Another A to Z….

A is for Antiques Roadshow. It is coming to The Royal Marines Museum in a couple of weeks and I am off with some mugs/cups that my late Nan had, which I chose to keep. I don’t think they are worth much, but I can always live in hope. Plus might see Fiona Bruce too. Though I won’t tell Elaine at Random Jottings, who is not overly keen on her tv presence!

B is for Bank Holidays – we have two in May. I do love a four-day week!

C is for Canasta. One particular friend has got the rest of us into playing this rather long but thoroughly enjoyable card game – it has become addictive. And nights and afternoon’s out are based around us playing a few hands. 

D is for Diet.  The last time I did one of these posts, D was for diet then – it still is. So perhaps the next letter down should be glossed over?

E is for eating out. I have been once to The Fish Factory at Littlehampton with friends, last year. Recently I went with my parents, and it was just as good. They liked it to and the choice of fish is wonderful, the chips delicious, the cheesecake for pudding divine and the portions ENORMOUS!

F is for future things to look forward to. London trip to include Afternoon Tea at Fortnum & Masons. Another Spa break, weekend away with the girls on the Isle of Wight. Readers Day at Winchester. Portsmouth Bookfest.

G is for Rosie Goodwin. I have never read any of her books before and was sent her latest Home Front Girls to read. I loved it, and it reminded me very much of the novels and sagas of  Maureen Lee.

H is for habits. It takes three weeks to break one apparently. I need to break the going down the biscuit aisle and buying biscuits and eating them all habit. It might help with the diet Jo! It worked this week – only 2 weeks to go then.

I is for Inferno – Dan Brown’s Inferno to be precise. It seems to have rather a mixed bag of reviews, page turning but not going to set fire to the literary world! As I still have The Lost Symbol to read, I think I might refrain from buying this one!

J is for Maggie Joel I have been sent The Second-Last Woman in England to read and review and she will be featuring on my blog towards the end of June.

K is for knitting. I have done a few characters lately, and have pictures on my iPad which I have now put into a post. Look out for them coming soon.

L is for Lego. I am a huge fan and if I had the room, it would all be out and built as it was when I was a kid. Then we had the space and I had a whole town set out, complete with train track that went round the perimeter. But in the interim I do have a wonderful shop that I was bought a couple of years ago for Christmas. When I opened this huge box, the sheer pleasure on my face apparently upset my dad, he could see the child in me still! It is still made, it took  me a couple of days and despite the dust I love looking at it. I am coveting one of the new exclusives ‘Palace Cinema’ but in the interim, I spotted this book Brick City - a Lego lovers dream – I bought it because it was half price in WHSmiths but if I had the money, the space and the Lego bricks…..

To celebrate the Royal nuptials of Prince William and his bride, Kate Middleton, four Adult Fans of LEGO built a giant scale replica model of a wedding ceremony at Westminster Abbey

M is for Money back from the gas man. I overpaid the last 6 months and did not use as much gas. It has been cold, for a lot longer than normal. But I love cosying up on the sofa or under the duvet with an extra blanket or two – and knitting invariably keeps you warm and saves money it turns out too.

N is for Nexus the new computer system at work. Don’t you just love a new computer system with a wire that goes into the wall but is nowhere near the computer and trails right across the office and is fixed down with black masking tape! To resolve it I was allowed to buy a longer cable – I went for pink. So what – I work in an office full of men.

O is for Offer.  Work this one out if you will – 1 x  500g tub of Cottage Cheese is £1.90. 1 x 250g tub of Cottage Cheese is £1.45. That in itself is rather a rip off – then add in the buy 2 of the 250g tubs for £2.50 So that is £2.50 for 500g or £1.90 for 500g. Look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves.

P is for Pointless. The tea time programme on BBC1 is entertaining and informative. Both Richard Osman and Alexander Armstrong make me laugh – and people really do not know stuff!

Q is for Quentin. Caroline Quentin and her National Parks TV programme. She has been in Scotland, Wales and in her final programme into the New Forest. Her delivery and enthusiasm for all she does is rather good and the humour underlying is subtle as well. I have only caught the odd one or two of her Cornwall shows but I hope she does more discovering Britain programmes soon. It is what makes our country so unique.

