BooksPlease

The North Yorks Moors

Published on November 23, 2019 by Margaret6 Comments

October and November have been unusual months as we’ve been away a couple of times – in October we went to the the North Yorks Moors and at the beginning of November we were in the Lake District, where amazingly we had such beautiful sunny weather, cold but sunny with a brilliant blue sky.

Here are a few photos of some of the places we visited whilst staying in an isolated converted barn on the North Yorks Moors. Runswick Bay, and Robin Hood’s Bay are on the east coast near Whitby Abbey.

Runswick Bay IMG_20191002_155100773_HDR — Runswick Bay

There a few red-roofed houses and cottages clinging to the cliff at Runswick Bay looking down on a long arc of beach. As the east coast is eroding the village is steadily creeping closer to the shore. The AA Mini Guide book – North Yorks Moors records that the village of Runswick, one of the ‘lost’ villages of Yorkshire’s coast, fell into the sea in 1682. The whitewashed house on the headland was the coastguard cottage.

Runswick Bay

Robin Hood’s Bay is further down the coast. It’s a little fishing village, with a long, steep access road down to the bay, a long stretch of sandy beach with a rocky foreshore.

Robin Hood's Bay IMG_20190930_144925574_HDR — Robin Hood’s Bay

The tide comes in very quickly and we had to dash back to avoid being caught. I did get my feet a bit wet though.

Robin Hood's Bay incoming tide — Robin Hood’s Bay – the tide nearly caught me.

We had a quick look at Whitby Abbey and Whitby itself, but really need to go back to see it properly.

On the way home we stopped at the Angel of the North at Gateshead. I’d seen the Angel of the North from the A1, but we had never stopped to see it up close. It was created by Sir Anthony Gormley. Completed in 1998, it is a steel sculpture of an angel, 20 metres tall, with wings measuring 54 metres across. It is immense – the person walking up to the sculpture gives some idea of just how enormous it is.

Angel of the North IMG_20191003_132615303_HDR — Angel of the North, Gateshead

I zoomed in to have a look at its head.

Of course, all this holidaying and travelling around has meant I am now so very behind with writing about the books I read!

An April Shroud by Reginald Hill

Published on November 21, 2019November 21, 2019 by Margaret4 Comments

An April Shroud is Reginald Hill’s fourth Dalziel and Pascoe novel, first published in 1975, in which Dalziel is on holiday and Pascoe is on his honeymoon.

From the back cover:

Inspector Pascoe may take holidays but Death never does – and neither, it seems, does Superintendent Dalziel. A watery accident on a solitary country holiday leads to the Fat Man drying off in Lake House, a nearby mansion well past its prime.

The same cannot be said for its owner, the fulsome Mrs Fielding. She has only recently buried her husband, but seems more concerned with her future. Dalziel’s curiosity is aroused – purely professionally of course – and by the time Pascoe’s honeymoon is over, there have been several more deaths and Dalziel might have compromised himself beyond redemption …

Whereas in the previous book, Ruling Passion Dalziel’s character was more of a caricature, on An April Shroud Hill develops his character more fully, in fact I think the book is primarily a superb character study of Dalziel. He is rude, coarse and insensitive, but his capacity for getting to the bottom of a mystery is shown to be immense.

Although on holiday he cannot help but ferret out what really happened to Conrad Fielding, when he meets the Fielding family on their way back home after Conrad’s funeral. He was rescued by them when his journey south was brought to an abrupt end by floods. The police had decided that Conrad’s death had been an accident – he had fallen off a ladder onto the drill he had been using and it had pierced his heart. Mrs Fielding invites Dalziel to stay at their home, Lake House, where it soon becomes apparent to him that the family have plenty of secrets they would rather he didn’t discover.

I couldn’t easily distinguish who was who in the family, except to realise that they were all rather odd. The plot seemed over complicated and in parts I thought I was reading a farce as more bodies turned up dead. I had little idea who was guilty and the identity of the culprits took me by surprise. Dalziel’s ‘interlude’ with the widow, Bonny Fielding, was entertaining as well as revealing about Dalziel’s personal life – he is sensitive and vulnerable beneath his boorish exterior.

