Books read in September

Before I talk about September books I just wanted to mention that I don't do the Top Ten Tuesday meme but I've loved reading all the posts others have done on their favourite bookish quotes. So I'll start this post off with one of mine and it's this: 

 “If you cannot read all your books, at any rate handle, or as it were, fondle them – peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on the shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that if you do not know what is in them, you at least know where they are. Let them be your friends; let them at any rate be your acquaintances. If they cannot enter the circle of your life, do not deny them at least a nod of recognition.” 

~Winston S. Churchill ~

I think that just about sums up my relationship with my books. My main body of TBR books and favourites are here in my study with my pc and before I go to bed at night I often have a change around or pick out several I want to read soon or sit and read the first few paragraphs of an old favourite. I suspect I'm not alone in doing this.

Anyway, enough rambling. I've read nine books this month and they are, as usual, a motley, undisciplined, surly bunch. These are they:

63. Smallbone Deceased - Michael Gilbert

64. Beyond the Stops - Sandi Toksvig

65. The Crime at Black Dudley - Margery Allingham

66. Travels with Tinkerbelle - Susie Kelly

67. The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter - Theodora Goss 

68. Beyond Time - ed. Mike Ashley

69. Underland - Robert MacFarlane. (To be reviewed.)

70. Silver Bullets - edited by Eleanor Dobson. I probably won't review this. It's a volume of werewolf stories a few of which were not bad but I wasn't overly smitten with the anthology.

71. Close Quarters - Michael Gilbert (To be reviewed.)

So nine months through the year (and what a year!) and it seems my average number of books read per month is no longer six but almost eight. I think this boils down to me hiding amongst my books from the ills of the world (literally). There are worse places to be. 

It's been an excellent reading month. Three or four books stand out. The two Michael Gilberts were superb and I think he's now my favourite vintage crime writer, although he didn't die until 2006 and his publishers were still publishing his books in 2011 so I'm not sure vintage is the right word, but the two I read were from 1947 and 1950. Not sure if these dates even qualify as 'vintage'.

Two non-fictions were also superb, Beyond the Stops - by Sandi Toksvig and Underground by Robert MacFarlane... which was brilliant and has given me a sudden interest in caving books. (I know...)

Also great fun was The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter by Theodora Goss. Great literature it is not but I loved its madness and energy. 

I'm currently reading these two books:

And:

Apologies, Blogger doesn't want to give me the option of putting them together unless I change back to html. view and I'm terrified of losing the formatting of the whole post if I do that. This, apparently, is progress. Perhaps I should call it, 'The new normal'. (Sorry.) Anyway, I'm enjoying these two immensely. I started The Poisoned Chocolates Case by Anthony Berkeley because it and the author is mentioned so often in Martin Edward's book and it isn't disappointing so far.

Happy autumn reading!

Catching up

As usual, I'm behind with reviews, two books in fact, reading quite a lot but busy with other things so not a lot of time for blogging at the moment. First up, The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter by Theodora Goss. I talked a bit about this one in my last post.

Mary Jekyll has just lost her mother after a long illness. She's now mistress of her own household but there's very little money and she's going to have to find a way to earn some. She believes her father to be dead (he is the 'Jekyll' from Robert Louis Stevenson's book) but discovers that his close friend 'Hyde' might still be alive. And there's a reward out for him that would temporarily solve her financial problems. Thus begins the adventure of a lifetime as Mary discovers other women like herself who are the product of mad scientists, such as Catherine Moreau, Justine Frankenstein, Beatrice Rappaccini, and Diana who is Mary's unknown sister. Aiding and abetting Mary and the motley group are Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. This was huge fun. An unusual premise this, bringing the offspring or creations of these literary characters together in one book. I don't know why someone hasn't thought of it before, perhaps they have and I just haven't noticed. Anyway, 'very' enjoyable, not to be taken too seriously and thus hugely entertaining. I already have the second book, European Travel for Monstrous Gentlewomen, on my Kindle. It suits my autumnal reading plans very nicely.

