Six in June

I read six books in June.

Every Contact Leaves a Trace by Elanor Dymott. (Christian Aid Book Sale buy) Alex tries to find out who killed his wife, Rachel, in the grounds of the Oxford College they’d both attended. I liked the complicated structure, very clever. Perhaps less of a whodunit than a whydunnit – the ending was vaguely disappointing. Plus I couldn’t help thinking that even if she hadn’t died the marriage wouldn’t have lasted between solitary, dull dog Alex and beautiful, bratty, manipulative Rachel.

Night Music by Jojo Moyes. (Christian Aid Book Sale buy) An early JM. As usual, great characters and dynamics between them.

A Woman Unknown by Frances Brody. This is in an excellent series about Kate Shackleton, a war widow and amateur sleuth, set in Yorkshire just after the First World War.

The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith. Well, by JK Rowling really. And I thought it was cracking, kept me awake for several nights and the conclusion was very satisfying. Really liked Cormoran Strike and his assistant Robin and can’t wait to read the follow-up The Silkworm.


The Other Miss Perkin by Lorna Hill. (Christian Aid Book Sale buy) This is set in the 50s, was first published in the 70s and republished in 2010 and is Lorna Hill’s only adult novel (she’s best known for her children’s books especially her ballet ones). I’m a Lorna Hill fan but I’m afraid I thought this was feeble – a downtrodden spinster (ancient apparently at the age of 44) wins a prize trip to the States and snags a millionaire. Written in a telling not showing way – ‘as we have seen’ etc. There was a really beautiful description though of the Grand Canyon; she is very good on scenery.

Loving Susie by Jenny Harper. First book I read on my newly acquired first Kindle. This is Jenny’s second novel following Face the Wind and Fly. Is the story of Susie Wallace MSP (member of the Scottish Parliament) and the devastating secret she discovers about her own background and the impact it has on herself and her family. Jenny is married to a former MSP so well-placed to set a heroine in this world. The story is told through her eyes and that of her husband and family and plays out Jenny’s tagline – she writes about ‘Strong women under pressure’.

 I am enjoying the Kindle – it is so easy (and usually cheaper) to acquire books in this way, and there are some titles that are only available in e-form. And, yes, it is terrific if you’re on the move. But it is frustrating to know that you can’t pass on a book to friends and family if you think they’ll like it too – you can recommend it of course but there’s no saying they’ll get round to buying it, and not everyone has an e-reader.

I fervently believe that books do ‘furnish a room’. The books on my shelves are part of my life in a way that words on an e-reader, however wonderful, can never be. There’s so much pleasure to be had in looking at other people's bookshelves and in spending time in a good (new or second-hand) bookshop.

And – you know who you are – if you keep nodding off and dropping your Kindle on the floor it is expensive to replace …

Six in May

I read six books in May.

A Spy by Nature by Charles Cumming. Much enjoyed his A Foreign Country was keen to read more; was not disappointed. Good, old-fashioned (in the best sense of the description) spy thriller.

Homeland and other stories by Barbara Kingsolver. (Christian Aid Book Sale buy) I love Barbara Kinsolver’s novels but her essays and short stories even more. Highly recommended as a masterclass in short story writing.

An English Woman in New York by Ann Marie Casey. (Christian Aid Book Sale buy) Love reading about New York, love reading about people who move to live somewhere completely different. Excellent.

Girls will be Girls by Arthur Marshall. (Christian Aid Book Sale buy) For many years, from the 30s to the 50s, broadcaster Arthur Marshall was asked to give a round-up of the year’s new books for girls and this is a compilation of them along with other of his musings, on such subjects as his schooldays and his horror of compulsory games. Gently hilarious if you like that sort of thing, which I must say I do.

The Red House by Mark Haddon. (Christian Aid Book Sale buy)  I wouldn’t like to be related, necessarily, to his characters or live next door to them but his writing can take your breath away – the kind where you re-read sentences and wish you could write like that.

