Random Jottings

My 2014 reading and Book of the Year

I have had a very busy year being much more involved with family and grandchildren, helping move, childcare and visiting and, hence, for the first time in over five years I have read less than 200 books. I am at my lowest with the total for 2014 being 164. I also find that this year my reading has very much leaned towards crime and detection and have discovered many new authors as well as enjoying old and well loved writers.

Here below is the list of books I have enjoyed most over the last 12 months (in no particular order):

• Old Friends and New Fancies - Sybil Brinton
• The Great Impersonator - E Phillip Oppenheim
• Grand Duchess of Nowhere - Laurie Graham
• Knife Gun Poison Bomb - Martin O'Brien
• I Visit the Soviets (aka The Provincial Lady goes to Russia) - E M Delafield
• A Tangled Web - L M Montgomery
• Cauldstane - Linda Gillard
• Winter Garden - Jane Thynne
• Black Roses - Jane Thynne
• Blue Remembered Hills - Rosemary Sutcliff

It goes without saying that the highlight of 2014 has been the publication of Women of the World by my clever and gorgeous daughter, Helen McCarthy, and I have not included it in the above list as it goes without saying that I think it is wonderful.

For that reason I am not making it by book of the year as I am totally biased and my choice for Random this year is The Four Sisters by Helen Rappaport.

This is not the first time I have chosen a book by this author for this accolade, if it can be deemed as such, but it is richly deserved. This story is beautifully written, impeccably researched and totally heartbreaking.   If you have yet to read it then I recommend that you make a good start to 2015 by getting hold of a copy.   My review is in two parts here and here.

So it remains for me to wish all Random readers and visitors a Happy New Year. You all continue to make my life fun and interesting so do keep on visiting. And do please leave comments as I love reading them, and if you are a lurker, I know I have some, then please come out of the shadows........

Merry Christmas to you all

I will be back after Christmas so I am taking this opportunity of wishing all of you lovely people who visit my blog and leave comments and give me so much fun and joy, a very very happy Christmas.

Home made cooked gifts for Christmas - check out Random Cooking

Have had a fun week cooking all sorts of lovely things for presents. Check it out.

http://randomjottings.typepad.com/random_and_the_great_colc/2014/12/home-made-cooked-gifts-for-christmas.html

Random Wednesday

One of my resolutions for New Year, though I know we are not there yet, is to make more time for my blog. I have posted much less this year as I seem to have spent most of my time charging around from pillar to post and back again. I am not complaining as this extra activity is nearly all to do with family and, in particular, my grandchildren but I have not been very organised with my time. So I am going to work on that.

In the meantime my usual catch up with you all.   Kathryn arrived last Friday amid panic that the crashing of the air controller system delayed so many flights (had visions of her being diverted to Scotland or all places north) would delay her, but she arrived safely and, because there were no flights landing she sailed through customs and baggage very quickly and Helen and I were able to shriek and hug and yell and jump up and down without too long a wait.

It is wonderful to have her here and always odd to me that within thirty seconds of her arriving it is as if I saw her yesterday and she has never been away. We stayed in Ealing overnight so that we could have a quiet sit and chat and see the girls in the morning (Florence went all shy and Beatrice looked puzzled as she has no memory of Kathryn at all) but that did not last long. A good ice breaker was a joint rendering of Let it Go in my bedroom between Florence and her aunt, bouncing on my bed all the time (not Kathryn I hasten to add).

We have had a lovely few days and my sister and bro-in-law came down and we had a good day together and at the moment of writing Kathryn is in London visiting friends. Tomorrow she goes to Ealing to meet up with Helen and Florence and they are going to see Paddington at the cinema. Then I take me hither on Friday and in the evening we are all going to Christmas at Kew which promises to be magical.  Then I am back on Saturday afternoon as Helen is taking her sister out for the evening and I am going to curl up at home and watch the final of Strictly. That is ring fenced in my diary......

A whirl of activity but it is all wonderful and I am going to make the most of every moment because I know the time will fly by and I will soon be waving my darling daughter off as she flies back to Sydney. 

Triple Tecs

I have had a quiet couple of days catching up on all things domestic but in between have managed to read three books.  All crime thrillers and each one excellent in their different ways. On scrolling through my reading list this year I note that the majority are all crime novels of one kind or another. I started off with Agatha Christie when I was eleven and my love of the detective genre has never disappeared.

