Random Jottings

January - D E Stevenson month

I know I have mentioned D E Stevenson on several occasions but offer no apology for returning to her once more.  It is a bitter cold January here in the UK and I have been hunkering down and trying to keep warm (my thanks to whoever came up with the idea of an electric throw) and I have returned to a comforting warm author to help me through the days.

My first review of the year was a political book which disgusted me so much I decided to turn once more to the aforementioned author and re-read some of her books. I have also found one, Crooked Adam, that I had never read and that was a delightful surprise.

D E Stevenson has written some fifty odd books and, as is natural in an output that vast, some are better than others.  Some are light and delightful, others deeper and more insightful. Many of them are set in her beloved Scotland and the descriptions of the countryside make me feel that I must visit.

The Mrs Tim books are very amusing and witty and when they are written in diary form, remind me forcibly of E M Delafield and Diary of a Provincial Lady (nothing wrong with that) though not all of them follow this format.  Mrs Tim is based on D E Stevenson as she was an army wife and kept a diary about her life. A friend read it and urged her to publish it. While I am fond of the Mrs Tim books they are a little bit too frothy for me at times much though I enjoy them.

Titles I have re-read and really enjoyed this month are:

The English Air - Franz von Heiden, son of a Nazi official and an English mother, comes to England early in 1938 to visit his English cousins and to study them. He is accepted and looked after by Wynne's friends but the life they lead is not what he had been told to expect. These people were not the enemy and Franz is puzzled. His reports home displease his father. He also finds that he is in love with Wynne but as his father's marriage with his English wife was so unhappy he is loathe to put her through the same sad fate.

In the end he returns home to see his dying father and he and Wynne are separated by the events of the Second World War.

This is one of D E Stevenson's deeper and more thoughtful books and it is very good indeed.

Spring Magic - Frances Field is 25 and has had no life at all. She lives in London and is expected to look after the house and her guardian's wife who is a professional invalid, selfish and demanding. Unforseen circumstances give her a chance to get away and, on a whim, she goes off on her own to a fishing village in Scotland. An army batallion is stationed nearby and she meets army men and their wives and families and sees the sometimes troubled relationships and undercurrents among the personnel. She also finds herself drawn to a young officer but sadly, he seems interested in somebody else...

Again, another deeper and thoughtful book.

Five Windows - A recent discovery. I had a copy lurking on my shelves but I did not find it until I was sorting out my books and came across it at the back. What a lovely find!

David Kirke has had a sheltered and peaceful childhood and he finds it rather difficult when he ventures into the world to make his way.  There are five windows in his life, five windows reflecting his life experiences and illustrates his path to happiness. A book to be read slowly and peacefully.

A serene book and, once again, deeper and more thoughtful than some others.

I have named these three but all of this author's books have much to recommend them. Many of them cover two or three books so when a couple end up getting married, we then find out what their life is like afterwards which is always interesting.  There are cross over mentions of people and places in her other books, mainly those set in Scotland, and it is great fun recognsiing these.

As I have stated many times in my posts, I used to work in a library as a teenager and then in my twenties, and I rather turned up my nose at the ladies who came into the libary to ask for a new D E Stevenson.   Well, as it turns out they were right and I was wrong.

Dean Street Press publish many of her titles with, I hope, more to come.   I am currently replacing my Kindle copies with hard copies as they are so beautifully produced.  Do check them out.

Thoughts on "nice" books

"giving pleasure or satisfaction; pleasant or attractive:"

This is the dictionary definition of the word nice.  I feel that sometimes this particular word can be used in a derogatory manner or to intimate something bland and uninteresting.  But, as you can see from above, it can mean precisely what is says - giving pleasure or satisfaction.

As I get older I find that my interest in books that are described as "searing" "visceral" "stunning" "brutal" is nil. Even when younger I avoided titles so described because, quite frankly, why be made miserable?

Over my reading/blogging life I have been sent a huge assortment of books and have struggled with many of them. That is not to say they were not brilliant or well written. Au contraire, one can hardly level this kind of criticism at the likes of Margaret Atwood, Barry Unsworth, Kingsley Amis etc.   But I have never wanted or wished to return to them or to re-read them. Once is enough. I remember reading Possession by A S Byatt, a real tour de force but once I had finished it I felt a weariness of spirit and an exhaustion and I cannot say I enjoyed it. I might appreciate it but I did not love it.