Lastly, Beyond Time: Classic Tales of Time Unwound edited by Mike Ashley. I'm not a huge fan of time travel stories if I'm honest. I have this because it came as a free review copy from the British Library and because I'm in the mood for wierd fiction at the moment I thought I'd see what it was like. Glad I did because it was far more enjoyable than I was expecting. Most of the authors I'd not heard of and it turns out those were the ones I liked the most. The Reign of the Reptiles by Alan Connell investigates the idea that reptiles might have created man. Friday the Nineteenth by Elizabeth Sanxay Holding is a well told 'time-loop' story of a man wanting to leave his wife for her best friend. Manna by Peter Philips is about the disappearance of 'miracle meal' cans from a factory in a small village. Turns out the food is being nicked by monks from centuries ago. Fun story. The Shadow People by Arthur Sellings is a creepy story of a shadowy couple travelling back in time to escape the end of the world. And the final story in the collection, Dial 'O' for Operator by Robert Presslie, was the best of the bunch in my opinion. A woman dials the operator from a call box somewhere near the docks in London. Some 'thing' is following her, a shadowy, dark mass, and is trying to ooze into the phonebox via the cracks. Very edge of your seat! All in all, I enjoyed the stories that weren't based on mad scientists more than those that were. The writing was superb in every case and every story was very readable, making this an excellent collection. I do find Mike Ashley a very reliable editor of anthologies and am always happy to read any of his British Library collections. I even have a non-BL collection of Sherlock Holmes stories edited by him so perhaps that would make good autumn or winter reading too. ~~~oOo~~~

Currently reading and just finished

Autumn has definitely arrived here in the UK. We've already had a couple of named storms and it feels crisp and cool early in the mornings, some lovely misty valley scenes out of our windows. We're so fortunate, my heart goes out to people in Oregon, Washington State and California, we're seeing hellish scenes on the TV. Anyone reading this from those states, please stay safe.

I always love autumn reading. The minute September arrives I suddenly feel like I must read something weird or spooky so my current read is this:

The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter by Theodora Goss is based on several classic weird fiction books including Robert Louis Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells. The 'heroes' of those books somehow had daughters who, as you can imagine, are not quite right, and they all end up living together. I'm halfway through this and I like it a lot, it's fun and intriguing and I like the fact that Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are involved in an investigation in it. It's written a bit oddly and it took me a while to get used to that, what I can't get used to is the frequent use of 'gotten' in Victorian England or a young girl exclaiming, 'Awesome!'. Regardless of that, I'm enjoying it a lot.

The first of three books I've just finished is, Between the Stops by Sandi Toksvig.

Sandi is a well known comedian and host of 'QI' (she took over from Stephen Fry) in the UK. She also co-hosted the new Bake Off on C4 but has just given up I think, a shame. Anyway, these are her memoirs, written in the form of her regular bus journey from Dulwich into the centre of London. It might sound like a very odd thing to do but it works a treat. Sandi loves history and unusual facts so the book is not just anecdotes from her life but pieces of the history of places she passes on her bus journey: London really comes alive. Her voice is so familiar that it can be read in said voice and I did so all the way through which made it very funny in places. She has such a lot of interesting things to say, not all of which I agreed with but that's fine. I must recommend another book by her, The Chain of Curiosity, which reprints the newspaper columns she wrote for one of the newspapers and is one of the funniest books I've ever read.


Secondly, The Crime at Black Dudley by Margery Allingham.

This one of those 'house-party' themed vintage crime novels, written in 1929, and is the first book in Margery Allingham's 'Albert Campion' series. Campion is part of a weekend get-together but is on the periphery of the plot at first as events centre on the other guests, particulary Dr. George Abbershaw who has fallen in love with one of the other guests and plans to ask her to marry him. On the first evening a sort of ceremonial dagger is the centre of attention and during a game which revolves around it another member of the party is found dead, apparently of a heart-attack. But is it? (Daft question.) This is my first outing with Albert Campion, apart from a short story read recently. I'm not sure it was quite what I expected (I didn't watch the TV series from years ago), the assumed idiocy of Campion took me by surprise a bit (reminding me slightly of Lord Peter Wimsey) and his role in things was rather more ambivilent than I was expecting. A good yarn though, well written and pacey. I will definitely be reading more.


