Category: Fiction

My Read-a-Thon Experience

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

At the last minute on Saturday I decided to take part in the 24 Hour Read-a-Thon. This was the first time I’d done this. Previously I’d thought there was no way I could read for 24 hours, but this time I realised that I didn’t have to – I could read for just as long as I liked! Which is what I did.

So I read all of Saturday afternoon, with just a short break for making dinner. Then, because I’m a creature of habit and I enjoy watching TV on Saturday evenings, I stopped reading long enough to watch Strictly Come Dancing and the X Factor, both entertaining programmes. Later on I fell asleep reading and started again about 6am. It was easier to read on Sunday morning than usual because we’ve been having internet connection problems and couldn’t get access until the afternoon. All in all I must have read for about 13 hours or so out of the 24.

I liked the experience of concentrated reading, spending most of the time on reading Exit Music by Ian Rankin. Usually I read in chunks rather than for hours and hours on end and it really helped to get into the plot. Often when I’ve been reading for a while I get a feeling that I should be doing something other than sitting reading but during those 24 hours it was as though I had nothing to do except read.

I finished Exit Music during Sunday morning and started Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman. That was quite strange, because that is pure fantasy; it was surreal moving from the world of crime with Rebus to that of magic with the strange, witchy Owens sisters and their family. I read about half of Practical Magic before the end of the Read-a-Thon. More about both books to follow.

I’m not sure I’ll take part again, but I enjoyed it this time.

Library Loot

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Library Loot:

From top to bottom they are:

  • A Detective at Death’s Door by H R F Keating. I haven’t read anything by H R F Keating, so I’m not sure what to expect. There’s a long list of his books at the front of the book and a brief summary of his work. He was the crime reporter for The Times for 15 years and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Chairman of the Crime Writers’ Association and the Society of Authors as well as President of the Detection Club. With such credentials I’m hoping to like this book, the fifth Detective Superintendent Harriet Martens novel. Martin Edwards’ page has much more information about Keating.
  • The Last Dickens by Matthew Pearl. I’ve recently read Dickens’ The Mystery of Edwin Drood and am keen to read more of Dicken’s books and books about Dickens (both fiction and non-fiction). So, even though I wasn’t too keen on Pearl’s novel about Edgar Allan Poe, I thought it was worth borrowing this book to try it. From the back cover this novel seems to be about Dickens’ final instalment of his last manuscript that disappeared after his death in 1870.
  • The Turning of the Tide by Reginald Hill. This was originally published under the pseudonym Patrick Ruell in 1971 called The Castle of the Demon. It looks as though it’s a sinister thriller when Emily discovers a body lying in the water at a sleepy coastal town. I like Hill’s Dalziel and Pascoe books and am hoping his earlier book won’t disappoint.
  • Frozen Moment by Camilla Ceder. ‘Move over Wallander‘ it says on the front cover. Camilla Ceder is a Swedish writer who also works in counselling and social work. This is her first novel; a murder mystery featuring Inspector Christian Tell, a world-weary detective with a chequered past. I picked this book off the new book stand attracted by its cover.
  • The Rain Before It Falls by Jonathan Coe. I’ve never read anything by Coe but I keep seeing his name on various blogs, so my eyes were drawn to this book in the library. The book’s blurb attracted me, describing the book as ‘intensely lyrical in its evocations of rural Shropshire and post-war London, and extremely moving in its portrayal of the nature of love and happiness.’ It looks like my sort of book.

Monday Musing

Published on by Margaret12 Comments

This week’s musing is:

What’s your favorite ‘cozy’ book €” and, by that, I’m meaning ‘curl-up-on-a-cold-day comfort read‘? Or, if you don’t have a particular book, what genre do you most feel like reading when the weather starts to turn colder?

For me it’s a ‘curl-up-on-a-rainy-day’ rather than a cold day. As a child on rainy days I used to love sitting inside watching the raindrops running down the window, curled up in front of an open fire with a book to read. Usually it was an Enid Blyton book – Mallory Towers for example, or one of the Heidi books, or What Katy Did. Over the years I read these many times.

These days, on rainy days I like to read a book such as One Fine Day by Mollie Panter-Downes, a nostalgic look at England just after the Second World War. Anything that transports me to another world is good. It may be a book I’ve read and enjoyed before such as Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes, which would whisk me off to sunny Italy. It’s nothing like the film they made of it – the book is much better. Or it could be historical fiction such as this one I’ve been looking forward to reading for ages, Helen of Troy by Margaret George.