And then I tried The Children's Book by the same author and honestly, I thought It. Would. Never. End.   This was one book that I really went to town on - I normally will not give a bad or withering review because I always remember that because I do not like a book does not mean others will feel the same. However, I was heartened after writing my post - here- by comments agreeing with me. I also felt that A S Byatt would hardly notice my thoughts.

So it is with a feeling of Sod it who cares that I now read Wot I Like. And Wot I Like turns out to be "nice" books.   I have not been well recently and also now have to deal with a bad hip and the likelihood that I will need an operation in the not too distant, and it is with relief that I have turned to relaxed reading.

When I worked at a library in Highgate, London many moons ago I was a teenager with skirts barely covering my bum, wearing boots and false eyelashes and full of myself.   The readers who came in were lovely but they were mainly of a certain age and would ask me for a "nice" book. I knew nothing but I did note that Miss Read and D E Stevenson featured largely in their choices, ditto Dorothy Whipple.   My nose was permanently turned up. But guess what I am reading at the moment - yep, Miss Read and D E Stevenson.  

Last year I read all the Thrush Green books by Miss Read.  There was an offer on Kindle for the whole lot some time back for the princely sum of 99p so I bought them and then forgot all about them.  And then one day I was feeling at a loose end and I opened then up and found all the wonderful illustrations were there too. I read them all over a week and absolutely loved them.   It also added to my pleasure when I discovered that the current price for the whole lot on Kindle was now nearly £40....

I have just started the Fairacre series and have most of them on my shelves waiting my attention.   This paragraph from The Village School made me laugh:

"I am heartily sick of books from Caxley library - all termed 'powerful' by their reviewers (and in future I shall steer clear of any with this label) which give the suffering reader a detailed account of the bodily functions of their main characters.  If the author has such a paucity of ideas that he must pad out his 300 pages with reiterated comments on his hero's digestive, alimentary and productive systems, I am sorry for him but do not see why he should be encouraged"

This could have come straight out of Diary of a Provincial Lady by E M Delafield (of which more another day).

I wrote about D E Stevenson a while back and here is the link. And I see I have used the word nice again!

And then D E Stevenson.  Over the last year or so I have read every single one. Her output was prodigious and, naturally, there are a few that I think are a bit poor and overwritten. Hardly surprising when you write so many and I daresay your publishers are breathing down your neck. But the vast majority of them are sheer delight and it is wonderful that they are now nearly all back in print. I remember a visit to Hay on Wye some while back when I was hunting second hand copies but now they are easy to find.  Dean Street Press have quite a few titles and Persephone Books have published the Miss Buncle books.  And the good thing about them is they pay rereading. I have not tired of doing so and reach for one when I need to be quiet and happy.

Dorothy Whipple was another popular author which made my nose turn up but oh how wrong I was.  Persephone Books now have all her titles in print and they are an eye opener. Yes, they are enormously entertaining and easy to read, but do not fall into the trap of thinking they are facile. They are not. They are positively Austenian in their dissection of human frailties and life.  See my earlier thoughts here

And then there is Richmal Crompton - author of the William books which dogged her all her life and which over shadowed her adult books.  Many of these long out of print titles are now available so another author to look out for.

So all Hail to Nice Books.  They should be given the respect they deserve. And don't start me on the way Romantic novels are treated.  That really gets my dander up. 

I once had an argument with a man (well it would be) who said they were a load of tripe and brought up the name Mills & Boon. I pointed out to him that they were a difficult publisher to persuade to publish your writing. I also said that most novelists are proud of producing a book a year. DId you know said I that with Mills & Boon you have to write three or four a year? Could you manage that? Did he have the discipline and the capacity to do so?  He weakly responded that they were all badly written at which point I got really cross and asked if he had read any. Of course he had not. I then asked him if he had read Dan Brown and he said yes. My response to this was that if he thought that was well written then he had no qualifications whatsoever to pontificate on romantic novels.

At this point he retired from the lists, with his wife who had been standing watching and listening, saying "I told you not to argue with Elaine"

Victory was mine.  Everyone should read what they want and not have to be sneered at by others. I admit I used to when I was young and stupid but no more.

This has turned into a bit of a rant. Do forgive me.

I am off to make a cup of tea and return to Fairacre.

Brit tec - home grown crime

I am getting really tired of January and the cold weather. Winter seems to have gone on for a long time this year.  I have been in Cambridge this week for a couple of days and the driving there was hampered by road works and the return journey not much fun as ice on the roads. So I have been hunkering down and reading a lot of crime, as per.

