Life must be filled up

At the library this afternoon, I saw a book called My Year in Penguins. I immediately assumed it was about a year of reading Penguin Books whereas it was of course, about a year with er, penguins.

I wrote recently of my intention of borrowing more books from the library. I have just worked with two windows open: Dorset libraries and my Amazon wish list (which is really a list of books I would like to read). *Every single book* I wanted to borrow was either unavailable or would incur borrowing fees. I pay enormously high council tax on a small cottage. I absolutely refuse to pay extra to borrow a book which, if I lived in a city instead of in the sticks, would be easily accessed. This has left me fuming. I’d honestly rather *buy* a book than pay to borrow it. Now all you librarians out there can explain to me why it is essential that I pay two or three pounds to borrow a book when I already pay to support the library system. I shall remain unconvinced.

Hardly an earth shattering event but it’s far too long since I visited the library. See how lucky I was in my finds! I was so surprised to see a Dorothy Whipple book on the shelves it was in my hand in a second. I’ve been wanting to read Because of the Lockwoods for ages. The other books are all from series I’ve enjoyed and are very light reading.

Had I taken my camera I could have shown you a picture of two swans on the river with six cygnets. Beautiful, and so lovely that they come back each year. I prowled round just a few of our many charity shops, finding a new one open and an old one closed. I can’t keep up with the swift turnover in shop occupancy around here.

In other news, what a storm yesterday evening. We had a brief power cut (as usual whenever it’s windy) while trees and shrubs were thrashing about madly. This morning the garden has a very battered look, with some of my beautiful foxgloves on the ground. I wanted rain, just not that sort of rain.

Not another gardening post but a reference to the number of books around which are about rose gardens. It seems the way to get a book published is to set the story in an old English house with big gardens where roses are grown commercially. My reading of The Rose Garden was followed immediately by The Rose Girls. This was my choice of pre-publication free Kindle book for the month (there isn’t much choice, TBH). Three sisters live in an old, beautiful but crumbling manor house in Suffolk. For three generations their family has run a business from the house breeding and selling roses. Now that their mother is dead, can they keep everything going without sacrificing the house? Each sister had her own difficult relationship with their mother (ghastly woman!) and of course, each has her own love life to cope with. Lots of detail about roses (all named and described, which is nice) and a story you want to know the end of. It will be out on 1st June.

But I’m getting tired of books which are ‘all right’ and went to the library yesterday in search of stronger meat.



Unfortunately, our library is small and the only way to get recent books is to order them. That’s easily done online but then you have to read the book as soon as it’s ready for you, and who knows whether that will be the right time to read it? The pic above shows my little haul. One non-fiction title by an author whose books I’ve enjoyed before; reliable Simon Brett; a Gladys Mitchell because I’ve never read anything by her. I’m on/off, love/hate with Douglas Coupland’s books; let’s hope this is a love. My next read will be Crooked Heart which I snatched off the ‘just returned’ shelf the second I saw it there. I absolutely loved Their Finest Hour and a Half.

Last Saturday, I called in at the library when I was in town and, as so often happens, came out without a book. I take my little notebook (see above) containing lists of authors I’m on the lookout for, but fail to find any of their books. I can only get books by ordering them specially or by a great piece of luck. For some perverse reason, I usually trust to luck. Perhaps I get more pleasure from a serendipitous discovery. Now I’ve found a new way to borrow books, via The Kindle Owners’ Lending Library. Since Amazon emails me every day with offers of items I don’t want to buy, such as plasma TVs, I don’t understand why I wasn’t alerted to this service. Here’s how it works. You return the book via Manage My Kindle. Just go to Your Kindle Library, find the borrowed book, click on ‘actions’ and ‘return this book’ is one of the options. Then you can borrow another. So what was the first book loan I tried?
(  Shrinking Violet by Karina Lickorish Quinn )

For the last few days I’ve been feeling desperate for new reading matter, in spite of having several TBR books around the place. My recent visits to the library have left me with a frustratingly empty book bag so yesterday I ventured further afield and came back with this little haul.

For a while now I’ve been wondering if it’s really possible for Laurie R King to have written successful books about a married Sherlock Holmes. Now’s my chance to find out by reading The Language of Bees. I loved Salmon Fishing in the Yemen and have read a couple more of Paul Torday’s books, so into the bag went More Than You Can Say. Silly me, I found I’d already read St Mungo’s Robin but had failed to recognise the cover, so that’s a wasted loan.

Reading the blurb for Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House I now wonder if I dare read it. I already know the story of Saplings so well I could probably write a synopsis, yet I’ve never actually read the book; something I’m about to remedy. Another Persephone book, this time one I’d never heard of: Doreen by Barbara Noble. Not a promising title, is it? Finally, I’ve already started Miss Hargreaves by Frank Baker. So far I find her to be a monster.