R is for Running. I have been sneaking in a few little and short runs. But I really think running is not for me. Shin splints, despite proper footwear leave me aching too much. I am not getting the adrenalin kick that I do from this as I do from  swimming, Body Pump, Zumba and even walking. I am a walker not a runner.

S is for Sunday Roasts. Whether it be Chicken, Beef, Pork or Gammon. (I don’t like lamb) you can’t beat a roast with all the trimmings, surprisingly even though I rarely cook one. I decamp to my parents every Sunday where one is probably 99% guaranteed. And amazingly all cooked the slimming way too – and you could not tell. Well perhaps the lack of crispy potatoes but apart from that.

T is for Transworld. One of the lovely publishing houses that send me books galore and the chance to read books I would have avoided in a bookshop.

U is for Uniform. New company (currently same job!) but now I have to wear a fetching black and white spotty scarf! Along with the white shirt and black skirt that I have been wearing for aeons!

V is for Vesta Churchill. A character in Brighton Belle by Sara Sheridan (review coming soon). A young black female in Fifties Britain. An interesting idea which the author I am sure will develop as the series goes along.

W is for Winter it is still with us.

X is for X back swimming costumes – the stringy variety – I hate you! Give me a proper back if you will and something that does not get tangled up and tries to garrote me half way through a swim. I have now disposed of all said garments. Mind you what can you do with swimming costumes when the lyrca has gone on them other than throw them in the bin?

Y is for Yes there are some things repeated on this list, compared to my last one back in March! Not intentional, but I have just gone back and looked – funny how certain stuff stays in your conscience.

Z is for Zips. If you watched the Great British Sewing Bee then you will know putting in a zip is a difficult yet clever thing. When you spot a knitting pattern that has one in, I tink it is best to avoid it!

Thanks for persevering to the end. It felt like lately that I had not really been here on the blog, despite the book reviews and so I wanted to rectify that. I am here and in the coming days, weeks, months; there will be some knitting posts, there will be some book reviews and I also have a couple of books to giveaway – so there will be that too. Do pop by whenever you can, I really do appreciate it.

Love is Blind – Kathy Lette

How can a quick read give you characters that get right under your skin from about the second or third page in? Well this quick read can.

Jane makes the rather rash decision to move to the other side of the world to speed up her chances of getting a husband – apparently in one town in the Australian outback  there is a shortage of women. Jane’s sister, Anthea, the one that got right under my skin, with her self-righteous attitude and oh so perfect life and boyfriend thinks Jane has lost her mind. 

But Jane goes, and so Anthea follows to make sure that Jane is not going to make the biggest mistake of her life. What she did not realise was that perhaps Andrea is the one making mistakes and that when you are least expecting it, something happens to make you see exactly what love is supposed to be about.

This is the first Kathy Lette I have read and I really enjoyed it as the characters were likable and unlikable in equal measures and there was enough to keep me interested and to keep reading. I was a bit unsure about the Tsunami in the Outback but I just went with it, and assumed that it was the case and these things did happen out there. It just made the romantic story-line that bit more exciting!  I will certainly pick up one of the author’s full length novels in the future.

This book was sent to me from the lovely people at Quick Reads. If you do not know about Quick Reads then please take a look here. 

Love is Blind was one of the choices for 2013. I have also read A Sea Change by Veronica Henry and A Dreadful Murder by Minette Walters. 

I am perhaps not one of the key target people that Quick Reads is aimed at people who read very little and think that reading is boring and not for them. I read a lot and find reading much more pleasurable than watching the goggle box – well most of the time! But it has introduced me to Kathy Lette – I have never read any of her novels before, now I have read this one, I will not be afraid of picking up one of her others, in fact I know there is a review copy sitting on the pile at home so to me Quick Reads has done its job! 