The Brutal Tide - Kate Rhodes.   This is the latest in the Ben Kitto series set on the Scilly Isles.  I really enjoy Kate's writing and loved her Alice Quintin books (if you have not read them may I recommend you do) and I keep pestering her for more despite the fact she is now writing a new series. Hope springs eternal.

A gangland mobster Craig Travis is dying in hospital and he is determined that he will get even with those who helped put him away. His daughter, who he adores and who sees no wrong in him, sets out to seek revenge on his behalf and a killing spree begins. Ben Kitto is on her list but she has to seek out a way to get to him.

At the same time Ben has discovered a skeleton which is unearthed during construction works and it links back to events some twenty years earlier.

The two stores run parrallel to each other and while one was predictible, (I won't say anything) the danger Ben is in keeps us on our toes and is very exciting. Really enjoyed it.

Showstopper - Peter Lovesey. The latest Peter Diamond detective story and I really love this series. I felt this was a slow burner and not as immediate as some of his other titles, and at the start when retirement was mentioned, I panicked. No this series cannot end but by the last page I felt reassured....

There appears to be be a jinx on a popular television series and while these are dismissed as just bad luck with the tabloids building it up, the mysterious disappearance of a member of fthe crew some years earlier has never been solved.

If you have not read any of the Diamond series then, once again, I can recomment that you do. Immensely readable and fun, with a dash of tragedy thrown in, I loved them all. 

Tana Collins - the Inspector Jim Carruthers series.   I received an offer from Amazon to read these, five of them in total, for the astounding sum of 99p on Kindle. Mad. But I bought them thinking if I did not like them then I was hardly out of pocket.

Well, I DID like them and spent a happy week reading all of them, Robbing the Dead, Care to Die, Mark of the Devil, Dark is the Day and Deep Water.   Inspector Carruthers is divorced from his wife (is there any other kind of DI in crime fiction) who is living in Scotland as he moved up there in an attempt to save his marriage. It did not work but Jim finds he loves living in a coastal town in Scotland.  He crosses swords with his boss (again this seems the norm in most crime stories. Peter Diamond has the same problem).   I am sure somewhere in the UK there is a DC Super who does not worry about budgets all the time. At least I hope so.

If I say to you that the writing is nice and tidy and clean you might get the impression that I am damning with faint praise, but I am not.  Flowery and over decorated prose is not for me. I like my stories and narrative lean and mean and Tana Collins fulfills this in spades as far as I am concerned.   Another recommendation and I do hope there are more.

I have also discovered another series, again courtesy of a 99p offer from Amazon. This is a cunning ploy because they lure you in and hope you will then go and buy the rest. I fall for it every time. This series features a female DI, Zoe Finch and the author is Rachel McLean. Just embarking on the second one and, yes, have bought more and will keep me going for a bit. Will let you know how I get on.

Two other things to mention.  A year or so ago, Dean Street Press, reprinted a series of detective stories by Moray Dalton of whom I had never heard. But as this publishing house seems to produce an endless list of books all of which I want, I got hold of them, read them and loved them.  Please do check them out and I am delighted to hear that in March this year more are arriving.

British Library Crime Classics continue to come up with the goods as well. Not all of them are to my taste but most of them are. After reading one of their reprints by Freeman Wills Croft I then went on to hunt down all his titles. It turned out to be quite expensive....

So two arrived this week, Death of Mr Dodsley by John Ferguson which is classified as a London Bibliomystery, A murder in a bookshop. Perfect.

Death of an Author - E C R Lorac. This title has been out of print since 1935 so kudos to the BritLib for giving us the chance of reading and enjoying. E C R Lorac is about my favourite of all the newly rediscovered authors they have published and I am going to save this up for a bit and just enjoy the anticipation.

And I have to mention yet again, Jane Casey and her wonderful detective stories featuring Maeve and Josh.  I have just reread them all and now that I know the characters well found that going right back to the beginning was a real treat.   They are simply brilliant.

Jane has also written stand alone title, The Killing Kind which is equally gripping and, I gather it is going to be made into a tv series.  Cannot wait.

OK well loads of recommends for you. Do let me know if you read or have read any of them, and let me know what you think.

 

Recent reading

I have had problems with the blog the last week or so as my host, Typepad, who I have been with for years, had a new update etc etc and like all updates it caused mayhem and the blog was unavailable. An irritant for me, but checking on Twitter I could see how upset so many users were who were running businesses and were losing customers and orders.

