jillysheep

The end

2011-09-25T04:35:00.000-07:00

Jillysheep is now up and running at Wordpress. I am still getting to grips with the layout and what to put where but there are two posts on there to be read - one about the Mountjoy novels of Elizabeth Pewsey/Aston/Edmondson and one about Jane Austen sequels, prequels and continuations.

Thank you everyone for your support over the last few years and I hope you will continue to visit jillysheep at www.jillysheep.wordpress.com

I hope to resurrect Lady Sophia as well and start writing regularly about feminism again and I think Lady Sophia will also migrate to Wordpress in due course.

New home for jillysheep

2011-09-18T03:25:00.000-07:00

I am currently in the process of setting up jillysheep on www.wordpress.com I seem to have a lot of problems with blogger with it throwing me out from time to time and not letting me comment on other people's blogs even when signed into my account. It has been known to not let me amend my own posts and locks me in a loop of signing in and then throwing me out. So I decided to move house as it were.

I am currently finding my way round Wordpress and will let you know when I feel that it is ready for visitors - might be later today or might be later this week. I intend to post more in the future and be rather more professional about it as well so there will be more in depth book reviews and occasional long posts on my favourite series and authors. I will also post essays on such topics as Jane Austen sequels, the ebook phenomenon and other book related themes.

I had considered changing the name of the blog but rejected that idea in the end as people seem to recognise jillysheep. The address for the blog's new home is www.jillysheep.wordpress.com and I will let you know once I have decided whether to re-post some of the entries from here on to the new blog. It is likely that this edition of the blog will stay as it is and the Wordpress version will be the blog which will be updated in the future.

A marvellous book of short stories

2011-09-17T06:16:00.000-07:00

People Tell Me Things by David Finkle - this is not my usual sort of reading by any means. It is by an American writer and the stories are set in the literary and art world of New York. But something appealed to me about it and I accepted the review copy I was offered a few weeks ago.

I am really glad I did. The stories are some of the best I have read for many years. They are full of compassion for the human condition and gently humorous. The amusement does not arise from poking fun at the foibles of the characters but springs naturally from the situations and descriptions. There is a wamth and compassion which is lacking in so much writing this days. I found it really enjoyable to read an author who clearly loves people for their personalities.

The stories left me with the feeling I was eavesdropping on real life but not in a voyeuristic way. Small everyday actions have unforeseen consequences and repercussions. Characters think they know what is going on and then find the situation isn't as they believed it to be and the piece of the jigsaw they hold does not belong to the jigsaw they thought they had. The dialogue is realistic, the characters are believable and idiosyncratic and the situations could translate to almost any milieu because human behaviour is universal.

It is difficult to give a flavour of these stories because they are so different from anything I've read. They leave me with a warm feeling that there are still people left in the world who don't want to find amusement in cutting people down to size or dwelling on extreme sex and violence to the exclusion of the good qualities in human nature. These stories are unique in my opinion and deserve a wide audience.

Latest reading

2011-09-15T03:31:00.000-07:00

The Psychic Tourist by William Little - the author buys his sister and her daughter astrological chart analyses for Christmas. Unfortunately they both say that his sister and niece need to be careful about being near water. This stops his sister travelling by boat or even being anywhere near water. Feeling responsible for restricting her life, William Little sets out to discover whether the future really can be predicted. He consults psychic, mediums, astrologers, gypsies, palm reader, Tarot readers and physicists. The verdict? Perhaps it is possible to predict the future but no one really knows. Fortunately he is able to eradicate his sister's fear of drowning and takes her out in a rowing boat to show her she is quite safe. This is an interesting read with some thought provoking findings especially in the field of science.

Mansfield Revisited by Joan Aiken - it is a credit to this book that I have been carrying it around in my bag for months and only reading it when I'm waiting for things to happen such as in doctors' and dentists' waiting rooms and yet I still managed to retain my interest in the story. I actually took it out of my bag and read the last 30 pages because I wanted to find out the ending. The books starts a few years after the end of Mansfield Park. Sir Thomas Bertram is dead. Fanny and Edmund have two children and are about to leave on a trip to the West Indies to oversee family business interests there. Susan - Fanny's sister - has grown into a sensible young woman with more sparkle than her older sister. Mary Crawford - a much subdued Mary Crawford - returns with mixed results. There is a marvellous failed trip out to discover Roman ruins which is worthy of Jane Austen herself. This is worth reading in its own right as well as a continuation of Mansfield Park.

The Plague Maiden and A Cursed Inheritance by Kate Ellis - Further episodes in the Wesley Peterson series which mixes modern crime with archaeological discovers with conspicuous success. I found both of these compulsive reading. There is little on the page violence or bad language and they are dark stories with many ramifications between past and present. Human nature is both good and bad. Tensions are growing between Wesley and his wife Pam and the constant conflict between work and home life is well done.

When Last I Died by Gladys Mitchell - the inimitable Mrs Bradley is drawn into a cold case when she rents a house which formerly belonged to a lady who may or may not have been murdered. There is a marvellous haunted house featured in this absorbing and psychologically well crafted story. I read nearly all of it one evening and found it totally absorbing.

Books and decorating

2011-08-11T05:33:00.000-07:00

I have been making a start on the decorating as well as doing other boring mundane chores which practically drive me demented but need to be done if we're not to live in a mess. I have practically finished the dining room/kitchen thanks to a very useful gadget - a Dulux Paint Pod. It is basically an electrified roller system. Much quicker than using a roller normally as you don't have to stop and re-load the roller - you just press a button.

I'm the world's messiest decorator so anything that promises no mess is a bonus for me. It really is no mess as well. It also cleans itself - fill a chamber with warm water and switch on. Empty the chamber at the opposite end of the machine when done and everything is clean and just needs drying - including the roller itself. I'm far from being a gadget freak but I just love this. I wonder when they'll bring one out that works with gloss paint? In the meantime I'm tempted to emulsion everything!

Books:

The Devil's Sonata by Elizabeth Aston - very good - supernatural influences in a co-ed boarding school which occupies a former monastery. A violin which seriously affects the girl who plays it and an American researcher studying a grimoire in the library.

Anna, where are you? Catherine Wheel, The Case of William Smith all three by Patricia Wentworth and all are among her best work for sheer complexity of plot and character analysis. I only have about six more to read by this author.

The Merchant's House and Armada Boy by Kate Ellis - archaeology and modern crime - fascinating. All the police characters get on as well which makes a change from many police procedurals.

The Hanging Wood by Martin Edwards - another episode in the Lake District series of mysteries. A very enjoyable crime story with a truly horrific ending. I love the concept of a residential library - now that is my idea of heaven! I thought the characters were well drawn and I like the way the relationship between Daniel Kind and Hannah Scarlett is being developed slowly and sensitively.

The Secrets of Pain by Phil Rickman - thanks to a mix up over publication dates I have the ebook version of this which is not actually published until September. I think by the time Amazon realised their mistake my copy had already been downloaded and they haven't asked for it back! It is the latest in the Merrily Watkins series and very good it is too. Not so much about the exorcism side of Merrily's job but enthralling just the same.

The SAS feature in the form of Syd Spicer - the vicar who was in The Remains of an Altar - currently temporary chaplain to the SAS, his old regiment. He is trying to deal with something unpleasant which would be better left to Merrily but for reasons of secrecy he has to keep it to himself. Hereford police - in the form of Frannie Bliss and Annie Howe have their own problems with the murder of a farmer and the murder of two girls. The book kept me reading late into the night when I got to the last third of it as I had to know how it all worked out. At least with ebooks it is more difficult to flick to the end and make sure all your favourite characters escape unscathed!

Books read and reading

2011-07-19T05:08:00.000-07:00

Rattle his Bones by Carola Dunn - one of her Daisy Dalrymple series. Daisy is researching a series of articles about the Natural History Museum and is inadvertently one of the first people of the scene when one of the curators is murdered. The professional rivalries are extremely well done in my opinion. This series is growing on me.

Flights of Angels by Victoria Connelly - chick lit with angels - which could have been twee and sickly and is actually really well done. First published in German and made into a film in Germany and only recently available in English thanks to the e-book revolution which enables authors themselves to produce their own ebooks.

Death of a Sweep by M C Beaton - latest in the Hamish Macbeth series. Milly Davenport comes home from a shopping trip to find her husband dead and stuffed up the chimney and the sweep missing. Hamish eventually gets to the bottom of the mystery.

Ivory Dagger and The Brading Collection - both by Patricia Wentworth. Cosy mysteries in the classic detective story mould with Miss Silver imperturbably knitting, watching and listening.

How to Leave Twitter by Grace Dent. I thought it might enlighten me about why people join Twitter in the first place. Seems the reason is because everyone else has joined. I can see that people can like watching it - in a sort of car crash fascination way but apart from that it really isn't something I actually want to take part in. I might change my mind - but not yet.

Currently reading

Agatha Raisin and the Love from Hell by M C Beaton. Agatha is married to James Lacey but things aren't as blissful as she had hoped.

The Devil's Sonata by Elizabeth Edmondson (AKA Elizabeth Aston and Elizabeth Pewsey) This is a story set in a Yorkshire girls' school located in a former abbey. Zuleika has come over from the USA to study a Grimoire discovered hidden in a pillar in the cloisters but she is unhappy about the atmosphere.

Mountjoy fans will be pleased to know that the rest of Elizabeth Pewsey's Mountjoy series will all be available in e-book format by the end of this month.

Yet more books and matters medical

2011-07-07T00:46:00.000-07:00

Books first: I'm still enjoying Lindsey Davis's Falco series. Last night I finished listening to an audio book of Saturnalia - which is one of the later books in the series. This sees Falco - married to Helena Justina and with two small daughters - trying to wend his way through the Roman celebrations of the feast of Saturnalia keep a clear head, solve a murder and find the missing Barbarian Priestess Veleda as well as rescuing his brother -in-law Justinus. I've also read Venus in Copper - which is number three in the series and have just started number four - The Iron Hand of Mars.

In between forays into ancient Rome I've been reading some more of Patricia Wentworth's excellent crime novels featuring Miss Maud Silver, who knits imperturbably through all her cases and still manages to unravel the mystery by staying, unnoticed in the background. The two books I've read in the last few days are Latter End and Eternity Ring - both excellent mysteries which kept me guessing until pretty nearly the end.

I am currently reading Royal Pain by Rhys Bowen about Lady Georgiana - 34th in line to the British throne - who has a Bavarian princess billeted on her by order of the Queen. Princess Hannelore is the 'pain' of the title. The book is set in the 1930s and is quite amusing and well written. I should have started with the first one but as this one was only 0.99 in an Amazon ebook sale I thought I'd try this one first. I am enjoying it and I think I shall probably go on to read the rest in the series.

Matters medical

My OH - MJR - has a chronic lung condition, lung fibrosis, for which there is no known cure apart from a transplant and for which the only treatment is oxygen. He has been on oxygen at night for the last 6 years and it was increased from 11 hours to 15 hours in every 24 late last year. He also has a portable cylinder for use when he is out of the house.

Every so often he has to wear a machine which measures his oxygen levels and pulse rate overnight and whose results can be downloaded to a computer and analysed. He had one of these machines in March. Yesterday he received a letter saying he could stop using his oxygen because the results of his test in March were good.

My immediate reaction was what??!!!! accompanied by one or two rather stronger words than that. In May he had an operation and it was touch and go whether that went ahead because his oxygen levels were so low before the operation. All the time he was in there they were giving him oxygen - every time he took his mask off to drink the alarms went off. We think on reflection that they may have thought that the machine he wore in March was while he was not on oxygen when in fact it was while he was on oxygen - or that they've got him mixed up with someone else.

He has a pulse-oximeter himself and wore it last night to see what the results were without oxygen and is currently downloading them to a computer ready to print out and send to the hospital with a fairly strongly worded letter. When he was wearing the machine yesterday and just lying in bed his oxygen levels were 88% - a normal healthy person would have oxygen levels in the high 90s. I know when he was first put on oxygen our GP said if it went down to 85% regularly during the day he would have to be on oxygen 24 hours a day.

I'm usually very complimentary of the NHS especially in this area but now I'm getting annoyed with them. In January MJR ended up in hospital because he'd been given too high a dose of Warfarin to prevent blood clots and was bleeding from his kidneys. Once again the GP has done the same thing and given him too high a dose for too long and his INR is dangerously high which means if he has an accident he could bleed to death. I'm keeping him away from anything sharp.

He has avoided hospital this time only because he isn't bleeding from anywhere - well as far as we know he isn't - and he has stopped taking Warfarin for a few days and is due to have it checked again tomorrow. So this is the second time in just over six months that he's been give the wrong dose for a sustained period of time. They use a computer programme to assess the dose but clearly there is something wrong with it as they were getting on better deciding on the dose themselves as it was almost always stable and needed little variation in the number of tablets he took.

We are not happy bunnies.

Books read and heard

2011-06-27T03:36:00.000-07:00

I have belatedly discovered Lindsey Davis's Falco series about a Roman private eye. I listened to the audio book version of See Delphi and Die - which has to be one of the best titles for a book - and was hooked. I'm not sure why I was never attracted to this series before but it could be because I tried Cadfael and couldn't get into that. Not logical I know but there we are. I have so far read The Silver Pigs and Shadows in Bronze and have just started the third one - Venus in Copper.

Why do I like them? Falco's attitude to his own successes and failures; the characters themselves and the way Falco often finds common ground with those he's investigating; his ability to tell it as he sees it to the Emperor and get away with it; the fascinating details about life in ancient Rome. Then of course there's the humour which is priceless. Even though I am now reading the series in order they can be read, or listened to, out of order as each book stands alone. If you go for the audio books then Christian Rodska is an excellent reader in my opinion.

I have just finished Jane Shaw's Talking to Zeus about the year she spent in Greece working in a garden on a hillside. Not a travelogue but a slice of life with some marvellous and eccentric characters both human and animal. Zeus by the way is a stuffed lion.

I really enjoyed the latest in Veronica Heley's cosy crime series featuring Ellie Quicke - Murder my Neighbour. Ellie is married to Thomas and struggling to combat her daughter Diana's latest demand for money as well as deal with the failing health of her housekeeper and friend, Rose, when she is presented with a mystery to solve. One of her neighbours has moved out of her house supposedly to take up residence is a retirement home - but she never arrived there.

Solar panels

2011-06-21T03:44:00.000-07:00

In response to a comment on my previous post from kcm:

Our installation got off to a good start on the day before it was planned as the electrician turned up and asked if he could start his bit of the work early. The electric bit is quite straightforward. It involves running a cable from the roof outside the house in trunking and into the house near the fuse box. Nothing goes into the electricity meter.

Provided you've got a spare slot in the fuse box - called consumer units these days - it is straightforward. I think if you don't have they can add something on to it fairly easily. There is a big red switch with all sorts of warning notices on it as if you're doing any electrical work in the house the solar panels need to be isolated as well. Above that there's a small meter - which looks like the electricity meter which your electricity company reads. This can tell you how much you've generated and how much you've used yourself.

Maximum output from our panels is 2.5kw and we've generated 60.2kw since last Wednesday in relatively dull conditions. We've used 48kw. No one needs to come and read this meter as it transmits the data to the company via the mobile phone network. In our case what electricity we use we get free and what we don't use the company gets paid for by the government/energy company as it feeds back into the national grid. If you pay for your panels then you get paid for what you generate but don't use by a corresponding reduction in your bill or by direct payment - not sure quite how that works as it didn't apply in our case.

