WWW Wednesday: 4 September 2024

Published on by Margaret10 Comments

WWW Wednesday is run by Taking on a World of Words.

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently I’m reading Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith. This is the only book left I didn’t finish reading for my 20 Books of Summer Challenge 2024. It has been on my TBR list for a few years, so I am determined to read it soon. The reason I haven’t read it before now is that I have a paperback copy and I’ve got too used to reading on my Kindle with the ability to enlarge the text.

I have high hope that this psychological thriller will be good – maybe too high as so many people have enthused over this book. Can it live up to all the hype? Guy Haines and Charles Anthony Bruno meet on a train. Bruno manipulates Guy into swapping murders with him. “Some people are better off dead,” Bruno remarks, “like your wife and my father, for instance.” It begins slowly though and so far, I’m doubtful it will.

I’m also reading Now You See Them by Elly Griffiths, the 5th Brighton Mystery novel, also called the DI Edgar Stephens and Max Mephisto series. It’s about three young women who have gone missing in Brighton. Edgar is now a Superintendent and his wife, Emma, formerly a police officer, is now a private detective. Edgar’s friend, magician Max Mephisto, is reinventing himself as a movie star and trying not to envy his daughter Ruby’s television fame. It seems a bit pedestrian so far, maybe too formulaic.

The last book I read was The Tree of Hands by Ruth Rendell, which I think is one of her best books I’ve read. It’s also a psychological thriller and compelling that I just didn’t want to stop reading until I finished it.

Description on Amazon

When Benet was about fourteen, she and her mother had been alone in a train carriage – and Mopsa had tried to stab her with a carving knife.

It has been some time since Benet had seen her psychologically disturbed mother. So when Mopsa arrives at the airport looking drab and colourless in a dowdy grey suit, Benet tries not to hate her.

But when the tragic death of a child begins a chain of deception, kidnap and murder in which three women are pushed to psychological extremes, family ties are strained to the absolute limit…

What will I read next? At the moment I have no idea. Once I’ve finished a challenge that involves reading from a planned list I have this great sense of freedom, that I can just decide on a whim what to read next.

Top Ten Tuesday: Books involving Food

Published on by Margaret6 Comments

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish and now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. For the rules see her blog.

This week’s topic is Books Involving Food. I’ve chosen to do books containing scenes involving food:

The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding by Agatha Christie

Operation Mincemeat by Anthony Horowitz

The Gourmet by Muriel Barbery

Toast by Nigel Slater

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

Ultra-Processed People by Chris van Tulleken

Chocolat by Joanne Harris

The Poisoned Chocolates Case by Anthony Berkeley

Death of a Red Heroine by Qiu Xiaolong

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

The 20 Books of Summer Challenge 2024

Published on by Margaret14 Comments

The 20 Books of Summer challenge, hosted by Cathy over at 746Books, came to an end today. You could choose to read 20, 15 or 10 books from your TBR shelves and this year I went for the 20 book challenge. I nearly made it, reading 19 books and currently reading book 20.

The books listed below shown in italics are books I’ve read but not reviewed, those shown in bold link to my reviews:

The Best = 5 stars

  • Great Meadow by Dirk Bogarde
  • The Innocent by Matthew Hall
  • The Silence Between Breaths by Cath Staincliffe
  • The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker
  • The Women of Troy by Pat Barker
  • The Voyage Home by Pat Barker
  • The Tree of Hands by Ruth Rendell

Very good = 4 stars

  • The Children’s Book by A S Byatt
  • The Black Tulip by Alexander Dumas
  • Hemlock Bay by Martin Edwards
  • Close to Death by Anthony Horowitz
  • Where Water Lies by Hilary Tailor
  • A Murder of Crows by Sarah Yarwood-Lovett
  • Black Roses by James Thynne

Enjoyable = 3 stars

OK = 2 stars

Very disappointing = 1 star

Currently Reading:

The one I haven’t finished is Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith, but I have started it and I will finish it.

My thanks to Cathy at 746 Books for hosting this event once more this year!

