Here are a couple of photos taken in December 2010 when we were snowbound. I came into the kitchen early one morning and there on the decking outside was this little mouse, eating the bread we had put out for the birds:
There were actually three mice climbing all over and round the back of the loaf nibbling it. I wasn’t the only one interested. Lucy came to the patio door and wanted to go out for a closer look.
See more Saturday Snapshots on Alyce’s blog, At Home With Books.
I read Tony and Susan by Austin Wright last November and parts of it are still vivid in my mind, but a lot of it has faded away. I’d put a few markers in the book, which act as pointers to sections I found notable, and which have helped to refresh my memory.
It’s a novel within a novel. Susan receives a manuscript novel, Nocturnal Animals, from her ex-husband. This is the outer story, which is nowhere nearly as interesting or absorbing as the inner story, her husband’s fictional tale of a crime, an ambush on the highway that leads to murder. Each time Susan stopped reading I just wanted to get back to the story of Tony Hastings and his family. It made me nervous as I was reading it and even more nervous went we drove anywhere, because Tony, his wife Laura and their daughter Helen were travelling on an Interstate going to their summer cottage in Maine when two cars in front of them blocked the lanes and forced them off the road. This does happen in real life, and the description is tense and vivid enough to make me believe it. It is terrifying.
The rest of the inner story is about Tony trying to get justice/revenge for what subsequently happened. There are questions on the back cover about why Susan’s husband sent her the manuscript, but the book doesn’t resolve any of these questions, which was disappointing. But I found it compelling reading and strangely enjoyable, if a little drawn out. It was strange because that is Susan’s reaction as she reads about Tony:
This book has her in its grip, she can say that truly. The long, slow plunge into the evil night and Tony trying to brace himself by being civilised. The notion that being civilised conceals a great weakness.
…
She puts the manuscript back in the box, and even that seems like violence, like putting coffins into the ground: images from the book moving out into the house. Fear and regret. (page 110)
This is what this book is about – fear and regret – and also revenge. And it’s also about writing:
Once she asked him why he wanted to write. Not why he wanted to be a writer but why he wanted to write. His answers differed from day to day. It’s food and drink, he said. You write because everything dies, to save what dies. You write because the world is an inarticulate mess, which you can’t see until you map it in words. Your eyes are dim and you write to put your glasses on. No, you write because you read, to remake for your own use the stories in your life. You write because your mind is a babble, you dig a track in the babble to find your way around it. No, you write because you are shelled up inside your skull. You send out probes to other people in their skulls and you wait for a reply. (page 134)
There are more passages I could quote, but I think this one says a lot – and is long enough, anyway!
Tony and Susan was originally published in 1993. The author, Austin Wright was a novelist and Professor of English at the University of Cinncinnati. He died in 2003 at the age of 80.
I had a good time at Barter Books in Alnwick yesterday. Bartering books is a good way to recycle the books I’m not going to read again. I took in a box of books and came home with these. As I had built up a nice little sum over my last few visits, I was able to indulge myself!
As you can see I was looking out for crime fiction and found three Agatha Christie’s I haven’t read:
I also got another Wycliffe book by W J Burley – Wycliffe and the Cycle of Death, in which he investigates the murder of a bookseller.
And another Perry Mason book by Erle Stanley Gardner- The Case of the Howling Dog – according to superstition a howling dog means a death in the neighbourhood, then both the dog and his owner are killed.
I’ve read one of H R F Keating’s books before but none of his Inspector Ghote’s books – this one caught my eye, Inspector Ghote’s Good Crusade, in which a millionaire philanthropist, the founder of a Bombay home for vagrants is murdered.
I’ve never read any of Sue Grafton’s books but have read reviews of a few, so I was pleased to find the first of her A-Z series – A is for Alibi. Kinsey Malone, Private Investigator has a cold case, hired by Nikki Fife, convicted of the murder of her husband eight years earlier, to find the real killer. If I like these there are plenty more in the series to look out for – and yesterday Barter Books had a shelf-full.
