My Life (maybe)

My Life (maybe) – according to the books I read in 2016

Describe yourself

The Lost Woman

How do you feel?

Wild

Describe where you currently live

Austerity Britain

If you could go anywhere where would you go

A House in Flanders

Your favourite form of transportation is

From the Alleghenies to the Hebrides

 

Your best friend is

Etta and Otto and Russell and James

You and your friends are

Eligible
 

What’s the weather like?

Stormbird

Favourite time of day

When the Children came Home

If your life was a book

The Road to Little Dribbling

What is life to you?

A Spool of Blue Thread

Your fear

So Many Books, So Little Time

What is the best advice you have to give?

How to Get Hitched in Ten Days

Thought for the day

This Must be the Place

How would you like to die?

Can’t Wait to get to Heaven

Your soul’s present condition

Slightly Foxed

This is a fun idea I saw first on Portobello Book Blog:

https://portobellobookblog.com/2017/01/01/my-life-according-to-books-i-read-in-2016/

Seven in December

I read seven books in December.

Shall we Dance? by Maggie Alderson

There’s always something very glam about Maggie Alderson’s novels and this one is no exception. She is a fashion journalist after all. Here, the main character, Loulou, has a vintage clothes shop in Primrose Hill and is the sort of person who wears high-heeled wellingtons to music festivals. 

Partners in Crime by Agatha Christie

I read every Agatha Christie, most more than once, when I was young (those long winter nights on the farm … ). When our parents downsized, my sister and I divided the collection between us.

I remembered The Secret Adversary as one of my favourites, very exciting – it’s the first Tommy and Tuppence story. I was looking forward to seeing the recent TV adaptation but was sorely disappointed. Why move it to the 1950s? Why rewrite the story to such an extent? Why make Tommy such a buffoon?

As my husband had never read any Agatha Christie (I know – weird) I pressed The Secret Adversary and N or M? on him (these had fallen to me in the share-out) and he liked them so much that he asked for more.

So I bought him two more Tommy and Tuppences, Partners in Crime and By the Pricking of my Thumbs, 1970s Fontana editions.

He liked those too and I reread PiC myself when he finished it. It’s a book of short stories, some very far-fetched but, hey, this is the queen of crime. She gets away with it as far as I’m concerned. Unlike the TV producers.

The Road to Little Dribbling More Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson

Bill travels around Britain (well, England mostly, apart from North Berwick, Ullapool and Cape Wrath), describing his journeys in his witty, informative and often caustic way.

The Lost Woman by Gilly Stewart

Read on Kindle. Set in the Scottish Highlands. Catherine McDonald is trying to turn her family’s home into a hotel but a missing hill-walker brings unwanted attention to the area and some of her family are less than enthusiastic about her plans. Good read, with a great sense of place – as usual from this writer.

So Many Books, So Little Time: A Year of Passionate Reading by Sara Nelson

Bought in second-hand bookshop, published in 2003. I could not agree with the title more and had every hope that this American author and I would be kindred spirits. Alas no.

A whole chapter was devoted to a true crime book about murder by baseball bat. After reading it she apparently got anxious about her young son playing baseball, and about the possibilities of other sporting paraphernalia being used as weapons. I could win worrying competitions but I’ll skip that one.

I knew we weren’t on the same planet reading-wise though when she was indifferent to /dismissive of two of my very favourite books.

Housekeeping, subsequent Pulitzer prize-winner Marilynne Robinson’s first novel, was ditched after a few pages as ‘too slow’.

Crow Lake by Mary Lawson was newly published when Sara Nelson read it. She found it ‘pretty close to cliché’ and suspected it would be ‘ignored or even trashed’ by other reviewers. Well, perhaps it’s mean of me to, ahem, crow, but with the benefit of hindsight I know that Crow Lake got brilliant critical reviews, became a best-seller and a beloved book for many people, and that it won the Books in Canada First Novel Award and the McKitterick Prize among other accolades.

But each to their own … in the lists at the back of the book there are a few titles I hadn’t heard of that I'll look out for. Maybe we might even agree over some of them.

Plainsong by Kent Haruf

Read on Kindle. I bought this because I read that it was one of Anne Tyler’s top ten books. It’s contemporary, set in a small town in Colorado, and follows various characters and how they are linked to each other.

I appreciated it more than liked it, I think. The characters stayed in my mind but I found the almost reportage style of writing distancing.

People We Love by Jenny Harper

This is the fourth title in Jenny Harper’s very successful Heartland Series of ‘strong women under pressure’, set in a fictional town in East Lothian, Scotland. Here, Artist Lexie is back in Hailesbank, living with her parents, as they all try to come to terms with her brother’s fatal accident. ‘An engaging and delightful read,’ as Alexander McCall Smith says on the cover.

