Spell the Month in Books June 2024

Published on by Margaret13 Comments

Spell the Month in Books is a linkup hosted by Jana on Reviews From the Stacks on the first Saturday of each month. The goal is to spell the current month with the first letter of book titles, excluding articles such as ‘the’ and ‘a’ as needed. That’s all there is to it! Some months there are optional theme challenges, such as “books with an orange cover” or books of a particular genre, but for the most part, any book you want to use is fair game!

This month’s theme is History. I don’t think that the books you choose have to be books that you’ve read, but where possible I like to do that, or at least choose books that I want to read and and this month I’ve managed to find enough nonfiction books about different aspects of history that I have read with titles beginning with each of the letters to spell JUNE.

J is for Jane Austen at Home by Lucy Worsley

I think it was a foregone conclusion that I would really enjoy historian Lucy Worsley’s Jane Austen at Home. I have loved Jane Austen’s books for many years, going back to when I was about 12 and read Pride and Prejudice for the first time. I’d previously read Carol Shields’s biography Jane Austen and Claire Tomalin’s Jane Austen: a Life so there was really very little I learned reading Jane Austen at Home that surprised me or that I hadn’t known before.

I suppose what was new to me was the emphasis on what home life was like during the period of Jane’s life and seeing photos of the houses and places that she had lived or stayed in as a visitor. And I think I gained a better understanding of the social history of Georgian England and of Jane’s wider family connections and what her family and friends thought of her both as a person and as an author.

Jane Austen at Home is both very readable and very detailed, which is not an easy thing to achieve. There is an extensive section at the end of the book, listing sources, a bibliography, notes on the text and an index. There are two sections of colour plates.

U is for Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes

In this book the author describes how she bought and renovated an abandoned villa. It’s full of the pleasures of living in Tuscany – the sun, the food, the wine and the local people. It makes me want to do the same! It’s nothing like the film they made of it – the book is much better. Bella Tuscany is the follow up book with more details about the restoration of the villa and its garden, plus recipes.

I read this book before I began blogging, so no review. And I no longer have my copy, which just shows the dangers of recycling books as I’d love to re-read it!

N is for Nagasaki: Life After Nuclear War by Susan Southard

The facts are horrendous – on August 9th 1945, two days after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, a five-ton plutonium bomb was dropped on the small coastal town of Nagasaki. The effects were cataclysmic.

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 it is their accounts which make this such an emotive and uplifting book, as it shows their bravery, how they survived, and how they were eventually able to tell others about their experiences. Along with all the facts about the after effects of the bombing, the destruction, and radiation, it exposes the true horror of atomic warfare, making it an impressive and most compelling account of pain, fear, bravery and compassion.

E is for Elizabeth Macarthur: A Life at the Edge of the World by Michelle Scott Tucker

This is an excellent biography because it is thorough, well researched and it provides an insight into the early years of Australia’s colonial history. It is an extremely readable biography of a fascinating woman. Elizabeth was born on 14 August 1766 in Devon, England and she married John Macarthur in October 1788. In June 1789 they sailed with their first child, Edward, initially on the Neptune, and then on the convict ship Scarborough to New South Wales where John joined his regiment, the New South Wales Corps, in the recently established colony of New South Wales.

For sixty years, Elizabeth ran the family farm in Parramatta, west of Sydney town – on her own during her husband’s long absences abroad, four years during her husband’s first absence, and nine years during the second, when she was responsible for the care of their valuable merino flocks, as well as the Camden Park estate and the direction of its convict labourers.

The book is packed with detail about the landscape, the indigenous population, the disputes between various sections of the colony, about farming and the establishment of the wool industry, not forgetting the details of the Macarthur family members, illnesses, and the position of the women within the community.

The next link up will be on July 6, 2024 when the optional theme will be Stars/Sky

Six Degrees of Separation from Butter to the Betrayal of Trust: June 2024

Published on by Margaret18 Comments

It’s time again for Six Degrees of Separation, a monthly link-up hosted by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. Each month a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six other books to form a chain. A book doesn’t need to be connected to all the other books on the list, only to the one next to it in the chain.

