As you can see I was looking out for crime fiction and found three Agatha Christie’s I haven’t read:

1. The Labours of Hercules – Poirot undertakes twelve cases before he retires to grow superior vegetable marrows.
2. N or M? – a Tommy and Tuppence wartime mission.
3. One, Two, Buckle My Shoe – Poirot investigates the death of his dentist.

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:

1. The Great Detectives by Julian Symons, fictional ‘biographies’ of seven detectives, including Sherlock Holmes in retirement! I’ve been watching the fantastic TV series Sherlock, so my interest is very high right now.
2. Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection by Chris Steinbrunner and Otto Penzler. I’m really excited by this book, even though it’s over 30 years since it was published. It’s a big, heavy volume which I’m sure is an excellent reference book, containing biographies and bibliographies of crime writers and articles on films, plays radio and TV series and so on. I’ll be dipping into it regularly.

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.

And up the stairs I found in the bookcase to the right of the photo a book I’ve had on my wishlist for a while. It’s On the Black Hill by Bruce Chatwin.

The book begins:

For forty-two years, Lewis and Benjamin Jones slept side by side, in their parents’ bed, at their farm which was known as ‘The Vision’.

The bedstead, an oak four-poster, came from their mother’s home at Bryn-Draenog when she married in 1899. Its faded cretonne hangings, printed with a design of larkspur and roses shut out the mosquitoes of summer, and the draughts in winter. Calloused heels had worn holes in the linen sheets, and parts of the patchwork quilt had frayed. Under the goose-feather mattress, there was a second mattress, of horsehair, and this had sunk into two troughs, leaving a ridge between the sleepers. (page (9)

The Black Hill is not one of the Black Hills of Dakota – known to me only from the song, sung by Doris Day, but it is one of the Black Mountains on the border of England and Wales, although fictionalised in this book. The book was first published in 1982 and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize that same year. It’s also been made into a film. It looks to be a gentle, richly descriptive book about lonely lives on a farm, largely untouched by the 20th century. A nice change from all the crime fiction I’ve been reading recently.

Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Katy, at  A Few More Pages.

I’ve visited just two of them – The Main Street Trading Company at St Boswells and Latimer Books at Kelso, both lovely bookshops, well worth visiting. The Main Street bookshop has the additional attraction of a café and gift shop.

I hope to look up the other bookshops as well, especially the wonderfully named Founditatlast Bookshop whose address is The Middle of Nowhere (actually it’s near Kelso). This is a secondhand bookshop spread over four floors with thousands of books on practically any subject.

Then there is The CobbyShop, also near Kelso, selling secondhand children’s books and postcards, three bookshops in Melrose, one in Peebles and lastly, by no means least, Last Century Books in Innerleithen. More details on The Borders Book Trail website. (By the way, I’m not getting commission from any of these shops, just in case you were wondering!)

A Friday Finds post.

I gave  in and bought first one book and then another because we went to Much Wenlock in Shropshire on our way to Stratford-upon-Avon and found two good bookshops on the High Street. The  first one I saw on the High Street was Wenlock Books, selling new and secondhand books in a lovely old timber-framed building:

The secondhand books are upstairs:

where I bought Vera Brittain’s Chronicle of Youth Great War Diary 1913 – 1917. It looks unread and as good as new. I’ve borrowed her diary Testament of Youth from a friend, so I’ll read that first.

We walked across the road to the Copper Kettle for a cup of tea and then saw another bookshop further down the High Street – Much More Books, selling secondhand books:

where I bought An Expert in Murder by Nicola Upson.

I’m following Fleur’s method of not buying books except for exceptional bargains, which I think these two books were:

Yesterday I went to Barter Books in Alnwick, a superb secondhand bookshop where you can not only buy books but exchange books. I took a pile along and came back with some more and am still in credit for more books for my next visit. It’s a great way to recycle books.

I have written about Barter Books before, but not posted any photos of what it’s like inside. It is in a huge old railway station, built in 1887 and closed to passengers in 1968.

(Click on the photos to see more detail)

There is a cafe in what used to be the station waiting room where we refreshed ourselves with coffee and toasted teacakes in front of a roaring fire. The painting on the wall above the fireplace shows the station as it was in 1908 when the future King George V and Queen Mary visited Alnwick.

We then browsed the shelves. There are all sorts of books, fiction, non fiction, first editions, valuable antiquarian books, signed copies, maps, dvds, pamphlets and so on.

