Random Jottings

Wallander

I am now on another of my binges - this time Wallander, the TV series and the books.

Last year I watched one episode of the Wallander with Ken Branagh, but for some reason only saw this one, not quite sure why and then also missed the second series as well, mainly I suspect because I thought not worth catching up now.  Anyway, I was recently loaned the DVD of series one and enjoyed it very much so nipped out to the library and borrowed series two and blitzed that as well.   What did I think?   First of all, I have not read any of the books by Mankell so have no preconceptions about characterisation or appearance, so I was open minded as to interpretation.  Secondly, I admire Ken Branagh very much and think he is an excellent actor now that he has matured and got rid of most of that ghastly Ken & Em, Successor to Laurence Olivier rubbish that was sloshing around in the 80s and 90s.  I found that pretty unbearable and remember wincing in embarrassment at his film Peter's Friends which our family used to call Ken's Loveys it was so 'in' and so 'cool' and I found it pretty unwatchable.  

But, as I said, that is now all over and I thought he was excellent as Wallander, he inhabited the role and there was none of the acterisms that used to permeate his performances when it seemed to me that Branagh was watching himself act and thinking God I'm good.  I hasten to say that I am sure he did not think this for one moment, it was my prejudices speaking and after watching the glorious film of Much Ado about Nothing I began to change my mind about him.

I am also watching the Swedish Wallander which is excellent.  Wallander is played in a much more laconic, down beat way by a much older actor, the polar opposite of Branagh and I find myself totally riveted while it is on. I have a thing about sub-titles, silly I know, but once you are drawn into these episodes your mind and vision slot together and after a while I forget it is in Swedish so engrossed am I in the drama.

I decided, therefore, that I really should read the books so in the last week have read two, The Dogs of Riga and One Step Behind and enjoyed them thoroughly and I am glad that I had not read the latter title earlier as it is one of those that has been dramatised by the Branagh team, and by the time I had finished the book I was bristling.  I was bristling with irritation and annoyance at the slant the BBC version had placed on this particular investigation.   A colleague of Wallander's is found shot, he has been taking a keen interest in the disappearance of three young friends, before they were officially declared missing and before Wallander takes over the case and it is clear there is a link and he met his demise because of  this interest.   Secrets about the dead detective's life emerge and it is clear he was leading a double existence and harboured doubts about somebody he knew who turns out to be a murderer.  

The secret he was hiding was that he was a homosexual and Mankell makes this a part of the plot of One Step Behind, BUT and I say BUT very clearly, it was only a part.   His sexual orientation had very little to do with the reasons for the murders and even when the murderer was caught and interrogated, it was all very down beat and underplayed.  Not so in the Branagh version.  The BBC made the homosexual element the reason for the murders, over stated the motive and made up a ludicrous ending when Linda, Wallander's daughter, was threatened by the culprit when he made his outrageous confession and reason for the killings.

When it comes to adaptations for TV and cinema we all understand that shades and emphasis may have to be altered for dramatic reasons and, in some cases, it may even improve on the original story, but I  really object when TV companies skew a story line because they think it will be more sensational that way.   It happened in the recent Miss Marple series with Julia Mackenzie when one episode introduced child abuse, rape and abortion into a story line where it did not exist.  We even had Miss Marple asking about sex - so out of character one could laugh except I was seething with temper by this stage.  The remake of the Body in the Library with Geraldine McEwan as Miss Marple this time (a rather too knowing twinkle in the eye portrayal IMHO), had the double murderers not a man and woman in love with one another, but two women. This gave the perfect excuse for an on screen gay kiss.   On another occasion, this time in a Poirot episode, we had two girls who shared a house together turned into lesbians (they may have been for all I know but Dame A was usually a tad more subtle in portraying gay couples - as shown in the Joan Hickson A Murder is Announced), but what was worse they changed the identity of the murderer in this particular episode.  

