Category: Uncategorized

It’s that time of year when real life kicks in, interrupting blogging. There’s the gardening to do and time for a break from blogging for a while – back towards the end of August.

Hope you all have a happy summer, or winter if you’re in the southern hemisphere. As Christopher Robin would write: 

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 Secondary/Minor Characters Who Deserve Their Own Book. This is just a quick run through of some of the characters in a few of Agatha Christie’s crime novels as I’m still not feeling up to writing much just yet, although the side effects of the chemotherapy aren’t quite so bad today.

1. Captain Hastings, a close friend, but he only appears in only eight of the thirty-three Poirot novels – he is the narrator in those books. He appears in the first Poirot novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles.
2. Ariadne Oliver, a writer of detective fiction who assists Poirot. I think Agatha Christie enjoyed writing about her, using her to express her own thoughts about writing, about Poirot and playwrights adapting her plays. Probably my favourite Ariadne Oliver book is Mrs McGinty’s Dead.
3. Inspector Japp appears in several short stories and novels. Although he is a minor character in most of them, like Hastings he has a big part in three of the novels, including Death in the Clouds.
4. Raymond West, Miss Marple’s nephew in a few books including A Caribbean Mystery, in which she is on holiday that he arranged for her after her doctor had prescribed sunshine. 
5. Lucy Eyelesbarrow appears in just one book, 4.50 to Paddington. Miss Marple enlists her help in investigating a murder that was seen on a train but there was no trace of a body and no one was reported missing.
6. Mr Satterthwaite, an observer rather than an investigator, who was in his sixties, a little man, with an elf-like face, is Mr Quin’s friend. One of my favourite stories he is in is The Man From The Sea in The Mysterious Mr Quin, a collection of short stories.
7. Harley Quin always appears unexpectedly and suddenly, and then just as suddenly disappears. He is, without doubt, the most mysterious and unusual character in all of Agatha Christie’s books. She describes him as a figure invisible except when he chose, not quite human, yet concerned with the affairs of human beings and particularly of lovers. He is also the advocate for the dead.
8. Colonel Race, who appears in four of the books. The first one is The Man in the Brown Suit, one of her earlier books and a thriller rather than a detective story.
9. Luke Fitzwilliam, a policeman who had returned to England from abroad. He investigates the murders in Wychwood-under-Ash, a picturesque village, in Murder is Easy.
10. Victoria Jones in They Came to Baghdad, a story about international espionage and conspiracy. I grew very fond of the amazing Victoria Jones!

I am now so far behind with writing about the books I’ve read this year that the only way to get back on track is to write just a few notes about the books I’ve read recently.

I read 7 books in May and only wrote about one – The Light Between the Oceans (linked to my post) by M L Stedman, the story of Tom, a lighthouse keeper on an isolated island, Janus Rock, and his wife Isabel. Janus Rock is nearly half a day’s journey from the coast of Australia, where the Indian Ocean washes into the Great Southern Ocean. When a boat washes up on the shore of the island it holds a dead man – and a crying baby. Tom and his wife have a devastating decision to make.

The other 6 books are:

Put on by Cunning by Ruth Rendell – a Chief Inspector Inspector Wexford mystery, this was a re-read. The link takes you to my post written in 2014. I didn’t realise at first that I’d already read this book. I didn’t enjoy it as much as the first time I read it. It’s a tale of great complexity, of murder and conspiracy to murder. A wealthy old man, Sir Manuel Camargue, one of greatest flautists of his time is found dead. Ankle deep in snow he had lost his footing in the dark and slipped into an icy lake and became trapped. Although it seems a straight forward death, Camargue’s much younger fiancée, puts doubts in Chief Inspector Wexford’s mind and he wonders if it was murder.

Before the Poison by Peter Robinson is a standalone novel and another re-read. It’s about Chris Lowndes, a widower who has bought a house in the Yorkshire Dales. Sixty years earlier a man had died there and his wife Grace was convicted of his murder and hanged. Chris wants to discover whether she really was guilty. This is a convincing mystery, told alternating between the present day and the past. 

A Deadly Thaw by Sarah Ward – I read her first book In Bitter Chill years ago and had been meaning to read more of her books, but only got round to it this year. It’s the second in the Francis Sadler series set in the fictional town of Bampton in Derbyshire, and it is just as good as the first. In 2004 Lena Fisher was arrested for suffocating her husband, Andrew. In 2016, a year after Lena’s release from prison, Andrew was found dead in a disused mortuary. Who was the man Lena killed twelve years ago, and who committed the second murder?