Overall, I enjoyed the book, although for me it was far from Hill’s best Dalziel and Pascoe book and I’m looking forward to reading book 5, A Pinch of Snuff, as I know that the later books are much better. Reginald Hill wrote 24 Dalziel and Pascoe novels. I’ve read some of them and currently I’m reading my way through the rest.

These are the Dalziel and Pascoe books I’ve read so far:

1. A Clubbable Woman (1970)
2. An Advancement of Learning (1971)
3. Ruling Passion (1973)
4. An April Shroud (1975)
8. Exit Lines (1984)
11. Bones and Silence (1990)
14. Pictures of Perfection (1993) – read, no post
17.On Beulah Height (1998)
20. Death’s Jest Book (2002)
21. The Death of Dalziel (2007)

Reading Challenges: Mount TBR 2019 (a book I’ve owned for four years) and the Calendar of Crime 2019 challenge (for the month of April – a book with the month in the title).

Nonfiction November Week 4 Nonfiction Favourites

Published on November 19, 2019 by Margaret14 Comments

nonficnov 19

I’m taking part in Nonfiction November 2019 again this year. It runs from Oct 28 to Nov 30. Each Monday a link-up for the week’s topic will be posted at the host’s blog for you to link your posts throughout the week.

This week’s topic is:

Nonfiction Favourites hosted by Leann @ ThereThereReadThis. We’ve talked about how you pick nonfiction books in previous years, but this week I’m excited to talk about what makes a book you’ve read one of your favourites. Is the topic pretty much all that matters? Are there particular ways a story can be told or particular writing styles that you love? Do you look for a light, humorous approach or do you prefer a more serious tone? Let us know what qualities make you add a nonfiction book to your list of favourite.

The subject of a book is what attracts me in the first place. To be a favourite for me it has to be readable, informative, and based on verifiable facts. It goes without saying really, but I like a nonfiction book to have an index, footnotes or end notes and at least a list of sources, if not a bibliography.

One the other hand I also really enjoy reading nonfiction books that are full of opinions, thoughts and reflections. Examples are books about books – Susan Hill’s two books – Howards End is on the Landing and Jacob’s Room is Full of Books, and personal memoirs, such as Karen Armstrong’s The Spiral Staircase, about her early life as a nun and her subsequent life after she left the convent, embarked on a spiritual journey and began her writing career.

Above all, I like books that make me think, whether they are nonfiction or fiction.

My favourite nonfiction book this year so far is The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot.

Immortal life of HL

This is a fascinating, but harrowing biography of Henrietta’s life and death. She died of cervical cancer in 1951. Her cancer cells became known as HeLa cells and have formed the basis for much medical research and drug development ever since. It is also a history of the diagnosis and treatment of cancer and considers the ethical issues around ownership of her cells and the distress, anger and confusion this caused her family.

Looking back to previous years these are just some of my favourites:

Quiet Cain

Quiet: the Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain. This is well researched, clearly written and full of fascinating information. I knew before I read it that I’m an introvert and this book confirmed it. Of course there are varying degrees of introversion, just as there are of extroversion and Susan Cain goes into this in some detail. She includes personal details, case studies, and anecdotes from people she interviewed which means that this is more than a factual account. It’s a well balanced examination of the differences between introversion and extroversion.

Wild Swans

Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China (first published in 1991), Jung Chang’s book about her grandmother, her mother and herself, telling of their lives in China up to and during the years of the violent Cultural Revolution. Her family suffered atrociously, her father and grandmother both dying painful deaths and both her mother and father were imprisoned and tortured. It’s a personal story, reflecting the twentieth century history of China. A remarkable book, full of courage and spirit.

Nagasaki

Nagasaki: Life after Nuclear War by Susan Southard is an amazing, heart-wrenching book. This must be one of the most devastatingly sad and depressing books I’ve read and yet also one of the most uplifting, detailing the dropping of the bomb, which killed 74,000 people and injured another 75,000. As the subtitle indicates this book is not just about the events of 9 August 1945 but it follows the lives of five of the survivors from then to the present day.

