Helen50

Helen50, 6 months ago to bookstodon

93 The Art of Dying Ambrose Parry
Will Raven has qualified as a doctor and has been traveling Europe to broaden his experience (in more ways than one). Back in Edinburgh, he takes up a post as Dr SImpson's apprentice. There is an accusation against Dr Simpson that sets Will & Sarah off to investigate. Will thinks he's might discover a new disease, Sarah thinks of a more human agency.
The final two chapters set up a third book.
I listened to this, with multiple narrators
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Helen50, 6 months ago to bookstodon

92 A Monster Calls, Patrick Ness
I don't know that I can do this justice. This is an excellent depiction of how complicated people, emotions and grief can be. It gets right to the dichotomy that you may want the person to not die, but you also don't want them to carry on living in their current state; it's too painful, even though you know what comes next will also be painful. It got right to me. For anyone who has ever lost someone and for those that might do so.
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Helen50, 6 months ago to bookstodon

91 Monstrous Regiment, Terry Pratchett
Re-read. The trouble with re-reading is that you know the twist in the tale and this, therefore, loses some of its tension and anticipation. It's still a fun read, but the first time's the charm here.
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Helen50, 6 months ago to bookstodon

90 Electra, Sophocles. Read as a comparison to the same play by Euripides. This seems to contain more long monologues of explanation. The way that various people don't recognise each other felt a bit far fetched. Electra not recognising Orestes, when she'd been told he was dead I could sort of understand, but some of the others not so much. The interplay between the sisters felt stronger here, while the action is entirely male driven.
Euripides is bloodier and more dynamic.
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Helen50, 6 months ago to bookstodon

89 Marple ,various
12 Miss Marple stories. As an anthology, it is a mixed bag. Some tried too hard to be different. There were successful ones with Miss Marple in a village with an old friend. The most successful was by Natalie Haynes. It was cleverly done, used a known setting and characters and a borrowed plot.
It was interesting that while some of the stories made reference to Miss Marple's youth, none tried to set a story in her younger days. She is the little old lady!
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Helen50, 7 months ago to bookstodon

when do you abandon a book?
I'm not very good at it, but I might be about to do it again.
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Helen50, 7 months ago to bookstodon

88 Fortunately the Milk, Neil Gaiman
After a long day I needed something light and this was perfect. Mum is away and in her instructions is don't for get to buy milk. Dad does forget, so goes out in the morning to buy milk for breakfast. And this is what happens to him. Just great, fun, but not at all lax, the plotting is tight and convincing throughout. Excellent and just right hit the spot. Read by Neil himself, who I would listen read the phone book, so this was a delight. #books @bookstodon

Helen50, 7 months ago to bookstodon

87 Great Goddesses, Nikita Gill
This is a collection of poems, each a short vignette of a Goddess, monster or mortal. Some tell of their nature, others of instances. Some even take the immortals and put them in a mortal world, how would they cope, how would it have mellowed them. You'd benefit from being up on your mythology. It was noticeable that the monsters are all female - difficult women seem to have been vilified for all time.
I listened to it, I'd like to see a copy. #books @bookstodon

Helen50, 7 months ago to bookstodon

86 April Lady, Georgette Heyer
Re-read: I warmed to it more this time. I still think that an honest conversation on page 1 would have saved half the trouble in the remainder of the book, but never mind. It feels, unusually in a Heyer, that while Letty & Jeremy's match may be a love match, you can't help feeling that it is a bad move for all concerned.
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Helen50, 7 months ago to bookstodon

85 Raven Black, Ann Cleeves
This detective tale makes use of its setting. Fran Hunter finds a girl's body. Catherine lived in the same house as Catriona, who went missing some decade ago. The locals have their eye on Magnus Tait, an old man who lives alone. There are lots of strands in here, with the relationships between some of the key protagonists reflecting the small town nature of the community, there's not a lot you an do without someone knowing about it. #books @bookstodon

Helen50, 7 months ago to bookstodon

84 If Cats disappeared from the World, Genki Kawamura
This is an interesting surmise, I'm just not sure it worked as the central character didn't seem to have enough depth.
One day the young man who tells this story finds out that he has only a limited time to live. At which point the devil appears. And he is offered a bargain, remove one thing from the world and gain an extra day of life.
Good idea, but the central character and the execution let it down.
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Helen50, 7 months ago to bookstodon