The point I am trying to make, in a very long winded way I know, is that the homosexuality of the character in One Step Behind was a part of the book and accepted as a thread in the story, it was NOT the raison d'etre of the  plot and it was totally unnecessary for the emphasis of the narrative to be changed in this way.  It was an excellent episode and Branagh was marvellous and I enjoyed it, but I would have been extremely irritated by it if I had read the book first and seen what the production company had done with it.  Each time this happens I ask myself Why? Why?  Why do they do it?  I know the answer really but gosh it irritates me no end.

The books are excellent and I know I am now going to have to read them all and the proof of the pudding is in the eating as when I read them it is not Ken Branagh who pops into my mind and who I see as Wallander, but Krister Henriksson from the Swedish version.  Seems to me he is just perfect in the role.

And as a footnote to all this, Radio Times on Saturday wrote quite movingly about last Saturday's episode of the Henriksson Wallander in which they mention the actress who plays his daughter, Johanna Sallstrom, and her suicide in 2007.  Turn to the listings for Saturday night and there is a picture of the British actress who plays Linda in the BBC version wrongly placed on the page.  I bet she, her family and agent are really pleased about that.  And what a stupid mistake to make.  I have written to the BBC about it (would you expect me not to?..) but doubt if I will get a reply.

Has anybody else been watching the Two Wallenders?  Would love to hear what you think..

Saturday

Taking a bijou blog break this weekend as off to Suffolk to see granddaughter and parents for a couple of days and taking them back home.  They have had a mixed week weather wise, but have enjoyed  time away from the bustle of London and just being on their own, the three of them, with no distractions.  A new baby is a wondrous thing but the first few months are so fraught and new and overwhelming and relatives and friends flocking round all the time, that I sometimes think time just to be quiet in all this excitement is necessary.

So that means I have not seen Florence for over two weeks now and I miss her dreadfully.  It seems as if she has always been there with us and I cannot imagine my life now without this child and am so looking forward to giving her a cuddle.  I gather that she is now taking solid food and is nearly sitting up on her own and cannot wait to see how she has changed - I also gather from Helen that though Florence still rolls up on her tummy and is kicking her legs and lifting her head, she has yet to grasp how to roll back. This is causing some problems at night when she does this in her sleep, gets stuck and yells and has to be turned over again before she nods off.   This is happening about five times a night and Mum and Dad are getting adept at staggeringg out of bed, doing the necessary and staggering back again while still remaining more or less asleep. Oh I remember that feeling well...

Have a good weekend everyone - I know I will.

The Tapestry of Love - Rosy Thornton

I spent a very happy afternoon last week reading this book which the author very kindly sent to me and since then I have been thinking about it and mulling over in my mind what I would write when it came to posting about The Tapestry of Love.  The word that kept popping up all the time was 'quiet'.  It is a quiet book, a book that left me feeling very calm and happy and satisfied.

Catherine is divorced, it is in the past and she has come to terms with it, so no heroine who is bitter and resentful and full of angst; she has two children with whom she is on excellent terms and her life is good, but she wants to make a new start, to try something different and she is now free to do so.  Her house in England is sold and she moves to a tiny hamlet in the Cevennes mountains in France and decides to set up a business using her skills as a seamstress.

So she moves in and we, the readers, are taken along with Catherine on her daily life, her adjustments to the silence and isolation and her gradual growing acquantanceship with her neighbours and the little town in the valley and the small beginnings of her business.   Her two immediate neighbours, at least those closest to her, are the Bouschets, an elderly couple who are at first formal and correct with this newcomer but as the book progresses over a year, become friends and partners.

I would like to assure any prospective readers of this book that we are not in the milieu of A Year in Provence in Cevennes.  No madly overdrawn caricatured French peasants who seem to spend all their time imbibing wine and consuming massive superbly cooked meals (and yes I am sure I am exaggerating but that is how I found the books of Peter Mayle), just real people who, like Catherine, we get to know slowly and gently and with growing warmth.

We meet Patrick Castagnol  "She put him at her own age or a little older; his hair was streaked more to grey than black, but his arms below the rolled up shirt sleeves were lean and closely muscled.....his hands caught her attention; their backs had the weathered tan and toughened knuckles of a life out of doors but his nails were trimmed and polished.  What montagnard had manicured nails - even a Frenchman?"