This month starts with Butter by Asako Yuzuki, a novel of food and murder. Inspired by a true story this is described on Amazon as a cult Japanese bestseller about a female gourmet cook and serial killer and the journalist intent on cracking her case, a vivid, unsettling exploration of misogyny, obsession, romance and the transgressive pleasures of food in Japan.

My first link is based simply on the title Toast by Nigel Slater, because I love hot buttered toast. It’s the story of his childhood and adolescence told through food; food he liked and food he hated. There are no recipes, but descriptions of toast, cakes, puddings, jam tarts, pancakes, sweets and toffee, tinned ham, lamb chops – you name it and it’s in this book. It’s also a very frank book about a young boy’s feelings and a teenager’s sexual experiences, and his relationship with his mother whom he loved, and his father who sometimes scared him.

My second link is another book by Nigel Slater, Kitchen Diaries. This is an account of more or less everything Nigel cooked in the course of a year, presented as an illustrated diary. The photographs are sublime, and they are done in ‘real time’; they are photos of the food he cooked and ate on that day.The book follows the seasons so you can find suggestions about what is worth eating and when – a book to dip into throughout the year and for years to come. There are recipes for Onion Soup Without Tears, Thyme and Feta Lamb, Roast Tomatoes with Anchovy and Basil, Mushroom Pappardella, Stilton, Onion and Potato Pie and many many more.

My third link is another diary – Ink in the Blood: a Hospital Diary by Hilary Mantel. I was really pleased to find this because I loved Wolf Hall and had tickets for Hilary Mantel’s talk at the Borders Book Festival at Melrose in the summer of 2010.  She had to cancel that because she wasn’t well – I didn’t know just how ill she was. Ink in the Blood reveals all – how she had surgery to remove an intestinal obstruction that ended up in a marathon operation, followed by intense pain, nightmares and hallucinations. Writing was Hilary Mantel’s lifeline – it was the ink, as she wrote in her diary, that reassured her she was alive.

Hallucinations gives me My fourth link in Don’t Look Now, a short story (52 pages, one of five short stories in a collection of Daphne du Murier). It’s a supernatural tale about a couple, John and Laura who have come to Venice to recover after their young daughter’s death. They encounter two old women who claim to have second sight and find themselves caught up in a train of increasingly strange and violent events, involving hallucinations, mistaken identity and a murderer.

My fifth link is also set in Venice, Drawing Conclusions by Donna Leon. It’s the 20th book in her Commissario Guido Brunetti series. Brunetti is somewhat of a rarity in crime fiction novels – a detective who is happily married with two children. He doesn’t smoke or drink to excess and often goes home for lunch to his beautiful wife Paolo. I was immediately drawn into this book, with its wonderful sense of locality, believable characters and intricate plot. It’s more than crime fiction as Brunetti ponders on life, the problems of ageing, and the nature of truth and honesty. 

My final link is via ageing in the crime fiction novel The Betrayal of Trust by Susan Hill. It’s  character-driven, concentrating on the people involved in the crime, a cold case, that of a teenager missing for 16 years, and on Simon’s family. It focuses on the problems of ageing, hospice care, Motor Neurone Disease, assisted suicide, Parkinson’s Disease and Alzheimer’s Disease. A lot to cope with all at once and at times I found The Betrayal of Trust a deeply depressing book.

My chain consists mainly of mystery/crime fiction books, as usual, plus books on food and cooking and a frank account of a stay in hospital after a nightmare operation.

Next month (July , 2024), we’ll start with the 2024 winner of the International Booker Prize, Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck (translated by Michael Hofmann).

Black Roses: Book Beginnings & The Friday 56

Published on by Margaret5 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. You can also share from a book you want to highlight just because it caught your fancy.

