scripsi

Most of November is already gone, but here is, rather late, my October reading.

New books
How To Solve Your Own Murder by Kristen Perrin. A young woman is called to a meeting with her great-aunt, whom she has never met before. Unfortunately the great-aunt gets murdered and it turns out she was predicted to be murdered as a teenager and has spent her whole life collecting information about the people in the village she lives in. Now her great-niece may inherit everything, if she solves the murder within a certain time frame. I liked the premise, but somehow the book failed to really grip me. I’m not sure why, but it felt like characters and descriptions were a little flat. It seems the book is the first in a series, so I may check out the next one, and see if things improves.

Testimony of Mute Things by Lois McMaster Bujold. Another Penric and Desdemona novella. The last few installments have been chronological, following Penric’s life as a husband and father, but this one took place with Penric in his 20s.. It’s a pretty straightforward murder mystery, but though I always enjoy Bujold's writing, this felt like one of the weaker novellas in the series. Still worth reading, though!

As usual I'm also reading several other books that I haven’t finished yet, but I also stopped reading a book, which I almost never do. Usually I stick to the end even if I don’t think the book is particularly good, because I want to know how it ends, but this one was so bad I couldn’t stomach it anymore. The book in question was Gallows Hill, a horror novel by Darcy Coates. I read Dead Lake by the same author which I thought was ok, and I like the premise of Gallows Hill. A young woman inherits her parents who she hasn’t seen since she was a young child, and doesn’t remember. In fact she doesn’t remember anything since before she came to live with her grandmother, though some strange scars on her body seems to indicate something traumatic must have happened. It turns out she has not only inherited a large and isolated house, but also a winery. And of course strange and sinister things start to happen.

You know, if I was broke, having used up the last of my money to get to my parents funeral, but finds out I had inherited everything, my first course of action would be to have a discussion with the family lawyers where I would explain my situation and see if it would be possible to get some money. Then, before going to the isolated house my parents lived in, I would buy some groceries. Well at the house, being met by a friendly and helpful employee of my parents, I would make sure he showed me the house properly, especially where all the many doors to the outside were located, and to make sure they are locked. Actually, I would probably stay in a motel instead, but now I’m here, and when choosing a bedroom, and I noticed the windows have locked, I would most certainly lock that window. The day after, when I find that someone has left nooses outside the house I would definitely leave, but if I didn’t, I would still make sure my phone batteries were full all the time.

The heroine of this story does none of these things. None! She also doesn’t locate a bathroom until she has stayed in the house for 2 or 3 days. At the point she noticed for the second time that her phone batteries had died, I gave up. I don’t think I have ever read a book with a protagonist so completely devoid of common sense. I mean, people can make stupid decisions, or be forced to, but the whole plot in this book seems to hinge on a protagonist too stupid to live. And who knows, perhaps she dies gruesomely by the end because of her lack of sense. But I couldn’t stomach more than barely half of the book, so I will never know.

Re-reads
Killer by Jonathan Kellerman. Some time ago I mentioned that I’m looking for a crime novel I was absolutely certain was a Jonathan Kellerman book, but when I re-read them, I never found it. In it the protagonist comes into contact with a woman with a small child, father unknown. The woman either disappears, or is found murdered, and the child definitely disappears. The protagonist eventually finds out that the woman has been murdered by the paternal grandfather who has some kind of cult, and the baby has been kidnapped by that family. I have a very distinct memory that the child gets to sleep in a bed looking like a car, a bed that belonged to his father, though the child is otherwise not well treated. It frustrates me so much that I haven’t been able to find that book.

Anyway, I realized that I had actually missed Killer in my re-read, and got a bit excited as the plot starts out somewhat similar. A woman tries to get custody of her niece, claiming her sister is not fit to be a mother. The little girl's father is unknown, but though the mother is a bit flaky, the aunt doesn’t get custody. Soon after the aunt is murdered and the mother and child disappear. At first I thought this actually was the book I was looking for, but the plot was solved in a completely different way. So I’m still frustrated. As Kellerman books goes, this was quite ok, though the ending felt a bit quick and sloppy.

The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook by Alice B. Toklas. I like reading cookbooks. Back when my insomnia was bad, cookbooks were what I read to get sleepy again. I also like cooking and trying out new recipes. This book is more a memoir with recipes than an outright cookbook. Toklas was Gertrude Stein’s life partner, and this book is a non-linear story of their life together, through two world wars, travels and servant woes. The recipes are a reflection of their time, the end of the 19th century and up to 1950, and many, if not most, are very complicated, or featuring ingredients not many eat today. But it’s a fun book.