Lastly, Travels with Tinkerbelle by Susie Kelly. This is my 17th book for Bev's Mount TBR 2020

The subtitle of this book is: '6,000 miles around France in a mechanical wreck'. To be honest that does sum the book up nicely. The author, Susie Kelly, and her husband Terry get someone to look after their menagerie of animals in rural France for six weeks and set off to drive around the perimeter of France. That's two coastlines, two mountain ranges, many forests, and an awful lot of chateaux. Oh, and I forgot to mention their two dogs, Tally and Dobby who had a remarkable talent for getting into trouble. I enjoyed this very much. Some of the coastline I knew as we've seen part of Brittany on the English Channel and been down the Bay of Biscay coast as well, although not all the way. So it was nice to revisit those. Most of it was new to me, all interesting but the part I was found 'most' interesting was Northern France and the war sites. One of these days (if the world ever shakes off Covid 19) I would like to go over and visit that area. This is my second book by Susie Kelly, Best Foot Forward was also excellent.

~~~oOO~~~

Smallbone Deceased - Michael Gilbert

My first book for September is Smallbone Deceased by Michael Gilbert.

Henry Bohun is a young man who has has just got himself a new job with a firm of solicitors, Horniman, Birley and Craine. He doesn't sleep at night and hasn't really settled to a career, trying various different things since the war ended. The firm he's now working for is one that specialises in working for the higher echelons of society, Lord and Lady This and That and so on.

One of the named partners, Abel Horniman, is recently deceased and has been succeeded by his son, Robert. The elder Horniman was one of two trustees for the trust fund of Ichabod Stokes, the other, Marcus Smallbone seems to have disappeared, although no one is too concerned as he tended to disappear for months on end collecting ancient bits of pottery in Italy. Eventually though he does turn up... dead in a deed box and the body has been there for four to six weeks.

So who killed him? Inspector Hazlerigg of Scotland yard arrives to investigate the murder. It's clearly an inside job and the one person the detective doesn't suspect, Henry Bohun, because he's new to the firm, is roped in to help Hazlerigg's investigation. Working practices and office politics make this a very complicated case because people have secrets and loyalties and resent being asked personal questions. And then someone else is murdered and the thing becomes more far more personal when the lives of the staff are suddenly at risk.

Oh, how I loved this one. The writing is sublime, the author has a light touch with humour that had me grinning all the way through. And a light touch with dialogue too, every character came alive as they spoke. You have to keep your wits about you as you read, legal firms and their legal-speak are not always easy to get to grips with and I did struggle a little with trust funds and how they work. It didn't matter though, because it wasn't that that was important in the end, it was the dynamics of personal relationships: it always is.

Oddly enough there's a local connection for me with the author: Michael Gilbert was educated at Blundell's School in Tiverton where I live.

He served in North Africa during the war and was a prisoner of war in Italy, which is how he was able to write Death in Captivity so realistically. If you haven't read that I suggest you do, it's brilliant. I'm really, really impressed with Gilbert's books, to the point where I feel a collection coming on. I have Death Has Deep Roots to read, one of the BLCC's recent output, and Tracy mentioned The Black Seraphim in this post and I liked the sound of it so much I now own a copy.

Smallbone Deceased is book four of six books about Inspector Hazlerigg and I'll definitely be reading the rest and trying to get my hands on his standalone output. I love a project.


~~~oOo~~~

Books read in August

Happy September, how lovely that it's here and autumn is on the horizon. Being kept busy in the garden at the moment, tomatoes and raspberries are particulary prolific. It means I'm not able to spend as much time online blogging and visiting blogs, hopefully that will ease off a bit soon. It'll have to, the freezer's full!

So, August was quite a good reading month for me, I'm just not sure where the month went! (Or the first eight months of the year come to that.) Nine books read and these are they:

54. Atlantic - Simon Winchester

55. An Air that Kills - Andrew Taylor

56. A Watery Grave - Joan Bluett

57. The Moonstone - Wilkie Collins

58. Gallow's Court - Martin Edwards

59. Virgin River Robyn Carr

60. Coastlines - Patrick Barkham. The National Trust currently owns 742 miles of the coastline of England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The author of this book sets out to walk and explore just some of these sites, including The Undercliffs at Lyme Regis, The Goodwin Sands, Orford Ness, Lundy and more. Well written, informative, interesting.

