So, yesterday, we were listening to Ireland playing France, in the Six Nations Rugby, on Irish radio station, RTE, and an advert came up about “Ireland reads”, a national day to celebrate reading! “Squeeze in a read” on February 25th.What a fabulous initiative, although personally I would prefer a national month J But I do love this idea. It reminds me of the Icelandic tradition, where they give books on Christmas Eve, and spend the evening reading with their loved ones, and drinking hot chocolate. Jolabokaflod translates into “Christmas Book Flood”.
I am doing very badly with my blogging, and I do keep on meaning to improve, but so much is going on. We have a lovely home, but it requires a lot of work, both inside and out, and together with working full-time, I tend to use my spare time to read! With that in mind, I have seven books to blog about on this occasion. Three are from the same author and so I shall start with them. Actually, I am shocked to see that I have already blogged about one of them, back in November 2020!!! So I won’t blog about it again, but I have been continuing to work my way through Ian Fleming’s James Bond series. I went on to From Russia With Love. I have been very lucky, as my local post office, in St Just in Penwith, sells books to raise money for Cancer Research, and they always have treasures, and I found this lovely 1961 edition. It is worth just having for the cover.
Anyway, it was entirely gripping, not just the plot, but the characters and the locations were beautifully described. One of the villains was an absolutely grotesque and perverse woman, and it made me wonder why, in the films, the villains tend to be male. Perhaps an ugly female one is just too ghastly to contemplate! The description in the book about her still makes me shiver with disgust as she was horrid inside and out. Anyway, I really enjoyed reading this book. I haven’t seen the film, but the book was so exciting, I don’t think I need to. Lots of twists and turns, and heroic acts. After that one, I read Live and Let Die, one of my favourite Bond films, especially for the soundtrack, and all the voodoo traditions.
The film very much followed the book, and I found the detail about the Haitian traditions so interesting, although quite terrifying too, the zombies in particular! Ian Fleming clearly researched his backgrounds in great depth to make them credible. It makes the books much more interesting reading. I do remember A Caribbean Mystery, by Agatha Christie, where she introduced a character who was an author, who was stuck for a name for his lead character, and she introduced another character who was giving a lecture, and his name was James Bond, and the author immediately noted the name down. Anyway, again, this was a super-exciting read, with great characters, wonderful descriptions of the locations, and quite gory endings involving fish….similar to Octopussy. In fact, I am noticing that many of Ian Fleming’s stories include some aspect of natural history in them.
Another book that I picked up at my fabulous post office, was “The Case of The Glamorous Ghost” by Erle Stanley Gardner. I hadn’t heard of the author before, but I was attracted to the book, because it is a Perry Mason mystery, and I used to love watching those on television. Published in 1955, it also had the most wonderful cover, and the book was fantastic. It was actually like a screenplay. You could imagine it all being acted out. The story was about a society girl who was regularly getting into trouble and on this occasion, she was suffering from amnesia, but had been seen looking like a ghost in not very much clothing! The story has a complex plot and some very colourful characters. I hadn’t read anything like it before, but I will definitely keep an eye out for more by this author.
Over Christmas, there is nothing better than reading a sentimental Christmas book. As usual, I came across The Six Tales of Christmas by accident, and it was just perfect. It was about an independent bookshop that had fallen on hard times. The husband had health problems, and so the wife didn’t want him to know the extent of their problems, and is worrying away to herself, while he worries about her, not knowing what is going on. They decided to have a competition. They randomly chose six books and wrapped them up and then asked their customers to nominate people who they felt should get a free book. And this is how the six tales unfold. There is a special story attached to each book, and it is just lovely. So heart-warming, without being to schmaltzy. It was a really lovely book to read, and it really emphasises the importance of supporting independent bookshops J
I really like books by Rosamunde Pilcher. They are very romantic and
quite dramatic, and the females are usually strong and independent, while still wanting to be in love. The plots follow a similar pattern, involving tragedy and hope, but they are comforting, and always set in gorgeous locations, like Scotland and Cornwall. I read The Shell Seekers over Christmas about a woman who grew up in Cornwall and London and went to live in Cornwall during the war with one of her children, before the other two were born. Her father was a famous artist, and she still had some of his works. She is old now and her children, all grown up, are trying to persuade her to sell them as his work has become very popular, and they knew that they would be worth a lot of money. She doesn't want to though, but instead wants to return to Cornwall for a visit with her family. They are all too busy, so she goes with two young friends she has met, and revisits old friends and memories. It is a complex tale, but lovely, full of memories of how Cornwall used to be, and what it was like during the war. She also writes
lovely short stories, and after her passing in 2019, a young assistant at a literary agency searched through old folios of magazines for stories written by Rosamunde Pilcher, but not published in book form, and A Place Like Home, is the culmination of this search. It contains 15 short stories, and I loved them all, with the exception of number 14, which just felt hopeless. The others were full of hope, magical, romantic, set in beautiful locations, with heros and heroines, and many different plots. It was a delight to read, and so wonderful to have found new stories from this lovely author. I wonder how many other authors have short stories originally published in magazines, that have never been published in collections. I quite like the idea of that job. Searching through the archives for magazine articles by some of my favourite authors, just as they are starting out. Imagine what treasures one could find!!!
So that’s it from me for now. Hopefully it won’t be another
six months before I write again, because I have a whole pile of books to read,
but Spring is coming, and the garden is calling, speaking of which, I am
looking into creating a medicine garden, based on the one described in Alice
Hoffman’s Nightbird.
