Category: Sunday Salon

Sunday Salon

Published on by Margaret5 Comments

Today’s reading:

I finished reading Pardonable Lies by Jacqueline Winspear this morning. I’ve read a couple of the Maisie Dobbs mystery books before and this one is  very good. Set in 1930 Maisie is asked by Sir Cecil Lawton to prove that his son, Ralph really did die in 1917 during the First World War. Sir Cecil’s wife, who had recently died, had been convinced that Ralph was still alive and on her deathbed made him promise to search for their son. This takes Maisie on a traumatic and dangerous trip to France – to the battlefields where she had been a nurse. Knowing she is going to France her old friend from Girton, Priscilla whose brother, Patrick died in France asks her to find out where he is buried. Maisie’s investigations reveal a number of photographs and a journal written in code leading her to to discover what actually did happen in 1917.  She then has to decide whether telling the truth is the right thing to do. Parallel with her investigations in France, Maisie is also involved in discovering the truth about a young girl accused of murdering her ‘uncle’.

I like the Maisie Dobbs books. They’re easy to read, but not simple, the plots are nicely complicated and Maisie’s own story is seamlessly interwoven with the mystery. They give a good overall impression of the period, describing what people were wearing, the contrast between the rich and the poor and the all-pervading poisonous London smog. The horror of the War is still  strong, people still grieving for friends and relations killed or missing, visiting the battlefields and working to improve life for the soldiers who had returned home injured, and for the homeless children forced into life on the streets. Maisie is an example of a working girl who has moved out of her ‘class’, driving an MG and supporting herself independently.

With the description of a police woman in the first chapter I wondered when women were first employed in the police force. The Metropolitan Police Service’s website provided the answer – in 1914 Margaret Damer Dawson, an anti-white slavery campaigner, and Nina Boyle, a militant suffragette journalist founded the Women Police Service and by 1923 – 30, women police were fully attested and given limited powers of arrest. I also found it interesting that later in the book Maisie and Billy see

one of the new female recruits to criminal investigation disguised as a passer-by

and the undercover police using

 a new police wireless radio … invented at the request of the chief of police down in Brighton. Scotland Yard have been testing it for about a month now – it looks as if it might come in handy today. (page 310)

I have the latest book in the series, Among the Mad on loan from the library, so I can continue reading about Maisie Dobbs very soon. But maybe I should read the earlier books first. Now I want to get back to Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, even though I’m tempted to read another crime fiction – Murder Being Once Done by Ruth Rendell – which I borrowed from the library yesterday. As usual I have too many books clamouring to be read and I haven’t done the ironing or any de-cluttering ready for moving house!

Sunday Salon – Currently Reading

Published on by Margaret14 Comments

tssbadge1I love starting to read new books and planning which books to read next, so the Currently Reading section on the sidebar over on the right is often not up to date. These are on the sidebar:

  • I am still reading After the Victorians by A N Wilson. It seems as though I’ve been reading it for ever, not because it’s boring or hard going, far from it, but because I only read small snippets when I have my breakfast – I don’t have a lot for breakfast! So far I’m up to 1941/2 and I have to say that Churchill doesn’t come over very well to me. It’s made me want to read his biography to get a fuller picture of the man.
  • I started Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel and have actually put it to one side – again not because I wasn’t enjoying it, but because I was reading it in bed at night and it’s too big and heavy to hold lying down. My eyes kept closing and the book kept falling out of my hands. I need to read it in the mornings, sitting up!
  • The Case for God by Karen Armstrong is fascinating – but it’s slow going because it too is a large, heavy book and also because it’s non-fiction I need to be fully awake to read it. So that has to wait for a morning time read as well.
  • Yesterday I started The Bradshaw Variations by Rachel Cusk. This is a paperback and much easier to handle in bed and so far I am enjoying it. I thought when I started it that maybe I wouldn’t as it’s written in the first person singular – not my favourite style – but the content is so absorbing that I don’t actually notice it anymore.