As I still had credit left I splashed out and bought two rather more expensive hardback books on crime fiction, which are at the bottom of the pile in my photo:
And because I do like to read other books than crime fiction I also got these two books:
I’ve been attempting to draw and paint and this book, How to Draw Anything by Angela Gair makes it look easy, which of course it isn’t. But I’m hoping it will help me improve.
I looked briefly at the many bookcases of general fiction and was drawn (pun not intended!) to Still Life by A S Byatt. Maybe my mind was still on art but this book certainly caught my eye. It’s a novel set in the 1950s. The cover is Still Life with Coffeepot by Vincent Van Gogh.
I enjoyed The Highest Tide by Jim Lynch, even though it’s a change from the type of books I’ve been reading recently. It’s the story of a young teenage boy, Miles O’Malley who is thirteen. He finds a giant squid dying on the mudflats at Skookumchuck Bay, at the southern end of Puget Sound, near his house. Such a rare creature causes intense interest and Miles is the focus of attention as he is pursued by TV crews wanting to interview him. The question is why has the squid been beached on the shore? What is happening out at sea?
It’s an easy book to read, even though packed with information about marine life, the ocean and tides, which Miles is passionate about. It’s narrated by an adult Miles, looking back at that summer he found the giant squid, when he had a crush on Angie, his ex-babysitter and his best friend, old Florence was getting sicker each week.
I’d visited Florence a least weekly for the past three years, in part because she increasingly seemed like the person most like me. She was almost as short and skinny but with huge bottom-fish eyes, as if she was designed to read in the dark, which suited her seeing how her gloomy home overflowed with books to the point stacks had to be moved to offer seats to more than one visitor. The clutter also added to the assumption that she was nuts. Most people didn’t know what else to call someone who called herself a psychic. My mother did. She called Florence a crazy witch. (page 47)
Florence, who is suffering from a variation of Parkinson’s disease, lives in a small steel-roofed summer cabin standing on stilts, washed underneath by the high tides. She predicts a superhigh tide in September. Miles is sceptical because September was known for mild tides. But Florence tells him:
‘Even science goes haywire sometimes, Miles.’ (page 50)
I was moved by Miles’s compassion for Florence, an old lady at the end of her life and his passion for the sea, whilst worrying about his parents’ divorce and his own troubles. It’s a beautifully written book about life, growing up, relationships and love. I was just sorry that this book had sat unread on my bookshelves for the last few years, but glad I did eventually get round to reading it.
This week’s musing asks…What devices –if any– do you read books on? Do you find it enjoyable, or still somewhat bothersome? Or: If you only read the print books, why haven’t you chosen to read on any devices?
I’ve had a Kindle for about a year now and have read several books on it. I’ve got more used to it now and don’t find it a bothersome way to read books. It’s just another way of reading, although with some disadvantages, as I still like the experience of reading a print book. I like the feel of a book, being able to flip over the pages easily, going backwards and forwards in the text, and looking at the cover and any illustrations – in colour.
But, I’m finding it easier and easier to read on my Kindle and that’s because I can enlarge the font, which makes it much easier to read in bed. My Kindle has its own light which makes it even better for reading in bed, or in poor light anywhere. I’ve picked up several print books recently and struggled to read them, because of the very small font – they would be much easier to read on a Kindle! Another bonus is the weight. For example, this month I’ve read The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins on my Kindle – this in a print book is around 700+ pages, making it a heavy and awkward book to read, but a doddle on the Kindle, no heavier or fatter than the slimmest paperback!
I also like the speed you can get a book – instantly, no more waiting for it to arrive in the post. This, of course, can also be a disadvantage, encouraging me to buy more books, but so far, I’ve been very strict with myself and the majority of books I’ve acquired have been free – another plus!
This is the Bell Tower at the northern side of Berwick-upon-Tweed, the most northerly town in England. It was built about 1577, replacing a 14th century tower on the medieval walls of the town. There used to be a warning bell in the tower that sentries would sound at the sight of danger to the townspeople. At one time there used to be a beacon on top, which could be lit if the country was invaded.
