Category: Fiction

January's Books

Published on by Margaret10 Comments

If you look at how many books I read in January it doesn’t look as though I did much reading with just 4 books completed. I usually average about 8 books a month! But that statistic is misleading because I’ve read just as much if not more than usual because of the length of the books.

Jaunary 2013

I began reading Wild Swans:Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang last year but by January I’d only read less than a quarter of it, so I began January by reading the rest of the book, which took me up to the middle of the month. Wild Swans is an amazing book (720 pages). I wrote about it in this post.It’s a harrowing book to read, but it’s also an eye-opener (for me at any rate) about what happened in China under Mao. It’s a personal story, reflecting the twentieth century history of China. A remarkable book, full of courage and spirit.

I read just one crime fiction – The Case of the Curious Bride by Erle Stanley Gardner (from TBR books). I was disappointed really with this Perry Mason book and didn’t think it was as good as other books by him that I’ve read.

Next was Deaf Sentence by David Lodge, which I liked but didn’t love. Unlike the reviewer in the Literary Review (quoted on the back cover) I didn’t find it had ‘many laugh-out-loud moments‘, just a few amusing bits that made me smile. But is it a moving and at times melancholy book.

In a much lighter vein, although sad in parts is Paw Tracks at Owl Cottage by Denis O’Connor, which I read on my Kindle. It chronicles O’Connor’s experiences with four more cats, all Maine Coons, at his Northumberland cottage.

So, not a large number of books but a lot of reading, because I’ve also been reading Barbara Kingsolver’s The Lacuna, another long book which I’ve finished this morning. I suppose that goes under February’s books!

Deaf Sentence by David Lodge

Published on by Margaret2 Comments

I have mixed feelings about Deaf Sentence, but overall, I liked it.

Synopsis from the back cover:

Retired professor of linguistics Desmond Bates is going deaf. Not suddenly, but gradually and – for him and everyone nearby – confusingly. It’s a bother for his wife, Winifred, who has an enviably successful new career and is too busy to be endlessly repeating herself. Roles are reversed when he visits his hearing-impaired father, who won’t seek help and resents his son’s intrusions. And finally there is Alex. Alex is the student Desmond agrees to help after a typical misunderstanding. But her increasingly bizarre and disconcerting requests cannot – unfortunately – be blamed on defective hearing. So much for growing old disgracefully …

After an amusing start, the book almost slowed down to a stop for me with too much detail. It was only towards the middle of the book and the final third that it really came alive for me. It’s a mixture of reflections on deafness, life, death, ageing and bereavement.

It switches between the first person and the third person, which does give it a slightly disjointed effect but highlights Desmond’s unease with his situation. Not only is he having to come to terms with his increasing deafness but also with his retirement from the academic world. He still hankers after his position as a Professor of Linguistics. He’s having to deal with academic rivalry, and his feelings of isolation and inadequacies in his relationship with his wife and family.

I liked the word-play, the misunderstood conversations and the comedy surrounding deafness and the references to authors, poets and artists who had also suffered. But overall I thought this was a melancholy book about the problems of ageing, not just deafness:

Deafness is a kind of pre-death, a drawn-out introduction to the long silence into which we will all eventually lapse. (page 21)

I did enjoy the picture of Gladeworld that Lodge painted – if you’ve been to Center Parcs it’s instantly recognisable! Desmond likens it to ‘a benevolent concentration camp. A benign prison’, with the Tropical Waterworld a modern version of Dante’s Inferno, with

… half naked crowds tossed in the turbulent waves, or hurtling down the spirally semi-transparent tubes at terrifying velocity, or tumbled arse over elbow through the rapids, choked with water, blinded by spume, spun round in whirlpools, dragged backwards by undertow, entangled with each other’s limbs, bruised and battered by impact with the fibre glass walls, to be tipped at last into a boiling pit at the bottom … (page 225)

I know this from my own experience!

