pamelad's reading log

July - December

110. Dry by Augusten Burroughs
109. Marjorie Morningstar by Herman Wouk
108. Kill Now, Pay Later by Robert Terrall
107. The Track of Sand by Andrea Camilleri
106. Fun and Games by Duane Swierczynski
105. August Heat by Andrea Camilleri
104. Death of an Artist by Kate Wilhelm
103. The Expendable Man by Dorothy B. Hughes
102. Laura by Vera Caspary
101. The Little Disturbances of Man by Grace Paley

100. Bunny Lake is Missing by Evelyn Piper
99. Divorce Islamic Style by Amara Lakhous
98. Freedom by Jonathan Frantzen
97. Say No to Death by Dymphna Cusack
96. A Very Private Enterprise by Elizabeth Ironside
95. Catherine the Great: portrait of a woman by Robert K. Massie
94. A Far Cry from Kensington by Muriel Spark
93. The Secret Life of the Grown-up Brain by Barbara Strauch
92. The Fifth Witness by Michael Connelly
91. Madame Verona Comes Down the Hill by Dimitri Verhulst

90. Colour Scheme by Ngaio Marsh
89. The Graveyard Position by Robert Barnard
89. Bedelia by Vera Caspary
87. Rounding the Mark by Andrea Camilleri
86. So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell
85. The Last Brother by Nathacha Appanah
84. Slip of the Knife by Denise Mina
83. Zemindar by Valerie Fitzgerald
82. The Hills is Lonely by Lillian Beckwith
81. The Enormous Shadow by Robert Harling

80. Garnethill by Denise Mina
79. The Demands by Mark Billingham
78. The Enormous Shadow by Robert Harling
77. Two Little Rich Girls by Mignon G. Eberhart
76. The Patient in Cabin C by Mignon G. Eberhart
75. The Ivory Swing by Janette Turner Hospital
74. Death of an Old Girl by Elizabeth Lemarchand
73. Quiet by Susan Cain
72. Still Midnight by Denise Mina
71. The Dead Hour by Denise Mina

Having a crime binge. Just about to start Garnethill by Denise Mina.

Just grabbing a good seat for your thread.

Welcome Dan.

Not a lot going on here recently because I have been buried in a big historical romance.

Zemindar by Valerie Fitzgerald

This is the Fitzgerald's only book, which is a shame because I could go a sequel. A panel that included M. M. Kaye, writer of some very good bad books, awarded Zemindar the 1981 Georgette Heyer Historical Novel Prize.

Laura Hewitt, impecunious orphaned cousin of Emily Flood, accompanies Emily and her new husband Charles on their honeymoon trip to India. Emily is only seventeen, willful, self-centred, and quite a nasty piece of work. The handsome Charles had been devoted to Laura until the manipulative Emily enticed him away, so on this honeymoon is the last place Laura wants to be. Fortunately there's enough going on to take Laura's mind off her problems - her unacknowledged attraction to the Zemindar, the sepoy rebellion and the siege of Lucknow.

796 pages just flashed by.

The Hills is Lonely by Lillian Beckwith

In the fifties Beckwith was a middle-aged spinster school teacher suffering from an unspecified illness, when she inherited enough money to have a few months off, longer if she could stretch it. She advertised for a quiet, secluded place to stay and ended up staying a couple of years in a croft in the Scottish Highlands. Occasionally a snobbish or maidenly judgement interrupts the flow, but overall this memoir is good-hearted and amusing.

The Enormous Shadow by Robert Harling

This spy novel, first published in 1955, was recommended by Barzun and Taylor. A British journalist, on leave from his job in New York, is asked to write, from his perspective as an outsider, profiles of a number of young, up and coming British politicians. He begins to suspect that one of them is a Russian spy.

This book was written just after the uncovering of Burgess and Maclean and is interesting for its measured efforts to analyse the motives of their fictional counterparts. As a spy novel the plot hangs together well, and the characters are believable. The romance, however, is not.

Worth a look.

Slip of the Knife by Denise Mina

The fat journalist, Paddy Meehan, lapsed Catholic, single parent and a disappointment to her mother, is woken by the police knocking on her door. An old friend has died, and because he has written Paddy's name as his next of kin, she has to identify his body. He has been murdered, and the IRA is implicated.

