Eight in July

 I read eight books in July.

 

Writers & Lovers by Lily King

Paperback, bought with the birthday book token that also bought Rodham (see below). I hadn’t heard of Lily King before but Writers & Lovers was on the same table as Rodham in Waterstones and I thought it looked my cup of tea. And it was, a complete afternoon tea in fact with jam and cream and a cherry on top. I’ll certainly be reading her four previous titles.

Casey Peabody is writing a novel, living in a gloried garage, waitressing, recovering from a relationship break-up. So Writers and Lovers encompasses her struggles and otherwise to write and her working life in the restaurant with characterful co-workers; she has non-sugary romances with the two new, very different, men in her life; she tries to come to terms with the recent death of her mother and to mend bridges with her ghastly father.

Glowingly endorsed by fellow writers such as Ann Patchett and Tessa Hadley, the book, to my mind, occupies the sweet spot between commercial and literary fiction. 

 

Midsummer Magic at Miss Moonshine’s Emporium by Authors on the Edge

Read on (ancient) Kindle but I shall get a paperback too because the map of Haven Bridge drawn by Livi Gosling looks lovely but not seen to best advantage in black and white. I do love a map at the beginning of a book, ever since my sister and I used to pore over the Toytown endpapers in our Noddy books. I love the covers of the three Miss Moonshine books too – they were done by one of the talented authors, Mary Jayne Baker.

I thoroughly enjoyed the first two outings for Miss Moonshine and on this evidence the series is going from strength to strength. The nine authors each have their own voice but the whole is made cohesive by their short stories all being set in the same place, the town of Haven Bridge, and in each story the amazing, time-travelling, Miss Moonshine sorts out everybody's problems.

 

Choose Me by Tess Gerritsen and Gary Braver

Read on Kindle. Taryn is a clever girl whose single mother is struggling to keep her daughter at a prestigious university. Taryn’s planned thesis has attracted the attention of a prominent feminist academic; together they are going to rewrite classical myths. But while Taryn’s work is about reclaiming history from men, in her personal life she is clingy to the point of stalkery. When she finally realises that her relationship with Liam is finished she overly responds to the admiration of married professor Jack Dorian to the ultimate tragedy of them both.

 

A Village Murder by Frances Evesham

Read on Kindle. Promising characters and plot but ultimately unsatisfying in outcome. The sleuth, a retired cop turned publican, made leaps of connections and puttings of two and two together that the reader (this one, anyway) couldn’t see; plus, we hardly met, never mind got to know, the villain  – so there was no ‘I wonder … ’ moment followed by feeling clever that you’d cudgelled your little gray cells and come up with the answer.

 

The Darkest Evening by Ann Cleeves

Paperback from a charity shop. The latest case for Vera and one of the best, plus the title comes from my favourite poem, Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost, not an original choice I know but it’s popular for a reason.

 

Hand-grenade Practice in Peking by Frances Woods

Reissued in this lovely edition by Slightly Foxed. Frances Woods spent a year at a language school in China in 1975-76; the book is based on the letters she sent home. So she was there at the very end of the Cultural Revolution and the end of the life of Mao Zedung – at a time when China was virtually closed to outsiders.

Funny, fascinating and jaw-dropping.

I blogged here about my own, much shorter but still funny, fascinating and jaw-dropping, visit to rural China in 2011.

And to read about China somewhere between those two dates I highly recommend Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory by Peter Hessler.

 

Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld

Read in paperback for book group. I thoroughly enjoyed American Wife by CS in which she imagined the life of Laura, wife of George W Bush – the result, I promise, is much more amusing and touching than I know you are thinking it could possibly be …

In Rodham, as you can see from the cover, she imagines what would have happened to Hillary Rodham, to the US, and indeed to the world, if she hadn’t married the charismatic Mr Clinton.

It’s an entertaining and thought-provoking read.

 

I Know I Saw Her by E D Thompson

Read on Kindle. A really good psychological thriller. Alice’s quiet (quiet for a slowly revealed reason) home life is disrupted by new neighbours, and a game of cat and mouse is played out over one hot summer.