Apart from the meter and the switch there is what is called an inverter in the loft which converts direct current to alternating current. This is about half the size of the average microwave. Then there are panels on the roof which slot into metal tracks so that if one needs replacing it can be taken out and replaced. There is no need to take the roof apart or any tiles off for that matter. I think - but I don't know as I didn't watch - that they drill through the tiles into the beams of the roof so that the panels are well and truly anchored and no the roof won't leak afterwards - I asked.

The only mess involved was brick dust in the hall where the electrician had been working which he swept up and some brick dust outside which quickly blew away and I've found the odd screw in amongst our slate on the front garden. They drilled holes in the wall outside so that they could insert steel eyes by which to anchor their portable scaffolding - though they did ask first if it was ok and they've filled them in again - well I assume they have as I can't find them!

The problem we had with ours was that on the day it was supposed to be done - last Tuesday - the guys doing it didn't turn up until lunch time because they'd been given the wrong panels and equipment and then when they arrived with the right stuff and measured the roof they found they couldn't arrange the panels how they'd been told to. That necessitated a manager coming out and telling them it was all right to put them the other way round - portrait instead of landscape. I laid down the law to the manager - this was 2.00pm - and said because of MJR's recent operation I did not want them doing the work that day as it meant they'd be working into the evening.

The manager in the end was very grovelly and agreed that it would be done the next day. The next day they turned up early and got straight on with the work. By 11.00am they'd just got to put the panels on and they were waiting for another gang to finish with the pulley system they needed - 'elf and safety! In the end it was the wrong one when it turned up but there were about six men here by that time and the panels were put on. So the problems were caused by lack of organisation by the company itself not by any unwillingness to work on the part of the people involved.

I must say that in spite of the organisational problems I was very impressed with the attitude of the people doing the job as they worked hard and didn't keep stopping for breaks and clearly knew exactly what they were doing. Mess created was an absolute minimum. There was a fair amount of noise but for a relatively short space of time. They reckon they can do the job normally by about 1.30pm if they start at 9.00am.

I've seen solar panels on houses which face East/West - in fact I can see one if I look out of the window now so I'm not sure how critical the direction is. What is more important I think is whether your roof is a plain straightforward roof with no little gables or windows and it mustn't be hip-ended - i.e. coming to a point in the middle. They want the biggest expanse of roof possible. It is not just how much sunlight I think but whether or not your roof is always in shadow since we are generating at the moment - only about 0.9kw - even though it is dull and cloudy and the sun isn't actually visible. It basically just has to be light but to work at full capacity it needs sunlight.

It's worth looking on http://www.homesun.com/ even if you don't think your house is suitable.

Solar panels

2011-06-19T02:27:00.000-07:00

We have just had solar panels fitted to the roof. We're fortunate in that our house faces almost due south and gets the sun at the front virtually all day. But solar panels work on light not just when the sun is visible - which I didn't know until the other day. The maximum we can generate is 2.5kw. Of course it has been cloudy since we had them fitted on Wednesday so we haven't been able to generate the maximum amount most of the time. On Thursday it was quite sunny and I looked at our electricity monitor and it was showing we were using no electricity even though the fridge/freezer was on, two computers were on as well as a pedestal fan and various others odds and ends.

What is even better than the reduced electricity bills in future is that the panels were free and are maintained free for 25 years. It's part of a government sponsored initiative and was done through this company - www.homesun.com Anyone can apply and they will tell you whether your house is suitable without sending anyone out to see it by looking at your house on Google Earth. Not everyone gets it free - though I've no idea how they decide whether you have to pay or not. I know we could have been asked to pay £500 and we were considering whether we would do it if we had to pay. But as it turned out we didn't have to pay.

Hated expressions and abbreviations

2011-06-19T02:11:00.000-07:00

I really detest the following abbreviations/expressions which seem to be in common use:

'My bad' when people mean 'I was wrong'

'Addy' when people mean 'address'

'Baggy' when people mean 'bag'

Those three expressions are like chalk squeaking on a blackboard to me!

Books read and unread

2011-06-09T06:33:00.000-07:00

I have been most impressed by two books over the last few weeks:

Dead End by Leigh Russell - the third book in the DI Geraldine Russell crime series. In my opinion this is the best book so far in this excellent series. Abigail Kirby - headmistress of a local school - is found murdered in a particularly gruesome fashion. At first there is very little evidence and the team fall back on the tried and trusted suspect - Abigail's husband, Matthew. But Geraldine herself is not convinced. It is when someone who saw Abigail in the last few hours before her death disappears that the pace of the investigation hots up and the tension mounts up. I found myself saying - I'll just read one more chapter, then realising I'd read three more!! I read over half the book in one evening and I can thoroughly recommend this series -especially this latest book - Dead End.

Gently in the Sun by Alan Hunter - Gently is sent to a Northshire village to investigate the murder of a visitor Rachel Campion. There is a heatwave and the first thing Gently does is buy himself some colourful shirts and a straw hat and sandals not to speak of an Ice cream. The portrait of a fishing village with the fishermen who seem unwilling to tell him anything is excellent as are the descriptions of the effect the incredibly hot weather has on people. The description of the thunderstorm across the wide skies of East Anglia towards the end of the book is brilliantly atmospheric.

Cookery books and others

2011-05-28T10:05:00.000-07:00

I was fortunate enough to receive a modern reprint of Eliza Acton's Modern Cookery for Private Families. It is an absolute gem and a marvellous book to dip into even if you don't want to try any of the recipes. Some of the author's comments are surprisingly modern as well. She says she thinks there is a shocking waste of perfectly good wholesome food in many households. She also says that many illnesses are caused by habitual indulgence in cakes!

I'm still trying to make up my mind about Carola Dunn's Daisy Dalrymple crime series. I've read two of them so far -the most recent being The Case of the Murdered Muckraker. I did enjoy it but . . . . Possibly their best read in order and I've been getting them whenever one has been offered at a bargain price. Maybe I'll try another one and see if I can finally make up my mind.

Books to be read

Dead End by Leigh Russell - third in the DI Geraldine Steel crime series. I seem to have overlooked this in my to be read list so I have moved it to my reading folder on my Kindle and will be reading it in the next week or so.

Miss Pym Disposes by Josephine Tey - an unknown quantity as the only book by Josephine Tey I've read so far has been The Daughter of Time.

Gently in the Sun by Alan Hunter - number six in the Gently series.

Books and matters medical

2011-05-25T05:13:00.000-07:00

I have been rather busy over the last few days because my OH has just had an operation - a Nissen Fundoplication. Do not Google it if you are squeamish! It's a cure for acid reflux basically but the after effects are probably more than most of us would care to experience. He has to be on a virtually completely liquid diet for the next couple of months though he can manage things like rice pudding if he eats small amounts - and I mean small - less than a dessert spoonful at a time.

Eventually he will be able to eat a more normal diet but may never be able to eat bread again. He has done well so far as he had the operation last Saturday and came out on Monday. He was expected to stay in about 5 days because of his serious lung problems and his diabetes but is recovering much better than was expected.

Books

Trollope by Victoria Glendinning - a comprehensive biography of the author which makes many references to his books and really brought the man to life for me.

Here Come the Girls by Milly Johnson - an enjoyable romp of a book which was a very welcome read at the weekend. Four friends go on a cruise. It changes all their lives - for the better.

Gently Through the Mill by Alan Hunter - the fifth book in the Gently series. 1950s crime in a flour mill with Gently involved because the body is that of a petty London villain.

Ellie Andrews has Second Thoughts by Ruth Sabberton - Again an enjoyable light read with Ellie reminiscing on her wedding day. The reader does not know exactly who she is marrying or whether the marriage will go ahead until the last few pages.

Current Reading

Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey - the classic novel about Richard III. Still good even when you know some of the text off by heart!

The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy - I'm still reading this in small chunks which you might think would cause a problem trying to remember what has gone on. I must have read the books many times back in the 1970s because I'm finding I have no problem recalling the story line.

The Perfect Hero by Victoria Connelly - Kay moves to Lyme Regis and opens a B&B. Her first guests are some of the actors involved in a new film production of Jane Austen's Persuasion.

Books - updated

2011-05-17T00:59:00.000-07:00

I have decided - reluctantly - to delete my previous post on the McCann case. It seems there are too many people on the internet who, however much they might advocate free speech, only like free speech if it supports their own views of a subject.

There are many unanswered questions about this tragic case and of course not all the evidence gathered by the Portuguese police has been released to the public. What is clear to me is that the Portuguese police having failed to make a watertight case against the parents were not really interested in finding any other explanation for Madeleine's disappearance.

In order to be fair to everyone - all comments - whoever they are from - will be deleted from this post.

Books, books and more books

2011-05-08T05:31:00.000-07:00

Death in a Strange Country by Donna Leon - I am re-reading the Guido Brunetti books in series order as e-books. Unfortunately the first and the third are not yet available as e-books so having bought the first in paper back I'm trying to decide whether to do the same with the third book or wait for the ebook version. However I did enjoy this one - the second in the series. Some people don't like them because there isn't always a cut and dried solution to the murder and there isn't always a criminal brought to justice. This doesn't bother me as I enjoy reading the story anyway. Maybe the journey is preferable to the destination?

The World the Flesh and the Bishop (Divine Comedy)by Elizabeth Pewsey - see previous posts - Just as good as ever - I always love the incident where Titus and Quinta rescue Lydia from the orgy! Unholy Harmonies is now available as an ebook

Currently reading

The Forsyte Saga - John Galsworthy - up to book six which is the last of the novels which are purely about the Forsytes.

Unholy Harmonies by Elizabeth Aston - see above and previous post

Trollope by Victoria Glendinning - biography of the Victorian author. It shows how his experiences were translated into fiction as well as describing his life.

Royal Wedding and books

2011-05-01T03:05:00.000-07:00

I wasn't going to watch the wedding but I wanted to see what 'the dress' was like so I ended up watching some of the guests arrive and then the service itself. I thought Catherine looked absolutely gorgeous - simple and elegant. The bridesmaids were well behaved as well and Philippa looked good too. I can't understand the people who say the dress was too plain - no one wants to look like a meringue with sparkles on their big day. It was nice too that the Royal School of Needlework did a lot of the work.

Books read

Landed Gently by Alan Hunter - the fourth in the Gently series. Gently is invited to stay with the Chief Constable of Northshire over Christmas and enjoy some pike fishing. A man is found dead at the foot of a staircase at nearby Merely Hall on Christmas morning - did he fall or was he pushed?

The Surprise Party by Sue Welfare - women's fiction with a bite. Liz and Suzie organise a surprise party for their parents' ruby wedding anniversary but there are surprises in store for everyone before the evening has finished.

Death at La Fenice by Donna Leon - the first in the Guido Brunetti series. This is a re-read but even better the second time writing. Her writing is subtle and understated and I saw things that I missed the first time round.

Currently reading

Them by Jon Ronson - conspiracy theorists he has known. So far they come over as misguided and all too human. New World Order and twelve foot lizards mix with more ordinary terrorists

Death on the Downs by Simon Brett - second in the Fethering series

The World the Flesh and the Bishop by Elizabeth Aston - this is a retitled ebook version of a book originally published as Divine Comedy.

Elizabeth Aston and Elizabeth Pewsey are the same person. As Elizabeth Pewsey she wrote the 6 Mountjoy novels - Children of Chance, Divine Comedy, Unholy Harmonies, Volcanic Airs, Unaccustomed Spirits and Brotherly Love. As Elizabeth Aston she has written 6 Pride and Prejudice sequels - Mr Darcy's Daughters (also titled The Way of the World), The Exploits and Adventures of Miss Alethea Darcy, The True Darcy Spirit, The Second Mrs Darcy, The Darcy Connection, Mr Darcy's Dream. She also wrote a modern Jane Austen themed novel - Writing Jane Austen. I'd read all these before I realised it was Elizabeth Pewsey under another name.

She has also written as Elizabeth Edmondson - The Frozen Lake, Voyage of Innocence, The Villa in Italy, The Art of Love, Stones and Shadows - which is published this year and Devil's Sonata also due for publication this year. I have only read The Villa in Italy of her Elizabeth Edmondson novels and found it extremely good.

Happy St George's Day; and books

2011-04-23T04:41:00.000-07:00

Why can't we have a Bank Holiday for St George's Day? We're falling over Bank Holidays this Easter but I still think we should have one for our national saint.

Books read:

Death in the Physic Garden by Karen Lowe - murder and garden design. I first read this a few years ago and enjoyed it but thought I would re-read it before I read the next one featuring Fern Green - Death in the Winter Garden.

Gently Down the Stream by Alan Hunter - murder and family secrets set in the Norfolk Broads with lots of Norfolk dialect - though nothing too incomprehensible for those not familiar with it!

Summer of Love by Katie Fforde - good light reading. I haven't enjoyed her later books but in this one she is back on form.

Cousin Kate by Georgette Heyer - Regency with a Gothic theme. This is the only Heyer which has ever reduced me to tears.

The Missing Marriage by Sarah May - man goes missing off the Northumbrian coast in a kayak - but is he really dead? I found it a very confusing story with some relatively unsympathetic characters.

The Body on the Beach by Simon Brett - the first in the Fethering series. I read it some years ago but it was still enjoyable the second time around. Touches of delicious humour and a pair of mismatched sleuths - what's not to like?

Currently reading

The Grand Sophy by Georgette Heyer - one of her most interesting heroines in my opinion

Death in the Winter Garden by Karen Lowe - Fern is asked to resurrect an overgrown art deco garden but the skeleton of a baby is found when the digging starts

Death at La Fenice by Donna Leon - the first in her Guido Brunetti series set in Venice - worth more than one reading as her style is understated and I'm seeing things I missed first time round.

Happy Easter people!

More books

2011-04-13T05:16:00.000-07:00

Recently read:

Death of a Nag and Death of a Bore by M C Beaton - both Hamish Macbeth and good light reads with darker undertones if you choose to look for them

Life from Scratch by Melissa Ford - this was a free e-book download and very good it was too. Rachel splits up from her husband and takes a year off from her job as a graphic designer. She starts a blog about learning to cook and makes a new life for herself. Fact or fiction? Who knows? Good reading though - set in New York.

Lizzie Harrison Loses Control by Pippa Wright - Lizzie is in PR dealing with celebrities. She is really organised but life - in the shape of out of control celebrity Randy Jones - is about to knock her sideways. Feel good read with enough serious insights to keep you reading

Gently Does It by Alan Hunter - the first in the Inspector George Gently police series. This one is set in a loosely disguised Norwich. I can remember my mother being a huge fan of Gently and I can see why. They are well crafted crime novels without too much violence with an interesting main character the peppermint cream eating Inspector Gently from Scotland Yard.

The Way to a Woman's Heart by Christina Jones. Love it! Feel good women's fiction with a touch of magic set in the Berkshire countryside. It came out last year but I have been waiting for the e-book version to come down to the paper back price.

Books currently in progress

Gently by the Shore by Alan Hunter - second in the Gently series

Housework Blues by Danielle Raine - about why we don't like housework and how to think differently about it. This is a good example of how e-books could develop with active links to books and websites mentioned in the text.

Doesn't time fly . . .

2011-04-03T05:32:00.000-07:00

Not sure that enjoy is the right word since too much of my time has been taken up with medical appointments of various types - only one of which was mine - my six months dental check up. Anyway - back to books M C Beaton - Death of a Charming Man, Death of a Gentle Lady - two books in the Hamish Macbeth series. Beatrice Goes to Brighton, Deborah Goes to Dover and Yvonne Goes to York - the last three volumes of the Travelling Matchmaker Series - which I really enjoyed. Light hearted early 19th century romps which could appeal to anyone who likes Georgette Heyer. S J Bolton - Now You See Me . . an atmospheric thriller about a series of murders carried out by a potential Jack the Ripper copy cat killer. Definitely kept me turning the pages and not a book to read on your own at night! Georgette Heyer - The Nonesuch - with one of my favourite heroines - Ancilla Trent and one of the most obnoxious young female characters - Tiffany - a spoilt brat heiress. Peter Lovesey - Skeleton Hill - very good crime story involving, among other things, a Civil War battle re-enactment.

