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.
Showing posts with label Anthony Trollope. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Anthony Trollope. Show all posts
Wednesday, 25 May 2011
Saturday, 12 March 2011
Books, books and more books
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.
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.
Monday, 5 January 2009
Work and books
I suppose it could have been worse. Our manager's still off today and won't be in our office until Friday so it was peaceful. One more person has decided to take the money on the table and go so she leaves at the end of February. When she's gone there will be less than 20 people in the office altogether. We're starting to feel a bit like rats on a sinking ship. Certainly on my floor we're all feeling very demotivated. There's been nothing much happening while I've been off but maybe things will get moving now we've got the festivities over.
Books: I finished another Jane Austen 'sequel' The True Darcy Spirit by Elizabeth Aston last night and found it enjoyable and well written. This one was about the grand daughter of the formidable Lady Catherine of Pride and Prejudice fame. She was cast out by her family after eloping with a handsome sailor and then not marrying him and finds herself having to make her living in London without 'coming upon the town' as becoming a prostitute was called in the 19th century.
I am still progressing with Barchester Towers with all its misunderstandings and misapprehensions. Long winded though he may be at times Trollope still knew how to tell a good story and I love the way even his villains have that redeeming grain of something about them. I am up to the 300 page mark with nearly 200 more to go.
Books: I finished another Jane Austen 'sequel' The True Darcy Spirit by Elizabeth Aston last night and found it enjoyable and well written. This one was about the grand daughter of the formidable Lady Catherine of Pride and Prejudice fame. She was cast out by her family after eloping with a handsome sailor and then not marrying him and finds herself having to make her living in London without 'coming upon the town' as becoming a prostitute was called in the 19th century.
I am still progressing with Barchester Towers with all its misunderstandings and misapprehensions. Long winded though he may be at times Trollope still knew how to tell a good story and I love the way even his villains have that redeeming grain of something about them. I am up to the 300 page mark with nearly 200 more to go.
Thursday, 1 January 2009
It's 2009
The start of a New Year. It always feels a hopeful time to me. Whatever sort of mess I made of 2008 I can now move on and do better.
What do I want to achieve this year?
What do I want to achieve this year?
- A resolution to the job situation - the uncertainty has gone on long enough now (sine November 2006)
- Read lots more books
- Continue reading Anthony Trollope - over 100 pages into Barchester Towers now and thoroughly enjoying it
- Write more
- Try and update jillysheep every day
- Give the books to charity which I no longer want and which have not sold so far on eBay or Amazon. Things will feel less cluttered then.
- Enjoy life
Not really resolutions as such but things to bear in mind.
PS - Kilian, if you're reading this - I have joined the Trollope group on Yahoo but have not yet posted anything - thanks for the information and a Happy New Year
Saturday, 27 December 2008
Reading
I am currently reading Deborah Gregory's Dancing with the Dead and I'm not sure whether I will finish it - chiefly because I can't take to the main character. Her name is Gill and she moves with her actor husband - Seb - and two small children, Rosie and Adam, to a house in very rural Lincolnshire which belongs to her mother. All of this ought to make it my type of book especially when you add in the fact that the house is old and full of interesting bits and pieces and that her great aunt is sending her regular letters about the family's past - apparently from the grave. There is something very nasty in the woodshed which is gradually being revealed. Again this is my type of book - as far as I could be said to have a type of book. Gill herself seems unnecessarily self centred and cruel to her small daughter and her husband - which may of course all be explained later - and I just do not take to her at all. As the book is only about 200 pages and I've read nearly half I probably will persevere and finish it. The book is a bit over-written as well and I keep reading sentences and wanting to chop half of them out. Altogether a pretty good plot but . . . .
I am also part way through Alexander McCall Smith's La's Orchestra Saves the World about La - short for Lavender - who moves to rural Suffolk just before the outbreak of World War II and works for nothing on a farm as part of her war effort and sets up a very ad hoc orchestra to help boost the morale of the local people and the nearby RAF base. As ever the writing is charming and the story intriguing, though maybe not in quite the same league as the 44 Scotland Street series or the No 1 ladies Detective Agency but still worth reading.
