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I have a tendency to enjoy things on the dark side of life, so when I saw this mentioned on Deanna Raybourn’s blog I just had to go and have a look, and so I now know that roughly 124,066 people died worldwide on the day I was born!
People who have died on January 31 over the years include:
- Bonnie Prince Charlie (of Jacobite rebellion fame) in 1788
- John Galsworthy (of Forsyte Saga fame) in 1933
- AA Milne (of Winnie the Pooh fame) in 1956
- Moira Shearer (of Red Shoes fame) in 2006
Gives a whole new perspective on the day, but won’t stop me enjoying the cake and party hats when the next one rolls around!
Picked up from Cornflower and Harriet Devine, this requires you to find the nearest book, go to page 123, find the fifth sentence then post the next three, so…………
Nearest book is Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie (I pulled it from the shelves while writing my thoughts on the film version), and the fifth sentence on page 123 is:
“I thought she too had been murdered!”
Next three:
“I came at a run, and there she was screaming like a madwoman, and she cried out that she must fetch you and she departed, screeching at the top of her voice and telling everybody whose carriage she passed what had occurred.”
He added with a gesture of the hand: “It is in there, monsieur. I have not touched it.”
Lauren Bacall handled it very differently in the movie, of course, not a screech in sight (or sound)!
Why not have a go?
Susan over at You Can Never Have Too Many Books put up a fascinating post on reading horror last week, and having thought quite a bit about this, and having consulted the local book-loving vampire bat (from Whitby no less) I thought I would throw in my tuppenny’s worth!
Do you read horror novels?
Yes, but not as many as I used to. I’ve become really disappointed by the number of series there are which get less satisfying the longer they go on (Anne Rice and Laurell K Hamilton spring to mind). I find that I’m reading more and more short stories, where the authors have to work harder to get the feeling of dread across to the reader.
If so, who do you read?
Stephen King is still my favourite (I first read Carrie when I was 15 in 1977, and haven’t really stopped). Christopher Fowler (pre Bryant and May) and Kim Newman are also interesting, along with HP Lovecraft of course, and MR James for ghost stories. New discoveries yet to be read include Dan Simmons and Joe Hill.
What kind of horror?
It used to be anything with vampires would get me hooked (but see my answer to the first question). I don’t mind a bit of blood and gore, but I do like originality, and atmosphere is particularly important for the ghostly stuff. And I do like a bit of Gothic.
If you’ve stopped reading horror, why?
Still persevering, still looking out for new and interesting things. A lot of the good horror seems to overlap with fantasy quite a bit, which suits me fine.
Favourite horror books
Salem’s Lot is still my favourite King, and is due for a re-read this year, I think.
Couldn’t pick a favourite MR James, they’re all too good, and I look out for repeats of the BBC adaptations which are often shown here at Christmas.
At the Mountains of Madness and The Shadow Over Innsmouth are my favourite Lovecraft tales. By the way, if you want a good Lovecraftian pastiche, you can’t go wrong with the Neil Gaiman short story Shoggoth’s Old Peculiar (hope I’ve got the title right, couldn’t find my copy).
Ooh, I nearly forgot Dracula – still the best vampire story. One of my best holiday experiences ever was listening to the Richard E Grant audio version while being driven across the North Yorkshire Moors – fantastic!
I have to confess that I haven’t read many Pratchett novels (two I think, although I have a couple more kicking around) but I always enjoy hearing him talk about his work, and he made the last episode of the Worlds of Fantasy series very memorable. So it’s particularly sad to hear him talk about his struggle with Alzheimer’s; the story is discussed here, including a clip of his speech, and if you want to know more about the disease look to the Alzheimer’s Research Trust website.
You will have seen from the sidebar that I have been reading Iain M Banks’ Matter for a couple of weeks now (with a slight detour to Michael Palin as discussed a couple of days ago). I am not making much progress with the novel, being about a third of the way through, but this isn’t because I’m not enjoying it; on the contrary I’m really savouring the story and that’s part of the problem. I want to sit down for at least an hour at a time to immerse myself in the world of the Culture, but pressures of work and the daily commute (which means I’m standing most of the time in crowded carriages which makes a book this size difficult to read) mean I just haven’t been able to find that dedicated time. However, today is a rare day off work and although I have the usual errands to run I intend to carve out a slot for Matter, so watch this space.
