Five of the Best for November 2011-2015

Published on by Margaret14 Comments

This was originally Cleo’s idea (Cleopatra Loves Books). It’s to look back over your reviews of the past five years and pick out your favourite books for each month from 2011 ‘“ 2015. I like it so much it inspired me to do the same.

I really enjoy looking back over the books I’ve loved reading. These are some of my favourite books for each November from 2011 to 2015 (click on the titles/covers to see my original reviews). November is apparently the month where the crime fiction books I’ve read have been my favourite reads.

Three of the five books are Ian Rankin’s Rebus books – November is the month he’s published his latest books and November is the month I read them.  Ian Rankin is one of my favourite authors and his Rebus books never fail to impress me both with their ingenuity and the quality of their plots and characterisations.

2011

White Nights by Ann Cleeves – the second in her Shetland Quartet, featuring Detective Jimmy Perez, set mainly in Biddista, a fictional village of a few houses, a shop, an art gallery and restaurant called the Herring House, and an old Manse. A man’s body is found, hanging in the hut where the boat owners of the village of Biddista keep their lines and pots. Perez recognises the dead man ‘“ he’s the mystery man who had caused a scene the previous evening at the opening of Bella Sinclair’s and Fran Hunter’s art exhibition.

This book is not only full of believable characters, each one an individual in their own right, it also has a nicely complicated plot and a great sense of location. It’s the place, itself, that for me conveyed the most powerful aspects of the book. The ‘˜white nights’ are the summer nights when the sun never really goes down. They call it the ‘˜summer dim’, the dusk lasts all night, and in contrast to the bleak, black winters, fills people with ‘˜a kind of frenzy‘˜.

2012

Standing in Another Man’s Grave by Ian Rankin. This is the first book after Rebus’s retirement in which he is working for SCRU ‘“ the Serious Crime Review Unit, a Cold Case unit of retired police officers, investigating the disappearance of a young woman missing since 1999, and linking it with later cases of missing women all in the vicinity of the A9. He also clashes with Malcolm Fox of Edinburgh’s internal affairs unit – their dislike is mutual.

I  was gripped by this book and liked the way Rankin included characters from earlier books, such as Big Ger Caffety, Siobhan Clarke, now a DI, and in particular Malcolm Fox.

2013

Saints of the Shadow Bible by Ian Rankin. I think this is one of his best ‘“ a realistic and completely baffling mystery. a complex, multi-layered case, linking back to one of Rebus’s early cases on the force as a young Detective Constable. Rebus is now back on the force, the rules on retirement age having changed, but as a Detective Sergeant. Once more he is under scrutiny by Malcolm Fox. There are suspicions that Rebus and his colleagues, who called themselves ‘˜The Saints of the Shadow Bible’ were involved in covering up a crime, allowing a murderer to go free.

The interaction between Rebus and Fox is one of the joys of this book. Beneath his controlled exterior Fox is just as much a loose cannon as Rebus, he’s not a team player either and it is fascinating to see how Rebus gets under his skin and reveals Fox’s true nature.

2014

And now for a different author, but still crime fiction:

Blue Heaven by C J Box. I loved this book, the first one of C J Box’s books that I’ve read. The action takes place over four days in North Idaho one spring. It’s a story about two children, Annie and William who decide to go fishing without telling their mother, Monica, and witness a murder in the woods. One of the killers sees them and they run for their lives.

I loved the writing style – straightforward storytelling, with good descriptions of locality and characters; characters that are both likeable and downright nasty, but not caricatures. It’s a book that got right inside my mind so that I found myself thinking about when I wasn’t reading it and keen to get back to it. And the ending was what I hoped, and also dreaded it would be.

2015

Back to Rebus – although I also loved Claire Tomalin’s Mrs Jordan’s Profession.

Even Dogs in the Wild –  Now, two years later on from The Saints of the Shadow Bible Rebus is on his second retirement, working in a ‘˜consultative capacity’, albeit not as a cop and with no warrant card or real powers and with no pay. Once more this is a complicated plot, involving Malcolm Fox now seconded to the team of undercover cops from Glasgow, gang warfare, and Big Ger Cafferty. There are so many deaths and twists and turns that my mind was in a whirl as I tried to sort out all the characters.