61. The Somerset Tsunami - Emma Carroll

It's 1616 and thirteen year old Fortune Sharpe lives in a village at the foot of the Mendips in Somerset. Her village is inhabited by women apart from Fortune's brother, Jem. It's the time of the witch trials and greedy local landowners are casting covetous eyes on the land owned by the women, if they accuse them of being witches this land could be theirs. Badly frightened, Fortune's mother sends her away into service, dressed as a boy. She ends up at Berrow Hall looking after two children of a similar age to herself, and a toddler, and quickly strikes up a friendship with them all. The only problem is, their father is a witch hunter. I should say that this young adult novel is aimed at children of about 10 to 14. I think they would love it as it's full of adventure and quite scary in places with the witch finders and then the tsunami, which I gather did actually happen in 1607, 2,000 people died. I had no idea about that. Emma Carroll is apparently a very popular writer of children's historical novels and I can see why, if I come across any more of her books I will grab them as this was very enjoyable.

62. Miraculous Mysteries edited by Martin Edwards. An excellent anthology of 'impossible' murder mysteries by authors such as G.K. Chesterton, Sax Rohmer, Sapper, Dorothy L. Sayers (The Haunted Policeman, one of favourites of her short stories), Michael Innes, Ednund Crispin. My favourite story was The Villa Marie Celeste by Margery Allingham, an absolutely ingenious little Albert Campion story... it's high time I read some of her full-length novels about him.

So, a favourite book of August? Well, it would probably be this:

I was genuinely surprised at how much I loved The Moonstone. Just could not put it down, pretty much from the beginning. But there were several other splendid books last month too, Atlantic by Simon Winchester, A Watery Grave by Joan Bluett, Virgin River by Robyn Carr etc. To be honest it was a very good reading month all told.

~~~oOo~~~

Bookshelf Travelling for Insane Times

I haven't done a Bookshelf Travelling for Insane Times post in while but as Autumn is rapidly approaching I thought I would sort out a few books I want to read over the next couple of months and use that for an Insane post. This meme was started by Judith at Reader in the Wilderness but has been taken over by Katrina at Pining for the West.


So my shelf this week is all about autumn reading, September and October to be precise. I sorted a few books I want to read, for various reasons, from my tbr shelves and these are they:

The pile on the left:

I have one book left in my 'Diary of a Provincial Lady' omnibus edition by E.M. Delafield and it is The Provincial Lady in Wartime, so I would certainly like to get that one read.

Smallbone Deceased by Michael Gilbert. It's a while since I read my first book by him Death In Captivity which I thought was excellent so it's definitely time to read more.

Walter and Florence by Susan Hill was sent to me by the author to read and review a couple of months ago so I do need to get to that one soon.

The Grand Sophy by Georgette Heyer is just part of my recent fancy to reread a few books by that author.

Death has Deep Roots is a second choice for a Michael Gilbert read.

A Companion to Wolves by Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear, well we are coming into autumn and it will be time for those spooky reads...

Travels with Tinkerbelle by Susie Kelly is my current travel book read and will take me into September.

The Somerset Tsunami by Emma Carroll I thought would take me into September but in fact I've just finished it so that should not really be on this pile.


Upright on the shelf:

No Name by Wilkie Collins will be my next read by him. Can't wait.

The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes is a recent purchase, set in Kentucky, is a book about delivering books to the needy in the 1930s.

Drood by Dan Simmons will be a reread of one of my favourite books.

Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens. I haven't read any Dickens since my late teens and it's time I did, this book is one I've owned for yonks.

Voyages of Delusion by Glyn Williams is all about the search for the Northwest Passage (which now exists I believe.)

Krakatoa by Simon Winchester is all about... yes... the explosion of the Krakatoa volcano.

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova is a reread because I enjoyed the book so much about 10 years ago.


So that's just some of my autumn reading. Some of these will get read, some will not. But that's ok, my 'read soon' pile is always very fluid and that's fine because I'm really not a huge fan of order and rules, I like casual.

~~~oOo~~~

Catching up - again

I'm permanently behind with reviews so let's see if I can catch up quickly. All three of these are new additions to my Kindle by the way, not one of them comes off the real tbr shelf and all three I bought after seeing them on various blogs I visit. So I'm blaming other people for these three, you know who you are!


I'll start with A Watery Grave by Joan Bluett.

