62 Sandi Toksvig and the Natural History Museum

Sandi Toksvig and the British Museum this time, but first: I promised to let you know about Mike Pannet’s book signing at WHSmith Mansfield. The author of You’re coming with me Lad: Tales of a Yorkshire Bobby [Hodder and Stoughton £12.99] will be in WHSmith to sign copies on July 24^th from 12 noon to 2pm.

A Comedy (?) of Errors.

I’m not sure what to make of Sandi Toksvig as a novelist ; I’ve just read one of her recent (2006) books – Melted into Air [Time Warner £6.99 9780751535433] which is set in a small town in Tuscany. I was hoping to find it quite funny.

Frances Angel – born with the surname Angelli – isn’t doing particularly well in her job as a theatrical impresario in England so her cousin Gina persuades her to take a break in the Italian village of Montecastello where she spent her earliest years. She tries to confront her past and find out what had happened to her two childhood friends after she was sent away by her parents to live with relatives in England. The only place to stay in the town is an art school which turns out to have a weird assortment of guests and proprietors who could do a good Italian version of Sybil and Basil Faulty. There is a darker side to the story: as very young girls, Frances and her two friends decided to announce that they had seen a vision when in actual fact there was no vision. This was immediately seized upon by the local priest as a good way to bring fame to the town and to further his career. One of her friends has been living under his “protection” ever since and it is suspected that he had something to do with the death of Frances’ other friend.

I have to admit that I nearly didn’t read this novel to the end. At times it didn’t seem to be getting anywhere and it wasn’t until at least three quarters of the way through that things really seemed to gel  as Frances and the other guests at the art school decide to put on a play for the whole town which will finally bring matters to a head. Perhaps my final comments on the book are that it is comical, but not especially funny and that it was like the curate’s egg – good in parts.  Watch a Google video here.

Life at the Museum

Whenever I think of the Natural History Museum in London, I think of the giant skeleton of the dinosaur , diplodocus carnegii which greets visitors as they enter the building. Apparently this is not a real skeleton, but a cast of an original in Pittsburgh and has been there since 1905. It’s this and thousands of other fascinating insights into the running of the Natural History Museum which Richard Fortey writes so eloquently about in his Dry Store Room No 1: the secret life of the Natural History Museum[ HarperPerennial  £8.99 978-0007209897]. (NB the illustration is of the hardback edition). It’s an absorbing exploration of the building housing the museum with particular emphasis on the areas not normally seen by the public. Take the wet collections for example “pickled, preserved and potted zoology”: round glass jars containing all manner of fishes, lizards, crustaceans, snakes and many other types of creatures in alcohol or formaldehyde.

In another part of the book Mr Fortey talks about the variety of characters who have worked at the museum spending years discovering new species and deciding where they sit in the evolutionary heirarchy. Some have published great tomes on very specialised subjects. David Reid, for example is devoted to winkles or littorina and has spent the best part of his professional life so far studying them. As Mr Fortey says, “they are ideal subjects to winkle out the truth about evolution”.

I’m going to repeat myself and say once again that this book really is fascinating. It’s not a book to read quickly, but rather one to savour as the author takes you on a tour of the museum or delves into a bit of gossip about some of the characters working  there. It might get a little technical at times and there is a smattering of latin names, but stick with it. This book is well worth the effort.

For Chick Lit fans….

… and that doesn’t include me, but if you like a spot of that type of reading from time to time, have you tried Paige Toon’s new book Chasing Daisy [Simon and Schuster £6.99 9781847393906] which is just out? It has a globe- trotting motor racing theme. You can find out more about Ms Toon on Simon  & Schuster’s website.

Another Odd Title.

A short while ago I mentioned the Diagram prize which is awarded every year for the oddest book title . In the shortlists of the past year or two I don’t remember seeing this one: Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification[Harry N. Abrams £9.95 978-0810955202] I’ve just discovered that this handy volume is on special offer in the latest Bibliophile catalogue for only £3.50. A snip!