A Lesson in Secrets by Jacqueline Winspear. (Christian Aid Book Sale buy) In the Maisie Dobbs private investigator series and well up to the usual standard.

I won’t name it but I started another book and didn’t get very far because the heroine irritated me so much and I found the writing banal (although from a big publishing house and covered in plaudits). I used to feel I had to plough on to the end once I’d started but not now – so many books to read, so little time.

Do you always continue once you've started – or have you ever hurled a book across the room?

Had we but world enough, and time …

Around eighty years ago the economist John Maynard Keynes, anticipating further technological innovations on top of those which astonished the 19th century, predicted that in a couple of generations people would only have to work a fifteen-hour week.

As we know this hasn’t come to pass and various reasons are put forward for why he got it wrong, for example: JMK did not anticipate how much stuff we would all ‘need’, including many more technological innovations he could never have dreamt of; telling everyone how busy you are has become a matter of one-upmanship; and we spend a lot of time thinking about how much we have to do.

I read all this in an article called ‘No Time’ in a copy of The New Yorker bought recently in the airport before my flight home from the USA.

Elsewhere (sorry, can’t remember where) I read that every second we make decisions about how to spend our time. So if we say ‘I haven’t got time to … write a novel, get some exercise … ’ or whatever it happens to be, that isn’t true. We have the time but choose to spend it in other ways.

I proved that point when I chose not to catch up with current thinking/look intellectual by reading my copy of The New Yorker on the plane as I’d intended; instead, with a plastic glass of red to hand, I slumped in front of Blue Jasmine.

Writers are notorious for procrastinating and in the 21st century they can spend hours being distracted by emails, social media and the highways and byways of the internet.

We are told in a new book, John Buchan and The Thirty-Nine Steps: An Exploration, that John Buchan planned his time to the nth degree. One evening he told his family he would finish writing his biography of Montrose at 11am the following day and he did, just as the clock was striking. He began his next at 11.15.

Now maybe JB didn’t have to worry about what to make for dinner, nor did he have to update his Facebook page or worry about his Amazon ratings, and he didn’t have the option of slumping in front of a movie. But as well as being the author of around 35 novels and 50 non-fiction titles, including single-handedly completing the 24 volumes of Nelson’s History of the War, he was in the course of his 65 years a lawyer, diplomat, WW1 propagandist, publisher, MP and Governor General of Canada.

No one could accuse him of procrastinating.

My favourite multi-tasker though is Queen Margaret of Scotland (1045-93) as described by author Eileen Dunlop:

‘She managed to fit in the most extraordinary amount of activity – the management of two households, the choice of clothes and furnishings; the supervision of building work; the opus anglicanum [needlework]; charitable works; hours on horseback; visits to shrines and hermitages; discussing theology; spending time with the king and overseeing the upbringing of her growing family, while almost constantly pregnant.’

Writing is not mentioned but I'm quite sure if she'd been asked to dash off a serial or two for a medieval woman's magazine she'd have fitted that in as well.

And that, if you take out the word medieval, is what I should be doing right now.

Calendar girl

My desk calendar at work for 2013 had a different motto for every day of the year; some, I thought, made good advice for writers:

Don’t wait for your ship to come in; swim out to it.

You cannot direct the wind, but you can adjust your sails.

(Image courtesy of Tim Seed / FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

Goals are dreams with deadlines.

Don’t think you are on the right road just because it’s a well-beaten path.

By the time a man finds greener pastures he can’t climb the fence.

Only Robinson Crusoe could get everything done by Friday.

(Image courtesy of Arvind Balaraman / FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

 Don’t let yesterday use up too much of today

Do what you can with what you’ve got, wherever you are.

When patterns are broken, new worlds emerge.

(Image courtesy of Oana Roxana Birtea / FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

Thanks to Helena Fairfax for alerting me to http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/ from where these pictures came.

Do you have a favourite motto?

In which I acquire twenty-five books

I went to the Christian Aid book sale in May with a long wish list. I took home twenty-five books, only two of which were on the list …

A Lesson in Secrets by Jacqueline Winspear

Maisie Dobbs is a private investigator. Love this series which begins just after the end of WW1.