Well they finally got it sorted and my post on Magpie Murders finally was able to be logged on.  SInce posting I have finished Moonlight Murders, a follow up to Magpie, and enjoyed its complexity and fun very much.  I am not sure if there will be another in this series, I do hope so.

I have also re-read the Karen Pirie books by Val Macdermid. I have read all her output and this particular series is my favourite.  I revisited them as I knew there was a tv adaptation coming up of A Distant Echo and I wanted to refresh my memory.  The TV dramatisation was a huge hit with large ratings and I gather another is in the pipeline.  I did not care for the actress who played the title role very much and I thought she was totally unlike the Karen of the books, but I put that to one side a she was very good indeed.   There were minor irritants with the characters, gender changed for one main protagonist for no reasont that I could understand, and the ethnicity of others was changed, presumably to tick diversity boxes as it made no difference to the story at all. I do find this virtue signalling that casting directors go in for rather boring and wish they would not do it but hey ho.   By the last episode it did not really matter as the tension was racheted up and it really had me gripped.   Do catch it if you can. Also if you read the books then please do read them in order.

I then turned to Marple: twelve new stories featuring the famous Christie creation. Twelve writers producing "new" Miss Marple tales.  This really irritates me as it is totally unneccessary and the main reason for this exercise is Money using the Christie name. 

I found most of them heavy going and nearly all lacking the  gentle wit and Marple touch. Oddly enough the only one which rang true in any way was the story penned by Val Macdermid. She got it right. The rest did not.  But it is out in time for Christmas and that is the obvious reason.

I have already written about the Alan Rickman diaries which I found disappointing and revealed a tormented, self absorbed persona in one of my favourite actors. Why they were ever published is beyond me. They were clearly personal and not written with publication in mind. I presume the reason is, once again, money.

As an antidote to this I turned to Patricia Wentworth. I have read all the Miss Silver cases and loved them but the author wrote many other crime stories and Dean Street Press (one of my very favourite publishers) have reprinted many more of these. I read three in one day (well it was raining and my arthritis was playing up so it was a day on the bed with hot water bottles) and they were huge fun. Madly dramatic and a bit over the top but thoroughly enjoyable. I read The Amazing Chance, Dead or Alive and the Red Lacquer Case and gave myself over to sheer in fun.

Left you Dead by Peter James.  I read this mainly because I have waded through all the Inspector Grace books but they really had become rather tedious and on at least a couple of occasions when it seems to me he had no idea what to do with a character he just killed them off. He did it again in this book.  I really enjoyed them when I started and I do wonder why authors carry on when they are clearly tired of churning them out. There was an interview with Lee Child in the paper today and he said that is why he stopped writing the Reacher books. 

Sadly though there will be no more Grace books because when I was writing this post I discovered that the author had died.  He was hugely successful and enjoyed by many including me though, as I said, I had rather lost interest in them.

Another of my favourite authors, Andrea Camilleri, died last year and he left several books behind for publication after his death. He was in his late eighties when he passed and the last few books showed a lack of focus which is understandable.   The final Montalbano book, Riccardino, was, I am sorry to say, really poor.   I have loved the Montalbano books with Catarella and Fabrizio and they have given me hours of enjoyment and many laugh out moments.

I mentioned in an earlier post the novels of Susan Scarlett AKA Noel Streatfield which I simply wallowed in, no other word, and they come once more from the Wonderful Dean Street Press. Well I read a couple more and have one left and am saving it up for a treat. Does that make sense?   Do check them out.

And finally, after a rather disappointing run, I turned to Agatha Christie.  I have recently rewatched the superb Miss Marple series on the TV and I re-read Murder at the Vicarage, Moving Finger, a Pocketful of Rye and A Murder is Announced and loved them all over again. I think Christie was a superb writer with a deftness of touch as well as steel and also she was funny,

There is one line in the TV version of A Murder is Announced which is pure Christie but I cannot find it in the book, so assume the script writer came up with this gem.  Miss Marple is having tea with Dora, and they are discussing a young man on the list of suspects.

"you know he is a communist don't you Miss Marple?"

"Oh dear, he must be very lonely in Chipping Cleghorn"

Priceless.

Susan Scarlett aka Noel Streatfield

I am very busy the next couple of weeks and will also be in France but I have loved these books so much I am posting this so I can urge you to get your mitts on them ASAP.

Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfield was published in 1936 and over fifty years later is still in print.  I doubt there were many children in the forties and fifties who did not read this book. I did and I loved it.   The three Fossil children Pauline, Petrova and Posy – who did not want to be one of them? I always viewed them as three of the Alcott Little Women. Pauline was Meg, not madly exciting but sensible and loving and nurturing, Petrova who loved mucking about with cars and engines and disliked the usual feminine hobbies was obviously Jo and the obnoxious Posy who I loathed and thought selfish and precocious, was Amy.

I read all of Streatfield’s output for children and it was not until Persephone books published Saplings that I realised she had written adult novels. It came as quite a shock to read about the possessive wife in this title who adored her husband and did not want her children getting in the way of their obviously passionate relationship.

Tracking down more of Noel’s adult titles proved somewhat tricky as second-hand copies were hard to come by and expensive. So for some years I rather put her to one side.

And now along comes Dean Street Press to whom I am devoted. I avoid looking at their website because every time I do I find that I wish to own every single title bar none and I have to keep reminding myself that life is expensive enough as it is and that I should not be spending money on books.

However, I soon forget…

By the time Susan Scarlett arrived Noel Streatfield has already published six novels for adults and three for children.  Under her own name she continued publishing for another forty years and she discarded the titles she wrote under this nom de plume.  She probably thought they were too slight and facile.  In the introduction to these books it seems they were regarded as ‘definitely unreal, delightful impossible’ and were rather snobbily categorised as perfect reading for ‘the lady of the house’. 

Well this lady of the house, or rather flat, has just read two of the twelve titles and my thanks to Dean Street Press for the review copies. These are Sally-Ann and Clothes Pegs.   I simply Loved Them. There are characters that are recognisably Streatfield, the thrifty and sensible mother, the ‘good’ daughter, the frivolous envious daughter and the cheeky younger brother.   The father in both is wary of anything that would take his girl away from them and is extremely irritating. My feeling is that these portraits are based on her own father who, as a vicar, made her life rather restrictive.

Ann Lake is an assistant cosmetician at an elegant upmarket establishment. She has to fill in for an ill colleague and asked to go to Sussex Castle to do the make up of a bride, Lady Mona. A bridesmaid falls ill and Ann is asked to impersonate Sally who is over on a visit from South Africa and who nobody knows.  It goes without saying that Ann just happens to be the right size…

Sally-Ann makes a considerable impression on the best man, Sir Timothy Munster, but as with Cinderella on the stroke of midnight, she disappears leaving him desperate to find her. Up pops the society beauty Cora Bolt, a scheming equivalent of an Ugly Sister, who wants Timothy for herself and she determines to find out just who Sally-Ann is.

Well you do not need me to tell you the outcome as I am sure you can guess the happy ending.

A similar case arises in Clothes Pegs. Annabel Brown works in the sewing room of a high end dressmaker and, when one of the mannequins quits, she is called in to take her place much to the chagrin of Freda and Elizabeth who are jealous and vindictive. She is, however, befriended by the third mannequin, Bernadette who, it transpires, is leading a mystery life and keeping a secret.

There is, of course, a charming upper class young man, Lord David de Brett and another scheming vamp, this time Octavia Glaye who is determined to marry him as she needs a wealthy husband.

And, once again, you can guess the ending.

I am a great lover of romantic novels and have read them all my life. Most of the time I kept this quiet as I used to receive sarky comments about my love of this genre. An ex one said to me he could not understand how I could read the Brontes or Jane Austen and then read tripe.  He became an ex very quickly.  I dislike snobbery in reading immensely and when I sit on a beach or a terrace on holiday and see what people are reading which they ostentatiously display, I always have a quiet smirk as I know full well that the Tolstoy or the Proust they are waving about is purely for show and they have a Dan Brown lurking.

It is clear from these books that Noel Streatfield had a great sense of style and loved clothes. She was an actress for some ten years and filled in time by being a mannequin herself. As she pointed out tall, thin actresses were much in demand in the 1920s.   The clothes sound wonderful

“there was a navy blue frock, coat and hat, the frock trimmed with buttons make like ladybirds. There was a leaf green evening dress. It had a little tight bodice held in with a great flaring bow. There was a tomato read wool frock which would go with the coat and hat of the navy outfit. There was a brocaded evening coat; almost military in cut with squared shoulders and a little tailored collar, very tailored at the waist where it went to flare out to the floor”

Susan Scarlett’s books were advertised by her publisher as ‘light, bright, brilliant present-day romances’

And they are.  I have the rest on order and urge you to read as many of these as you can get your hands on.  I loved them.