Husband, Missing – Polly Williams

To be honest, I thought this was going to be a very formulaic romance story, of the boy meets girl, they marry, he disappears and then he reappears and everything will be all right with the world. How wrong I was, and how much I had judged the book based on cover, and the blurb on the back. This is far more than a formulaic novel – in fact I would even put it in the thriller genre if I was having to pigeon-hole books, which I dislike doing.

Gina, has a whirlwind romance and marries within a year Rex, after she met him the park. This is “the one” Gina tells everyone, and whilst she thought she would never know when she had found him – she suddenly realises that she has found him and that when you know you know.

However, this bubble that Gina has created with Rex and that has pushed away family and friends to the outskirts of her life is about to burst.

Rex goes missing.

Gina wants to find him. Gina knows he is still alive. She has the utmost belief in their relationship and that Rex will return.

But as the days turn into weeks, turn into months, Rex is still missing and Gina keeps trying, but as she tries to find out where he is, she discovers a completely different man to the one she married.

Did Gina really know the man she married? Was she so wrapped up in finding the one, that she missed the vital clues about his personality?

You have to keep turning the page, as whilst Gina discovers more about Rex as we do as readers, Gina discovers a lot more about herself and her ability to survive in a very different world to the one she dreamed of.

Through all the heartache over Rex, Gina finds the ache of heart is actually for someone else.

This is a really gripping novel, and one that had me engaged from the beginning. I felt for Gina, she had a tough time, and it really was heartbreaking to see hope slip from someone’s eyes not just in losing the physical person but also in the belief you had about someone being completely shattered. A women’s fiction book with a bit more meat and a little less fluff!

Thank you to the publisher for sending this to me for review. Plus second thanks go to Dot from Dot Scribbles who enthused about the book that I had to pick it up and see what all the fuss was about – she was right in her enthusiasm. 

Polly Williams is not an author I have encountered before, but if her work is of a similar vein to what I have just read then I will certainly look out for her other novels. 

A Caribbean Mystery – Agatha Christie

Miss Marple has stepped away St Mary Mead and has branched out with her sleuthing skills abroad. Of course she is meant to be there for a rest at the insistence and expense of her nephew Raymond West. But where Miss Marple goes there is bound to be the odd body or two.  But all she meets are a rather interesting collection of people. A rather highly strung wife and worrying husband who run the hotel, couples who seem to have an interest in tropical birds and walking, a vicar and his rather gossipy sister, a crotchety old man who is confined to a wheelchair with an assistant and a male nurse to attend to his every need and an old Major, still living his early army days with the stories he likes telling to anyone that will listen.

One of those people happens to be Miss Marple and when, Major Palgrave confides in her that he has a photograph of a murderer and that perhaps that person is on the same island as them – her interest is piqued. But then Major Palgrave can say no more to help her as the following day he is found dead, natural causes and no-one seems very perturbed at his death. Apart from two people, Miss Marple and the crotchety old man; Mr Rafiel. Although not always is Mr Rafiel as right as he may think “In this assumption, as Miss Marple could have told him, he was wrong. But she forbore to contest his statement. Gentlemen, she knew, did not like to be put right in their facts.” Between the two of them they dissect and put back together what they think is the right version of events. But will they be able to  get to the bottom of it before anyone else seemingly dies of natural causes?

I think this is not one of Christie’s stronger Miss Marple stories, it has the red herrings and the twists of plot but actually somehow if you take Miss Marple out of her normal setting – traditional English villages or seaside towns it rendered it slightly less believable for me.

I fancied some Christie and I know this is being remade (I think actually already filmed) for the ITV series of Marple with Julia McKenzie so I wanted it fresh in my memory for when it is eventually broadcast. I remember the Joan Hickson one and had a vague recollection of whodunnit but was not 100%. 

Not one of the better books for me but I think this was to do with reading it on my kindle – an American version where they had changed the name of Mr Rafiel to Mr Rafter and that some of the text was missing. I had a quick late night call to my mum to dig her book out so I could check and make sure I had not missed anything – it was a rather vital bit in explaining the relationship between some of the characters. What also struck me was some of the descriptions of the natives – I don’t think you could get away with writing this nowadays?

