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Booking Through Thursday – 2009 in Review

Published on December 31, 2009 by Margaret9 Comments

It’s the last day of the year, and you know what that means €¦ nostalgia and looking back.

What were your favorite books of the year? (Books that were new to you in 2009, if not necessarily published this year.)

This year I’ve read more crime fiction than ever before in one year and I’ll be writing a post on “My Top Ten Crime Fiction Reads 2009” very soon. As usual it’s hard deciding which are my favourite books and I could easily list more than ten. These are what I have settled on – not in any order of preference.

Fire in the Blood by Irene Nemirovsky
The Falls by Ian Rankin
We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
The Rebecca Notebook and other stories by Daphne Du Maurier
Somewhere Towards the End by Diana Athill
The View from Castle Rock by Alice Munro
Star Gazing by Linda Gillard
A Lost Lady by Willa Cather
Company of Liars by Karen Maitland
Good Evening Mrs Craven by Molly Panter-Downs

Miscellaneous

Published on December 30, 2009 by Margaret12 Comments

Christmas has been and gone whilst I’ve been away from the blogworld. For days I didn’t even switch on the computer, what with getting ready for Christmas, which this year included moving loads of boxes we haven’t unpacked so that our son and his family had room to sleep at the weekend, and I had a cold, which didn’t help at all. Anyway we had a good time.

I had some books (my favourite presents) for Christmas, all of which I now can’t wait to read. No doubt I’ll be writing about them later – they include Agatha Christie’s autobiography, and her Secret Notebooks and a book on the Eleven Missing Days, all of which I’ve dipped into.

Meanwhile I’m still ploughing through Drood. I have very mixed feelings about this. Ann wrote the other day on her blog Table Talk that she has a problem with books centred on people who really existed and I think that is part of my problem with Drood.

Drood himself, of course, is a fictional character, but most of the book is about Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens, both of whom don’t come across as people I would want to meet. But I want to know more about them, if only to find out what they were really like, and to read more of their books. I’m glad I’ve already read Collins’s The Moonstone, because the plot of this is detailed in Drood.

The other stumbling block I have with Drood is that there is far too much detail and emphasis for my liking on horrific opium induced nightmares. On the other hand I want to know how it ends, so it is keeping me turning the pages, although I am tempted just to skip to the last few pages.

The snow is still here, thawing just a little bit today, but we ventured out yesterday to the next town, over the border in Scotland and joined the library. I restricted myself to borrowing just three books – two on the history of the Borders and The Music Room by William Fiennes. I have The Snow Geese by him, which I’d really like to read soon – but it’s still in a box somewhere.

Winter Wonderland

Published on December 22, 2009 by Margaret13 Comments

It’s been snowing here, but not as much as in the south of England and I do find it odd that we’ved moved north where it’s supposed to be colder and it isn’t! This snow is the best kind – crisp and even. The roads have been gritted and are clear so we’re still able to get out and about. We haven’t had time to do anything but shop so far, except for two visits to our family in Scotland, now much nearer than before. We’re off there today for a school carol service with the two older grandchildren. They have had more snow than us, so I hope we’ll get there and back ok.

We’re still emptying boxes and trying to find the best places to put things. I can’t imagine how I fitted everything into the wall unit for example, but what came out should go back in, shouldn’t it? And will we have the bedrooms ready for the family to stay on Sunday – I hope so?!

The computer is in a room overlooking the back garden – this is the view from the window.

: View from my desk

Amazingly, there is an apple tree out there that still has its apples. The birds love it!

: Close up of apple tree

The garden has a small stream runing through it going into a small coppice.

: Stream at the back

Here is a view of the front garden as seen through the lounge window

: Christmas tree in the front garden

Still not much time for reading. Drood is proving to be a test. It started off really well with the train accident that Dickens was in at Staplehurst, great descriptions of London and so on. But Simmons’s inclusion of great tracts of background research is slowing down the story interminably. It reminds me a bit of Les Miserables!