Rankin, as usual, successfully combined all the elements of the crime mystery with the personal lives of the main characters and at the same time highlighting various current political and social issues.

Is this the last we’ll see of Rebus? Only time and Ian Rankin will tell.

November’s Books

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I read a variety of books in November, one biography, one book of short stories, and 7 novels, four of which were crime fiction. All enjoyable reads:

  1. Silver Lies by Ann Parker (from my Kindle TBR), a murder mystery set in 1879/80 in the silver-mining town of Leadville, Colarado in the heart of the Rocky Mountains.
  2. A Fear of Dark Water by Craig Russell (Library Book) the sixth book featuring Jan Fabel, the head of Hamburg’s Murder Commission set in Hamburg.
  3. Even Dogs In the Wild by Ian Rankin – the latest Rebus mystery.
  4. Mrs Jordan’s Profession by Claire Tomalin (Biography, TBR),  the story of actress Dora Jordan and her relationship with the Duke of Clarence, later King William IV .
  5. A Pale View of Hills by Kazuo Ishiguro,  the story of a widow, Etsuko living in Britain, as she reminisces about her past life in Japan shortly after the war, living at the edge of the wasteland of Nagasaki.
  6. Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner (Library Book), a beautiful book with, lovely lyrical descriptions, somewhat magical and mystical and underlying the text is the changing position of women in society in the 1920s.
  7. Bliss and Other Stories by Katherine Mansfield, a collection of fourteen short stories originally published in 1920.
  8. The Abbess of Whitby: a Novel of Hild of Northumbria by Jill Dallaway (Review Book), historical fiction set in 7th century Britain.
  9. The Ghost Riders of Ordebec by Fred Vargas (LB), the 8th book in her series of Commissaire Adamsberg books, an intriguing mystery full of  eccentric and quirky characters.

My book of the month is a draw between, Even Dogs in the Wild by Ian Rankin and Mrs Jordan’s Profession by Claire Tomalin; impossible to choose between two excellent books in completely different genres.

Nov 15 bks

 

The Abbess of Whitby by Jill Dalladay

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The Abbess of Whitby is subtitled A Novel of Hild of Northumbria. As Jill Dalloway explains in her Author’s Note at the end of the book what we know about Hild (St Hilda) comes from the Jarrow monk Bede’s  A History of the English Church and People written 40 years after her death. He gave no information about her between the ages of 13 and 33, so Jill Dalloway has based her fictional account of her life up to the age of 33 on the works of various modern scholars, assuming that like other royal girls of the time she was married for dynastic or political purposes. The major characters are historical, with a few exceptions and Hild’s husband and son are fictional. Hild was born in 614 and died in 680.

Knowing very little about the historical background to the story I found this a fascinating book, but could not have followed it very easily without the list of characters, the family tree of the royal families of Northumbria and the maps showing the Peoples of 7th Century Britain and of Hild’s Northumbria. I was surprised by how much people travelled in the 7th century. It spurred me on to find out more and I am now reading The King in the North: the Life and Times of Oswald of Northumbria by Max Adams. I would also like to read Edwin: High King of Britain and Oswald: Return of the King both by Edoardo Albert.

About two thirds of the book covers Hild’s early life, from the time she was chosen to lead the handmaidens of the fertility goddess  Eostre. It’s a time of transition as people are gradually being converted to Christianity, although at first it appears to be a matter of politics rather than of faith. Her marriage to Cerdic of the Goddodin tribe took her to Din Edin (Edinburgh). When home and family are lost in Oswy’s sack of Edinburgh, she finds herself in enemy hands, but meets the charismatic Aidan (St Aidan of Lindisfarne). The final part of the book covers her life as she helped establish various chapels and finally settled in Whitby as the Abbess there, involved in resolving the Easter dispute at the Synod of Whitby in 664. This settled that the calculations to establish the date of Easter would be according to the customs of Rome, rather than the Celtic customs practised by Irish monks at Iona and also to observe the monastic tonsure.

For me the first two thirds  of the book, showing the disputes between the separate kingdoms in Britain in the 7th century, the  transition from pagan to Christian beliefs and the harsh conditions and plague people had to endure, came to life more successfully than the later chapters.

I received this book for review from the publishers via LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers Program.

