Category: Weekly Events

Saturday Snapshot

Published on by Margaret22 Comments

There was a loud bang the other day. I looked around the house but couldn’t find anything that had fallen down to explain the noise. Later I noticed that the front room window was looking rather dusty, and then I realised what the bang had been:

There are lots of wood pigeons and collared doves flying round our garden and it looks as though one had tried to fly through the window. It had certainly left an impression, probably seeing the reflection of trees in the window and thinking it could fly through. Fortunately there was no dead or injured bird anywhere to be seen!  We’d better get some stickers on the window!

See more Saturday Snapshots on Alyce’s blog At Home With Books.

Book Beginnings

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

Today I finished reading Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates. It has taken me several weeks to read it and I fancy a complete change and a shorter book!

So, I’m thinking of reading No Longer at Ease by Chinua Achebe, which begins:

For three or four weeks Obi Okonkwo had been steeling himself against this moment. And when he walked into the dock that morning he thought he was fully prepared. He wore a smart palm-beach suit and appeared unruffled and indifferent. The proceeding seemed to be of little interest to him. Except for one brief moment at the very beginning when one of the counsel had got into trouble with the judge. (page 1)

This is my copy which I bought several years ago from a second-hand bookshop somewhere, after reading its predecessor Things Fall Apart, whose hero was Obi’s grandfather. I thought Things Fall Apart was an amazing book and one that had made a great impression on me, so why haven’t I read No Longer at Ease before now?

From the blurb on the back cover I see that Obi has returned to Nigeria from studying in England. He is a civil servant with a respectable job and a fiancée, but despite the expectations of his family and tribe he falls victim to the corruption of Lagos. It promises to be a study of the cultural change in Nigeria during the 1950s.

Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Katy, at ‘˜A Few More Pages’.

ABC Wednesday – F is for …

Published on by Margaret12 Comments

… one of my favourite flowers:

Fuchsia

Photos taken in my former garden.

A couple of commenters have asked is this a perennial. It’s a herbaceous perennial that flowers in the spring and summer and dies back in the winter. My next door neighbour grew them in profusion and I grew this one in our garden from a cutting off one of her plants.

An ABC Wednesday post for the letter F.

Character versus Plot – Musing Mondays

Published on by Margaret9 Comments

This week’s musing from Miz B at Should Be Reading asks’¦

Do you prefer character-driven stories, or plot-driven stories?

I can’t chose, because for me a book has to have both well-defined characters and a good plot.  I prefer to have a balanced book which is both character and plot-driven.

There’s not much left to say really, but I suppose that I couldn’t believe in a plot-driven story without well-defined characters, so maybe I would prefer character-driven stories. For example, not a lot happens in One Fine Day by Molly Panter Downes, and I loved it.  But then it’s a psychological novel, being more about mind than action, about the pleasures and tragedies in life and there is plenty of reflection in it about sociological and cultural changes.

Saturday Snapshot

Published on by Margaret18 Comments

 I took this photo a few weeks ago through the window of The Maltings Kitchen, in Berwick-upon-Tweed. It shows the River Tweed on its way down into the North Sea, a seagull sitting on top of one of the chimneys below the restaurant, and a crow-stepped gable end of one of the buildings. And on the skyline you can just see the Royal Border Bridge carrying the East Coast Main Line Railway over the Tweed, built by Robert Stephenson and opened by Queen Victoria in 1850.

Saturday Snapshot is hosted by Alyce at At Home with Books.

Book Beginnings

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

I’ve been reading books recently and not writing about them. I didn’t have the impetus at the time (too many other things going on in my life right now to distract me), but I hope to write about them quite soon:

  • The Hanging Wood by Martin Edwards – excellent
  • Evil Under the Sun by Agatha Christie  – very good
  • Murder on the Eiffel Tower by Claude Izner – a bit disappointing

I’m about to start reading S J Bolton’s second book Awakening. Here are the opening sentences from the Prologue:

The darkest hour I’ve ever known began last Thursday, a heartbeat before the sun came up.

It was going to be a beautiful morning, I remember thinking, as I left the house; soft and close, bursting with whispered promises, as only a daybreak in early summer can be. The air was still cool but an iridescence on the horizon warned of baking heat to come. Birds were singing as though every note might be their last and event the insects had risen early.

This opening is full of threat. Even though it is a beautiful morning it foreshadows some dreadful event coming soon, in contrast to the fine day.

I decided to read Awakening after finishing Sacrifice, which I wrote about in my last post, especially as several people commented that her later books are better.

Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Katy at A Few More Pages.