In one section there is a miniature overhead railway line with trains passing every few minutes.

It’s a very special bookshop.

This is an an entry in ABC Wednesday for the letter S.

New-to-me books this week are Naming the Bones by Louise Welsh,  and The Sisters who would be Queen by Leanda de Lisle.

Louise Welsh is the author of The Cutting Room, a dark mystery, which I read several years ago and thought was good, if rather scary. Naming the Bones looks promising:

Knee-deep in the mud of an ancient burial ground, a winter storm raging around him, and at least one person intent on his death: how did Murray Watson end up here? (Blurb on the back cover)

Dipping into the book I see that the story moves from Edinborough and Glaslow to the Isle of Lismore a small island off the west coast of Scotland. I’m tempted to start reading at once and as I’m nearing the end of Barbara Vine’s A Dark Adapted Eye I think this will be my next book.

I seem to be drawn these last few months to the Tudor period. Having read fiction - Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (Thomas Cromwell) and currently reading Portrait of an Unknown Woman (Thomas More’s family) I also bought a book of non-fiction, namely The Sisters who would be Queen: the tragedy of Mary, Katherine and Lady Jane Grey by Leanda de Lisle. This is the story of the tumultuous lives of Lady Jane Grey, known as the “Nine-Day Queen”,  and her sisters. I nearly didn’t buy this book as I don’t like pictures of headless women on book covers! But the blurb by Julian Fellowes attracted my attention:

An enthralling story of tyranny and betrayal … meticulous history that reads like a bestselling novel.

I bought these books in a real bookshop – Main Street Books in St Boswell’s. I first found out about this shop from Cornflower’s blog (where she has lovely photos of the shop) and it is a real find – not only books, but a cafe and gift shop and they also sell antiques. We’d been to Melrose and stopped in Main Street Books on the way home (just a short detour), where we browsed and had lunch.

Last week we were in Scotland staying with our son and his family and whilst there we visited Linlithgow and found a really great little bookshop called, not surprisingly, the Linlithgow Bookshop. It’s on the High Street in a 16th century building, the entrance being down some steps through a small door – if you’re taller than me you have to duck your head! I’m sorry I didn’t take any photos but their website shows what it’s like. It has very friendly, helpful staff and a really good range of books, specialising in Scottish authors, children’s books, travel and fiction. In fact it’s packed with books, cards and gifts – a book lover’s heaven. We bought several books and I could have bought plenty more:

• Be Near Me by Andrew O’Hagan – an award-winning Scottish author. This book was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2006. It’s about a priest assigned to a small Scottish parish. The title attracted me first, taken from Tennyson’s “In Memoriam” and when I read the first paragraph I was hooked:

My mother once took an hour out of her romances to cast some light on the surface of things. I was just back from Rome and we stood together on the ramparts of Edinburgh Castle, watching the sky go black above a warship anchored in the Firth of Forth. Picture that time of day in the old city when the shop windows stand out and the streets of the New Town begin to glow with moral sentiment. She took my arm and we rested like passengers bound for our distant lives, warm in our coats and weak in our hearts, the rain falling heavily on the stone.

• Star Gazing by Linda Gillard – I wrote very briefly about her book Emotional Geology in my second post. I’ve been meaning to read this one for ages. Linda now lives in Glasgow, having spent six years living on the Isle of Skye. This book was shortlisted for the Romantic Novel of the Year 2009. It is set in Skye with a blind heroine exploring the beauty of the island, in particular the stars in the winter night sky.
• Doors Open by Ian Rankin – the award-winning Scottish crime author famous for the Inspector Rebus books. Now D I Rebus has retired this is a stand-alone thriller about a plan to steal paintings from the National Gallery of Scotland. I couldn’t resist this one either.
• Southern Uplands by Nick Williams – this was my husband’s choice. It’s a pocket mountain guide. It’s a small book but filled with beautiful photos and sketch maps. I think I’ll only be attempting the gentler walks and content myself with reading about the others. The book features

40 circular hill routes from the remote Galloway Hills and the rolling Cheviots to the folding valleys of the Borders and Edinburgh’s own Pentland skyline, this region is rich in history and diverse in topography, inspiring great days out for walkers of all levels.