Eirin Thompson writes excellent women’s magazine stories; I look forward to seeing what she does next as her alter ego.

 

 

 

Seven in November

I read seven books in November.

The Little Library Cookbook by Kate Young

I love reading (and using ... ) cookery/baking books; don't usually mention them here – making an exception because this lovely book (bought with the last of a birthday book token) has 100 recipes that the Australian-born author and blogger has written and road-tested, inspired by food references in her favourite books. They all sound delicious and very doable, not in the least gimmicky. If you are looking for a Christmas present for a book-loving cook look no further.

The Cactus by Sarah Haywood

I liked this first novel a lot – it’s ‘uplit’, the same category as, eg, Needlemouse and Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine (also first novels as it happens; look forward to all their second ones). Susan is in her mid forties, a workaholic living on her own with no outside interests (apart from seeing a friend-with-benefits once a week) and a toxic relationship with her brother. She has a complete lack of self-awareness which is funny and sad at the same time. An unplanned pregnancy and the revealing of family secrets after the death of her mother turn her carefully managed life upside down.

One Winter Morning by Isabelle Broom

I’m a bit puzzled by how this book is presented, in its title, wintry cover and promotion banner beginning ‘Warm your heart this Christmas … ’ None of these, to my mind, give a true indication of what the book is like.

The incident that happened ‘one winter morning’ in England was offstage and a year before the story begins. It was the catalyst for Evangeline (‘Genie’) going to New Zealand where most of the book is set. Genie is there during the month of December, one of the hottest times of the year on the other side of the world, and Christmas barely gets a mention.

I wasn’t keen on Genie (perhaps it was the way she came over in the first person, present tense voice). Her little sister Tui was delightfully drawn though and there was a great sense of place – I enjoyed, vicariously, revisiting Queenstown in the South Island of New Zealand.

Bright Lights and Lies by Gill-Marie Stewart

When I was a child and got new books only at birthdays and Christmases and from additions to the folding bookcase that was the school library (we weren’t anywhere near a public library), I read them immediately.

Nowadays I’m spoilt for choice – I can buy books for myself in print or digital from bricks-and-mortar and online bookshops, or I can borrow from Edinburgh’s Central Library, fifteen minutes’ walk away. I can acquire them from second-hand or charity bookshops or buy and get them signed at events; even get out-of-copyright titles free from Project Gutenberg.

So there is always a tottering to-be-read pile; I wouldn’t go back to my previous state but I know I’ll never recapture the total joy I used to feel at embarking on a book I’d never read before.

Bright Lights and Lies was bought at a book launch four years ago and only now fished out of the pile. And well worth the wait it was too – a YA set mostly in Glasgow, a sweet romance between Finn and George (Georgina) with some very gritty subjects along the way, such as drug addiction and police corruption.

Lily’s Just Fine by Gill-Marie Stewart

And having enjoyed that Gill-Marie Stewart it was great to be able to whiz over to the TBR pile for the first in her new series Galloway Girls. That one was bought at the Romantic Novelists’ Association conference a mere four months ago. Again, a sweet romance plus difficult subjects for the protagonists to tackle, set in beautiful Galloway in south-west Scotland. Lily is a terrific character because she’s so well rounded; she just walks off the page, as do all the other teenagers and adults.

You think it; I’ll say it by Curtis Sittenfield

Short stories. I loved CS’s first four novels especially The American Wife and Sisterland; I was disappointed however in her fifth, Eligible, a bleak modern retelling of Pride and Prejudice. So I was interested to read this, her first short story collection. In several of the stories she references and skewers current American politics, one of her favourite themes as evidenced in The American Wife (an imagined life of Laura Bush – yes, really, and far funnier than you’d expect).

She’s good too on the perennial theme of meeting your high school nemesis; that’s in A Regular Couple. The secret game (that gives the book its title) played by Julie and Graham, married to other people and who meet through their children, is embarrassingly misconstrued by Julie; in Plausible Deniability it’s Libby who thinks her relationship with her brother-in-law is other than it is.

‘You won’t want these stories to end,’ said Reese Witherspoon no less.