Books read and reading

2011-03-20T06:12:00.000-07:00

M C Beaton - Death of a Prankster; Death of a Glutton and Death of a Travelling Man - all good light crime novels with some interesting things to say about human nature.

Georgette Heyer - Arabella and Faro's Daughter - I really loved Arabella and had completely forgotten how amusing it is. I think Arabella is one of my favourites among Heyer's younger heroines.

Andrew Matthews - Happiness in Hard Times - Australian self help guru writing about his favourite topic - happiness. Count your blessings and read the inspiring personal stories.

Currently reading

Georgette Heyer - The Unknown Ajax - heir to the Darracott property indulges in a little bit of deception.

H R F Keating - The Perfect Murder - the first of the Inspector Ghote mysteries set in India. I've only read about 50 pages so far but it seems very good.

I'm also still plodding on with the Forsyte Saga and the Way We Live Now as well as listening to the audio book version of Faulks on Fiction.

Books, books and more books

2011-03-12T04:20:00.000-08:00

Plenty of crime and other things mainly historical:

M C Beaton - Emily Goes to Exeter, Belinda Goes to Bath and Penelope Goes to Portsmouth - the first three books in the Travelling Matchmaker series - light reading set at the beginning of the nineteenth century. I'm waiting for the last three to come out at the end of this month. If you like Georgette Heyer then you may enjoy these.

Elly Griffiths - The House at Seas End - the third in the Ruth Galloway series set on the North Norfolk coast. This one is about six skeletons uncovered by a cliff fall which turn out to be rather newer than the skeletons Ruth is normally interested in. Excellent atmospheric writing with an out of the ordinary heroine.

M C Beaton - Hamish Macbeth mysteries - Death of a Cad, Death of an Outsider, Death of a Perfect Wife, Death of a Hussy, Death of a Snob - these are all good light reads with Hamish displaying not only his laziness but his good knowledge of human nature. While they are light crime stories they often have some deeper aspects which raise them out of the ordinary.

Ken Moody - The View from the Surgery - short pieces by a GP based in Scotland with some very Dickensian pseudonyms for the patients.

Amy Bratley - The Girl's Guide to Homemaking - chick lit - but interesting chick lit. Juliet moves into a new flat with her boyfriend only to discover he has been cheating on her with one of her friends. From there on in her life disintegrates. How she deals with that disintegration makes interesting reading.

Carola Dunn - Styx and Stones - poison pen letters in 1920s rural England. This is the first book I've read in this series and I think I shall be looking out for the others.

Edmund Crispin - The Case of the Gilded Fly - Golden Age crime set in Oxford. Good reading and the solution to the murder is so simple when you know it!

Currently reading:

Georgette Heyer - Faro's Daughter

John Galsworthy - The Forsyte Saga - I'm on volume 5 - The Silver Spoon. I can still see the people who played the characters in that long ago BBC adaptation!

Anthony Trollope - The Way We Live Now - very topical even if it was written in the 19th century.

Simon Parke - One Minute Mindfulness - short passages providing food for thought.

Books

2011-02-25T03:45:00.000-08:00

Mainly crime this last week or so.

Agatha Christie - The Mysterious Affair at Styles - the first book featuring Hercule Poirot. A classic poisoning mystery.

Stephanie McAfee - Diary of a Mad Fat Girl - Graciella (Ace) and friends try to free Chloe from her abusive marriage. Interesting plot and rather too many swear words and American expressions but I thought it was an interesting read.

Georgette Heyer - Lady of Quality - one of my favourites - set in Bath with an older heroine and an abrupt but humorous hero.

M C Beaton - Agatha Raisin and the Murderous Marriage - Agatha is going to marry her neighbour, James Lacey, but is her husband Jimmy Raisin actually dead?

Maggie Sefton - Knit One, Kill Two - detective story with knitting interruptions set in Colorado. Good light read but not as good as some.

M C Beaton - Agatha Raisin and the Terrible Tourist - set in Cyprus where Agatha goes to try and woo James Lacey. I think this is one of the best in the series.

Christina Hopkinson - The Pile of Stuff at the Bottom of the Stairs - about the niggly things which annoy everyone about living with someone else. I could not get on with this and abandoned it after 100 pages. It is fiction but could equally have been factual. I just did not warm to the characters at all. I usually read all of a book but this one had me beaten.

Yet more books and heating update

2011-02-15T05:09:00.001-08:00

The heating is still working and we have been surveyed. The surveyor was not happy because the old oil tank has still not been taken away, the oil pipe underground was not replaced and the gubbins which stops the system silting up was not installed. We really don't want that done but we've been told we've got to have it done. But he did say because they have to drain the system again to do it they will need to take responsibility for any damage they might cause in the process and they will be told that in no uncertain terms. So we wait and see. In the meantime we have heating and hot water so we are happy - and warm - bunnies.

Books

Theodore Dalrymple - Second Opinion - short and astringent essays about the seamier side of life from a doctor's point of view. I find it best to read these a few at a time as they can cause you to lose any faith you might have had in the essential goodness of human nature.

Hugh Hunter - Our Man in Orlando: Murder, Madness and Mayhem in the Sunshine State - the work of a British Consul in Florida. The British abroad are just disgusting but the book was interesting as I'd never been quite sure what British Consular staff do - now I know.

Georgette Heyer - Charity Girl - not perhaps my favourite Heyer novel but still enjoyable

Tilda Shalof - A Nurse's Story - memoirs of an intensive care nurse in Canada. Thought provoking, funny and sad and raises many questions about 'striving officiously to keep alive'.

Books read

2011-02-10T04:22:00.000-08:00

The first few in the Agatha Raisin series by M C Beaton: Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death; Agatha Raisin and the Vicious Vet; Agatha Raisin and the Potted Gardener; Agatha Raisin and the Walkers of Dembley. I like Agatha Raisin because she is not the conventional heroine. She is outspoken and a good organiser and she she is insecure about her ability to attract men. She does her best in any situation but her attempts at detection do not always go to plan. These books are a light and amusing read but well written. I have read all three before but they will bear re-reading.

Carmen Reid - New York Valentine - the latest in the How Not to Shop series. Chick lit at its best with Annie Valentine wading in where angels fear to tread to sort out clothes shopping nightmares.

Patricia Wentworth - The Lonesome Road; The Chinese Shawl; Miss Silver Comes to Stay. All three are excellent examples of Patricia Wentworth's Miss Silver books.

Elizabeth Edmondson - The Villa in Italy. Set in the late 1950s. Four people unknown to one another arrive at the Villa Dante in accordance with a will. They have to find a codicil which is hidden somewhere in the Villa and they have thirty three days in which to find it or all the money will go to charity. The plot may seem a bit of a cliche but everything is in the writing and the writing of this novel is excellent. The characters are interesting and I wanted them to sort out their problems with or without the money. I felt quite sad when I read the last page.

Gladys Mitchell - The Mystery of a Butcher's Shop. A body of an unpopular man is found neatly jointed in a butcher's shop - but the head is missing. Another case for the inimitable Mrs Bradley.

Theodore Dalrymple - Second Opinion. A collection of short pieces about the flotsam and jetsam of society as represented by inner city dwellers and prisoners. Ascerbic and judgemental - Theodore Dalrymple will either delight or horrify you and may completely destroy your faith in the basic goodness of the human animal.

The good news

2011-02-08T00:52:00.000-08:00

The boiler is working now and so we have heating and hot water - success!! Now we have to get the company who did it to clear up their mess and to give us the forms that says it's been installed properly. As we've not heard from them at all since last Tuesday I think we may be waiting a while and MJR seems reluctant to chase it up.

On the plus side we have a very quiet apparently very efficient boiler and a room thermostat that you can progamme down to decimal points of a degree. The house is not in a mess any more though outside still is. Was it worth it? I reserve judgement. I have learned more about the operation of central heating systems than I knew before or ever wanted to know.

It's funny when you have anything new like a central heating boiler and it must be a bit like having a new baby as we keep tiptoeing into the utility room to check it's still breathing!!

The surveyor is coming out on Friday to inspect the system - which will be fun - though I think basically that the system has been installed properly it's just that things haven't been done that were supposed to be done and it all took far longer than it was supposed to.

We are also fortunate that we had the insurance on the Boilermate otherwise we would have been left out of pocket for what was supposed to be free. As it is we've paid our own plumber to do some of the work. Would I recommend the Warmfront scheme to anyone? Yes with the caveat that they make sure that it isn't one particular company doing the installation - name supplied on application to me via e-mail!

Some progress

2011-02-06T03:45:00.000-08:00

The man from Gledhill - who make the Boilermates - came out on Friday and virtually replaced everything in the Boilermate - which now works both normally and on emergency heating and hot water.

We did have the boiler working for a time - in spite of the absence of the installer who again failed to turn up on Friday. The boiler is now having a hissy fit again and we're back to the emergency heating. We are not letting anyone else touch the Boilermate again! Full marks to Gledhill - they've done a brilliant job and he had all the parts he needed with him - which seems to be pretty unusual these days.

Personally I suspect a fault with the only bit of the system which hasn't been replaced - the oil line under the ground from the tank to the house. This was supposed to be replaced and hasn't been. We're supposed to be having a surveyor come out to check the work has been done properly so he will have his ear severely bent when he does turn up as we have an ongoing list of what's happened and not happened.

To look on the bright side we do have heating - at a cost because it's electric - and we're not cold. We shall get it sorted in the end no doubt but when is anyone's guess.

The nightmare continues

2011-02-03T06:06:00.000-08:00

Still no heating or hot water!

Electrician and the heating engineer came on Monday and they eventually got around to firing up the new boiler - which immediately went bang and blew a fuse in the Boilermate. It turns out there was a fault in the new boiler among other things. But we only found that out because we spoke to our normal boiler man and he came out and had a look and isolated the burner from everything else and the fuse didn't blow.

On the strength of that MJR called Bosch who make the boiler and they came out yesterday and confirmed what we knew and came back today to replace the relevant part. Now the boiler will work but the Boilermate won't. Added to which it shouldn't have been us chasing around to get that side of it sorted it should have been the company which is responsible for the installation doing it.

The heating engineer was supposed to have been here on Tuesday but we had a phone call to say he wouldn't be coming because another job took longer than expected. He came yesterday and did bits and pieces for an hour or so and said he would come back on Friday to drain the system again and fit the gubbins which should have been fitted last week and which stops the whole system silting up.

The local expert on Boilermates is coming out on Monday and we've got someone from the Boilermate manufacturers coming tomorrow and our usual plumber to see if he can throw any light on the situation. In the end I think we're going to have to have the Boilermate taken out and a conventional tank installed - which we were going to do in a couple of years time anyway when we had the money.

I am totally fed up with the whole thing. I don't cope well with this sort of stress anyway. Give me a room full of angry people to talk to on a subject they don't want to hear about and I'm absolutely fine but something like this and I am stressed. Still we're all different.

Totally fed up

2011-01-30T04:30:00.001-08:00

We are currently having our central heating boiler replaced and it's a nightmare from start to finish - except that it isn't finished yet. It was supposed to have been done last November but the weather intervened. It was supposed to start on Monday 24 January and be finished by Thursday. We have our new oil tank -with oil from the old one in it - but no connection to the new boiler which is partly installed.

Unfortunately - I am using very temperate language here - draining the system and refilling has affected our backup electric heating system which now doesn't work. We had expected to be able to use it over the weekend as the new boiler will not be commissioned until Monday when the electrician turns up to do the wiring.

This is not our usual man doing the work for longwinded reasons which I won't bore you with except to say it's being done under a government energy saving scheme and we're not paying for it. That's an advantage but it reduces our level of influence on the work . So we have a fan heater and the offer of loans of other fan heaters to keep us warm and no hot water except a kettle. I am not a happy bunny and I wish we'd never decided to go ahead with it. Sometimes free is not the best option.

My madeleine moment . . .

2011-01-22T03:57:00.000-08:00

I bought a Marks & Spencer's coffee Swiss roll the other day and I decided a few minutes ago to have a piece of it - together with a cup of coffee. When I took the first bite I was immediately transported to evenings in the early 1970s. Once again I was sitting talking to my fellow blogger - Norn - and drinking coffee and eating coffee Swiss roll. I was also reminded of watching the BBC's adaptation of Anthony Trollope's Palliser novels with Susan Hampshire as Glencora Palliser and Philip Latham as Plantagenet Palliser. Of such moments are memories made.

Books

Several Patricia Wentworth crime novels - The Watersplash, Grey Mask, Vanishing Point all featuring the inimitable Miss Maud Silver.

Gone Away by Hazel Holt - the first of her Mrs Malory crime series

A Paramedic's Diary by Stuart Grey - his experiences on the streets of London among the drunks the drug addicts, the genuinely ill and the time wasters. Fascinating reading if you like that sort of thing.

The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande - how he helped to introduce checklists to the medical world and how they are used in other professions. A fascinating look at how simple things can simplify the most complex processes and help prevent mistakes happening.

Cruise Ship SOS by Ben Macfarlane - about his experiences as a doctor on a cruise ship. The book should come with a health - or wealth - warning - as I now quite fancy going on a cruise - something I've never really considered before.

Currently reading

Patricia Wentworth - Lonesome Road - I've only just started this so can't really say much about it yet.

M C Beaton - Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death - the first in the Agatha Raisin series. I've read it before but enjoy re-reading these stories.

John Galsworthy - I'm still reading The Forsyte Saga - nearly at the end of the third volume - To Let - with everyone trying to keep the details of the Irene/Soames scandal from the ears of his daughter, Fleur.

I'm also dipping into Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice for the umpteenth time.

Would you employ this person?

2011-01-14T02:59:00.000-08:00

Advertisement seen on hospital noticeboard:

Sectarial Services Offered

The advertisement went on to make clear it was telephone answering and typing which were being offered.

Good start to the New Year - I don't think!

2011-01-14T02:27:00.000-08:00

My other half - MJR - has been in hospital for the last four days though he is home now thanks to a break down in communication between the hospital, the consultant and our health insurance company. He would have been out today or tomorrow anyway. He is on Warfarin and his INR - the clotting factor in his blood - went way too high because he's been on too high a dose for too long.

Fortunately the antidote - Vitamin K - works almost straightaway but has to be administered in hospital in case the INR goes too far the other way. He has to go to our GP today to have his INR tested and it depends on the results (obtained instantly like blood glucose machines) of that as to what dosage he's on. Clearly for someone who has had two previous pulmonary embolisms it is essential that his blood does not clot too easily. But on the other hand you don't want to imitate someone with haemophilia.

So - not a good start to the New Year. He has a consultant's appointment on Monday which may lead to another operation so it looks as though this year is going to feature hospitals prominently.

The good thing about the last few days is that it has shown me I'm getting more things done than I thought I did because trying to fit everything in that I normally do has proved impossible.

I have never seen our local hospital as busy as it has been the last few days with everyone rushing around all the time and ambulances queuing to unload patients four or five deep at times. Clearly winter is taking its toll on people round here.

Books

I took my Kindle with me when I went visiting and when MJR fell asleep one day I decided to buy a book - just for the hell of it! That's the first time I've used it outside the house and it worked! Funny how little things amuse me. I downloaded a book called The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande - which is about making sure the right things are done at the right time in hospital - which I thought quite appropriate.