When Catherine's son Tom meets Patrick and pronounces him 'a bit too smooth' we are on the alert that perhaps this neighbour is not all he seems and we, or at least I did, begin to worry and wonder what secret he is hiding.   There is an attraction between them but it is kept subtle and understated and as the spring and summer pass the relationship gently grows and all seems set fair.  But then Bryony, Catherine's sister, a high flier in the City, comes out to stay and immediately decides that Patrick is what she wants....

OK so no more plot give aways from now on as I want you to read this book for yourself though it is not as easy or as plain sailing as I think I have made it sound. Catherine has bureaucratic problems in setting up her business and at one stage all seems in peril, but I just want to concentrate on Rosy Thornton's writing which I found easy to read, elegant and beautifully flowing and also her sense of understanding. 

When you read a book such as this you want to immediately sling a bag into the back of a car and take off but of course wherever you go your inner anxieties and problems go with you.  Catherine has an elderly mother in a home in England and she feels guilty at not being close by and visiting more often, despite the fact that she has dementia and does not recognise her family any more, and is grief stricken when she hears of her mother's death and has to fly back to the funeral and to sort out all the aftermath of her mother's life.   It goes without saying that I found this part of the book very moving and I did have a little bit of a weep as it reflected so perfectly my own feelings when my own mother died earlier this year.  The necessary clearing up that has to be done, the sorting through of possessions and the knowledge that you will never see this person again, but at the same time the coming closer to family at a time like this, the shared grief and time to talk of things past and mend fences for the future.  Beautifully done.

I liked Catherine very much. I found her a person with whom I felt a kinship as she determines to make something of her life, to be happy and not to waste her time and though she has insecurities, as we all do, she overcomes them and gradually carves out a niche for herself in her French home, is accepted into the community and forges friendships.

"I'm sorry, so sorry" How uselessly inadequate, how derisorily crassly inadequate "Madame if there is anything I can do"

"Marie-Josephe.  My name. Please if you would it's Marie-Josephe"

A tightness gripped Catherine's throat, making it difficult to speak.

'Catherine'"

As I said, a quiet book.

I loved it.

Books for Florence

I should not wish time away I know, but I am so looking forward to the day I can read to Florence. I loved the time I spent reading with my daughters when they were small and neither of them would go to sleep at night until Mum had told them a story.  They had their favourites which they would choose over and over again; Each Peach Pear Plum; Mr Magnolia; The WIld Washerwomen; Burgler Bill and others too numerous to mention.  Each daughter has kept their childhood books and they will now be passed onto darling Florence and she has a ready made library waiting for her.

Since Florence was born I have had so many lovely messages from my contacts at publishers, cards and congratulations and this from people who have never met me and, which is even nicer, they are sending me books for her.  Bloomsbury sent me some first books in black and white some months ago and Florence has had these nearby her and looks at them now. These were reviewed by me - here.

These books have also been sent to me by Bloomsbury and they are all simply delightful. 

When the World is ready for bed - Gillian Shields with illustrations by Anna Currey.  All in simple verses of what to do before getting ready for bed and thinking on the day just gone. Gentle and soothing.

The Bloomsbury Nursery Treasury - Patricia Borlenghi with illustrations by Eleanor Taylor. Full of familiar stories, Goldilocks, Henny Penny, Three Little Pigs and many more.

Bear Flies High - Michael Rosen with illustrations by Adrian Reynolds.  A bear visits a fun fair with his four young friends and flies high on a roller coaster.  Gorgeously coloured pages and so eye catching

Stormy Weather - written and illustrated by Debi Gliori.   Baby animals, including snails, foxes, rabbits and polar bears all tucked up in bed while a storm rages outside.  Will make every child feel warm, cosy and safe.

These two enchanting books were sent to me by Adele Geras; the first My Grandmother's Stories - a collection of Jewish folk tales with illustrations by Anita Lobel is just sooo lovely that I am tempted to hold onto it myself, but I won't.  I will have enormous pleasure in reading this to Florence when she is older.

Wishes for you by Adele and Cliff Wright is quite simply all that you would wish for a child or, indeed, for any of us - 'Light from the hill spilling into the sky', 'kisses to wake you',  warm sun on your face'. 