Girl, Balancing by Helen Dunmore

Read for book group, these are short stories which were published after the writer’s untimely death in 2017. The subjects and themes are wide-ranging and include: a teenager, abandoned by her parents, gives the book its title; a young man caught in a storm while on a boat to Sweden meets a mysterious girl; the last days of John Keats; two women from very different backgrounds have an unusual night out; a young mother is left with her unpleasant mother-in-law while her husband goes exploring; and much more. She's such a wonderful writer.

Four in December

Or, more accurately, I read three books and finished a fourth in December.

Family Britain 1951-57 by David Kynaston

This has been one of the non-fiction books I dip into between novels. (I previously read his Austerity Britain 1945-51.) I started it a while ago and finished it this month – 776 pages (including notes and index) encompassing exhaustive research through newspapers, books, magazines, Mass Observation diaries and other archives.

As the blurb says this was the era when: ‘Britain was starting to move away from the hardships of austerity. Great national events jostle alongside everything that gave 1950s Britain its distinctive flavour from Butlin’s holiday camps, Kenwood food mixers and Hancock’s Half Hour to Ekco television sets, skiffle and teddy boys.’

I was born during this time so one item gave me particular pause for thought. There was a very popular radio quiz programme called Have a Go! compered by ‘Halifax’s Wilfred Pickles’. His opening catchphrase – ’Ow do, ’ow are yer? – was followed by ‘amiable chat with the mainly working-class contestants about their lives’ and there was (my italics) ‘a large round of applause if a contestant turned out to be over 60’.

From which I conclude that 90 is the new 60.

Gingerbread and Cupcakes by Claire Watts

As hinted above I am an ‘OA’ and not a Young Adult at which market this book is aimed. I was already aware of the author’s excellent non-fiction book The Covenanters so was interested to know about her novels. She is one of four YA authors who have collaborated to publish their books under the banner Paisley Piranha.

Although this title is the third in a series about a group of 17/18-year-old girls it can be read as a standalone. It’s the summer before Lily and Simon go to university. Simon has been one of their school’s heart-throbs (to use an OA expression) while Lily is quieter, more in the background. They are thrown together when Simon’s cake-shop-owing mum has an accident and he and Lily step in to help. Their sweet romance is told from both their viewpoints – and there is bonus material in the form of cake recipes at the back. Loved it.

Betty: The Story of Betty MacDonald, Author of The Egg and I by Anne Wellman

Betty MacDonald is an author I re-read, most recently in October this year. So I was delighted to find out that there are a couple of biographies newly out on her. It was great to fill some of the gaps in my knowledge about her  – her four books for adults (she also wrote very successfully for children) are ‘lightly fictionalised’ accounts of her life. This book is self-published and my only gripe is that I would like to know what the author’s connection, if any, was to Betty MacDonald/her family. They sound such fun – even during the Depression they were able to keep cheery in their overcrowded household and made a ceremony out of every meal however frugal.

Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld

This is 514 pages but I read it in just over a day in the Christmas holidays – not as impressive a feat as it might appear as the type in my hardback copy is large and many of the chapters are just one page so there’s a lot of white space.

I’ve loved Curtis Sittenfeld’s books which are all quite different. The last one was Sisterland which I read in March this year. She’s such a stylish writer.

So I was really looking forward to Eligible, her modern take on Pride and Prejudice. Her Fitzwilliam Darcy is a neurosurgeon newly moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, where live the feckless Bennett family. Mr Bennett has had a heart attack and as Mrs B is more interested in her Ladies’ Luncheon Club than in looking after him, 40-year-old Jane and 38-year-old Liz come home from New York to help. It was fun seeing what CS did with the characters (although perhaps too many ‘issues’ are ascribed to them) but it’s told in a kind of reportage style which I found distancing (and another reason why it was a quick read); all in all I confess I was rather disappointed.

What would Jane Austen make of 21st-century life were she to take this as her guide? I expect she’d be delighted that women can now live independently, and amused to know that they can make the running in a relationship … but I’m sure she’d be sad that, in 2016, romance (dictionary definition: a feeling of excitement and mystery associated with love) would appear to be well and truly dead.

