Category: Fiction

Best Books January to June

Published on by Margaret3 Comments

Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise recently asked what are your favourite crime fictionbooks so far this year, which got me to thinking about my favourite books as a whole (not just crime fiction). About half the books I read are crime fiction and the other half is a mixture of fiction (of many genres) with a smattering of non fiction.

After much thought I’ve decided on these ten books as my favourite reads so far. I’ve only included one book from Ian Rankin and Agatha Christie, although I’ve read several from each that I rate as highly as the ones I’ve chosen. Six of the books are crime fiction (marked *), there is one non fiction and one book of short stories. They are listed in the order that I read them.

I hope to vary my reading during the rest of 2010, maybe a few more non-fiction books as I have several biographies/autobiographies I’d love to read and more classics, but I expect crime fiction will still be high on my list of best books by the end of the year.

Paris in July

Published on by Margaret2 Comments
I’m not actually going to Paris this month, but BookBath and Thyme For Tea are hosting a blogging experience to celebrate all things French and Parisian running from the 1st – 31st July this year called “Paris In July“. 
The aim of the month is to celebrate our French experiences through reading, watching, listening to, observing, cooking and eating all things French!
There will be no rules or targets in terms of how much you need to do or complete in order to be a part of Paris In July – just blog about anything French and you can join in. Some ideas for the month might include;
  • Reading a French book – fiction or non-fiction
  • Watching a French movie
  • Listening to French music
  • Cooking French food
  • Experiencing French art, architecture or travel

This should give me the nudge to finish reading Irene Nemirovsky’s Suite Francaise, which I started last year. I’ve read half of it and right now I can’t imagine why I didn’t finish it because I was finding it so good! I’d also like to read The Gourmet by Muriel Barbery.

Although I doubt very much that I’ll be able to read these books this July there are also two other books I’ve been meaning to read for ages – The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo and The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas.

And I must get out my French cookery books too, in particular The Frenchwoman’s Kitchen by Brigitte Tilleray.

Disappointment: Booking Through Thursday

Published on by Margaret6 Comments

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Today’s question from Deb is:

Name a book or author that you truly wanted to love but left you disappointed. (And, of course, explain why.)

One book that came to mind when I read this question is Haweswater by Sarah Hall. I read it in 2006 before I wrote about books on my blog so my notes on it are brief. It’s a novel about what happened when the Haweswater dam was constructed and the valley of Mardale in Cumbria was flooded. I read it because I was interested in the area and on the cover it said that it had won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book in 2003, so I was expecting it to be good.  I think I’m obviously in the minority here because I thought that it was “Disappointing, verbose, overwritten and detached – characters not described with much empathy.”

Teaser Tuesday

Published on by Margaret5 Comments

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.

Share a couple or more sentences from the book you’re currently reading. You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your ‘teaser’ from €¦ that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given!

After feasting on Ian Rankin’s Rebus books, I’ve gone back to reading Portrait of an Unknown Woman by Vanora Bennett.  After reading Wolf Hall I’m in the mood for more about Thomas More, and this time the spotlight is on his family and in particular his adopted daughter Meg and her involvement with John Clement, the former family tutor and later President of the Royal College of Physicians and Hans Holbein, the German portrait painter.

Here is Hans Holbein’s reaction on meeting Meg:

She stopped a bit breathless, and looked provocatively at him. Hans Holbein had never seen a woman looking provocative in this completely unflirtatious way, any more than he’d ever come across a woman who had read the Imitation of Christ. She was challenging his mind instead of his body. But Erasmus had told him about More’s family school. This must be what happened to women when you taught them Latin and Greek and the skills of argument. (page 97)

Resurrection Men by Ian Rankin: Book Review

Published on by Margaret5 Comments

I’m on a roll now with Ian Rankin’s Rebus books. Resurrection Men is excellent, so good that I couldn’t wait to get back to it each time I had to stop reading. And when I finished it I immediately got out the next book in the series A Question of Blood, which promises to be just as good.

Resurrection Men isn’t about body-snatchers (as I wondered it might be), but about the cops who need re-training, including Rebus. They’re at Tullialian, the Scottish Police College and they are a tough bunch indeed, ‘the lowest of the low‘ as one of them, DI Gray tells a witness he is interrogating:

We’re here because we don’t care. We don’t care about you, we don’t care about them. We could kick your teeth down your throat, and when they come to tell us off, we’d be laughing and slapping our thighs. Time was, buggars like you could end up inside one of the support pillars for the Kingston Bridge. See what I’m saying? (page 326)

To help them become team players – fat chance of that I thought – they’ve been given on old, unsolved case to work on. But Rebus was involved in the case at the time and begins to get paranoid about why is on the course. It’s a tough, gritty story and as with other Rebus books, there’s more than one investigation on the go, several, in fact, needing concentration to keep tabs on each one. Siobhan Clarke is now a DS and with Rebus away she is in charge of the case of the murdered art dealer. Siobhan is getting more and more like Rebus and has a much bigger part in this book than in previous books.

Rankin is great on characterisation – they’re all credible, I feel I know the main characters. His dialogue rings true to life and I felt like a fly on the wall throughout, a bit uncomfortable at times as Rebus gets into tricky situations and tries to work out who he can trust. Both he and I were unsure right to the end.

Library Loot

Published on by Margaret3 Comments

Here’s a pile of books I’ve recently borrowed:

From top to bottom they are

  • Brat Farrar by Joesphine Tey. Patrick had committed suicide, so who is the mysterious young man claiming to be him and calling himself Brat Farrar? I borrowed this because I enjoyed Tey’s books, The Daughter of Time and The Franchise Affair.
  • The Sea Lady by Margaret Drabble: a story of first and last love and the ebb and flow of time giving shape to our lives. I borrowed this because it’s been a long time since I read anything by Drabble, the last one being The Witch of Exmoor.
  • Naked to the Hangman by Andrew Taylor. Detective Inspector Thornhill is under suspicion of murder and his wife and former lover join forces to try to help him. The only other book by Taylor that I’ve read is The American Boy, historical crime fiction, set in 19th century England, with links to Edgar Allan Poe.
  • The Forgery of Venus by Michael Gruber. This was on display at the library in a section of books called ‘Thrills and Chills’, not normally the sort of book I read, but this looked interesting about an art dealer with a dark past and the discovery of a previously unknown masterpiece by Velazquez. When I got the book home I realised I’ve got another book by Gruber – The Book of Air and Shadows, which I started once and put to one side, so I don’t expect much from this book.
  • Truth to Tell by Claire Lorrimer. I fancied reading something different by an author I’d not heard of before. The title appealed to me. The Library Journal blurb tells me it’s ‘Nicely done pyschological suspense, firmly in the cozy tradition.’ It looks more like a historical romance though.
  • Green for Danger edited by Martin Edwards, a collection of short crime fiction stories on the theme of ‘crime in the countryside.’ I’ve become quite a fan of these short story collections. This one includes stories from Robert Barnard, Reginald Hill, Ruth Rendell, Ann Cleeves and Martin Edwards, himself. I think I’ll start with this book.
  • The Death Ship of Dartmouth by Michael Jecks, a medieval mystery set in 1324. In Dartmouth a man is found lying dead in the road and a ship has been discovered half ravaged and the crew missing. I first came across Jecks when I read King Arthur’s Bones by The Medieval Murderers, in which he wrote one of the short stories. I hope this is just as good.

Have you read any of these books – are they any good?

Library Loot is hosted by is a weekly event co-hosted by Eva and Marg that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library.