This week’s teaser is not quite conforming to the rules as it is more than two sentences and is between lines 11 and 15 from page 17 of The Various Flavours of Coffee by Anthony Capella:

‘A merchant is someone who trades. Ergo, if I do not trade, I am not a merchant.’

‘But a writer, by the same token, must therefore be someone who writes,’ I pointed out. ‘It is not strictly necessary to be read as well. Only desirable.’

Today’s reading is a mixture of murder and farce.

Farce in the form of Something Fresh by P G Wodehouse which is brightening up this cold and frosty Sunday. I hesitate to write about it because the quote from Stephen Fry on the back cover tells me:

You don’t analyse such sunlit perfection, you just bask in its warmth and splendour.

But I will anyway. The aimable and definitely doddery Lord Emsworth absent-mindedly pockets first a fork at his Club luncheon and then a valuable scarab belonging to Mr Peters, the American millionaire and father of Aline engaged to be married to Freddie, Lord Emsworth’s feckless son. Mr Peters is the opposite of Lord Emsworth, driven by his devotion to collecting scarabs, which he pusues with the same  concentrated and furious energy that had helped him to amass his millions and chronic dyspesia. Lord Emsworth on the other hand is mild and placid, happy to bask in the park and gardens of Blandings Castle. I can see it’s going to get nicely complicated as Freddie, Aline, and their parents, George Emerson who insists he is going to marry Aline, Ashe Marson and Joan Valentine (both employed to retrieve the scarab) all go down to Blandings. Freddie meanwhile is scared he’ll be sued for breach of promise by Joan.

Then murder from Susan Hill’s The Vows of Silence, the fourth book in her Simon Serrailler crime novels.

So far this is a gloomy book not just because of the murders but also because of the unhappy state of Simon and his family. His brother-in-law is diagnosed with a brain tumour, his father has started a new relationship with Judith a year after his wife’s death much to Simon’s distress, and adding to his sister Cat’s problems Karin, one of her patients is suffering from aggressive and terminal breast cancer.  Simon, himself is unhappy, missing his mother, unable to understand his father, and quarreling with his sister. Add to all this a gunman apparently shooting young women without any motive, an uneasy, middle-aged couple starting a relationship through an online dating agency with their own individual family problems and it’s doom and gloom all the way.

The murderer is introduced in the first chapter, as “he” and switching rapidly between all the different characters (there are lots of them) and sub-plots intervening chapters reveal his state of mind. I don’t think it’s going to take me much longer to finish the book as it’s easy reading apart from the subject matter.

Tiger In the Smoke by Margarey Allingham (first published 1952).  Jack Havoc is on the loose in post-war London, resulting in murder, mystery and mayhem.  I was immediately struck by the imagery - the fog pervades everything. At times I wished there was a bit less description but at other times I was completely caught up in the story and could feel the tension and fear in the characters. I expected Inspector Campion to take the lead but he only appears as a minor character. I thought the attitude to women was a bit condescending, and Meg, the young widow, didn’t really engage my sympathy.  However, Canon Avril is one of the best characters (along with Tiddy Doll), and forms a complete contrast with Havoc - good/evil.  His view of anger is that it is “the alcohol of the body”, which “deadens the perceptions.” And l liked his thoughts on the soul: “When I was a child I thought of it as a little ghostly bean, kidney shaped, I don’t know why. Now I think of it as the man I am with when I’m alone.”  After a slow start I read with increasing anticipation to find out what happened next.

Detection Unlimited by Georgette Heyer. Published in 1953 a year after Tiger In the Smoke this is a much lighter novel. As the title implies there are many suspects for the murder of Sampson Warrenby, found dead under a tree in his garden with a bullet through his brain and many people all too ready to tell Inspector Hemingway who did it. I was immediately drawn into a world gone by in a small village, with characters such as Mrs Midgeholme with her pack of Pekes, whose names all begin with ‘U’, Mr Drybeck, the old-fashioned solicitor, Warrenby’s long-suffering niece, Mavis, the country squire and his lady-wife, the maiden aunt Miss Patterdale, and the village bobby on his bicycle. A spot of blackmail, and a  number of twists and turns in the plot kept me interested to the end.