61 Doggy Sitting

I’ve not been getting that much reading done in the last week or so and that’s partly because I’m looking after a friend’s dog for a few days. Dogs need attention, especially those that are suddenly plunged into a strange environment – and anyway he’s a very well behaved dog and I’m definitely a dog lover. This has made me think however of a few titles related to or about dogs, amongst the 1000s that are out there…

…Marley and Me: Life and Love with the World’s Worst Dog by John Grogan [Hodder £7.99 9780340977804 – film tie-in edition] is probably already well known to most of you. It has recently been made into a feature film and the book has appeared in many editions. Marley is a boisterous and accident prone Labrador who teaches its owners what really matters in life. I notice the DVD of the film is out this week, but read the book first.

Then there’s the catchily titled Why do dogs drink out of the toilet? by Marty Becker and Gina Spadafori  [Orion £6.99 9780752882499]. This is not a cheap attempt at lavatorial doggy type humour, but an explanation of why dogs do some of the things they do – why they cock their heads to one side when listening intently and whether praise or punishment is best to help dogs learn better, for example.

Finally there are two books by Matthew Johnstone which are really nothing to do with actual dogs: I  had a Black Dog [Robinson Publishing £6.99 978-1845295899 ] and Living with a Black Dog[Robinson £7.99 9781845297435] are both picture books about depression – “black dog” being another word for the condition. Both these books have been highly praised by sufferers and carers alike for the way they put into pictures the feelings of people with depression.

A travel writer of the old school

For those who enjoy Michael Palin’s or Bill Bryson’s travel books, this one may or may not be suitable. Shadow of the Silk Road by Colin Thubron [Vintage £8.99 9780099437222]is an account of a journey from northern China to Turkey visiting on the way many off the beaten track locations in countries such as Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan. Mr Thubron, Eton educated and born in 1939, is definitely one of the old school travel writers and none the worse for it. …and if you want photographs, forget it: Mr Thubron doesn’t like being encumbered by a camera. The author has written several travel books as well as award winning fiction.

Family dynamics

Rachel Kelly is a gifted artist with bipolar disorder. She is married with four children (one of whom is not her husband’s child) , but her past has always been something of a mystery to the rest of her family. After she is found dead in her studio, her Quaker  husband and family try to piece together what facts they can about Rachel’s life before she married.  The eldest of the children visits his real father. Anthony, the husband, even appeals for information on the internet. Slowly the jigsaw that is Rachel’s past is pieced together with surprising results. Notes from an Exhibition by Patrick Gale [HarperCollins £7.99 9780007254668] has been praised for the way it portrays the twisted dynamics of a family. I found it interesting but the way the narrative jumped from the present to the past and back again several times annoyed me. Patrick Gale’s latest title- The Whole Day Through [Fourth Estate £7.99 978-0007306015 – also available in hardback] was out at the end of May.

Finally, another word about Monty Halls, author of Beachcomber Cottage , the book of the TV series. Mr Halls has also written Great Ocean Adventures [Broadcast Books £15 978-1874092544] which is the book of a Channel 5 Tv series  a couple of years ago. Monty and a small team travelled the world in search of some of the largest sea creatures on the planet. This book is the story of the making of the programme and is illustrated with “stunning” photographs.

Next time – Sandi Toksvig and life at the British Museum

60 Catching up and looking forward

Oddest Book Title Prize

This prize is awarded annually by the Diagram Group for the title which is voted by readers of the The Bookseller magazine as the most unusual title published during the previous 12 months. I’m afraid  the winner escaped me this year until now – it was back in February that the winner was announced; the extremely odd,  but not specially amusing The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-miligram Containers of Fromage Frais, published by Icon Group International.  Other contenders were Baboon Metaphysics, Strip and Knit with Style and The Large Sieve and its Applications. Next year I’ll try to be on time with the results and I hope there’s something a little bit more, well, exciting!

Get ready for an Autumn bonanza

The Bookseller magazine reports that publishers are bringing out some very tempting titles this Autumn to try and encourage book buyers who may be put off by the credit squeeze.  One of the highlights for me would be Michael Palin’s Halfway to Hollywood [Weidenfeld & Nicholson £20 9780297844402, published 17^th Sept] which will be the second volume of his diaries from 1980 to 1988 (or is it 1987 as on the book cover?).  This is the period when members of the Monty Python team were starting to go their separate ways and Michael Palin found himself in several films, including “A Private Function”, which is one of my favourite films of all time. I didn’t know that, for a while,  he also hosted the very popular TV show on US television “Saturday Night Live” and that his mother once made a highly successful guest appearance.