Not only is 4.50 from Paddington (1957) one of my favourite Christie’s, it’s also the one I have re-read the most, and it also has one of my favourites among her characters.

On the train to see Miss Marple, her friend Mrs. McGillicuddy observes a man strangling a woman on a train that is temporarily beside her own. She and Miss Marple report the crime, but as no body is found, the police dismiss it all as a dream. Miss Marple, of course, thinks otherwise. She figures out that the body must have been thrown out of the train on the Crackenthorpe estate, and manages to get help from her friend Lucy Eylesbarrow, who gets a job at Rutherford Hall as a housekeeper.The Crackenthorpe family is a fine collection of Agatha Christie tropes. The elderly family father who keeps a thigh rein on his money. The spinster caretaker, the bohemian artist, the successful businessman, with a wife from a noble but poor family, and lastly the never-do-well son. There is also the daughter who died young, but her husband, the war hero, is around. Another son died in the war, and the dead daughter has a teenage son who sometimes visits. To complete the picture there is also the family doctor who seems very interested in the spinster daughter. Lucy manages to find the dead body secreted away in a barn, and then she and Miss Marple need to find out who she was, and also which one of the many men having access to the estate who is the murderer. Needless to say Miss Marple figures it all out, through there a couple of more murders before that happens.

It’s a pretty solid Christie mystery, but a large reason why I love this book is because of Lucy Eylesbarrow. She’s an attractive woman in her early 30s who, despite being a highly gifted academic, decides to have a career as a short time housekeeper. She’s very good at her job, and is therefore in high demand and is very expensive. I love that Christie, though Lucy, points out that taking care of a home is actually a job that requires a number of talents and hard labour. Whenever I feel household chores are just a drudge, I always feel more motivated after re-reading 4.50 from Paddington, because Lucy thinks doing chores are fun. Lucy also proves to be an excellent detective, and she and Miss Marple make a very good team. I’ve always felt it’s a pity Lucy never returns, she would have made a good returning character.

Mild spoilers below the cut.

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Overall I think Christie does a good job with the characters in this book. Yes, they are a selection of her stock characters, but they still have distinct personalities. Like Emma, the spinster daughter, who isn’t at all down trodden, and clearly has her own life and interests, even if she lives a life as her father’s caretaker. Mrs. McGillicuddy, who we only see at the beginning and the end of the book, is still a real human being, and I think it’s a testament to Christie’s skill as a writer that even if Mrs. McGillicuddy is so briefly described, you are still left with a real person. Someone who isn’t very imaginative, who may not be very generous with money, but who still has a large family who loves her, and close friends who look forward to seeing her.

I’ve seen two adaptations of this book. One from 1987 with Joan Hickson. She was a marvellous Miss Marple, but this particular adaptation is one of the weakest in her Marple series. I don’t mind that there are some cuts and changes in the cast, but several of the characters have significant changes to their characters, and none for the better. I’m especially annoyed with how Lucy is portrayed. On the other hand the one from 2004, part of the Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple, is one of the better episodes from that series, even if I don’t think Geraldine McEwan is the best Miss Marple. There are some changes in this adaptation as well, for example Inspector Craddock is made into a relative to Miss Marple.Not that I mind, especially as he is played by the ever charming John Hannah.

I haven’t read that much in September, or rather, not finished much. I don’t even want to know how many books I have started…

The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno Garcia. I’ve enjoyed everything I have read by this author, and I enjoyed this one as well. It has three timelines, but I found those easy to keep apart, and the three protagonists each with their own voice. There is a young Mexican woman, Minerva, who in the 1990 studies at an old New England university. She writes her thesis on a mostly forgotten horror author, Beatrice Tremblay who attended the same university in the 1930s. The second timeline is her diary Minerva gets access to, where Beatrice describes the disappearance of her best friend. And last there is the story Minerva’s great grandmother Alba told her about what happened on the family farm in the 1910s. All the stories are linked, and like all of Moreno Gracia’s books I have read there is something supernatural in action. Here it is witches. Even though I guessed from the start who the antagonists were, i still found this a very interesting read.

The Five by Hallie Rubenhold. I’m not a big fan of true crime, and I’m not especially interested in Jack the Ripper. But The Five isn’t about him, but about the five women he killed. Rubenhold is a historian and she has made a thorough research into their life. The only thing she doesn’t describe is their murders, she cuts away at the last sighting, and returns to talk about their families reaction. Because most of them had families who cared deeply for them. And what I found very interesting was that she could find no proof any of them, apart from the last victim, was a prostitute at the time they were killed. Most of them were homeless, and all of them poor and alcoholic. Evidently Rubenhold has received a lot of flack, even outright hate, for daring to claim Jack the Ripper didn’t kill prostitutes. She has also received critique for not describing the actual murders, but personally I liked that. I thought it was a good book, and I found her descriptions of the five women thoughtful and interesting.