Let’s hope that’s just in Cincinnati ...

Wishing you a happy and peaceful 2017. Oh – and, wherever you are, if you are looking for a book that does give a feeling of excitement and mystery associated with love, may I recommend ...

See reviews here. And buy it here. And may all your Christmas wishes come true.

Six in March

I read six books in March.

 Period Piece: A Cambridge Childhood by Gwen Raverat

Bought at Christian Aid Book Sale last year. This memoir by Gwen Raverat (1885-1957) is illustrated by her own delightful line drawings.

Gwen’s mother, Maud, was American, sociable and strong-willed, and her father was one of Charles Darwin’s five sons. Childhood was a dull time for late-Victorian girls but Maud gave her daughters more freedom than most. However there were conventions that could not be disregarded. It’s sad that when she was an old lady Gwen Raverat said ‘it fairly makes my heart bleed’ to remember beautiful summer days when she and sister were not allowed to discard their thick black woolly stockings and high boots.

When she was eighteen, skirts were worn down to the ground – even an inch or two above would have been very improper. Round the bottom of her skirts she had to sew on two and a half yards of ‘brush braid’ which to some extent saved the skirt from getting muddy (no tarmac roads). Then, back home, she had to spend an hour or more brushing off the mud – as she says ‘no more futile job, imposed by idiotic convention’.

My Two Grandmothers and I by Diana Holman-Hunt

Bought at Christian Aid Book Sale last year. Another memoir – this time by the grand-daughter of the great Pre-Raphaelite painter. Having drawn a couple of poor straws in the parent department, young Diana lived mostly in the country with her lovely cosy maternal grandparents – and had to spend a rather terrifying couple of weeks every so often with her other grandmother, the widow of William H-H, in London. Mrs H-H was parsimonious (Diana went hungry for those two weeks), set booby traps for imaginary burglars and lived entirely in the past with her memories of her (very unfaithful) husband. Luckily Diana was a resilient, feisty and amusingly naughty child who coped very well with this eccentric household.

Watch Over Me by Daniela Sacerdoti

Read on Kindle. The first novel in the bestselling Glen Avich series set in the Scottish Highlands – with an incredible 2050 5* reviews on Amazon. ‘A poignant story about letting go and moving on: with a little help from beyond the grave.’ A very enjoyable read.

Sisterland by Curtis Sittenfield

Another purchase from the Christian Aid Book Sale last summer (hoping to clear a bit of shelf space before this year’s). I am a big fan of Curtis Sittenfield (she’s written three other books including the touching and funny fictional life of Laura Bush (yes, really! do try it) called American Wife. This one is about identical twins Kate and Vi and their volatile relationship – their disagreements mostly having to do with their psychic abilities. Loved it.

Waiting for You by Catherine Miller

Read on Kindle. Fliss longs for a second baby, a sibling for Hollie, but the negative tests have a detrimental effect on her marriage. Against her husband’s better judgement they sign up to take part in a TV programme called Baby No 2. A light, easy read.

The Newlyweds by Nell Freudenberger

From the Christian Aid sale last year – but I liked this so much I don’t think I’ll part with it just yet. Amina from Bangladesh meets George from New York State online and moves to America to marry him. She is an only child and her secret intention is that when, three years down the line, she gets her citizenship she will be able to bring her parents over to move in with them; however, she begins to realise that that is not the way American families live.

George is a little dull and not particularly handsome. When Amina first sees his photograph she finds his face ‘flawed rather by a certain compression of features leaving large, uncolonised expanses of cheek and chin’. He has a secret too but he’s a decent man; as the Observer review says ‘With great sensitivity and psychological subtlety, Freudenberger charts the misunderstandings experienced by the couple in their first years together.’ 

The novel was inspired by a chance meeting Nell Freudenberger had on a plane with a Bangladeshi woman who’d just arrived in America to marry a man she’d met on the internet. NF subsequently visited Bangladesh with the woman – the last third of the book is set there.

Highly recommended.

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?