Random Jottings

Holiday/Beach/Good Reads - whatever you want to call them

It is June and it is summer though if you live in the UK you might be forgiven for wondering if this is right. I have had the heating on this week and go to bed each night with a hot water bottle. However, as I write this the sun is coming out so perhaps we are getting there.

And, of course, as it is summer we get the books in the bookshops and supermarkets et al under the heading Beach Reads, Holiday Reads etc etc. I always find this categorising odd. Presumably if a book is a good read then it will be good whether you read it at work or on holiday or in the bath or on the beach, but it is that time of year when all promotions behave in this way. Calling a book a perfect beach read is slightly puzzling. What exactly do they mean? I suppose the bookshops think of books which do not require a huge amount of thought or analysis, one which you can put down when the sun and margarita overcomes you and you fall asleep. But I can read a book in the middle of winter and fall asleep on my sofa in the afternoon after lunch with the same ease.

I feel that calling a book a Holiday/Beach read is vaguely insulting.  It seems to infer that it is not worthy of a 'proper' read when the weather is cool and you are indoors and that it is a light frothy story that does not warrant much attention. The covers are slanted towards this attitude as well. Usually with pretty water colours on the front, or matchstick women with pink handbags or sketches of a beach. I feel this kind of marketing does the content inside the pages a disservice.

I am now going to mention several women authors who are marketed in this way: Rosamund Ley, Veronica Henry, Fanny Blake, Harriet Evans, Lucy Diamond, Erica James are just a few who come to mind.  I have read books by all these authors over the last few years and you know what? They are good. They are readable. They make you laugh. They make you cry. They make you forget for a few hours that you are getting old and are not the mad young thing you think you are. They have happy endings. Problems are solved. People fall in love.

And I tell you something else as well. These books will never win a Costa Prize, a Booker Prize, an Orange Prize or a Banana Prize (ok I made that last one up...). They will never be listed. They will also never be reviewed by the book magazines, by the Literary Review, by the Guardian blah blah blah blah.  The litterati turn up their noses. They would prefer to laud the latest Rushdie, Amis or Ali Smith. All those cool names that will make the readers appear intelligent and up with the latest trend.

I used to have a friend who read on the Tube or bus and she always had her books covered as she was too ashamed to show to the world that she was reading the latest Jilly Cooper or, back in the day, Jacqueline Susann (ironic that now Virago publish the latter writer as a feminist icon of the sixties, ditto Grace Metalious and Peyton Place). She was made to feel ashamed of her taste. Bugger the fact that Jilly Cooper was a hoot and wrote such fun books. They were rather looked down upon. Still are.

I have just finished reading the latest by one of my favourites Harriet Evans - the Butterfly Summer and I simply loved it and could not put it down. She uses a narrative device which I always enjoy, two stories running alongside each other, one in the current time and one a hundred years back, usually a relative of the narrator. 

"You follow the hidden creek towards a long forgotten house. They call it Keepsake, a place full of wonder and danger. Locked inside the crumbling elegance of its walls lies the story of the Butterfly Summer, a story you have been waiting all your life to hear. This house is Nina Parr's birthright. It holds the truth about her family an a chance to put everything right at last"

This is the blurb. Sounds captivating and it is. Now out. Do buy and read and yes, it IS a great book to read on holiday, but it is also a great book to read anytime.

Rosamund Ley - Last Dance in Havana. This is my next upcoming read and, once again, the back in time device. Set in Cuba in 1958 and England in 2012. I have read all her earlier titles and here is a review I wrote last year of her book The Villa

"Single mother of a teenage daughter, Tess Angel is astonished to receive a solicitor's letter telling her that she has been left a villa in Sicily. Her mother, Flavia,  left Sicily after the war to seek out a young airman she fell in love with during World War II whose plane had crashed near their village.   Her parents opposed their marriage and she waited to hear from him but in vain.   When her father put pressure on her to marry a young Sicilian who would bring money and property to their family she fled to England with the help of her employer, Edward Westerman, the owner of the villa of the title.   She never returned and never told her daughter the reason why and now Tess is returning to the home of her mother's childhood.

My favourite device used here, while Tess is in Sicily, her mother Flavia takes us back to her story and we learn why she left. This is alongside her writing down of her recipes and thoughts on Sicilian cuisine (no it does not turn into a cook book, the descriptions just add to the story) and then we come back to the present day and are with Tess as she meets friends and protagonists in equal measure, some of whom are not pleased she is there and has decided to keep the villa.  Throw in a rather darkly handsome Sicilian, another not so nice who may have Mafia connections, and a missing treasure and you have a stonking good story which I thoroughly enjoyed.    Looking forward to her second"

Here is a link to my review of a title by another lovely lady,  Fanny Blake and this, in turn, leads you to a link to my reviews of her other titles.