  • Paperback: 352 pages
  • Publisher: Lion Fiction; 1st New edition (21 Aug. 2015)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1782641548
  • ISBN-13: 978-1782641544

Jill Dalloway is a classicist, historian and former head teacher who pioneered the Cambridge Latin Course. She lives in Whitby.

The Ghost Riders of Ordebec by Fred Vargas

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I really enjoyed The Ghost Riders of Ordebec. It’s full of  eccentric and quirky characters, an intriguing mystery beginning with the death of an old woman, killed with breadcrumbs, then a car is burnt out with someone inside, and a pigeon is found with its legs tied together so it can’t fly.

But the main mystery Commissaire* Adamsberg has to solve is the strange tale a woman from Ordebec, a little village in Normandy, presents to him.

Blurb:

‘People will die,’ says the panic-stricken woman outside police headquarters.

She refuses to speak to anyone besides Commissaire Adamsberg. Her daughter has seen a vision: ghostly horsemen who target the most nefarious characters in Normandy. Since the middle ages there have been stories of murderers, rapists, those with serious crimes on their conscience, meeting a grisly end following a visitation by the riders.

Soon after the young woman’s vision a notoriously vicious and cruel man disappears. Although the case is far outside his jurisdiction, Adamsberg agrees to investigate the strange happenings in a village terrorised by wild rumours and ancient feuds.

My thoughts:

This is the 8th book in Fred Vargas’ series of Commissaire Adamsberg books. I’ve previously read two, so I’ve a bit of catching up to do. But although there are obviously events that I don’t know about (the appearance of a son, aged 28, that he hadn’t known about, for one thing) this doesn’t detract from the story. I loved all the strange characters – not just the odd people living in Ordebec, but also Adamsberg’s fellow police officers whom he describes as:

 … a hypersomniac who goes to sleep without warning, a zoologist whose speciality is fish, freshwater fish in particular, a woman with bulimia who keeps disappearing in search of food, an old heron who knows a lot of myths and legends, a walking encyclopaedia who drinks white wine non-stop — and the rest to match. (page 67)

And I also loved the medieval myths and legends forming the basis of the plot: the ghostly army that gallops along the Chemin de Bonneval, led by the terrifying Lord Hellequin.

Adamsberg is a thinker ‘ but a vague thinker ‘ he works mainly on intuition, and in this book his intuition and deductive reasoning have to work overtime. I was thoroughly immersed in this book, enjoying the humour as well as the mystery, intrigued to see how the crimes came together and how the pigeon was rescued. It’s original, and maybe not altogether plausible, but most definitely a treat to read.

Fred Vargas is the pseudonym of the French historian, archaeologist and writer Frédérique Audoin-Rouzeau.

*Commissaire is roughly the equivalent of a British Superintendent. His colleagues’ ranks in descending order are commandant, lieutenant and brigadier.

Reading Bingo 2015

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reading-bingo-small

I saw this on Cleo’s blog and think it’s a good way of looking back at what I’ve read over the year so far. Here’s my version. Some of my choices could go in more than one square, and for some squares I could have chosen lots of books!

I think this is the best way of tackling a Reading Bingo card – read the books you want to read and then see where they fit into the squares.

A Book With More Than 500 Pages

The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens – This is a sentimental tale but it’s also full of weird, grotesque and comic characters, a mix of everyday people and characters of fantasy. It has elements of folklore and myth, as Nell and her grandfather, go on an epic journey, fleeing from the terrifying dwarf, Daniel Quilp and travelling through a variety of scenes, meeting different groups of people on their journey.

A Forgotten Classic 

The Dead Secret by Wilkie Collins – A dying woman, Mrs Treverton commands her maid, Sarah Leeson, to give her husband a letter confessing a great secret. I don’t think The Dead Secret is in quite the same league as The Moonstone or The Woman in White, but it has all the elements of a good mystery story, drawing out the secret in tense anticipation of its revelation.

A Book That Became a Movie 

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L Frank Baum –  This was first published in 1900, made into a Broadway Musical in 1902 and a film in 1939. I’d seen the film and also a stage version in a local amateur dramatic society production some years ago, but not read the book. It’s pure escapism, which I would have loved as a child.