I thought A Christmas Visitor by Anne Perry was a little disappointing. The only Christmas connection I could see is that it is set just before Christmas. The good thing about this book is that it is very short (133 pages). The bad thing is that it is rather tedious. It began well set sometime in the 19th century with Henry Rathbone’s visit to the Dreghorn family near Ullswater in the Lake District for Christmas.  Judah, a judge in the local court at Penrith, had been found drowned in a stream, having gone out late at night. It was assumed at first that it was an accident. Antonia, Judah’s widow tells Henry of the death of her husband and then one by one Judah’s brothers, Benjamin, Ephraim and Naomi, his sister-in-law arrive and are met by Henry and he relates the account of Judah’s death to each one and I started to get tired of the repetition. The chief suspect is Ashton Gower, who has just been released from prison, sentenced by Judah to twelve years for forgery. Gower claims to be the rightful owner of the Dreghorns’ house. Not the most riveting of mysteries.

Happy New Year, everyone!

So … any Reading Resolutions? Say, specific books you plan to read? A plan to read more ____? Anything at all? Name me at least ONE thing you’re looking forward to reading this year!

I’ve listed some of the books I’d like to read this year for the What’s In a Name 2 Challenge and then there are books from my to-be-read lists and the books I had for Christmas.

I’d also like to read these:

• Dante’s Divine Comedy 
• The End of Faith, Religion, and the Future of Reason by Sam Harris
• The Man of Property (Forsyte Saga) by John Galsworthy
• Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens
• Remember Me by Melvyn Bragg
• Being Shelley by Anne Wroe
• Eden’s Outcasts: the Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father by John Matteson
• The Helmet of Horror: the Myth of Theseus and the Minotaur by Victor Pelevin
• Walking by Henry David Thoreau
• The Pleasure of Reading edited by Antonia Fraser

I’ve only read a few crime fiction books this year - 16 to be precise. So it’s not too difficult to pick out ten as the top books. They are, in no particular order:

• The Death of Dalziel, Reginald Hill
• Messenger of Truth, Jacqueline Winspear
• A Splash of Red, Antonia Fraser
• The Seven Dials Mystery, Agatha Christie
• Nemesis, Agatha Christie
• Oscar Wilde and the Candlelight Murders, Gyles Brandreth
• An Unsuitable Job for a Woman, P D James
• Lock 14, Georges Simenon
• The Arsenic Labyrinth, Martin Edwards
• The Tiger in the Smoke, Margery Allingham

• Fiction = 80, including 1 audiobook
• Non fiction = 15, including 8 memoirs/autobiographies/biographies.

Of these 50 were written by female authors and 45 by male authors, and 44 of these authors were new-to-me.

• 5 were re-reads
• 55 were my own books
• 39 were borrowed
• 1 was an e-book

For the full list of books see here.

I joined 8 Challenges, most of which I didn’t finish. So next year I’ve decided not to join so many. This year’s challenges were:

• Celebrate the Author - completed 7 months out of 12
• Chunkster - completed
• Heart of a Child - not completed
• Once Upon a Time - not completed
• Pullitzer Prize for Fiction - ongoing
• R.I.P. (Readers Imbibing Peril) - not completed
• Soup’s On - on going
• What’s In a Name - completed

Coming up next my top ten Crime Fiction books of 2008.

I didn’t read very much during Christmas week as we spent a very happy Christmas in Scotland with our son and his family, lots of presents, food and fun, a walk on Boxing Day and a trip to Edinburgh’s Winter Wonderland on Saturday. Set in in Princes Street Gardens overlooked on one side by the huge Scott Monument and on the other by Edinburgh Castle and surrounded by trees full of twinkling silvery lights there were two outdoor ice rinks and fairground rides. The grandchildren loved the skating, even the three-year old once she had got used to the doublebladed skates strapped to her boots! As it got dark the lights came on making the scene just magical - a winter wonderland.

It was a lovely break but now we’re back to normal and have picked up Lucy from the cattery. She was very pleased to be let out of prison and won’t leave us alone, following us around, inspecting everything and sitting on my lap.

As for reading, I read one of the books I had for Christmas - a nice boxful - Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.  The past few years just before Christmas I’ve looked unsuccessfully for my copy that I had as a child to read it again; I’ve no idea where it went. So this year D bought me a new copy, with the same illustrations by John Leech as in the book I’ve lost. I’d forgotten just how good this book is!