But contrast this with Desmond’s visit to Auschwitz – a real hell on earth. As Desmond reflects there are no words adequate to describe the horror of what happened there and no adequate emotional response:

In the end perhaps the best you can do is to humble yourself in the face of what happened here, and be forever grateful that you weren’t around to be drawn into its vortex of evil, in either suffering or complicity. (page 269)

Lodge acknowledges that Desmond’s deafness and his Dad have their sources in his own experience and for me this is the heart of the book, the parts that captured real life with depth of feeling, emotion and empathy. For these reasons I did like this book.

  • Paperback: 320 pages
  • Publisher: Penguin (4 Jun 2009)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0141035706
  • ISBN-13: 978-0141035703
  • Source: I bought the book

Pride and Prejudice 200th Anniversary

Published on by Margaret1 Comment
Title page from the first edition of the first volume of Pride and Prejudice 1813

Today is the 200th anniversary of the publication of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and to mark the occasion the Jane Austen Centre in Bath is hosting a 12 hour readathon (click this link to go to the readathon site) of the book. It’s taking place at the Centre in Gay Street and will be filmed and broadcast around the world live on the internet.

From 11am this morning Pride and Prejudice will be read in short 10 minute segments by up to 140 celebrities, authors, politicians, musicians, Olympians, school children, competition winners and personalities.

First Chapter, First Paragraphs: The Unquiet Bones

Published on by Margaret7 Comments

Uetred thought he had discovered pig bones. He did not know or care why they were in the cesspit at the base of Bampton Castle Wall.

Then he found the skull. Uetred was a villein, bound to the land of Lord Gilbert, third Baron Talbot, lord of Bampton Castle and had slaughtered many pigs. He knew the difference between human and pig skulls.

I was browsing in the library, when the medieval style script on the spine of this book caught my eye. Taking it from the shelf I was also struck by the dramatic cover, showing a strange wooden or leather artificial foot. When I read the opening paragraphs and flicked through the pages I decided to borrow the book. It seems it’s a good choice because the library assistant said she had enjoyed it as she likes historical crime fiction – so do I. And there are more books in the series.

It’s The Unquiet Bones: the first chronicle of Hugh de Singleton, surgeon by Melvin R Starr.

I was interested in the foot – is it a genuine medieval prosthetic? I discovered that it is actually an Ancient Egyptian prosthetic toe found on a female mummy at Luxor. The big toe is carved from wood and has holes for lacing it to a leather-type casing.

Now, as far as I know, this is nothing to do with The Unquiet Bones, which is set in the English village of Bampton, but I think it’s fascinating. It certainly drew my attention to the book.

First Chapter, First Paragraphs is a weekly event hosted by Diane at Bibliophile By the Sea.

The Case of the Curious Bride by Erle Stanley Gardner

Published on by Margaret6 Comments

First published in 1935 The Case of the Curious Bride is the 5th Perry Mason book by Erle Stanley Gardner.

Synopsis extracted from the back cover:

An attractive young woman calls at Perry Mason’s office to inquire if a friend can marry again without getting a divorce as her husband had been presumed killed in an air accident seven years previously. Mason sees sinister implications and as a result of his investigations – helped by his secretary Della Street – dramatic developments lead to a court case in which the tables are turned on the police.

My view:

There are plenty of twists and turns in this mystery surrounding Rhoda Montaine, who is accused of murder and it certainly looks as though she is guilty.  I found it very puzzling. I also thought it was unsatisfactory as Perry Mason resorts to trickery, fooling everyone. At times I was at a complete loss to understand what he was doing and why. It all becomes clear at the end, but I found it far-fetched.

  • Paperback: 208 pages
  • Penguin Books 1960 (first published by Cassell 1935)
  • Source: I bought the book
  • My Rating 2/5
  • Challenges: Mount TBR, What’s in a Name 6 (a book with an emotion in the title)

Tolkien, The Hobbit and Middle-Earth

Published on by Margaret9 Comments

The Hobbit
Last Wednesday we went to see The Hobbit: an Unexpected Journey. Whereas I’ve read The Lord of the Rings several times, I’ve never read The Hobbit, so the story was new to me. It meant that I could watch the film, totally unbothered by any changes from the book. And no doubt there are differences, as the book has been transformed into three films.