And finally, although there are plenty of other books I could have selected, a book about trees:

The Man who climbs Trees

The Man Who Climbs Trees by James Aldred, a professional tree climber, wildlife cameraman, and adventurer. He explains how he discovered that trees are places of refuge as well as providing unique vantage points to view the world. It is not only full of information but also beautifully written and absolutely fascinating. If you have ever wondered how wildlife/nature documentaries are filmed this book has the answers. His travels brought him into contact with dozens of different religions and philosophies all containing ‘profound elements of truth’ that he respects very much, concluding that ‘spirituality is where you find it’ and he finds it ‘most easily when up in the trees’.

My Friday Post: Northern Lights by Philip Pullman

Published on November 15, 2019 by Margaret16 Comments

Every Friday Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Gillion at Rose City Reader where you can share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires.

I’ve been watching the BBC One adaptation of His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman, which has made me pick up the first book in the trilogy, Northern Lights. I first read it several years ago but seeing the first two episodes has made me want to re-read it.

Pullman Northern Lights

Lyra and her dæmon moved through the darkening Hall, taking care to keep to one side, out of sight of the kitchen.

Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice.

30879-friday2b56 These are the rules:

Grab a book, any book.
Turn to page 56, or 56% on your eReader. If you have to improvise, that is okay.
Find any sentence (or a few, just don’t spoil it) that grabs you.
Post it.
Add the URL to your post in the link on Freda’s most recent Friday 56 post.

Pages 55-56:

“What is them Gobblers?” said Simon Parslow, one of Lyra’s companions.

The first gyptian boy said, “You know. They been stealing kids all over the country. They’re pirates -”

“They en’t pirates,” corrected another gyptian. “They’re canniboles. That’s why they call ’em Gobblers.”

“They eat kids?” said Lyra’s other crony Hugh Lovat, a Kitchen boy from St Michael’s.

“No one knows,” said the first gyptian. “They take them away and they en’t never seen again.”

Blurb:

‘Without this child, we shall all die.’

Lyra Belacqua lives half-wild and carefree among the scholars of Jordan College, with her dæmon, Pantalaimon, always by her side.

But the arrival of her fearsome uncle, Lord Asriel, draws her to the heart of a terrible struggle – a struggle born of stolen children, witch clans and armoured bears.