And, finally, one of my favourite children's books of all time The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame. I did not read this  until I was an adult but hope that Florence won't leave it as long as I did before making the acquaintance of Ratty, Mole, Toad and Badger and learning that there is nothing quite so wonderful as 'messing about, simply messing about in boats'

This edition is a newly published one by  Oxford University Press in their wonderful World's Classics series of which I am a huge fan.

So what can I say but a heartfelt thank you to Bloomsbury, Adele Geras and OUP.  Being a grandmother has made me so happy and all those of you out there in Randomland have been so kind and generous it is hard to express how I feel - I leave it to your imagination.

DIY Tuesday

This is going to be one of those rambly posts today and the reason for this is that I have just started painting my living room and I am totally shattered.  In the words of Danny Glover in Lethal Weapon 'I'm too old for this shit'...

My living room is a bright green and when I say bright, I mean bright.  I think it is rather a zingy, cheerful sort of colour myself.  Somebody once said that when she visited me and the sun shone through the window she felt as if she was sitting in a field.  Now, that could be taken two ways I suppose but I chose to think that it made her feel springlike and happy.  Others thought it was all too much too bear.

Well, it has been up now for five years and even I am now beginning to weary of this assault on my senses and have decided to go for a change.  So off to DIY places, bring home loads of colour charts and sit and look and then I begin to go cross eyed and think oh that yellow is nice, oh but the sage green looks good too, mmm how about dark red and what do I think of blue and of course I am now going slowly mad.   I think I have settled on duck egg blue but the problem is that duck egg blue is a different shade from each paint manufacturer ranging from a pale insipid washed out colour to a dark rather dreary one.

Staggered home with lots of tester pots and started doing little squares on my walls and then realised with a sinking heart that the green is SO bright that I can get no idea at all of what these blues look like.  In fact, it will probably take about two coats of any colour to cover it up.  So I did what I always do in these circs, chucked the tester pots in the rubbish and made a cup of tea.

That was three weeks ago and I have now bitten the bullet and realised that I have to slosh white emulsion over the green before I can even think of doing anything else and that is what I have been doing today. I have quite a large living room and decided no point in trying to do it all in one go as I would merely kill myself in the attempt, so moved furniture over to one side of the room, covered everything in old blankets and sheets kept for decorating purposes and then started.

Nothing is ever straightforward in Schloss Random and first of all the roller (which had been sitting around for a while I admit), was rock hard, and though I had soaked it in hot water was still pretty resistant to taking paint, but I persevered. Mistake.  Because it was so hard and no give, the paint spattered off the wall onto moi and within ten minutes of painting I was covered in a fine spray of white paint spots from head to foot.  I began to feel like Stephanie Plum when she is attempting to capture somebody and she ends up being smothered in tomato sauce, paint, dust, dirt, garbage whatever.   I then found I had a spare roller in the cupboard. Oh Joy so decided to change it but took me about ten minutes to prise the old one off as the old paint had solidified round it.  Well managed it in the end and put the new roller on and off I went and then discovered that the new roller kept coming away from the handle and I had to keep shoving it in every ten seconds.  Which I did and managed to get the walls done - well two to be precise at which point I decided enough for one day and cleared up, shoved the furniture back, hoovered behind all aforementioned furniture first, oh the dust and dirt, oh the shame of it all, had a shower, washed hair etc and then crashed out on my bed for a couple of hours.

I am now sitting in the most dreary looking living room, half green half white and it is clear that my decision to put a coat of white on before I embarked on anything else, was the right one as even though it has dried the green is peeping through underneath.  However, a coat of the new paint - when I make up my mind - should be ok.

I know you are thinking what an exciting life I lead here in Colchester but I am going to stop now and save the next instalment How I painted the Other Two Walls for another day.   Not looking forward to tomorrow when I know I must finish this - and the books! all the books have to come down and I paint behind them - and then once that has been done then I have to put the paint of my choice on the walls and you know what?  I'm not sure any more about the duck egg blue now and haven't the faintest idea which colour to pick.