I’m featuring Black Roses by Jane Thynne. It’s on my 20 Books of Summer list, a book I’ve had for several years.

Chapter One:

For a wedding it would have made a good funeral.

Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice, but she is taking a break and Anne at My Head is Full of Books has taken on hosting duties in her absence. You grab a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% of an eBook), find one or more interesting sentences (no spoilers), and post them.

Frau Doktor Goebbels is the wife of the Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda.’

Clara nodded politely, thinking what a dreadful mouthful that title was to be saddled with.

‘But we prefer to call her the First Lady of the Reich,

Synopsis from Amazon:

Berlin, 1933. Warning bells ring across Europe as Hitler comes to power. Clara Vine, an attractive young Anglo-German actress, arrives in Berlin to find work at the famous Ufa studios. Through a chance meeting, she is unwillingly drawn into a circle of Nazi wives, among them Magda Goebbels, Anneliese von Ribbentrop and Goering’s girlfriend Emmy Sonnemann. As part of his plan to create a new pure German race, Hitler wants to make sweeping changes to the lives of women, starting with the formation of a Reich Fashion Bureau, instructing women on what to wear and how to behave. Clara is invited to model the dowdy, unflattering clothes.

Then she meets Leo Quinn who is working for British intelligence and who sees in Clara the perfect recruit to spy on her new elite friends, using her acting skills to win their confidence. But when Magda Goebbels reveals to Clara a dramatic secret and entrusts her with an extraordinary mission, Clara feels threatened, compromised, desperately caught between her duty towards – and growing affection for – Leo, and the impossibly dangerous task Magda has forced upon her.

~~~

What do you think, does it appeal to you? What are you currently reading?

Hamlet, Revenge! by Michael Innes

Published on by Margaret8 Comments

A Golden Age Mystery

Hamlet, Revenge! by Michael Innes has been languishing on my TBR shelves for 9 years, mainly because it is in such a small font making it difficult for me to read. It was first published in 1937. My copy was published in 1961 in paperback with the cover shown in the photo above.

Synopsis:

A Scotland Yard detective probes a high-society house party for someone rotten when a government official is murdered in this classic British mystery.

Preparations are underway for a grand party at Scamnum Court, the sweeping English country estate of the fabulously wealthy Duke of Horton. Some of the nation’s elite are invited for dinner, and some are even set to star in a semi-amateur production of Hamlet on an authentic Elizabethan stage in the banqueting hall. No expense is spared, but one guest soon pays with his life. Before the play ends, a shot is fired, and the actor playing Polonius―Lord Auldearn, the Lord Chancellor of England―is dead.

With war looming on the horizon, suspicions arise over the possibility of espionage. Therefore, the prime minister sends Insp. John Appleby not only to investigate, but to also find a confidential government document. Appleby is lucky there’s a mystery novelist eager to lend a hand with the extensive guest list at Scamnum Court. He will need all the help he can get if he hopes to prevent the killer from making an encore performance . . .

My thoughts

This is the second Inspector John Appleby book. And like the first, Death at the President’s Lodging (my review) it is a most complex mystery. When Lord Auldearn, Lord Chancellor of England is murdered on stage during an amateur production of Hamlet at Scamnum Court the Prime Minister asks Appleby to investigate. Because there’s a possibility that espionage is involved, the PM tells Appleby not to trust anybody. It’s all very vague. The PM tells him there’s a document concerning

… the organization of large industrial interests on an international basis, in the event of a certain international situation. The general drift towards the matter such a document embodies cannot, you realize, well be secret; nothing big can be secret. But the details may be. And this document might be useful in two ways: the detailed information might be useful to one powerful interest or another: and accurate possession of the details, as circumstantial evidence of something already known in general terms, might be useful to an unfriendly government.

…War? said Appleby … (pages 83,84)