• Making History by Stephen Fry (a present for our son) - what can I say about Stephen Fry? He makes me laugh and he makes me think; both are good for you. I love QI, he was wonderful as Jeeves  in Jeeves and Wooster with Hugh Laurie as Bertie Wooster, and even further back I enjoyed the show A Bit of Fry and Laurie. His documentary The Secret Life of a Manic depressive was very good and his TV series Stephen Fry In America was fantastic (I have the book of the series) and that’s only mentioning a few of his achievements. If you follow him on Twitter you’ll be amazed at the amount of travelling he’s been doing recently – currently he’s island hopping around Indonesia (I think).

Giveaway

Because this is my 500th post I’m having a book giveaway.  It has a Scottish connection as I’ve been reading books by Scottish authors or set in Scotland recently (and our son lives there).

Everyone is welcome, wherever you live. Just put a comment on this post giving the title of the book you’re currently reading and whether you would recommend reading it or not and I’ll enter your names in a draw next Thursday to win a copy of Ian Rankin’s last Inspector Rebus novel Exit Music and a magnetic bookmark from the Linlithgow Bookshop.

Today’s MUSING MONDAYS post is about book stores…
How do you choose what to buy from your local bookstore? Do you have a list, or just browse? What is the selection in your book store like? Do you find what you’re looking for? Do you feel pressured to buy the kind of books the store makes prominent?

There is only one independent bookshop near me, about 8 miles away. Waterstones and W H Smiths are nearer and I visit these more, mainly because they’re where I usually shop. The trouble with bookshops like Waterstones is that they’re usually the same wherever you go, with the same books on display. Waterstones has a branch very close to where I used to work and I used to go there most lunchtimes when I wasn’t in the library. Sometimes I went looking for a specific book and other times I just browsed.

I’m trying to resist buying any more books until I’ve made some inroads into my to-be-read piles and so I don’t often go in bookshops these days as it’s almost impossible to come out without a book once I’ve gone in. It’s not that I feel pressured by the displays but because there’s usually one or more books I want to buy whether they’re on display or not.

My son found this blog Great Bookshops, which is great if you live in Scotland (he does, I don’t) because most are in Scotland but some are south of the border. To quote them this blog is:

dedicated to the best independent book shops. Not those that are part of a large national chain, but those that are much more the one of a kind, kind; shops that offer readers enthusiastic and knowledgeable advice, ones that are run by people who are passionate about books, not product.

This is Jaffé & Neale, a bright, welcoming bookshop with a good variety of books on offer. There wasn’t much space left inside to sit and have a drink, but as in the car park there was just one table left. It was our day for sure! We had coffee and I was very tempted by the cakes, but resisted.

It was just too much to expect me to resist buying a book and I had a wander round the shelves. They had some books that have been signed by the authors and I was really pleased to find a pile of books signed by Alan Bennett. I had seen on the BBC website a while ago that Alan Bennett had been reading his new book The Uncommon Reader on Radio 4, but I hadn’t managed to listen. So I was delighted to find it here.

It’s a lovely little hardback book and it only took me a couple of hours to read it. It tells the story of Her Majesty, not named, but she has dogs, takes her summer holiday at Balmoral and is married to a duke. She comes across the travelling library, thanks to the dogs, parked next to the bins outside one of the kitchen doors at the palace and ends up borrowing a book to save the driver/librarian’s embarrassment. There are some wonderfully amusing touches, such as the Queen asking:

“’Is one allowed to borrow a book? One doesn’t have a ticket?’ No problem,’ said Mr Hutchings.
‘One is a pensioner’, said the Queen, not that she was sure that made any difference.’ ‘Ma’am can borrow up to six books’. ‘Six? Heavens!’”

Helped by Norman, who works in the kitchen, she borrows books regularly and this changes her life. This little book is full of interesting ideas about books and the nature of reading and society. As the Queen expands her range she realises that “Books did not care who was reading them, or whether one read them or not. All readers were equal, herself included. Literature, she thought, is a commonwealth: letters a republic.”

I love the way Bennett describes how the Queen becomes a bookaholic (my word, not his) and wants to discuss her books and what she is reading. The French President had mentioned Proust to her, when she had asked him what he thought about Jean Genet, which led to her taking Proust’s novel, all thirteen volumes of it, and George Painter’s biography of Proust, as her holiday reading at Balmoral. What an image!

This book is only 124 pages, but what a lot is packed into those pages, not a word is wasted. It’s amusing and thought provoking as well. I wondered where it was leading and how Bennett was going to end the story, but all I’ll say is that the Queen realises that books have enriched her life “in a way that one could never have expected. “ Her next venture follows inevitably. Do read this book. I wonder if the Queen has.