How to Find Love in a Bookshop - Veronica Henry. Set in a bookshop. I need say no more. Loved it. Due to be published on 16 June.

Now I will sit down and read Dickens, Austen, Eliot, Bronte, Trollope - I have read War and Peace (twice. rather chuffed at that). I have read Zola, Balzac and Flaubert.  I have read all of these and enjoyed them hugely. I have read books by the authors mentioned above and enjoyed them hugely. A good book is one which is well written, good story, great characters and keeps you enthralled from start to finish. It does not matter who it is by or whether they are famous or not. It is up to you, the reader, to enjoy and be happy in your reading. I used to read books because I felt I ought to but I certainly don't now.

All of these writers I have written about should go on your reading lists and if you wish to learn more about two of them, Fanny Blake and Veronica Henry then come along to the Felixstowe Book Festival where they will be sharing a platform. I have the enormous pleasure of introducing them both and am so looking forward to it.

Au reservoir.

Beach/Holiday/Summer Reading

I hate to tell you this but I am off again in a couple of weeks. I am going to Madeira for a fortnight and yes I know I can hear you shrieking but this wretched woman has just got back from Australia, and I know it is a hard life but somebody has to do it. You will remember last year I had a week in Funchal with a companion who said I was 'moribund' and it was not a fun time. My lovely sister and bro in law have a timeshare in Funchal and have a spare two weeks on their tab and so have invited me to come with them and they say they are looking forward to showing me all the places I did not get to see last time. I have my own apartment which for reasons of family harmony is a good idea and I am looking forward to it very much.

And so I have to sort out books etc to take with me and this is where I am so pleased I have a Kindle.  It really came into its own in Oz where I read about 25 books and most of them on my e-reader. When I think how determined I was not to own such a ghastly object I am amazed at how shortsighted I was - now my suitcase only has clothes in it and not lined with books as it used to be.

I dislike designating a book a Beach Read as this seems somewhat derogatory as if it is only worth reading when lolling by the pool or on the sand and this is not the case, but let's face it, we are hardly going to read Dickens, Tolstoy or Dostoevsky under the hot sunshine when smothered in Factor 30 now are you?   And if you do, then my apologies but this sort of reading, for me anyway, is best kept to the winter and dark evenings.   If I wish to turn to the classics in the summer it has to be Jane Austen...

I have read several books in the last week which I would happily take on holiday with me, they are all enjoyable and well written but do not demand that you take notes or write an essay on its meaningfulness when you have read them.   When I was in Australia I found I read a huge amount of crime and thrillers mixed up with my rediscovery of Norman Collins.   The Lee Childs books are read and then forgotten, they are all the same and great fun but you don't need to worry about the characterisation because there isn't any.   I read Michael Connelly who I think is an excellent writer and his main protagonist, Harry Bosch, a much more interesting personality than Jack Reacher (oh and I tried to watch the movie on the plane, you know the one with Tom Cruise, all two feet of him, playing the eponymous hero who happens to be  6' 5" and gave up after fifteen minutes - crap, total crap).

OK I am meandering again. In the last week I have read the latest in the No 1 Ladies Detective Agency by McCall Smith.   I am finding these a bit slow and, sorry to say it, a tad boring now and wondering if the author should leave Precious Ramotswe alone.   They are rather sweet and gentle but are getting somewhat repetitive and I feel enough is enough though others will disagree. Though the title is the Limpopo Academy of Private Detection just why it is called this is left to the end and it is all rather nebulous and up in the air.  You could pick this up, read a chapter and then fall asleep in the shade quite happily.

The Hanging Wood by Martin Edwards another of his excellent detective series set in the Lake District and featuring DCI Hannah Scarlett, head of the Cold Case Review team. Orla Payne is haunted the the disappearance of her brother some twenty years ago and rings the team to see if they can help her solve the mystery of what actually happened to Calum all that time ago.  Shortly after she makes this call she is found dead - murder or suicide?   The case in the past seems linked to the present and it all gets very nasty and murky.    I have read all the titles in this series and think they are excellent. Good tight plots and narrative and surely some TV company should take them up?    The setting could not be more beautiful.

Earlier this year I came across a book in the library, The Villa by Rosanna Ley in which our heroine Tess, inherits a villa in Sicily. Her mother left the island when young and has never been back and has never spoken of her past but Tess sets off to get to know her mother's birthplace.   It was a lovely story full of sunshine and with flashbacks to her mother's story as well as her own and I enjoyed it very much so was delighted to be sent her second novel, Bay of Secrets which I finished yesterday.   The setting this time is Barcelona and England and once more the narrative flicks backards and forwards in time from the viewpoint of Sister Julia a nursing nun during the Spanish Civil War who has a secret which is a burden to her to that of Ruby Rae recovering from the sudden death of her parents in a motor accident. When sorting out her parent's house and contents she discovers a secret which has been kept from her all her life and following its trail leads her life to intertwine with that of Sister Julia as they find the link that brings them together.   Great read and, as it is set in the warmth of Spain, perfect for reading in the sun with a glass of something long and cool to hand. I look forward to the next by this author.

