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Teaser Tuesday

Published on January 20, 2009 by Margaret8 Comments

I read on Aviannschild’s blog how she modifies the rules for Teaser Tuesday and it took my fancy. Instead of choosing two sentences from the beginning of the page pick two or three ‘teaser’ sentences, more or less at random from the book, anywhere on the page. (The official rules are here.)

My teaser today is from page 140 of IrÃ¨ne NÃ©mirovksy’s Fire in the Blood:

What I could not foresee was the flame that would be locked inside me, whose cinders would continue to glow for years to come, to burn in my heart. How strange it is when something that we have desired so much actually happens.

Musing Mondays

Published on January 19, 2009April 25, 2020 by Margaret5 Comments

Today’s MUSING MONDAYS post is about reading while sick…

How does your being sick (or injured) affect your reading? Do you read more? Less? Do you pick out a different book than you had already planned? Do you have a “comfort book” that makes you feel better?

It all depends on how sick I am. If I’m just off-colour or have a cold it doesn’t affect my reading, except that I’ll probably spend more time reading, until I fall asleep. When I’ve felt really bad – when I had flu or a middle ear infection for instance (both were years ago) I just couldn’t read at all – couldn’t even lift my head off the pillow, never mind pick up a book!

lark-rise-still-glides

I don’t have a “comfort book” that makes me feel better, although when I was recovering from flu I read and enjoyed Flora Thompson’s books Lark Rise to Candleford and Still Glides the Stream and remember both with affection as comforting books.

the-sea-the-sea2 When I had a really bad cold once (not flu) I was off work because of it and read Iris Murdoch’s The Sea, The Sea, which was not really a good choice if you want a book to cheer you up, but it sticks in my mind. It’s the sort of book I like to read in large chunks and having a cold gave me the extra time – although I did keep falling asleep and having to re-read pages. It’s funny but when I’m dropping off I read words that make sense but are not in the book at all and when I read it again it’s very different – either that or I have no idea what I’ve read at all.

The Sunday Salon

Published on January 18, 2009November 17, 2018 by Margaret5 Comments

Sunday Salon Today I’ve been reading an autobiography that reads like a novel and a novel that is a fictionalised biography.

The autobiography is William Woodruff’s The Road to Nab End. I’m loving this book and am amazed at the detail he could remember about his childhood. I was very interested in his family background. In 1906 his parents had emigrated from Blackburn to Fall River in Massachusetts, where his father worked in a cotton mill. Although he was doing well they returned to England in 1914. His father then joined up and went off to war, leaving his wife with three children to care for; when her savings ran out she was forced to work in the mills.

road-to-nab-end William was born in 1916. After the end of the war life was very different. His father came home disillusioned, a sick man, having been gassed at Ypres late in 1917, back to his job in the cotton mills. This book covers the period up to 1933, the poverty of Blackburn’s cotton workers, the local characters and their way of life. This morning I was reading about the General Strike of 1926 and was wondering how it affected my parents who were 12 at the time. William’s experience in Blackburn could have been similar to my father’s who lived about 30 miles south in Cheshire. Jumping forward in time William eventually moved to Florida, where he was a Graduate Research Professor until his retirement in 1996 – at the age of 80! He died last September in Florida. He continued his life story in Beyond Nab End.

blonde I do like variety in my reading and this morning I also briefly picked up Blonde by Joyce Carole Oates. I only read The Prologue and the first chapter, The Kiss, of this fictionalised life of Marilyn Monroe. Oates’s portrait imagines Marilyn’s inner life and begins with a portrayal of Death, hurtling unexpectedly to 12305 Fifth Helena Drive, Brentwood, California on 3 August 1962. I was reminded of the character of Death in The Good Thief. This book is going to take me a while to read as it’s another mammoth novel of 738 pages. I might alternate my reading with Barbara Leaming’s biography, Marilyn Monroe to see how they compare.

Yet More Books

Published on January 15, 2009 by Margaret11 Comments

No sooner do I think I have plenty of books to read and that I’ll concentrate on reading the books I already own than I go out looking for more. Nan over at Letters From a Hill Farm has far more resolve – she has decided not to buy any more books for a whole year and also not to borrow books either. Well I thought that was a good idea and maybe I should take it one month at a time and not buy any books, although I knew I would borrow books from the library. That thought soon deserted me; but at least I can comfort myself because I’d already identified the book I’ve now bought as one I’d planned to read this year.