The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens

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Edwin Drood 001It’s been a few weeks now since I finished reading The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens, his last and unfinished book. I was surprised that it took so long before the mystery actually began to emerge and that it’s more the story of Edwin Drood’s uncle, John Jasper, than it is of Drood himself.   I was also surprised that much of it is written in the present tense, a style that I’m not too keen on. I haven’t read a Dickens novel for a few years and found the difference in style between this and modern mystery novels interesting. The build up to the mystery is so much more leisurely and descriptive than in modern novels, and I had to tone down my impatience for something mysterious to happen. Once I’d passed these hurdles I enjoyed the book immensely, even though I knew that the mystery is left open.

It begins dramatically with a scene in an opium den where Jasper lies under the influence of several pipes of opium, trembling and almost incoherent from the visions that came to him. According to the introduction to the book, Dickens took great care to make the scenes in the opium den authentic and had visited one in the east end of London, under police guidance. The mystery only becomes apparent when Drood has disappeared and cannot be found.

He had been engaged to Rosa Bud from their childhood days and both had realised that they didn’t want to get married. Before that Neville Landless and Edwin had come to blows over Rosa, but made up their differences just before Edwin disappears, but Jasper spreads suspicion that Neville may have killed him.

The novel abounds with wonderful characters – Canon Crisparkle, Neville’s mentor; Durdles a stonemason and his assistant, Deputy, whose tasks include making sure the drunken Durdles gets home safely, by the unlikely means of throwing rocks at him; and my favourite character, Mr Grewgious, a lawyer and Rosa’s guardian. Over and above these characters is the setting of Cloisterham (Rochester), with its Cathedral and sinister and dark background, ideal for secrecy and crime:

… a certain awful hush pervades the ancient pile, the cloisters, and the churchyard, after dark, which not many people care to encounter.

The inhabitants of Cloisterham feel

the innate shrinking of dust with the breath of life in it, from dust out of which the breath of life has passed. (page 105)

The mystery remains unsolved. What did happen to Edwin Drood? Was he killed and if so was it by John Jasper, his uncle, obsessed with his passion for Rosa? Who is Datchery, a stranger who arrives in Cloisterham six months after Edwin’s disappearance and what is his part in the story? And what is ‘Er Royal Highness the Princess Puffer’, the opium den woman’s connection with Jasper? I suppose it’s up to each reader to decide, although there is an account given by Forster, Dickens’s friend, in which he wrote that Dickens had intended it to be a story of the murder of a nephew by his uncle, but we’ll never know if that was so.

Also reviewed by A Library of My Own.

Sunday Salon – Current Books

Published on by Margaret2 Comments

I finished reading The Fall by Simon Mawer yesterday. It is the story of Rob Dewar and Jamie Matthewson from their childhood up to Jamie’s death 40 years later. But it’s also the story of their parents and how their lives are interlinked. I found it enthralling, one of those books that make me want to look at the ending to see how it all turns out. I managed to stop myself, however, and read impatiently to the end anxious to know what actually happened between them all.

It moves between the two generations beginning in the present day, when Rob hears on the news that Jamie, a renowned mountaineer has fallen to his death in Snowdonia. No one is sure whether it was an accident or suicide. Then it moves  back 40 years to the time when the two boys met, both fatherless – Jamie’s dad, Guy went missing when climbing Kangchenjunga and Rob’s parents are divorced, and back yet further again to 1940 when Guy Matthewson met the boys’ mothers – Meg (later calling herself Caroline) and Diana. And so  the drama unfolds in the mountains of Wales and the Alps, culminating on the North Face of the Eiger.

The Fall is not just a gripping account of the dangers of rock climbing and mountaineering, but it’s also a love story, with the intricacies of relationships, and love, loss and betrayal at its core. The love stories and the climbing scenes are both shown through the imagery of falling with all its ambiguities – actual falls, falling in love, falling pregnant and falling from grace. It’s beautifully written, capturing not only the mountain landscape but also London during the Blitz. This is the second excellent book by Mawer that I’ve read, even though it has a rather predictable ending.