I've read a few of Mina's books now, and this is the first disappointment. The story doesn't hang together too well. There are corrupt police, incompetent police, cynical journalists, a child murderer, the IRA, British intelligence, just too many threads. Paddy, however, delivers some very funny lines.

A good enough crime novel, but not up to Mina's usual standard.

The Last Brother by Nathacha Appanah

Raj's two brothers died in the cyclone that devastated their Mauritian village, so now he lives with his mother and his violent father in a hut in the jungle. His father works as a warder in the local prison, which incarcerates a shipload of Jews who have been denied entry to Palestine. Raj knows nothing of the war and is amazed to see white people in prison. Through the fence he makes friends with David, a boy of his own age, and, during a stay in the prison hospital, where Raj is recovering from a beating, and David from malaria, they cement their friendship. In his seventies, Raj relives his short time with David, who died so young.

This is a beautifully written book. It was so sad that I put it aside because I couldn't bear that David should die. It unveils a piece of Mauritian history that had remained hidden until 1973.

Highly recommended.

I loved The Last Brother too, Pam!

So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell

Two lonely boys play together in a half-built house. One, disappears, the victim of a family disaster that ended in the deaths of a neighbour and his own father. Years later, the second boy sees his friend again but doesn't speak, an omission he regrets all his life. This book is his reconstruction of the tragedy that befell his friend.

A good book that I didn't much like.

Rounding the Mark by Andrea Camilleri

Rebecca has been writing about her Andrea Camilleri binge, so this book leaped at me from the library shelves.

Inspector Montalbano is his usual insubordinate self as he single-handedly investigates the fate of a little African boy who had arrived in Sicily as an illegal immigrant.

I am very attached to Montalbano and his colleagues, so am pleased that there are quite a few in this series that I haven't read.

Glad you are enjoying Camilleri. I too am very attached to Montalbano and his colleagues.

The Boy in the Suitcase by Lene Kaaberbol and Agnete Friis

A red cross nurse finds a little boy in a luggage locker and desperately tries to evade the psychotic, steroid-fuelled monster who kidnapped him and beat her friend to death.

Obviously there's something rotten in the state of Denmark. An ugly book.

Intriguing review of The Last Brother, Pam. The Boy in the Suitcase is in this month's Kindle sale and I downloaded it a few days ago. An ugly book has me a little worried.

Linda, it seemed ugly because of the amoral people doing unspeakable things to children. Have you started it?

The Graveyard Position by Robert Barnard

I read this a few days ago and it has left no trace.

Colour Scheme by Ngaio Marsh

Marsh wrote many crime novels, some good, some unreadable and many, like this 1943 one, mediocre. I waded through the whole book because it is set in the hot springs region of New Zealand's north island, where I am going in December. I do not plan to end up like poor Questing, dead in a pool of boiling mud, so will certainly take care where I walk at night time. Fortunately, WWII being over, there are unlikely to be any fifth columnists about so the the country should be safer.

Ngaio Marsh was born in New Zealand, but was more British than the British, racist, and quite a snob. The poverty-stricken English proprietors of the spa resort, retired from the Indian Army, have been forced to send their son to a local school, where he has acquired an unfortunate accent and a bad case of antipodean truculence. Bad show! The Maori chief, an aristocratic old gentleman, is such an impressive man that he doesn't have that unfortunate Polynesian appearance: he looks Scottish!

Maori bits and pieces provide some interest, but the plotting is poor, the pace slow, and the characterisation cardboard. Not recommended.

>15 pamelad: I haven't started it yet, Pam. Opened it up last night but decided I wasn't in the mood and went to watch Olympics instead.

I think that Mina's best work is her Garnethill trilogy, but I still enjoy everything she writes.

I gave Garnethill 4.5 stars and have ordered the next in the series on an inter-library loan, which is taking a while. Denise Mina is good find, and I first read about her on one of your threads, RidgewayGirl.

Haven't written anything about Garnethill here - must have been busy at work, finding time for reading but not for reviewing.

