Books read

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.

Bluestockings and How Not To Shop

Bluestockings by Jane Robinson is absolutely fascinating. It is strange to read how women had to fight for any sort of education as they were not considered worth educating. There's a marvellous quote from a sermon delivered by Dean Burgon of Chichester Cathedral in 1884 'Inferior to us God made you: and our inferiors to the end of time you will remain. But you are none the worse off for that.' The author comments that apparently his audience/congregation, brave souls, dissolved into incredulous laughter. I knew Oxford did not award degrees to women until the 1920s but I had not appreciated that Cambridge was even later - 1948!

I'm about half the way through the book which is written in a very approachable style. There is a comprehensive bibliography at the end and the author spoke to many of the women still alive who were involved in the early days of women's university education which really brings the whole subject to life.

How Not To Shop by Carmen Reid is excellent chick lit with great dialogue and characters. Yes there is a happy ending but there are also problems in the background. Annie Valentine - the heroine - is having to deal with her mother's increasing vagueness and with trying to support her sister through IVF. These issues are not reslolved at the end of the book. It's a real feel good read whether or not you've read the previous books in the series.

Where Does it Hurt?

Where Does it Hurt? by Max Pemberton is not quite what might have been expected from his previous book - Trust Me I'm a Junior Doctor. This latest offering is about the time he spent working at an outreach project with the homeless, drug addicts and people generally outside 'normal' society. He meets some real characters - the chap who thinks he's God who takes up residence near the back door of a Tesco supermarket; Molly the 80 year old drug addict and former working girl; Barry the schizophrenic who saves the author's life in a sticky situation; Georgia who goes mad and traps everyone in the outreach project's building; Janice the middle class housewife addicted to over the counter painkillers. Not all homeless people are drug addicts and not all drug addicts are homeless though many of each group have mental health problems.

There are people who want to be helped and others who don't. He is warned at the start he will be lucky if 5% of his patients turn their lives around. He has to go out and find many of his patients rather than them coming to him and he gets to know some of the seedier parts of the city intimately. The main point of this book is that there is no one solution to the problems of society because everyone at the bottom of the heap got there for different reasons.

I found the book moving and uplifting though it is difficult to know what to read after it! I have started Anne Brooke's The Bones of Summer and it looks good - especially seeing Paul from someone else's point of view; Bluestockings by Jane Robinson - strange to think women were first awarded degrees only in 1882 and not until 1920 from Oxford; and Carmen Reid's How Not To Shop - chick lit, which I found just too light and fluffy after Where Does it Hurt?. A pretty diverse selection of reading here!