Category Archive

When I piled this month’s purchases up I was really surprised at the number of books that I had bought without really trying. A good range, I think, with some authors that are new to me:

Blue Remembered Hills by Rosemary Sutcliffe – a lovely limited edition from the wonderful people at Slightly Foxed, with proper bookmark and everything

Odd and the Frost Giants by Neil Gaiman – written for World Book Day and mentioned in my post on the Novella Challenge

The Mathematics of Love by Emma Darwin – worth looking at Emma’s blog

Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist – Scandinavian urban vampire story, so how could I resist?

The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford – heard him being interviewed by Simon Mayo about his new book, picked this up in a bookshop and became very interested

The House of Lost Souls by F G Cottam – spec buy to make up a 3 for 2 offer, looks interesting but no idea what it will be like

The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares – attracted by the cover which is a photo of Louise Brookes, and also in the Novella Challenge

Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin by Marion Meade – mentioned on someone else’s blog, it sounded like a good read

Vampire Loves by Joann Sfar – couldn’t resist it, looks great

Broken Things by Padrika Tarrant – as mentioned by dovegreyreader

Engelby by Sebastian Faulks – wasn’t sure about this when it first came out but dipped into it in a bookshop and decided to give it a go

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz – reviewed by Simon Mayo’s Book Panel, this sounded like geeky good fun

T is for Trespass by Sue Grafton – the latest Kinsey Milhone mystery, to add to my towering pile of unread Graftons

I seem to have been concentrating more on movies and music this month but there have been one or two small purchases of a bookish nature:

Silent in the Grave by Deanna Raybourn – Lady Julia Grey seeks the truth about the death of her husband in 1880s London; looks like great fun, and Deanna’s blog is well worth a read too;

Henry VIII’s Last Victim by Jesse Childs – award-winning biography of  Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, executed in 1547;

The Professor’s Daughter by Joann Sfar & Emmanuel Guibert – graphic novel about love between the daughter of an Egyptologist and a mummy, Imhotep IV – beautifully drawn;

Going Out and Bright Young Things by Scarlett Thomas – had to get a hold of these second hand but well worth the search, I’m sure.

Despite the generous supply of gifts for Christmas and birthdays I still managed to buy some books for myself; you will spot some familiar names, but also some new authors that I am looking forward to exploring.

The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson – how the battle against the great London cholera epidemic of 1854 was fought

Diaries 1969-1979 by Michael Palin – The Python Years; I’ve already dipped into this and it looks extremely entertaining – I can’t resist reading other people’s diaries!

The Translator and Aegypt by John Crowley – two very different stories by the fantasy author, one about an exiled Russian poet and his American translator set in the early 1960s, the other asking whether there is more than one history of the world

Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation by Noel Riley Fitch – a biography of the woman who founded Shakespeare & Co Bookshop in Paris, with cameos from many of the great writers who found themselves there in the  1920s and 1930s

Touchstone by Laurie R King –  a standalone by the the author of the Mary Russell mysteries, possibly the beginning of a new series?

Duma Key by Stephen King – one to savour!

It took me many years and a lot of persuasion on the part of the Book God to finally get around to reading The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame. I’m not sure exactly why I was so reluctant; it may be the combination of a very English story with a rural setting didn’t have much appeal for a Scottish townie (ironic given that Grahame was born in Edinburgh), but when I did finally read it I instantly became a fan. One of the joys of the story, apart from the Piper at the Gates of Dawn which must be my favourite chapter, is the way that it has attracted some wonderful illustrators. I already have editions with artwork by Arthur Rackham and Charles van Sandwyck, and now this marvellous version by Robert Ingpen produced to mark the centenary of the original publication, the drawings of Badger being particuarly fine. A real joy.

The Bride’s birthday has come and gone for another year, and some wonderful books were supplied as presents, mostly from the Book God, with a contribution from the Stanley Scot. I always feel a little bit guilty that my birthday is so close to Christmas, but not guilty enough to refuse the gifts as it’s really not my fault (I blame the parents)! So what did I get this year?

The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth – my first Roth, but not my first novel on the Austro-Hungarian Empire

Blood Mask by Lauren Kelly – a pseudonym of Joyce Carol Oates so nuff said; I wonder how the woman has time to write all of these books and still maintain the quality, but I’m not complaining

Shopping, Seduction & Mr Selfridge by Lindy Woodhead – does what it says on the tin, looking forward to the scandal and hidden tales behind the founding of this fine establishment!

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield – as reviewed on a number of other blogs, thought I’d give it go myself

Matter by Iain M Banks – I’ve been so looking forward to getting this, a new Culture novel from the great man.

The Book God has been most generous once again this year, and has provided me with enough reading to keep me going for some time. There is a mixture of fantasy (The Faery Reel, Widdershins, The Broken Kings) crime and mystery (The Death List, The Ghost Orchid, Dead Clever, Dexter in the Dark, Sepulchre) and more general fiction (The Last Fish Supper, PopCo, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union).

In non-fiction I got the usual mix of history (Mary Tudor, Katherine Swynford, Singled Out), memoirs & diaries (The Journals of Joyce Carol Oates, Harriette Wilson’s Memoirs), biography (Myself & the Other Fellow), and the most wonderfully beautiful coffee table volume At Home With Books which just makes me envious of people with proper library spaces, and has had me rushing off to measure walls for shelving!

