Category: Weekly Events

Sunday Salon – Today’s Books

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

My reading today, so far has been just a short portion of Agatha Christie’s Autobiography and some more of A Change in Altitude by Anita Shreve. AC’s autobiography is very entertaining. At the moment I’m still in her childhood, so a long way to go yet. I’m reserving judgement for a while on A Change in Altitude. I always used to enjoy Anita Shreve’s books, but latterly I’ve found them not quite so much to my liking. This one is set in Kenya, a very different location and so far it’s quite depressing. I don’t think it’s going to lighten up much either.

Anyway, I’m putting these two books to one side for the rest of today and will be reading Quite Ugly One Morning by Christopher Brookmyre, because tomorrow I’m going to his Author Event in Livingston. I thought I’d get in the mood early. Quite Ugly was his debut novel in 1996. This is the synopsis from his website:

Yeah, yeah, the usual. A crime. A corpse. A killer. Heard it.

Except this stiff happens to be a Ponsonby, scion of a venerable Edinburgh medical clan, and the manner of his death speaks of unspeakable things.

Why is the body displayed like a slice of beef? How come his hands are digitally challenged? And if it’s not the corpse, what is that awful smell?

A post-Thatcherite nightmare of frightening plausibility, Quite Ugly One Morning is a wickedly entertaining and vivacious thriller, full of acerbic wit, cracking dialogue and villains both reputed and shell-suited.

Brookmyre’s books have such great titles, for example – One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night, All Fun and Games until Somebody Loses an Eye, and A Big Boy Did It and Ran Away. His latest book is Pandaemonium.

A Plethora of Plums

Published on by Margaret9 Comments

We have an old plum tree in our garden. This year is the first year we’ve been here and we didn’t know what to expect from the tree. It’s been absolutely blooming, full of fruit. The boughs are weighed down to the ground with the weight and I’ve picked many kilos of plums. I don’t have any jam jars so I’ve been cooking the plums and either eating them with ice cream, or making crumble, or freezing the fruit.

I made crumble with some of these, a simple recipe made with plain flour, sugar and butter, rubbed in until mixture resembles breadcrumbs and then cooked on top of the plums for about 30 -40 minutes at 190°C.

Check out the other entries this week at Weekend Cooking.

ABC Wednesday – K

Published on by Margaret20 Comments

This week in ABC Wednesday the featured letter is:

A number of Ks, came to mind when I was wondering which K to illustrate. My difficulty is which ones to keep and which to kick out?

Should it be kaleidoscope, a toy which fascinated me as a child, or knitting, although I haven’t made anything for ages.  I thought of picking a place €“ a town, like Kelso, or Kendal, maybe  food €“ kippers, or kedgeree, or a bird such as kingfisher or kittiwake. Perhaps I should pick an author such as Barbara Kingsolver, the author of The Poisonwood Bible, one of my favourite books. So many to choose from €¦

But in the end it has to be KINDLE, because I’ve been wondering about getting an e-reader for such a long time.

I’ve hesitated because, apart from the cost, I do like the physicality of reading – the feel of a book in my hands. I like having a pile of books waiting to be read, browsing my bookshelves, the smell of books and so on. These days I don’t travel so much so I’m not sure that I’d get that much use from it. I can see the advantages of having several books loaded ready to read if I was going on holiday for example – but would I use it at any other time?

Then I realised from reading Bernadette’s post that it could save me space, which would be a great bonus. Currently my bookshelves are all full, most of them double shelved, and I have piles of books in different rooms. I’d be able to weed out books and have more space as apparently a Kindle can store up to 3,500 books, which is more than I own! It’s also much lighter than any paperback book so it would be easier to read in bed. And, although I do like the feel of a book, it would mean I wouldn’t have to struggle with those books that are bound too tightly so that you can’t open them fully.

I’d still have lots of books, but maybe I should ask Father Christmas for a Kindle?

Teaser Tuesday – The Sunday Philosophy Club

Published on by Margaret1 Comment

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.

For today’s teaser I’ve chosen the opening sentences of Alexander McCall Smith’s The Sunday Philosophy Club, which is the first in his series of Isabel Dalhousie novels. Isabel is a philosopher and the editor of the Review of Applied Ethics; and also an amateur sleuth. She is a great favourite of mine.

Isabel Dalhousie saw the young man fall from the edge of the upper circle, from the gods. His flight was so sudden and short, and it was less than a second that she saw him, hair tousled, upside down, his shirt and jacket up around his chest so that his midriff was exposed. And then striking the edge of the grand circle, he disappeared headfirst towards the stalls below. (page 1)

Was it an accident or was he pushed?

Weekly Geeks – Overly Critical?

Published on by Margaret10 Comments

This week’s Weekly Geeks host Tara asks if we are OCRs?

O.C.R. = Overly Critical Reader

Symptoms:

  • not liking characters in the beginning
  • needing the main character to prove themselves before you’ll respect them
  • rolling your eyes while reading
  • needing things to be completely realistic
  • shouting things such as “WTF?!”
  • needing every plot twist and turn to be foreseeable

I don’t think I’m overly critical. I’m quite fussy about what I read in the first instance, so many books just don’t get a look in beyond the first page. I want to enjoy what I’m reading so I don’t start any book that looks boring or as though it’s not well written.

I do get exasperated when I read a description or a fact that I know is wrong, but a book doesn’t have to be completely realistic – I can suspend my disbelief to a certain extent. And I certainly don’t want every plot twist and turn to be foreseeable because that would be far too predictable.

I don’t feel the need to like all the characters, in fact unlikeable characters can be more interesting and necessary to the plot. It would be terribly boring if every character was ‘nice’.

I like reading critical reviews because then it gives me another view from the gushing praise some reviewers give (on Amazon for example), so in my reviews I like to say why I don’t like certain aspects of a book if I’ve found it disappointing or poorly written and give an overall idea of whether I loved it or not. I don’t give ratings on my blog, but I do on LibraryThing, where my average rating is 4 stars (out of 5). I also rate each book privately as I read it; most are between 3.5 and 5, where 5 is excellent and 3 is average. I don’t put it on the blog because it’s very subjective. I’ve noticed that this varies from blog to blog and I’m wondering  if I should start putting my rating in the review?

ABC Wednesday

Published on by Margaret13 Comments

Last week I found the ABC Wednesday meme, which was started by Mrs. Denise Nesbitt, and people from all over the world come together to play and share their entries. Each week word(s) beginning with the designated letter are selected and illustrated through a photo, poem or prose. This week is the letter J.

J is for Jigsaw

As well as reading I also enjoy doing jigsaws and I’ve just started doing this one:


Eventually it will look like this. It’s a view of Little Langdale in the Lake District.