These days it’s an odd sight on a grassy mound at the end of a residential road.
But in earlier days it was in a prime position overlooking the sea, the fields and the town. Nearby is Lord’s Mount, a fort built in around 1540 during Henry VIII’s reign. It was orginally on two floors but all that remains are parts of the ground floor and you can see fireplaces, a flagged kitchen floor, a well and a privy.
There used to be guns mounted on the parapet and I climbed what was left of the steps to see the view. I didn’t venture on to the top; it was very windy and I don’t have a head for heights!
Photos taken September 2011.
For more Saturday Snapshots see Alyce’s blog At Home With Books.
Booking Through Thursday asks:
1. What’s your favorite time of day to read? I don’t have a favourite time – any time is best. I read mostly early mornings and late at night.
2. Do you read during breakfast? (Assuming you eat breakfast.) Yes.
3. What’s your favorite breakfast food? (Noting that breakfast foods can be eaten any time of day.) I love porridge for a hot breakfast and muesli when I fancy a cold breakfast.
4. How many hours a day would you say you read? 2 – 3 hours.
5. Do you read more or less now than you did, say, 10 years ago? About the same.
6. Do you consider yourself a speed reader? No
7. If you could have any superpower, what would it be? To read multiple books at the same time.
8. Do you carry a book with you everywhere you go? Not everywhere, but most places – it’s easier now with my Kindle.
9. What KIND of book? If it’s a ‘real’ book it has to be small enough to fit in my bag or pocket and can be any genre – usually whatever I’m reading.
10. How old were you when you got your first library card? Four or five, I think, or I may have been able to borrow books on my mother’s card, I don’t know. I only remember borrowing books from the library before I went to school aged five.
11. What’s the oldest book you have in your collection? (Oldest physical copy? Longest in the collection? Oldest copyright?) I don’t know the oldest physical book in my collection. It would be one of the books my parents or grandparents owned. I have several of these that I know my parents were given (as school and Sunday School prizes) in the 1920s, but there are a few like these that probably belonged to my grandparents:
Jane Eyre by Currer Bell (Charlotte Bronte) published by Richard Edward King, 88 Curtain Road, E.C. no date probably 1880s- 90s and The Channings by Mrs Henry Wood, published by Richard Bentley and Son, Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen, 1890.
12. Do you read in bed? Yes – see question 1.
13. Do you write in your books?I was brought up never to write in books, but I sometimes do now – in pencil. I have some of my children’s books that I’ve coloured in the line drawings with coloured pencils and some novels I read for school with passages underlined in biro (I’m shocked by my younger self!)
14. If you had one piece of advice to a new reader, what would it be? Read whatever you like and read, read, read. Never believe anyone who tells you that you should be doing something else rather than reading.
The Clocks is one of Agatha Christie’s later books, published in 1963. I read it in December and then watched the TV version. They are different and for once that didn’t irritate me, although I do wonder why some of the names were altered. The main difference is that in the book, Poirot doesn’t appear until about halfway into the book, whereas in the TV version he is the main investigator. So be it, I liked both versions. This post is now just about the book.
Sheila Webb, a typist, had found a dead man in the sitting room at the home of Miss Pebmarsh at 19 Wilbraham Crescent. He had been drugged and then stabbed. Miss Pebmarsh who is blind didn’t know the dead man and denied ringing the secretarial agency and asking for Sheila. The strange thing was that there were five clocks in the sitting room and all, except for the cuckoo clock which announced the time as 3 o’clock, had stopped at 4.13. Sheila ran out of the house in a panic into the arms of Colin Lamb. Colin has his own reasons for being in Wilbraham Crescent, which only become clear later in the story. He reports the death to Detective Inspector Hardcastle and together they investigate. The first problem is to identify the dead man as no one knows who he is. In fact no one seems to know anything.