The Bunner Sisters by Edith Wharton, a Novella

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

Rating: 3 out of 5.

This has been on my TBR list for several years, so I thought it was about time I read it. It was written in 1898, but not published until 1916, one of the short stories in Xingu and Other Stories, set in a working class neighbourhood in New York.

In the days when New York’s traffic moved at the pace of the drooping horse-car, when society applauded Christine Nilsson at the Academy of music and basked in the sunsets of the Hudson River School on the walls of the National Academy of Design, an inconspicuous shop with a single show-window was intimately and favourably known to the feminine population of the quarter bordering on Stuyvesant Square.

It was a very small shop in a shabby basement, in a side-street already doomed to decline; and from the miscellaneous display behind the window-pane and the brevity of the sign surmounting it (merely ‘Bunner Sisters’ in blotchy gold on a black background) it would have been difficult for the uninitiated to guess the precise nature of the business carried on within. (page 1)

As the title indicates it’s about two sisters, Ann Eliza the elder, and Evelina the younger, who have a small shop selling artificial flowers and small handsewn articles. The sisters, both unmarried, have fallen on hard times.They meet Herbert Ramy, a German immigrant who also has a small shop, when Ann Eliza buys a clock from him as a birthday present for Evalina.

This is a sad tale, very readable and very descriptive. The characters are memorable, well drawn and are clearly distinguishable. Their lives are mainly filled with daily routine. But there’s a growing sense of foreboding and mystery, especially surrounding Ramy. As he gradually becomes an important part of their lives, the sadness becomes overwhelming, eventually turning into tragedy.

Top Ten Tuesday: Posts That Give You a Glimpse of Me

Published on by Margaret14 Comments

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish and now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. For the rules see her blog.

I wasn’t sure I could take part this week because I don’t really write personal posts, but I found the following posts that give a few glimpses of me and my life.

  1. Blog Anniversary 12 April 2015! written for the 8th anniversary of BooksPlease, about starting my blog and my love of reading.
  2. I was a Brownie – shown in this post
  3. I was a Queen’s Guide – see here
  4. I used to spin wool shown in this post
  5. Here are some of the things that have influenced my reading 
  6. Libraries have always been important in my life – this post contains some of my library memories
  7. I love cooking – This post is one of my Weekend Cooking posts about Strawberry Meringue Layer Cake.
  8. I love history -reading both history books and historical fiction, visiting historic buildings, castles, cathedrals, and National Trust properties. This post combines my love of history with cross-stitching.
  9. I’ve written a few posts about my family. This one is about my grandmother, my father’s mother.
  10. I love cats as well as books. Here is one of the posts I’ve written about George one of the cats we have had.

Death at the Sign of the Rook by Kate Atkinson

Published on by Margaret6 Comments

Random House UK| 22 August 2024 | 335 pages|e-book |Review copy| 2*

Description:

Ex-detective Jackson Brodie is staving off a bad case of midlife malaise when he is called to a sleepy Yorkshire town, and the seemingly tedious matter of a stolen painting. But one theft leads to another, including the disappearance of a valuable Turner from Burton Makepeace, home to Lady Milton and her family. Once a magnificent country house, Burton Makepeace has now partially been converted into a hotel, hosting Murder Mystery weekends.
As paying guests, a vicar, an ex-army officer, impecunious aristocrats, and old friends converge, we are treated a fiendishly clever mystery; one that pays homage to the masters of the genre―from Agatha Christie to Dorothy Sayers.

My thoughts:

Death at the Sign of the Rook by Kate Atkinson begins so well I thought that I was in for a treat. But sadly, as I read on I was disappointed. I was looking forward to reading more about Jackson Brodie, but he only has a minor role. It is amusing in parts. But there are so many other characters, and the story became far too long winded, the narrative jumping around from one set of characters to another, and then another, which made it confusing. The ending was just pure farce, which I’ve never liked, pushing it into the absurd.

Looking back at some of Kate Atkinson’s other books I’ve read I see I had the same reaction to her previous book, Shrines of Gaiety. My favourite books by her are Life After Life and A God in Ruins, both of which I loved.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for my review copy.