The book begins with a Prologue.which is is longer than most prologues. It sets the scene, describing Scamnum Court in detail. It’s the family seat of the Crispin family, described as ‘a big place: two counties away it has a sort of little brother in Blenheim Palace.’ All the characters are introduced, including Giles Gott, who was also in Death at the President’s Lodging. An eminent Elizabethan scholar, he is the director of the play. The other characters are also introduced; Lord Auldearn, the Lord Chancellor of England, who plays Polonius, and numerous other family members, guests and members of the Scamnum Court staff.

There are thirty people involved in the play, actors and those behind the scenes, plus twenty seven in the audience. I found this section too long (74 pages in my copy) and it took me more than a while to identify who was who! My attention was drooping as I read pages of long meandering, descriptive paragraphs and I wondered when there would be a murder. And there is a lot of information about the staging of the play and numerous Shakespearean references. Before the performance the murderer delivered a number of warning messages about revenge, so everybody is on edge.

Appleby doesn’t appear until the second section and then the pace picks up considerably as he and Gott question the suspects. It gets more complicated when a second murder, that of Mr Bose, the prompter who was on stage and who could possibly have seen who shot Lord Auldearn. I was puzzled for much of the time as I read – it’s a book that you can’t read quickly and it requires concentration. I had no idea who the culprit was as Appleby and Gott tried to eliminate the suspects and answer numerous questions, such as why was Lord Auldearn shot and not stabbed as Polonius the character he played was, why did the murderer come onto the stage to shoot him and risk being seen by Bose, why did he send the mysterious messages about revenge – what revenge was being sought, and was the possible espionage plot the reason behind the shooting? Or was the reason a personal one?

From being confused and overwhelmed by the puzzle I became thoroughly absorbed by the mystery and was eagerly turning the pages to find out all the answers. It’s a book I really need to re-read to get to grips with it – I’m sure I missed so much. My post falls far short of doing justice to the book!

Top Ten Tuesday: Authors I’d Love a New Book From

Published on by Margaret12 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.

The topic this week is Authors I’d Love a New Book From (These could be authors that have passed away, who have retired from writing, who have inexplicably gone quiet, or who might jut not be able to keep up with how quickly you read their books!)

These are just some of the authors who immediately came to my mind, and who sadly are no longer with us. Apart from the first and last authors I’m lucky that I don’t have to wish for a new book from them because I still have books of theirs to read.

I’ve listed them as I thought of them:

C J Sansom 1952 – 2024 I love his books and was so sorry to hear he had died recently (27 April). I can’t remember how I heard of his books, but I read his first book, Dissolution in March 2006 (before I’d started writing this blog). It was first published in 2003. Ever since then I’ve read each of his historical mystery novels featuring barrister Matthew Shardlake, set in Tudor England. There are seven in all – he was working on the eighth, Ratcliff when he died. He also wrote two standalone novels, Winter in Madrid and Dominion, which I have also read.

Hilary Mantel 1952 – 1922 The first of her books I read was Beyond Black, which I also read in 2006. Since then I’ve read quite a lot of her books, including the wonderful Wolf Hall trilogy. She wrote seventeen books, including the memoir Giving Up the Ghost, and she was awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, the Walter Scott Prize, the Costa Book Award, the Hawthornden Prize, and many other accolades. In 2014, Mantel was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. But there are still more books by her for me to read.

Agatha Christie 1890 – 1976 I have been reading her crime fiction for years – first from the library, as a teenager. Since starting this blog I’ve read all her crime fiction books and her Autobiography. 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 still have a lot of her short stories to read. She is most probably the author that has given me the most enjoyment over the longest period of time.

Daphne du Maurier 1907 – 1989, another author whose books I began reading as a teenager, thanks to my mother. The first was Rebecca, which I have read many times over the years, followed by Jamaica Inn and Frenchman’s Creek. A prolific author, I haven’t read all of her books.