Wiki Coffin is half New Zealand Maori, half American, his father being a sailor from New England. Wiki was brought back to the US by his father as a child and brought up by his step mother, speaking English but still a Maori in spirit. It's 1838 and Wiki gets a position as a linguist with the United States Exploring Expedition but just before it sets sail he's accused of the murder of the wife of a local big-wig. The Sheriff eventually comes to the conclusion that Wiki did not do it and lets him go on condition that he will investigate while on board his ship, The Swallow, the Sheriff being of the opinion that the murderer is sailing with the expedition. Any voyage aboard a sailing ship is hazardous enough but this will increase the danger tenfold. Can Wiki survive this? I do love a sea-voyaging book. Perhaps it's something to do with having been brought up by the sea and loving being there (but not in the summer, at least not these days) that makes books about the ocean so attractive to me, I'm not sure. I don't mind if it's non-fiction or fiction but I do have a preferance for historical sailing yarns rather than modern day ones, I suspect it's do with being really cut off from land centuries ago with the complete lack of communications and, you know, 'sailing ships'!! Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed this first book in the Wiki Coffin series. Lots of adventure on the high seas, very atmospheric, but also gentle feeding of historial information about what it was like to serve on these ships. A picnic it was not! But then I knew that from reading Redburn and Moby Dick by Herman Melville and other sundry books, must give Patrick O'Brian another go at some stage. A Watery Grave was a very readable but honest book about life at sea in the 1800s and not a bad mystery to boot: I really enjoyed it.

Next up, Gallow's Court by Martin Edwards.

London 1930 and Jacob Flint, a young journalist from Yorkshire, is trying to make a name for himself with the newspaper he's working for, The Clarion. He's become fascinated by Rachel Savernake, the daughter of a deceased 'hanging judge'. She solved a recent 'Chorus Girl' murder case before Scotland Yard could do it and is now embroiled in the suicides of two emminent men who, it turns out, were both murderers. High level curruption is a dangerous game and Savernake lets Jacob know that he's very much out of his depth and ought to back off. People start to die and Jacob knows he ought to heed Rachel's warning but he needs a big scoop to prove himself, so of course doesn't do any such thing. Interesting book this. Rather confusing at the start. Who's doing what to whom? Who is on the side of right? Who isn't? Who is somewhere in the middle? I had no idea and even towards the end of the book was pretty clueless. Rachel Savernake is a very interesting character, seemingly invincible but I had no idea what her business was and and what she was up to. Martin Edwards is such a good writer and is apparently fascinated by the period between the wars. As he's been very involved with the BLCC vintage crime reisssues and has produced many of their anthologies, this comes as no surprise. This is a good start to a new series and I already have book 2, Mortmain Hall, on my Kindle.


And now, as they say, for something completely different, Virgin River by Robyn Carr.

Mel Monroe lost her husband a year ago in a fatal shooting in a convenience store. He was a doctor and her a nurse specialising in midwifery, in a busy hospital in LA in California, both jobs being very full-on. She was devastated beyond belief and can no longer cope with her very demanding job. Needing a total change she applies for a position in a small town in northern California, Virgin River. She's been told the elderly doctor in the town needs help and that there will be good accommodation waiting for her. On arriving she finds neither are true. The cabin she's supposed to live in is practically falling down and the curmudgeonly doctor is stubornly refusing all offers of assistance. Mel resolves to stay a day or two and then go off to her sister in Colorado. She's on the verge of leaving when a baby is discovered abandoned on the steps of the doctor's surgery. Now she'll have a stay a few days longer because someone needs to look after the baby. Naturally a few days becomes a few days more as local births occur and she gets involved with the local bar and restauant owner, Jack Sheridan. Well this is very much a Mills and Boon type romance so the reader knows pretty much what to expect. It's well written, has a good sense of rural, mountainous California that I didn't know much about, and I enjoyed all of the characters in the story. There's a touch of intrigue and danger so there's a bit more to it than romance, plus it has a very real sense of a grieving widow and the time it takes to get over a terrible loss. Jack is also an ex-serviceman who has served in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan and there are tragic images from that which make this book a little less fluffy than you might expect. I thoroughly enjoyed this first in Robyn Carr's 'Virgin River' series (I think there's a TV series on Netflix now which is where the cover photo comes from) and already have book 2 downloaded to my Kindle. It's my first book for California too for my US challenge to read a book from every state.

~~~oOo~~~