I am still reading John Galsworthy's Forsyte Saga - on the third book at the moment - To Let. I'm also still reading my way through Patricia Wentworth's crime novels.

Happy New Year

2011-01-02T02:55:00.000-08:00

A Happy New Year to everyone who reads Jillysheep regularly and of course to those who just happen to stumble upon it.

Read recently:

Patricia Wentworth - The Key - murder of a scientist in World War II in a small English village church. Suicide or murder? Miss Silver needs to find out. The war time background in interesting - especially telephones which are connected to party lines. Does anyone under 50 remember these? I wonder how younger readers think of them?

Patricia Wentworth - The Clock Strikes Twelve - did he fall or was he pushed? James Paradine is found dead on New Year's Day after a somewhat fraught family party. Can Miss Silver work out who did it?

Currently reading:

John Galsworthy - The Forsyte Saga - I'm on volume two - In Chancery. Soames after twelve years of separation from Irene has decided he wants a divorce.

Christina Hopkinson - The Pile of Stuff at the Bottom of the Stairs - the heroine is fed up of doing everything around the house and starts to keep a list of all the ways her husband annoys her - the reverse of the star chart she keeps for her small sons.

With Christmas out of the way . . .

2010-12-27T05:25:00.000-08:00

. . . it's back to the reading.

John Galsworthy - The Forsyte Saga - all nine volumes of it. I haven't read it since the BBC dramatised the books back in the 1960s with Nyree Dawn Porter and Irene and Kenneth More as young Jolyon. I find I am still seeing all those famous faces as I read!

Patricia Wentworth - The Gazebo - I do love these Golden Age detective story writers and it's great - form my point of view - that some at least are available as e-books.

Books read:

David Austin - Delivered Unto Lions - not my usual sort of book but I found it compelling reading. Daniel is 12 when he is sent to Oakdale - a psychiatric children's unit in the 1970s. It is written in the first person in a matter of fact style which makes it all the more effective. He is suffering from depression and the regime at Oakdale would be more likely to give anyone depression than cure it. Daniel is kept in the dark about just about everything and punished if he asks questions. I really hope children - or adults for that matter - are not treated like this now.

Ngaio Marsh - Final Curtain - Troy is commissioned to paint the portrait of an ageing Shakespearean actor dressed as Macbeth. Naturally he ends up dead which provides another case for Troy's husband Roderick Alleyn.

Anthony Powell's Dance to the Music of Time is starting to appear in e-book format.

Chocolate

2010-12-24T02:20:00.000-08:00

I love chocolate. One of my favourite Christmas treats is Cocoa dusted French Truffles from Waitrose. There may be other places that stock them but if so I haven't managed to find them yet. I bought two boxes when I was in Norfolk the other week and started one of them the other day - yumm!!

They are just melt in the mouth gorgeous. I used to buy them quite often when I lived near Waitrose but they're only a Christmas treat now - or they were until I bothered to look at the box on Wednesday and found a web address - www.whoismontybojangles.com. They do mail order and have other varieties of chocolates and truffles.

I ordered some more on Wednesday evening and they arrived this morning so I would like to recommend this website to any chocoholics out there not just for marvellous chocolates but also for excellent service. They will be getting more of my custom.

Latest books read and current reading

2010-12-16T02:06:00.000-08:00

Ruth Rendell - The Monster in the Box - Wexford and a blast from his past. Much of the story is told in conversations between Burden and Wexford which could make for a boring story but all the ramifications of the past and the present keep the reader's interest. It's a long time since I read any of Ruth Rendell's novels and I enjoyed this one so I shall be looking for more - provided they are e-book format!

M C Beaton - Death of a Maid - in this case maid means cleaning lady. Hamish wins the services of a somewhat aggressive and unpleasant cleaning lady. He and her other customers don't know whether to pleased or sorry when she is found dead - hit over the head with her own bucket.

Hazel Holt - Mrs Malory and the festival Murder - this is the first Mrs Malory book I've read and I shall be looking out for more. They are English village murder stories with a literary and musical background. Crime in a classic mould.

M C Beaton - Death of a Dustman - Fergus is not the most popular dustman in the world and soon becomes even less popular when he is given a new uniform and more power . Is he murdered because he has been brow-beating the villagers into recycling everything or is it something more than that?

Current reading:

Still plodding through Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke - one chapter at a time.

Amy Silver - Confessions of a Reluctant Recessionista - chick lit about Cassie who loses her job and her boyfriend and goes on spending sprees to make her feel better. Clearly she is heading for disaster. Well written and entertaining light reading.

M C Beaton - Death of a Celebrity - those who are bored with reading about Hamish Macbeth will be relieved to know I've almost come to the end of the available e-books in this series.

Julia Cameron - Mozart's Ghost - set in New York - a story about a medium who needs peace and quiet for her job but finds it disturbed by a pianist playing Mozart moving into her apartment block. I've read nearly 100 pages of this and I'm really not sure about it. I shall persevere - it may redeem itself.

Books and a good web site for crime novels

2010-12-03T01:22:00.000-08:00

M C Beaton's Death of a Poison Pen - a Hamish Macbeth story. Poison pen letters lead to a suicide or is it murder? I wasn't sure about this series at first but I was sufficiently interested to keep reading and it is definitely growing on me.

Rebecca Tope - A Cotswold Killing - the first in her series about Thea Osbourne - a widow - who takes on house sitting assignments and gets involved in investigating murders. The second in the series is A Cotswold Ordeal. I seem to remember reading one of this series some years ago and wasn't keen but I have gone back to them and found them interesting. Thea is growing on me as a character and the plots are nice and complicated.

Currently reading:

Polly Samson - Perfect Lives - this is a book which has been in the news recently because of some Amazon reviews which were less than favourable. I'm not sure I would have bought it myself but it is quite good. It is a book of interlinked short stories and the writing is a little too self conscious for my taste. I shall persevere and hope when I post a review on Amazon it doesn't attract too much criticism.

Rebecca Tope - Death in the Cotswolds - the third in the series and narrated by someone in the village where Thea Osbourne goes to stay with Phil Hollis - a police superintendent. Pagan undertones, village life and the plot centres round a prehistoric barrow and the pagan festival of Samhain.

Susanna Clarke - Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell - a very long book about magic in the 19th century with pictures and footnotes. I have mixed feelings about this but I will persevere with it.

Web site - for those of us who like cozy mysteries - www.cozy-mystery.com For the uninitiated - cozy (or cosy if you prefer) are crime or mystery novels which have very little violence and usually feature every day situations and characters often with a theme - such as candlemaking, cooking, knitting etc.. All the above crime novels fall into this category. It is a genre which is perhaps more popular in America than here. The Golden Age authors fall into this category - Agatha Christie, Georgette Heyer, Dorothy L Sayers.

Books, books and yet more books

2010-11-16T02:44:00.000-08:00

Jenni Mills - Buried Circle - very good novel with two inter-twined stories - from the 1930s and the present day. Set around the Avebury stone circle.

Georgette Heyer - A Blunt Instrument - body in the study and plenty of suspects not to mention a Bible quoting PC. Another case for Hannasyde and Hemingway.

Trisha Ashley - Twelve Days of Christmas - chick lit set around Christmas with widow Holly Brown coming to terms with her grief for her late husband. Serious issues but feel good factor too.

Veronica Heley - False Money - latest instalment in the Abbot Agency series. Cosy crime with interesting characters and fascinating scenarios.

Elizabeth Buchan - That Certain Age - two women sixty years apart - facing very similar problems in balancing their own lives with family life

Angela Thirkell - Wild Strawberries - I first read this book about forty years ago and had forgotten how good it is if you like reading about life for the upper classes in the 1930s. Her dialogue and witty descriptions raises this author's work above run of the mill novels.

M C Beaton - Death of a Gossip - first in the Hamish Macbeth series - good light reading.

Anna Dale - Magical Mischief - a children's book but still worth reading for adults - Mr Hardbattle's bookshop has been taken over by magic. We see drawing pins sending messages, a velour elephant which marches up and down a shelf, a step that turns to custard and books that rearrange themselves in the colours of the rainbow when no one is looking. Fun for any age.

Trisha Ashley, Angela Thirkell and Veronica Heley were books the rest were e-books.

Trouble in the book world

2010-11-04T02:25:00.000-07:00

You may have seen the articles about the Agency Pricing model for e-books. This is widespread in the USA but until 1 November did not exist in the UK. Those who follow such things may recall that the Net Book Agreement was abolished back in the mid 1990s. This agreement allowed publishers to dictate the price at which books were sold by retailers.

This was abandoned before it was ruled to be illegal and anti-competitive. Now some publishers - most notably the Hachette group which includes such big names as Penguin and Harper Collins - are saying that anyone selling their e-books, whatever format, must sell them at the price dictated by the publisher - i.e. retailers are acting as the publisher's agents and selling on their behalf.

This to me is price fixing under another name and is, I think, illegal in the UK under EU and UK law. Even if it is illegal it would seem that the publishers are likely to shoot themselves in the foot with this as in some cases the e-book price is turning out to be considerably higher than the hardback price. This piece of nonsense arises because retailers can discount hardbacks and paperbacks as much as they like but cannot alter the price of e-books from some publishers.

I'm aware both publishers and authors need to make a living and like most people who read I have no problem paying a fair price for a book I want to read. Ultimately I shall do with e-books what I have always done with tree books - look at the price for the cheapest format and make my choice accordingly based on whether I want to keep the book or read it once and dispose of it. What I am against is people trying to sell to me at a higher price because it keeps the market dynamic and gives consumers more choice as one publisher tried to say. So making every retailer sell an e-book is giving consumers more choice and keeping the market dynamic? I don't think I'd want him working for me if I was running a company!

I don't see there are any baddies or goodies in this situation - it is just a new market trying to establish itself and stabilise. I shan't be boycotting any publishers but I will be making my book buying decisions based on price and how much I want to read the book concerned. If the price fixed bears some resemblance to the paperback price of the book then I may buy it. If it is way more than the hardback then I shall wait for it to come down or not as the case may be. I read between 250 and 300 books per year. I can't see me running out of e-books to read - many of which are free.

Busy Kindling . . .

2010-10-30T01:48:00.000-07:00

Is Kindling a verb created from a noun or is it just a new meaning for the word which means the wood you use to light a fire with? I seem to spend a lot of time reading at the moment and the novelty of my Kindle has not yet worn off.

Recent reads in e-book have been:

Georgette Heyer - Death in the Stocks - a body is found in the village stocks and leads Superintendent down some very murky byways of family life

Wendy Holden - Gallery Girl - this was a paperback - I enjoyed it though not as much as some of hers. I did enjoy the jibes at the pretensions of some of the more way out parts of the art world - artificial legs sprayed gold and hung on a washing line - your for £20 million. There are some absolutely priceless scenes towards the end of the book which make the whole thing worth while.

Georgette Heyer - Footsteps in the Dark - a brother and two sisters inherit a dilapidated country house only to find that it appears to have a resident ghost or two. They quickly realise that the ghost may be rather more corporeal than it would like them to think.

Richard Wiseman - 59 seconds - sort of distilled self help and psychology. It was interesting but as I can't remember anything about it now it clearly wasn't that memorable!

The Complete Idiot's Guide to dealing with Difficult People - interesting with a few tips I shall make use of such as lowering your voice when someone is getting angry. It reminds the reader that you can never control the behaviour of others - only how you react to that behaviour.

Currently reading:

Georgette Heyer - Detection Unlimited - murder of a very unlikeable solicitor in a country village - featuring Chief Inspector Hemingway.

Jenni Mills - The Buried Circle - set around Avebury featuring two parallel narratives from the point of view of India in the present day and Frannie, her grandmother in the late 1930s and early 1940s.

Trisha Ashley - The Twelve Days of Christmas - this is a paperback which I'd bought before I realised there was an e-book. I'm getting through it slowly and I'm starting to think her recent books are not as good as early ones.

And yet more reading . . .

2010-10-23T03:02:00.000-07:00

Death at the Opera by Gladys Mitchell - e-book - the first I've read by this author and very enjoyable it was too. She is one of the Golden Age of detective fiction writers from the 1920s and 1930s. This story features psycho-analyst Beatrice Lestrange Bradley trying to find out why a school teacher apparently committed suicide during the school's performance of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado.

Georgette Heyer's Penhallow - e-book - not what I was expecting because the reader knows who the murderer is and how it was done. The portrait of a family tyrant - Adam Penhallow - and the effect he has on his nearest and dearest deserves to be better known. It is an excellent psychological novel

Games People Play by Eric Berne - I first read this about 30 years ago and had forgotten a great deal of it. Very instructive about the way people operate and you find yourself looking out for the games people play in every day life.

Currently reading:

Georgette Heyer - Death in the Stocks - e-book - a body is found in the stocks on the village green. Superintendent Hannasyde is his usual self and the story exposes a very strange family set up.

Risk: the science and politics of fear by Dan Gardner - e-book - fascinating book about how bad human beings are at assessing relative risk

Doesn't time fly . . . .

2010-10-12T02:07:00.000-07:00

Reading in the last week:

Coffin, Scarcely used by Colin Watson - 1950s crime in seaside town in Lincolnshire - paperback

Our Lady of Pain by M C Beaton - Edwardian Crime featuring Lady Rose Summer and Captain Harry Cathcart - private investigator - e-book

Pursued by Love by Georgia Hill - love story set against the filming of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice - e-book.

The Attenbury Emeralds by Jill Paton Walsh which is a new Peter Wimsey/Harriet Vane story set in 1951 and featuring a case which is mentioned in other Peter Wimsey books. It is very good and I could imagine Sayers herself writing this one - paperback.

What's Up Doc? by Hilary Jones - the doctor who appears regularly on TV - good but not as good as some - e-book.

Cranford by Mrs Gaskell - Victorian life from a female perspective, e-book.

A Medal for Murder: a Kate Shackleton Mystery by Frances Brody - Yorkshire crime set in the 1920s - very good it was as well - I can thoroughly recommend this series. Paperback

A predominance of crime set in other eras.

Currently reading:

The Hedge Fund Wives by Tatiana Boncompagni - chick lit with bling and shopping but seems pretty well written - paperback

Wives and Daughters by Mrs Gaskell - 19th century literature - e-book

What would Jane Austen do? by Laurie Brown - time travel and ghosts - e-book

59 seconds by Richard Wiseman - sort of self help/popular psychology - e-book - I will be writing a post shortly about this type of book - which I've always enjoyed reading.

Latest reading

2010-09-26T05:14:00.001-07:00

Blue Lights and Long Nights by Les Pringle which is about his experiences in the ambulance service in the 1970s. Poignant, funny and thought provoking as are most books like this.

I'm still ploughing through Merchants of Culture by John B Thompson - which is fascinating - but heavy to hold. I've always been interested in the way publishers work and this provides a lot of information. I could have done without so much information about American publishing but it's still worth reading. When you consider how big the US is it publishes - relatively speaking - fewer new books each year that the UK does - 194,000 new titles a year in 2008 compared with the UK's 120,000. What is interesting is that those figures only relate to trade publishers and the books reckons you can double the number of new titles if you include self publishing, print on demand etc. Books are alive and well and living everywhere.

I've currently just started a Jane Austen spin off which I've been debating reading for a while - Laura Viera Rigler's Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict. All American girl wakes up one morning to find herself in Austen's England inhabiting someone else's body - that of Jane Mansfield. Light reading but interesting and amusing for all that.

I have downloaded e-book versions of the whole of Anthony Trollope and the whole of Charles Dickens not to speak of the whole of Mrs Gaskell - plenty of reading there for cold winter evenings! They are such ridiculously cheap prices - or completely free that I couldn't resist.

Still reading . .