A Book Published This Year

The Ghosts of Altona –  an outstanding book, one of the best I’ve read this year. It won this year’s Bloody Scotland Crime Novel of the Year. Jan Fabel, the head of Hamburg’s Murder Commission, has a near-death experience when he is shot by a suspected child killer, which has a profound effect on his life and the way he views death. Two years later his first case as a detective is resurrected. It’s very cleverly plotted, multi-layered and complex and I loved it.

A Book With A Number In The Title

Three Act Tragedy by Agatha Christie – This is one of Agatha Christie’s earlier books and is full of baffling clues, conjuring tricks, clues concealed in conversations, with larger than life personalities, and above all with puzzles to be solved. Poirot plays a secondary role, and it is Mr Satterthwaite and Sir Charles Cartwright who investigate the deaths.

A Book Written by Someone Under Thirty

I think most of the authors I read this year are over 30, but some may be under! I don’t know!

A Book With Non Human Characters

Dreamwalker by James Oswald – Inspired by Welsh folklore this is a magical tale of the young dragon, Benfro and the young boy, Errol, born on the same day.

A Funny Book

I haven’t read any funny books as such this year! But Watching War Films With My Dad: a Memoir by comedian Al Murray (AKA The Pub Landlord) comes closest. It’s very funny in parts.

A Book By A Female Author

I’m spoilt for choice, but have chosen The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton. I loved everything about it ‘“ the descriptive passages, the mystery, the secrets and the people involved. Another contender for the best book I’ve read this year. It moves between time periods from 2011, back to the 1960s and also to the 1940s, cleverly written and so well plotted – I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough!

A Book With A Mystery

Again I’m spoilt for choice and have picked The Burning by Jane Casey,  the first in the DC Maeve Kerrigan series. Four young women have been brutally murdered, beaten to death and their bodies burnt in secluded areas of London’s parks. When a fifth body is discovered it appears to be the work of The Burning Man ‘“ but is it, there are slight differences? Is it a copy-cat killing?

A Book With A One Word Title

Wreckage by Emily Bleeker – well written, full of suspense, tension and drama as well as love, loss and longing. This is the story of Lillian Linden and Dave Hall, who were being interviewed following their rescue from a deserted island in the South Pacific where they had spent two years after their plane crashed into the sea. The thing is their interviews are full of lies ‘“ they are desperate to keep what really happened a secret from their families.

 A Book of Short Stories

Bliss and Other Stories by Katherine Mansfield, a collection of fourteen short stories originally published in 1920. As with all short story collections I liked some more than others. These are about the relationships between men and women, about childhood, growing up and loneliness.

 Free Square

For this I’ve chosen a book that once I started reading it I didn’t want to stop  – The Book of Lost and Found by Lucy Foley. It’s the story of Tom and Alice beginning in 1928 in Hertfordshire and moving backwards and forwards in time and place to 1986, from Paris, to London, Corsica and New York; a love story, as well as a story of loss, discovery and grief as the decisions we make impact not just on our own lives but on those of others too.

A Book Set On A Different Continent

Come, Tell Me How You Live by Agatha Christie Mallowan. In 1929 and 1930 Agatha Christie travelled on the Orient Express to Istanbul and then on to Damascus and Baghdad. The emphasis in the book is on her everyday life on a dig excavating the ancient sites at Chagar Bazar, Tell Brak and other sites in the Habur and Jaghjagha region in what was then north western Syria.

A Book of Non-Fiction

Spilling the Beans by Clarissa Dickson Wright, who was an English celebrity chef ‘“ one of the Two Fat Ladies, a television personality, writer, businesswoman, and former barrister. Despite all her difficulties and her alcoholism this is an upbeat autobiography, ending on a positive note: ‘Believe me on one thing: I have a splendidly enjoyable life’. And believe me this is  a ‘˜splendidly enjoyable’ autobiography.

The First Book By A Favourite Author

A Pale View of Hills by Kazuo Ishiguro, a beautifully written book, describing the countryside around and in Nagasaki after the Second World War, referring to life before the war, and how not only the landscape but also the people and traditions were altered in the aftermath of the atomic bomb.