A Quiet Year by Derk Tangye

Heard an interesting radio programme about him the other week

Apple Tree Yard by Louise Doughty

Was on wish list; the reviews have been brilliant

At Times Like This by Catherine Dunne

Irish writer; haven’t read her before

Caleb’s Crossing by Geraldine Brooks

I blogged about Geraldine Brooks here. This one is set in Martha’s Vineyard in 1650.

Cross Country with Grandma by Karen Testa

Great title

Dear Life by Alice Munro

After reading The View from Castle Rock I’m looking forward to this

Every Contact Leaves a Trace by Elanor Dymot

Sounds very intriguing

Girls will be Girls by Arthur Marshall

Arthur reviews girls’ school stories and other titles in his own hilarious way. The other title I’ve read of his was called Giggling in the Shrubbery.

Homeland and other stories by Barbara Kingsolver

Love Barbara Kingsolver’s novels and essays but have never read her short stories

If Morning Ever Comes by Anne Tyler

One of my favourite authors

Night Music by Jojo Moyes

Always good for a page turner

People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks

Yipee, another Geraldine Brooks – this time set in Vienna in World War II

Sisterland by Curtis Sittenfeld

Was on wish list; have loved her other books

Telling Tales by Ann Cleeves

For when I feel like a spot of crime

The Aloha Quilt by Jennifer Chiaverini

Anything with patchwork quilts catches my eye

The Beginners Goodbye by Anne Tyler

An Anne Tyler I haven’t read; what a treat

My Antonia by Willa Cather

First published 1918; set in the American West

The Hour Before Dawn by Sara MacDonald

A family mystery set in New Zealand

The House at Sea’s End by Elly Griffiths

More crime. Hope I like it as I see there are other titles with the same main character.

The Long Weekend by Victoria Henry

And a long book to get lost in

The Red House by Mark Haddon

Have started this one; don’t care much for the characters but his writing is stunning

True Grit by Charlie Ports

Loved both the 2010 version of the film and the John Wayne original so will be interested to see how they compare with the book

When the Children come Home by Julie Summers

Non-fiction, about children who were evacuated in WW2

Wild Strawberries by Angela Thirkell

A lovely Virago edition

Plus five girls’ annuals for my collection including one printed in 1948 when paper was still rationed. The board cover is counted as page 1.

I think that will keep me going in reading material for a little while. Have you read any of the titles above?

Six in April

I read six books in April.

The Physic Garden by Catherine Czerkawska, published by Saraband. Set in Glasgow in the 19th century. Young gardener William Lang forms an unlikely friendship with botanist Dr Thomas Brown while working in the university physic garden. Around them, City life is never short of drama: poverty and pollution preys on all but the lucky few and resurrection men prowl the streets to procure corpses for anatomists to experiment on. Atmospheric, full of fascinating historical detail, but above all a great story.

Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks. I first heard of Geraldine Brooks (Australian-born and now living in the States) when she won the Pulitzer Prize in 2006 with March, the story of Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy’s father while he is away as a chaplain on the front line in the American Civil War, which also tells us something of his early life and how he met and married Marmee. March is faithful to the spirit of Little Women while being very much its own self and is one of my very favourite books.

So I was keen to read something else by this author and her first novel (2001) Year of Wonders did not disappoint. It is set in a different century and country from March and is based on a true story, as it is set in 1666, in Derbyshire, when the Great Plague reached Eyam and the decision was taken by the villagers to isolate themselves to prevent its further spread. Events are seen through the eyes of an eighteen-year-old widow, Anna. No less a person than Hilary Mantel said of it ‘It has a vivid imaginative truth, and is beautifully written.’ With which I can only agree and urge you to seek out Geraldine Brooks right now.

Take My Breath Away by Sally Quilford. My Weekly Pocket Novel: a murder mystery on the set of a remake of the film Cleopatra.