2010-09-22T05:46:00.000-07:00

I have read in the last few days - Erica James - The Queen of New Beginnings; M C Beaton - Hasty Death and I'm currently reading Defending the Guilty by Alex McBride - about his work as a barrister with lots of historical asides about the evolution of the criminal justice system. I'm also reading Merchants of Culture by John B Thompson - which is about the publishing industry over the last 40 years in the UK and the USA. It is interesting reading though a shade heavy going - both physically as it's a heavy hardback and in the brain sense.

I enjoyed the Erica James and while it did have its light hearted and funny moments it had heavyweight themes in at as well about the fickleness of public opinion and the disadvantages of quarrelling with ones parents.

The M C Beaton is one of her Edwardian crime series featuring Lady Rose Summer and Captain Harry Cathcart - not to speak of Daisy the lady's maid with hidden talents. Very light reading but well written.

I'm always interested in people's job so the Alex McBride is good reading for me - not to everyone's taste perhaps.

Classics

2010-09-17T03:29:00.000-07:00

This week I have read Stella Gibbons Cold Comfort Farm. Everyone has been telling me for years that it is good but I never got around to reading it. I love Flora Poste - she's an absolute gem of a fictional character as is Aunt Ada Doom - 'something nasty in the woodshed'. The names for the characters are pretty good as well; the cows, Graceless, Aimless,Feckless and Pointless and the bull Big Business not to speak of Seth and Reuben - the sons and Amos- the father - the hell fire and damnation preacher. How Flora manages to change everything on the farm and many of the people is brilliant. If you haven't read it then you're in for a treat.

I've also read George and Weedon Grossmith's Diary of a Nobody and I love Mr Pooter. His staunch principles, his loyalty to his employer and his love for his wife and son even when they annoy him are marvellous. Yes he gets irritated by some not very important things but often he tears up his letters of complaint and doesn't post them. When given more compensation for his ruined handkerchiefs than the handkerchiefs cost new he is scrupulous about returning the amount he isn't entitled to - which to me sums him up. An absolutely marvellous book and I really should have read it years ago.

Do people complain about nothing these days?

2010-09-12T06:23:00.000-07:00

I've been frequenting the Kindle forum on Amazon and found the following complaints about the Kindle which seem to me extremely petty:

The Amazon-Kindle logo on the screen surround irritates me - does anyone know how I can remove it?
I don't like the screensavers which come with it - they're just black/grey pictures of authors etc - can I change them?
I can't buy books from Waterstone's - why do Amazon insist you only buy books from them?
I don't like the size of the margin on the page - I want it smaller
The screen goes black when the page changes - it irritates me
Why isn't there a memory card slot?
I don't like having lots of small transactions on my credit card for Kindle books because my card provider has queried some of my transactions.
I want a Kindle in white not grey

My answers were:

You don't notice it when you're reading but something like T-Cut might get it off if it's really annoying
Do you look at the screensavers when you're reading a book?
Amazon don't insist you only buy from them. In fact they specifically direct you to other sites where you can download books for free and the Kindle supports some other formats as well.
Size of the margin varies from book to book and if you change the text size and the number of words per line - try experimenting
Duh! All e-book readers do this - it is for a fraction of a second only and you could try blinking when it changes then you won't notice.
Do you really intend buying more than 3,500 books? If you do try deleting them when you need more space as Amazon keep a list of everything downloaded from them and you can always re-download them if you want.
Credit card providers get used to your spending pattern and query transactions outside the norm for you. I'm all for them querying transactions myself so I can't see the problem
Grey is easier to read from - a white surround will distract you from the page you're reading. You could always try painting it ;-)

I didn't actually answer some of the questions because my answers would probably have got me severely criticised. But seriously all these points could have been clarified from reading the product page BEFORE purchase. One person sent their Kindle back because of the page change thing even though he'd been told by everyone who responded that all e-book readers do this and you don't notice after a while.

Do people look for things to criticise? As for the person who said the screensaver picture of Jane Austen frightened her - well words fail me!

Good book

2010-09-09T06:00:00.000-07:00

I've just finished reading Elizabeth Buchan's Separate Beds. From the cover it looks like something light and frothy but it's actually quite serious and covers a great many problems faced by families today: falling out with nearly adult children, facing up to redundancy in middle age; female breadwinners, caring for children when parents are at work, looking after elderly relatives etc. Tom and Annie have three children - Mia and Jake, twins, and Emily. It is clear from the start of the book that Mia's abrupt exit from the family home five years ago is still having repercussions now and is the cause of the separate beds - actually separate rooms. But Tom's unexpected redundancy from a well paid post at the BBC throws the family into turmoil.

The house suddenly becomes overcrowded when Jake returns home with his small daughter Maisie and Tom's redundancy causes his mother Hermione to move in with them as her care home can no longer be funded. The small irritations of every day family life are recognisably real and even Hermione - the aged relative from hell - has her good points as well as her bad ones. I loved all the characters - faults and all - and wanted things to work out for them. The book provides no trite answers to the problems but shows clearly that family life is based on compromise. I enjoyed it and would recommend this author's thoughtful and thought provoking novels of family life and marriage.

Busy week

2010-09-03T04:51:00.001-07:00

I seem to have been spending less time on the computer and more on the Kindle this week and I'm still really pleased with it. I love the free samples of books you can download - try before you buy. I have about 20 free samples to read on mine at the moment and have bought a couple of books having read the sample - most notably John O'Farrell's An Utterly Impartial History of Britain. This is somewhat in the vein of the immortal 1066 and All That by Sellars and Yeatman but contains more facts and no test papers. I particularly like his imaginary conversations between famous people as well as between the not so famous. If you like reading history then give it a go.

I've also cleaned the car and done various things about the house including housework - shock! horror! In fact I'm not sure where the week's gone and I've been busy most of the time.

I'm currently reading the John O'Farrell and some of G K Chesterton's Father Brown stories - which were free to download. I've also started re-reading for the first time in years Winnie the Pooh and Edward Lear's Book of Nonsense. It's amazing what you can find free or very cheap.

I'm not a gadget person but . . . .

2010-08-29T03:58:00.000-07:00

My Amazon Kindle e-book reader arrived yesterday and I love it! Very easy to use straight out of the box though I did skim through the manual while it was charging just to get used to using it. I tried buying and downloading a book via the 3G telephone network but it is slow partly because there isn't a terribly good signal here. Now it's set up on our wi-fi network and downloading is very quick. It's pretty intuitive to use if you've ever used a mobile phone or a computer. What really intrigues and amuses me is that I can be using the computer and see an e-book I want so I buy it and it's then downloaded to my Kindle provided it is on and the wi-fi connection is switched on. You can switch it off to save battery life.

I was going to say it's like reading a book but it's actually better in some ways than reading a book. You can change text size and appearance, line spacing and the number of words per line. You don't get text lost at the edge of the page as you do when reading a tightly bound paperback. Of course the big advantage is you can store up to 3500 books on it and pretty well anything out of copyright is free or less than £1. Other books - unless they're only just published - are cheaper than paperbacks.

It has to be one of the best things I've bought.

Eek! Where has this week gone?

2010-08-26T04:52:00.000-07:00

Time seems to have gone really quickly this week and it's Thursday already! Current reading: M C Beaton's Snobbery with Violence - historical crime featuring Lady Rose who has ruined her reputation by being involved with the suffragette movement. This was originally published under the name of Marion Chesney and I would think has been re-published under M C Beaton to try and entice readers of the Agatha Raisin and Hamish Macbeth books. I've read about 40 pages and it seems pretty good.

I'm also reading The Fan Tan Players by Julian Lees which has a really pleasing cover picture. It's set in Macao and Scotland among other places in the early to mid 20th century. Well written with some glorious descriptions of places and food, it features Nadia a White Russian exile and Iain a Scot working for an early version of MI6.

Then there's Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error by Kathryn Schulz which I'm still ploughing through. It is interesting but not that sort of thing you want to read for hours at a time.

I've nearly finished Mean Spirit by Will Kingdom - not I think as good as his Merrily Watkins series written under his real name but still worth reading.

Reading and read

2010-08-22T05:25:00.000-07:00

I finished Will Kingdom's The Cold Calling - and enjoyed it. Some memorable characters and a frightening plot. 'Cindy' Mars-Lewis the cross dressing shaman with Kelvyn Kite - the talking bird. Grayle - 'Holy Grayle' - the American journalist looking for her sister, Ersula, and Bobby Maiden - the police inspector whose returned from the dead. The background is the supernatural, shamanism and prehistoric stones as well as the Green Man and someone who is killing people in order to return their blood to the earth. I'm now reading the same author's Mean Spirit which is equally good and includes some of the same characters.

I also finished Kate Muir's Suffragette City and enjoyed it. Some very funny scenes and some interesting characters as well the historical background of suffragette activity in the early 20th century.

I'm currently reading David Hamilton's How Your Mind Can Heal Your Body which is very interesting. Visualisation as a way of helping to heal your body. He makes clear that people shouldn't give up their conventional medication but use visualisation as something extra. He is also honest enough to say that the personal stories he quotes have not been medically verified and they're just how people have sent them to him. As I'm interested in the mind/body link I'm finding it fascinating.

I've also just started reading this Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error by Kathryn Schulz - about how we are so attached to being right. I've only read about 30 pages so far so maybe more about this later.

Reading . . .

2010-08-16T03:38:00.000-07:00

I am currently reading The Cold Calling by Will Kingdom (Phil Rickman under another name) - very good but not as good as the Merrily Watkins series. Then there's Kate Atkinson's Started Early, Took my Dog which is improving the more I read of it and I'm familiar with much of the geographical area she writes about which has to be a bonus. The first 30 pages didn't impress me but it's growing on me.

Also reading Suffragette City by Kate Muir which I've had kicking around for ages. I finally picked it up and started reading it on Saturday and was hooked by it. Albertina is living a somewhat Bohemian life in New York when her grandmother gives her a trunk belonging to Agnes - Albertina's great great grandmother. The problem is that Agnes - in spirit form - keeps turning up and haranguing Albertina about her life and how she's wasting it. Funny and historically interesting.

Pretty mixed bunch there and I'm also still listening to Bill Bryson's At Home - on disc 13 of 14.

Different viewpoints

2010-08-11T05:30:00.001-07:00

I was intrigued when someone in the course of a discussion on the internet said to me that they couldn't imagine why anyone would want to live in a village. The main reason for their comment? They would be lonely without hordes of people around them. They didn't seem to understand my comment that you can be lonely in a crowd.

I have no problem with people wanting to live in cities - it's just not my thing. I find people in villages very friendly. When I walk to the the post office - about 5 minutes - I find that everyone speaks to you. The same in the post office and shop. When I go to the hairdressers the conversation is often general and involves the hairdresser's three staff and all the customers there at the time. Same with the doctor's waiting room.

The walk to the post office has been known to take me more than an hour because I've met so many people to talk to. In spite of that life is quiet and much slower than city life. If I wake up about 2.00 or 3.00am everything is quiet outside which it never would be in a city.

Yes there are disadvantages. No theatres nearby, though there is a cinema about 6 miles away. There are libraries and mobile libraries but no art galleries unless you want to travel about 40 miles. There are some specialist museums - such as the bulb museum - that's flower bulbs not electric light bulbs; and there are big houses to visit not that far away - nearest is 10 miles away. With mail order and the internet you can get anything you want delivered and there is a furniture shop about 5 miles away which is very good and very reasonably priced in spite of a captive audience.

I like being able to walk into the doctors and be addressed by name by the receptionists - it makes me feel I belong - though it could indicate I go there too often! Crime is low - virtually non-existent in this village. It's a bit higher in the two neighbouring towns though in both of them you could walk through the town centre at night on your own without any qualms about safety.

Scandalous

2010-08-07T03:20:00.000-07:00

Scandalous by Tilly Bagshawe looks like your typical blockbuster, sex and shopping holiday read but actually it is rather more than that. Sasha is clever and gains a place at Cambridge to study physics. It looks as though she has a bright future ahead of her as a scientist. But thanks to Theo Dexter this is not what happens. Revenge is what motivates Sasha to make a career for herself as a business woman in the USA . But all the time she is looking out for a suitable way of getting her own back.

Set in Cambridge and New York this is a well written book with many very funny one liners and some believable characters. Theo's wife Theresa - a Shakespearean scholar - is one of the protagonists. Both Sasha and Theresa have their faults which make them human. I'm always wary of reading this type of blockbuster fiction because it frequently promises a lot and delivers little. Scandalous is a satisfying read with an intriguing finale. I enjoyed it. Not quite a 5* read but certainly 4*s.

Lessons learned

2010-08-04T04:24:00.000-07:00

I have been involved in an argument on an Amazon forum during the course of the last few months. Please bear in mind that it never really annoyed me and it caused me quite a bit of amusement one way and another. I don't believe I wrote anything that was at all nasty as I tried to make my posts purely factual. About the only thing I could be criticised for was agreeing with the person concerned that yes in my opinion she was being paranoid.

The lessons I have learned:

Don't ever show something is important to you or you feel strongly about something otherwise you will be ridiculed
Accept all abuse without retaliating
If someone accuses you of breaking any rules or laws - don't rise to it and defend yourself - you'll only end up in the wrong
Everything you think is insulting is actually humorous and you're the stupid one for taking it seriously - no good expecting your own comments to be taken as a joke because they won't be.

I'm semi-serious about those points but I actually think the person I was arguing with has a screw loose.

Some of the problem is that I have developed a reputation for being reasonable and rational and not insulting people and I was consequently arguing with my hands tied behind my back and with a bag over my head while the other person behaved like drifting mist and turned round everything I said to mean the opposite of how it was intended.

Baffled by the whole thing - yes I am. Communication to me is a two way process and I have no problem with people disagreeing with me. I always mean exactly what I write - unless I put a winking smiley at the end of it. Other people seem to take the piss all the time. Oh well we're all different and there's nowt so queer as folk.

Sick Notes

2010-08-01T03:49:00.000-07:00

I love reading books about people's jobs and Sick Notes by Tony Copperfield is a very good example of the genre. As the title suggests it's about the work of a GP and it's very funny - and sad. The people who really need the GP's services are almost always the ones who fail to keep their appointments. The surgery is often full of the worried well clutching Internet print outs. There are people with many symptoms - none of which fit any known disease and there are people who will talk about everything except the problem they really want dealt with. Women are far better than men at describing symptoms - especially pain. Men just know it hurts women will tell the GP when it started, what it's like, what makes it better and what makes it worse and what they think caused it.

Obviously this is a generalisation but I've read before that women are in general better at describing symptoms of any sort. There are sad cases in the book - the Type 1 Diabetic who is not using her insulin properly and the hypochondriac who does turn out to have something serious wrong with him. But the big thing to take from this book is that 90% of complaints will get better without any medical intervention at all and medical intervention may even make things worse. Your doctor's job is to keep you away from the hospital and away from all the expensive tests - not to save the NHS money but to allow your body to do what it does best - heal itself.

Should be required reading for all patients.

Good news for Leigh Russell

2010-07-30T05:10:00.000-07:00

Leigh Russell has informed me that her debut novel - Cut Short has been short listed for the Crime Writers' Association 2010 John Creasey New Blood Dagger award. www.thecwa.co.uk/daggers/2010/newblood.html

This is fantastic news for Leigh and I wish her the best of luck.

You can find out more about Leigh at her blog www.leighrussell.blogsport.com or at www.noexit.co.uk and both Cut Short and Road Closed the next book in her series featuring DI Geraldine Steel are available from www.amazon.co.uk

I thoroughly enjoyed both of them and they are well worth reading if you like crime novels.

Still reading . . .