Story of A Murder by Hallie Rubenhold. Because I liked The Five, I went on to read her book about the Crippen murder. I knew the basic fact about it, mostly because Agatha Christie was inspired by it in Mrs. McGinty Is Dead. Again I thought Rubehold did a good job describing Belle Elmore, the victim, Crippen and his mistress Ethel Le Never, and she has clearly done her research. But I just can’t find this murder interesting, even if it was deeply tragic, so I can't say I enjoyed this book much. But if you are interested in true crime, I think you might like it.

No spoilers in this post

I think I can safely say Sparkling Cyanide (1944) was the third Agatha Christie I ever read, because I remember being very attracted by the cover. It’s the one you can see in this post, and I found it both pretty and intriguing. Of all the Christie books my parents had, this was very likely the one I chose, just because of that.

The book begins with a number of characters remembering the beautiful and wealthy Rosemary Barton. At this point she has been dead for almost a year from what appears to have been a suicide, though no one can find a very convincing reason, or explain why she choose to do it by cyanide at a restaurant. Among them are her younger sister Iris, who reflects she never really knew her sister, and her husband, George Barton. There are also Anthony Browne and Stephen Farraday, both in love with Rosemary, Stephen's wife Sandra, and Ruth Lessing, George’s secretary. All of them people who may have had a reason to kill Rosemary. Then George arranges a new dinner party, with the same people, and the same restaurant as when Rosemary died. And someone else dies, and this time it’s clear it’s murder…

This novel has neither Poirot nor Miss Marple as detectives, but the semi-recurring Colonel Race, who in this book is an old friend of Geroge Barton. I’m always surprised Poirot isn’t in it, which is probably because he is the detective in the short story “Yellow Iris”, which has pretty much the same plot and characters, but another murderer. And Sparkling Cyanide feels like a Poirot novel than anything else, and there is not a very good reason for not having him, apart from Christie just not wanting to.

Generally Sparkling Cyanide seems to be considered a mid-rung Christie. It’s written during her Golden Age, and I think it would have been ranked higher if Poirot had been in it. Race just isn’t a very exciting detective. Personally, though, it has always been one of my favourites. I always enjoyed the first chapters where the various characters remember Rosemary, and the murder plot, even if it’s very complicated, is entertaining. And I’m still coveting a dressing gown in spotted silk, like the one Rosemary has. Also, Aunt Lucilla is quite funny.

There are several adaptations, but the only one I have seen is from 1983 with Anthony Andrews as Anthony Browne. The only thing I remember about that one was that I was disappointed it wasn’t set in the 1940s. There is, however, an excellent adaptation of “Yellow Iris” with David Suchet from 1993.

Spoilers for the book under the cut!

Murder of the Orient Express (1934) was the second Christie I read, and the book that got me hooked. But the reason I read it was because I saw the 1974 movie. You know, some movies you remember more than just the movie, you remember what happened around it. I was twelve, it was Sunday evening, and it was bedtime, and the movie had just started. Something about it made me curious, so I sat down beside my mother on the sofa instead of going to bed. I was told to go to bed, and I said yes, and didn’t budge. I remember sitting extremely still and quiet so my parents would forget about me. They must have decided it was ok for me to see it, because I wasn’t told again, and when they made their evening coffee I got a cup of cocoa. At that point I realized I was going to be allowed to stay up, despite school the next day. And I loved the movie so much. The cast, the costumes, and the mystery. The very next day I realized we had the book, and this was the beginning of me falling in love with Agatha Christie. The movie also made me fall for 1930’s fashion, which has been an enduring love since then. Another thing it instilled with me was a burning desire to travel on the Orient Express myself, something I eventually did, and I can tell you it was an amazing experience!

The plot almost completely takes place at the Orient Express. A man is murdered, a man who has previously approached Hercule Poirot saying he fears for his life. Everything points to the murderer having left the train, but as the train unexpectedly has been stopped by a snowfall, Poirot quickly realizes the murderer must still be on the train. Then that the victim had a very shady past, and then, little by little, more and more of the passengers are revealed to have a connection to this past.

I think this book may seem tedious to some, as it’s pretty static. People are interviewed and reinterviewed, and a lot of information is repeated. And it’s also almost entirely taking place on the train, which gives you very limited scenery. Personally I like how Poirot slowly picks apart the various statements, but I can see it may be boring for others.