Random Birthday

My birthday weekend and I am in Cambridge for a few days so no posting till I get back. I was due to arrive today but Daughter No. 2 insisted I drive over yesterday because of the storm due today. I am glad I did as the wind is now really getting up and I would not like to be out driving.

So I am here with iPad and books and all is well.

I am still working my way through D E Stevenson. Currently reading Young Mrs Savage which I am thoroughly enjoying.

 

D E Stevenson - a rediscovered joy

When I was a young mini skirted teenager I worked at Highgate Library in London. It was an old building, one of the Carnegie Libraries and I loved being there surrounded by books all day.  It was a fairly well heeled area and we had a large amount of ‘mature’ ladies who used to come in regularly to change their books. I got to know them all and had some really interesting chats with them.

There were favourite authors whose books went in an out with incredible regularity and one of these was D E Stevenson.  “Such nice books” I was told so often and I smiled and agreed while inwardly feeling slightly superior about it all.  I flicked through one or two but put them to one side as I found them slight and old fashioned.

Now here I have to mention that at the time Iris Murdoch, Sylvia Plath, Penelope Mortimer, Muriel Spark etc were books that were stocked along with shedloads of modern literature.  I have never enjoyed modern literature and this is not something that has crept up on me in old age, I have always felt this way.  I tried to read newly published titles and gawd knows I gave the Booker a try, but found them so unrelenting and, frankly, unenjoyable. I have read Margaret Atwood and A S Byatt and other Booker luminaries and can, with a clear eye, acknowledge their brilliance and the quality of the writing. But here is the thing – I finish them and I feel tired. They wear me out and the final seal of approval for me is do I want to read them again?   And the answer is always no.

So after years of trying so hard to read worthy literature, along with the Viclit and crime novels that I love, I abandoned all attempts to be An Intellectual and thought sod it, I will read what I want.

And one day, I read a D E Stevenson.   And I loved it and then I read another and another and another and I loved them. OK there are a few that are not so good but if you write as many books as she did you are going to have the odd dip now and then.

Well of course by the time I discovered DES all her books were out of print and so I started doing my rummage in second hand book shops. I remember one year going to Hay and coming back with about fifteen titles.  Lovely hard backs and paperbacks with sixties covers that bore no resemblance to the content inside.

Persephone Books, the home of so many of my favourite titles, published two; Miss Buncle’s Book and Miss Buncle Married and I have to say that I think they are two of her best and very funny indeed.  But still a lack of reprints. Bloomsbury published Mrs Tim of the Regiment but just the one and then came to a grinding halt.

(Covers here are Five Windows, Youngs Mrs Savage on the left and The Blue Sapphire, Winter and Rough Weather and The Musgraves on the right)

And then along comes Dean Street Press. All hail to Dean Street Press who I simply adore. Apart from the DES titles they have so many interesting titles in the Murder and Mystery genre as well but at the moment I am awash with their Stevenson books.

D E Stevenson was Scottish and is a descendant of Robert Louis Stevenson. She was born in Edinburgh and seemed to have had a delightful childhood travelling abroad with her parents to France, Switzerland and Italy, which countries feature in her novels.  She married Major James Peploe (nephew to the artist Samuel Peploe) and became an army wife, travelling abroad with him.   Her Mrs Tim books are based on her adventures during this period. I shall be writing about Mrs Tim in a future post.

In an autobiographical note published with the Dean Street reprints, the author herself says the following:

“ Sometimes  I have been accused of making my characters ‘too nice’. I have been told that my stories are ‘too pleasant’, but the fact is I write of people as I find them and am fond of my fellow human beings. Perhaps I have been fortunate but in all my wanderings I have met very few thoroughly unpleasant people, so I find it difficult to write about them”.

I look back and remember how I used to turn my nose up at the ‘nice’ books she wrote. Makes me realise once again that as a teenager, I knew nothing about anything and this now mature lady apologies for being so dismissive of these delightful books which I can now appreciate. Quite frankly, the way the world appears to me at the moment I have become a great fan of “nice” and we could all do with a lot more of it.

Do nip over to Dean Street Press and give yourself the pleasure of buying one, or two or three and sit back, relax and enjoy.

You know it makes sense.

Recently received at Random Towers

At the moment there is a hashtag on Twitter #beathebacklog as a whole slew of book lovers are trying to get their To be Read backlog reduced. Nobody thinks for one moment that it is ever going to happen but we thought we would see if we could get it down a bit.  I have managed to get rid of about five or six that I have had since the autumn but I know I am doomed to failure as another heap arrived this week, either from purchases or from lovely authors and publishers.