A Book I Heard About Online

The Golden Age of Murder:The Mystery of the Writers Who Invented the Modern Detective Story by Martin Edwards. I read about this on Martin Edwards’ blog. This is the story of the writers who formed the Detection Club between the two World Wars. Edwards sets the authors and their works in context ‘“ that period when Britain was recovering from the horrors of the First World War, living through an age of austerity as unemployment grew, the cost of living soared leading to the General Strike whilst the rich partied and saw the beginnings of the end of the British Empire.

A Best Selling Book

Even Dogs In the Wild by Ian Rankin – the latest Rebus book. Rankin, as usual, successfully combines all the elements of the crime mystery with the personal lives of the main characters and at the same time highlighting various current political and social issues, such as the involvement of public figures in child abuse cases and the effect this has on the individuals concerned and their families.

A Book Based Upon A True Story

Catching the Eagle by Karen Charlton – a novel set in Northumberland in the early 1800s and based on the true story of her husband’s ancestors. Jamie Charlton was accused of robbery  and was transported as a convicted felon to New South Wales. Did he or did he not steal the money?

A Book At the Bottom Of Your To Be Read Pile

An Autobiography by Anthony Trollope Autobiography Trollope 001– I’d almost forgotten about this book because I’d had it for so long that the pages had yellowed and it’s a bit worn and damaged from moving house. I found it fascinating because it is not only his life story ‘“ his unhappy childhood, his work in the Post Office, including his work in Ireland and abroad, his marriage and family life and his love of hunting, but Trollope also writes a lot about his writing, criticises his own books and discusses his fellow writers.

A Book Your Friend Loves

Burying the Typewriter: Childhood Under the Eye of the Secret Police by Carmen Bugan, recommended by a friend at my local book group, this is a childhood memoir of political oppression and persecution during Romania’s Ceausescu years. I struggled a bit at first with the style of writing in the historic present tense, but then I often have problems reading the present tense.

A Book That Scares You

A Dark and Twisted Tide by Sharon Bolton, a Lacey Flint murder mystery that is such a terrifying novel, particularly if like me, you have a fear of drowning, a grim tale with a great sense of foreboding and mystery.

A Book That Is More Than 10 Years Old

Lady Susan, The Watsons and Sanditon by Jane Austen. Three stories not published in Jane Austen’s lifetime, written between 1793 and 1817. They are so different from each other, probably reflecting the different periods of her life when they were written. And I can’t decide between Lady Susan and Sanditon which one I like best.

The Second Book In A Series

Have His Carcase by Dorothy L Sayers – this is the second of her books featuring Harriet Vane, a crime fiction writer, although it’s the seventh featuring Lord Peter Wimsey. It is an example of the puzzle type of crime fiction ‘“ incredibly complicated and seemingly impossible to solve.

A Book With A Blue Cover

A Question of Identity by Susan Hill, the 7th Simon Serrailler book. The main theme in this book, as the title indicates is ‘˜identity’ and its importance, how it is concealed, whether a personality can be changed convincingly and completely, or whether eventually the façade will crack and the real character reassert itself. It’s full of tension and suspense.

Mount TBR Reading Challenge 2016

Published on by Margaret3 Comments

It’s that time of year when people are thinking about next year’s reading challenges. I’m aiming to cut back on challenges, so I’ll not be taking part in many. But I’ll definitely be doing this one.

Mount TBR 2016

It’s the Mount TBR Challenge 2016 hosted by Bev at My Reader’s Block. It’s the most simple challenge ‘“ read your own books ‘“ that is, books you’ve owned prior to January 1, 2016. No library books. (See this post for more information.)  I don’t know exactly how many TBRs (under this definition) that I have – it’s a lot. And actually I wouldn’t want to have it any other way. It means I’ve always got a choice of books to read and I enjoy browsing my own shelves.

My target for 2016 is to read as many of my own books as I can, which realistically could be 36 books as I like to read library books and newly acquired books (new or used) as well.

These are the challenge levels:

Pike’s Peak: Read 12 books from your TBR pile/s
Mount Blanc: Read 24 books from your TBR pile/s
Mt. Vancouver: Read 36 books from your TBR pile/s
Mt. Ararat: Read 48 books from your TBR piles/s
Mt. Kilimanjaro: Read 60 books from your TBR pile/s
El Toro: Read 75 books from your TBR pile/s
Mt. Everest: Read 100 books from your TBR pile/s
Mount Olympus (Mars): Read 150+ books from your TBR pile/s