And that was it apart from listening in the car on the way home to The End of Summer by Rosamunde Pilcher, read by Geraldine James. I wish I could read in a car but it makes me feel sick, so listening is the next best thing. Entertaining, if a bit predictable, it filled in three hours of the journey.

Also in my box of books are three books by Martin Edwards, Lake District mysteries - The Coffin Trail, The Cipher Garden and The Arsenic Labyrinth. (The last one I’ve already read when I borrowed a copy from the library, but I enjoyed it so much I wanted my own copy to read again after I’ve read the first two in the series.) 

The other books are a mixed bunch. There is Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham, the most autobiographical of his masterpieces, according to the back cover. And then, The Various Flavours of Coffee by Anthony Capella, “gourmet” fiction about the coffee trade set in 1895. Followed by Susan Hill’s The Vows of Silence, the latest of the Simon Serrailler crime novels. Then, We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson, which I’ve been wanting to read for ages. Last and by no means least, I was given The Literary Pocket Companion by Emma Jones - full of fascinating things, perfect!

The only thing now is where do I start - one of these new books or maybe one from my ever growing to-be-read piles?

In January I decided to pick one book each month as my “Book of the Month” and my idea was that at the end of the year it would be easier to decide which was the one I liked the best. It hasn’t worked out because I just can’t decide between them. Maybe, because I have been reading it for most of this year and I  finished it yesterday, it’s Les Misérables by Victor Hugo! 

These are my books for the year in the order I read them:

January

• Winter In Madrid by C J Sansom - an action packed thrilling war/spy story and also a moving love story and historical drama all rolled into this tense and gripping novel. Sansom vividly conveys the horror and fear of the realities of life in Spain during the Spanish Civil War and the first two years of the Second World War. Original Review

February 

• The Illusionist by Jennifer Johnston - it starts with Stella, looking back on her life after the death of her estranged husband, Martyn. Thirty years earlier they had met on a train. Stella is charmed by him, and after a very short time they are married, against her parents’ advice. Martyn has a full time job but practices magic tricks, describing himself as an “Illusionist”. However, it’s not long before she begins to have misgivings, particularly when he won’t tell her anything about his background or his job or what is in the locked the room where he is devising an extraordinary new trick, with the help of two mysterious men. Original Review

 March

• Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. This book is based on the Nigeria-Biafra War of 1967 –70. It begins in the early 1960s in Nsukka in the south eastern area where Ugwu becomes Odenigbo’s houseboy. The story centres on these two characters and Olanna, Odenigbo’s partner, her twin sister Kainene and her partner Richard. Odenigbo is a professor at the University and his house is the meeting place for academics who debate the political situation as it leads up to violence and the secession of Biafra as an independent state.  Original Review

 April

• Revelation by C J Sansom - the time was March and April 1543, a time of struggle for power between religious reformers and reactionaries. Matthew Shardlake, a lawyer joins forces with Gregory Harsnet, the London coroner in investigating the murder of his old friend Roger Elliard one of a number of grizzly murders based on the Book of Revelation.  Matthew is also working on the case of Adam Kite, a teenage boy, imprisoned in the Bedlam hospital for the insane, helped by Guy Malton (previously a monk and now licensed as a doctor). Adam is a ‘self-hater’ fearing that he is ‘unworthy of God’s love’. The question is, is he mad or possessed by the devil? Original Review

May

• Our Longest Days: a People’s History of the Second World War  Mass Observation (non-fiction). This is a collection of real wartime diaries. The diarists came from a variety of backgrounds, and from different regions, most of them were middle-class, well-read and articulate. They tended to be people with a natural capacity for observing – and for recording what they observed. I felt as though I had lived through the war myself. Original Review

June

• Messenger of Truth by Jacqueline Winspear - a detective story set in 1930/1 in England. The artist Nick Bassington-Hope fell to his death from the scaffolding whilst installing his work at an art gallery. The police believed it was an accident, but his twin sister Georgina wasn’t convinced and hired Maisie Dobbs to investigate his death. Along with Nick’s death there is also the mystery of the missing piece of art work that was to be the centre of the exhibition. Original Review

 July

• In God We Doubt by John Humphrys (non-fiction). Humphreys was brought up a Christian but his growing doubts overwhelmed his faith. On his Radio 4 programme he challenged the leaders of three religions to convince him that God exists. In this book he explores religious beliefs and atheism and finds himself somewhere in the middle. I didn’t write a post about this book.