“They’ve both worked like blacks, though that’s an odd term to use out here, for blacks don’t work themselves to death at all, so far as I can see. Was looking at a fellow shinning up a coconut tree to get his breakfast, then he goes to sleep for the rest of the day. Nice life.”

Dead in the Water – Carola Dunn

Daisy Dalrymple is still trying to make her own way in the world through her writing – her latest assignment is to report for an American Magazine at the Henley regatta. She gets the chance not just to experience the rowing but also to spend time with her fiance Alec Fletcher and Inspector at Scotland Yard and not your average choice of man for an honourable lady such as Daisy and her set.

But this is the 1920s and everything is changing in the world. Those from the lower classes are suddenly on a par as those who have had a privileged background and where money, positions and who you know gets you to where  you want to be even if you are particularly no good – certainly this is the case for the members of the Oxford Rowing Team who also happen to be staying in the same house as Daisy.

The class war is alive and well in this story and it is with some obvious prediction that one of the warring rowing team is going to end up dead – and the other is going to be the main suspect. So Daisy and Alec’s quiet weekend away turns into an average few days for them as they investigate and try to find the culprit.

This particular story is heavy on the number of characters within it and it was rather confusing  especially as we were introduced to them in a rather random way. Their full names given and then all of a sudden hit with nicknames we were meant to grasp immediately as well as there relevance to the story line - too many for such a short book and some with little purpose.  Some were related to Daisy which I could not get my head round at all even after rereading the relevant passages. If you can accept this then the book is simply a jolly cosy mystery and goes along fairly well but for me not one of the better Daisy Dalrymple’s I have read.

The Doctor & the Diva – Adrienne McDonnell

It is the early 1900s and this book opens in Boston, America. Erika is an opera singer, beautiful in looks with a voice to match. She seems to have two ambitions to sing in Italy and to become a mother. Both are evading her. For many years she has been unsuccessful in getting pregnant, visits to numerous doctors have all been unsuccessful. That is until Dr Ravell enters her and Peter her husband’s life.

The ramifications of Dr Ravell becoming part of this couples life reverberate out over many pages and through many years and across many seas and lands. Where others have failed Dr Ravell succeeds in what Erika and Peter want. Sadly though, it is not meant to be and so Erika turns her life back to escaping to Italy to pursue her other long held dream.

In the meantime Dr Ravell’s reputation suddenly becomes tarnished and he takes himself off to the Caribbean to run a plantation for a friend. He is now away from anything to do with helping couples conceive and he can find solace in the rich landscape of Trinidad, beautifully described by the author. Peter is determined to be a father and follows Dr Ravell out there, bringing his wife with him – if at first you don’t succeed, try again seems to be Peter’s motto.

All the time though Erika is still yearning to be in Italy. Her chance does come in this novel, suddenly the desperation to achieve one of the two ambitions Erika wanted is at the cost and detriment to the other. Erika goes to Italy. Peter is left behind and Dr Ravell, is no longer part of their lives.

As the book goes on, as the years move forward it is to be inevitable that all three shall meet again in some way. Their character’s have developed and moved on, they have tragedies and battles to fight and they have to all decide if the decisions they make are the right ones. Each one has their reason for their action and it is this which will either join or divide the reader ultimately in what they think of the book. For me it left me rather undecided. This is a wonderfully descriptive book of the landscapes, the journeys, the sights, the locals of the area but the three main characters did not stand out enough for me. I am sure there was more to be learn about Dr Ravell, I did not think his infatuation with Erika was obvious, I felt I had missed it. Peter’s arrogance whilst driving me mad, suddenly lost impetus at times. Erika’s ultimate decision was rather cowardly and then her actions after she returns from Italy are somewhat unbelievable and she yet again lets go of something precious. Would she really have lost everything for a second time?

I acknowledge that this is a début novel, and such it is good. I enjoyed the historical setting, the research and information about obstetrics was interesting and as I have mentioned the descriptions were clear and it took you away to these places, the snow of Boston, the heat of Trinidad, the ruins of Italy but for me the characters are where it let it down.  Still worth a read, but the drama will not keep you gripped enough.

