Friday bits and pieces

It is a glorious day, sun is shining, though a keen wind does take the edge off the warmth, but really just so good to sit here looking out the window and posting and all is relaxed and gemutlich.

An eclectic mix of books read in the last week and also coming up so here is a summing up of those I have enjoyed or not, recently:

Noel Coward - Collected Short Stories

.  Having only recently read and posted about The Master's only novel, Pomp and Circumstance, which was wonderful, I have now read his short stories, all in this one volume.  I say short, but Noel C obviously has the same take on what short means as does Henry James. With Henry this can lead to losing the will to live, but in Noel's case, the longer the better.  All quite dazzlingly wonderful and I am going to write about individual stories as a running thread for 2009 as they are worthy of a closer look. 

John Buchan - Mr Standfast.  I am working my way through the Richard Hannay books of this author and am loving them.  I have had some difficulty with the language and attitudes of the time these were written, but I have now got over that and am enjoying hugely these ripping yarns with their With One Bound he Was Free attitude.  Two more to go and I am saving them up.

The Behaviour of Moths - Poppy Adams.  Great setting, old Gothic house, sister comes home after 30 years away to rejoin her reclusive elder sibling, an expert on moths, who has never left home.  Promising but never quite made it, for me

anyway, and more information on moths than I really wanted to know.  Full of insects eating each other, suppurating pupae or whatever which rather turned my stomach and, in my opinion anyway, distracted from the main story line which is that of hidden secrets in the family and their uncovering and murder.  I can only say  do not read this if you have a meal coming up soon....

Nicola Upson - An Expert in Murder.  A conceit really, using the real author  Josephine Tey as a protagonist in a murder story.  I am putting in a link here to the review on Juxtabook which says all I need to say about this book and much more competently than I could express.  I agree with it all, save a small comment that I was not as totally convinced by the use of Tey.  But very very good.

Alexander McCall Smith - Tea Time for the Traditionally Built.  The latest in the No 1 Detective Agency series.  Nothing to say about this, only that it is as delightful as the others and a total comfort read. I have given up on the TV series as the subtle writing and characterisation of the characters has been completely missed as far as I am concerned.  It is impossible to capture and while I have always appreciated that the book and the TV series should be treated as two separate things entirely, I have been unable to do so in this case.  I am just so glad that AMS writes so many books and am looking forward to the next in the Isabel Dalhousie series which are my favourites.

Nicola Humble - The Feminine Middlebrow Novel 1920s to 1950s.  This book has been on an off my shelves over the last two years and I have finally set time aside to read it.  Does what it says on the tin, discusses the so called Middlebrow novels of this period and I found it fascinating to see just how many of these authors I have now read, many of them since I first purchased this book.  Dorothy Whipple, Angela Thirkell, Elizabeth Taylor etc etc.  Not a read you just pick up and rush through, I read it over three days, an hour or so at a time and my copy ended up covered in little yellow post its as various thoughts struck me.  By the time I had finished it was positively bristling with them so I decided not to post in detail in the end as I realised that many of these comments had already been made by me in individual posts on these authors and I would be repeating myself.  One author, E Arnot Robinson was mentioned several times and I suddenly had a recollection of coming across one of these which I picked up in a book sale purely because it had the Green Virago cover.  I checked and yes there it was, Ordinary Families.  So, that has now been moved to my TBR pile.

Patricia Wentworth - Miss Silver mysteries. I am now working my way through the last tranche of these books which have been loaned to me and, well, they are just gorgeous ranging from the 1930s to 1950s (same period as the Middlebrow Novel oddly enough) and I will be writing about them when I have finished the lot.

And finally, coming up.  Have been lucky this week with books arriving: Alma Books have sent me Austen's Love and Friendship; The Whole Day Through by Patrick Gale from the Amazon Vine Programme;  three intriguing books from Bloomsbury - John Berger To the Wedding, Anne Michaels Fugitive Pieces and The Solitude of Thomas Cave the first novel by Georgina Harding, whose The Spy Game I so enjoyed recently; and finally, A Seriously Useful Author's Guide to marketing and Publicising Books by Mary Cavanagh which tome has Random Jottings (and others I hasten to add) holding forth on blogging and such a thrill to see my name in print.

So all sorts of things going on and as my kitchen is being gutted next week and I have to empty my cupboards and pack everything away and as I am also flying off to Istanbul next Thursday (thus very neatly getting out the way while the first three days of bashing out cupboards and drilling for electrics is taking place) and I have to get all that organised as well, I am already feeling that it is All Too Much to Bear....

Thank goodness I don't have a job to go to.