Yesterday morning I had an email from the library telling me my requested book was waiting. I rushed down to get it and finished it the same day. This was The Spy Game by Georgina Harding. At last, something to read! Tell me a story! I was fascinated from the start, as I’d expected to be. Anna's and Peter’s mother drives away on a foggy day in 1961. They never see her again. Two days earlier the Portland Spy Ring has been rounded up. As was common then, the children are told nothing about their mother’s death, leaving an opening for fantasy: 'Peter, who was so clever but did not know where you divided stories from reality.'

Peter’s fantasy is that their German mother is not dead but a spy and his theories lead to unhappiness for all. In the end it is not Peter but Anna, after their father’s death, who tries to find out more about their mother’s early life. The book is beautifully written, the sixties period feel exactly right. (Odd that this era of fog, Cold War, black and white, should now have a strange glamour about it.) It also touches on the problems of displacement in post-war Europe with great economy. By the end of the story doubts remain, in Anna’s mind and the reader’s. Is the truth better known, or not? What is identity? Can people reinvent themselves and if so, who are they then? I absolutely loved this book and recommend it highly. Just as well, because I’d had three reading failures on the trot.
( books I couldn’t finish )

There's nothing on television and no Test Match until Thursday and that means no knitting. So, I had plenty of reading time over the weekend.



A Proper Education for Girls, Elaine Di Rollo. *L This is a rollicking good read, which gets off to a promisingly gothick start. An enormous Victorian pile stuffed to the rafters with 'the collection' and elderly relatives. A bullying father, more than half mad. Twin sisters who've had an extraordinary education. A doctor with terrifying ideas on how to 'treat' female maladies like independence of spirit. Will both girls manage to escape? The publishers haven’t done the author any favours with the horrible cover. Ignore it; the book is good fun.



Delay of Execution, Hazel Holt *L
The trouble with the Sheila Malory mysteries is that I read them too quickly! In this one, Mrs Malory is appointed literary executor of an old friend. She plans to write a biography but discovers things about the late author which she thinks should not be printed. (Shades of Nicola Beauman and Elizabeth Taylor!) She is not the only one with an interest in suppressing the truth and the result is another murder for her to investigate.




Someone at A Distance, Dorothy Whipple *L
I could hardly put this book down. It starts with an unusually convincing description of happy, prosperous middle class family life. The sudden way in which it comes crashing down is brilliantly explained. It’s tougher stuff than you’d expect; the effect on the teenage daughter is heartbreaking, although she is as manipulative in her own way as the villainess of the piece. Odd Girl Out by Elizabeth Jane Howard (1972) has many similarities with this book.

These books all came from the library and if ever I see the Whipple on the sale trolley, I'll snap it up. How I regret now selling this lovely first edition of another of her books.



Still, I was hard up at the time. Oh, besieged? More work on the house has just started and there's a man downstairs.

What a beautiful song, what an earworm. I only have to hear Bob Dylan’s Make Me Feel Your Love once to have it fixed firmly in my head and I'm obsessed with it this morning. The version you hear on the radio all the time is by Adele but I prefer Bryan Ferry from Dylanesque.

( now for the library )

I’m having a terrible time settling to reading at the moment. I have any number of books around, started but not finished. Being so stressed out by builders means that the highlight of my day is getting into bed with a hot water bottle and a cosy Mrs Malory Mystery; saddo me. The exception is Hopes and Fears by Charlotte M Yonge which is new to me and totally gripping. I revere that lady so much that she deserves another post of her own.

All the books in the picture above came into the house yesterday. Thin Blue Smoke by Doug Worgul I was lucky enough to win in a draw over on the dovegreyreader blog. ‘A novel about music, food and love’; well, two out of three ain’t bad and dovegrey certainly made me want to read it. From the library comes La’s Orchestra Saves the World by Alexander McCall Smith. I heard this on Book at Bedtime, or would have done if I hadn’t regularly dropped off to sleep before the end of each episode. Let’s hope reading it will prove less soporific. I’ve just ordered Tea Time for the Traditionally Built. I was tempted because The Book People have it for £4.99 but adding on their postage charge made it cheaper from Amazon (with Prime). Goody, another parcel will be on its way.
Also from the library is Anna Shepard’s How Green are my Wellies?. I picked this up thinking it would be about gardening but see it actually deals with green matters generally. Hmm. The author writes for The Times and has a green blog. It will have to be very good to please me.

The top three books on the pile also came from the library but I bought them for ten pence each. This is shocking, really; only one of them is in poor enough condition IMO to warrant throwing out. Damsel in Distress is part of The Everyman Wodehouse series and is in just about perfect condition. Donna Leon: some say one thing, some say another. The books are never in the library or in any charity shops so I was happy to risk twenty pence to find out if I will be a Brunetti fan. Although I’m pleased to have the books, I still think it quite wrong that for every new book coming into the library, an old one has to go.

To add to my weekend’s reading pleasure, Folly Magazine arrived today. lizarfau, First Term at Cotterford is highly recommended!