Category: Challenges

What's In A Name 6 Challenge: Completed

Published on by Margaret1 Comment

WIName 6

I’ve completed the What’s in a Name 6 challenge hosted by Beth Fish Reads, which runs between January 1 and December 31, 2013. The idea is to read one book in each of the Challenge categories.

I like this Challenge which has no theme linking the books, except that it is based purely on the book title.  Each category is complete in itself, so it is ideal to use to whittle down my to-be-read books or to include new books or books from the library. It’s worked well, although I didn’t read most of the books I’d listed in my sign-up post, but four of the books are from my TBR shelves – so that’s a good thing.

The books I read (linking to my posts on the books):

1. A book with up or down (or equivalent) in the title: Falling Angels by Tracy Chevalier (from TBR books) – I was fascinated by this book! It has depth both of characterisation and of themes €“ family relationships, in particular that of mother and daughter, attitudes towards death and mourning, the change in social codes, the perils of being an unmarried mother and the beginnings of the women’s movement. I should have got round to reading it ages ago.

2. A book with something you’d find in your kitchen in the title: Dead Water by Ann Cleeves (a new book) – I loved this latest book in Ann Cleeve’s Shetland series, featuring Detective Jimmy Perez as he investigates the death of journalist Jerry Markham, found drifting in a yoal, a traditional Shetland boat in Aith marina.  Cleeves writes with clarity, so that you can easily picture the people and the places she describes.

3. A book with a party or celebration in the title: The Birthday Boys by Beryl Bainbridge (from TBR books) – another great novel that I loved, this is about Captain Scott’s last Antarctic Expedition. It gets inside each man’s mind, vividly describing the events as they progressed to the South Pole and the terrible conditions they had to endure. Beryl Bainbridge’s imagination and research combined make this a dramatic heroic story and an emotional roller-coaster set in the beautiful but deadly dangerous frozen landscape of the Antarctic.

4. A book with fire (or equivalent) in the title: Daughters of Fire by Barbara Erskine (from TBR books) – historical time-slip fiction switching between the present day and the first century CE Britannia, a mix of historical fiction, fantasy and romance. I was a bit disappointed with this book as although the essential story was good, it dragged on, drowned in words and by the repetition of the struggles between the characters. Because of this the ending was drained of any impact and suspense for me.

5. A book with an emotion in the title: The Case of the Curious Bride by Erle Stanley Gardner (from TBR books) – a Perry Mason book, which I thought was far-fetched and unsatisfactory as Perry resorts to trickery, fooling everyone.

6. A book with lost or found (or equivalent) in the title: The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown (a new acquisition on Kindle) – pure escapist reading, this is a breathtaking race over 24 hours as Robert Langdon follows the clues, to rescue the his friend, Peter Solomon, a Mason. Not great literature but great entertainment.

The Shining by Stephen King

Published on by Margaret12 Comments

Years ago I read a few of Stephen King’s books, including Carrie and Christine but I didn’t read The Shining. I saw the film with Jack Nicolson, which is terrifying. I remember his crazed face as he rampaged through the hotel, the sense of evil and terror, and I decided that was enough – I wouldn’t read the book.

Recently I changed my mind and bought a copy on Kindle and began reading – it’s an ideal book to read for Carl’s R.I.P. challenge. It has a fascinating introduction by Stephen King, in which he writes about writing horror stories and how he came to write The Shining, which was a ‘crossroads novel’ for him. He wanted to go deeper than he had in his earlier books (The Shining was his third novel) and make his characters more realistic and therefore more frightening. In my opinion he succeeded.

The Shining tells the story of Jack Torrance and his family as they move into the Overlook Hotel in the Colorada Rockies. The Overlook is closed for the winter and Jack, a recovering alcoholic is the caretaker. Just what impels him towards murder is horrifyingly revealed as the winter weather closes in on the hotel and they are cut off from the rest of the world. For terrible things had taken place at the hotel and as psychic forces gather strength ghosts begin to surface and both Jack and his five year old son, Danny are their targets. There are hints right from the start that the Overlook is not a good place to be and Jack is told that there have been scandals and suspicious deaths, and he soon discovers from records down in the basement just what has been going on. Also down in the basement is the boiler – that seems to have a life of its own – Jack has to control it, release the pressure to let off its steam.