April Roundup

You can tell when it is holiday time from work for me – the reading rate increases rather quickly. Then I went back to work and all of a sudden I am a few days late in doing my April roundup – I have been so tired as work is increased due to contract changes (that I won’t bore you with) that I was mainly arriving home,eating, reading and then sleeping. Time was simply running away with me. However, with restorative cup of tea and a few hours in the sunshine I am able to catch up! Hello all followers, do feel free to comment.  I have been reading blogs, but apologies if I have not commented for a while.

So what did I read in April, well whilst I read a lot, the variety has been vast but some of the subjects of a similar theme and even title!

Cosy and familiar were the way forward and I spent some time with Katie Fforde – Love Letters and Trisha Ashley – Good Husband Material. I find these books such a tonic and am completely captivated and absorbed by the stories, thank you to both authors.

Cosy remained with crime as I read another Daisy Dalrymple story, this time book 6 of the series with Carola Dunn – Dead in the Water*. I suppose you could say they are cosy historical crime, as they are set in the 1920s but the remind me so much of Jeeves and Wooster that they are good escapism. I am not sure whether you would put Agatha Christie – A Caribbean Mystery* as cosy crime, as I think of these books as more traditional classic crime from the golden age. I was slightly disappointed with this book I have to confess, it was just not right taking Miss Marple out of the country village setting for me. However, it was a passable read and ticked another book of the list of challenges for 2013 as did the Daisy Dalrymple one. Sticking with crime, but certainly not the cosy sort was Cath Staincliffe- Bleed Like Me. The second in her Scott and Bailey prequel novels, based on the television series of the same name on ITV. A book with three strong female characters, who you would think would be jostling to take centre stage, but not one of these women ever seems to dominate more than the other, no doubt down to Cath Staincliffe’s excellent writing.

Ironically enough Strong female characters can be covered in the next two reads of April but rather in a tongue in cheek manner! First up we have the third (and maybe final?) part of Paul O’Grady’s autobiography – Still Standing: The Savage Years. Not as laugh out loud funny, as it covers some rather dark issues which are generally glossed over by some. What it did do was tell a few home truths and what it was really like at the time of developing the character Lily Savage, who I only knew from television. Another character that I have only just picked up on, from the television is that of Agnes Brown, from the TV series Mrs Brown’s Boys. Actually The Mammy by Brendan O’Carroll is the inspiration for the programme and well if you know who Brendan O’Carroll plays it all begins to make perfect Irish sense.

And now for something completely different, when I went to Wales to meet Wendy Jones – The Thoughts & Happenings of Wilfred Price, Purveyor of Superior Funerals.Wilfred’s tale was a quiet, gentle one with some rather sobering consequences.Deception and love can make rather odd bedfellows. A debut novel from this author, that I think will gather more momentum, it is certainly a word of mouth book. Another word of mouth book or in this case – drawn in by the cover was Adrienne McDonnell – The Doctor & the Diva* is also a debut novel. It is set in places that were described beautifully, the heat of the Caribbean,  the snow of the American winter, the ruins of an European city but it lacked something int he characters. It did pique my interest of reading more historical fiction again, which I think has been rather lacking these last few months.

The beauty of book blogging, besides getting to share my love of books,and make lots of friends is also picking up on new books and authors from the review copies that are luckily enough to be sent to me. This was where Polly Williams – Husband, Missing* comes in. It arrived, it looked promising, but it got on the pile to read at some point, not on the pile that I know I will never read. However, when I saw the review of the book by a fellow blogger and tweeter Dot (@Dot_Scribbles) and the fact that she had devoured it in almost a day I knew it must be worth a look – so it got to the pile by my bed. She was right, and I devoured it in a couple of days and was hooked by a rather sad case of as the title says – a husband going missing, suddenly and unexpectedly. You could say it was romance, you could say it was a thriller, but it was just a jolly good read!

So April ended with me reading Sara Sheridan and Brighton Belle – I am back on the cosy historical crime train as I chug my way into May.

* Book review yet to appear on this blog