Also on my “curiosity” list (ie. titles I want to check up on when they come out) is Look Back in Hunger by Jo Brand, [Headline Review £20 9780755355235,published on Oct.1^st] another autobiography. Jo has become more of a general TV personality just lately after starting out as a stand up comedian. Recent TV appearances have ranged from “Country File” and as one of the judges in “The Speaker”.

Finally in this pick of what’s to come – Tickling the English by Dara O’Briain [Michael  Joseph £18.99 9780718154370] might be worth a try. This Irish comedian who has lived in England for quite some time tries to fathom out what makes the English tick. I don’t go for his TV show “Mock the Week”, but perhaps he might be more “me” when he’s in print.

Something quite different….

….different in writing style that is. A bestselling novelist Victoria About (pronounced “Abut”) decides it would be a good idea to invite eleven friends to stay in a rented house for a few weeks just to see what happens and how the people interact. With the help of hidden cameras, this will provide plenty of material for her next novel.  But things don’t  turn out as expected; the house is apparently haunted, the guests do as they like, not as Victoria wants them to behave and the hidden cameras are discovered.

Finding Myself by Toby Litt [Penguin £7.99 9780141006543]  promised to be a very funny book, if all the quotes on the back cover from the reviews were to be believed, but I really didn’t get on with the style – to say it’s informal would be an understatement:  we get Victoria’s innermost musings and from time to time we come across sections of text crossed out, sometimes with comments handwritten in the margin, presumably from Victoria’s fictional editor. Call me old fashioned, but I prefer the more conventional style.

Literacy News

I receive the National Literacy Trust’s email newsletter and in the latest received this week, there’s news of a competition for young fiction writers. It’s open to anyone aged from 8 to 18 and the age groups are divided into three age categories. It’s a bit of a tight deadline as the closing date is 15^th July. For some writing tips go to  www.youngfictionwriteroftheyear.co.uk/

The trust has announced  the result of a recent poll which asked “Who has the most influence over children’s reading habits?” Of those asked, 79% said “family”. If that isn’t a good reason for parents reading to their children, then I don’t know what is.

59 Your bodily organs and who arrives first when they don’t work..

……but before all that: it’s the tenth Annual Lowdham Book Festival this year and it’s taking place in various locations around the village of Lowdham (just north east of Nottingham on the A612)  plus one or two other locations and lasts until June 27^th. Amongst the well known names that will be making an appearance this year are Jenni Murray (of Radio 4), Stephen Booth, Gillian Slovo and the railway writer Geoffrey Kingscott who will be talking about Lost Railways and Lost Stations. The box office number for all the events is 0115 966 3219. For more details about all the events go to the website.

Keeping Healthy

Last time I mentioned Dr Alice Roberts’ new book about the origins of our species: homo sapiens (see the previous edition of this blog). Dr. Roberts’ first book accompanied her first TV series in 2007 : Don’t Die Young [Bloomsbury £20 9780747590255]. In it she describes the principle organs of the human body and what we can do to help them all stay healthy and function properly. By understanding how your organs work and how to look after them, you stand a better chance of a healthier life. The book is lavishly illustrated (I really mean that) with many colour photographs, some of minute bacteria, cells etc, magnified 1000s of times as well as lots of colourful diagrams of our insides. There’s even an electron microscope photo of split ends – hair damaged by bleach.  In the introduction, Dr Phil Hammond says “Most people haven’t experienced the joy and wonder of dissecting a fellow human, but this [book] is the next best thing”.

If you’re not too keen on photos of your internal organs, just have a look at the special sections at the end of each chapter, where ways to keep your brain/liver/kidneys etc in good order are listed. I think I’ll just stick to that and try and follow Dr Roberts’ advice, one of the main points being to eat five portions of fruit and veg a day.

…and if something suddenly goes wrong…

…you might need an ambulance. This is where Tom Reynolds comes in. Tom works for the London Ambulance Service and for the past 6 years or so he has been publishing a blog about his daily experiences as an ambulance driver: Blood Sweat and Tea [The Friday Project £7.99 9781905548231] and More Blood, More Sweat and another Cup of Tea [The Friday Project £12.99 9781906321406] are both collections of excerpts from Tom’s blog about the many and varied experiences he has in his job.