I’m still reading Agatha Christie’s  An Autobiography and will be for some time as it is long and detailed – 550 pages printed in a very small font, which makes it impossible for me to read it in bed. But it is fascinating. It’s not just an account of her life but is full of her thoughts and questions about the nature of life and memory:

I am today the same person as that solemn little girl with pale flaxen sausage-curls. the house in which the spirit dwells, grows, develops instincts and tastes and emotions and intellectual capacities, but I myself, the true Agatha, am the same. I do not know the whole Agatha. The whole Agatha, so I believe, is known only to God.

So there we are, all of us, little Agatha Miller, and big Agatha Miller, and Agatha Christie and Agatha Mallowan proceeding on our way – where? That one doesn’t know – which of course makes life exciting. I have always thought life exciting and I still do. (page 11)

I’ll be writing more about Agatha Christie on Wednesday for my contribution to the Agatha Christie Blog Tour.

Borrowed Books

Published on by Margaret16 Comments

The mobile library came last week. I wasn’t going to borrow many, if any books, but there were some on the shelves that looked interesting and the van isn’t coming again until 21 October so I thought, why not borrow them. Then we went to our granddaughter’s 10th birthday party on Saturday and our son lent me a book too. It’s the top one in the pile shown below. Finally we went into town yesterday and as I returned a book to the library there I had a quick look round and borrowed the book at the bottom of the pile.

Borrowed Books

From top to bottom they are:

  • The Tent, the Bucket and Me: My Family’s Disastrous Attempts to go Camping in the 70s by Emma Kennedy. Apparently (I say this because I haven’t got that far in the book) they go to Carnac where we also went camping (well in a caravan) in the 80s. I checked on Amazon and this book has widely different reviews – some love it and think it very funny and others think it’s dreadful and not at all funny. I wonder which ‘camp’ I’ll be in.
  • Borrower of the Night: a Vicky Bliss Murder Mystery by Elizabeth Peters. I haven’t read anything by Elizabeth Peters, but as I’ve seen some reviews on a few blogs, I thought I’d have a look at this one. I haven’t started it yet. Vicky Bliss is an art historian, beautiful and brainy, according to the back cover. This one is about a search for a missing masterwork in wood by a master carver who died in Germany in the 16th century.
  • The Fall by Simon Mawer. I’ve read one other by by Simon Mawer – The Gospel of Judas, which I’d enjoyed. The Fall is the story of Rob and Jamie, friends from childhood, with a passion for mountaineering and climbing. From just a quick look at it, I see that it begins in Snowdon (another place where went on holiday and have camped and climbed (well D climbed, I just walked). Jamie and Rob take on greater challenges, culminating in the Eiger’s North Face. The jacket description appealed to me: ‘a story that captures nature at its most beautiful and most brutal, and which unlocks the intricacies at the heart of human relationships.’
  • A Change in Altitude by Anita Shreve. I’ve not been too keen on the latest books by Anita Shreve, although I loved her earlier ones, so I thought I’d borrow this one rather than buy it. I have started to read it, but just a few pages in it hasn’t ‘grabbed’ me yet. It’s about two couples on a climbing expedition to Mount Kenya when a horrific accident occurs.
  • Sepulchre by Kate Mosse. I read Labyrinth a few years ago (before I began this blog) and at the time I noted that it was ‘OK but too long’. So this is another book I decided not to buy, but if I saw it in the library I’d borrow it. It is enormously long! So far I’ve read a few chapters, set in 1891 in Paris and I’m not sure whether I’ll ever finish it. It’s a time-split book, divided 1891 and 2007, ‘the story of a tragic love, a missing girl, a unique set of tarot cards and the strange events of a cataclysmic night.’ (from the back cover)
  • The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein by Peter Ackroyd. I’ve always enjoyed Peter Ackroyd’s books and this one looked like a candidate for the RIP Challenge (as does Sepulchre). So far I’ve read about Victor Frankenstein’s love of learning and his desire to know the secrets of nature and the source of life. He has met Shelley at Oxford University, attended lessons at the dissecting room of St Thomas’s Hospital in London and is fascinated by Humphrey Davy’s experiments with electrical experiments. So far, so good. This book also has very mixed reviews on Amazon and in the press – the Guardian, ‘disappointing‘ and the Telegraph, ‘a brilliant jeu d’esprit.’

The links are to Amazon.co.uk (except for the press reviews). The only book to get consistent reviews on Amazon is The Fall. I don’t take much notice of these reviews, unless I know the reviewer, but I find it interesting to read such varying responses.