It’s Eden’s Outcasts: the story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father by John Matteson and now of course I want to start reading it at once. The little I know of Louisa May is that she wrote some of my favourite childhood books – Little Women, Good Wives, Little Men and Jo’s Boys. I know even less about Bronson, her father, beyond the fact that he was a close friend of Emerson and Thoreau.

The only things that are holding me back from jumping straight into this book is that I’m already reading a few books – The Language of God: a Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief by Francis Collins, a book I started to read last year and stopped because I was finding it hard to follow. Collins is the head of the Human Genome Project and has “an unshakable faith in God”, but when he came to describing the Project, DNA and genomes he lost me. I do want to finish this book though and have started it again this year. In complete contrast I’m also reading The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason by Sam Harris about the irrationality of all religious faiths.

But the book that has really grabbed my attention is The Road to Nab End: an Extraordinary Northern Childhood by William Woodruff. My friend, Margaret lent me this book saying that it’s a wonderful book and she is right. In some ways it reminds me of Cider With Rosie by Laurie Lee, but this is about a Lancashire childhood, a life of poverty in Blackburn. I know it’s a clichÃ© but I really am finding hard to put this book down. It’s beautifully written, rich in description of both people and places and of the period. Woodruffe, an historian, was born in 1916 and lived in Blackburn until 1933.

So why when I went to the library yesterday did I pick up three more books? I returned a couple of books and then browsed the shelves to see if anything caught my eye. Of course there were many, but I restricted myself to three – An Imaginative Experience by Mary Wesley, even though her biography Wild Mary didn’t make me want to rush out and read her books this one was just sitting there as though it was waiting for me. The other two are Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen by P G Wodehouse because I enjoyed Something Fresh and fancied a bit of humour and The Mirror Crack’d From Side To Side by Agatha Christie, a great title taken from Tennyson’s The Lady of Shalott, and promising to be a satisfying murder mystery solved by Miss Marple.

Sunday Salon – On Daphne Du Maurier

Published on January 11, 2009November 18, 2025 by Margaret10 Comments

This morning I was reading Rebecca again.

It’s long been one of my favourite books but it’s been years since I last read it. There is something special about reading a book when you know the characters and what happens to them and yet at the same time you want it to turn out differently – to prevent the disaster happening, and to help them understand where they’re going wrong. I first read it as a young teenager and was instantly captivated by the story. Re-reading it now I have the same feelings about it – I long to know Maxim De Winter’s second wife’s name; the most we know is that it is a “lovely and unusual name“, given to her by her father and I want to give her a good shake. She is so lacking in self-confidence, timid and obsessed by Rebecca, the first wife.

I still feel the tension, the mystery and suspense as the story unfolds even though I know what’s coming next, but it’s the details I’ve forgotten and re-reading means that I don’t need to rush through to find out what happens and can concentrate on those details. For example I’d forgotten about the visit to Beatrice and Maxim’s grandmother. This is a small episode which encapsulates the pathos of old age, the loss of memory and the way that old people are treated.

After my first reading of Rebecca I eagerly read as many of Daphne Du Maurier’s books as I could find. So I read Jamaica Inn, Frenchman’s Creek, Mary Anne, The Scapegoat and The King’s General. I loved them all and have re-read them several times. I cannot imagine how it came about that I’ve lost my copies of Rebecca, Jamaica Inn, and Frenchman’s Creek but I have! So all I have left of my original books are these:

I bought a set of ten books a while ago from The Book People which included the three books I’ve lost.

I’ve since read The House on the Strand, The Flight of the Falcon and Castle Dor. None of them are as good as Rebecca, which was disappointing and I wondered if I would find Rebecca a bit of a let down now, which is why I’m now re-reading it. I’m glad to find that it is just as good as I remembered it to be! Some time soon I must re-read the other three books and hope they’ll be as good as well. And in future I’d like to read her other books too – not just those in the photograph but all her other books as well. I’ve read Margaret Forster’s biography, which I thought was excellent and I’d love to read Justine Picardie’s biogrpahical novel, Daphne, and Flavia Leng’s Daphne du Maurier : A Daughter’s Memoir.

New Year’s Resolutions

Published on January 1, 2009 by Margaret13 Comments

Happy New Year, everyone!

So €¦ any Reading Resolutions? Say, specific books you plan to read? A plan to read more ____? Anything at all? Name me at least ONE thing you’re looking forward to reading this year!

I’ve listed some of the books I’d like to read this year for the What’s In a Name 2 Challenge and then there are books from my to-be-read lists and the books I had for Christmas.

I’d also like to read these: