I have been reading...

Not heaps to be honest as it was Wimbledon fortnight for the first two weeks of the month and I watched a lot more of it than I normally would. So good this year, my two favourite players, apart from the Brits who all went out early, were Lulu Sun from New Zealand and Jasmine Paolini from Italy - two bouncy, dynamic players and huge fun to watch. And in a week or so it will the Paris Olympics of course. 

So, books. I started July with Murder Takes a Holiday, an anthology of murder mystery short stories with a holiday theme, edited by Cecily Gayford.

Ten stories in this collection. It started with two stories I'd already read, the first being, The Adventure of the Devil's Foot, a Sherlock Holmes story by ACD of course. It's set in Cornwall on The Lizard Peninsula and I'm always up for a reread of this one as it's 'so' atmospheric. That was followed by a Lord Peter Wimsey which is not one of my favourites but even an average Wimsey is better than a lot of other stuff. After those I had five favourites. The Mystery of Home's Cross by Anthony Berkeley tells the story of a body discovered in the woods but when the man who finds it brings the police the body has gone and no one believes him. Chapter and Verse by Ngaio Marsh is an Inspector Alleyn story about a murder that took place in 1770. I haven't read any Alleyn novels so I must correct that. The Mysterious Visitor by Austin Freeman is about a man who goes on holiday and goes missing. The Fever Tree by Ruth Rendell was set on an African game reserve and was probably the best story in the collection for my money, very atmospheric. A couple go to reinvigorate their marriage after he's had an affair, nice twist at the end. Parking Space by Simon Brett was the last one I liked, another story about a disintegrating marriage and husband who's a social climber and another author I need to read a proper novel by. This anthology has quite a low rating on Goodreads - 3.33 - which really surprises me as I thought it was very solid with no dud stories at all. Oh, well.

Next, I read the third novella in the canal boat series I've been enjoying by Cressida McLaughlin, Cabin Fever. These are light and fluffy and set on a canal with interesting characters and dogs and what's not to love if that's what you're in the mood for?

After that it was Reckless Creed, book 3 in Alex Kava's 'Ryder Creed' series. 

Hard to see what I can say about this as it's a continuation of book 2 and I don't want to spoil it. Basically it's about secret labs in parts of the USA where uncontrolled experiments on human guinea pigs have been taking place. This came to light in book 2 when there was a landslide in South Carolina that engulfed one of these labs and Ryder Creed and his dogs are sent in to find survivors. Someone from the lab got away and book 3 tells what happens next and it is 'scary'. It was written in 2016 I think, and it's odd how many authors there are who predicted pandemics, what would be the cause of them, and how they would spread. Sobering stuff and this was quite edge of the seat reading. I do enjoy this series, good characters, all of them nuanced and interesting, and delightful dogs of course. But I've had enough of pandemics now...

 

 

So that's been my reading so far in July. My two current reads are two non-fictions. First up, Everything is Everything: A Memoir of Love, Hate and Hope by Clive Myrie.

 

Clive is a very well known in the UK as a BBC newsreader, maker of travel documentaries and question-master for Mastermind. I thought this might be an interesting read and it is, covering as it does, some of his childhood as part of a black immigrant family from Bolton near Manchester with origins in Jamaica. It gives a different perspective from the one I know and that's always a good thing. I'm really enjoying this, especially his experiences as a foreign correspondent for the BBC in many countries, which is one of the reasons I wanted to read it. A very readable and fascinating memoir.

Lastly, Jane Austen at Home by Lucy Worsley. 

I love Lucy Worsley's books and TV documentaries and this one lives up to its promise. It charts Austen's life through the various houses she lived in with, first of all, her family in Steventon in Hampshire and then, basically, wherever Jane, Cassandra and their mother could find to house themselves after the father died. The brothers all had careers of course, not so easy for widows and women who couldn't find a husband. I think this is going to take me a while to read as it's very densely written.

I hope you're all having a good July, one that's not 'too' hot, and also finding some good books to read.

Books read in June

Now that it's July, the Wimbledon tennis tournament has my attention, so my reading has dropped off the last few days. But June was not actually a bad reading month for me. I read eight books in all and these are they:

38. The Bordeaux Book Club - Gillian Harvey

39. A Charmed Life - David Essex. Autobiography by the famous British singer, actor, writer. Enjoyed this one a lot.

40. What Would Jane Austen Do? - Linda Corbett

41. The Wild Isles - edited by Patrick Barkham. An anthology of British nature writing, a bit hit and miss but overall not bad.

42. The Canal Boat Cafe - Cressida McLaughlin

43. The Canal Boat Cafe, book 2 - Cressida McLaughlin. A continuation of the story from the first book, great fun. 

44. Death in the Sunshine - Steph Broadribb

This crime yarn is set in a retirement complex in central Florida. Moira is a retired British under-cover police officer, hoping to find a quiet life away from people she knows who might be aware of the secrets she's harbouring. Her mission is to keep herself to herself but this intent is stymied rather when she's the one to discover the dead body of a young woman floating in a swimming pool. Moira is not the only retired police officer living in the complex. There's another British couple, Phillip and Lizzie, he was a DCI and she a crime scene investigator. And then there's retired American cop, Rick. The police are so inept that the four retirees start to investigate themselves and discover that there's still life in the old dogs yet. I rather enjoyed this. The Florida retirement village setting was unusual although it was rather a stretch to imagine 'three' retired Brits in the same place, all previously attached to the British police. I also struggled to believe that the local police would that antagonistic. But I liked the way the four main characters with their various secrets were written and having each chapter written from the point of view of each of them worked for me. It kept me guessing about what had happened in their previous lives and even at the end we realise that not everything has come to light. Interesting. I will definitely read more in this series as I thought this was a decent start.

45. Frederica - Georgette Heyer. This was a reread for the 'Reread an old favourite' category in a Book Bingo  challenge I'm doing with a friend. It was like snuggling into a comfy old blanket as I immersed myself in the story of how Frederica and her young family inveigle themselves into the affections of the Marquis of Alverstoke. No one did Regency Romance like Heyer and I enjoyed this so much I plan to reread a few more favourites, Arabella, Sylvester etc. before too long.

Oh, here's a strange thing that happened while I was reading Frederica. It has a long scene about two thirds of the way in concerning an adventure the youngest brother has with a hot-air balloon. That mode of transport was in its infancy when this book was set. So, I'm sitting there reading this when I hear noises outside and when I looked out there was only a hot-air balloon floating along just above the house! How's that for weird?

So, eight books is not bad for me, I liked them all so that's even better. And I even managed a couple of non-fictions which I failed to do in May. 

My total for July so far is two and I will be back soon to talk abut those. Hope the summer is treating you well and it isn't too hot where you are. It certainly isn't here, it's more like autumn, but that's ok with me, I'm not a hot-house plant. 

 

Time for a catch-up

How on earth can it be mid-June already? I feel like the year is flying by and before you know it we'll be into autumn, especially as it's the longest day tomorrow. Summer's not my favourite time of year, I hate too much heat, and so far this year we've been lucky and Spring into Summer has been really nice with temps. in the high 60s, low 70s. That suits me very nicely.

Apologies for being AWOL for a few weeks. I've not been reading as much as usual, fueled by a strange inability to settle to anything. I'm assuming this is quite normal after a serious loss but I'm getting there, albeit slowly, and actually have some books to talk about today.

So, I started June with The Bordeaux Book Club by Gillian Harvey. 

There's an awful lot of bookclub themed contemporary fiction around these days, this one being slightly different with its setting of Bordeaux in France. As usual, a motley group come together to discuss books. Grace is the instigator of the group, she's an older, single lady with a finger in a lot of pies. She ropes in her friend, Leah, who lives on a small holding with her husband and daughter and is finding out the hard way that The Good Life is not all it's cracked up to be. Add to them Monica, a young mum, husband away a lot and struggling with a new baby, George, a builder, and Alfie, very young and clearly harboring a secret and you have a new bookclub for Brits in Bordeaux. This was a bit formulaic, the usual problems to be solved with everyone coming together to help, or not. I enjoyed it a lot but didn't feel the setting of Bordeaux came very much alive, it could've been anywhere but it was a very decent 'people' sort of read. 

 

I've been reading The Wild Isles: An Anthology of the Best of British and Irish Nature Writing, edited by Patrick Barkham for a couple of months and finished it last week. It was a bit hit and miss for me. There were dozens of authors (it's a huge book) such as Dorothy Wordsworth, Kathleen Jamie, Roger Deakin, Nan Shepherd, Horatio Clare, Kenneth Grahame and so on. Some pieces were excellent but quite a few were just a bit tedious. I see from reviews on Goodreads that I'm not alone in this opinion. 

A Charmed Life by David Essex is pretty much what it says on the tin - an account of the singer and actor's rather charmed life in showbiz. Fascinating, I enjoyed it a lot but it's not a kiss and tell sort of account, he's clearly a really nice chap.

What Would Jane Austen Do? by Linda Corbett was next.

Maddy Shaw has her column in a magazine cancelled and is jobless until she discovers a 'black sheep' uncle has left her a huge house in the Cotswolds (which, as we all know, often happens.) Off she goes to live in it for a year as the will stipulated, but will she then sell up? The locals welcome her to the point where she suddenly finds herself in charge of the village literary festival. She's also met a local crime writer, Cameron Massey, nice dog but very grumpy owner. Can she persuade him to come and give a talk at the event? This was fun. I mean the outcome was never in question but I liked Maddy's Jane Austen obsession and the grumpy author with a bit of a superiority complex was well written. As was the village and the locals who lived there. A fun read.

 

 

I seem to be in mood for fluff because I then moved on to a couple of novellas by Cressida McLaughlin, set on a canal boat, the canal itself being next to a small village and pub etc. All Aboard is book1.

Summer Freeman, an artist specialisng in sign writing, is returning to her mother's canal boat café nine months after she died. A friend has been keeping it going but it's struggling. Summer takes it over but it's hard with so many memories closing in on her and antipathy from the local owner of the pub. Eventually her bacon butties and delicious brownies win people over and a growing friendship with another boat owner, Mason, a wildlife photographer, doesn't do any harm. This had a lovely sense of the British countryside about it, the canal and surrounds feeling very real. Summer's indecisiveness and inability to put her foot down with certain people slightly annoyed me, more than slightly, but I liked the dogs and the birds and it was charming enough for me go straight on to book 2, Casting Off, which I've already finished but can't say anything about as it would involve spoiling the end of Book 1. 

 

So, my current read is this:

Death in the Sunshine by Steph Broadribb is set in Florida in a retirement complex. Moira is an ex-police inspector from the UK who discovers a body in a swimming pool. She gets together with several other retired folk to solve a murder that the police don't seem very interested in. Very good so far. 

Next month is Jane Austen July and I'm planning to try to get a few Austen related titles under my belt. I've never read Sense and Sensibility so would like to get to that and then I have a whole heap of other possibilities as I do enjoy anything related to Jane Austen and her writing.

So that's my June reading so far. I hope you're all keeping well and enjoying some good books.  

I have been reading...

 Again, I meant to post a bit sooner than this but I'm still not quite back in the swing of things and suspect that might continue for some time. The oddness of it all is very hard to shake. I have been reading though and thought I would a do brief rundown of the books I've been reading this month.

I finished this BLCC collection, Guilty Creatures, edited of course by Martin Edwards. The theme in this one is 'animals', each story has a connection to wildlife or pets. So we have a chap with a fear of earthworms, a yarn about nobbling racehorses, there're gorillas, parakeets, slugs, all life is here. Authors include G.K. Chesterton, Christiana Brand, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Josephine Bell, Edgar Wallace and so on. Overall, I thought this was a better than average collection, only a few failed to please and the rest were top notch. I didn't jot down my usual notes so I can't name any favourites, other than remembering that the Father Brown was good and so was the Christiana Brand. And what a glorious cover!

The Wheel Spins by Ethel Lina White is a novel published in 1936, and subsequently made into a Hitchcock film, The Lady Vanishes. I'd seen that years ago, so the plot was slightly familiar, but I couldn't remember the outcome, so it was fine. Socialite, Iris Carr, is travelling back by train from a holiday somewhere mountainous (they don't say exactly where but I think northern Italy) in Europe. An English governess, Miss Froy, takes her under her wing, but the next day the woman has disappeared and no one in the carriage can remember her being there. Is Iris suffering the results of sunstroke  or is there a conspiracy of silence. Excellent read this one, a little too heavy on the surreal, 'am I going crazy?' aspect but nevertheless, a real pageturner and not a little creepy, to my mind anyway.

 

The Man by the Sea by Jack Benton is book one in his 'Slim Harding' series. Slim is a private detective, ex-army and an alcoholic. He's hired by a woman who thinks her husband is having an affair. Slim duly sets about following the husband only to discover that what he's actually doing is driving to an isolated cove and reading something aloud to the incoming tide. Slim thinks the man might be mad. Delving a bit deeper, the case ends up being connected to a woman who went missing just before her wedding. Is she dead and haunting this part of the wild Lake District coast? And what does she have to do with a man reading to the waves? I liked this a lot despite not being all that enamoured of the detective, Slim Hardy. As is the nature of the beast, his alcoholism rules and that was hard for me to identify with. That said, the story has a huge sense of place and is really atmospheric. I also found the plot intriguing enough to carry me through the book without any wish to abandon it. I will probably, at some stage, continue on with the series.

So, my most recent book, I finished it yesterday, is Illyrian Spring by Ann Bridge. Lady Grace Kilmichael  is leaving her husband and grown-up children behind and going off on a European trip. Only they don't know. She thinks her husband might be having an affair and the children are not really interested in her nowadays. She does leave a letter to her husband however, telling him she's off to Greece to paint as Grace has recently become quite a well-known artist. She doesn't go to Greece. She starts in Paris and then on to Venice where she comes across Nicholas, aged 23, half Grace's age, who wants to be a painter but whose parents won't hear of it, they want him to be an architect. She takes him on to mentor him, and the pair travel together along the Dalmatian (present day Croatia) coast, not just painting but learning a lot about life from each other. So this sounds like a fairly simple plot and indeed it is. If I'm honest the whole thing is more of a travelogue and homage to the Dalmation coast and, in fact, I read that the impact of this book when it was first published in 1935 was to up tourism in the area and even Edward and Mrs. Simpson took a cruise down the coast to see what all the fuss was about. Fascinating. 'And' I have no problem understanding it because that was exactly what the book made me want to do... pack my bags and set off! It has quite an introspective sort of narrative and this might not be everyone's cup of tea. I was reminded of Absent in the Spring by Agatha Christie writing as Mary Westmacott, or Enchanted April by Elizabeth Von Arnim, they too have older ladies looking for a break from humdrum life or difficult relatives and trying to find a way to make life work for them now they're older. It's not often I finish a book and find myself wanting to go back to the beginning and start again but I did with this. A five star read and certainly a book that will be in my top ten for this year.

So, that's me, up to date. I hope you're all well and finding lots of good book to read this spring.

A bit of catching up

 It's several weeks since I posted, I did mean to post again sooner but, as I'm sure you'll understand, with the loss of my husband and the funeral last week, I felt like I was existing in a strange kind of limboland. The funeral, I felt, went well and was a nice celebration of his life. We cried but also laughed, and I did enjoy catching up with family and friends afterwards. What was also nice is that these days funerals can be live-streamed so those who couldn't make it were able to attend that way. Technology has its faults but there are occasions when it's a wonderful thing.

This won't be a very long post as I'm doing it on my Kindle Fire. My computer decided it didn't want to speak to my monitor any more and it seems it's the pc not the monitor and my family computer boffins say there's no easy fix (one could but hope). I now have to decide what to do and as I can prevaricate for England I've warned folk not to hold their breath...

So, books. I read seven in April.

26. Silent Creed by Alex Kava. Book two of her Ryder Creed series. It was 'excellent ' but the theme of secret laboratories doing uncontrolled experiments I found quite alarming.

27. Agatha Christie: A Very Elusive Woman by Lucy Worsley. This was a superb biography on the world's most famous crime writer. A lot of interesting comments and reflections from the author. Highly recommend!

28. Murder in Tuscany by T.A. Williams. Murder at a writing retreat for erotic fiction writers, the narrator did not know it was such before he arrived. Huge fun and I loved the dog.

29. How to Find Love in a Bookshop by Veronica Henry. Father who has been running a bookshop in The Cotswolds dies and his daughter comes home to take it on and save it. Nice cast of characters. I enjoyed this light read.

30. The Murderer's Ape by Jakob Wegelius, translated by Peter Graves (hopefully not a Mission Impossible!) YA fantasy type yarn about a gorilla, Sally Jones, who is a ship's engineer. When the captain is accused of murder and locked up, she sets about trying to prove he didn't do it.  A bit overlong I thought but nonetheless a decent, unusual read. 

31. Ranger Confidential by Andrea Lankford. I think this is another one that Lark is responsible for. LOL! Fascinating look at the lives of American NP rangers and what they have to deal with on a regular basis. Sobering.

32. No Life for a Lady by Hannah Dolby. Hugely fun yarn about Violet, a young woman whose mother disappeared ten years ago and how she sets out to hire a private detective to find her. Great fun and I've already preordered book two which I think is out in early June.

So that was my reading month. A good lot of escapism, gentle reads and interesting non-fiction. Since then I've DNFed one book, a BLCC vintage crime story, The Port of London Murders by Josephine Bell, because it was thoroughly unpleasant. I'm now reading these three:

All interesting and entertaining, which is all I'm asking of a book at the moment. I hope you're all keeping well and finding lots of good books to read this Spring.

Reading as a retreat from reality

I've been so grateful to be a reader since my husband passed away, just over a month ago. Not that I wasn't before of course, but having somewhere to escape to, where reality doesn't intrude, has been a huge comfort. For a few days even books didn't help but slowly I managed to get back into a book and the author I turned to was Agatha Christie. I have no idea why but she worked for me and the couple of books I read by her were a real escape.

I'll quickly list the books I read in March with one longer review that I had already written weeks ago.

18. The Last Bookshop in London - Madeline Martin

19. A Death in the Parish - Richard Coles

So, this is book two in the author's fairly new 'Canon Clement' mystery series. A new associate vicar is on the scene, Chris Biddle. He's taking over a couple of churches in Daniel Clement's parish so Daniel will have to work with him. But it's not easy as their views on church matters are opposing, Chris being of a more fundimental bent and Daniel, not. All this has to be put to one side though when the ritualistic murder of a teenage boy is discovered on a disused airbase. Policeman and friend of Daniel's, Neil Vanloo, is brought in to investigate and Daniel, as in the first book, helps him to solve the crime. Running alongside this are a couple of other issues including an elderly woman, nearing death, being preyed on by a couple who make it their business to insinuate themselves into death-bed families like this, hoping to pick up a legacy. (I'm assuming this is a 'thing'.) I thoroughly enjoyed this second book about Daniel and his parishioners. I like his mum, Audrey, far from any perfect vicar's mother, judging by what she was up in this instalment. There is some personal stuff which took rather an unexpected twist right at the very end. A genuine 'Wut?' moment. I hesitate to call this a 'cosy' because it has a slight edge in that some of the situations feel very real and quite gritty, but they're not written in a gritty manner. Coles writes in a gentle, non-judgemental, way about human foibles and mistakes and it's actually really well done. There is plenty of humour too. I suspect some situations are based on his personal experiences or that of people he knows and I found some of his theological explanations really interesting too. I gave it five stars on Goodreads, no agonising required.  I gather the next book is based in a monastery and as I love a good monkish murder story I can't wait for that. Murder at the Monastery is out in June I think. 

20. The World's Greatest Sea Mysteries - edited by Michael and Molly Hardwicke. What it says on the tin, an anthology of mysterious happenings on sea voyages etc. Entertaining in places but not fantastic. 

21. Lending a Paw - Laurie Cass.  Book one in the author's cost mystery series: 'Bookmobile Cat Mystery'. This is set in Michigan and revolves around a mobile lending library. There's a murder and a cat and lots of books so what's not to like? I loved it.

22. The Hairy Bikers, Blood, Sweat and Tyres - Si King and Dave Myers. This is a biography of the TV British cooking duo who're household names in the UK. Particularly poignant now of course because Dave Myers died of cancer about 2 months ago. A really enjoyable biography of two lovely men.

23. Best Detective Stories of Cyril Hare. I've been reading this vintage collection for several months and can't recommend it highly enough, it has some really excellent crime short stories in it.

24. Crooked House - Agatha Christie. Terrific story about a family living in a huge house and the death of the patriarch with all the money. Who, amongst the dozens of suspects, knocked him off? Agatha Christie at her best.

25. Passenger to Frankfurt - Agatha Christie. This spy type yarn didn't work quite so well for me and is known as one of her odder books I believe. But I still enjoyed it and noted that, as they say, 'the more things change, the more they stay the same' because much of what Christie worries about in this book are things which are still worrying us now. 

So that was my March reading. Six fiction books, two non-fiction, eight books in all. Personally, one of the strangest and most unsettling months I've experienced in my life and April is not much different if I'm honest. Books continue to be the place I retreat to and so far this month I've finished just two.

Silent Creed by Alex Kava is book two in her 'Ryder Creed' K9 series of crime novels. Quite gritty and scary in its background premise of experimental labs where we have no idea what's goes on inside and what happens when one is destroyed in a landslide. Really good.

Agatha Christie: A Very Elusive Woman by Lucy Worsley. This is a really excellent biography of the iconic crime writer. Having read Christie's own autobiography I thought it might be just a rehash of that but it wasn't at all. There was a lot more comment than I expected and clearly heaps of research done. A really good read and I also highly recommend the accompanying BBC documentary Lucy Worsley made. 

My current read is this:

A cosy murder mystery set at a writing weekend for authors who write erotic fiction: the narrator is there by mistake. The setting of Tuscany is gorgeous, the writing style is gently funny, and I'm really enjoying it.

I hope you're all doing well, enjoying the spring when it's not pouring with rain, and finding lots of good books to read.

Thank you

I just wanted to thank everyone who left such heartfelt and touching messages in reply to my post last week about Peter passing away. I read them all and feel so blessed to know each and every one of you through our mutual passion for reading. I'm doing ok. The sense of unreality and disbelief is still quite overwhelming as is the 'empty chair' syndrome - 50 years is a long time to be with someone. But I'm getting there and I'm so lucky to have two wonderful daughters and grandchildren who are looking after me, I couldn't ask for better to be honest. I will be back, probably in a few weeks, in the meantime I hope to catch up on a few of your blog posts I've missed and start to comment again. I miss it and feel it might comfort me to get back to what I love and I know Peter, a keen reader like myself, would want that. 

Thanks again and take care, all of you. xxx