Random Jottings

If I Never See you Again - Niamh O'Connor

When I post on Random I know I am sending my thoughts out into cyberspace and who knows how many eyes will be reading and where they are located and who they are.  I have my regular visitors from all over the world, most of whom are now familiar to me and welcome, but though the blogging world is now accepted and appreciated as a marketing tool it is difficult to quantify the influence or effect you may or may not have.

One of the unexpected pleasures of Random Jottings is to suddenly receive emails out of the blue saying they have been reading/following my blog and how much they enjoy it which I love when they pop up in my in-box.  What I love even more is when a publisher drops by and says the same thing and then asks if I would like to review a particular book.   The thrill of being deemed worthy of reviewing a book will never leave me and so you will understand one day why I was amazed to see an email from a name unfamiliar to me but identified in the subject line as 'Tess Gerritsen's editor'.  Having just discovered, read and enjoyed all of this author's books I honed in like an Exocet and found I was being offered a copy of a debut novel by Niamh O'Connor, the front cover of which boasts a recommendation from Tess herself.  So I said yes please and this book duly plopped through my letter box last week.

Since I have designated my reading this yeas as the Year of Living Dangerously as I seem to have been working my way through a whole swathe of crime writing, lots more have turned up unannounced so those hawk eyed publishers miss very little....

Having read thrillers this year set in Iceland, Sweden, Italy (Venice and Rome), SIcily and good old Brighton, I now find myself in Ireland with this novel set in the streets of Dublin.  We meet Jo Birmingham who has been recently promoted and is one of the few female Detective Inspectors on the force.  Add to this that she is separated from her husband, who just happens to be Dan Mason her boss, has two children, one a teenager and one just over a year old and we know we are in familiar territory.  Woman in charge who has to prove herself while juggling with her family life and having a tough time.   Have mentioned before that I know there are some fictional detectives who are happily married, but theya re very few and far between.

So I started thinking Oh dear here we go again, same old, same old but I have been caught out that way before and withheld judgement until I had got well into the narrative. Glad I did as I found a pacy well plotted story.  There have been several brutal killings in Dublin and the killer has left a particular mark at the scene of each crime so that Jo realises that they have a serial killer at work.   I have read several thrillers this year featuring serial killers and all of the authors have, in their own way, built up the tension so that by the end of the book the reader is dying to find out his identity.  In a couple I have read, I have guessed who it is; another led me so far up the garden path that I got totally lost and this one also took me round the houses as we begin to suspect, particularly after the death of one of Jo's colleagues, that something or somebody in the investigating team is not all they should be.  Or are they?   Threw me completely.

This is a debut novel and already looking forward to the second on in what promises to be an interesting series.  Jo's personal life is left ambiguously open so we know that not only will there be more crimes, but we are in for more complications on the familial front and all is set fair for a long run, I hope.

The only quibble I have about If I never See you Again is the cover which does not do the story justice. A rather vapid looking blonde on the front and sorry to say that if I saw this in a book shop I am not sure I would have picked it up and looked at it.   I would have missed a treat so thank you to Transworld for sending me a copy of this great read.

Back on Sunday

Random has been somewhat light of content this week for which I apologise and am now off to Cambridge for a couple of days.  Meeting up with family and my darling Florence in one of my favourite places and am really looking forward to it. I will be in charge of darling girl this evening as parents off to posh dinner at Gonville & Caius, their old college so I will have her all to myself to tuck up in cot and yearn over.

Thank goodness the snow has gone and the roads are clear.  Have a good weekend everyone.

Simon's Cat: Santa Claws

via www.guardian.co.uk

Simply cannot resist posting this today. Not sure what my neighbours must think of me - shrieking in the middle of the night when we won the Test and now howling with laughter while watching this video.

Simon's cat is simply THE BEST

Scroll up when you click onto the link as I have ended up in the comments section. If it is cold, dreary and dark where you are, this is guaranteed to cheer you up no end

Colin Firth 'did not think Mr Darcy was much of a role' - Telegraph

The actor revealed that he thought himself “wrong” for the role of Mr Darcy in the 1995 BBC adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.

via www.telegraph.co.uk

Just think how awful life would be for us all if he had not finally taken this role.....

