Category: Sunday Salon

Sunday Salon – Current Books

Published on by Margaret6 Comments

This week I’ve finished reading two crime fiction books:

and posts on these books will be on my blog this coming week.

I’m still reading Eden’s Outcast: the story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father by John Matteson. So far I’ve been reading about Bronson Alcott and his unorthdox ideas about educating and bringing up children.  It was quite a coincidence I thought, when I was reading the Daily Express in the coffee shop recently and came across a review of Fruitlands: The Alcott Family and their Search for Utopia by Richard Francis. The reviewer describes this book as a

… richly textured history of the life and times of a back’‘to’‘nature community in 19th-century America. It was called Fruitlands, though Fruitcakes would have been more apt.
(Read more from this review.)

I haven’t got up to this venture so far in Eden’s Outcasts. There are many entries in the index under ‘Fruitlands’ so I expect to find out much more about it. His career as a teacher was not a success and it seems that his venture into communal farming wasn’t either.

I spent other reading time this week downloading more books onto my Kindle and have read the opening paragraphs of most of them. It really is so easy to get carried away and add more books to my to-be-read lists! But I only bought one book this week, so that’s not too bad.

It’s Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose and it’s been on my wish list for a long time. I read fairly quickly and know that I often read too quickly to take in all the detail. Prose writes that reading quickly can be ‘a hindrance‘ and that it is ‘essential to slow down and read every word‘. She also contradicts the advice to novice writers ‘to show, not tell‘, when ‘the responsibility of showing should be assumed by the energetic and specific use of language‘. Using Alice Munro’s short story Dulse as an example, she says:

There are many occasions in literature in which telling is far more effective than showing. A lot of time would have been wasted had Alice Munro believed that she could not begin her story until she had shown us Lydia working as an editor, writing poetry, breaking up with her lover, dealing with her children, getting divorced, growing older, and taking all the steps that led up to the moment at which the story rightly begins.

Most interesting, I thought.

I still haven’t got used to Kindle’s use of locations as opposed to page numbers – the extract above is from Location 409 – 12. Nor have I mastered the technique of transferring my highlighted passages and notes from the Kindle to the computer!

I’m also reading The Matchmaker of Kenmare by Frank Delaney. This is an Advance Uncorrected Proof; the book is scheduled to be on sale on 8 February. It’s the first book I’ve read by Delaney, described by the publisher as a

… lush and surprising historical novel, rich as a myth, tense as a thriller …

From what I’ve read of it so far I’d go along with that description, except for the tenseness – but it’s early days yet. It’s set in 1943 in Ireland, a neutral country in the Second World War. It’s a long book and takes its time in setting the scene and introducing the characters. It promises well.

Sunday Salon – the First Books of 2011

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

My reading this year has been from books I’d started in December and I’ve now finished these – Little Women by Louisa May Alcott and Just Me, Sheila Hancock’s autobiography. I borrowed Just Me from my local library. It interested me, not because Sheila is a ‘celebrity’ but because it’s about her life as a 75 year old woman, recently a widow and I wondered what she had to say. She comes across as a down-to-earth person, feisty and open about her views on life and her beliefs.

I’m still reading Eden’s Outcasts: the Story of Lousia May Alcott and her Father by John Matteson and I’m also reading a crime fiction book, Payment Deferred by Joyce Holms.

Much of my reading time this week, however, has been on my new Kindle. I’ve spent  hours learning how to use it, loading in free books, mainly classics and starting to read quite a few of them. I’ve bought one book – Ink in the Blood by Hilary Mantel and I’ll write a separate post about this remarkable little memoir in a few days’ time.

I’m enjoying the experience of reading on my Kindle but it certainly won’t replace reading printed books. For one thing I have plenty of those still waiting to be read and for another it still hasn’t got the feel of a ‘real’ book for me. That may come but for now the Kindle is another source of reading material and not a substitute.

I do like a number of things about it – the weight and ease of handling it is obvious. I also like being able to look up the meanings of words so easily – just a click and up pops a definition. I like being able to go immediately to where I’m up to and also find locations when I’ve highlighted passages. I haven’t tried making notes yet or using pdfs. I like the ease of acquiring books – too easy maybe for a bookworm like me, but so far I have been restrained – and of downloading samples. I like the customer reviews and the quick links to wikipedia and Google.

I can only think of a couple of downsides to using it and that is that the page size is a little on the small side for me – I’m ‘turning’ the pages too quickly on a larger font size and the smallest size is a bit too small for me. And it’s going to add to my TBR list very quickly!

Next up on my blog tomorrow –  Kerrie’s Crime Fiction Alphabet begins with the letter A.

Sunday Salon – Current Books

Published on by Margaret7 Comments

The snow is slowly retreating with the slight thaw we had yesterday, the fir tree is green again, but there’s no green anywhere else. It’s still mainly a white world.

In keeping with the weather my current reading is Frozen Moment by Camilla Ceder. It’s set in Sweden at Christmas time – well it keeps flashing back to an unspecified season in 1993, but it’s mostly a cold, snowy scene. I haven’t read much beyond the first murder – a man is found shot in the head and he was also run over repeatedly for good measure. I know from the blurb that there is another murder and the police are baffled.

As I’ve finished the two autobiographies I was reading last week I’ve started another – Just Me by Sheila Hancock. I haven’t read much of this yet either. Sheila is trying to come to terms with the death of her husband, John Thaw and has decided she needs to keep busy. She has put the house in France that she and John loved on the market and decided to go travelling. As she writes about her current life she also reminisces about the past. So far I’m enjoying her candour and easy style of writing.