Danny too, who has the gift of ‘shining’ was warned by Dick Hallorann, the hotel’s cook, as he was leaving, that bad things had happened in the hotel and if he should see something he should just look the other way and it would be gone. ‘Shining’ is a psychic ability – both Danny and Hallorann can hear people’s thoughts, and see visions of the past and of the future. He tells Danny to ‘call’ him if there’s trouble and he’ll come to help. Danny tries looking the other way, but it doesn’t work and he desperately needs Hallorann’s help. I didn’t remember this part in the film and as the tension built, just as the pressure in the boiler inexorably rose, I just couldn’t foresee how the book would end.

In fact there’s an awful lot of the film I don’t remember. I didn’t remember the hedge animals. These are blood-chilling as they come to life and move when you’re not looking – like the stone angels in Doctor Who! Truly terrifying. And the carpet in the hotel corridor with its deep jungle of blue and black woven vines and creepers, the light blue silk wallpaper with the embossed pattern of wavy lines and the wasps crawling and stinging again and again. Oh, no I probably couldn’t have watched that – and I couldn’t stand to watch the film again to see if these scenes were in it!

The characters are so well-drawn and so distinct. Their vulnerability, coupled with the way King gets inside each person’s head, increases the element of fear. There’s the horror of the father who has monsters inside his head, who still loves his son, but demands he should ‘take his medicine’; the evil is palpable. Then, the powerlessness of the mother to help either her husband or son makes it even more frightening. Even when it seems to have ended there is a further twist in the tale and it’s not the end. I read on breathless, almost.

It was only when I’d nearly finished read The Shining that I discovered that Stephen King has written a sequel, Doctor Sleep – I just have to read that!

The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown: Book Notes

Published on by Margaret3 Comments

I read Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol back in July and never got round to writing about it at the time, so I’ve forgotten much of the detail. For pure escapism I really like Dan Brown’s books. I know lots of people criticise his writing but I find his books hard to put down once I’ve started reading them – I’ve read The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons as well as this one. They’re not great literature but they are great entertainment, even though this one follows the same formula – it’s a breathtaking race over 24 hours as Robert Langdon follows the clues, to rescue the his friend, Peter Solomon, a Mason. Because it’s so formulaic I knew what to expect (although not the detail), it’s full of cliff-hangers and the characters are stereotypes.

It’s long and complicated, full of coincidences and improbable situations, all of which I had no trouble accepting, and a terrifying and crazy villain, Mal’ahk. It’s also packed with detail about the Freemasons,the art and architecture of Washington D.C., and Noetic Science – ‘a fusion of modern particle physics and ancient mysticism’,  all of which was new to me and I found it fascinating. It helped that I read the Illustrated Edition on Kindle which has many photographs and illustrations and I kept checking facts on the computer too.

I don’t think it’s as good as either The Da Vinci Code or Angels and Demons, but that may because the first had the novelty factor and the second is set in Rome, a place I’ve visited and know more about than Washington D.C. It did make me want to visit Washington D.C. though. And I do intend to read his next book Inferno. I’ve read some of Dante’s Inferno and I’ve visited Florence so I’m keen to find out where Robert Langdon’s race against time takes him and how Brown incorporates the details of the Circles of Hell.

Although I didn’t read this to take part in the What’s in a Name Challenge I’ve realised that it does fit into the category of book with the word ‘lost‘ in the title, making this the last book for me to complete the Challenge.

Mount TBR Challenge: September Checkpoint

Published on by Margaret8 Comments

Mount TBRIt’s time to check in for Bev’s Mount TBR Reading Challenge 2013.

This is a very simple challenge – to read books from your own shelves.  All the books I own are ones I want to read so why is it so difficult to reduce my TBR mountain of books?I think it’s because of the temptation to read newly acquired books, those recently published and also older books that I come across either on the internet, or in the library or bookshops.

I suppose the only way not to keep adding to the TBR mountain is to stop going to the library, bookshops or read the internet – and I really don’t want to do that and I could miss out on some good books. So, the TBR piles never get smaller, even though I’ve been reading quite a lot this year – 26 so far, which is one more than I read in the whole of last year.