Written in bight-sized chunks, you can dip into the book at almost any point to get a picture of what it really means to be an ambulance driver – answering emergency calls which might be a little old lady who has had a fall or a victim of a stabbing or just someone who has had a cough for a couple of weeks and just can’t seem to get rid of it. The situations he has to deal with range from the tragic to the ridiculous – they are all in a day’s work – as are the dangers all ambulance drivers have to face, whether it’s driving at high speed through heavy traffic or coming into contact with life threatening infections. Then there are all the abbreviations they use such as FRU (Fast Response Unit) and FBUA – you’ll have to read the book to discover what that stands for!.

I picked up Blood Sweat and Tea from the library. At first I thought I wouldn’t like the format of the book, but I started reading and found it hard to put down. Try it.

58 Espionage with Flair, Evolution and the Yorkshire Bobby

“He’s tall, he’s dark and, like the shark, he looks for trouble” – that’s a description of Lucifer Box, the central character in a series of quirky espionage novels by Mark Gatiss. I’ve just read Devil in Amber [Pocket Books £7.99 9780743483803] and thoroughly enjoyed it, though the plot became so incredibly complicated as it went on that there’s only space here to give you a rough idea of what it was all about. It takes place sometime in the 1920s or’30s (it’s left intentionally vague) when Box is asked by his employers (known as the “Royal Academy” – a sort of MI5) to eliminate a chap with the unlikely name of Olympus Mons. Mons is determined to take over the world with the help of the Devil himself and Lucifer Box’s sister Pandora (Lucifer and his sis don’t get on). The book begins in New York and finishes in North east England via Norfolk. Lucifer encounters, and is helped by, a most unlikely collection of characters. It’s action packed right from the start.

Mark Gatiss is of course one of the League of  Gentlemen (the award winning TV series), so it’s not surprising that his novels might be very offbeat. He says that most of his inspiration comes from the Flashman novels, but I would describe it as a sort of James Bond with a touch of Bertie Wooster.  To see a short video of Mark talking about the third – and probably the last – Lucifer Box novel (Black Butterfly Simon and Schuster £15 9780743257114) go to the publisher’s website.

Incredible..but true?

There’s just one more episode to go for the fascinating series presented by Dr Alice Roberts: “The Incredible Human Journey” on BBC2 on Sunday night. Dr Roberts takes us all over the world to some of the most unlikely places in search of clues to the reasons why homo sapiens was the only species of human being to survive. Of course there’s a book to go with the series, out now: The Incredible Human Journey [Bloomsbury £20 9780747598398]. I’m hoping that Nottinghamshire Libraries will stock it, but from past experience TV tie-ins are not always purchased.

Echoes of “Heartbeat” ?

This next title reminds me of an uncle of mine who was a country bobby in Northamptonshire, who used to regale us with tales of his exploits. In those days anyone caught doing wrong (usually a poacher or petty thief) was more likely to get a good hiding than be arrested. Somehow I don’t think Mike Pannet will have similar tales to tell about his life as a country policeman in rural Yorkshire. His new book You’re Coming with me Lad [Hodder and Stoughton £12.99 9780340918760] is more likely to remind people of the books by Nicholas Rhea (Constable on the Prowl, Constable around the Village etc) except that Mr Rhea’s books are now regarded as novels rather than non-fiction. (Nottinghamshire Libraries moved its stocks of “Constable” titles from the biography shelves to the fiction quite a while ago). In the publicity for Mike Pannet’s books (his first one was Now Then Lad [Constable £7.99 9781845298111]) he is being compared to Gervase Phinn and even James Herriott, so he’s one to watch out for.

You’re Coming with Me Lad will be published on 25th June and not long afterwards  Mike Pannet will be at W H Smith in Mansfield for a signing session – I’ll give the date later. My thanks to Margaret of W H Smith Mansfield for the information

New from Peter James

Former film producer and horror novelist Peter James is now firmly established as a good whodunit writer. His latest police procedural novel is out this week: Dead Tomorrow [Macmillan £16.99 978-0230706866] has been hailed as one of his best yet.

57 Nottinghamshire oil and Derbyshire coal

Well, actually oil and coal have been found in both counties of course, but two new books shed more light on specific areas: a brand new book Oil under Sherwood Forest by Janet Roberts [published by the author £4.99 9780956190208] tells the story of oil production in Nottinghamshire.