2010-07-30T04:55:00.000-07:00

I am still reading Phil Rickman. I rarely read a series back to back because I usually start getting bored after the first few but with the Merrily Watkins series I am number 8 with 2 more to go. I recently visited the author's web site and have discovered that he is working on another one www.philrickman.com

There is just so much packed into the books - ghosts, the supernatural, religion, paganism, local history and folk lore. Then there's the characters - Merrily herself and her teenage daughter Jane and her boyfriend Eirion; Gomer Parry - semi retired plant hire expert; Lol Robinson - singer, song writer and guitarist; Sophie - the Bishop's lay secretary; Frannie Bliss - detective and his boss - the ice maiden Annie Howe. Great stuff and I find myself totally lost in their world on the Hereford border with Wales.

When I get to the end of the series I have several other books to start on. Matt Haig's The Radleys; Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson; Two Serious Ladies by Jane Bowles; Sick Notes by Tony Copperfield. A fair old mixture there!

The stop press news is that I have finally ordered an e-book reader. I've been debating for about a year whether to get one. Now Amazon are selling a UK version of their very successful Kindle I'm going for that - which will be released at the end of August. I had favoured the Sony but having found out their latest one has a shiny screen I decided to go for the Kindle. I dislike reading books printed on shiny paper as I find them difficult to read so trying to read on a shiny screen could have been difficult.

Currently listening

2010-07-25T03:45:00.000-07:00

I have never read any of Bill Bryson's books but At Home appealed to me. I am currently listening to the Audio edition - all 14 CDs of it, unabridged - read by the man himself. I'm on disc 2 and it's really interesting - just the sort of thing I like. It's packed full of fascinating details. He sets out to give a potted history of houses and their contents by reference to his own house - a Norfolk rectory in a village which he doesn't name.

So far he's talked about clergyman in the 18th and 19th century - I hadn't realised how many of them had made inventions or discoveries in all fields of human endeavour. Then he's covered the Great Exhibition and all its interesting statistics. Only 25 people arrested for crimes out of 5 million visitors. The Chartists and their struggle for universal manhood suffrage and the design and construction of the Crystal Palace and its subsequent history.

There are so many interesting snippets that you immediately want to know about them and I suspect you really need to read it as an e-book so that you can look up more information about the things he mentions. I really recommend it to anyone who likes information and interesting and eccentric people.

Currently reading

2010-07-23T04:23:00.000-07:00

Phil Rickman still - now it's number 6 in the series - The Prayer of the Night Shepherd which involves a spooky hotel, a small village and an alternative source of inspiration for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Hound of the Baskervilles. I remember being not quite so keen on this book when I first read it but I suspect that was because I read it in very small chunks. Some books need to be read in longish sessions I think.

I found The Lamp of the Wicked - number 5 in the series - compelling reading. The background to it the Fred West murder cases and a possible copy cat killer - with of course supernatural elements. A very good and thought provoking mystery.

Still reading Phil Rickman . . . .

2010-07-19T03:04:00.000-07:00

I'm part way through The Lamp of the Wicked - which is the 5th in the Merrily Watkins series. It's good when books you haven't read for years are just as good - if not better when you read them again. I've read nearly five in a week and have stayed up later than normal on several evenings because I couldn't put the book down.

I'm also listening to an audio book of Jane Austen's The Watsons and Sanditon - her two unfinished novels. I really wish she'd lived long enough to finish Sanditon as I'm sure it would have been one of her best books.

I also have an audio book - all 14 discs of it - of Bill Bryson's At Home: A Short History of Private Life which looks like being good. I got that through the Amazon Vine programme - free - which can't be bad.

Recent murders

2010-07-16T05:01:00.001-07:00

I find the glorification of Raoul Moat as a sort of anti-hero to be frankly quite sick making. The victim blaming which also seems to be going on is also not pleasant. Yes his ex-girlfriend - if everything said so far is to be believed - didn't behave very sensibly in taunting him. But many of us may have done equally silly things in our time - I know I have. Maybe she thought she'd stop him doing anything stupid by saying she was with a member of the police - which perhaps shows she has more respect for the police than many of Moat's supporters apparently have. In any case the answer to someone 'winding you up' is not to kill all and sundry. What's with this expression 'you're winding me up'? I find it really irritating. The same with 'you're doing my head in'. You can chose how you react to things and ought to be able to control your own responses - if you can't then you walk away - and stay away from the person who is 'winding you up'.

That said I don't think David Cameron should have asked for the Facebook page to be taken down. I'm all for freedom of speech - even if I don't like what is said and I'm also of the opinion that the majority don't agree with most of what has been said in support of Moat. It's better to let stupid people expose themselves to ridicule really or as my grandfather always said; 'better to keep quiet and be thought a fool than open your mouth and remove all doubt'.

Phil Rickman

2010-07-12T05:52:00.001-07:00

I'm a fan of Phil Rickman's Merrily Watkins series about a Church of England Exorcist - now called Deliverance Consultants. It is quite some time since I first read The Wine of Angels which was the first in the series so I decided to re-read it at the weekend. I found myself totally hooked and when I'd finished it yesterday I immediately started the next one - Midwinter of the Spirit. These are gripping stories set in Herefordshire in a fictional village called Ledwardine. In the first book Merrily is the newly appointed Priest-in-Charge of the parish.

Village life with all its fallings out and cliques is well portrayed. A newcomer wants to stage a drama in the church to rehabilitate a 17th century vicar - Wil Williams. But things are not as simple as they seem. There is ghostly activity in the vicarage and Jane - Merrily's daughter - has some strange other worldly experiences. This is a gripping story and it keeps you reading even when you're hair is standing on end. It even made me break my usual habit of reading several books at the same time - even though I'd read it before.

The Tapestry of Love

2010-07-09T02:45:00.000-07:00

I am currently reading Rosy Thornton's The Tapestry of Love and it's very good. Catherine decides to go and live in France. Why isn't really made clear - or it hasn't been so far and I'm two thirds the way through it. She finds it very easy to fit in with her neighbours in the tiny village she moves to - partly because she does speak French. She sets up a business making soft furnishings and upholstering furniture as well as designing and stitching tapestries and is asked to repair a ceremonial banner for the church. This is a gentle story about people and their surroundings and nature. Just the sort of book to read in a deck chair on a hot summer's day - with or without - a bottle of wine. Lovely cover design too.

Minor works

2010-07-08T05:51:00.001-07:00

I have thoroughly enjoyed reading Jane Austen's minor works - Lady Susan, The Watsons and Sanditon. Lady Susan is a novella and complete in itself. The Watsons is about 50 pages of a novel as is Sanditon.

Lady Susan is written in the epistolary form and presents a picture of one the nastiest most manipulative fashionable ladies in fiction I think. She descends on friends and relatives at a moment's notice and stays too long. She delights in enticing men away from their wives or girl friends - for the hell of it. Her own interpretation of her conduct is of course completely different. She has no qualms about adultery or about treating her teenage daughter something like a parcel - moving her between friends and schools and trying to marry her off to someone rich and gullible.

The Watsons is about a family living in a small village on very little money. Emma Watson has just returned from several years living with an aunt. The Aunt has re-married and Emma has lost any hope she might have of being left any money. The story centres on the intereaction between a group of country families. By the end of the fragment it is unclear whether Emma will end up with Mr Howard - the local clergyman - or Lord Osbourne - who seems to have a passing resemblance to Mr Darcy.

Sanditon is about a seaside village which two local landowners - Mr Parker and Lady Denham - are hoping to turn into a fashionable seaside resort. Mr Parker has Charlotte Heywood staying with him and his family in return for being looked after following a carriage accident. There are many hypochondriacs of all ages who are brought vividly to life and the village is described in some detail. If the book had been finished I can't help feeling it would have been as good as anything else Jane Austen wrote. Unfortunately it was left unfinished when she died.

Policing in Yorkshire

2010-07-03T03:28:00.000-07:00

I like reading books about people's work and Mike Pannett's Not on my Patch, Lad is excellent. It shows what policing is really about - understanding criminal behaviour and what is likely to happen. yes, the police need the technology - communications, DNA testing, computerised records etc - but they also need intuition and flying by the seat of your pants. Many problems can be solved by having a quiet word - a man living nude in a wood. Others need a sterner approach and probably a court appearance - like the men who are targeting garden sheds and stealing lawn mowers.

Knowing your area and knowing what could happen is a big part of the work - and luck and being in the right place at the right time. I enjoyed reading about the funny incidents - the gang who stripped down a Land Rover and took the bits away (they were caught); the gang who dismantled part of the back wall of a supermarket brick by brick to remove the safe from the manager's office (they were also caught eventually). Then there's the author's Countryside Watch initiative (like neighbourhood watch) which helped them catch the lawn mower thieves by acting as the police's eyes and ears.

I recommend the book - it is interesting reading.

Currently reading

2010-06-30T04:07:00.000-07:00

Jane Austen's Persuasion - I'm also listening to an Audio book version as well. I've just got past the bit where Louisa Musgrove knocks herself out at Lyme Regis. I think the book is probably the least humorous of the six novels - possibly because it was written when the author was ill. I am enjoying it though and the portrait of Anne's hypochondriac sister is brilliant. A few minutes conversation with Anne and she is suddenly so much better that she can go out and pay a visit to her in-laws! Everyone uses Anne as a go-between so she inevitably gets both sides of any argument which is going on.

I'm also reading Dan Waddell's Blood Atonement - the sequel to Blood Detective which I read last week.

I just read Kirsty Robinson's Grass Stains about Louisa, a journalist, who is teetering on the brink of a breakdown and really doing nothing to stop herself falling over the edge. If you like the sort of book which depicts the excesses of the drink and drugs culture as though it is a really great lifestyle - then maybe this is the book for you. I'm afraid it brought out the prude in me and I just wanted to shake both Louisa and Dan - her alcoholic and junkie husband - and tell them there is more to life than getting wasted.

I've just started Kate Atkinson's Started Early, Took My Dog - which I'm really not sure about yet. It is set in Leeds - a city I know quite well - which drew me to read it. I'll see how it develops - it may improve.

I'm also reading Mike Pannett's Not on my Patch, Lad about his experiences of policing in North Yorkshire. I enjoy books about people's jobs and have read the previous two by this author.

Northanger Abbey

2010-06-26T02:43:00.000-07:00

Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey is probably the least well regarded novel of the 6. I really like it. She manages to steer a middle path between parodying the trend for Gothic novels but at the same time supporting the novel writer's art. Catherine Morland visits Bath in the company of her friends Mr and Mrs Allen. How she makes friends with the Thorpes - Isabella and John - and the Tilneys - Eleanor and Henry and learns the difference between friends who have her best interests at heart and those who don't makes an amusing story.

Isabella must be one of the most manipulative, simpering and silly women in Austen's books. Yes she has to make a reasonably wealthy marriage - having no fortune of her own - but to behave how she does is not the best way to achieve that aim. The misunderstandings about everyone's relative wealth and status are the sub text for the love story of Henry and Catherine. Ultimately it does not matter to Henry how much Catherine's fortune is because he has enough money of his own, but others in the story such as his father, have other opinions.

Catherine is not typical heroine material, as her creator acknowledges, but I found myself warming to her as she tries to make sense of her world. Her journey home on her own shows she is made of sterner stuff than the average heroine. Her civil manners and generous tipping provide her with good care and treatment as she has to sort out hiring her own post horses - a frightening prospect for a young girl of 17 in the early 19th century.

I have Persuasion, the Juvenilia, Sanditon, The Watsons and Lady Susan left to read. I have read Persuasion before - though not for many years - the rest I have not read, so that is a treat in store.

Blood Detective

2010-06-23T02:54:00.000-07:00

I read Dan Waddell's Blood Detective on my train journey on Monday. It was extremely good - though I had my doubts about it when reading the first two pages - 2 people threw back their manes of hair!! So I was thinking - oh no! - there are going to be too many cliches in this book! But it wasn't like that at all - or maybe I didn't notice them because of the exciting and complex plot.

A murder victim is found in London with what appears to be a reference number carved into its chest. This proves to be a reference number for the GRO registers of births marriages and deaths. Fortunately one of the detectives - Heather Jenkins - knows of a family history researcher - Nigel Barnes - and contacts him about it. Heather Jenkins and Grant Foster - the detectives - are then involved in an exciting to chase to try and second guess what the murdered is going to do next based on what happened in 1879.

My only complaint about the book was that some of the violence was a bit too graphic for my taste and that yet again we have a hard drinking morose policeman. I really wish someone would write a crime novel featuring a cheerful detective - maybe someone has done so - if so can anyone let me know who? In spite of that criticism I shall be reading the next one in the series - and skipping the violent bits.

Problems of choosing a book for a train journey

2010-06-20T04:44:00.000-07:00

I am off to Norwich by train tomorrow and I was pondering what book to take with me. It has to fit in my bag and not be too heavy to carry around. Should it be an old favourite or something previously unread? If an old favourite it might not quite fit my mood. If unread I might decide I don't like it after page 1. So should I take two books with me? An average size one and a thin one perhaps?

You see even the most trivial decision is fraught with difficulty if you want it to be. I was debating whether to take Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey with me but I like to appreciate Austen in peace and quiet - so maybe not her. But there is Joan Aiken's Mansfield Revisited (thank you, Noreen, for the information about this) which may need less savouring but is fewer than 200 pages long. My journey is about 2.5 hours each way and I therefore need something longer than 200 pages.

In the end I've plumped for Dan Waddell's The Blood Detective and Joan Aiken's Mansfield Revisited - neither of them heavy books in the physical sense; and I'm taking my trusty Kangol messenger bag so there's plenty of room. I had considered a heavy weight tome about feminism - Simone De Beauvoir's The Second Sex but as I've tried to read that before and found it difficult a train journey is not the place to get to grips with it.

Outraged!

2010-06-18T04:26:00.000-07:00

This really belongs on Lady Sophia but it deserves as much publicity as it can get. I've just read an article on www.thefword.org.uk about someone called Dr Dix Poppas who is surgically reducing the clitorises of small girls because he deems them too big. The reason? in order for the girls to 'undergo a more natural psychological and sexual development'. The details of the follow up examinations nearly made me regurgitate my lunch and need to be read to be believed. www.thefword.org/blog/2010/06/first_do_no_har

Kate Fforde

2010-06-16T04:07:00.000-07:00

I think I've read all Katie Fforde's books at various times. Her latest is A Perfect Proposal. She writes light women's fiction which is a relaxing read and her earliest books - Wild Designs, Living Dangerously and Life Skills - were all excellent reading but her later ones were not so good in my opinion. Highland Fling was the one which started to put me off her books. The edition I read had so many typos in it that it almost looked as though it had never been proof read. I hope these error were corrected in later editions. I think it was at that point that her books suddenly became about 85% dialogue and virtually no narrative.

I have no problem with dialogue - if it is well written, which hers is - but I do like to see a larger proportion of narrative in the novels I read. Her last book Love Letters - set in the literary world - was good - almost back to the standard of her earlier work. So I had high hopes of A Perfect Proposal. I did enjoy it but . . . It seemed almost as though there were two books trying to get out. There was the story about Luke and his grandmother Matilda - from New York and there was the story with Sophie's (the heroine's) family. There just seemed to be too much material for one book and it seemed a little disjointed and sort of thrown together in a hurry. The problem is, I think, that Katie Fforde has found a formula that works and sells books - which she and her publisher obviously love - but I think she needs to maybe do something a bit different.

If you like light fiction then don't let me put you off - just read her earlier books as listed above. - anything prior to about 2003 was excellent in my opinion.

Interview with Leigh Russell

2010-06-14T02:28:00.000-07:00

I interviewed Leigh Russell - author of Cut Short and Road Closed - by e-mail last month. Here are her responses to my questions.