I should have let well alone, I know I should have done...

PS - Look at this stupid picture. Just look at it. No paint anywhere, she is immaculate, no spots of paint in her hair.   Grumble, grumble, grumble.....

Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

I was persuaded to read this book by my daughter who has read all three in the series and thought they are terrific. I had my doubts but then I read Nora Ephron's spoof on this book in the New Yorker, see link below and knew that I had to  check it out.

http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2010/07/05/100705sh_shouts_ephron

I am not going to review this book, it needs no help from me to shift copies and I gather a film has also been made so what I think is going to make no difference at all, but I have just finished reading it and really feel I have to pass on my thoughts.  I laughed at the Ephron spoof and thought 'Well, gotta read it now' and when I started it I could not believe how close to reality was the spoof - the narrative is chunky and appallingly badly written (and yes I know it is in translation but that  shouldn't really make any difference if the writing is good), and it is full of product placement, the hero journalist has his ipod, his iphone, his ipad, the Girl with the Tattoo has her Kawasaki, her new modem, her Apple notebook blah blah blah blah.  There is one page in the book where she has to replace her laptop and we are given a description of her new one, how much memory it has, how many gigabytes, Ram etc and it is so unbelievably banal and just so dire and I stopped laughing and just read on in disbelief.   If I say that I said aloud 'Dan Brown, I apologise, come back all is forgiven' you will understand my thoughts on this book.

BUT then it gets nastier and nastier and nastier and I began to feel nauseated.   I had guessed who the killer was about a third into the book, if the guy had gone around with a t-shirt on saying IT WAS ME, it could not have been more obvious but then we had all the murders gone into in minute detail as the villain confessed all prior to his attempted killing of our heroic journalist who had uncovered the truth.  So we learned all about torture, burning, rape, incest and familial abuse and it was VILE. 

I approached this book with a flippant attitude thinking O my God this is going to be sooo bad it is going to be fun.

I was wrong.

It isn't.

I would be really interested to know what others think - I have already found friends who loved it and so I am wondering if my reaction is totally disproportionate.   Let me know if this is so.

Lena Geyer - opera diva

I love books which feature opera and recently I reviewed The Maestro's Voice by Roland Vernon which I found enthralling and it set me thinking about other books I have read in which opera plays a large part.  I have to say that I cannot think of many, but I do remember reading the Mills & Boon books of Mary Burchell, pen name of Ida Cook, biographer of Tito Gobbi, who with her sister travelled around Europe attending the opera.  They seemed to be a slightly eccentric pair to put it mildly, neither of them married, both spending their lives indulging their opera obsession,  but during the Second World War, Ida used the income generated from her very successful romantic novelist persona to help Jewish refugees escape to England.  For further information see this article from The Guardian.

One book I remember well from my teenage years is Of Lena Geyer by Marcia Davenport.  I have yet to come across anybody who has heard of or read this book but am hoping that some Random Readers may know of it.

"Her first novel, Of Lena Geyer (1936, reprinted 1982), is the story of a poor Czech girl and of her ascent to fame and fortune, triumph and tragedy. It is a work of fiction, yet Lena is only partly the child of imagination: she is a composite figure of several singers Davenport had known intimately, among them her own mother. The background of the novel opens a wide vista on the golden age of opera both in New York and in Europe".

The author, Marcia Davenport, was the daughter of Alma Gluck, a celebrated American soprano and spent most of her childhood, indeed her whole life, immersed in the world of music and opera.   In the story of Lena Geyer we are introduced to 'real' people.  Lena works with Gustav Mahler at the New York Met who conducts when she sings in Don Giovanni, Lilli Lehmann is her singing teacher and Jean de Reszke is her co-star in Tannhauser. The production notes and details about her performances were so detailed and informative that they sent me scrabbling to the back of the book looking for a non-existent index and references.

When I first read Of Lena Geyer, I knew nothing about Wagner, but once I saw the light and became a devotee, I re-read all the chapters dealing with Wagner performances and found their detail and background information was spot on.  Hardly surprising as Marcia Davenport must have watched all these productions unfolding in front of her.  What an incredible experience.