Driving through the sleepy village of Eakring today, you would find it hard to believe that this was once the centre of oil production in the UK and provided a source of oil for the war effort that “the U boats could never sink”. Janet’s excellent little book tells the story of oil production at Eakring and how a team of American engineers was brought over from Oklahoma in secret to the Eakring area to help sink the oilwells. The team was accommodated at Kelham Hall alongside the monks belonging to the Society of the Sacred Mission. The oilmen certainly turned heads when they ventured into nearby Newark dressed in loud shirts and looking every bit like cowboys. On being asked what they were doing in Britain, they said they were here to make a movie.

We also read about the problems caused for the men who were working long shifts, but having to survive on the same rations as everyone else and the only fatal accident when a worker fell 55 feet. The final chapter brings the story right up to date with the unveiling of the ”Oil Patch Warrior” statue and the opening of the museum at Duke’s Wood south of Eakring. An essential read for anyone wanting to know about Nottinghamshire’s industrial history or the history of oil exploration in Britain. The only other book about oil exploration in Nottinghamshire was published in 1973 and is now out of print.

In her blog, Janet Roberts explains how she researched the book and her involvement in writing a play about the oil patch warriors.

Now to Derbyshire coal, or, to be more precise, the coal mining area of Bolsover. Published last year, Bolsover: castle, town and colliery by Philip Riden and Dudley Fowkes [Phillimore £14.99 9781860774843] is a title in the “England’s Past for Everyone” (EPE) series. This is a general history of the Bolsover area since prehistoric times, but the book points out that Bolsover has never been more than a minor market town. Even the building of a castle and the subsequent building of a mansion on the site of the castle failed to give the place that impetus needed for substantial expansion. . It was the coming of coal mining and then the railways of course that made the biggest difference to the area and much space in the book is devoted to that. Apart from the story of mining in the Bolsover area, there is still plenty to interest the local historian, apart from industrial history, and this book does the job well. The outlying settlements such as Whaley Thorns, Carr Vale and Stanfree are not forgotten and there are plenty of maps and photographs.

I bought my copy of the book just a few weeks ago: I’ve only read the first chapter and I’m looking forward to having time (!!) to read the rest, but I hope I don’t encounter any more errors – there are only minor “typos”, but sometimes I do wish the proof readers had done their job a little better!

According to the EPE website, another book in the series, this time about Hardwick Hall, Estate and Village is in preparation – I’ll look forward to that.

The days of the “open road”

If you are enjoying or have enjoyed the BBC 4 series “Britain’s Best Drives”, (currently on BBC2) then the book of the series might be for you. Britain’s Best Drives by Richard Wilson and Nigel Richardson [ Headline £16.99 9780755319008] describes six different drives in various parts of Great Britain, following routes in 1950s guide books, which were filmed for the series. For each drive Richard Wilson drove a different car, but all of them dated back to the era which many regard as the golden age of motoring.

As we follow Richard on his circular tours we read about the characters he meets and we get plenty of historical information, but there isn’t an awful lot about the way the car performs or how the route or road has changed since the day when the guide book he is using was published. These are very individual accounts and whether you enjoy reading them or not is very much a matter of personal preference. I have to say I didn’t read the whole book.

New novel from Jo Brand

The stand-up comedienne Jo Brand, well known for being partial to cake, has just brought out her third novel The More you Ignore Me [Headline Review, £12.99 9780755322312] which draws on her experience as a psychiatric nurse, which was her job for 10 years before she turned to show business. It’s described as “hilarious, poignant and darkly comic”.

56 Going green and a ’50s classic

Doing your bit for the planet

I’m grateful to my good friend Janet for the loan of a little book on how we can all do our bit to save the planet. In Ecology begins at Home: using the power of choice [Green Books £4.95 9781900322331] the author Archie Duncanson tells how he took stock of the way he ran his home, what he ate and his lifestyle in general and found ways of making less of an impact on the environment. Now, a lot of what Archie decided to do to lessen his carbon footprint is not new and there are plenty of other books on how to be green, but this comes in handy sized chunks in a pocket sized book . There are even a few recipes which need a minimum of cooking or use fresh rather than tinned or pre-prepared produce. There are some rather odd hints and tips under the heading “Natural beauty at home” such as using sugar water or beer instead of hair gel(!)