The folowing books are not listed on the sidebar but are books I’ve started and would love to continue reading, but there is a limit to how many I can keep in my mind at one time:

1599Slaves

I really, really want to find time to read these books as well (all borrowed from the library):

Oh, for more reading time!

The Sunday Salon – newbooks magazine

Published on by Margaret8 Comments

tssbadge1My copy of ‘newbooks’ magazine arrived the other day. This is perhaps the one magazine that I always read from cover to cover. The editorial highlights the changes in publishing in the last decades with

… the conglomeration first of publishing houses and then bookselling, and the negative contribution made by literary agents pedalling a ‘stifling excess of lucrative junk’, hand-in-hand with Google and Amazon’s rapid growth in influence. … ‘No one can predict how books and readers will survive.

The trend seems to be away from books in print, with not only independent bookshops dwindling but also the high street bookshops in decline, towards the on-line digital era. Whilst this is something that has been debated extensively online before, it did strike me that this could mean that in future magazines like ‘newbooks’ would not be issued physically but only available on line and how would I like that?

Well, I wouldn’t – I like it dropping through the letterbox onto the doormat and then flicking through its pages before settling down to read it. Maybe there won’t be any letterboxes in future – everything will be done online? I have no problem with reading somethings online – after all I write this blog and read lots of other blogs quite happily. But I’m not up to reading whole books on screen, nor do I want to print them off and read them that way and the same goes for magazines – I want the physical object – books in print please. Although I do buy some books from online boksellers I prefer to go to a bookshop and browse the books. So I hope the complete change doesn’t come soon.

newbooks-augustIn the meantime I’m happy reading and choosing which book to pick as my free book from ‘newbooks’. Will it be An Equal Stillness by Francesca Kay, The Girl on the Landing by Paul Torday, Antigona and Me by Kate Clanchy, The Book of Unholy Mischief by Elle Newmark, or The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery?

Mog commented on my previous post that she has chosen The Book of Unholy Mischief and I’m very tempted  by that one too. It’s set in Venice in 1498, where an ancient book, rumoured to contain heresies and secrets of immeasurable power, is hidden. Luciano, a chef’s apprentice in the doge’s palace is drawn into the search leading him into a perilous maze to the centre of an intrigue concerning some of the most powerful and dangerous men in Venice.

I’m also drawn to The Girl on the Landing, which is about Michael and his wife Elizabeth. Michael spots a painting whilst staying at a friend’s country house in Ireland. In the background of the painting he see a woman clad in a dark green dress, except his hosts say there is no woman in the picture and indeed when he looks again she is not there.

There is also an interview with Paul Torday in the magazine in which Zoe Fairbairns reveals that its the nature of Britishness and Englishness that is debated furiously in this book as Michael, on medication which he then refuses to take, plummets towards breakdown. She writes:

If identity and personality are so fragile, how can anyone said to be ‘truly’ British, ‘truly’ anything? It’s disturbing stuff, but compulsively readable, which is what Torday wants: ‘My perfect reader is someone who picks the book up and goes on reading it until it’s late at night.’

That could be me!

Sunday Salon – Birthday Books

Published on by Margaret24 Comments
Sunday Salon

We’ve been away from home again for a few days. This time it was to Stratford to celebrate my birthday by going to see the RSC’s Julius Caesar at The Courtyard Theatre. I finished re-reading the play just before we went to Stratford. I enjoyed it, but not as much as other performances I’ve seen. More about the play in a future post.

Stratford was packed – with bikers as well as the usual tourists – a constant whine and roar of their engines as they seemed to spend the days and evenings circling the town. We have visited Stratford many times but this time we did the tourist thing and visited Shakespeare’s Birth Place and other houses connected to him and his family – more about that in a future post.

