This week’s top is Long Book Titles. Here are some of the longest book titles I’ve reviewed on this blog. It appears that non-fiction books lend themselves more to long titles than fiction as six of them are non-fiction –
The Woman Who Walked into the Sea by Mark Douglas-Hume – I don’t think this quite lived up to The Sea Detective, the first Cal McGill book. Cal is an oceanographer using his skills in tracking human bodies and sea-borne objects.
This week’s is Book Covers with Autumn Colours. I’ve chosen book covers that are the various shades of autumn leaves – yellow, orange, red, and brown. These are all from my catalogue of books on LibraryThing.
The first four are old books, science fiction that I read years ago.
The Early Asimov Volume 2– a collection of sci-fi short stories by Isaac Asimov, from the early 1940s, with Asimov’s commentary on how each story came about and where it was published.
God Emperor of Dune by Frank Herbert, the 4th in his Dune series. Leto II, God Emperor of Dune, trades his humanity for immortality and, as the magnificent sandworm of Dune, desperately attempts to save mankind. I read and loved the whole series.
Second Stage Lensman by E E ‘Doc’ Smith, the fifth novel in his Lensman series, ‘one of the all-time classics of adventurous, galaxy-spanning science fiction.’ I read a lot of these.
Don’t Pick the Flowers by D F Jones – I don’t think I’ve read this book – if I did I can’t remember the details. Nitrogen gas begins to leak from the Earth’s core and tidal waves threaten those who have fled to the coast for safety. Two men and two women at sea work to find a solution.
The next four books are ones I’ve read more recently and the fifth and the sixth are two of my TBRs:
Empire of the Sun by J G Ballard – a semi-autobiographical novel, set during the Second World War, the novel draws on Ballard’s childhood experience in the Japanese-controlled Lunghua civilian internment camp in China. A book I loved.
The Hobbit by J R R Tolkein – I’ve read this and The Lord of the Rings several times – love these books.
Lord Edgware Dies by Agatha Christie – first published in the UK in 1933 and later the same year in the USA as Thirteen for Dinner. It’s the eighth book featuring Hercule Poirot, narrated by Captain Hastings.
The Dry by Jane Harper – I read this a few weeks ago and loved it. A tense thriller set in Australia about the Hadler family found dead in their farmhouse.
The Vault by Peter Lovesey – set in Bath, when a skeletal hand is discovered in the ground of the Pump Room, Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond must investigate when it’s proved to be from the modern era.
Recalled to Life by Reginald Hill – the 12th Dalziel and Pascoe mystery telling the story of Dalziel’s re-investigation of the 1963 murder at a local manor, Mickledore Hall. The murder took place shortly before the story of the Profumo affair broke, and during a weekend get together at the Hall.
The topic this week is Favourite Book Quotes. At first I didn’t think I would tackle this topic, with so many to choose. But in the end I came up with the following quotations from just three authors.
First from Roger Deakin, Wildwood: A Journey through Trees, a book about Deakin’s journeys through a wide variety of trees and woods in various parts of the world.
“To enter a wood is to pass into a different world in which we ourselves are transformed. It is no accident that in the comedies of Shakespeare, people go into the greenwood to grow, learn and change. It is where you travel to find yourself, often, paradoxically , by getting lost. Merlin sends the future King Arthur as a boy into the greenwood to fend for himself in The Sword in the Stone. There, he falls asleep and dreams himself, like a chameleon, into the lives of the animals and the trees.”
And later in the book he writes about pencils:
“The pencil whispers across the page and is never dogmatic.‘ And this, ‘Rub your finger long enough on a soft-pencilled phrase and it will evaporate into a pale-grey cloud. In this way, pencil is close to watercolour painting.’
Thinking about trees led me on to The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy, one of my favourites of Hardy’s books, full of beautiful descriptions of the landscape and woods. In this passage he is describing Giles Winterbourne:
“He looked and smelt like Autumn’s very brother, his face being sunburnt to wheat-colour, his eyes blue as corn-flowers, his sleeves and leggings dyed with fruit stains, his hands clammy with the sweet juice of apples, his hat sprinkled with pips, and everywhere about him that atmospheres of cider which at its first return each season has such an indescribable fascination for those who have been born and bred among the orchards.”
Next from Agatha Christie’s Autobiography:
“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.”
“Always when I woke up, I had the feeling which I am sure must be natural to all of us, a joy in being alive. I don’t say you feel it consciously – you don’t – but there you are, you are alive, and you open your eyes, and here is another day; another step as it were, on your journey to an unknown place. That very exciting journey which is your life. Not that it is necessarily going to be exciting as a life, but it will be exciting to you because it is your life. That is one of the great secrets of existence, enjoying the gift of life that has been given to you.”
“Naturally happy people can be unhappy and melancholic people enjoy themselves. But if I were taking a gift to a child at a christening that is what I would choose: a naturally happy frame of mind.”
“If I could write like Elizabeth Bowen, Muriel Spark or Graham Greene, I should jump to high heaven with delight, but I know that I can’t, and it would never occur to me to attempt to copy them. I have learnt that I am me, that I can do the things, that as one might put it, me can do, but I cannot do the things that me would like to do.”
And this is probably my favourite of all:
“I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.”
The topic this week is Books On My Autumn 2020 TBR. I’ve stopped trying to plan what I’ll read next because what usually happens is that I’ll read anything except the books I’ve planned to read. So this is a list of books that I’ll read sometime soon … maybe. It includes books I own and review books from NetGalley.
Child’s Playby Reginald Hill – the 9th Dalziel and Pascoe mystery.
Moon Over Soho by Ben Aaronovitch – the 2nd Rivers of London novel.
The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel – book 3 of the Wolf Hall trilogy. I did start to read this book earlier in the year, but I’ll probably have to start it again.
The Haunting of H G Wells by Robert Masello – to be published 1 October 2020 – my choice from the First Reads selection this month, a novel mixing fact and fiction.
A Song for the Dark Timesby Ian Rankin – to be published 1 October 2020, the 23rd Rebus book – a ‘must read’book for me.
The Survivors by Jane Harper – a standalone crime fiction novel, published today 22 September 2020. I’ve just finished read her first book, The Dry, so I’m very keen to read this one soon.
V2 by Robert Harris – a Second World War thriller.a blend of fact and fiction.
And Now for the Good News by Ruby Wax – this is the book I really must read soon – we all need some good news!
The Postscript Murders by Elly Griffiths – to be published 1 October 2020 – a literary murder mystery.
Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish and now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. For the rules see her blog. The topic this week is a Book Cover Freebie.
How it works:
There’s a new topic every Tuesday. You create your own top ten (or 2, 5, 20, etc.) list on that topic or one of your own if you wish and then link back to That Artsy Reader Girl so that others know where to find more information. If a weekly topic is listed as a “freebie”, you are invited to come up with your own topic. Sometimes she will give the freebie topic a theme, such as “love”, a season, or an upcoming holiday. That just means that you can come up with any topic you want that fits under that umbrella.
BooksPlease 