I read Ngaio Marsh decades ago and don't remember anything about her books -- plots, characters, scene-setting or racism -- so they must not have made much of an impression on me even though I read several at the time!

Bedelia by Vera Caspary

Caspary's Laura has been on my wishlist for a while, along with a few others from the Women Write Pulp series, so I had to buy this remaindered copy of Bedelia. The cover is a reproduction of the original: Joan Crawford lipstick, big hair, lots of cleavage and She Seduces Men . . . But Does She Kill Them? A mystery about the wickedest woman who ever loved

I was expecting forties noir, so was surprised to find the story set in 1913. It makes sense though, because Bedelia, with her naivete and helplessness, would be out of place among the classically tough forties femmes fatales.

Loved it! There's a strong feminist message here, but no proselytizing. Bedelia, homicidal potential aside, is the perfect wife and Charlie, her husband, thinks he's the luckiest man alive. Should he believe the stories that the local amateur artist is spreading, or is the man mistaken? Charlie knows who he wants to believe.

Highly recommended.

Heading off now to order Laura and Dorothy Hughes's The Expendable Man.

Madame Verona Comes Down the Hill by Dimitri Verhulst

Madame Verona lives in a remote mountain cottage with her husband, a composer. Theirs is a great love, and when her husband dies Madame Verona stays alone on the mountain, remembering their life together and avoiding the trips down to the village that they used to make together. Her memorial to him is to be a cello, made from a tree that her husband planted. She waits twenty years for the wood to be ready; when the cello is made there is nothing to tie her to the land or to life. Her last trip down the mountain will be her last.

This is an oddly delightful little book, enlivened by vignettes of village oddities and the personality of Madame Verona. I enjoyed it.

The Secret Life of the Grown-up Brain by Barbara Strauch

Do you often find yourself staring vaguely round the room, wondering, "What did I come in here for?" Do people's names escape you? Do your keys disappear, when just a moment ago you had them in your hand? Don't worry, it's unlikely to be Alzheimer's, probably just your middle-aged brain.

Some things I liked about this book

* Middle age extends much longer than I would have thought, perhaps even into the seventies.
* Apart from losing a bit of processing speed and the ability to operate efficiently when lots of things are going on simultaneously, middle-aged brains work just as well as twenty year-old brains, and in some situations, work even better.
* Middle aged people use more of their brain than younger people and rely more on the frontal cortex.
* It's a myth that massive numbers of brain cells die as people age.
* The brain can make new neurones.
* There is a lot of evidence to support the hypothesis that exercise is good for the brain and that it promotes growth of new brain cells.

A comforting read for the middle-aged. A bit too much chit-chat and hard sell, and too many pages on untested hypotheses, but that sort of thing is the norm for a popular science book.

The scientists who have been testing the effects of antioxidants on brain cell growth in mice have been so impressed by the results that they're eating blueberries (#1 on the antioxidant food list) for breakfast. Can't hurt!

A Far Cry from Kensington by Muriel Spark

Mrs. Hawkins is only twenty-eight, but because of her great size, her competence and her propensity to advise, she seems much older. She lives in a Kensington boarding house whose tenants and proprietor are the biggest beneficiaries of her advice, and works for a publishing house that is heading for bankruptcy. The evil-natured Hector Bartlett, a hack writer and fake philosopher whose malevolence shadows Mrs Hawkins and her fellow tenants, is one of the publisher's clients.

This is a wonderfully nutty book: humane, silly and very funny. The characters are larger than life, but true all the same, and Spark is manipulating them lovingly, wryly, at a distance.

Highly recommended.

I enjoyed The Secret Life of the Middle Aged Brain too, despite its breezy style, and found it reassuring.

A Far Cry from Kensington sounds like fun to read. I thought I had covered Spark but it seems I missed a few.

I also am comforted by your excellent review of The secret life of the Grown-up Brain

Well, you've been busy. Enjoyed catching up here.

Adding Bedelia to my wish list!

Just finished Catherine the Great: portrait of a woman by Robert K. Massie.

