Category: Fiction

Weekend Books & A New Challenge

Published on by Margaret10 Comments

This weekend I’ve been reading:

  • The Private Patient by P D James. I finished this yesterday and I’ll be writing about it for the next Crime Fiction Alphabet post this week.
  • The Blood Detective by Dan Waddell. I started this a few days ago.

I see that José Ignacio from The Game’s Afoot has found an interesting challenge and it is indeed a challenge:

2011 Challenge ‘Do not Accumulate, Read!!’

The rules are simple, before you buy another book, make a list of six from your TBR pile and read them. Once done you can go ahead, buy the book and, of course, read it. At the same time make another list of six books before buying the next one, and so on and so forth.

This will be difficult as this last week I’ve acquired nine books (bought and borrowed) and so I should make nine lists (and read 54 books) before I buy/acquire any more. That is some challenge, so I’m going to start the challenge from today and read 6 of my to-be-read books before I buy any more!

The new to me books this week are:

  • Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffennegger. I’ve previously borrowed a copy from the library but took it back unread. It hadn’t appealed at the time, but when I saw it on a secondhand bookstall selling in aid of the Teenage Cancer Trust I wondered if the time was right to give it another go.
  • The Weather in the Streets by Rosamond Lehmann. This is my local book group choice for May. We chose a romance due to the Royal Wedding this month.
  • Small Island by Andrea Levy – borrowed from a friend because I enjoyed The Long Song so much and she said this one is better.

Then two watercolour painting books to help me paint flowers:

I hope these will help me to paint like this. (Click on image to enlarge it.)

I’ve also recently downloaded these onto my Kindle:

  • Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi – because I no longer have a printed version
  • THE COMPLETE FATHER BROWN MYSTERIES COLLECTION by G K Chesterton
  • The Unbearable Bassington by Saki
  • Gently Does It (Inspector George Gently 1) by Alan Hunter

I’m not sure what I’m going to read next, apart from The Weather in the Streets by Rosamond Lehmann, because that’s the May book group book, but they will all be from my to-be-read books.

House of Silence by Linda Gillard: Book Review

Published on by Margaret4 Comments
Version 1.0.0

I’ve read several of Linda Gillard’s books and House of Silence is definitely one of her best. It’s only available on Kindle but you can download it onto your computer to read if you don’t have a Kindle.

It’s one of those books that makes you want to carry on reading although you know you’ve lots of things you should be doing apart from reading, but you read on anyway.

It’s a novel about families and their secrets – in particular one family, the Donovans. When Gwen Rowland met Alfie Donovan she becomes interested in his family and persuades him to let her spend Christmas with them at the family home, Creake Hall. Gwen comes from a dysfunctional family – mother died of an overdose, aunt from drink and uncle from AIDS, whereas Alfie is the youngest and much-loved younger brother of four sisters and the model for his mother’s best selling children’s books about Tom Dickon Harry.

But  their family life  is not as Gwen imagined it. Although Gwen immediately finds a kindred spirit in Hattie, Alfie’s sister nearest to him in age, and Viv his oldest sister she soon finds there is a secret they’re all hiding. The only person who seems to be open with her is Tyler, the handsome Polish gardener. Alfie, himself seems different and his mother keeps mainly to her room, her mind drifting back to the past. Gwen is puzzled by an old photo of Alfie and then discovers scraps of letters that eventually lead her to the truth.

This is a book in which it is so easy to lose yourself, at once emotional and mysterious. I really enjoyed it – the characters are so distinctive and complex, and the setting in an old Elizabethan manor house is perfect. It raises issues of memory and identity, mental illness, loss and love.

  • Format: Kindle Edition
  • File Size: 1125 KB
  • Sold by: Amazon Media EU S.à r.l.
  • Language English
  • ASIN: B004USSPN2
  • Source: I bought it

My Sunday Selection – Reading Today

Published on by Margaret3 Comments

I probably won’t be reading very much today as the sun is shining, the sky is a cloudless blue – and the garden needs lots of attention. At the moment I’m having a rest from mowing the lawn.