As I always have at least two books on the go and usually more I read 50 pages of Anthony Trollope's The Warden last night. I was fortunate enough to buy all 6 of the Barchester novels in Folio Society editions just before Christmas and I'm intending to read them during 2009. I read both The Warden and Barchester Towers when I was still at school but have never read the other 4 - The Small House at Allington, Doctor Thorne, Framley Parsonage and The Last Chronicle of Barset.
Thinking about the Barchester novels reminded me that a twentieth century novelist adopted the geography of the novels in her own stories - Angela Thirkell. Not quite the same as a sequel but interesting for similar reasons.
I am also part way through Alexander McCall Smith's La's Orchestra Saves the World about La - short for Lavender - who moves to rural Suffolk just before the outbreak of World War II and works for nothing on a farm as part of her war effort and sets up a very ad hoc orchestra to help boost the morale of the local people and the nearby RAF base. As ever the writing is charming and the story intriguing, though maybe not in quite the same league as the 44 Scotland Street series or the No 1 ladies Detective Agency but still worth reading.
As I always have at least two books on the go and usually more I read 50 pages of Anthony Trollope's The Warden last night. I was fortunate enough to buy all 6 of the Barchester novels in Folio Society editions just before Christmas and I'm intending to read them during 2009. I read both The Warden and Barchester Towers when I was still at school but have never read the other 4 - The Small House at Allington, Doctor Thorne, Framley Parsonage and The Last Chronicle of Barset.
Thinking about the Barchester novels reminded me that a twentieth century novelist adopted the geography of the novels in her own stories - Angela Thirkell. Not quite the same as a sequel but interesting for similar reasons.
Thursday, 23 October 2008
Jane Austen Sequels
I am currently intrigued by the number of Jane Austen sequels/prequels etc there are out there. I had a quick scout round on Amazon and came up with a grand total of 67 though I'm sure there are more than that. I then looked up www.pemberley.com - which is a largely American site devoted to all things Jane. They have a section on sequels/prequels where I found more of them - and their lists didn't include some I'd found. The site also includes fanfiction - i.e stories which fans have posted which may or may not be of any literary merit at all.
Some authors seem to have made a career out of sequels to famous novels - e.g. Emma Tennant - who has also written around the Brontes as well. I've also located one by Rachel Billington - Perfect Happiness - a continuation of Emma. I suppose one of the well known books on this sort of theme is Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea which has become a classic in its own right and deals with the early life of the first Mrs Rochester - the mad woman in the attic from Jane Eyre.
The attraction of such literary efforts must be partly that the characters are already in existence so potentially you have a ready made audience for the book. Though of course the purists may not consider them to be worth reading. Many sequels do fail to achieve the popularity of the original - the sequel to Gone with the Wind sank without trace. Many of the spin offs from Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca have not been commercial successes.
Of course using the characters from work which is out of copyright is attractive as well, though sequels of works mentioned above have been sanctioned and even encouraged by copyright holders.
I have not checked to see whether there are any sequels to the works of Charles Dickens or Anthony Trollope. Both these authors must have abandoned minor characters who could be turned into heroes and heroines of their own stories and yet no one seems to have taken up the challenge - or not that I have heard of. Does anyone know any different?
Some authors seem to have made a career out of sequels to famous novels - e.g. Emma Tennant - who has also written around the Brontes as well. I've also located one by Rachel Billington - Perfect Happiness - a continuation of Emma. I suppose one of the well known books on this sort of theme is Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea which has become a classic in its own right and deals with the early life of the first Mrs Rochester - the mad woman in the attic from Jane Eyre.
The attraction of such literary efforts must be partly that the characters are already in existence so potentially you have a ready made audience for the book. Though of course the purists may not consider them to be worth reading. Many sequels do fail to achieve the popularity of the original - the sequel to Gone with the Wind sank without trace. Many of the spin offs from Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca have not been commercial successes.
Of course using the characters from work which is out of copyright is attractive as well, though sequels of works mentioned above have been sanctioned and even encouraged by copyright holders.
I have not checked to see whether there are any sequels to the works of Charles Dickens or Anthony Trollope. Both these authors must have abandoned minor characters who could be turned into heroes and heroines of their own stories and yet no one seems to have taken up the challenge - or not that I have heard of. Does anyone know any different?
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