Stagestruck - Peter Lovesey.  I have now galloped through all the Inspector Diamond books since I discovered them a couple of months ago and have loved them all. Set in Bath so that I have a good idea of location and where things are and this helps enormously when reading.   I am a Camera by Christopher Isherwood is being staged at the Royal Theatre and in order to bring in the punters, a fading pop star, Clarion Calhoun, is playing  Sally Bowles.   It is clear that she is a bad actress and it is going to be a disaster and so it is, but not for the reason you might think. Within five minutes of her entrance she is screaming and clawing at her face which is burning and on fire.   Rushed off to hospital it is discovered that she is suffering from acid burns. The make up artist who looked after her then vanishes and bodies start turning up all over the theatre.   Inspector Diamond has to investigate, but he has an overpowering fear of theatres and part of this story deals with this and his tracking down of the origin of this phobia.   Just when he thinks he has cracked it and we all agree, there is a twist.

Loved it.

Star Fall - Cynthia Harrod-Eagles. The lastest in the Bill Slider series which I have been impatiently waiting for .  Oh I love these stories.   Full of wit and humour and great characters I hate to call them 'cosy' but they are. We have the contrasting Bill Slider and his sidekick Atherton (difficult to rid myself of the pictures in my mind of Lewis and Hathaway) and their relationship, based on friendship and respect.

An antiques expert, Rowland Egerton, darling of day time TV is murdered. I have to say that from the description of the victim I immediately thought of David Dickinson but sincerely trust that it is only a facial similarity as Rowland turns out to be nasty and duplicitious and a bit of a fraud.  A Faberge box and a painting were missing from the house but nothing else and it is the tracking down of these two items that lead us to the culprit who, quite frankly, I only began to suspect about ten pages from the end when it all fell into place.

As always, so well written and characterised and a joy to read.

Die Again - Tess Gerritsen.   The latest Rizzoli and Isles book and totally different from the above titles. Tess Gerritsen's books always have a darker edge and can be quite scary at time. Her last two or three have been particularly creepy with shades of Christie's Ten Little Indians or whatever the correct title is now, with protagonists gradually disappearing and being murdered one by one.   Die Again opens with a group of tourists on safari in Botswana. They have paid for the 'real bush experience' and boy do they find it. One by one they are being picked off and, while at first they think they are being attacked by animals, it soon becomes clear that they are being stalked by a human hunter.  One of the group manages to flee the carnage and takes to the bush.

Years later, back in Boston, a grisly murder takes place which may have links with the happenings in Botswana and the disappearance of other groups who have gone on holidays in the wild.   Rizzoli flies to South Africa to try and persuade the survivor from Botswana to return with her to the US to identify the murderer, a move which nearly proves fatal.

Started reading this last night but had to give up and go to sleep, but the first thing I did this morning was to pick it up and finish it off as it was so darn gripping.   Well up to her usual standard. Great stuff.

And then while I was at the hairdressers today I read Watch you Die by Katie Lieff. I have read a few of hers and though I would not say they set the world on fire, they are well plotted and enjoyable. This one concerns a widow and her young son who have moved to New York to start a new life but find a stalker who has been watching them for some time follows them to the city.  I enjoyed it.

Strictly -oooh it's getting tense

Have not written about Strictly for a few weeks but after last week I feel time for a Random update.   I simply love this show, it reminds me of the kind of TV that used to be on Saturday nights years ago when people sat down to watch a particular programme which was then discussed with your mates the next day or at work on Monday. Now of course we all get on Twitter with our reactions and chat and that can be just as much fun.

Big shock at the weekend was Pixie Lott and her partner Trent leaving. Now I am sure she is a lovely girl, she seems to be and by all accounts everyone loves her.  I knew zilch about her before this programme and zilch now but no matter.   From the very first week I have found the combination of her and Trent slightly unnerving, both blonde and blue eyed and almost identical.   My initial reaction was that they looked like refugees from the Village of the Damned, others called them the Midwich Cuckoos and thoughts of Thunderbirds are Go also crossed my mind. The live blog in the Guardian which is a hoot and well worth reading, named her Trixietron 300 because of the robotic appearance of she and her partner. All in good humour I might add and after their outfits on Saturday, Barbie and Ken.