Elizabeth Jane Howard 1923 – 2014 I can’t remember when I first read her books – but they are definitely pre-blog. I loved her historical fiction novels, the five Cazalet Chronicles, a series of books telling the story of the family from 1937 to 1958. I still have some of her standalone novels to read.

Reginald Hill 1936 – 2012 crime fiction author – Dalziel and Pascoe series, Joe Sixsmith, plus standalone novels and short stories. I’ve watched practically all the Dalziel and Pascoe episodes on TV  before I knew they were based on books and I’ve still got quite a lot of them still to read.

Beryl Bainbridge 1932 – 2010 An Awfully Big Adventure is semi-autobiographical based on her own experience as an assistant stage manager in a Liverpool theatre. She wrote dark novels with an undercurrent of psychological suspense. They are disturbing, unsettling, chilling stories, with flashes of humour and farce. She also wrote historical fiction – my favourite is The Birthday Boys, a novel about Captain Scott’s last Antarctic Expedition. Another prolific author there are plenty of her books I haven’t read.

Ruth Rendell 1930 – 2015 – another crime fiction author I first came across on TV in the Chief Inspector Wexford series and then read the books. She also wrote under the pseudonym Barbara Vine. A most prolific author she wrote numerous books and won many awards, so I still have plenty of her books to read.

Peter Robinson 1950 – 2022 Peter Robinson was a British-born Canadian crime writer who was best known for his crime novels set in Yorkshire featuring Inspector Alan Banks. He also published a number of other novels and short stories, as well as some poems and two articles on writing.   Beginning with Gallows View in 1987, Robinson delivered a novel in the series, or short story collection, almost every year until his death. He won a CWA Dagger in the Library (2002); Anthony Awards 2000; Barry Award 1999. I still have some of his Inspector Banks books left to read.

And last but not least, Jane Austen, 1775 – 1817, one of my longtime favourite authors ever since I read my mother’s copy of Pride and Prejudice   – it’s the brown book shown in the photo. Wouldn’t it be great to have another novel to add to her six completed books and three volumes of juvenile writings in manuscript, the short epistolary novel Lady Susan, and the unfinished novel The Watsons?

Close to Death: Book Beginnings & The Friday 56

Published on by Margaret4 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. You can also share from a book you want to highlight just because it caught your fancy.

I’m featuring Close to Death by Anthony Horowitz, book 5 in the Hawthorne and Horowitz murder mystery series. It’s on my 20 Books of Summer list.

Book Beginning:

It was four o’clock in the morning, that strange interval between night and morning when both seem to be fighting each other for control of the day ahead.

Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice, but she is taking a break and Anne at My Head is Full of Books has taken on hosting duties in her absence. You grab a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% of an eBook), find one or more interesting sentences (no spoilers), and post them.

‘We’re not going to let them get away with it,’ Roderick exclaimed. ‘Someone should do something about him! Someone should … I don’t know! Ever since he came here, he’s been nothing but trouble.’

Synopsis from Goodreads:

In New York Times–bestselling author Anthony Horowitz’s ingenious fifth literary whodunit in the Hawthorne and Horowitz series, Detective Hawthorne is once again called upon to solve an unsolvable case—a gruesome murder in an idyllic gated community in which suspects abound

Riverside Close is a picture-perfect community. The six exclusive and attractive houses are tucked far away from the noise and grime of city life, allowing the residents to enjoy beautiful gardens, pleasant birdsong and tranquility from behind the security of a locked gate.

It is the perfect idyll until the Kenworthy family arrives, with their four giant, gas-guzzling cars, a gaggle of shrieking children and plans for a garish swimming pool in the backyard. Obvious outsiders, the Kenworthys do not belong in Riverside Close, and they quickly offend every last one of their neighbours.

When Giles Kenworthy is found dead on his own doorstep, a crossbow bolt sticking out of his chest, Detective Hawthorne is the only investigator that can be called on to solve the case.

Because how do you solve a murder when everyone is a suspect?

~~~

What do you think, does it appeal to you? What are you currently reading?