You can see that this pile adds ten back onto the TBR backlog so it is clear that I am going nowhere. I admit that at the moment I am finding it hard to settle to any reading at all. I loathe January and I loathe the cold and the drear and am spending most of my time either watching the tennis or having a binge on box sets on the tv. My brain feels as if it has gone to mush so I am patiently waiting for the weather to get a bit better and hope that I can get on with things.

You will see from the top of the recently received, four D E Stevensons and one Molly Clavering. They were friends and neighbours up in Scotland I gather and I am looking forward to writing about D E Stevenson in particular at a later date.  Dean Street Press are republishing a shedload of her titles and, as they have only been available in second hand copies up to now, this is a blessing and I am so grateful to them for sending me copies. I have just started the Fair Miss Fortune and am enjoying it very much.

Then the British Library Classic Crime series have sent two, one by Anthony Berkeley and one by E C Lorac who is one of those unknown (well to me anyway) writers of the Golden Age and who I now love. This is going to be moved to the top of the heap.

Back to the Shops by Rachel Bowlby looks really interesting. Here is what the blurb has to say:

"Back to the Shops offers a set of short and surprising chapters, each one a window into a different shop type or mode of selling. Old shopping streets are seen from new angles; fast fashion shows up in eighteenth-century edits. Here are pedlars and pop-ups, mail order catalogues and mobile greengrocers' shops. Here too are food markets open till late on a Saturday night, and tiny subscription libraries tucked away at the back of the sweet shop". 

I have already dipped into this  - just the kind of social history I like.

Walking Invisible by Michael Stewart is a literary guide through the walks and nature of the Bronte sisters.  The author walked in the steps of the sisters and, while it is unlikely I will ever be able to copy his feat, I can come with him in spirit as I read. It looks a lovely book and I love all things Bronte.

Queen Alexandra by Frances Dimond.   It has been years since a biography was written on this rather forgotten Queen of England. We know all about her husband, there has recently been a wonderful biography of George V but Alexandra seems to lurk in the shadows. Time to open this up and have a delve.

Mary Seacole by Helen Rappaport.  I love this author's books. She has written on a variety of historical subjects with a slant to all things Russian, but writing the biography of Mary Seacole has been a dream of hers for many years and here, finally, the result of all her hard work and research is in print.  Everyone knows who Florence Nightingale is and her exploits in the Crimean War but it is only fairly recently that the name of Mary Seacole has become better known. 

So there you have it. These are the hard copies of books that have recently arrived but I have also downloaded quite a lot on my Kindle so I have a long hard slog in front of me...

The Invisible Host - Gwen Bristow and Bruce Manning

This latest title by the wonderful Dean Street Press is really intriguing.  And what is intriguing  about The Invisible Host was the introduction in which we read that five years after a film was made of this title  “there appeared a novel by a popular English mystery writer that bore and uncanny resemblance both to the film and the play and the book which inspired it.

The author of this novel is of course Agatha Christie”

And the Christie title which is mentioned is And then there were None, surely one of Dame Agatha’s most well known books.   The question of plagiarism reared its ugly head but a crime writer of the time stoutly defended her saying that Agatha Christie was unaware of the existence of, much less, had read the Invisible Host.  Can we be sure?  She may have unconsciously drawn on it as it is possible that Dame Agatha saw the film which was released in England in 1934.

Of course we will never know but it does put this mystery in a fascinating context.   And if you have read the Christie title, then the setting of the Invisible Host will need little explanation.

Set in New Orleans, eight guests are invited to a party at a luxurious penthouse apartment and when they arrive it turns out that nobody knows who the Host is.   We never see him but only hear him as he communicates with the guests through a radio. I freely admit that I found this device rather clumsy and is a clear indication that one of the guests must be the Host as its questions and replies and interaction between the two parties could not be scripted and depended on events and reactions.  No matter but it is a pointer.

All of the guests are linked, albeit in a tenuous way, and all of them have done something that could reflect badly on them. The Host knows all about these peccadilloes and weaknesses and has decided that they must pay for their actions.

As with the Christie one by one the guests meet their demise in more and more bizarre ways and it is here that I feel The Invisible Host parts company with And then there were None.  In the Christie there is more plausibility and logic. In the Bristow title we have electric doors to prevent escape, poisons a plenty and servants in the kitchen drugged so they cannot help or know what is going on. It is all slightly over the top and overly dramatic and I must say I simply adored it. I read it through in one sitting and then immediately checked and found that Bristow and Manning have more titles available. I can feel my fingers twitching already…..