Treasures: What do we treasure most? published by Scottish Book Trust to celebrate Scottish Book Week 2013. Contributions from some famous folk eg Richard Holloway, Mairi Hedderwick, Denise Mina and John Barrowman, plus a host of others, ‘these items tell the stories of the people of Scotland’.

Truly, Madly, Deeply, an anthology of stories by members of the Romantic Novelists’ Association, some huge best sellers such as Katie Fforde and Adele Parks, others at various stages of their writing career. Many different settings and eras – I particularly liked the Indian setting of the stories by Jenny Harper (The Eighth Promise) and Louise Allen (Head over Heart). Other favourites were a contemporary story that harked back to ‘Summer '43’ by India Grey, and a contemporary story set in London, The Fundamental Things by Heidi Rice – lots of good reading here. I got the e-version which has eleven more stories than the paperback.

The Hundred-Year-Old-Man Who Climbed Out Of The Window And Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson – a good yarn and, along the way, a look at the history of the 20th century as our unlikely hero inadvertently meets President Roosvelt, Mao Tse-tung, Stalin and de Gaulle amongst others. A note on the front of the book says it is soon to be a ‘major motion picture’ – whether this refers to the one made in Sweden which came out at the end of last year I don’t know; it sounds as if a Hollywood one is in the offing too maybe. Very cinematically written so I feel as if I have seen the film already.

My Writing Process Blog Tour

Thank you to Juliet Greenwood for tagging me in the My Writing Process blog tour. See Juliet’s post here (and check out her two terrific books Eden’s Garden and We That Are Left).

I’ve been on this tour before here. I enjoyed it first time round and have come up with some different answers this time.

1) What am I working on?

(a) A new serial for The People’s Friend – currently writing Instalment 5.

(b) Three short stories in various stages of completion. One to be aimed at The People’s Friend and two for general competitions.

(c) One novella, two-thirds of the way through.

(d) Bits of a longer novel.

I’ve started so I’ll finish … I hope.

2) How does my work differ from others of its genre?

I write ‘women’s fiction’. I also write more generally eg I had a story called Hattie in New Writing Scotland a few years ago which was a kind of stream-of-consciousness from an elderly man with dementia. Was he imagining his mis-treatment at the hands of one of his carers or not?

Another World in the anthology Work (the short-listed stories for the Scotsman/Orange Short Story Award in 2006) was about a Gulf War veteran recuperating in the Highlands.

So I like to think that I’m versatile. I enjoy doing both types of story but I concentrate largely on women’s fiction because, frankly, it’s more sellable.

3) Why do I write what I do?

I’ll answer the question twice.

Why do I write?

I write because I love words, because I love stories. I write because I can create people and (mostly) make them do what I want …

Why do I write what I do?

Because I can.

4) How does my writing process work?

I am the world’s best procrastinator, looking at each email as it pings in, checking Facebook, daydreaming about potential writing projects, reading other people’s writing. So to discipline myself I’ve started setting a timer (an online one http://www.online-stopwatch.com/countdown-timer/) for twenty-five minutes and forcing myself to type without editing for that time. Five minutes off, and then set it again.

Many of my stories have started from prompts in the creative writing class I’ve been going to for the last ten years.

And inspiration is all around in everyday life – for me usually in the form of a setting or situation eg a university open day, mature lady having swimming lessons, holiday cottage, guests at a wedding table …

I can’t keep up with the material in the ‘Story bits’ file on my computer: currently 142 first few paragraphs waiting to be pumped into life. Not to mention the other files: 56 one-line entries in a ‘Character file’; 23 one-line entries in ‘Settings’; 199 one/two-line ‘Ideas’ and 49 ‘Titles’.

To use them up perhaps I could take a handful of ‘story bits’ and put them together in one story. Or maybe I should have a rummage sale and offload some of them. Any offers?

I’m passing the Writing Process baton on to Anne Stenhouse. Anne is an Edinburgh-based award-winning playwright and Regency novelist – in the last year Mariah’s Marriage and Bella’s Betrothal have been published by MuseItUp. Read about her Writing Process here.