I always love books as birthday presents and was lucky enough to be given this pile this year. I just wish I could read them all at once:

  • Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. I’ve been reading about this one and it was high on my wish list.
  • Jane Austen’s Letters collected and edited by Deirdre Le Feye – another book I’ve been coveting for a while.
  • The Rebecca Notebook & Other Memories by Daphne Du Maurier. Rebecca is one of my favourite books and this book begins with Du Maurier’s thoughts on writing it with an alternative Epilogue.
  • The Children’s Book by A S Byatt. How could I not want this book – other bloggers have been giving it such praise!
  • The Cleansing by Bill Rogers. I’d actually forgotten this was on my wishlist, but I’m so glad D bought it for me. I’ve started to read it and so far I think it’s very good. Set in Manchester, it’s a murder mystery well grounded in police procedure. DCI Tom Caton leads the Specialist Detection Group investigating a very messy case involving a killer dressed as a clown.
  • Mary Queen of Scots by Antonia Fraser. I’m particularly drawn to historical biography and especially Mary Queen of Scots, so I’m looking forward to this one.
  • Death of a Chief by Douglas Watt. This looks excellent – a surprise present from my son. From the back cover: “The year is 1686. Sir Lachlan MacLean, chief of a proud but poverty-stricken Highland clan, has met with a macabre death in his Edinburgh lodgings. … Death of a Chief is set in pre-Englightenment Scotland – a long time before police detectives existed.”
birthday-books09

Sunday Salon – Reading The Sixth Wife

Published on by Margaret7 Comments

tssbadge1Yesterday I started reading The English by Jeremy Paxman. It’s entertaining but I felt I wanted a story – something to get lost in. So I picked up  The Sixth Wife by Suzannah  Dunn. I’ve had this book for a long time and I decided it was now time to read it. I’m so glad I did because I have difficulty putting it down. It’s the story of Katherine Parr as told by her friend Catherine, Duchess of Suffolk after the death of Henry VIII, when Katherine had married Thomas Seymour.

Reading one book often leads me on to reading others. I was sure I had a copy of David Starkey’s The Six Wives of Henry VIII but I can’t find it – I wanted to read what he had to say about Katherine, so I must have just borrowed it from the library. I know I’ve read it.

I find this period of English history so fascinating and most of what I know has come from reading novels or books like Starkey’s because we only touched on it at school and my later historical study was all a lot later. I’d like to visit Sudeley Castle where Katherine lived with Thomas – he renovated it in 1547/8. And I’d also like to read more about both Katherine and her friend, Catherine. So much from one book.

sixth-wife

Note: See my final thoughts here. My enthusiasm for this book waned.

The Sunday Salon – Today’s Selection

Published on by Margaret8 Comments

tssbadge1

Some thoughts on today’s reading.

But first of all a short video (the first one I’ve put on YouTube):

Thunder and lightning – very, very frightening!

We had the most tremendous thunder storm last night and our lane was like a river in full flow. We’ve never had such a storm before with the whole lane covered by several inches of fast flowing water. The patio in the backgarden was completely flooded, fortunately it didn’t get quite up to the height of the doorway. This morning we found the slabs were lifted and the patio covered in garden debris.

 

I’ve not done much reading today. The family stayed overnight, arriving just as the water was subsiding. They’ve gone now to visit friends and will be back here later in the week.  Meanwhile, they’ve left behind quite a range of books that I could read today, including these –

Granddaughter (age 8 )

Granddaughter’s choice (age 3)

  • Pants by Giles Andreae, featuring lots of pants (what would Alan Sugar think?!) – giant frilly pig pants, fairy pants, hairy pants, run away from scary pants!  Love it!

Grandson’s (age 7) selection:

My selection?

I’ve read a short chapter from After the Victorians by A N Wilson, called The Silly Generation –  in the 1920s enthralling the world were Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin, Ronald Coleman, Greta Garbo and Harold Lloyd. Rudolph Valentino, one of the first great stars of the Silver Screen died in 1922; thousands attended his funeral, openly weeping, foreshadowing the 21st century’s adulation of celebrities as witnessed by the deaths of Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, Princess Diana  and most recently Michael Jackson.