As she hurtles towards danger in the cold far North, Lyra never suspects the shocking truth: she alone is destined to win, or to lose, the biggest battle imaginable.

~~~

It’s compelling reading, both in terms of storyline (with many parallel worlds) and in terms of ideas.

Are you watching His Dark Materials too? Have you read the books? Do let me I know.

The Blogger Recognition Award

Published on November 14, 2019 by Margaret5 Comments

I’m amazed and delighted to have been nominated for The Blogger Recognition Award by FictionFan at FictionFan’s Book Reviews – thank you!

The Award Rules

1. Thank the blogger/s who nominated you and provide a link to their blog.
2. Write a post to show your award.
3. Give a brief story of how your blog started.
4. Give two pieces of advice to new bloggers.
5. Select 15 other bloggers you want to give this award to.
6. Comment (or pingback) on each blog and let them know you have nominated them and provide the link to the post you created.

3. Give a brief story of how your blog started.

Pinkerton's Sister

It all started in 2005 with Pinkerton’s Sister by Peter Rushforth. It’s a bizarre story seen through the main character’s, Alice’s eyes, which because she lives in a world of books is a very strange place indeed. It’s funny, well ludicrous at times, full of literary and musical references and I got lost in it for hours.

I decided I wanted to know more about this book and a Google Search led me to Book World’s Blog where Sandra had written a post about it (I can no longer find her blog to thank her.) I had not heard about blogs before, but I was hooked and using her blogroll I discovered more book blogs. I decided to write one myself mainly to keep a record of what I’d read, but it took me another year before I plucked up the courage to make a start in July 2006 with a very short post and another nine months before I really got going in April 2007. I’d just left work and had more time to read and write about books, so I began this blog partly to help me remember what I’ve read and also to extend the pleasure of reading. And so ‘BooksPlease’ was born.

4. Give two pieces of advice to new bloggers.

My problem was getting started, so if you feel like that, just sit down and write and don’t worry about what others think or do. It’s your blog and you decide what you want to write about.

Be aware that blogging is addictive – and if you’re not careful you can find yourself adding more and more books to your To-Be-Read lists, which is both a good thing and a bad thing. Writing a blog also means you have less time to actually read books. It’s a real balancing act, but I love it.

5. Select 15 other bloggers you want to give this award to.

I don’t find this easy, so if you’d like to join in please consider yourself nominated.

Nonfiction November: Week 3 – Be The Expert – Agatha Christie

Published on November 14, 2019 by Margaret7 Comments

nonficnov 19

I’m taking part in Nonfiction November 2019 again this year. It was one of my favourite events last year – this year it will run from Oct 28 to Nov 30. Each Monday a link-up for the week’s topic will be posted at the host’s blog for you to link your posts throughout the week.

This week’s topic is:

Be The Expert/Ask the Expert/Become the Expert (Katie @ Doing Dewey): Three ways to join in this week! You can either share 3 or more books on a single topic that you have read and can recommend (be the expert), you can put the call out for good nonfiction on a specific topic that you have been dying to read (ask the expert), or you can create your own list of books on a topic that you’d like to read (become the expert).

I read more fiction than nonfiction, so I can’t claim to be an expert in any one subject, but I do read quite a lot of autobiographies and biographies and combined with my love of crime fiction I’ve chosen Agatha Christie for the subject of this post. I have read all of her crime fiction novels, her Autobiography and her memoir, Come Tell Me How You Live.

Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie: An Autobiography. It took her fifteen years to write it. She stopped in 1965 when she was 75 because she thought that it was the ‘right moment to stop’. As well as being a record of her life as she remembered it and wanted to relate it, it’s also full of her thoughts on life and writing. I’ve written about her Autobiography in a few posts as I was reading it:

Agatha Christie: Come, Tell Me How You Live: an archaeological memoir – she had visited the Middle East in 1929 travelling on the Orient Express to Istanbul and then on to Damascus and Baghdad. She visited the excavations at Ur and returned there the following spring where she met archaeologist Max Mallowan – by the end of the summer they had decided to marry, which they did on 11 September 1930. She wrote this memoir to answer her friends’ questions about what life was like when she accompanied Max on his excavations in Syria and Iraq in the 1930s.

I can also recommend the following books:

Agatha Christie and the Eleven Missing Days by Jared Cade – a fascinating book. I did feel as though I was intruding into Agatha Christie’s private life that she had not wanted made known but Cade writes sympathetically. In December 1926 Agatha Christie disappeared from her home, Styles, in Berkshire. She was found eleven days later in a hotel in Harrogate, Yorkshire apparently suffering from amnesia. The book is not just about those eleven days but is a biography that reveals how those eleven days and the events that led up to her disappearance influenced the rest of her life.

Agatha Christie: An English Mystery by Laura Thompson – Overall, I think that this book as a biography is unbalanced, concentrating on the events surrounding Agatha’s disappearance and there is much speculation and supposition. I prefer Agatha’s own version of her life: An Autobiography, in which she merely referred to the events of 1926 thus:

The next year of my life is one I hate recalling. As so often in life, when one thing goes wrong, everything goes wrong. (page 356)

Agatha Christie at Home by Hilary Macaskill – a beautiful book, with many photographs – more than 100 colour photos – illustrating Agatha’s life and homes.

Poirot and Me by David Suchet – For me Suchet was the perfect Poirot and this book really lives up to its title, as the main subject is David Suchet’s role as Poirot. His first performance as Poirot was in 1988. Over the intervening twenty five years he played the part in every one of the seventy Poirot stories that Agatha Christie wrote, with the exception of a tiny short story called The Lemesurier Inheritance (a story in Poirot’s Early Cases and in The Under Dog).

I also dip into two more books about Agatha Christie’s work – Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks: Fifty Years of Mysteries in the Making by John Curran and The Life and Crimes of Agatha Christie by Charles Osborne.