Taken in Gloucestershire on a lovely summers day. Nothing to do with this post which is a bit of a moan, be warned, but just wanted to put it in for me and, hopefully you, to enjoy.
Now here we go.
A combination of Wimbledon and hay fever is causing my brain to turn to mush this week so apologies for the lack of incisive, witty and erudite book reviews and my well informed take on the world, politics and life in general........ ok, I know.
Been up for hours as total lack of sleep last night, spent most of the twilight hours coughing, sneezing and hacking and am now peering at the screen between itchy, slitty eyes and feeling very bad tempered and irritable. BUT, as I said in an earlier post this week, boy am I glad that I am not on the commute to London in this heat. I have done it in the past and remember arriving home at 11 pm one night, after a five hour, yep five hour, journey home from London, and as I arrived at Colchester keeling over as my feet hit the platform. Stayed at home the next day and remember well going into the office the following morning to be greeted by my then boss with the welcome 'Elaine, I know you had a long journey home and it was hot but surely you could have made it in yesterday?'......I sometimes wonder how I stood that man for as long as I did without murdering him.
Anyway, here I am and in keeping with my general well being, or lack of, I seem to be hitting an unlucky reading patch at the moment. This sometimes happens, a book is disappointing and you wonder why and then so is the next one and you start to rummage and have a look to see what you have waiting. In these circumstances, I generally re-read a much loved book and just bide my time and then all is well. I have recently read The Angel with Two Faces by Nicola Upson and The Salati Case by Tobias Jones and found both to be mediocre. I am not dissing them, I don't pitch into books on Random because as you know I believe that every book has a reader who will enjoy it and just because it ain't me, doesn't mean I should rip it apart, but I felt as I closed up the last page, yes well, so..?
Nicola Upson's first book, An Expert in Murder, was a tightly plotted thriller set in the 1930s, right up my street and I enjoyed it, though I did have reservations about using a real life (now dead) person, ie Josephine Tey as a protagonist in this story. It seemed to work so I put my reservations to one side, but now I cannot having just read the latest which I found melodramatic and highly implausible. Having read the book I sat back and thought 'If you take out the character called Josephine Tey and replaced it with another called Freda Bloggs would it make any difference to the story?' and it doesn't.
The second, The Salati Case by Tobias Jones is set in Italy and I am a sucker for stories with this background, Donna Leon and Camilleri being proof of this. I always feel that no matter how seedy the location or how dreary the author makes it sound, having an espresso or a glass of wine in a cafe on the Via Mellini or wherever, sounds so much more attractive than grabbing a cup of Nescafe in a Greasy Spoon in Blackpool. Still, location does not make up for a rambling, muddled plot where I had to keep stopping to remind myself who did what to whom and at the end, was still not sure I knew precisely what had happened.
Both these books came from Amazon Vine so at least I did not pay for them but I do hate being disappointed in a book.
BUT BUT BUT, on the other hand I have just started, We the Accused by Ernest Raymond, another of those wonderful reprints from the Capuchin Classics house which is going to be brilliant as I can tell straight away, and after simply loving Henrietta's War, recently republished by Bloomsbury and reviewed here, I tracked down the second volume by Joyce Dennys, Henrietta Sees it Through and am in no doubt whatsoever that this is going to cheer me up no end.
Anyway, end of Rambling Moaning on a Thursday. Have had shower and just going to have some breakfast and then perhaps I will stop being grumpy and feel a tad more like a human being.
Au reservoir.