If you’re interested in helping to reduce our climate impact, you could also try one of these titles: Reduce, reuse, recycle: an easy household guide by Nicky Scott [Green Books £3.95 9781903998403] or Change the World for a Fiver by Anon. [Short Books £5 9781904095965, but no longer in the publishers’ catalogue]. There are lots more on similar subjects.

Back to the ‘50s

From time to time I pick up books that my parents acquired through their membership of those monthly book clubs. This one is no longer in print – it was first published in 1955 –  but it deserves to be reissued. Deliverance by L A G Strong (not to be confused with the novel of the same name by James Dickey) is set at the very end of the nineteenth century in the West Country.

Georgie’s whole life so far has been spent in an orphanage, but he is nearing the age when he has to be sent out into the wide world to fend for himself. Apart from the frequent visits across town to his Aunt Butters, he knows nothing about life beyond the orphanage. After two false starts in unsuitable jobs, his Aunt dies and leaves him her shop in her will. Georgie takes over the running of the shop and is moderately successful until a young woman, Grace,  befriends him and begins to turn the business around. Eventually Grace persuades Georgie that they should get married. At first Georgie goes along with this, but it turns out to be a loveless marriage, Georgie knowing nothing abut love or relationships, and before long Grace has the upper hand in the running of the business and the home.

Soon she begins to order him about like a skivvy and he discovers that she is paying some of the takings of the shop into her own account. The situation for Georgie becomes unbearable, but one day he meets Ruth and love begins to blossom. But how does he get rid of Grace? Is Georgie capable of murder, or is there an easier way out of the impossible situation? I won’t give away the ending, but I can say that it is a cleverly crafted novel and a real page turner towards the end. Deliverance can be picked up on second hand bookseller websites for as little as a fiver – well worth the effort. Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire library services each stock a handful of titles by L A G Strong, but not this one. L A G Strong was a prolific writer – click here for a complete bibliography

Smiley on the Radio

Dramatizations of all eight of the Smiley novels by John Le Carre will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 over the next twelve months beginning with “Call for the Dead”, the first in the series on Saturday 23rd May. Here’s the complete list ;

Call for the Dead
A Murder of Quality
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
The Looking Glass War
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
The Honourable Schoolboy
Smiley’s People
The Secret Pilgrim

An interview with John Le Carre in the “Front Row” programme is available on the BBC  iPlayer

55 An interview with Jonathan Foster

Jonathan Foster is a local author from Mansfield Woodhouse who recently published a book about the life of scientist and inventor Harry Grindell Matthews : The Death Ray [Inventive Publishing £11.99 9780956134806]

The other week I spoke to him about the book and asked him why he decided to write about this largely forgotten scientist. Matthews was well ahead of his time, having invented the world’s first mobile phone: many of his inventions had military uses, but his relationship with the Ministry of defence and other parts of HM Government was fraught with difficulties. Listen here whilst Jonathan explains more about this inventor and find out why this character was “one of the best kept secrets of twentieth century Britain”.

A plague fantasy

I tend to shy away from novels set in the distant past – often full of tales of derring-do, knights in shining armour and so on, but I’ve just read – and thoroughly enjoyed – something a bit different. The Company of Liars by Karen Maitland [Penguin £7.99 9780141031910] is set in fourteenth century England , 1348 to be precise, when it rained every day from Midsummer’s Day to Christmas Day and which was a particularly bad year for the Black Death. Our narrator is one known simply as Camelot, a peddler or hawker, someone who sells so called religious relics. It’s a novel about a journey which begins in a town in South West England at about the time when a new outbreak of the plague is beginning.

It is thought that the plague has entered the country via the ports and harbours, particularly Bristol, and so everyone who can tries to escape the pestilence by heading East or North. Though Camelot would prefer to be alone on his journey, a number of people in one way or another join him in his effort to escape the plague. They include Rodrigo, a minstrel with his pupil Jofre, a young couple, the woman heavily pregnant, Zophiel with his horse and cart and mysterious collection of boxes, which he jealously guards. Then there is Cygnus, one of whose arms appears to have been replaced by a swan’s wing and a strange little girl and a woman companion. The girl, Narigorm (a name reminiscent of a Tolkien or Harry Potter novel) seems to be proficient in reading the runes and her prophesies have an eerie habit of coming true.