This is where Poirot gets involved because Colin knows him. Colin has changed his surname; his father had been a Police Superintendent – presumably Superintendent Battle. Colin asks for Poirot’s opinion, and challenges him to solve the mystery. At this point Poirot then runs through what amounts to a potted history of crime fiction and the art of detection. He refers to real crimes and then to examples of criminal fiction, including The Leavenworth Case by Anna Katherine Green (which reminds me I have a copy on Kindle still to read). He lambasts fictional writers such as Gary Gregson (one of the characters in The Clocks) and Ariadne Oliver, another of Agatha Christie’s creations, thinking her books are highly improbable.
Colin gives him the facts and wants the answer. He says:
I want you to give me the solution. I’ve always understood from you that it was perfectly possible to lie back in one’s chair, just think about it all, and come up with the answer. That it was quite unnecessary to go and question people and run about looking for clues. (page 193)
I enjoyed these aspect of the book immensely, where I imagine Agatha Christie was amusing herself at her characters’ expense. Poirot sends Colin away instructing him to talk to people and to let them talk to him. Later on his curiosity gets the better of him and he does leaves his chair and visit the scene of the crime.
I also liked the descriptions of the neighbours in the Crescent and the confusing way the houses are numbered. I did work out the significance of the numbering quite early on in the book, which rather pleased me. There are many red herrings and I didn’t think the separate plot involving Colin’s work as a British Intelligence agent was terribly interesting,or necessary, although the two plots do connect by the end.
For a more detailed account of the book see Wikipedia.
My rating: 4/5
Death in the Clouds is a kind of locked room mystery, only this time the ‘locked room’ is a plane on a flight from Paris to Croydon, in which Hercule Poirot is one of the passengers.
In mid-air, Madame Giselle, is found dead in her seat. It appears at first that she has died as a result of a wasp sting (a wasp was flying around in the cabin) but when Poirot discovers a thorn with a discoloured tip it seems that she was killed by a poisoned dart, aimed by a blowpipe.
At the inquest the jury’s verdict is that the murderer is Poirot! However the coroner refuses to accept this and finds that the cause of death was poison with insufficient evidence to show who had administered the poison. All the other passengers and flight attendants are suspects and Poirot together with Inspector Japp, studies the passenger list with details of their belongings. There is a helpful plan of the cabin at the front of the book showing who sat where, including a crime fiction writer, a flute-playing Harley Street doctor, two French archaeologists, a dentist, a hairdresser, a Countess (formerly an actress), a woman who is a compulsive gambler, a crime writer and a businessman . Despite all this I was quite unable to work out who did it.
The question is who could have acquired the rare poison and how could it have been shot at Madame Giselle without anyone noticing that happening. Why would anyone want to kill her, and how were any of the suspects connected with her? Even when Poirot details the clues, including the Clue of the Passenger’s Baggage (and I read through the list a few times), I still didn’t work it out.
Apart from the ingenious mystery, which the coroner describes as the most astonishing and incredible case he had ever dealt with, there were other things I enjoyed in reading this book. First of all the ‘psychological moments’ in which people don’t notice what is happening in front of them because their attention is diverted. Then there is the way Christie makes fun of crime fiction writers and readers, making Japp comment that:
I don’t think it healthy for a man always to be brooding over crime and detective stories, reading up all sorts of cases. It puts ideas into his head. (page 63)
Poirot’s dénouement at the end of the book clears up all the confusion, detailing his impressions, precise ideas and methods in dealing with the case. Looking back through the book, all the clues were there, of course, but so cleverly concealed that in most cases I had overlooked them or not realised their significance. A most enjoyable book!
I’ve been spending time doing some family history these last few days and looking at old photos. I came across this one of my father as a baby, with his brother Jack and sister Mary. He was born in 1914. How children’s clothes have changed! And none of them look too happy – click on photo to enlarge and see their expressions.
And here is a more cheerful one of Dad with his brother-in-law – I think this was taken at Mum and Dad’s wedding in 1938.
Finally, here’s a photo of Mum and Dad, which I really like. It was taken in Llandudno, probably on their honeymoon.
Saturday Snapshot is hosted by Alyce at At Home With Books.