This biography zipped along from favourite to favourite and battle to battle. Catherine was brave and enlightened leader who achieved a great deal for Russia. Massie seems to be a big fan, which makes me wonder how unbiased the book is, but I liked it. At times I was haunted by the vision of Marlene Dietrich as the Scarlet Empress, which added another layer of enjoyment.

Rebecca has already written an excellent review.

Welcome back, Dan.

Say No to Death by Dymphna Cusack

Cusack's best known book in Australia is Come in Spinner, but apparently some of her others, including this one, were better received in Europe than they were at home. Her sympathies were with the poor and her political leanings far to the left. Although she never joined a political party, she eventually married a man who had been the leader of the Australian Communist Party.

This book was Cusack's impassioned response to the tragic death from tuberculosis of a young woman who had been a close friend. It is both a love story and a sad denunciation of the inadequate treatment available for the poor, who were dying as they waited for beds to become available in sanatoria. It is a savage attack on the greed of the owners of private clinics, who would send away a dying person who could no longer afford the fees.

I was shocked to read that TB was still rife in Australian cities in the forties. A decade later it had been controlled by antibiotics, mass screening programs and inoculations, but in the forties this coordinated attack had not begun. Antibiotics were wildly expensive, and the parents of some of the young sufferers had sold their houses in the desperate hope that the new, experimental streptomycin treatment would save their lives.

Worth reading. I'd also recommend Come in Spinner.

Freedom by Jonathan Frantzen

Hundreds of people have reviewed this book already on LT; I'm siding with the people who rated it highly. If you were a Republican you'd probably be grinding your teeth before you were a quarter of the way through, because might not agree that you're either a misguided redneck or a corrupt and conscienceless, greed-driven business person. Frantzen's Democrats come across as far too smug, but they're not actually evil.

The book isn't about political parties, it's just that the some of the main characters are caught up in left-wing causes, while others are corporate predators. It's not subtle. I didn't really like the characters, but all the same I became involved in their lives and wanted things to work out for them.

It's a long book, at 597 pages, and bogs down in the middle, but is definitely worth reading.

Divorce Islamic Style by Amara Lakhous

Someone on LT recommended this, and if I could remember who they were I'd thank them.

Safia is Egyptian. In Egypt she didn't wear the veil, but now she's in Italy, married to Felice, a qualified architect in Egypt, but a pizza maker in Italy; Felice insists, so Safia has no choice. Her great ambition in life is to open a hair dressing salon, so she cuts women's hair in secret.

Issa is Sicilian, but his Arabic is perfect so he has been recruited as a spy. He hangs around Little Cairo gathering intelligence, his contribution to the War on Terror.

Lakhous's book is very funny. Its satire touches on Islamic culture, both at home and in Italy as immigrants ; racial prejudice, not only between Muslims and Italians, but between Muslims from different countries and Italians from different parts of Italy; the ludicrous rules for an Islamic divorce; and the insane manoeuverings of the intelligence services.

Highly recommended.

I've been avoiding Freedom because Franzen is one of the youngish US writers who annoy me, and now that you say it isn't subtle I feel you've let me off the hook. I have another book by Lakhous on the TBR that I haven't felt inspired to read yet, but you make this one sound interesting.

I bought Divorce Islamic Style earlier this summer, but I haven't read it yet. I may have to add it to my list of planned reads for the month.

Hi kidzdoc. Thanks for dropping in. I'm planning on reading Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio as well. Love the name.

I've had a crime binge. The best of them are Laura by Vera Caspary and Bunny Lake is Missing by Evelyn Piper, both reissued in the Women Write Pulp series, and a nryb classics reissue, The Expendable Man by Dorothy B. Hughes.

I also enjoyed two Inspector Montalbano books, August Heat and The Track of Sand, quite liked Fun and Games by Duane Swierczynski despite finding the style a bit too too breezy for the body count, and was bored by the bland Death of an Artist by Kate Wilhelm.

For a change of pace I read a collection of short stories, The Little Disturbances of Man by Grace Paley, which I bought in error when I was looking for something by Dawn Powell. A happy mistake.

Just finished Marjorie Morningstar by Herman Wouk, which I liked, but I feel cheated by the ending.

Nice to catch up on your reading, Pam!