Sunday Salon – Non-Fiction

Published on by Margaret7 Comments

I’m often reading more than one book at a time, sometimes as many as four or more. Sometimes I think it would be better to read just one at a time but that rarely happens. A library book may be due back and I can’t renew it so that has to take precedence, or one of the books I’m reading may be so compelling that I have to finish that one and I drop the others for a while.

At the present I’m reading two books and both of them are non-fiction, which is a novelty for me. I usually have one non-fiction on the go along with one or more fiction books, so not reading any fiction is very strange for me. Both my non-fiction books are autobiographies and are riveting and remarkable books. They are:

  • Agatha Christie: An Autobiography
  • Seeing Things: a Memoir by Oliver Postgate

I’ve written some posts already about Agatha Christie’s book and will link to those in my Author Index. I’m nearly at the end of it now, but she is only still writing about 1943. She wrote the Autobiography in 1965 and the twenty intervening years are compressed into 25 pages – as she wrote ‘Time has altered for me, as it does for the old.’ (page 525). I’ll try to write a summary post about the book as a whole when I’ve finished it.

Oliver Postgate’s book is absolutely amazing. I’m enjoying it on several levels. There are the autobiographical details of the chronology of his life, the fascinating accounts of how he created those wonderful TV films of Ivor the Engine, The Clangers, Noggin the Nog and Bagpuss, and his own philosophical thoughts.

It’s quite difficult to write about such books as a whole but I’ll try to concentrate on what I most liked about them, which in both cases is a lot.

Now, after sorting out what to buy the grandchildren for Christmas, which of course will include some books, I need to decide what to read next – I think it will be fiction for a while.

Sunday Salon – Sunday Selection

Published on by Margaret5 Comments

Recently the weekend is the time when I’ve just finished a book and am deciding what to read next. This weekend is no exception. Yesterday I finished Mary Webb’s Gone to Earth, a book I first read as a young teenager. This is a dramatic romantic tragedy, first written in 1917. It tells the story of Hazel Woodus and her marriage to Edward Marston, the gentle, local church minister. Hazel is an innocent, a child of nature, wild and shy and a protector of all wounded and persecuted things. She becomes the prey of John Reddin, the squire of Undern who is obsessed by her. I’ll write more about it in a later post.

Because I enjoyed Gone to Earth so much it’s hard to find a suitable book to read next.  I have started All Bones and Lies by Anne Fine, which is the choice for my local book club. But so far I’m not sure if I want to finish it. It’s about Colin and his mother, who could complain for Britain. He has a twin sister who is estranged from her mother, making up a unhappy family who don’t get on. It’s about old age and the problems of carers and  up to now I’m not finding it at all uplifting. It paints a sad picture of the frustrations of old age and the problems of everyday life. I’ll give it a few more pages before deciding whether to finish it or not.

Other than that book, I have several library books I could read next.

  • The Beacon by Susan Hill – a short book (154 pages), examining truth, mental health and memory. Maybe that’s not right for me today as it sounds like another family with problems.
  • Missing Link by Joyce Holms – a new author for me, this book is a murder mystery a case for the detective duo Fizz and Buchanan. This one looks promising.
  • The Missing by Andrew O’Hagan – about people who disappear from society, a merging of social history and memoir. Described on the back cover as ‘elegantly written, affecting and intelligent.’

I’ll also look at some of my own books, to reduce the growing pile of to-be-read books. I started A S Byatt’s The Children’s Book a while ago. I think I’ll start that one again, or maybe look at Margaret Atwood’s The Robber Bride, or a shorter book such as The Highest Tide by Jim Lynch.

Although writing posts like this does help a bit to clarify my thoughts, sometimes I just can’t decide what to read next and today is one of those days.

Sunday Salon – Book Connections

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

The Sunday Salon is the place to meet and blog about the books we’re reading.

This morning I read some more from Agatha Christie’s book An Autobiography. It’s now 1917 and Agatha is working in a hospital dispensary in Torquay and also studying to take her Apothecaries Hall examination so she could dispense for a medical officer or a chemist. As part of her training she had instruction from a proper commercial chemist – a Mr P, one of the principal pharmacists in Torquay. She described him as

… a rather funny-looking little man, very roundabout and robin redbreast looking, with a nice pink face. There was a general air of childish satisfaction about him. (page 261)

He once showed her a piece of deadly curare that he carried around with him in his pocket. Curare once it has entered the bloodstream paralyses and kills you. He said he carried it in his pocket because it made him feel powerful. Agatha often wondered about him afterwards. In spite of his cherubic appearance she thought he was possibly a dangerous man and years later used her memory in writing The Pale Horse.

I then picked up H R F Keating’s book A Detective at Death’s Door and started reading it, whilst drinking a cup of coffee. I had intended reading one of my own books but this library book was closer to hand than any of my own books. In this book Superintendent Harriet Martens is just recovering from a nearly fatal dose of aconitine. Her husband, John recognised the symptoms from reading their description in an imaginary Agatha Christie book, Twisted Wolfsbane – aconitine is also known as wolfsbane.  Then a few pages later I came across this coincidence – Harriet quoted the passage in Agatha Christie’s An Autobiography about the chemist carrying round a piece of curare – the same passage I’d read half an hour or so earlier.