Category: Weekly Events

Teaser Tuesday – The Tent, the Bucket and Me

Published on by Margaret6 Comments

I’m reading Emma Kennedy’s The Tent, the Bucket and Me.  As the subtitle explains this is about her ‘Family’s Disastrous Attempts to go Camping in the 70s‘, and that is not an understatement. I wish that I had the same powers of recall as Emma does to remember what I thought, felt and said at the age of 3. Emma is of course, writing comedy. It reminds me of those TV programmes that make you think ‘this just wouldn’t happen in real life’. I’m not saying that what she writes about didn’t happen, but I do suspect it’s been embellished somewhat.

Emma Kennedy would be great on Rob Brydon’s programme Would I Lie to You? All the events she describes would be ideal for the programme because no-one would believe they were true from the way she describes them. Passages in this book both make me laugh out loud and groan at the stupidity that led up to them. Just imagine you’re three, you’re drenched in wee (from a bucket full of the stuff that had tipped over when you tried to sit on it) and your parents told you to run naked round the car in a howling gale to wash off the wee! And that was Emma’s introduction to the joys of life under canvas.

There are more than enough toilet incidents, but these are not the only disasters that befall Emma and her teacher parents Tony and Brenda.  Having put up a frame tent in a howling gale in a field on the side of a cliff they abandon the tent and break into an empty caravan on the campsite, only to find that it went from bad to worse. The caravan was ‘ a stinking hole’, the back window blew out and, fighting against the wind the front end of the  caravan came off its bricks. They managed to jump out just as:

The caravan groaned; a deep crunch shattered out from its underbelly. With one terrifying yaw, the rear cracked up to the verical, tipped over and then rolled end over end, crashing down the field, metallic smashes punching through the howling wind. Then with one sliding finale, the caravan fell off the edge of the cliff.

‘We’re in hell!’ wailed Mam, as she watched it go. ‘Hell!’ (page 37)

They’d been in the eye of a force-ten gale, without realising it. Nothing daunted they carry on camping (holidays, that is) for the next 9 years.

Weekly Geeks – What Makes an Author Last?

Published on by Margaret7 Comments

This week’s discussion topic is inspired by the fact that on September 15 the world celebrates the 120th anniversary of the birth of Agatha Christie.

Have you read Christie’s books? Recently? What do you think it is about them that has given them such lasting value?
Or perhaps you have another favourite author whose works have outlasted those of their contemporaries? Maybe you’re a fan of Charles Dickens whose work is still widely known and studied while those of his contemporary, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, languish in relative obscurity.
What do you think it is that gives your favourite long-lasting author an edge? Is longevity all to do with quality? Quantity? Style perhaps? Or luck?
Agatha Christie is a great favourite of mine. I read a great many of her books as a teenager when I first came across her books and I’ve been taking part in the Agatha Christie Reading Challenge – my contribution to the current blog tour will be 22 September.

I’ve already written quite a lot about Agatha Christie’s books so for this post I thought I’d I’d write about another favourite author – Jane Austen. I first read Pride and Prejudice even before I knew anything about Agatha Christie. I can’t compare the two because they are so different – Jane only wrote six novels, Agatha over 80, Jane’s are romantic fiction, whereas Agatha wrote crime fiction, and so on.

Jane Austen’s lasting appeal is certainly down to the quality of her writing. Her characters are timeless. She portrays flirts, bores, snobs, the self-centred and foolish people as well as high-principled characters such as Jane Bennet (in Pride and Prejudice), who is determined to see good in everyone.  Her characters are amusing and well drawn, with great depth so that we are convinced of their reality. But her books aren’t sentimental and they are full of wit and humour. She writes about serious subjects treating them with humour and irony. In fact she delighted in a sense of the ridiculous, with such characters as Lady Catherine de Burgh and Mr Collins (Pride and Prejudice). And then there is Mr Darcy, handsome and aloof, a man who has won the heart of many women readers and also TV viewers with Colin Firth’s portrayal in the 1995 TV production.

Jane Austen’s England was at war with both America and France and the French Revolution was being fought across the Channel, but little of this is seen in her novels, just as it didn’t directly affect much of the nation. England was then largely a rural, agricultural society and Jane’s characters live in that world – a world of social inequality, one in which the role of women was very different from that of today. And for me this too is part of her appeal. She takes me into that world as I read her books. And yet because she was more interested in relationships, courtship, love and marriage than in national or international affairs her work has a timeless quality.

Her popularity is widespread from the academic to the popular. Her books are studied in schools and universities and they have been dramatised for the stage, TV and radio, and made into films and musicals. The first stage production was the 1906 play of Pride and Prejudice. In 1940 it was made into a film starring Laurence Olivier as Mr Darcy and Greer Garson as Elizabeth. Later two musicals of Pride and Prejudice were produced called First Impressions, Jane Austen’s first title for the book. Since then numerous TV productions of all her books have been made, and sequels, prequels and adaptations galore. More recently Pride and Prejudice has entered the zombie world with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, (a book I cannot bear the thought of reading!) and also Bollywood with Bride and Prejudice.

There are numerous biographies, Jane Austen clubs and societies, in the United Kingdom, Australia and North America. The Jane Austen Centre in Bath, the Cobb at Lyme Regis and the house she lived in at Chawton are places of pilgrimage for her fans. And there are several blog sites dedicated to celebrating Jane Austen’s work, including:

Writing this has made me want to re-read her books and read for the first time The Watsons, Lady Susan and Sanditon. I also have Jane Austen’s Letters to read.

Disaster! – Booking Through Thursday

Published on by Margaret18 Comments

Today’s Booking Through Thursday’s question is:

You’ve dropped your favourite out-of-print book in the bath, ruining it completely … what do you do?

I have done this with a library book. My immediate reaction was to panic and fish the book out of the water, abandon the bath and try to dry the book. Of course, it was useless, the book had been completely submerged. I had to take it back to the library and confess what I’d done. This was not the only library book I had to take back ruined. The second was one our dog had chewed. In both cases I had to pay for replacement books.

So after the bath disaster I’ve never read in the bath again.

It’s so difficult to replace a favourite book because even if I could find a second-hand copy it wouldn’t have the same meaning for me. I lost my copy of Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses that I had loved as a child. I have bought a replacement copy, but somehow it doesn’t have the same sentimental value for me, although it is better than not having it at all.

Teaser Tuesday – Seeking Whom He May Devour

Published on by Margaret9 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.

Today’s teaser is from Seeking Whom he May Devour by Fred Vargas:

‘You’re really weird,’ he said. ‘You see no evil anywhere. I’m afraid you’re blind.’ (page 125)

Seeking Whom He May Devour is an intriguing book as Vargas describes the various episodes where sheep are found in the French mountains with their throats torn out. Then a woman is found killed in the same way. People are convinced it’s the work of a werewolf except for Johnstone, a Canadian staying in France to film wolves, a man of few words who doesn’t believe in werewolves.

It  is not a fast-paced book, but has a feel of fable and legend about it, telling a tale of death, attitudes to life and death and a pilgrimage of sorts as the murderer is tracked down.