This quarter I’ve read 13 of my TBR books (linked to my posts on the books):

  1. Falling Angels by Tracy Chevalier
  2. Tamburlaine Must Die by Louise Welsh
  3. The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
  4. The Case of the Howling Dog by Erle Stanley Gardner
  5. The Red Coffin by Sam Eastland
  6. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
  7. Third Girl (Poirot) by Agatha Christie
  8. Agatha Christie at Home by Hilary Macaskill
  9. The Birthday Boys by Beryl Bainbridge
  10. The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
  11. The Death Maze by Ariana Franklin
  12. Relics of the Dead by Ariana Franklin
  13. Not the End of the World by Christopher Brookmyre

There are a couple of outstanding books in the ones I’ve read this quarter – To Kill a Mockingbird, and The Birthday Boys. 

Here are my answers to some of Bev’s questions:

1. Tell us how many miles you’ve made it up your mountain (# of books read).  If you’re really ambitious, you can do some intricate math and figure out how the number of books you’ve read correlates to actual miles up Pike’s Peak, Mt. Ararat, etc. 

This means in terms of mountains climbed (according to the Challenge criteria) that I’ve scaled Mont Blanc (24 books) and am now in the foothills of Mt Vancouver (36 books) – quite a way to go until my target of Mt Ararat (48 books).

2. 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?

Of the books read this quarter I think Falling Angels has been on the list the longest and it was well worth the wait. I always wonder why I haven’t read such a book earlier when I’ve enjoyed reading it so much, but really it doesn’t matter when I read it, so long as I do sometime!

Third Girl by Agatha Christie

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

Third Girl was first published in 1966. In it Poirot is probably meant to be approaching eighty, although if he had aged with the books he would have been well over a hundred! Anyway, the young lady who comes to see him about ‘a murder she might have committed‘ runs out of his room after blurting out:

‘You’re too old. Nobody told me you were so old. I really don’t want to be rude but – there it is. You’re too old. I’m really very sorry.’ (page 13)

Poirot is bored. He had finished his Magnum Opus, an analysis of detective fiction writers, in which he had spoken scathingly of Edgar Allen Poe, and had complained of the lack of method or order in the romantic outpourings of Wilkie Collins. He had no idea what to do next, so, his interest is aroused by the young lady’s announcement and he sets out to discover what murder she ‘might have committed.’ It turns out that Mrs Ariadne Oliver had told the girl about him when talking with friends about detectives and together they discover that she is Norma Restarick, the ‘third girl’, sharing a flat with two other girls.

Norma thinks she might be crazy, but won’t see a doctor. She doesn’t always remember what she has done. She hates her stepmother and thinks she might have poisoned her. Poirot is intrigued but when a suspicion of espionage surfaces it is all too much for him:

Poirot gave an exasperated sigh.

‘Enfin,’ he said, ‘it is too much! There is far too much. Now we have espionage and counter espionage. All I am seeking is one perfectly simple murder. I begin to suspect that that murder only occurred in a drug addict’s brain! (page 211)

But as Poirot reminds himself it is his ‘metier’ to deal with murder, to clear up murder, to prevent murder and eventually with a casual phrase spoken by Mrs Oliver it all becomes clear to him.

The plot is complex, which is rather puzzling,  but for me Third Girl is also interesting because of its commentary on the 1960s culture seen through the eyes of the older characters – the disparaging remarks about the youth of the day – beatniks, long hair, clothes that were of doubtful cleanliness, and skimpy skirts, and the Van Dyke type clothes some of the young men wore, the drink and drugs and wild parties. Mrs Oliver has her usual gripe about people saying things to her about her books and how they longed to meet her, making her feel ‘hot, bothered and rather silly‘ and how much they love the ‘awful detective Sven Hjerson‘ she had created and now hates.

Maybe it’s not one of Agatha Christie’s best books but I think it’s very entertaining.

Falling Angels by Tracy Chevalier

Published on by Margaret8 Comments

I really enjoyed reading Falling Angels by Tracy Chevalier. It’s been sitting unread for several years on the to-be read shelves and I’ve been meaning to read it for ages after reading her earlier book, Girl with a Pearl Earring. I should have got round to it sooner.