83 Tiger Lily, Jodi Lynn Anderson
I feel the need to go & read Peter Pan again after this. Tiger Lily gets a back story. The world that's built is convincing. The narrator is Tinkerbell and as a silent observer she makes for a good narrator. The changes that come as a result of Tiger Lily's own actions are many and varied. The implications change her life for ever. As in a lot of YA books, this seems to take our heroine somewhat by surprise. It's got some depth to it though.
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Helen50, 7 months ago to bookstodon

82, Baggage, Alan Cumming
I'm not familiar with Alan Cumming as an actor. In this, he reflects on his life how he came to be an actor, his acting adventures and the associated life. It is rather lively, and while there are lots of tales, there is little introspection.
Some of his thoughts on memory are worthwhile, but these are scattered thinly through the book. I'm not sure that I know the person behind the book any more now than I did previously.
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Helen50, 7 months ago to bookstodon

81 Babes in the Wood, Mark Stay
This rocks along at a fair lick and while it is intended at a YA audience it doesn't shy away from the dark side of human nature. Into Faye's Kent village arrive a family of German Jewish children, which allows an exploration of prejudice, and the horrors that the Jews were suffering. Faye runs into everything, headlong. The contrast between the war and the local is well balanced.
As a piece of escapist literature, it worked exactly as hoped. #books @bookstodon

Helen50, 8 months ago to bookstodon

80 Waiting for the last bus, Richard Holloway (pt1)
This was either great or awful timing, we're currently dealing with his mother as she approaches her end.
Richard Holloway, former Bishop of Edinburgh, has seen a lot of both life and death in his years as a parish priest and as a man who is now in his 9th decade. He reflects on how we live and what happens to us, and those left behind, when we die. @bookstodon

Helen50, 8 months ago to bookstodon

79 Mr Campion and Others, Margery Allingham 13 short stories with Campion solving mainly society based mysteries. he fits well in his environment and there is enough variety that they don't become too similar. They do share a tendency to tell you the solution & how Campion arrived at it, rather than let you spot it yourself. but that's probably artifact of the format. He works well in this format, this was a nice change of pace.
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Helen50, 8 months ago to bookstodon

78 The Girls of Slender Means, Muriel Spark
This is mainly set between VE & VJ day in London. Set in a house that offers room to girls who have moved to London. We meet a number of them. They all come vividly to life (as does the Schiaparelli dress). Into this comes Nicholas Farringdon. We hear about him as he aims to get a book published and also as he's been martyred in a future timeframe. It ends with a bang. It is a fascinating slice of life at a very different time.
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Helen50, 8 months ago to bookstodon

77 The Selfless act of breathing JJ Bola
This could be a difficult read. Michael has depression and decides to quit his job, go to America and, when the money runs out, end his life. His story is told in 2 parallel strands, in the 1st person in London, America in the 3rd person. I really felt for Michael. Having suffered depression myself, it all felt very real and painful (counseling was my route out). There's a hell of a lot packed into this, a lot of it raw and painful. @bookstodon
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Helen50, 8 months ago to bookstodon

75 Golden Hill, Francis Spufford
Mr Smith arrives in New York in the mid 18th century and presents a bill for payment to a merchant for a huge sum of money. It is due at next quarter day, so he spends the next 2 months in New York. His position is very unclear, is he merchant, trader, conman? That all becomes clear at the end and was not at all what I was expecting. It is a quite astonishing sleight of hand that pulls this particular tablecloth out from under your nose.
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Helen50, 8 months ago to bookstodon

76 Long Live the Queens, Emma Marriott
A short run through some of the Queens that have maybe fallen off the radar. I was quite pleased that I had at least heard of most of the British ones. Rather British focused, some of those from further afield were the more interesting. It was noticeable how many of these ladies had had their reputation besmirched by those that came later, either trying to erase them or by presenting them in an adverse light. Brief and enjoyable listen.
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Helen50, 8 months ago to bookstodon

73&74 Electra & Orestes, Euripides.
Electra starts10 years after Agamemnon returns from the Trojan wars and is murdered by his adulterous wife. The siblings meet and Electra drives the murders that follow. While the events of the second follow on, it's not a sequel. I was confused when the actions decreed in Electra weren't taking place at the beginning of Orestes.
In both of them, the ending is dictated by a god appearing and straightening everyone out.
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Helen50, 9 months ago to bookstodon

72 Sprig Muslin, Georgette Heyer
I started this as I wanted a book to read in the bath after the successful conclusion of operation clear the shed. I ended up turning the light out after I'd finished it. Excellent. One of Heyer's romances that actually had me uncertain which of the female leads our hero would end up with, the one he should, or the one with the obvious charms.
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Helen50, 9 months ago to bookstodon