But there will be time to look at newbooks magazine – the latest copy of newbooks magazine arrived here a couple of days ago. This issue is full of interesting articles and a Crime Supplement, with short extracts from a number of books and author interviews.

Some that look interesting from the Crime Supplement are:

  • The Whispers of Nemesis by Anne Zouroudi – Hermes Diaktoros, ‘the inimitable Greek Detective’ in a story of long-kept secrets and of pride coming before the steepest of falls.
  • The House at Seas End by Elly Griffiths – the third Ruth Galloway investigation. In this one the mystery goes back to the Second World War with Britain threatened with invasion.
  • 1222 by Anne Holt – ‘a snowbound mountain pass, a derailed train, a mysterious carriage, an apocalyptic storm, an ancient hotel, murder and state secrets.’ Phew!!

The main magazine has as usual longer extracts from the free books (you have to pay the postage though) on offer. The one that takes my fancy is:

  • Death Instinct by Jed Rubenfeld, about a deadly attack on Wall Street in 1920. this begins: ‘Death is only the beginning; afterward comes the hard part.’

Weekend Cooking – from The Long Song

Published on by Margaret14 Comments

One of the books I’m currently reading is The Long Song, a novel about slavery set in 19th century Jamaica, by Andrea Levy. The narrator is July, now an old woman born as a slave, writing her memoirs.

This morning I read about the preparations for the Yuletide dinner of 1831. There were to be twelve people at the plantation owner’s table.  Caroline, the owner’s sister is giving Hannah, the cook, her orders for the food to be provided.

There was to be both turtle and vegetable soups, mutton, pigeon pies and guinea fowl, a boiled ham and a turkey or two, turtle served in the shell (but she would prefer beef), four stewed ducks, cheese, as many hogsheads as they could get and roasted pig.

There was also to be:

… malt liquor, wine, porter, cider, brandy and rum, watermelon, mango, pawpaw, naseberry, soursop, grandilla fruit. ‘And make sure the preserve has come from England. Strawberry or damson. Do not serve guava, ginger or that ghastly sorrel jelly. I’m so tired of Jamaican jams.’

Hannah had stopped listening, for the need to shout ‘And me to fix-up all this? You  a gut-fatty, cha!’ at her misssus was becoming overpowering in her. (pages 74 – 75)

And in case they were still hungry after this obscene amount of food, Hannah was told to make plum pudding. Hannah remembered how to make it –

A little fruit, a little molasses, some cornmeal, eggs, plenty rum. Mash it up a bit. Put this mess in that silly round mould the missus did give her the first Christmas she arrived, and boil it until the water does run dry. And when the thing is hard then it is done. (pages 75 – 76)

So far I think this book is beautifully written, vivid, lively and enthralling.

Weekend Cooking is hosted by Beth Fish Reads.

Crime Fiction Alphabet – Letter N

Published on by Margaret9 Comments

This week we’ve reached the letter N in Kerrie’s Crime Fiction Alphabet. My choice is a medley of ‘N‘s.

  • I had thought I would review Peter James’s Not Dead Enough, and I started it a while back but put it down to read other books. Not because I didn’t like it, but it’s a very long book – 610 pages of very small font, which is difficult for me to read, especially late at night when my eyes get tired quickly. From the back cover:

On the night Brian Bishop murdered his wife he was sixty miles away, asleep in bed at the time. At least that’s the way it looks to Detective Superintendent Roy Grace, who is called to investigate the kinky slaying of beautiful young Brighton socialite, Katie Bishop.