Cricket lovely cricket

Read a quote recently, forgotten where, that people who love reading love cricket and vice versa. Well in my case this is correct.  I LOVE reading and I LOVE cricket. If you can understand the fielding positions and appreciate the difference between fine leg, silly mid on, third man and long leg, then you will have no trouble reading War and Peace.  I know this is true - my conversion to cricket and the reading of this might tome happened at the same time.

I have two daughters who both read and both love cricket so that is a joy to me as well.  Kathryn has tickets for the Sydney test and I am trying hard to batten down the Daughter Envy but not succeeding very well at the moment.

Am bog eyed this morning and yesterday also as I sat up till the early morning listening to Radio 5 with the live commentary.  Kept dozing off and then would be woken up by a yell from the commentators when a wicket fell (which did not happen during England's batting) or a groan of despair when another Australian bowler was tonked over the park (all the time).  Thank goodness that ITV4 coughed up the money for the highglights - the BBC said it was 'too expensive'.  Yeh, right. Cut back on the use of taxis by the Director General for a year and they would have the dosh easily. 

Papers full of joy this morning and the Aussie team are really getting it in the neck back home.  Ponting, their captain, was dignified and generous in his after match interview and I felt so sorry for him.   However, having watched so many Brit sportsmen trying to make the most out of a bad situation, I don't wish to grind his nose in the dust...much

Not sure if the Aussies can come back - their team is pretty poor and they lack Shane Warne who could wipe us out single handed, or Glen McGrath et al, but I never underestimate their fighting spirit and sheer bloody mindedness and will not write them off yet.

But oh wonderful to wake up this morning and know that we have won the this Test.   I let out such a yell when the final wicket went down that I am sure my neighbours would have wondered what I was up to.

Who said cricket was boring?  WHO?

 

Slightly Foxed

I was recently contacted by Slightly Foxed and asked if I would like to write on Random about same and of course I am simply delighted to do so.  The more people know about this publication the better.

I am going to own up straight away and say that I no longer subscribe to Slightly Foxed. Not because I thought it wasn't worth it, it so is, but simply because I had no time to read it.  I was working at the time and they plopped through the letter box and were put on the pile and never read and in the end I gave up. I have picked up the odd copy here and there and have always enjoyed it so as this request to review SF also came with a copy of the Winter edition I said oh yes please and here I am.

What I have always loved about SF is its look and feel. Just the right size to pop into a handbag, good paper and printing font, and it looks classy.  Inside the articles live up to one's expectations.   I have just glancing down the index of the Winter edition and first on the list is Happy ever After by Daisy Hay (author of The Young Romantics) - all about Daisy Ashford and her delightful book which she wrote when she was a child called The Young Visiters (no I have not made a typo that is how it is written). I have had this book for years and think it is quite quite wonderful. Here is a taster:

"Bernard placed one arm tightly around her. When will you marry me Ethel he uttered you must be my wife it has come to that I love you so intensely that if you say no I shall perforce dash my body to the brink of yon muddy river he panted wildly.

Oh dont do that implored Ethel breathing rarther hard......Oh Bernard she sighed fervantly I  certinly love you madly you are to me like a Heathen god she cried looking at his manly form and handsome flashing face I will indeed marry you"

She certainly did love him as by the time they returned from honeymoon they had seven children....

Other contributors are Juliet Gardiner, Sue Gee and Diana Athill so you can see the standard is stratospherically high.  I actually submitted an article once but it was turned down and looking at it again recently I can understand why.  Not very good!

As well as the magazine Slightly Foxed has started producing its own editions of chosen books.  I was delighted to find that they are now publishing A House in Flanders which I reviewed earlier here.  I chose this as my book of the month at the Wood Green bookshop and found that Souvenir Press have now licensed SF to produce it.  A simply beautifully and elegiac piece of writing and I think I am going to have to get hold of a copy of this again as I gave my older edition away.     BUT what has really caught my eye is Edition No.12 The Young Ardizzone who is one of my favourite illustrators, I actually wrote about him earlier here and so I feel my credit card is going to take another bashing when I order a copy.   I was meant to go up to London last week on three occasions and all of them had to be cancelled because of the snow which was infuriating, not least because on one of those days several members of my on line reading group were going to the Slightly Foxed Bookshop in Gloucester Road.  Still, this is a simply a pleasure deferred and next time I am in town I am determined to go in and say hello.