71 Caste Isabel Wilkerson
This survey of the attitude to race in America is comprehensive, thought provoking and depressing. Her surmise is America's segregation is not simply a matter of race, but that it has become embedded as a caste system. She compares this to other caste systems, that of India & the Third Reich. The comparison is startling. I felt that chapter it was missing was how you end a caste system.
An excellent read, a call to action, but not a hopeful book.
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Helen50, 9 months ago to bookstodon

A DNF - most unusual for me.
Decided that Metropolis by Thea von Harbou was 1) a bit odd and 2 ) needed too much attention for listening in the car.
One for another day, maybe.
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Helen50, 9 months ago to bookstodon

70 Bog, Fen & Swamp, Annie Proulx
A love song to the wetlands, this series of essays on different land/water habitats is comprehensive and informative without being dry (pun intended).
It captures aspects of humankind's interactions with watery land from ancient peoples to modern drainage and the massive implications that has for nature and the environment.
As someone with fenland heritage, I feel inspired to make some land soggy again.
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Helen50, 9 months ago to bookstodon

69 The color of air, Gail Tsukiyama
This could have been an interesting story, but I couldn't get into the writing. Telling of the events during an eruption in Hawaii in 1935, this concentrates on the Japanese who moved to work on the sugar cane plantations. It felt that there were too many perspectives, the chapters were very short and even those were broken into sub chapters, it simply didn't have enough depth to immerse yourself in. It just didn't work for me.
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Helen50, 9 months ago to bookstodon

68 Sure and Certain Death, Barbara Nadel
In the East End our detective is Frank Hancock, an undertaker of Anglo-Indian parentage. Frank fought in WW1 and suffers still. Frank discovers the body of a woman who has been skinned. So begins a trail of death that brings the murders of Jack the Ripper to mind in the local population. Slowly the death toll mounts, with the victims being women of a certain age.
I will look out others in the series, Frank is worth spending time with.
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Helen50, 9 months ago to bookstodon

67 Bath Tangle, Georgette Heyer
Re-read. From the start you know how this is going to end, the sparring between Serena and Ivo is too obvious not to flag that they will end up realising they are suited to each other. How you get to that situation is a little more unexpected. It is predictable in once sense, in that you know where this is going to end, but getting there is a heap of fun.
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Helen50, 9 months ago to bookstodon

67 Before the Fact, Francis Iles
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I read this because it is the novel that the Hitchcock film Suspicion is based on. In my thoughts on that film, I said that the ending felt false, and someone put me onto this.
This may be rather spoiler ridden.
From the first there is an air of menace over the book. We see it from Lina's perspective, as we review her marriage to Johnnie, who we believe to be a murderer from the first.
Lina is unmarried at the books' beginning.

Helen50, 9 months ago to bookstodon

66 Everyone in my family has killed someone, Benjamin Stevenson
This is a load of fun. Ernie Cunningham is our narrator. He writes how to books about detective fiction using Knox's rules. It is set in a mountain resort where the Cunningham family has a reunion, marking Michael's release from prison - where he was because Ernie testified against him. It's cleverly done, and rolls along at pace. Ernie engages with the reader, you feel like you're being told a story in a bar.
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Helen50, 9 months ago to bookstodon

65 The Guest, Emma Cline
Alex is down on her luck and too stupid to know to stop digging.
She is not described so, but call her a prostitute and be done with it. She is also presented as being street smart, but is often either at a loss for words or knows that what she is doing is stupid and self sabotages. I have no idea what the author expected the ending to be, but this non-ending leaves Alex and the reader hanging over what I fully expect to be a fast train out of town.
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Helen50, 10 months ago to bookstodon

64 Fashion in Shrouds, Margery Allingham
This isn't the best of the series.
The plot is rather complicated, with the police not getting involved until the third death. Then the investigation takes on more structure. It feels rather like Campion is taking sides, trying to protect his sister and his circle from the investigation.
It went past quickly enough, but I'm not sure that the tone and the way that the women are presented doesn't leave a sour taste in the mouth.
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Helen50, 1 year ago to random

29 Crook O'Lune ECR Lorac
The strength of the Lancashire books is the sense of place and the way that they treat the landscape. Gilbert Woolfall has inherited his uncle's fell land house. Then there's a fire that destroys the study and kills the housekeeper. Throw in some sheep rustling and there's a lot to try and sort out. It's not just purely picturesque, there are issues of trying to get started in farming in the fells and the fate of the elderly in a rural environment.
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