Their journey is a long and arduous one, often sleeping in the open at night, and beset with arguments amongst the companions.  At night they often hear the howling of a wolf and this sets everyone’s nerves on edge: is it a real wolf, or is it someone trailing them, waiting for the right moment to steal or murder? Then, their numbers begin to dwindle as one by one the companions meet untimely deaths. The first is found hanging from a tree, the next is brutally murdered.

As the story progresses, the reason for the word “liars” in the title becomes apparent: each character professes to be something they are not or they have a guilty secret. Even Camelot has a secret which is not revealed until very near the end. It is this vulnerability that the strange girl Narigorm plays on.

I found this book fascinating and compelling soon after I began to read it and it is just occasionally a little gruesome (but this aspect is not overdone). At times things became so spooky, that I felt a shudder or two – and that’s no exaggeration. Not everyone is enthusiastic about this novel – have a look at this review from the Telegraph, reproduced in the Mediaeval News  blog, but don’t let it put you off.

Books to look our for

Just published: Mr Toppit by Charles Elton [Penguin £7.99 9780141038001] – about fame, fortune and the  problems an inheritance can bring.

Ruso and the Demented Doctor by R S Downie [Penguin £7.99 9780141027265] – a who-dunnit set in Roman Britain.

54 Richard and Judy recommendations and more

Small town USA

Down River by John Hart [John Murray £7.99 9781848540958] is one of Richard and Judy’s 2008 Summer reads, so I thought I would give it a try. Adam Chase has been living in New York for five years after being acquitted of a murder. The only evidence against him was given by his stepmother. Prompted by a call from his friend Danny, Adam returns to the small town in Rowan County where he grew up to see his family once again, but is met by hostility and suspicion. Almost as soon as he arrives, a girl whom he believes to be the daughter of his father’s best friend (revelations later in the book prove otherwise) is savagely assaulted, and soon after, the remains of his friend Danny are found in a remote spot.

Naturally the police are suspicious of Adam, but Adam’s former girlfriend Robin is a policewoman and manages to keep him out of jail. Adam sets out to find out the real murderer and who committed the latest atrocities. As events unfold, many family secrets from the past gradually see the light of day, such as the real reason why his mother committed suicide many years ago. Adam’s apparently close knit family turns out to be more and more dysfunctional as the tale unfolds. As the author says in his acknowledgements at the end, dysfunctional families provide lots of good material for authors.

I don’t think I was ever totally happy with this book – perhaps it was the style or the expressions used which sometimes caused me to do a double take- or perhaps it was the characters themselves who seemed to be miserable most of the time! I’m not sure, but I did want to finish the book, which did get a little more like a page turner as I got very near to the end. A deckchair read I would think.

Trying to follow that…

I like variety, but I don’t like books that look as if they are going to make me miserable. Unfortunately when I turned to The History of Love by Nicole Krauss [Penguin £7.99 9780141019970] – another Richard and Judy recommendation, this time from 2006 – I found an opening that seemed to be quite depressing. It begins with Leo Gursky describing the lengths he goes to to make sure that he doesn’t die on a day when he has not been seen by anyone. But there’s far more to this book than that: many years ago in Poland, our main character Leo wrote a book called “The History of Love” about a girl called Alma, but he has long forgotten about it. The book survived and a teenage girl who was named after the girl in the book sets out to find her namesake.

Now, perhaps you are thinking that I should have continued to read this as you shouldn’t be put off by the opening pages of a novel – read a bit further. Well, maybe I will, but not for the moment as I took up a totally different  novel which I’m really enjoying and I’ll tell you about that one next time.

One man and his dog

I really enjoyed a recent BBC2 documentary series about the recreation of the simple life of a crofter in a remote part of the Scottish Highlands. If you did too, then you might like the book that goes with it: Beachcomber Cottage by Monty Halls [BBC £11.99 9781846076213] tells how the author renovated a roofless cottage, raised livestock and grew his own vegetables as well as joining in with the life of the local people, watching wildlife and enduring a yearning for the mod-cons of urban life and plagues of midges.