A quiet month on the book buying front as we head towards Christmas; the Book God and I have exchanged wish lists and are both under strict instructions not to buy anything between now and the day itself. So only a handful to talk about really. Anne Fadiman’s At Large and Small looks fascinating; I enjoy reading essays, (Gore Vidal’s various collections are particular favourites) and I really loved Ex Libris, so looking forward to this. Nigel Slater’s Eating for England has already been dipped into; I heard him interviewed about this on the radio and it brought back so many memories of my own childhood that there was no way I wasn’t going to get this, and I bored the Book God by reading out bits and pieces over lunch one Saturday; I have been made to promise not to do it again. Dream Angus by Alexander McCall Smith is part of the Canongate series re-telling myths; I have a couple of these but haven’t been buying the series religiously, but thought that this looked interesting.

The Georgian period isn’t one that I have been particularly attracted to in the past; regular visitors will know that the sixteenth century is more my thing, but over the past year or so I have accumulated a small quantity of books about the period, of which The Gentleman’s Daughter and High Society are the two most recent.

But my big treat this month is Posy Simmond’s new graphic novel Tamara Drewe; I have loved Posy since I was a student and used to read her weekly cartoon in the Guardian, and have have quite a few of her books including her children’s works; I love her drawing style so much (she has also done the cover for this month’s Slightly Foxed); this is definitely going to be one of my Christmas holiday reads.

The final batch has a Scottish theme, (which makes sense given that that’s where the Book God and I spent the larger part of our holiday!) although the first book was actually bought in Carlisle. It’s a biography of George Mackay Brown, the Orkney poet and novelist, whom I have found fascinating ever since I had to study Greenvoe in school at the end of the 70s.  The biography is by Maggie Fergusson and has some fine endorsements from such as Allan Massie and Claire Tomalin, so I hope to learn a great deal about this rather enigmatic man.

The other books are all Scottish history, one by Alistair Moffat about the Borders which, although I have visited often, I know very little about other than the obvious stuff. The others by Rosalind Marshall and Pamela Ritchie are about Mary of Guise, mother of Mary Queen of Scots and regent while her daughter was living in France. I’ve been looking for material about her for a while, and like buses two came along at once, so the sixteenth century stack piles ever higher.

A Whitby theme, as this batch of books was either purchased in the town on our recent visit or has the town as it’s setting. There is a fantastic bookshop there which we always visit and I don’t think I have ever left there empty handed. One of the great discoveries this time was an audio CD of Sir Derek Jacobi reading MR James’ ghost stories – I was thrilled to find this as our original taped version with Sir Michael Hordern has vanished into the mists of time, and the stories are great for listening to in the car, particularly when driving over the North Yorkshire Moors in the rain. I will be looking out for volume 2. I also picked up two books by Paul Magrs, Never the Bride and Something Borrowed, both featuring Brenda and her Whitby B&B, and of course a supernatural element; these have been well-reviewed and look like a a nice addition to the Gothic stack.  And finally, friends have suggested that I try Peter Robinson’s work, so I thought I would start with Caedmon’s Song, a standalone psychological thriller which looks intriguing.

A bit late this month in sharing book purchases from October, and what a lot of them there were! This is partly due to the annual holiday – last minute buying of books before we go, more buying while we are away, and then time to spare at the end of the month to pick up anything that we might have missed. It looks like a fairly varied selection, but all the usual themes are there – it’s depressing to be so transparent!

Crime first of all – Dearly Devoted Dexter by Jeff Lindsay is the second in the series about a man who is a forensic specialist by day and a serial killer by night. I’m looking forward to reading this one as I really enjoyed the TV series based on the first book, which made Dexter a likeable figure despite his homicidal tendencies, and there was a lot of dark humour mixed in with an interesting murder mystery. Then we have Goodnight Sweet Prince by David Dickinson – I’m pretty sure that I have another of his crime works somewhere in the house but can’t put my hands on it at the moment. This is about a murder involving Queen Victoria’s grandson Prince Eddy, and will either be excellent or awful, but I’m very much willing to give it a try. And a new Scottish-based series (well, new to me anyway) which looked like it might be good fun, After the Armistice Ball by Catriona McPherson.

History & biography next – Consuming Passions by Judith Flanders has been recommended on a number of other blogs, and I had already enjoyed her book on the Victorian House , and I also have (but haven’t yet read) her book about the MacDonald sisters,  so this was a no-brainer for me, and after buying it I sat in a teashop with the Book God reading sections of it out to him; he was very forbearing as always, and I think this will be one to savour. I also picked up out of curiosity a biography of Peggy Guggenheim by Mary Dearborn; I don’t really know anything about her at all but a first dip suggested it would be interesting; and yet another addition to the sixteenth century pile, The Last Days of Henry VIII by Robert Hutchinson, which speaks for itself I suppose.

New things by old favourites – The Female of the Species by Joyce Carol Oates and Margaret Atwood’s Curious Pursuits.

Oddments – Susan Hill’s Man in the Picture (one for dark night reading over Christmas, I think); Pat Barker’s Life Class (I really, really loved the Regeneration trilogy); Joe Hill’s 20th Century Ghosts – even though I haven’t yet read his novel everything I have heard makes me think I will love this author; and Walking with the Green Man, and odd little book I picked up at the Tullie House Museum in Carlisle – it’s a subject I am very interested in, so will see what new insights if any I get out of this volume.