August

• Pompeii by Richard Harris. The story of the eruption of Vesuvius, destroying the town of Pompeii and killing its inhabitants as they tried to flee the pumice, ash and searing heat and flames. Harris gives vivid descriptions of the luxury of the town - its villas and baths - the corruption of its leaders, the poor living conditions of the general population and savage cruelty shown to the slaves. Original Review

 September

• The Gravedigger’s Daughter by Joyce Carol Oates about a Jewish family who emigrated to America before the Second World War, fleeing from the Nazis. Rebecca’s father, originally a maths teacher can only get work as a gravedigger and as the story unfolds we see the effect this has on him and inevitably on his wife and children. Original Review & also here

 October

• The Behaviour of Moths by Poppy Adams - the story of two sisters, Ginny and Vivi. Vivi, the younger sister left the family mansion 47 years earlier and returns unexpectedly one weekend. Ginny, a reclusive moth expert has rarely left the house in all that time. What happens when they meet again is shocking to both of them. Original Review

 November - two books tied

• Stillmeadow and Sugarbridge by Gladys Taber & Barbara Webster (non-fiction) -a lovely book composed of letters between Gladys and Barbara about country life in Pennsylvania and Connecticut in the 1950s, illustrated by Edward Shenton. Original Review,  also here & here.

• Cider With Rosie by Laurie Lee (non-fiction) - the  story of Laurie Lee’s childhood in Slad in Gloucestershire, a remote Cotswold village at the beginning of the twentieth century. A delicious book, full of wonderful word pictures. Laurie Lee was also a poet and this book reads like a prose poem throughout.  Partial Review (Full review to follow next year).

December

• The Arsenic Labyrinth by Martin Edwards - the mystery of the the disappearance of Emma Bestwick. Ten years earlier there had been no apparent reason why she vanished into thin air but more information was revealed following an article in the local paper appealing for the case to be re-opened on the tenth anniversary of her disappearance. There are many twists and turns as Detective Inspector Hannah Scarlett’s Cold Case Review Team carries out its investigation. Original Review

When Icicles Hang by the Wall by William Shakespeare

When icicles hang by the wall,
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,
And Tom bears logs into the hall,
And milk comes frozen home in pail,
When blood is nipp’d and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
Tu-whit; Tu-who, a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

When all aloud the wind doth blow,
And coughing drowns the parson’s saw,
And birds sit brooding in the snow,
And Marian’s nose looks red and raw,
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
Tu-whit; Tu-who, a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

I loved all the pictures this brought to mind the raw cold, frozen milk, biting wind and snow. Milk was often frozen on the doorstep when I was little, the foil cap lifted up by a plug of ice. I didn’t think that an owl whooting sounded merry at all and I imagined Dick and Tom out in the dark, with their “blood nipped”, fearfully going home to see greasy Joan sitting over a steaming pot - of what I wondered? To me it was a strange scene, but it was just that strangeness that appealed and I felt so sorry for poor Marian left out in the snow.

Maybe it’s the cold in that poem that then made me think of T S Eliot’s Journey of the Magi. Or maybe it’s the thought of travelling in winter:

A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For the journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.

I’m nearly ready for Christmas - all the presents have been bought, and some are wrapped (by D not by me!) I haven’t done a lot of reading these last few days, but have continued with Wild Mary and Les Misérables (see the sidebar). It’s the start of the war for Mary Wesley, which was the most vivid time in her life and the source for her novels - it was “chaos, exhilaration and loss”. As for Les Mis, I’ve spent too long in the Paris sewers recently. There are long descriptions and history of the sewage system in Paris which I was tempted to miss out, or at least scan read, but I didn’t. I read it all, in all its noxious detail; the horror of Jean Valjean carrying Marius, struggling through the sewers and sinking up to his head in the pit.

This year is the first without my sister, although we didn’t always meet up at Christmas we always spoke on the phone - she even phoned me from China when she was there at Christmas! So it’s a bit strange. It’s also the first year that most of our family is split up, with our son and his family in Scotland and the rest of us in the south of England - the first time we’ve not all seen each other over Christmas. We’re off to Scotland next week, so it’s not all doom and gloom!