How did you first get into writing?

It seems unbelievable that three years ago I had an idea, started writing and haven't been able to stop since. It was like turning on a tap.

Was Cut Short your first published work?

Yes. In fact Cut Short was the first story I ever wrote.

What do you think about creative writing courses and have you ever attened one? Do you think they help writers achieve publication?

I've never attended a creative writing course so I can't really comment on how useful they are, but I've given talks to a number of writers' groups and I think the mutually supportive atmosphere can be very positive. It is very helpful for any writer to have trusted readers who can give feedback.

In what way was Road Closed easier, or more difficult, to write than Cut Short?

I enjoyed writing Cut Short, I enjoyed writing Road Closed and I'm enjoying writing Dead End. I just love writing! My main problem is finding enough time to write!

Do you think it is important to have a series character - such as Geraldine Steel - in crime novels?

I hadn't anticipated how important it would be, but fortunately there has been a generally positive response to my detective so far, which has surprised me! Her popularity has even spread to the US where Jeffery Deaver wrote 'you're just plain going to love Geraldine Steel' and US Publishers Weekly described Geraldine as 'a compassionate and complex heroine who's sure to win fans.' I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they are right.

How do you research the police procedural side of your books?

The best form of research is always real people. I'm lucky that I have one particularly knowledgeable contact in the police force who always responds to my queries immediately and in great detail. Sometimes I have quite trivial questions to which I could never find an answer by researching on the Internet. I have collected a number of fans on the force who are all incredibly helpful and I'm very grateful for their input.

How did you feel about Jessica Mann's comments last year about crime novels always featuring women as corpses? Do you consciously decide to have a man or a woman as a corpse or does this come out of the needs of the plot itself?

This arises out of the plot. All my corpses in Cut Short are women but this certainly isn't true in Road Closed or Dead End. I'm not going to say any more!

Many very popular authors put an excessive amount of graphic violence in their books as violence seems to sell well. Cut Short contains very little 'one the page' violence - did you deliberately set out to write a crime story with very little violence?

No. Graphic descriptions of violence don't inspire me for their own sake, although I will include them if the plot requires it. It is the characters who interest me, and what motivates them, so if I have a character who is a sadist I might include a violent scene exploring my character's feelings. I do find some contemporary crime writers rely too heavily on the shock factor of violent scenes, instead of focusing on writing a gripping story.

Did you get any rejections for Cut Short before No Exit Press accepted it?

No. I sent my manuscript out to three publishers who specialise in crime fiction and No Exit Press telephoned me two weeks later to express interest and shortly after that they offered me a three book deal.

Do you have an agent? Do you think it necessary for an author to have an agent in order to find a publisher?

I recently signed up an agent after the runaway success of Cut Short. I seem to have done everything the wrong way round! In general I would say it is much better to seek representation before looking for a publisher as agents can advise and guide an aspiring author. I was unusually lucky to find a publisher straightaway without an agent and it was my success, once published, that led to interest from agents, rather than the other way round.

How did you first create the character of Geraldine Steel?

When I started writing Cut Short I had no plans to write a series. It never even occurred to me that my writing would one day be published. So I wrote what interested me. I was fascinated by my killer and wrote pages and pages about him. My detective was really only there to serve the plot. My editor quite reasonably pointed out that the detective continues from book to book and had to become a character in her own right who would hopefully engage my readers' interests. At that point I had to do some work on my detective's character and her story begins to unfold in Road Closed and develops further in Dead End.

Do you have plans for any more books featuring Geraldine Steel following on from Road Closed?

I have written the first draft of the third book in my series, Dead End, and my publishers have already put it an offer for a fourth book, so it looks as though the series is going to run for a while.

Do you think of your plots first or the characters?

I think the crime - so far murder - comes into my head first, so that's really a combination of plot and character. Although it's the plot that drives my narrative, my characters and their motives are my main interest.

Some authors use complicated systems for plotting their novels such as charts and timelines. How did you work out the plot of Road Closed?

I didn't plan Cut Short at all. I just started writing one day and found I couldn't stop. I had to so some work on my initial manuscript once I found a publisher, to make sure readers would be able to follow what was going on. I did plan Road Closed on an A3 sheet of paper. My novels are written in 'real time' in the sense that I follow the investigation day by day. So I plotted what each character would be doing each day. That meant that when I moved certain events there was a knock on effect on everything else that occurred. I got in a terrible muddle but managed to sort it out in the end. By the time I was plotting Dead End I had an agent who advised me to write a ten page synopsis so I could see where everything was going to fit in before I started writing. Sounds foolproof? I'm afraid I still ended up getting in a muddle as I decided to move a murder to improve the narrative pace. I write very easily but organisation is not my strong point!

Do you write with a pen or pencil or straight onto a computer?

When I started writing I followed a certain routine writing every word in long hand before typing it up. Now that I'm more practiced - and more confident - I can type, write, jot down, scribble - you name it. When I'm writing, I write, and I'll use whatever comes to hand.

I've heard other writers say that their characters sometimes 'take over' and start doing things which they hadn't planned for them. Have you ever had such an experience?

Yes! Because crime fiction has to be tightly plotted, characters often need to perform certain actions for the sake of the plot, but as an author I cannot allow a character to step 'out of character' or my readers might not believe in them. So I have to keep a tight rein on how my characters want to develop. It's not always easy.

Thank you very much to Leigh for answering my questions. Both Cut Short and Road Closed can be purchased online from http://www.amazon.com/ or from http://www.amazon.co.uk/ I can thoroughly recommend both of them and I hope they continue to sell well. There's always room on the shelves for well written crime.

Reading Emma

2010-06-12T04:10:00.000-07:00

I am re-reading Jane Austen's novels in order of publication and having read Mansfield Park I have recently started on Emma. I studied the book for A level in the late 1960s and apart from listening to an Audio version of it I haven't re-read it since. The book has a lighter feel to it that Mansfield Park but it is still a very moral book in some ways. Emma is frequently reproved by Mr Knightley for not treating people how she should do - most notably being rude to Miss Bates in the famous Box Hill incident. Emma does learn throughout the book and becomes a better person in the long run.

Many people like Frank Churchill as a character but I find him too smarmy and insincere. He does not treat Jane Fairfax well at all especially when you consider his clandestine relationship with her. It is a book which repays several readings as do all Jane Austen's novels.

Time's Legacy

2010-06-09T08:18:00.000-07:00

I was lucky enough to get hold of a proof copy of Barbara Erskine's Time's Legacy which is not published until July in the UK. Naturally I devoured it in the space of two or three days. This one if a bit of a departure for Barbara Erskine I felt as her heroine is Abi Rutherford - a female curate in the Church of England. The book features the familiar time slip theme but this one also features a modern day Druid and several members of the clergy - not just Abi. There are also some pagans as well including Athena who runs a shop selling crystals and jewellery in Glastonbury.

Abi - having fallen out with her boss Kieran Scott - is sent by her Bishop to stay with some friends of his who live near Glastonbury. But she has not seen the last of Kier who has accused her of being a witch and conjuring up the spirits of the dead when they both see and hear a ghostly congregation in a church in Cambridge. This is a fascinating and compelling story of history and the present day and religions both past and present. I loved it and found it totally enthralling.

Road Closed

2010-06-04T08:00:00.000-07:00

Road Closed is Leigh Russell's second novel and the second in her DI Geraldine Steel series. I really enjoyed the first one in the series Cut Short and I looked forward to reading Road Closed. I wasn't disappointed.

The plot is complex with several apparently overlapping investigations. There's the unsolved series of burglaries, a murder of an elderly lady which might have been an accident and a deadly arson attack. Pretty standard police fare you might think. But then things get complicated with an apparently unprovoked attack on a local small time villain. Geraldine herself has problems with her on/off relationship with Craig, a local estate agent, her mother's death and a demanding friend who can't understand Geraldine' devotion to her job.

The characters are believable and I really like Geraldine herself who is far from perfect, unlike some fictional police officers. I also liked the way everything dovetailed together so that while you're reading you get those light bulb moments when a piece of the jigsaw slots into place. I thought the petty villains and the arson victim's widow were particularly well drawn as was the elderly man whiling away his time in the seedy pub.

Enjoyable crime, without the graphic blood and guts so many authors use and well worth reading if you enjoy psychological police procedural novels where the police seem like real people with lives outside the job. I'm looking forward to the next one in this series.

I will be posting an interview with Leigh Russell on jillysheep on Monday 14 June 2010.

The Slap

2010-06-02T04:41:00.000-07:00

I finally got to the end of The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas. The plot idea is good: man slaps child - not his own - at BBQ; child's parents report him to the police and the case goes to court. The basis of the plot is the reverberations around the circle of family and friends - some of whom support the parents and others support the perpetrator of the slap. The book is divided into sections - each of which concentrates on an individual who was at the BBQ.

Here it all goes pear shaped as far as I'm concerned. The obnoxious swear word on the first page; the violent impulses of many of the male characters; the concentration on bodily functions; and the obviously endemic racism against anyone who isn't exactly like the character whose thoughts the reader happens to be privy to at the time. Yes I'm sure the writer is accomplished and he paints an interesting and accurate(?) picture of middle class life in Melbourne. But do people in Melbourne really behave in this way? Are they constantly fantasising about attacking their wives or any one else they don't happen to like at that moment?Misogyny is rife and what a man says goes. The women who attempt to stand up to them are mainly defeated.

I found I didn't really care what happened to any of the characters and the book was about 250 pages too long for me. There was too much verbiage; too much irrelevant back story for all the characters which clouded all the issues. If the author had concentrated on the ripples spreading out from the slap and nothing else it would have been a powerful story. As it was, I felt there were at least two novels trying to get out and to remove most of the second one would have left a much better book.

Reading . . . .

2010-05-30T05:00:00.000-07:00

I finished reading Jane Austen's Mansfield Park last night and I do like Fanny Price. So many people think she is a little boring. But anyone who can ignore the unpleasant Mrs Norris, stand up to Sir Thomas Bertram and refuse the attentions of the smarmy Henry Crawford must have more going for her than many readers seem to think. I suspect many people who don't like her forget that what is acceptable behaviour now definitely wasn't then. Henry's flirtations with Maria and Julia Bertram would be considered unimportant now but then - when marriage was as much a business transaction as an emotional relationship - it was a different matter.

I started reading Leigh Russell's Road Closed last night and found it engrossing reading - to the extent that I read all of part 1 - about 8o pages- even though I had the latest Barbara Erskine tugging at my sleeve and clamouring for my attention! I did start reading Time's Legacy as well before I fell asleep. I'm lucky enough to have received a proof copy of Time's Legacy through Amazon Vine - which allows its members to pick from a list of free books - usually advance copies - every month. I was surprised to see Barbara Erskine on there because she has a large readership anyway. Lady of Hay sold 2 million copies! But I'm more than glad to receive a copy at least 6 weeks before publication.

How time flies . . .

2010-05-28T07:03:00.000-07:00

I really don't know where this week has gone to and now it's the weekend already! I've just had the front garden done with blue slate chippings - as I got really fed up with the lawn which never really looked right in any case and didn't grow very well in patches where it got too dry and where it got no sun. We've still got the hedge and the Rowan tree so it's not completely barren. Next door one side had their pocket handkerchief done as well. At the moment it looks very bright but it will look all right once it's been rained on.

I'm currently still indulging in an orgy of Jane Austen; reading Mansfield Park and listening to Sense and Sensibility. I'm also reading The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas which is about a man at a friend's BBQ who slaps a child - not his own. The book is about the repercussions from that one single act has amongst the friends who were at the BBQ when the parents of the child go to the police.

What a good idea for a novel you might think as it provides lot of opportunities for showing characters in their ordinary lives and the effect of one ill thought out action on them and their relationships. But it is set in Melbourne and the culture there must be completely different from the UK. There is much use of heavy duty swear words, casual racism and a fascination with violent imagery. At least two of the main characters - male - are having affairs.

It is clear the men are the boss at home. They walk into a room and change the music their wives are listening to and insist on their choices. Wives get bawled out if they talk about their lives to anyone and the husbands are always thinking about smashing their faces in even if they regard themselves as happily married. Not pleasant. The writing is good and it would be even more powerful if the bad language, violence, misogyny and racism weren't there. It is perfectly possible to indicate that a character swears without using the words.

For light entertainment I'm also reading Victoria Clayton's Dance with Me.

I have received today - from Amazon - my copy of Leigh Russell's Road Closed - the month before official publication so I will probably be able to post my interview with Leigh AND a review of the book at the same time. I'm looking forward to reading it.

Sheer stupidity

2010-05-23T04:10:00.000-07:00

www.henrymakow.com is not noted for its sensible articles - unless you go for the wilder shores of conspiracy theory land. However I was totally taken aback by an article entitled 'Do animated movies prepare children for sodomy?' posted on 22 May 2010 and written by someone called Sam Peyo.

The author analyses movies such as Shark Tale, Madagascar I, Ice Age II attempting to show that there are scenes in which homosexuality can be inferred by the characters' appearances or behaviour or from scenes where animals are hit up the behind by something or someone. The latter is pretty standard cartoon stuff I would have thought but there seems to be a deeper meaning in it to this author. As for Melman the Giraffe being gay in Madagascar - I must say I didn't notice. Was there really a character in Ice Age II who wore an ear ring? If so it completely passed me by and I have seen the film.

The author might just as well be saying that the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz was gay because of his behaviour and what about the cowardly lion? Obviously a woman trapped in a man's body.

I sometimes wonder whether people like this author have ever heard of 'projection' because it seems to me there's a hell of a lot of projection going on here.

Road Closed and Leigh Russell

2010-05-21T02:37:00.000-07:00

I reviewed Leigh Russell's first book, Cut Short, on this blog last year and her latest one featuring DI Geraldine Steel called Road Closed will be out in June. I will be publishing an interview with Leigh during June - probably about 14th or 15th. I will also be reviewing Road Closed during June.

Cut Short is the sort of crime story I really enjoy - not too much violence - a complex and intriguing plot - interesting and believable characters. I am looking forward to reading Road Closed and publishing my first author interview - which I hope people will enjoy reading. Thank you to Leigh for taking the time to answer my questions.

The Vault

2010-05-19T09:23:00.000-07:00

I have read a few of Peter Lovesey's Peter Diamond series of crime novels and enjoyed them. The other night I was rummaging around in my unread books pile and came across a very old and battered copy of The Vault. I just fancied reading something not too deep and crime-ish. It is excellent. Bath, Mary Shelley and Frankenstein and William Blake's art - pretty good combination really I thought.

It is a complex story of all sorts of disparate bits which are, of course, all interconnected. The characters are well drawn - an eccentric antiques dealer, a flash local councillor, an apparent hippie who runs a travelling puppet theatre, a persistent journalist who wants to join the police and an English Literature Professor from the US who is crazy about Mary Shelley. I can't really write any more about it without giving away the plot but I really enjoyed it.

Northanger Abbey

2010-05-16T03:00:00.000-07:00

I've been listening to an audio book of Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey read by Juliet Stevenson and really enjoyed it. It pokes fun at the craze for Gothic novels such as Ann Radcliffe's Mysteries of Udolpho in the early 19th century. Catherine Morland visits Bath with her friends Mr and Mrs Allen. She makes friends with Isabella and John Thorpe - a brother and sister who it is clear are definitely not quite her sort of people even though they are friends with her brother. Then she meets Henry and Eleanor Tilney - another brother and sister who are in Bath with their father - General Tilney. An invitation to stay at their home Northanger Abbey soon follows - which delights Catherine not least because of the prospect of staying in an abbey.