I’m very pleased to have been interviewed by Jenny Harper about writing serials, and about The Ferryboat (my People’s Friend serial now available as a large-print library book which I might possibly have mentioned before):

http://jennyharperauthor.co.uk/kate-blackadder-celebrates-serial-success/

@harper_jenny

Twelve in May

I read twelve books in May.

Twelve.

Accomplishable partly because I was on holiday in London for a week, travelling there and back by four-and-a-half-hour train journeys; and partly because, ahem, I was not doing much writing. But I was having a long-overdue tidy-up of writing-related bumph, about ten years’ worth of notes from classes and workshops, scribbled bits of stories etc. Etc. Also had big reorganisation of bookshelves – nothing I like doing better, apart from reading what’s on them.

Between You and me: Confessions of a Comma Queen by Mary Norris

I wrote about the last chapter of this book in a previous post A Penchant for Pencils. Mary Norris has been a proof reader at the New Yorker since 1993. As the blurb says: ‘Now she brings her vast experience, good cheer and finely sharpened pencils [yay!] to help the rest of us in a boisterous language book as full of life as it is of practical advice.’ See also:

http://www.newyorker.com/contributors/mary-norris

The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton

I finally got round to reading one of the highest selling and critically acclaimed books of recent years – and found it deserving of all the hype. Love the writing and the story, and the picture it paints of 17th-century Holland.

Rescue in Ravensdale by Esme Cartmell

This is a book I loved when I was about ten and I rediscovered it during the aforementioned bookshelves reorganisation.

I must have reread it several times because I found I could remember great chunks of it. It’s about a family – parents, four daughters and their eighteen-year-old male cousin (from whose point of view the story is told) – on holiday in Yorkshire in August 1939, who get involved with the search for an apparent German spy.

It stood the test of time for me, and I think this was why. It is unusual in a children’s book for the parents to be so much involved – generally they are got out of the way as quickly as possible. Here, with their writer/reviewer father and artist mother, the girls (I remember being intrigued by their names – Thelma, Kyra and twins Daphne and Dione) and their cousin have wonderfully wordy, punny, literary conversations that I enjoyed this time round too.

Neither the book jacket nor Google can tell me anything about Esme Cartmell and whether she/?he wrote anything else.

Hysteria 3 – read on Kindle. An anthology of winners from the Hysteria Writing Competition, which include my fellow Edinburgh Writers’ Club member Olga Wojtas, and her typically amusing, and wonderfully named, story Green Tea and Chocolate Fudge Cake.

The Highland Lass by Rosemary Gemmell

Read on Kindle. A dual narrative, cleverly interspersing contemporary Eilidh’s return to the Scottish town she left as a child, and the story of Robert Burns and his doomed romance with the lass known as Highland Mary. With its great sense of place, the book is also a love letter to Burns’ home county of Ayrshire.

Sunshine Through the Rain by Gilly Stewart

Read on Kindle. Ellen’s transition from no-baggage career girl to hands-on guardian to her sister’s children is very believable, as is her slow-burning romance with neighbour Kit. I loved the farming background too.

The Pearl Locket by Kath McGurl

Read on Kindle. Enjoyed this even more than The Emerald Comb. Again, it’s a dual narrative, this time contemporary and WW2.

Some Tame Gazelle by Barbara Pym

Read umpteen times before but never stales. Have just joined the Barbara Pym Facebook page and thought my favourite title of hers was due for a reread.

The Trinity Six by Charles Cumming

Love a good spy story. Was there a sixth man – along with Burgess, Maclean, Philby, Cairncross and Blunt?

Kissing Mr Wrong by Sarah Duncan

‘Lu Edwards may write and illustrate books for children, but she's certain she doesn't want children of her own. She believes in travelling light, with not even a goldfish to tie her down, until Nick – a WWI expert with more baggage than Heathrow, right down to the kids, ex-wife and hamster – blows into her life.’ A good read.

What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty

Christian Aid sale purchase. The second LM book I’ve read, following The Husband’s Secret. Much enjoyed this one too – her characters are really … real. Alice hits her head and when she comes too she thinks it’s ten years earlier, but her whole life has changed.

Wedding Night by Sophie Kinsella

Christian Aid sale purchase. Enjoyably farcical situation. And a reminder, if it’s required, that trying to relive your youth with your first love is never a good plan.

Re-reading childhood books on the other hand is, mostly, a very good plan.