Musing Mondays – Distractions

Published on by Margaret16 Comments

from Should Be Reading by MizB

This week’s musing asks:

Can you read amidst distractions? (tv, others talking, sporting events, etc)

I used to be able to read through most things. When I was at school I had to do my homework downstairs in the winter – my bedroom was too cold (no central heating) and as my grandparents lived with us and had the front room I had to do my homework with the rest of the family who were watching TV and talking. It never bothered me. I used to lie on the floor reading or writing, oblivious to the noise all round me. My sister could be chattering, playing the piano and generally messing about and I was still absorbed in a book. I used to walk around reading and could read anywhere.

But these days the sound level can affect me. I can read with the TV on, but the sound level has to be just right – too high or too low can be a distraction – but a programme that interests me can intrude sometimes. Music is great for reading by, I rarely hear it. I can read in waiting rooms, but people sitting next to me talking loudly (both the old and the young can do that) can be distracting. And children playing are very distracting. I was waiting in the hospital for my husband recently and a small girl was playing very quietly on a little rocking horse, well she was quiet but the rocking horse wasn’t and it kept moving nearer and nearer to my feet.

So, I do read with noise all round me and it’s not distracting if it’s just background noise, but anything more and I can’t do it.

Weekly Geeks – Book Trailers?

Published on by Margaret7 Comments
The Weekly Geeks’ question is about book trailers:

In the last year or two a new entity has arisen in the publishing world: the book trailer. Apparently every self-respecting book has to have one these days so it seemed a good time to have a chat about them. Feel free to answer as many (or as few) of these questions as you like.

  • Do you watch book trailers?
  • If yes, do you actively seek them out or just watch the ones that get pushed to you in some way?
  • If you don’t watch them, why not?
  • Have you ever read a book based solely on seeing the trailer? What book was it and what did you like about the trailer?
  • Where do book trailers come on your list of things that influence you with regards to what books to read (friends’ recommendations, mainstream reviews, bloggers, bookstore promotions, the blurb….)?
  • Do you have a favourite book trailer that you’d like to share? What do you like about it?
If you have missed out on seeing many book trailers you might like to visit the Moby Awards website which list the nominees and winners of what is set to become an annual award for the best (and worst) book trailers.

My answer

I enjoy deciding what to read, sometimes it’s better than actually reading a book – not every book’s a winner. So anything that helps me decide what to read next is welcomed. At the moment as I’ve just finished one book I’m wondering which one to read next and this time I want to read a book for the pure joy of the reading experience – not to accomplish anything, or to learn something, nor to cross a book off a list of to-be-read books. I want to read a book I’m going to enjoy that entertains me, holds my attention and intrigues me.

So when I came across this question I realised that here is another source of information on books and it’s one that has somehow escaped my attention until now. I scour book blogs for inspiration and browse my bookshelves, library shelves and bookshop shelves. I scan on-line book sellers and get information from family and friends, from newspapers, and from radio and TV programmes about books, but I’ve never watched a book trailer before today.

My starting point was the link above to the Moby Awards site, where I looked at a few trailers and was disappointed. Nothing there to hold my attention, nothing to excite me or make me want to read the books. I looked for more and found a trailer for a new ghost story by Susan Hill – The Small Hand.  It’s so-so, some spooky-type music and black and white images, but it doesn’t make me want to read the book any more than a written description would. In fact I prefer the written description, for one thing it’s a lot quicker than watching a trailer and for another it’s the words I want, not sounds or images, as I can supply those myself from my imagination.  Book trailers just don’t appeal to me.

But although they’re not for me, I think that anything that gets people reading books is a good thing.

Weekend Cooking

Published on by Margaret6 Comments

I  don’t think I qualify to write a Weekend Cooking post this weekend as my attempts so far have been a bit disastrous. First of all on Friday evening we decided to have an easy meal and bought a Chinese style meal for two from the supermarket. Simples!

But no, when I opened up the egg fried rice this is what happened to my finger, because stupidly I left it in the line of the escaping steam – painful and not a pretty sight! D sprained his ankle and tore a ligament two weeks ago and is still limping about painfully – we’re hoping there won’t be a third accident! 