I told a fib in my last post; The Mandlebaum Gate isn’t the first book in my Muriel Spark project that I hadn’t read before. I completely forgot that I finished Robinson in August 2006 (you can tell that I’ve been rummaging through old stats!), and that was a first-timer too. I didn’t have the same problems with that novel though, which is making me hopeful that this is a wrong frame of mind situation and not the awful prospect of a book by Dame Muriel that I didn’t like!
Anyone who has been reading this blog over the past year will know that my love for Muriel Spark knows no bounds, and that since her death in 2006 (?) I have embarked on a project to read all of her novels in order, followed by her collected short stories and her memoirs. Only I’ve hit a bit of a snag with The Mandlebaum Gate. This is the first of her novels that I hadn’t read before (I devoured her stuff when I was a student) and it is set (and was written in) the early 1960’s about Barbara Vaughan, half-Jewish convert to Roman Catholicism who, while waiting to find out if her lover will obtain an annulment of his first marriage, goes on a pilgrimage to vist the holy sites in Israel and Jordan.
It started off really well, I was making great progress and now, slightly more than half way through, I’ve come to a complete halt. I do still want to know how things are resolved as Barbara apparently disappears in Jordan, but have no enthusiasm at the moment. I refuse to entirely give up and will put it aside for a revisit later on, but am so disappointed, and not sure what to do about continuing the project until I know whether I’m ever going to finish this book. Oh dear.
And by the way blurb-writer, since when is a book written and published in 1965 and set in 1961 a historical novel?
It’s been very quiet around here lately as the Book God and I have been away on our annual holiday for the past three weeks, touring around the Scottish Borders and the north of England, seeing beautiful places such as
and one of my absolutely favourite places
Not many books got read, but quite a few were bought, and I’ll say more about some of those over the next few posts.
I have been watching the Comics Britannia season on BBC4 with great enjoyment; hearing about The Dandy and The Beano, as 
well as Bunty and Judy, brought back many happy memories of my childhood, and of course the Book God’s devotion to Dan Dare knows no bounds. I caught up with one of the best programmes earlier this evening, celebrating 70 years of The Broons; seeing lots of well-known Scottish celebrities confessing they still get the annual (you know who you are!) was great, and the evident joy of Muriel Gray who was featured on one of the comic strips was fantastic. Of course as soon as the programme was over I visited Amazon to see what’s available. Let’s just say that The Broons Annual for 2007 may be on the Bride’s Christmas wish list this year!
I watched the recent BBC series with the Book God, and although I have never been a huge fan of James Nesbit, I really enjoyed his performance in this; scenery chewing at its very best. The series seems to have really divided opinion, but I’m always willing to give Stephen Moffat the benefit of the doubt, especially as he has written some of the very best episodes of the rejuvenated Dr Who.
There was also an excellent documentary on BBC Four, a companion piece to the series presented by Ian Rankin, which looked at the influences on Robert Louis Stevenson – why the book was set in London and not Edinburgh, who was Jekyll based on etc. It gave some real insights into Victorian double life and the creative process itself.
I didn’t think much more about Jekyll until I came across Dr Jekyll and Mr Holmes as part of my Sherlockian marathon; this 
is a retelling of the story with Holmes called upon by Jekyll’s solicitor Mr Utterson to investigate the hold Edward Hyde has on his client. Written by Loren D Estleman, this version of the story works quite well, and I must admit to loving the fairly lurid cover, but it did make me hanker after the original, which I listed to on my daily commute by way of an excellent Naxos audiobook. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is read by John Sessions (one of my favourite Scottish actors) with real passion, and reminded me 
just how dark the original tale actually is; it’s really well worth a listen. It does reinforce what a masterpiece the Jekyll story is, which of course leaves it open to all sorts of retelling and reinterpreatations. One of the very best of these is Valerie Martin’s Mary Reilly, which looks at the tale from the perspective of Jekyll’s housemaid, who gets drawn into the very heart of her employer’s terrible story.
Looking back at my book diary, I found that I had read this for the first time on Christmas Eve 1991 (nice and atmospheric) and hadn’t looked at it again since, but on re-reading it I was pleased that it really was as good as I had remembered. Forget the film, which I didn’t take to largely because I thought Julia Roberts was miscast in the title role, and go back to the novel for something special.
Bride of the Book God 