Category: Weekly Events

Teaser Tuesday – The Beacon by Susan Hill

Published on by Margaret7 Comments

I’ve just finished reading The Beacon by Susan Hill. It’s a short book that can be read in one sitting and it’s beautifully easy to read, written in a straight forward style, moving between the past and the present. It’s compelling, drawing a picture of a family, four children and their parents living in the Beacon, an old North Country farmhouse. It’s also full of tension, of unspoken feelings and emotions as each child, Colin, May, Frank and Berenice grow up and leave home. Except that May came back after a year at university in London, unable to cope with ‘the terrors’ that began to assail her.  As the years pass, May is left at home caring for her widowed mother, after she suffered a stroke.

I have two teasers today. The first is a description of one of May’s terrors:

When she lay down again she saw strange shapes before her eyes, trees with branches that curled upwards and inwards and turned to ash and blood-covered beaches dotted with mounds of sand-coloured snakes which stirred and coiled and uncoiled. Her own heart was beating extremely slowly and as it beat she felt it enlarging, swelling and filling out like a balloon inside her chest and stomach and finally growing up into her brain. (page 53)

And the second is about Frank. Frank is the mysterious one, the loner; the others felt they didn’t know him and said that no one knew what went on inside his head – it was one of life’s mysteries. There are hints throughout that Frank is different and it is only in the latter part of the book that it becomes clear why none of his siblings have any contact with him and don’t want him to know of his mother’s illness and death.

He did little speaking but a great deal of staring out of large green-grey, slightly bulbous eyes. He followed people too, his father and the men about the farm, his mother in the house, the other children at school almost anywhere. Turn round and Frank would be there, silent, watching, following. (page 32)

It’s a short, powerful book about truth and memory, about the ordinary everyday outer lives we  live and the inner turmoil and tensions within us. It’s also about what we make of our lives, how we express ourselves and about how other people see us. It’s amazing.

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

Microfiction Monday – The Man with No Horse

Published on by Margaret18 Comments

His horse stolen, poor Pedro had to walk and his feet were killing him. Those new thigh-length boots were definitely not made for walking.

Microfiction means the shortest of short stories. Think Aesop’s fables, comic strips, or even jokes: complete stories that can be told in under a minute. For this game, the limit is a tweetable 140 characters or fewer. Microfiction Monday is hosted by Susan at Stony River.

Weekly Geeks – Time for Reading?

Published on by Margaret6 Comments

This week’s Weekly Geeks question is about how to find time to read:

Do you read for a few minutes here and there?

Do you put aside certain nights or times of the day to read?

How do you minimize family interruptions?

If I don’t have some time for reading each day I feel deprived – I have to read even if it’s only for a few minutes. Reading is essential.

I’ll read whenever there are a few minutes here and there. At work I used to read whilst waiting for the lift, at breaks and at lunch time. I’ll read whenever I have to wait – at the doctor’s, dentist’s and hospital waiting rooms (it is more difficult to concentrate in those places, I admit). I also like to read whilst eating breakfast (but not other meal times), and each night I read before I fall asleep.

Family interruptions aren’t a problem. I can read whilst the TV is on, provided I don’t want to watch what’s on, of course. Sport is ideal for both reading and writing – the background noise seems to help me to read. This may be because growing up I had to do my homework in front of the TV in a warm room, or upstairs in a freezing cold bedroom (we didn’t have central heating).

ABC Wednesday – Q is for Queues

Published on by Margaret21 Comments

ABC Wednesday is the place to share a photograph, piece of art or poetry each week. This week it’s the letter Q.

Queuing is not my favourite activity – I always pick the wrong queue at the supermarket for instance. All the other queues move much quicker than the one I’m in. I’m too impatient to wait patiently but I know that if I move to another queue that one will slow down immediately – there will be a query about the price, or the till roll will need changing or the till operator has to go on a break. And those people who queue-jump are most annoying.

Queues at airports are even more frustrating. You’ve dashed to get there hours before take-off as you’re told to do and then queue up to check in, only to be told that the flight’s delayed and then hang around for hours before the announcement to board and then rush to the plane.

Hospital waiting rooms are just as bad. You check in at the reception desk, then sit in the waiting area. Then a nurse calls your name, good you think, and walk off behind her, only to go to yet another waiting area. I always take a book, but it’s hard to concentrate what with crying children, and chatty people all around you, not to mention worrying what the doctor will say or do when you eventually get called through.

These days you also have to queue on the phone, listening to horrible music, interspersed with announcements telling you that ‘your call is important to us’ and ‘you are now number …  5 …  in the queue.’

But here’s a queue I do like. This is my queue of books waiting to be read. These are just the A-L books. I’d lined them up on the floor to sort them in A-Z author order before putting them on the bookcase.

Arranging Books 1

 

Teaser Tuesday – Missing Link by Joyce Holms

Published on by Margaret11 Comments

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Share a couple or more sentences from the book you’re currently reading.

On Sunday I was wondering which book to read next and eventually decided upon Missing Link by Joyce Holms. She is a new writer to me. I liked the description of her at the front of the book:

Joyce Holms was born and educated in Glasgow. The victim of a low boredom threshold, she has held a variety of jobs, from teaching window dressing and managing a hotel on the Isle of Arran to working for an Edinburgh detective agency and running a B & B in the Highlands. Married with two grown up children she lives in Edinburgh and her interests include hill-walking and garden design.

Val McDermid’s blurb on the front cover reads, ‘Holms is a magician – the reader is so busy laughing, the clues just slip by unnoticed.’ More words by other authors are on Joyce Holms’s website , like this from Ian Rankin: Joyce’s humour is sharp without being nasty, her characters well drawn, and her Edinburgh a place you’ll want to spend time in….. read her books.

I began reading and was immediately drawn into the mystery. Mrs Sullivan wants to be proved guilty of murder and asks Fizz Fitzpatrick, a lawyer to help her. This extract is from the Prologue describing the murder of Amanda Montrose. Amanda is  driving home when the narrow country road ahead is partially blocked by old Volkswagen and someone has the bonnet up and is leaning under it. Amanda goes to see what’s the problem:

The driver straightens and turns, smiling, and fear surges through Amanda’s body like an electric charge. She sees the hammer. She sees the gloating, resolute eyes. And she knows she is looking at her own death. (page 14)

The question is did Mrs Sullivan kill Amanda or was it Terence Lamb, a known criminal, or one of the other people who also claimed to have killed her?