Much though I love this story, I do feel that in creating the perfect opera diva in Lena Geyer she strikes me as being almost TOO talented.  She seems to be able to switch from Puccini, Mozart and Verdi to the heavier Wagner roles without batting an eyelid, a feat which is well beyond most operatic singers.  To my knowledge, the only singer who did essay this, though I am prepared to be proved wrong, was Maria Callas who sang all the coloratura roles and, in her early years, also sang some Wagner.  She abandoned the heavier German repertoire though for most of her career.

When writing this post I did some Googling and came across a fascinating article about the great Wagnerian soprano, Birgit Nilson, who was stalked for years by a female fan who sent her flowers before each performance and messages containing quotes from 'Of Lena Geyer'.  Read it here.  Quite chilling.

I am sure this is a cult book for all opera buffs.  I have a hardback copy of this on my shelves which I will not part with as it is no longer in print though copies are available on Amazon, including one with this execrable cover.  My particular copy came from Highgate public library where I worked many years ago.  Somehow it was recommended for withdrawal as it was never taken out and so took up shelf space.

As to who actually put forward this recommendation, my lips are sealed......

Thursday Random

Am about to get dressed, blow dry my hair, bung some slap on and drive off to park car at station and then off to London.   Tree being pollarded outside my window at moment and noise considerable so will be quite happy to leave that behind.  Last time the beautiful willow tree was 'pollarded' it was reduced to pathetic stump with a few wisps of leaves hanging off the edges so wonder what it will look like when I get back tonight.

Have been to London twice this week (not Florence sitting sadly), went up on Tuesday to meet a friend, recovery time yesterday and now back up today but this time will be pumping up the grey cells as I am going to see Henry IV Part 1 at the Globe.  I love going to this theatre.  First of all its location, right by the  river is wonderful.  Secondly, when the sun shines as it is today it is magical. Thirdly, it is always packed out, all seats sold, groundlings teeming below and everyone has a simply marvellous time.  I loathed Will for years because of the teaching I had at school and also the style of Shakespeare acting prevalent in the 60s which put me off for yonks.  Lots of ranting and raving and posing and it seemed that all the speeches started quietly and ended up with the actor spitting and furious by the end of it. Yes, I know that is a generalisation and I daresay I am totally wrong but that is how I saw it.

Sooo different at the Globe - Shakespeare comes alive and is so immediate.  Whenever I am there I always think of that scene in the movie Shakespeare in Love, when the audience is totally transfixed by a performance of Romeo and Juliet.   That is exactly how it is at the Globe.

Will report back on the morrow.

Fare thee well....

August Celebration of Georgette Heyer

You all know how much I love Georgette Heyer, having started off with The Talisman Ring when I was fourteen and then working my way through her entire canon.   Last year I read them all over again, many of which I had not looked at for a long time and re-discovered my love for these books.

Sourcebooks in the US are reprinting all of the Heyer novels.  They have been out of print in America for a long time and, while they have always been available over here, there is an untapped market of possible Heyerites across the pond waiting to be introduced to her world.  I have quite a few of the Sourcebooks editions which I think are far superior to the recent reprints of her books here in the UK, which were full of typos and not very good quality paper.  The American editions are lovely but sadly I cannot have any more to review outside of the US because of complications which I will not bore you with.

No matter.   Over on Austen Prose we have a month celebrating her life and her works and every single book is being reviewed by a blogger and/or fan of Georgette.  I am proud to be contributing and taking part and I will be reviewing An Infamous Army, a quite brilliant book which shows off Heyer's total immersion into research and pinpoint accuracy in her description of the Battle of Waterloos, and also A Civil Contract, which after years of dithering and reading I have decided is my favourite of all of her works.

So a wonderful opportunity to read reviews of every single book in one place and to make your choice as to where you will start if you have never read any of Georgette Heyer before.   You will not necessarily like all of them, and I certainly would not recommend that you start at No 1 as listed and read your way through them, her middle period of writing when she was at the height of her powers, is far and away the best, but this is an excellent venture and must be such fun and delight to all Heyer fans of which I am most definitely one.