More reading for holiday coming up when I have sorted out what I am taking with me, but at the moment I am reading Erica James who reminds me very much of Rosamund Pilcher and Marcia Willets in style and setting and I mean that as a compliment.   She has a fairly long list of titles and I have only read a few and so I think she may be coming with me, probably on my Kindle.  

So two weeks ahead of me for relaxing, reading and, no doubt, dozing in the sunshine with a book on my knee.  I can't think of a better way of spending one's time....

Four Random Reads

Seem to be motoring through books at the moment. Must be the cold and drear that makes me want to hole up and do nothing. So I find that I have read four books in the last four days. All enjoyable reads and here they are:

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel by Deborah Moggach.   Found this at the library the other day so thought as I had just seen the film I would give it a whirl.   One of those horrid editions with Now a Major Motion Picture plastered across the front. Odd how it is never a Minor Motion Picture...

Of course the book and film are going to be different and the Maggie Smith character seems to be an amalgam of two people, fair enough, makes sense as the combination makes for more interest.   The rather elegant but lonely Norman, played by Ronald Pickup in the movie is, in fact, a rather unpleasant dirty old man in the book and the lonely gay man who comes to India to find his lost love, is heterosexual in the book who is lonely because his fiance died.   So why they had to make him gay I do not know. It is another character who is searching for something and somebody and it is equally poignant.   Ah well...   Beautifully written and I am now seeking out more by this author.

Act of Faith by Erica James.   I have mentioned this author before as one I do not actively seek out, but am always glad to come across her books and this is another one I borrowed from the library. Ali Anderson is divorced from her husband Eliot as their marriage collapsed in a welter of anger and sorrow after the tragic death of their young son Isaac.  It does not make for easy reading and is quite heartwrenching in places and reduced me to tears, but the tragedy of this couple is balanced out by the narrative strand about Sarah, Ali's best friend, who is married to a truly awful husband, who rejoices in the name of Trevor and is an absolute pain.  A real page turner and one of her best that I have read so far.

The Last Girl by Jane Casey. Fourth book by this author and I remember reading her first one, The Missing, which I enjoyed until the last third of the story when I thought it ended in a rather far fetched manner and said so in my post.   Jane emailed me to thank me for my review though she said 'it made me wince a bit' and of course, I felt totally conscience stricken.   But she was kind enough to send me her following two which were so much better and well plotted and now this one which is the best of the lot so far.  Called to a murder scene in Wimbledon,  Maeve Kerrigan discovers a double murder, that of a mother and daughter.  The husband is found bloody and unconscious in the upstairs room and insists that he is not guilty though this is greeted with some scepticism by the police. He is a leading barrister who has made many enemies during his life, including the women he has used and discarded so the field of suspects is pretty wide.  However, one daughter escaped the carnage but is a complex and secretive girl who is saying very little. So is the culprit closer to home?    Very well done indeed and the author is really hitting her stride with this series.

The Villa - Rosanna Ley.   New author to me and I gather this is her first novel to be published and not surprised to hear that another is on the way. Single mother of a teenage daughter, Tess Angel is astonished to receive a solicitor's letter telling her that she has been left a villa in Sicily. Her mother, Flavia,  left Sicily after the war to seek out a young airman she fell in love with during World War II whose plane had crashed near their village.   Her parents opposed their marriage and she waited to hear from him but in vain.   When her father put pressure on her to marry a young Sicilian who would bring money and property to their family she fled to England with the help of her employer, Edward Westerman, the owner of the villa of the title.   She never returned and never told her daughter the reason why and now Tess is returning to the home of her mother's childhood.

My favourite device used here, while Tess is in Sicily, her mother Flavia takes us back to her story and we learn why she left. This is alongside her writing down of her recipes and thoughts on Sicilian cuisine (no it does not turn into a cook book, the descriptions just add to the story) and then we come back to the present day and are with Tess as she meets friends and protagonists in equal measure, some of whom are not pleased she is there and has decided to keep the villa.  Throw in a rather darkly handsome Sicilian, another not so nice who may have Mafia connections, and a missing treasure and you have a stonking good story which I thoroughly enjoyed.    Looking forward to her second.

So there you have it. Four more good page turners, good reads for you all to think about. Each excellent in their own way.