The book has plenty of colour photos including some great ones of his dog Reuben, who obviously thoroughly enjoyed his time out in the wilds. During their last night in the cottage before returning to the more comfortable life, Reuben became very agitated and would not settle. It appears that they may not have been alone in that remote spot: Monty writes that he had always had a slight feeling that he was not the only resident in the lonely bay which his cottage overlooked.

BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week…

…is My Mame is Daphne Fairfax [Hutchinson £18.99 9780091921033] the autobiography of Arthur Smith. See the Radio 4 page for more details. Should be good.

Also next time:

An interview with Jonathan Foster from Mansfield Woodhouse whose book The Death Ray: the secret life of Harry Grindell Matthews [Inventive Publishing £11.99 9780956134806] has just been published.

53 The Victorians, humour and book towns

The Victorians and their artists

I really enjoyed Jeremy Paxman’s short series of documentaries on the Victorians and how their lives are portrayed through the paintings of the age. If I enjoy a documentary series, I’m always on the look out for the book – the so called TV Tie-in. Unlike some tie-ins, The Victorians; Britain through the Paintings of the Age [BBC £25 9781846077432] stands perfectly well on its own. Jeremy Paxman doesn’t mince words and his style is witty and entertaining. He begins by saying that Victorian art is certainly not fashionable today and that quite a lot of it isn’t very good, but it is the way life in the Victorian era is portrayed by the painters and some photographers of the age that is the real point of this book. Not only do we look at Victorian life through its paintings, but we also find out a little about the lives of the artists and the methods they used – Gustav Doré, for instance, who had a photographic memory and didn’t like to be seen sketching in public so lurked in dark corners making notes and sketches.

I hesitate to use the phrase “lavishly illustrated”, but that phrase accurately describes this book. So, when you’ve read the text, you can still come back to the book time after time for the many paintings reproduced in its pages – if you like that kind of art, that is. The period of the industrial revolution is certainly one of my favourite periods in British history, so I’m putting this book on my “wants” list. Read the Guardian review here

In memory of Humph

It’s hard to believe that it’s over a year since the death of Humphrey Lyttelton, well known jazz musician and, more importantly for me, host of the popular Radio 4 panel game “I’m sorry I haven’t a Clue”. At the beginning of each show, Humph would read out a short comic history of the town in which the show was being recorded. These scripts, by Iain Pattinson, are funny just to read in a book, but Humph’s delivery made them hilarious. Of course the best way to relive those joyous moments is to listen to some of the shows again, but this collection of scripts of the introductory talks, Lyttelton’s Britain [Preface £14.99 9781848091078], is a close second. Here’s just a short excerpt from the piece about Nottingham : “The greatest bare-knuckle fighter of the Victorian age was born in Nottingham, one William ‘Bend-e-goes’ Thompson, probably the most famous British boxer until Frank ‘Down-he-goes’ Bruno.

National Year of Reading becomes Reading for Life

The National Year of Reading (NYR) has now finished and it has been hailed a success: it’s claimed that there has been a significant increase in library membership amongst certain socio-economic groups and an increase in library membership nationally – in fact 2.3 million new library members were recruited between April and December 2008. We’re not given the figures for the same period the corresponding period in 2007 however.

Be that as it may, the NYR has now rebranded itself as Reading for Life  and has a new website (http://www.readingforlife.org.uk/) aimed at the general public as well as teachers, librarians and other interested professionals. They are also going to promote the value of reading using “media and brand partners”, so watch out for Where’s Wally promotions on milk cartons and a Horrid Henry promotion in Iceland stores amongst other schemes.

Found on the Internet..

If you are keen on second hand and antiquarian books then you might already know about The Book Guide. It lists secondhand and antiquarian booksellers in the UK, has a calendar of book fairs and auctions and offers advice on looking after your own books as well as a directory of bookbinders.

Have you ever been to a “book town”? Hay on Wye isn’t the only book town in the UK, but it is probably the best known. A recent article in the Independent offers a guide to book towns, such as Atherstone in Warwickshire and Wigtown in Scotland, but it doesn’t mention a book village (not big enough to be a town) called Burnham Market in Norfolk. Well, at least when I was there last, there were at least 3 bookshops: perhaps there’s only one left now (according to the Book Guide website)