It begins:

I woke this morning with a stranger in my bed. The head of blond hair beside me was decidedly not my husband’s. I did not know whether to be shocked or amused.

Well, I thought, here’s a novel way to begin the new century.

It is 1901, the day after Queen Victoria’s death and the ‘I’ in this opening is Kitty Coleman, one of several narrators in this novel set in Edwardian England.

Synopsis from Tracy Chevalier’s website:

Two families visit neighboring graves in a fashionable London cemetery. One is decorated with a sentimental angel, the other an elaborate urn. The Waterhouses revere the late Queen and cling to Victorian traditions; the Colemans look forward to a more modern society. To their mutual distaste, the families are inextricably linked when their daughters become friends behind the tombstones. And worse, befriend the gravedigger’s son.

As the girls grow up and the new century finds its feet, as cars replace horses and electricity outshines gas lighting, Britain emerges from the shadows of oppressive Victorian values to a golden Edwardian summer. It is then that the beautiful, frustrated Mrs Coleman makes a bid for greater personal freedom, with disastrous consequences, and the lives of the Colemans and the Waterhouses are changed forever.

A poignant tale of two families brought reluctantly together, Falling Angels is an intimate story of childhood friendships, sexual awakening and human frailty. Yet its epic sweep takes in the changing of a nation, the fight for women’s suffrage and the questioning of steadfast beliefs.

My view:

This book covers the years from 1901 – 1908 when the world was on the cusp of change just before the outbreak of the First World War, and I found myself wondering what my grandmothers, who would have been much the same age as Kitty Coleman and Gertrude Waterhouse, had thought about it all. What would they have thought about the suffragettes for example? I suspect it would have been similar to one of the characters, Jenny Whitby, the Colemans’ maid servant, as they too were domestic servants. Jenny is horrified when she listens to the suffragettes, whilst she served them with scones at Kitty Coleman’s ‘At Home’:

What I heard made me want to spit. They talked about helping women but it turns out they are choosy about who exactly gets the help. They ain’t fighting for my vote – only for women who own property or went to university. (pages 227 – 228)

Maybe my great aunt who never married and became a matron at a public school would have had more sympathy and agreed with the suffragettes that all women would not get the vote all at once and they had to start somewhere. These are the early years of the suffragette movement culminating in the book in June 1908 with the Women’s March in Hyde Park to demand Votes for Women.

The change between Victorian and Edwardian England was a gradual one, as attitudes to life and death were transformed and the middle-class Colemans and the Waterhouses reflect these changing attitudes with the Colemans looking forward to the modern era, whilst the Waterhouses still value the Victorian traditions. I was interested in the discussion about cremation/burial, with Kitty favouring cremation  in opposition to her mother-in-law as they visited the columbarium (a place for keeping cinerary remains, ie ashes) that had recently been opened at the cemetery. Their discussion with Mr Jackson, the superintendent of the cemetery was a theological one in which he ends the discussion of how God could reunite the body and soul if the body has been burnt by saying:

Surely there is no difference between the decomposed remains of a buried body and the ashes of a burned one. … I would simply say that God is capable of all things, and nothing we do with our remains will stop Him if he wishes to reunite our souls with our bodies. (pages 37 – 38)

I liked the multiple first person narrator structure of the book, giving an all round view of events and the characters’ views and thoughts. It was easy to distinguish between them all, the two daughters, Maude Coleman and Lavinia Waterhouse in particular are very well depicted. The setting too is so well described that I could imagine myself wandering round the cemetery with all its gothic symbology, and see the suffragettes’ march with their banners ‘Deeds not Words’ and hear their cries of ‘Votes for Women’.

It’s an easy to read book that still manages to contain depth both of characterisation and of themes – family relationships, in particular that of mother and daughter, attitudes towards death and mourning, the change in social codes, the perils of being an unmarried mother and the beginnings of the women’s movement. I was fascinated by it!

This page on Tracy Chevalier’s website lists her books – I have one more of hers – The Lady and the Unicorn, I mustn’t wait too long before I read it!

Although I didn’t read this to take part in any challenges I realise that it fits in with several I’ve signed up to do – the Mount TBR Challenge, the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge and the What’s in a Name Challenge (in the category of book with the word ‘down’ or an equivalent in the title).