  • Another choice for the letter N that I considered is A Necessary End, an Inspector Banks mystery by Peter Robinson but I haven’t finished that book either. From the back cover:

In the usually peaceful town of Eastvale, a simmering tension has now reached breaking point. An anti-nuclear demonstration has ended in violence, leaving one policeman stabbed to death. Fired by professional outrage, Superintendent ‘Dirty Dick’ Burgess descends with vengeful fury on the inhabitants of ‘Maggie’s Farm’, an isolated house high on the daleside.

  • My third choice is Not the End of the World by Christopher Brookmyre. I started reading this after enjoying Quite Ugly One Morning. The bookmark shows I’m up to page 30. I think I didn’t finish this book because I was expecting it to be set in Scotland like Quite Ugly One Morning and was put off by it being in Los Angeles – silly I know!

 

  • Then there is Agatha Christie’s Nemesis, which is the last Miss Marple mystery. I only bought it recently and I’m itching to read it soon. Mr Rafiel, an old acquaintance (see A Caribbean Mystery), has died and left Miss Marple instructions for her to investigate a crime after his death.

 

  • And finally the book I’m currently reading is Janet Neel’s Ticket to Ride, which so far is making very interesting reading. But I don’t want to write much about it before I’ve finished it. Ticket to Ride features Jules Carlisle a newly qualified solicitor. She takes on the case of Mirko Dragunoviç, an illegal immigrant who claims that one of the eight dead bodies, found on the beach west of King’s Lynn, is that of his brother.

Janet Neel is the nom de plume of Baroness Cohen of Pimlico who sits as a Labour peer in the House of Lords. She started out as a solicitor, then went to the Board of Trade and then to Charterhouse Bank. She has written several crime fiction novels. The first, Death’s Bright Angel won the John Creasey Prize and both Death of a Partner and Death Among the Dons were shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger.

ABC Wednesday – K is for …

Published on by Margaret16 Comments

… Kingsolver

For my ABC Wednesday posts I’ve been highlighting either authors or artists whose work I enjoy. This week it’s the letter K and there was no doubt about who that brought to mind – Barbara Kingsolver, who is the author of one of my very favourite books – The Poisonwood Bible.

I bought this book in an airport bookshop just before boarding a plane to go on holiday to Cyprus; that gave me plenty of time to read a good chunk of the book before we landed. I remember being very amused by the description of how the Price family got round the forty-four pound per person luggage limit on their flight to the Congo. I’d just struggled to get our luggage allowance down to the required limit for our holiday, but I hadn’t thought of doing what they did – each of them wearing multiple layers of clothing and other goods, such as tools and cake-mix boxes tucked out of sight in their pockets and under their waistbands. Cake-mixes were an essential item as Mrs Price said, ‘they won’t have Betty Crocker in the Congo.’

I soon read the rest of the book by the side of the pool, my hands covered in sun cream removing the gold lettering of Barbara Kingsolver’s name.

This is the book’s description from the back cover:

Told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959, The Poisonwood Bible is the story of one family’s tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa. They carry with them all they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it – from garden seeds to Scripture – is calamitously transformed on African soil.

It is a brilliant book – one that I’ve read at least twice and would eagerly read again. The setting and historical figures and events are real, even though the characters and story are fictional. Barbara Kingsolver writes in her author’s introduction to the book that she relied on her memory, travel in other parts of Africa and many people’s accounts of the natural, cultural and social history of the Congo/Zaire to write the novel.

She wrote that her parents, who were different in every way from the parents in the book, were

… medical and public-health workers, whose compassion and curiosity led then to the Congo. They brought me to a place of wonders, taught me to pay attention, and set me early on a path of exploring the great, shifting terrain between righteousness and what’s right. (page x)

It’s a book that has stuck long in my memory, maybe because it paints such a remarkable picture based on reality and truth.

I’ve read some of her other books, namely The Bean Trees, Homeland and Other Stories, and Prodigal Summer,and whilst I enjoyed them, none of them were, I thought, as good as The Poisonwood Bible. I have The Lacuna, waiting to be read.

For more information see Barbara Kingsolver’s own website.