I enjoyed the film immensely, although, as I expected, there was too much fighting for my liking, which made my eyes glaze over. (This is my normal reaction to fighting scenes.) The hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, Gandalf and a party of dwarves, led by their king, Thorin Oakenshield go on a quest to recover the lost Dwarf Kingdom of Erebor and its long-lost treasure, guarded by Smaug, the dragon. Their journey takes them into great danger through lands occupied by orcs, goblins, wargs and sorcerers and sees the first meeting of Bilbo and Gollum (Andy Serkis) in which Bilbo gains possession of the precious Ring.

Martin Freeman was perfect as Bilbo Baggins, as was Ian McKellen as Gandalf, and Richard Armitage as Thorin Oakenshield. It was Ken Stott’s voice (and his mouth) that made me realise he was taking the part of Balin the dwarf, but I completely failed to see that the Goblin King was played by Barry Humphries. The rest of the cast was also excellent and the scenery was magical.

There are many books now about Tolkien and his writings – I have just two books of reference on Tolkien’s works, both from pre-movie days:The Tolkien and Middle Earth Handbook by Colin Duriez, which is a mine of information about Tolkien’s life, thoughts and writings. It’s an A-Z of people, places and things of importance in Tolkien’s books as well as containing details of Tolkien’s friends, colleagues, writers and thinkers who influenced his work.

Tolkien is now so well known, not only through his books, but also through Peter Jackson’s films, that it’s hard to believe that at one time his publishers thought the The Lord of the Rings could make a financial loss for them. Duriez writes:

In those unenlightened days, the learned Professor could mutter the word ‘Orc’ at uncouth behaviour, or exclaim ‘Mordor in our midst’ at an ugly example of modern life, without its meaning being known to the general public.

I think this book is a good source to discover information not only about the characters, but also the back-stories of Tolkien’s invented mythology. It is, of course, selective and certainly doesn’t aim to be comprehensive, because of the sheer volume and breadth of Tolkien’s works, but it’s certainly a good starting place.

The other book I have is A Tolkien Bestiary by David Day. A bestiary is an illustrated book about beasts, popular in the Middle Ages and this one includes Tolkien’s fantastical beasts and monsters, together with the races, flora and fauna that inhabit Middle-Earth and the Undying Lands. There are colour and black and white illustrations, maps, time charts and genealogical tables, plus a useful index. A mine of information from before Peter Jackson’s movies were made. Here, for example is the illustration of Gandalf (very similar to Ian McKellan’s portrayal, I think!) and of Gandalf and some of the dwarves making their way to Bilbo’s house in the Shire:
Tolkien Bestiary Gandalf

Since seeing the film I’ve downloaded an Enhanced Edition of The Hobbit. This has illustrations and audio/video content available for iPads, iPhones, and iPod Touch devices, including J R R Tolkien singing and reading from his book.

It also includes illustrations by Tolkien and one of the manuscript pages of his original draft of the first chapter. In the Foreword, Christopher Tolkien, Tolkien’s son reveals that his father had a clear recollection of writing the opening sentence of The Hobbit. It was whilst he was sitting correcting School Certificate papers and on a blank piece of paper he scrawled: ‘In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.’ He did not know then and later why that came into his head, but years later it became The Hobbit. And he couldn’t remember when. But his sons think it must have been around 1929. During the years that followed Tolkien wrote more of the book and became engrossed in The Silmarillion, the myths and legends of his invented world.

Now I just need to read the book itself! And then I may have to re-read The Lord of the Rings, and find a biography of Tolkien too. There are so many books about Tolkien – can anyone recommend any of them?