The Road Towards Home by Corinne Demas – I thoroughly enjoyed this book, a complete and welcome change from crime fiction. It’s about the friendship between Cassandra and Noah, two retired people who had first met in their youth. They were reacquainted when they moved to Clarion Court an ‘an independent living community’. Noah invites Cassandra to rough it with him at his Cape Cod cottage, and their relationship unexpectedly blossoms after several ups and downs

The Hairy Bikers Blood, Sweat & Tyres: The Autobiography by Si King and Dave Myers – a fascinating book written in alternate chapters by Si and Dave. It’s funny, informative, sad and happy, revealing the tough times they went through, their health issues, family losses, how they came to work on TV and above all their friendship.

Empire by Conn Iggulden – historical fiction, the 2nd book in The Golden Age series , a thoroughly entertaining book that brings the ancient history of Athens, Sparta and Persia to life. I’ll write about this in more detail in a later post.

I’ve not been writing posts because I’m in hospital at the moment and will be for a few weeks – but I’ll be back!

Cathy at 746 Books is hosting her 20 Books of Summer Challenge again this year. The challenge runs from 1 June to 1 September. There are options to read 10 or 15 books instead of the full 20. And you can swap a book, or change the list half way through if you want. And you can decide to drop your goal from 20 to 15 or 10 if you want to. This is a very flexible challenge!

You can sign up here.

During previous summers I’ve taken part in this challenge and never managed to read all the books I’ve listed, although I’ve read over 20 books during the summer months. It seems that listing books I want to read somehow takes away my desire to read them – or it may be that other books demand to be read when the time comes.

But I do enjoy compiling a list, so here are 20 books I’d like to read, subject to change, of course and as time goes on I may drop my goal to 15 or 10 … depending on circumstances.

1. Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively
2. A Sea of Troubles by Donna Leon
3. Death is Now My Neighbout by Colin Dexter
4. Islands of Abandonment: Life in the Post-Human Landscape by Cal Flyn
5. The Bedlam Stacks by Natasha Pullen
6. Recalled to Life by Reginald Hill
7. The Hunt for Mount Everest by Craig Storti
8. I’ll Never Be Young Again by Daphne du Maurier
9. The Locked Room by Elly Griffiths
10. The Midnight Hour by Elly Griffiths
11. Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
12. Broadchurch by Erin Kelly
13. The Virgin Blue by Tracy Chevalier
14. The Hog’s Back Mystery by Freeman Willis Crofts
15. Longbourn by Jo Baker
16. Weyward by Emilia Hart
17. The Cut by Christopher Brookmyre
18. A Dirty Death by Rebecca Tope
19. Broken Summer by J M Lee
20. The Vanishing Tide by Hilary Taylor

What will you be reading?

This challenge was devised by FictionFan in 2021 and I have been filling in the squares at a snail’s pace since then.

Any type of book counts – crime, fiction, science fiction, non-fiction and a country can only appear once. I think this is why I have found it the hardest reading challenge of all – so far only completing 16 of the 25 squares and I’ve been thinking about giving up on it. But after looking through my unread books I have come up with books to fill 8 of the remaining 9 squares.

Books shown in italics are ones I’m thinking of reading or am currently reading.

North America – Inland by Téa Obreht – USA

Small Town – A Town Called Solace by Mary Lawson – Canada

Island – The Island by Victoria Hislop – Greece

Train – Stamboul Train by Graham Greene – on the Orient Express travelling from Ostend to Constantinople (Instanbul or Stamboul), via Cologne, Vienna and Belgrade.

Far East – The Honourable Schoolboy by John le Carré – Hong Kong, Cambodia etc

Indian Sub-Continent – The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai – India

Village – Extra Virgin by Annie Hawes – Italy – I have just started reading this

Oceania – A Room Made of Leaves by Kate Grenville – Australia

Forest – White Rose, Black Forest by Eoin Dempsey – Germany read not yet reviewed

Space – The [Widget], The [Wadget], and Boff, by Theodore Sturgeon

Mountain – The Moon Sister by Lucinda Riley – Spain and other countries

South America – Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez – Colombia

Free Square – The Fellowship of the Ring by J R R Tolkien – read not yet reviewed – Middle Earth

River – State of Wonder by Ann Patchett – Rio Negro in Brazil – read not yet reviewed

Polar Regions – Ice Bound by Jerri Nielsen – The South Pole, Antarctica

Desert – The Night of the Mi’raj  by Zoë Ferraris – Saudi Arabia

Walk – A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute – Malaya – currently reading

Southeast Asia – The Quiet American by Graham Greene – Vietnam

Africa – Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad – Belgian Congo

Beach – The Night Hawks by Elly Griffiths – Norfolk, England – read not yet reviewed

Road – Coffin Road by Peter May – Scotland

Europe – Ashes by Christopher de Vinck – Belgium

Sea – The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway – in the Gulf Stream off the coast of Cuba.

Middle East – Murder in Mesopotamia by Agatha Christie – present-day Iraq, Kuwait, and parts of Iran, Syria, and Turkey

City – The Paris Library by Janet Skeslien Charles – France

~~~

This leaves me with just one book to find to fill the Desert square – any suggestions, please!