Category: Weekly Events

Booking Through Thursday – Books that Change Your Life?

Published on by Margaret9 Comments

Today’s Booking Through Thursday question is:

Which Book Changed Your Life?

I’ve seen this question before and wondered about it, so I can say with confidence that there is no one book that has changed my life. Books as a whole have influenced my life. Reading is a way of life for me. It began a long time ago when I was a little girl, listening to my Dad reading to me before I went to sleep. Books are a wonderful resource, whether you want entertainment or information. Books are part of me, I’ve always loved them. When I had to decide what to do when I left school it was my Dad who suggested that I might like to be a librarian, because he knew I loved books. So books steered me into going to Library School and working in libraries for a few years.  I’ve had a few different jobs since then, but books have always been central.

Without my love of books I would never have started to write a blog. It was whilst I was trying to find more information about a book that I stumbled into this world of book blogs and began my own – life changing!

Teaser Tuesday

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly event hosted by MizB where you share ‘teasers’. I’ve adapted it a bit to include more information about the book and longer teasers.

Yesterday I finished reading Where Three Roads Meet by Salley Vickers. I borrowed it from the library simply because I’ve enjoyed other books by Salley Vickers –  in particular Miss Garnet’s Angel and Mr Golightly’s Holiday.

Where Three Roads Meet is different, but just as good. It’s one of the Canongate Myths series, modern versions of myths told by a number of different authors. I’ve read others in the series – A Short History of Myth by Karen Armstrong, Weight by Jeanette Winterson (the myth of Atlas and Heracles) and The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood (the myth of Penelope and Odysseus).

It’s the Oedipus myth as told to Sigmund Freud during his last years when he was suffering from cancer of the mouth. Under the influence of morphine he is visited by Tiresias, a blind prophet of Thebes who tells him his version of the Oedipus story. In between telling the story, Freud and Tiresias discuss language and the origins of words. The point where the three roads meet is the place Oedipus and his father had their tragic meeting, setting in motion the sequence of events that led to his downfall and to the fulfilment of the prophecy that he would kill his father and marry his mother.

In Tiresias’s version Freud’s interpretation wasn’t quite right:

Because, if I may say so, here in all the world was the one person you could safely say didn’t have the complex you dreamed up for him. He was Oedipus, plain Oedipus. But not simple. What was complex about him was not that he wanted to sleep with his mother (as she herself said, that impulse is not so uncommon) nor even that he killed a man who had once threatened his life. Tit for tat, some might say. What was so remarkable was that his own safekeeping was usurped by the need to know what he needed not to know. (page 169)

This is a book with multiple layers, not a simple book. Although it’s easy enough to read it straight through, it is complex, with many ideas about life and death, and truth and ambiguity to ponder. Even if you know the story of Oedipus it seems fresh and new in this version. I found the details of the operations Freud had, their effect upon him and the terrible pain he suffered was quite shocking. All in all, a satisfying, entertaining and challenging book.

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.

U is for …

Published on by Margaret8 Comments

… Unfinished …

My first entry for ABC Wednesday was J and I chose Jigsaw. I’d just got the pieces out ready to do it:

It’s a beautiful picture of Little Langdale in the Lake District. It’s also a very difficult puzzle partly because so many of the pieces are so similar in colour. Often a puzzle like this has to be done by matching the shapes of the pieces but what is so frustrating in this puzzle is that so many of them will fit together but they aren’t quite right and I end up with pieces that just won’t fit anywhere. The grass was bad enough and I know I’ve not got the pieces all in the right places because I have one green piece left and it won’t fit into the one remaining space. The sky is even worse.

It is UNFINISHED.

Also UNFINISHED is another U – namely Ulysses by James Joyce. Back in January I was full of determination to read this book, but so far I’ve only managed a few pages. It will certainly remain unfinished this year – maybe next year will be my Ulysses year, maybe not. It’s a daunting book because of its sheer length and reputation as a difficult book. It would probably help if I read it alongside Declan Kiberd’s book Ulysses and Us. I love the cover of this book, showing Marilyn Monroe reading Ulysses.

More variations on the letter U can be found on the ABC Wednesday site

Weekend Cooking

Published on by Margaret2 Comments

Time now to think about cooking for Christmas. I’ve made the Christmas Cake and that is maturing nicely (I hope). Whilst out shopping I found this book with more ideas for Christmas Cakes and Cookies:

It’s a flip-over book that is also free-standing, so you can stand it up whilst looking at the recipes as you cook. There are recipes for Shortbread Snowmen, Gingerbread Reindeer, Snowflake Delight, Festive Fudge, Christmas Crunchers and Christmas Toffee Pudding and many more delicious temptations.

I’m very tempted by the Christmas Toffee Pudding which is made with dates:

(click image to enlarge)

For more tempting cooking posts have a look at Beth Fish Reads

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.