Now to seasoned watchers of Strictly, and I am one, there is a recurring pattern to the show.   You will get those Slebs who are lousy and awful and unlovable and we cannot wait to see the back of them. Gregg Wallace fell into this category from day one, gurning and mucking about and trying to be funny - he was the first one out. Then we have the likeable but forgettable ones who go pretty quick; then the fun ones who the audience and public love and who they keep in for weeks much to the judges fury while better dancers perish in the dance off.   We all love this BUT the Fun Sleb always loses before we reach the hard core of the competition and by the quarter finals we are down to the real contenders.

And in this bunch there is always, and I mean always, a pair who appear to be perfect and this year it was Pixie and Trent.  Pixie has had dance training and it is no good Craig Revel-Horwood appearing on It Takes Two and saying that has nothing to do with it, ballroom dancing is different etc etc, because it DOES have something to do with it. The Sleb has the mental discipline to channel that previous experience into their current role. There were two routines when Pixie used ballet moves which would have been beyond anybody else and she was rewarded with high scores because of this. So there is no argument that dance training does help.

And then the judges have their favourites. They say they don't but they do. It has been clear for weeks that they thought Pixie should be in the final and she could have fallen on her butt in the middle of a routine and it would not have mattered.  As soon as they start doing this the pair are doomed.   There was a series a few years ago which featured an American dancer, Brian, and his partner Ali. They were good, really good but mistakes and errors which appeared were mostly glossed over by the judges who grossly overmarked them. This was spotted by the viewers very early on and their displeasure was marked.   At the quarter final stage the waltzathon or whatever it was called took place and Brian and Ali were placed top even though they had bashed into another couple. Result, they were voted out as soon as the public could manage it. Cue indignation from the judges.

So we had the same situation last week when Pixie and Trent turned in a less than stellar performance of their cha cha cha but were then chosen for first place in the waltzathon. I knew they were in trouble as soon as that was done and so it was.

Craig and Bruno picked Pixie and Trent to go through talking about their general overall dance ability, Darcy picked Simon and Kristina and then Len chose Simon and Kristina as well based not on their past or future ability, but on the dance off alone which should always be the case and so bye bye to the Golden Duo.  Collapse of Simon on floor in a state of shock.

It was a dead give away that before the dance off SImon was thanking Kristina for all her hard work and saying he had had the best time, as it was clear he assumed the judges would choose Pixie and Trent.   And please don't tell me it was because he thought they were better dancers, though technically they were, but because he thought the judges would never choose them over the other two.

My only worry about this is that Simon will suffer as the Twitter backlash etc has been HUGE and people may not vote for him now.   I know it sounds crazy but that is how it works. A lot of people get very involved in Strictly. I know I do but not to such an extent as some.

So it is now very interesting indeed and throughout all this hooh hah the fact that Mark has made it through has fallen below the radar.   I find him very endearing and his face when his name was called was a picture.

Best of all next Saturday my darling Kathryn will be here and she emailed me to say that we were going to sit down and watch Strictly just as we used to do and that is something I am sooooooooo looking forward to.

Keeeeeeeeeeeeep dancing....

Christmas - Random Recommendations (2) and (3) and others

I am sitting upstairs in my room at Ealing looking out the window and after yesterday's torrential rain which made the drive here pretty vile, the sun is now shining.  Cup of coffee to hand and more Christmas recommendations. Struck me the other day I had better get my skates on as not long to the Day now.

Well No 2 on my recommended list is the British Library and its wonderful selection of books. I have posted about them a week or so ago so will not repeat myself so here is the link to that post. Besides these there are loads more wondrous things on their website and if you can visit their shop in person even better.

No 3 is Hesperus Press. I have already written about them as well but have no hesitation in mentioning them again. I love the way the books are published and printed and they always looks so buyable.  Lucy Maud Montgomery is out of copyright now so her books are being issued in new editions for the first time. Virago have already published the Emily books and these should be on your list, but in the last year Hesperus have given us two titles you may not be familiar with, The Blue Castle (reviewed here), my favourite LMM and A Tangled Web, (reviewed here). I hope more are to come. There are so many unknown stories that deserve to be discovered. I do hope that Jane of Lantern HIll is on their list. Hint Hint......

These books are not madly expensive so you could buy two or three at a time. Just a thought.

Elizabeth Goudge is one of my favourite authors and Hesperus have recently published The Runaways. I have a first edition hardback of this story but it was then called Linnets and Valerians so I am slightly at a loss at the renaming. Presumably it is easier to read and attract attention. No matter, I am simply delighted to see more of this author out there as she is a magical writer. (Note: Folio have just reissued a Little White Horse in a wonderful edition. A real treat).