And of course now that I have reacquainted myself with SF, well you can guess what I am going to do can't you?   Yes, I am going to take out a subscription again.......

Freezing Friday

Walked Trudged Floundered to my local small supermarket this morning as my car park and side road is a sheet of glass and when I tried the car the other day I began to skim backwards and forwards rather like the corp de ballet in Swan Lake and if two lovely passers by had not helped me by giving me a push, I would have ended up in some body's front garden.  Not going to try that again.   This walk normally takes me 15 mins at most each way, today I was gone an hour.  I chose to walk through the deep untouched snow as the main walked on parts of the pavements and roads were icy and treacherous and I nearly went over a couple of times.  Three teenage girls laughed merrily at one near slip and I asked them would they find it really really funny if I fell over and broke a leg and they looked shamefaced and muttered Sorry.  As I was expecting an expletive, which seems to be the norm nowadays, I was quite surprised and beamed at them.

Walked past the lake nearby and took these pics.  I do love the monochrome colours when it snows and the leafless trees are etched against the sky.  I stopped off and fed the ducks and it was like a scene from Hitchcock's The Birds as the seagulls came shrieking and swooping in. Made me duck I can tell you.

On the way back I took a short cut through the small wood at the back of my block of flats where several children were having a glorious time sledging and shrieking with laughter and fun.  They were very sweet too, getting out of my way so that I could get past them safely and I was just thinking what nice polite children they were when the eldest one bellowed out to the rest 'Look out, let this old lady get by' and I began to revise my opinion.....

Following the Detectives

Following the Dectives arrived courtesy of the Amazon Vine Programme which only requires a review on their site, but found this book such fun I thought I would review it here as well.

The sub-title is 'Real Locations in Crime Fiction'.  I do love books that tell you where events take place in books, knowing where you are really helps in fixing a story.  I used to have a book Georgette Heyer's Bath identifying all the places where her heroines etc used to be but it seems to have vanished, probably when I moved and I am a bit cross about that. 

One of the reasons I love the Donna Leon books is that they are set in Venice which I know fairly well. I do get lost sometimes but have an idea of where Brunetti is going most of the time and it really adds to my enjoyment to know exactly which piazza he is crossing or where he is picking up the boat to take him out to Murano or whatever.  In this book, edited by Maxim Jakubowski, we are taken to La Fenice (before it burned down - again - a few years ago) which is featured in Death at la Fenice, the first Donna Leon I read and which started me off (in Venice a few years ago I sat at the cafe next to it which is also mentioned)  and am delighted to see the location of Tonolo, the pasticeria where Brunetti buys bread every Sunday. Next time I visit I will track this down though I gather there are now Brunetti walking tours which would make it easier.

This book also covers Sweden (Wallander), Sicily (Montalbano), Oxford (Morse) and many others some of which I know and some I don't.  It also features the Brighton of Peter James whose books I have just discovered and am enjoying enormously, but as I spent a lot of my childhood in Brighton I don't really need a  map - still interesting though.

There are plenty of other locations for me to explore, Boston, Chicago and Iceland though my recent experience of an Icelandic mystery nearly finished me off so not sure I will be turning to those just yet, but at the rate I am going I will be running out of countries and detectives soon and may yet end up reading those.   This year has certainly been a Detective Year for me and I had forgotten just how much I enjoy this genre.  My heart is still wedded to Lord Peter Wimsey and Roderick Alleyn in particular, with Adam Dalgliesh hot on their heels, but am having fun discovering all the different nationalities in the detective world.   I will be seeking out more new authors and locations in 2011 methinks.

Oh and have just been checking the Radio Times and and BBC4 are showing four of the Wallander films which have been shown in Sweden - I gather the characterisation of Kurt is not the same as that of the TV series which I thought was just right - but will be interesting to see.  Also, again BBC4, there will be three more Montalbano episodes shown, in Italian with sub-titles.  I missed the couple they showed a few years ago but will make sure I don't this time around.

This would make a perfect Christmas present for crime aficionados and all lovers of detective fiction because as well as giving you information about those you already love, it makes you want to get hold of the other authors mentioned and explore the cities with them.  So Washington and Chicago here I come....