 Mt second cooking disaster was last night’s meal. I cooked pork in cider, topped with a layer of sliced potatoes. The potatoes hadn’t browned nicely so I put the casserole under the grill and left it too long. Result – a burnt offering of potatoes (I couldn’t bear to take a photo!). Luckily the meat and vegetables underneath were OK. I dread to think what I’ll do for tonight’s meal!

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. For more information, see the welcome post, and have a look at some better efforts than mine.

A Dark-Adapted Eye by Barbara Vine: Book Review

Published on by Margaret6 Comments

A few months ago we went to the Science Centre in Glasgow where we spent time in the Planetarium, looking at the night sky as it appears without urban light pollution. To see the stars and planets you need a dark-adapted eye and the lights are slowly dimmed until they all come into focus.

In Barbara Vine’s A Dark-Adapted Eye, the narrator Faith has spent her life avoiding thinking, talking or reading about at the events that led up to her aunt’s hanging for murder. She only develops a “dark-adapted eye” very slowly when asked by a crime writer for her memories. This is psychological crime fiction, you know right from the beginning who the murderer is, but not why or how the murder was committed. It’s not even clear immediately who the victim is.

Slowly, very slowly, with lots of hints and questions about how things could have turned out differently the family relationships and events that led up to the tragedy are revealed. Because of this it’s not a quick read and I think it’s a book that could stand many re-readings, just to work out how everything ties in together and for different perspectives to become clearer. I borrowed this book from the library, but it’s one I’d like to own to delve into its secrets.

Faith and the other members of her family are all so well described and the settings too. This is a book where you can see events and people so clearly through their thoughts and emotions as much as through their actions, but their secrets are so well concealed. Vera, Faith’s aunt, prim, snobbish and obsessional is the murderer. Her brother is shocked and removes all photos of her, refusing to read the newspaper reports or go to her trial, as does Faith. Slowly, it appears that Vera has killed her half-sister, the beautiful, the perfect Eden, but how or why is not clear until near the end of the book, or at least it wasn’t clear to me. Francis, Vera’s elder son changed his name as soon as she was arrested and the younger son, Jamie is living in Italy as the book begins. Jamie has a major part in the story but he was only 6 when his mother was hanged and remembers nothing about the situation.

Eden and Vera have a love/hate relationship, which only gets worse as the years go by. I began by disliking both of them, then swinging from one to the other as Faith describes them and their relationship. In fact I was doing that all the way through this book, never quite sure what to believe. And by the end just when you think you understand it all, Vine throws everything into question yet again and the reader is left to decide just what did happen, just what was the truth. Fantastic.

Friday Finds – Books and a Bookshop

Published on by Margaret7 Comments

New-to-me books this week are Naming the Bones by Louise Welsh,  and The Sisters who would be Queen by Leanda de Lisle.

Louise Welsh is the author of The Cutting Room, a dark mystery, which I read several years ago and thought was good, if rather scary. Naming the Bones looks promising:

Knee-deep in the mud of an ancient burial ground, a winter storm raging around him, and at least one person intent on his death: how did Murray Watson end up here? (Blurb on the back cover)

Dipping into the book I see that the story moves from Edinborough and Glaslow to the Isle of Lismore a small island off the west coast of Scotland. I’m tempted to start reading at once and as I’m nearing the end of Barbara Vine’s A Dark Adapted Eye I think this will be my next book.

I seem to be drawn these last few months to the Tudor period. Having read fiction – Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (Thomas Cromwell) and currently reading Portrait of an Unknown Woman (Thomas More’s family) I also bought a book of non-fiction, namely The Sisters who would be Queen: the tragedy of Mary, Katherine and Lady Jane Grey by Leanda de Lisle. This is the story of the tumultuous lives of Lady Jane Grey, known as the “Nine-Day Queen”,  and her sisters. I nearly didn’t buy this book as I don’t like pictures of headless women on book covers! But the blurb by Julian Fellowes attracted my attention:

An enthralling story of tyranny and betrayal … meticulous history that reads like a bestselling novel.

I bought these books in a real bookshop – Main Street Books in St Boswell’s. I first found out about this shop from Cornflower’s blog (where she has lovely photos of the shop) and it is a real find – not only books, but a cafe and gift shop and they also sell antiques. We’d been to Melrose and stopped in Main Street Books on the way home (just a short detour), where we browsed and had lunch.

Friday Finds is  hosted by Should Be Reading.