OUP Classics series go from strength to strength and have just reissued all the Barchester Chronicles in a new format.  I am keeping my old copies of The Warden and Barchester Towers however, as they have illustrations by Edward Ardizzone which the new editions do not have which I think is a shame. No matter this series is a great one and look out for lots of Trollope next year as it is his Centenary Year. I shall be working my way through the Barchesters again as I love them all.   One of the titles already available is Trollope's Autobiography and well worth reading as it shows what a nice man he was. Here is a link to a post I wrote a couple of years ago about the man and his books.

I am looking forward to lots of AT in 2015.

I hope I have given you some bookish ideas for Christmas. If not nip over to Shiny New Books and see what they are looking at this month.

And I close with saying that this week I shall be reading A Christmas Carol again which I do every year. I have so many editions of this story, see here. Which one shall I take down from the shelf? And, yes I have included the Muppets as well...

Random Catch up - again....

As per I am madly behind in reviewing or chatting about recent reads and have to do my round up.  I have to be honest and say that everything I am reading at the moment is pretty light and easy as am charging around doing other things, so no in depth writing really needed. And I mean no disrespect to the authors I am going to write about!

Janet Evanovich and Lee Goldberg - The Job. I have read all the Stephanie Plum books by this author and love them but have to admit that I felt the last one was a little tired so was pleased to see a new series which is full of fun and wit and sass as the earlier Plum novels. This is the third in this series and it is hitting its stride now. Special Agent Kate O'Hare is teamed up with master thief and conman Nick Fox who is, naturally, wicked and gorgeous. I could not help thinking of Steve McQueen in the original Thomas Crown Affair when reading this book. Intricate scam and take downs and huge fun.

Earl Derr Biggers - Love Insurance. Another little gem from the Hesperus Press very Wodehousian and written in 1914 it tells the story of Dick Minot entrusted by his boss with the simple job of making sure that the fiance of Lord Harrowby actually does marry him.  The groom has taken out a huge insurance for this and it goes without saying that nothing works out how it should and lots of rather silly, funny and complicated events occur. Simply delightful and charming and a gorgeous cover.

Harriet Evans -A Place for us.   I came across this author a few years ago when I borrowed one of her earlier books from the library and since then have read them all as I enjoyed them so much. At first I regarded them as rather chicklitty books, light and fluffy but that was all. However, I have found that her more recent books have much more depth and strength to them and she is getting better and better. I reviewed her last book HERE.

Martha Winter is nearing her 80th birthday and has invited her somewhat scattered and fractured family to a party at which she will 'make an announcement'.  Intrigued and slightly fearful the family gather and then she reveals a secret which she has kept for years and which shatters them all.   Obviously, I am saying nothing more as I do not wish to give anything away.   The story reveals the lives of her son, daughter and siblings and their marriages and relationships and shifts between timelines and time changes, which I always enjoy as it is so interesting to hear the backstory and alternate thoughts of the same event.

This is a terrific book and a great read and it very much reminds me at times of Rosamund Pilcher. And that, I can assure you, is a huge compliment. Due to be published in January 2015 so give yourself a New Year treat and order it.

The Inspector Diamond Books - Peter Lovesey. I discovered these a couple of months ago and have cantered through the lot which I usually do when I discover a new series I like and now have to wait for the next one. As the latest title was just published a few months ago I have a wait ahead of me I see. Set in Bath, which I know fairly well, it makes it more interesting to know the locations mentioned in these novels and helps to give a sense of place. Inspector Diamond is a larger than life figure, naturally, can be over bearing and irascible, hates attending post mortems and always palms that off to somebody else, is astute and probably a pain to most of his team, but he has a likeability about him. He is also very happily married which makes a change.   I can really recommend these.   I remember reading the Inspector Cribb books by this author yonks ago so may re-read those now.

Currently reading The Silence of the Sea by Yrsa Sigurdardottir, which is an Icelandic mystery and is shaping up nicely. A luxury yacht crashes into the harbour and nobody is on board. All is deserted and the entire family and crew have disappeared. Love stories about missing yachts so am lapping this up. Seems this lady has written others so more to chase up which is good. Will let you know what I think of this but it is not published until the Spring so will have to restrain my full review until then.

So that is it for the moment. I had a mad sort out the other day and have three bags of books for the charity shop. Sadly, it seems to have made no appreciable diffrence to my To be Read shelves.....