As ever Jane Austen creates some lovable characters and some thoroughly objectionable ones - such as John Thorpe who does his best to break up Catherine's friendship with the Tilneys. I laughed over some of it and even cried towards the end. What is it about audio books which brings stories to life? I wonder whether it is that it reminds me of being read to as a child? Who knows? I know I find it relaxing to listen to them - especially Jane Austen - and now have 5 of her 6 novels in unabridged format. I am also re-reading the text as well and have read Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice and have just started Mansfield Park. I have yet to but an unabridged edition of Persuasion - that is next on my list.

Wild Romance

2010-05-13T03:03:00.000-07:00

That got you reading! It's the title of a book by Chloe Schama about a lady called Theresa Longworth who met a guy called William Yelverton on a steamer travelling from France to England. They start writing to each other and eventually meet up again. After several years they go through an informal marriage service in Scotland and then a church service in Ireland. But were they really married? Theresa believed so but William eventually married someone else. Theresa attempted through court cases in Ireland and Scotland to get his subsequent marriage declared bigamous - without any real success. She spent the rest of her life travelling the world and writing about it and he disappeared into obscurity.

The first half of the book - the growth of the relationship and the trials - was fascinating reading but the second half almost seemed like padding. There wasn't really a whole book in this in my opinion though it could have been used as a jumping off point to examine the invidious legal position of women, and especially married women, in Victorian England. Married women weren't treated as individuals but as extensions of their husbands therefore it was virtually impossible for a wife to challenge her husband in a court of law. Theresa found herself damned if she did and damned if she didn't. She had to prove the marriage legal or risk damaging her reputation beyond repair.

Books read and reading

2010-05-09T06:16:00.000-07:00

Lucy Kellaway's In Office Hours should be read by anyone who works, or has worked in an office. It is about two women at opposite ends of the office hierarchy at Atlantic Energy. Both for reasons, which are not always clear even to them, embark on affairs with colleagues. The reader knows at the start of the book that both affairs are over and both women no longer work for Atlantic Energy. The story is about how the affairs themselves and how they ended. Office life is well described and the intensity an affair gives to life in general. Stella - high flying economist - muses at one point that she has paid far less attention to her work than she has ever done and yet that is the time she is promoted. I chuckled over that because I could remember feeling exactly the same when I got promoted!

Mavis Cheek's Truth to Tell is a little different from some of her previous work. I've read all of her novels but did not enjoy Patrick Parker's Progress or Yesterday's Houses but this latest one is a return to her earlier form I thought. I read it in two evenings and really enjoyed. Nina decides to tell the truth at all times and as a result her husband Robert goes on a team building event on his own in Florida where she would normally go with him. Nina soon finds that always telling the truth turns everything in her life upside down. The story that follows, narrated by Nina, is amusing and well written with many literary allusions. I enjoyed it especially as the heroine was middle aged rather than in her twenties and her children are almost grown up.

I'm currently listening to Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey read by Juliet Stevenson which is really good as she brings all the characters to life. I'm really into complete novels as audio books and have just replaced by abridged version of Sense and Sensibility with a complete version. I am also reading Mansfield Park.

I'm just about to start reading Christobel Kent's A Fine and Private Place which is her latest book featuring her PI - Sandro Cellini - and set in Florence.

Reading . . . .

2010-05-04T09:21:00.000-07:00

Milly Johnson's A Summer Fling is one of those books where you hate turning the last page. Feel good factor in spades and women whose friendship with one another is just as important as a date with the man they're interested in. If you want something to curl up with on a wet weekend - in summer or not - read it. This is chick lit about 'real' people in a real place. You could imagine meeting them in the supermarket queue.

I've just started reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot which is absolutely gripping reading. Henrietta was an African-American woman who died in 1951. She had cancer of the cervix - which is not that unusual - but the type of cancer was unusual. For a long time scientists had been trying without success to grow human cells in laboratory conditions. They could sometimes get them to grow for a short time but then they died. The cells taken from Henrietta's tumour however were different - they multiplied at an alarming rate and weren't too fussy about what they grew in or the conditions they were stored under. For the first time human cells could be used for research studies because cancer cells share many of the characteristics of human cells.

These cells - referred to as HeLa cells - were sent to labs all over the world and have helped - among other things - to test the original polio vaccine. The book is a fascinating study of Henrietta's life and the way the immortality of her cells has affected her family. I'm about half way through and finding it fascinating.

Currently reading . . .

2010-04-27T03:18:00.000-07:00

Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice - and just reached the point at which Elizabeth is struggling to come to terms with Charlotte's engagement to Mr Collins. Elizabeth wants to marry for love but Charlotte is content to settle for her own home. Both have a similar amount of money behind them - i.e. not much - but Elizabeth is pretty. Have things changed? Looks are still - apparently - just as important but does money matter as much? There is a different attitude to it now I think. Women looking to marry a fortune were as common as men looking to do the same thing at the beginning of the 19th century - and gold digging was not a concept which would have meant very much as marrying money was considered no more than common sense, whether you were male or female. Interesting times.

Nicola Barker's Burley Cross Postbox Theft is a revival of the epistolary form in novel writing. I do like the form but I'm not sure about this book. It is amusing but the letters are too long I think. 26 letters are stolen from a post box in the village and found in a bag in an alley. They are handed over to a local policeman whose job it is to try and find out who broke into the post box. The letters reveal the usual cross section of oddities and feuds which might be expected in a village and some are funny. There's a bit too much lavatorial humour for my taste; one 'letter' is a transcript of a tape made by someone sitting on a loo - complete with 'sound' effects; another is about dog poo - several pages - and the same subject appears in another letter. I'll reserve judgement until I've finished it but at the moment I'm having trouble keeping the characters straight in my mind.

Re-reading Jane Austen

2010-04-24T02:59:00.000-07:00

I've been listening to audio books of Jane Austen's novels recently - Emma, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility and currently Pride and Prejudice. Apart from Sense and Sensibility all the versions I have are unabridged so they provide anywhere from 12 to 15 hours listening. Listening to them has prompted me to re-read the books. I started reading Sense and Sensibility yesterday and I'm about two thirds the way through it. If anyone had asked me before I would have said S & S was probably my least favourite but actually it is really good.

There is no violence, no sex - except by implication. Colonel Brandon's ward - later his sister-in-law - has an illegitimate child as does her child. But it is enthralling reading and all of human nature is here. The vulgar but very good hearted Mrs Jennings; the excitable Marianne; the sensible Elinor; the two Steele sisters - Lucy and Anne - Lucy sly and Anne not very clever; Willoughby - the arch villain - though even he has some redeeming features; Colonel Brandon - apparently dull but merely quiet and intelligent; the Middletons and the Ferrars.

The dialogue is well done though obviously more long winded than in the 21st century. The author's comments on the ways her characters behave and the morives for their actions are brilliant. Marianne simply says - rather rudely - she doesn't want to play cards - Elinor suggests to Lady Middleton she would be better employed helping Lucy with her filigree work as she is making a present for Lady Middleton's daughter - and thus achieves her aim (talking in private to Lucy) - and keeps everyone happy.

Jane Austen may have lived a restricted life but she had plenty of opportunities to study and analyse people and society in general and her observations are put to good use in her novels.

Jane Austen - Ancient and Modern

2010-04-20T02:32:00.000-07:00

I've enjoyed all 6 of Elizabeth Aston's Pride and Prejudice sequels and I looked forward to her latest book with interest. Writing Jane Austen is set in the present day and features an American academic living in London. Georgina Jackson is commissioned against her better judgement to complete a Jane Austen fragment. What follows is an amusing story about Gina's writers' block and her resistance to even reading Jane Austen's novels.

Gina visits Bath and goes on a Jane Austen tour and she does finally read the novels - and it totally bowled over by them. But can she complete her commission in within the three months' time limit? The characters are fascinating - her landlord Henry and his sister Maud - a Janeite; her fearsome agent, Livia; and Henry's housekeeper Anna. Most (all?) characters have names taken form the novels as well which makes for interesting reading if you know your Jane Austen.

This is a good light hearted read and I definitely didn't see the twist ending coming at all!

Murder by Mistake

2010-04-17T02:29:00.000-07:00

I am a fan of Veronica Heley's Ellie Quicke series and the latest one - Murder by Mistake - lives up to the high standard set by the previous books. Ellie is married to Thomas and living in Aunt Drusilla's house now that her aunt is dead. She is playing host to Ursula's wedding reception and looking after Mia as she recovers from her ordeal at the hands of her family and their friends. Ursula and Mia appeared in the previous book in the series Murder in House.

Everything is going smoothly with the wedding plans until Ellie's obnoxious daughter Diana appears and announces she wants to hold her own wedding reception at the house on the same day and Ursula's will have to be cancelled. But Ellie puts her foot down about it and refuses to cancel Ursula. So then it's two wedding receptions on the sane day - which would have been fine if someone hadn't decided to try and wipe out Mia and/or Ellie by various means.

This is a fast paced plot with an excellent mixture of fascinating characters. The constant battles between Ellie and her daughter are always interesting; and Ellie's endless curiosity about friends and neighbours and her efforts to help unravel their lives make for entertaining reading. The sub text is always Ellie trying to live up to her Christian principles - with her successes and failures. This could be sickly but isn't because Ellie is a strong character with a sense of humour and a well developed sense of the ridiculous as well as a good knowledge of human nature.

This is a series I collect in hardback and regularly re-read. It deserves to be better known in my opinion.

Philip Pullman

2010-04-16T04:38:00.001-07:00

I read Philip Pullman's The Good Man Jesus and that Scoundrel Christ with interest. It is an imaginative re-telling of the story in the Gospels from Jesus' birth, life, death and resurrection. He splits Jesus into two. Jesus himself and his twin brother Christ who faithfully records Jesus' words for posterity. The book offers some interesting thoughts on the way what actually happened becomes history and is distorted in the telling.

What I think is upsetting people more than anything is that the book highlights to difference between Christianity and the institution of the Church. Pullman has always said he is not anti religion but anti Church - not the same thing at all. Christianity as a belief system would still exist even if there was no Church to structure it. Isn't the quotation - 'when two or more are gathered together in my name . . . '?

An interesting book though I still prefer the King James version of the Bible because of the resonance of the language.

Hard Work

2010-04-14T02:28:00.000-07:00

I thought Polly Toynbee's book Hard Work was really excellent reading and it certainly made me stop and think. She had to pretend she was virtually destitute for the period of Lent and see what it was like doing a low paid job and trying to set up home from scratch. While she didn't claim Job Seekers' Allowance or a Social Fund loan she did go to DWP and talk about what she would be entitled to if she was in that situation so that she could establish how much money she would have to last her until she could get a job and where she could get cheap furniture from. She was loaned a council flat in a run down block that was being refurbished.

Some reviews have said the book is patronising but I didn't feel it was. She highlighted differences in income by saying she would have spent what she earned in a week from a low paid job on a meal out. I felt from reading the book that the author herself really learned a lot from the experience and it made her more understanding of the poor in society. She took several low paid jobs - mainly minimum wage - including - hospital porter, cake packer, nursery assistant,school dinner lady, early morning cleaner, care assistant in a nursing home and tele-sales.

What really came over to me was the inconvenience involved in getting a job. Bus rides or train trips to collect application forms or wait at a factory to see if there were any jobs, not being able to take away contracts - or even copies of them, turning up for interviews to find the person who arranged the interview has left the company etc etc. Even when you've got the job it's quite often through an agency with no printed terms and conditions and no job security or holidays. Even though we have employment laws in this country smaller employers do everything they can to get round them.

With the majority of jobs in the private sector cost cutting and profit are the all important things and everywhere is always understaffed so that one person off sick or left means that everyone else has to work even harder. In spite of this the author found many people doing more than they were asked to because they took a pride in their work and wanted to do the best they could. Even in dreadful jobs with difficult conditions people found it impossible to look for better jobs because of the time and effort involved. Many were trapped because the job was the only one which fitted in with childcare arrangements. More than 70% of the low paid jobs are done by women.

What really struck me was that when wages were compared with those paid for the same jobs in 1970 workers are relatively worse off now - in spite of the minimum wage being introduced in 1999. The author's interview with the anonymous 'Mr Jones' towards the end of the book shows how many medium sized private employers think of their staff - just as a means to make a profit. The book raises some interesting and complex issues about low paid work. Much of it is essential and if all the care assistants - for example - went on strike their absence would be noticed instantly; and yet they are paid less than enough to live on, even at a very basic level. No one seems to realise if employers spent more on training and paid better wages they would have much lower turnover of staff and probably a higher profit as a result.

Interesting and thought provoking stuff.

More books . . .

2010-04-12T03:02:00.000-07:00

I have just started this: Ruth Saberton - Katy Carter Wants a Hero. The author made headlines in some quarters by putting the manuscript through Richard and Judy's door at their holiday home. Fortunately they loved it and the rest, as they say, is history. It is chick lit but with masses of humour. The dinner party and the lobster which causes Katy to lose her home and her fiance is brilliant and laugh out loud funny. I'm about 100pages in and so far it is really good.

I have also started Philip Pullman's The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ. It is a simple imaginative retelling of the Gospel story. Jesus and Christ are twins with Jesus being the out going one who preaches and Christ the quiet one who takes down his words. Whether it will annoy or inspire is hard to say. I'm finding it interesting though modern use of language - in my opinion - does not compare with the resonance of the King James Bible.

I've read a few pages of Kal Bonner's Climbing a Ladder Backwards which Anne Brooke did not enjoy. I think it is going to be a little tedious - not because of the Instant Messaging aspect of it but because every joke appears to be somewhat overwritten. I keep wanting to go through it with a red pen crossing out the superfluous words which make it overdone. I will persevere if only because I like the stripy socks on the cover.

Still reading Polly Toynbee's Hard Work - I shall never call myself poor again.

I am nothing if not eclectic in my reading

Books currently in progress . . .

2010-04-10T03:45:00.000-07:00

Someone recommended Polly Toynbee's Hard Work to me a while back and I rummaged through my unread books and found I actually already had a copy of it! She left her comfortable life and took a flat in a run down tower block as an experiment to see what it was really like doing low paid jobs or living on benefit. It is interesting reading and she is honest enough to admit that she hadn't realised what it was really like living below the poverty line. Many people may be put off the book because of her political beliefs but I'm finding it illuminating.

Then there's Gross Misconduct: My Year of Excess in the City by Venetia Thompson which - if you can get past the bad language and the childish behaviour of many of her fellow workers - is an eye opener. It makes you realise why there are so many bullying and sex discrimination claims filed against banks and other financial organisations.

As a little light relief there's also Georgette Heyer's Bath Tangle.

Blood Harvest by S J Bolton was excellent - totally absorbing reading.

I have also just finished Echoes of the Goddess by Simon Brighton and Terry Welbourn about Goddess worship in Britain and the monuments which still exist if you know where to look for them. It also touches on witchcraft, Druids, Celtic Christianity, May Day festivals and pagan imagery in churches. I learned quite a lot from it including the apparent origins of the dance of the seven veils - Inanna's visit to the Underworld to visit her sister Erishkagal - she had to take off a garment at each of the seven gates of the underworld.

Blood Harvest

2010-04-07T03:54:00.000-07:00

I am currently reading Blood Harvest by S J Bolton and it is very very good. Not the sort of thing you want to read late at night in the house on your own. It features a village from hell where small children disappear and everyone takes part in strange and rather nasty customs. There is a new vicar, a very interesting female psychiatrist and a family who have misguidedly built a new house bang next to a graveyard. I am saying no more at the moment but if you like crime and more than a hint of the supernatural and religious you will love this.

jillysheep

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A marvellous book of short stories

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