I have been Plummed

"I looked for ironing but there was none.  When something needs to be ironed I put it in the ironing basket. If a year goes by and the item is still in the basket I throw the item away. This is a good system since eventually I end up only with clothes that don't need ironing"

When I read this paragraph in one of Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum books, I knew I had found a kindred spirit. I mean, what's not to like about a person who holds the above philosophy?  I actually spent two, yes two, hours ironing last night and was shattered at the end of it.  I have done no ironing for months now and much though I might yearn to emulate the Plum Rules I just couldn't do it.   Damn, that means I'm never going to make a lousy bailbonds woman or meet a Morelli or a Ranger or blow up cars and burn down funeral parlours and have orange hair by accident and......well, the list of qualifications is a long one.

Now I had never heard of Janet Evanovich until three weeks ago. Never.  And it seems she has written dozens of books and I have read nary a one until I was sent her latest, Sizzling Sixteen, to read and review. Picked it up, sniffed it, stroked it, turned it over a few times (always a necessary pre-read test of a good book) and then thought I would give it a try. Nearly gave up when our heroine was described as 'feisty' pretty early on (all books with feisty heroines should be avoided like the plague IMHO) but decided to continue as the wise cracking, bullet style delivery of narrative and chat had caught my attention.  Well, two hours later when I was still sitting in my nightie, in bed at 11 o'clock in the morning and weak with laughter, I was glad I had persevered.  Simply loved the book, loved Stephanie Plum, loved her kick-ass friend, retired hooker Lula, rather yearned after Morelli until Ranger came along and then decided he was The One and forgot about Morelli.  Stephanie also has a mother who wishes she would get a proper job and stop getting into appalling situations, get married (preferably to Morelli who is a nice Italian boy) and have babies.  Then there is Grandma who lives with them, likes a good viewing at the local funeral parlour and packs a 45.

I am sure the hawk eyed of you will have seen a whole list of the Stephanie Plum books in  the left hand column of Random that I have read in the last few weeks.  As you all know, I binge read when I find a series I like and this is what I am doing here.  I visited my library last week and exited with ten titles in my bag, one of my readers has sent me another one on my list which she was going to get rid of and another on the way, I ordered some from Amazon and those lovely people at Headline have also sent me a couple after I emailed them screaming and yelling How Dare They Get me Hooked and they had A Lot to Answer For and the least they could do was feed my addiction....

I have had various comments both on and offblog about these books. Some of you love them, some of you dislike them and some of you got fed up about No 10 and gave up.  There have been remarks about the fact that they are all the same and that there is no character development and you are right.  There isn't. Stephanie Plum stays the same in each book, she stays the same age, she is still involved in an on-off relationship with Morelli and yet yearns after the enigmatic and sexy Ranger (as I do) and there seems to be no resolution in sight. She remains an inefficient and lousy bail bonds woman.  She lives off junk food.  She never changes.  But it really doesn't matter. She is a great character (I rather suspect she is Janet Evanovich really).  If you are a Plum fan you just want these stories to keep rolling out one after the other and, as a new member of the ranks, I hope they keep going as well.   My problem is going to be in a week or so when I have read all of these and will be sitting waiting eagerly for No 17 to appear having gobbled up the previous 16 in less than a month.  I did this when I discovered the Brunetti books of Donna Leon and read 13 in four weeks and now am reduced, like everyone else, to waiting for each new title to be published.

There are others, not in the Plum series, which I am already exploring and Headline  Press sent me an early proof copy of the first of another new series due out in September, set in Salem and featuring some familiar characters from the Stephanie books, but more of that later.

I have had a few months of emotional ups and downs as you all know and I am spending the summer taking it easy with books, not reading anything much that requires deep thought or deep analysis (not that you ever got much of that anyway) and enjoying lots of crime novels and romance.  These books by Janet Evanovich have really cheered me up no end and, on many occasions during their perusal, I have had to put them down as I have been helpless with laughter and could not focus on the page.

Sheer delight from beginning to end and I love them.  Janet Evanovitch has a new Plum fan here on Random Jottings.