in any order of preference.

Miscellaneous

Published on by Margaret12 Comments

Christmas has been and gone whilst I’ve been away from the blogworld. For days I didn’t even switch on the computer, what with getting ready for Christmas, which this year included moving loads of boxes we haven’t unpacked so that our son and his family had room to sleep at the weekend, and I had a cold, which didn’t help at all. Anyway we had a good time.

I had some books (my favourite presents) for Christmas, all of which I now can’t wait to read. No doubt I’ll be writing about them later – they include Agatha Christie’s autobiography, and her Secret Notebooks and a book on the Eleven Missing Days, all of which I’ve dipped into.

Meanwhile I’m still ploughing through Drood. I have very mixed feelings about this. Ann wrote the other day on her blog Table Talk that she has a problem with books centred on people who really existed and I think that is part of my problem with Drood.

Drood himself, of course, is a fictional character, but most of the book is about Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens, both of whom don’t come across as  people I would want to meet. But I want to know more about them, if only to find out what they were really like, and to read more of their books. I’m glad I’ve already read Collins’s The Moonstone, because the plot of this is detailed in Drood.

The other stumbling block I have with Drood is that there is far too much detail and emphasis for my liking on horrific opium induced nightmares. On the other hand I want to know how it ends, so it is keeping me turning the pages, although I am tempted just to skip to the last few pages.

The snow is still here, thawing just a little bit today, but we ventured out yesterday to the next town, over the border in Scotland and joined the library. I restricted myself to borrowing just three books – two on the history of the Borders and The Music Room by William Fiennes. I have The Snow Geese by him, which I’d really like to read soon – but it’s still in a box somewhere.

Teaser Tuesdays

Published on by Margaret10 Comments

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

We’re still not in our new home, but still have access to the internet and I’m still reading! Next week it’ll be more difficult with all the unpacking and settling in, so I’ll probably be missing from the blogosphere then.

Currently I’m reading Mortal Causes by Ian Rankin.

About the book (from the back cover): It is August in Edinburgh and the Festival is in full swing… A brutally tortured body is discovered in one of the city’s ancient subterranean streets and marks on the corpse cause Rebus to suspect the involvement of sectarian activists. The prospect of a terrorist atrocity in a city heaving with tourists is almost unthinkable. When the victim turns out to be the son of a notorious gangster, Rebus realises he is sitting atop a volcano of mayhem – and it’s just about to erupt.

My teaser is from page 54:

Rebus shrugged. I’m just wondering how professional all of this really was. I mean on the surface, if you look at the style of execution, then yes, it was a pro job, no question. But then things start to niggle.

I always enjoy reading the Rebus books.  Although you can read each one as a stand alone book, reading them in order helps with understanding the background and the characters as they develop. I prefer reading to watching the TV series, but inevitably it is the faces of the actors I imagine as I’m reading.

Sunday Salon -This Weekend’s Books

Published on by Margaret6 Comments

tssbadge1I’d sorted out some books to take with me whilst we are between houses, but sadly there wasn’t room in the car for the box, so it had to go into storage. I kept out the ones I was already reading:

  • A Secret Alchemy by Emma Darwin, which I finished yesterday. This is historical fiction set during and after the Wars of the Roses. It’s very good – more about it later.
  • Mortal Causes by Ian Rankin – crime fiction, the sixth Inspector Rebus book.
  •  Can Any Mother Help Me? by Jenna Bailey – this is a fascinating book of letters written by a group of women over a period of fifty years. Their letters are part of the Mass Observation archive, forming a record of everyday life during the last century.
  •  Billy by Pamela Stephenson – a biography of Billy Connolly, written by his wife.

On 1 December I began Emily’s TBR Challenge – reading books I already owned from before then. So it was lucky for me that we went shopping in Milton Keynes last Sunday – 29 November and I bought three books to add to to the little pile I have with me until we can unpack our books, which won’t be for a while yet. The shopping centre was absolutely solid with people last Sunday, which makes me feel very claustrophobic and just want to go home, but I managed to buy these:

  • Black and Blue by Ian Rankin – another Inspector Rebus book. D is ahead of me in reading these and this is the next one he’ll be reading.
  • Portobello by Ruth Rendell – a thriller (not an Inspector Wexford).
  • Drood by Dan Simmons – I’ve been wondering whether to read this after reading about it on the blogs. As it’s so long it should keep me going for quite a while. A novel of 19th century England, this is a fictionalised account of  Charles Dickens’ last five years as narrated by Wilkie Collins. I haven’t read Dickens’ The Mystery of Edwin Drood, so I hope that won’t matter.

Today I’ll be reading Mortal Causes and maybe start Drood.