Six in May

I read six books in May.

Bookish: How Reading Shapes Our Lives by Lucy Mangan

A book about books – what’s not to like? I enjoyed Bookworm which covered Lucy Mangan’s childhood years of not wanting to do much else other than read (a girl after my own heart then).

Of course, though, adulthood does have its compensations – an income to buy books and a house (and a specially built ‘shed’ in the garden, of which I am very jealous)’) to put them in. Oh, and a husband who’s equally bookwormish, and a child who provides a reason to reread favourites and to find new ones.

So this book ranges wildly and wonderfully (as anybody’s reading material should) from Library Lion to 1990s bonkbusters such as Lace, to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight with much (much) in between.

I had the pleasure of seeing her recently being interviewed under the auspices of the wonderful Toppings bookshop in Edinburgh and got this lovely signed copy.

 

 

Free, Coming of Age at the End of History by Lea Ypi

Read for book group. I knew next to nothing about Albania; it was so interesting to hear about its recent history through the eyes of Lea Ypi, born there in 1979 and now a professor at the London School of Economics.

Albania, the last Stalinist outpost in Europe, was a difficult place to live in for many reasons – but it was Lea’s home and all she knew. But in December 1990 political upheaval meant everything changed. There was freedom at last which seemed wonderful to begin with but it came with many downsides for everybody and, for Lea, some startling family revelations.

Fascinating.

 

 

Here One Moment by Liane Moriarty

Something extraordinary happens on a flight from Hobart to Sydney – an elderly woman called Cherry goes down the aisle telling each passenger (including children) and crew members when and how they are going to die.

Thereafter, the book focuses on some of these people and what effect their prediction has had on them (especially when they find out that some of the predictions have come true)  – and we find out Cherry’s very plausible backstory too. Riveting. I particularly enjoyed Leo’s and Ethan’s stories – Leo, the family man with a toxic boss, and Ethan, hopelessly infatuated with his rich, glamorous housemate. I still think about them actually …

 

April Lady by Georgette Heyer

Yay – the Christian Aid book sale was back this year in Edinburgh after a couple of years’ hiatus. Among my (very restrained) purchases were two GHs I’ve never read before. April Lady won’t go into my top five but it was very enjoyable all the same.

 

 

Death at the Sign of the Rook by Kate Atkinson

A joy to catch up with Jackson Brodie again.

A painting has apparently been stolen from the Yorkshire home of a deceased woman but her unpleasant offspring are reluctant to involve the police. Our hero, rather reluctantly, takes on the case – which leads to a stately home, an array of characters straight from the Golden Age of crime writing, and a Murder Mystery Weekend. Hope that’s not the last we see of JB – I’m still cross that the television series was cancelled.

You can’t see from the image but my copy (also purchased in Toppings but this time the St Andrews branch) has sprayed black edges, a special edition for independent bookshops.

 

 

Shy Creatures by Clare Chambers

After I read Small Pleasures by CC a few years ago, I read through her backlist of six books, one after the other.

Shy Creatures, her latest, is terrific. Set in the 1960s, in the environs of Croydon, it was inspired by the true story of a man discovered in a house he hadn’t left in forty years – a man with wild hair and beard and an astonishing talent for art.

Helen, an art therapist (embroiled in an affair with a charismatic married colleague in the psychiatric hospital) becomes entangled in the man’s mysterious past.

Six in February

I read six books in January.

Bookworm: A Memoir of Childhood Reading by Lucy Mangan

I’m a fan of Lucy Mangan’s journalism (especially in the excellent free magazine Stylist) but it’s nerve-wracking to read about the favourite childhood books of someone you like in case their likes disagree violently with all your own cherished choices. What you want is agreement over some books, a difference of opinion over a few, and the introduction to some that, inexplicably, you’ve never come across. And with Lucy I found exactly that.

She is almost twenty years younger than me but she too read as a child every waking hour she could (only asking that her family turn her over on the sofa occasionally to avoid bedsores … ) so we are definitely kindred spirits. I was upset when she didn’t like Anne of Green Gables – but then she concluded she’d read it too young; on a re-reading she loved it. We differed rather over Little Women – unlike me she remained dry-eyed reading of Beth’s death. (Lucy! How could you? Pass the hankies.)

Like me, she loved Enid Blyton, the William books, The Borrowers and Tom’s Midnight Garden. (I say loved but of course it’s not a past-tense feeling but a forever one.) Some favourites of hers, the Narnia series and anything by Judy Blume, I have never embarked on and don’t feel inclined to start now.

I was chagrined to find that I hadn’t heard of three books very dear to her heart: The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster, a mega-seller published in the 1960s, now deemed ‘an essential modern classic’; Private – Keep Out! by Gwen Grant, the diary of a north of England female Just William, set just after WW2 (in Bookworm Lucy says it has long been out of print; however it has since been reissued, perhaps thanks to her championing); and Life with Lisa by Sybil Burr (of which more below).

Thinking about it, my experience of books for children was different from Lucy’s: as I lived very rurally I wasn’t near a library so much of my reading of them came later, especially when I had my own children as I chronicled here.

White Nights by Ann Cleeves

Set around midsummer in Shetland when it scarcely gets dark, a time known locally as the ‘simmer dim’ – white nights.

When Shetland detective Jimmy Perez finds a body in a hut used by fishermen it seems to be a straightforward case of suicide. He recognizes the victim – a stranger with amnesia who had disrupted a local party the night before his death. Further deaths point to the crimes having their roots in the past. Excellent.

Madness Lies by Helen Forbes

Since White Nights had put me in the mood for a crime spree, I retrieved Madness Lies from the to-be-read pile at the side of my bed, where I’d put it some months ago after buying it at the author’s Edinburgh launch. Set mostly in Inverness, the book features policeman Joe Galbraith. The twist in the first JG book, In the Shadow of the Hill, needed all my little gray cells to get to grips with – but although there wasn’t that shock here I enjoyed it even more.

The plot is terrific, beginning with the murder of an Inverness councillor in broad daylight in the middle of town, and featuring a heart-stopping showdown at a Highland beauty spot. Gives ‘Shetland’ a run for its money I would say.

Millions Like Us: British Women’s Fiction of the Second World War  

edited by Jenny Hartley

Does what it says on the tin – discussing a range of authors including Elizabeth Bowen, Olivia Manning, Rosamond Lehmann, Rose Macaulay and Stevie Smith.

Life with Lisa by Sybil Burr

See above – after reading about Lisa in Lucy Mangan’s book I was keen to get hold of this, another (fictional) diary of a working-class, mildly rebellious schoolgirl, set in the 1950s. One of her heroes is ‘Peeps’ and he’s one of mine too. I was lucky enough to find a (tatty Puffin) edition online for £3.99 (all that appears there now are hardback editions starting from £32). And I wasn’t disappointed. Maybe the Mangan magic will see this one reissued too.

Old Baggage by Lissa Evans

Read for book group, on Kindle. It’s 1928. Mattie Simpkin was a militant suffragette and now that that battle has (mostly) been won all the energy and passion she poured into that campaign has to find another outlet. She decides to start a Saturday club for working girls (ie girls in domestic service/shop workers) on Hampstead Heath – with mixed, sad and funny results in which her own family background plays an unexpected part. I loved Lissa Evans’ writing. This is the first book of hers I’ve read – but a film I enjoyed, Their Finest, was based on one she wrote, originally published as Their Finest Hour and a Half.