Alphabet in Crime Fiction: J and K

Published on December 19, 2009October 30, 2017 by Margaret3 Comments

Whilst I’ve been busy moving house Kerrie’s A-Z Crime Fiction meme has featured the letters J and K. Now that I have the computer up and working (well D actually did that for me) I’m having a little break from unpacking boxes to add to the series. I’ve written about the following books earlier in this blog and have adapted my reviews for this post.

the letter J J is for A Judgment in Stone by Ruth Rendell.

This portrays Eunice, an illiterate woman and a psychopath who does anything to stop anyone from finding out that she can’t read or write. Her ingenuity and resourcefulness is amazing. She blackmails people and killed her father. I found the whole premise of such a damaged person apparently functioning normally in society scary.

She is employed by the Coverdales as their housekeeper and in the interests of having their house kept clean and tidy they tried to make her comfortable. But part of the problem was that they looked on her as little more than a machine, not as a person. They meant well, wanting to make other people happy, but they were interferers and things went from bad to worse. Then Eunice met Joan, who was completely unstable, in fact she was insane. Joan is a religious fanatic, a sinner who delights in telling people of her past sins and wanting them to seek God’s forgiveness. Their friendship ends in tragedy.

I felt helpless whilst reading this, desperately wanting the Coverdales to realise Eunice’s problems, but they were blind to the fact that Eunice was illiterate and although they tried to prevent her meeting Joan they were unaware of the danger they were in. This inflamed Eunice and pushed her into taking the actions she did.

Although Eunice’s crime is known right from the start, that does not detract from the suspense. It actually makes it worse – you know that the murder is going to happen and as the reasons why it happens become clear, the tension builds relentlessly.

letter K is for King of the Streets by John Baker.

I read this over two years ago. It depicts violent murder in graphic detail, which I found hard to stomach and the subject matter of the abuse and murder of children is neither easy nor pleasant to contemplate, but it’s a quick read. This was the third book I’d read by Baker, all set in York and featuring the private detective, Sam Turner and his assistant Geordie (naive, but street-wise). Sam is investigating the murder of a blackmailer and the death of a teenage runaway, hampered by a gangster and his “minders”.

It’s well written, giving insight into the minds of both the detective and the criminal characters. I particularly liked the nickname ‘Gog’ for one of the ‘minders’, who trashes Sam’s office. Gog is, as the name suggests, a huge giant of a man, with little reasoning power, but plenty of brawn, looked after (not very successfully) by his brother, Ben. Baker also refers to Gulliver’s Travels in describing Gog as ‘Brobdingnagian’. At times I even felt sorry for Gog.

I enjoyed this book immensely, despite the violence it portrays.

New Home

Published on December 17, 2009November 17, 2022 by Margaret15 Comments

Christmas is now only a few days away and I’m nowhere nearly ready.

We’re in our new house. It had been empty for nearly three weeks and it was cold! We arrived before our furniture with just a few things to keep us going. The removal men we’re due to come on Monday but didn’t arrive until Tuesday and now we’re surrounded by boxes. I have to admit that quite a lot of them are boxes of books and I haven’t even unpacked one of them yet. There is no time to read, except for a few pages of Drood, which is promising to be interesting and at 700+ pages will keep me going well into the new year.

We expected cold weather moving from the south of England up to the north, but so far it’s been warmer here than at our old house. I don’t suppose it’ll stay like that and heavy snow is forecast for Saturday. We’re enjoying the scenery here – below is a photo taken from our kitchen window. I’m looking forward to exploring the area. When we’re more sorted I’ll take more photos and change the blog header – but for now it’s still showing part of the garden from the old house taken in the summer!

Lucy has settled quite well although she isn’t allowed out yet. For a cat who complained loudly when we drove 10 minutes to the vet’s, she was remarkably quiet during the 10 hour journey here and after a few miles she only miaowed quietly a few times. And now that our belongings are all around us she’s a lot happier.