I don’t think I am giving much away if I say the ending, which I did see coming (but then I have read too many crime stories) is different from the Christie but if you want mysterious deaths and pile up of bodies – there is even a stack of coffins on the balcony for the other guests to drop them in – this is the book for you.

When this book arrived and I saw the names of the two authors, Gwen Bristow and Bruce Manning, my first thought was “that’s a familiar name” and my mind went back to when I worked in a library in London years ago in my youth, and a novel Calico Palace by one Gwen Bristow was on the shelves and I read it and loved it.   And yes it is the same writer but this is one in a series of Classic 30’s mysteries and light years away from her Out West titles with which I was familiar.  These are now available so I feel my finger twitching...

I simply loved it and Dean Street Press have another winner on their hands.

The Woods in Winter - Stella Gibbons

Stella Gibbons most famous book is Cold Comfort Farm which I had no desire to read at all and only did so after being urged to by fellow bloggers. So I read it, thought it was very good indeed but did not enjoy it at all and disliked nearly all the characters in it.   And then I more or less abandoned this author and never thought of reading any more written by her.   This was easy to do as most of the titles seemed to be unobtainable and/or out of print.

A few years ago I read Nightingale Wood which was reissued by Virago and enjoyed, but again, not bowled over.   But now along comes Dean Street Press and as I am a huge fan of theirs and love their list, I thought I would try Stella again and read The Woods in Winter.

And how glad I am that I did. I absolutely loved this book.  It is just perfect.

"... for the first time in her life she was living as she had always unknowingly wanted to live; in freedom and soliltude with an animal for a close companion"

Ivy Gower, widowed three times and a rather gypsy looking woman with a talent for drawing animals to her, lives in a dingy room in the city where, to the annoyance of her neighbour below her, she befriends a pigeon who comes to her each day for food.   One day she receives a letter from a solicitor and discovers that she has inherited a cottage in Buckinghamshire in a tiny village of Little Warby. She goes to see Mr Gardner to check that this is really true and the property is hers. Her forthright attitude rather takes him aback:

"...he hoped she would not ask about buses; Greddle had infored him two hours ago that the bus had stopped running.."I must make my way homeward". Ivy too had risen. "That your car outside sir?" she enquired...........My cottage is on your way 'ome...so you could give me a lift"

So Ivy moves in to the dilapidated property with a dog she rescued from being locked up in a hut all day in London, and who becomes devoted to her.  One day she is inspecting the hole in the roof and contemplating tackling the landlord to have it fixed when "something fluttered into the area of brightness and perched there, undulating its head and cooing while studying her with a bright eye  "Come to Ivy then" and at that low call he came sailing straight down to her..............."Well I never, all that way" she muttered'

Despite being told that her landlord Lord Gowerville will not expend money on the cottage she earns his gratitude and devotion by healing his old beloved dog who was in danger of being put down.  She is an object of curiousity by all her new neighbours but goes her own way perfectly self sufficient and happy with her lot until one day a runaway 12 year old boy turns up on her doorstep.

Ivy takes him in and looks after him but is adamant that he must return to his father who she manages to trace. For the first time in her life her defences are breached  and her motherly instincts come to the fore as she takes care of Mike and comes to love him.  The day comes when his father comes to collect him and Mike has to leave. He does not want to go and is angry thinking Ivy does not want him.  She asks him to send her a card and work hard at school

"his lids lifted slowly and the glowing blue eyes, dark with fury and suffering, met her own. "I won't send you a card. Your'e making me go you are. I don't ever want to see you again"

"All right" said Ivy with a smile that was all love. "please yourself"

Then Mike broke away and came racing back...she saw that his face was ugly in the grimaces of crying and when he flung himself against her and her face came down to his, she felt the hot tears"

What I loved about this book is the almost Austen like atmosphere - no similarity in the way it is written - but the feel of a small village and the feelings and day to day small happenings which are described so beautifully.  

I freely admit to having a lump in my throat at the final page and was so regretful that I had finished reading it and was sad that it had come to an end.

Dean Street Press were kind enough to send me a copy of the Woods in WInter (ok I admit I emailed them and shamelessly cadged this title and also The Swiss Summer which I have just started and is already shaping up to be delightful).  I promised them faithfully that I would purchase the other titles by Stella Gibbons which they have just published as I did not wish them to think I was always on the cadge..........

They are on their way.

A simply lovely lovely book. Do read.