I mentioned the 1974 movie, with Albert Finney playing Poirot. It has an all-star cast, and to me particularly Lauren Bacall and Ingrid Bergman shines. I still think most of the actors are very well-cast, but nowadays Finney’s Poirot grates on my nerves. He is shrill, aggressive, and shouts a lot. David Suchet in the 2006 adaption is great, but I find the rest of the cast very nondescript. I wish I could have the 1974 version with Suchet instead of Finney! There are a number of other adaptations, but I haven’t seen those, so I can’t comment on them.

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Books I read late July and August.

New books

At School With The Stanhopes by Gwendoline Courtney. If you follow my journal, you will sooner or later hear me talk about Stepmother by the same author. It’s one of my constant comfort reads, and has been since I was 10. But not until I was an adult did I realize that Courtney wrote a number of books in the 1940s and 50s, all geared towards teenage girls. Most of them have been out of print for decades, and being in Sweden has made it a bit of a hassle to buy them used. But now girls Gone by seems to republishing them, and I read II earlier this year. At School With The Stanhopes is about 16 year old Rosalind, whose guardian dies, forcing her to move in with her much older brother, whom she hardly knows. Neither of them are pleased with it, but I lifes becomes much less gloomy when her favorite teacher opens a school just down the lane. Especially as Miss Stanhope has a bevy of friendly younger sisters. It’s mostly a school story, but also about Rosalind and her brother building a relationship, and I enjoyed it enormously. I do wish I had been able to read this book in my early teens, though, because I can tell I would have loved it even more had I read it back then.

Furstinnan (The Princess) by Eva Mattson. A biography of the 16th century Swedish queen Catherine Jagiellon. Sweden is pretty bad at noting women in history, and this is the first biography of a very interesting woman. Katarina Jagellonica, to use her Swedish name, was a Polish princess who rather surprisingly married Johan Vasa, the younger brother of the Swedish king at a time when the Vasa dynasty was seen as an upstart royal family. She was highly educated and educated, and it’s clear after reading this book that she had a lasting impact in how late 16th century Sweden was shaped.

The Art of French Pastry by Jacqut Pfeiffer. I read a lot of cookbooks, but mostly just bits here and there, so never mention them in these posts. But this book was really interesting as it isn’t just recipes, but a thorough explanation of why a recipe looks the way it does, and also how it’s supposed to behave throughout.

The Adventure of the Demonic Ox by Lois McMaster Bujold. The latest installment in the Penric and Desdemona series. It’s a series of fantasy novellas about a young man who accidently gets infested by a demon, something which makes him a sorcerer. As he doesn’t know how one is supposed to behave during those circumstances, he names the demon Desdemona, and they embark on a much more equal relationship. Bujold is one of my favourite authors, and the Penric and Desdemona novellas are bite-sized pieces of delight that together form a bigger whole. With that said this was probably one of the more lightweight installments in the series.

Re-reads

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe and The Wonder Boy of Whistle Stop by Fannie Flagg. The first book has been a comfort read of mine since the early 90s, and I like the movie too. A couple of years ago it got a sequel. If Fried Green Tomatoes paints the past in very nostalgic shades, The Wonder Boy feels like a fanfic, if one can say that an author can write that to their own work. Everyone is happy at the end of it, and if the bad guy in the first novel was a genuinely awful person, the villains in the latter are reduced to a man with murderous intent towards a cat, and an awful mother-in-law. But sometimes one is in the mood for a book where everything will be just fine. And then some.

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I have always thought of this as a gothic novel for children. I mean, an orphaned heroine moving into an isolated mansion where she hears strange cries in the night, and there is a garden no one has been in for 10 years, and no one knows how to get into. I still remember how thrilled I was when I first read it as a kid. And I still love the description of the secret garden.

As I'm going on my 4-week vacation tomorrow I know I won’t post much during that time. So here’s July’s books for most of the month, and the rest will be included for August. My goal this month was to actually finish some of the thirteen books I have started, but not finished. This is how it went.

The Empty Grave by Jonathan Stroud. The last of the Lockwood & Co series. I found it enjoyable, and the series ended with a satisfying conclusion. The reality of Marissa Fitts was more horrifying than I thought. But I also feel the ending opened for a sequel, with various things Lucy indicated that she had done since the grand finale, and also because we never found out Skull’s identity and why he was such a powerful ghost. But as this book was published in 2017, it doesn’t seem very likely it will come.

Det ockulta sekelskiftet (The Occult Turn of the Century) by Per Faxneld. How occultism influenced a number of Swedish artists in the late 19/early 20th century. Super interesting, and not something I knew anything about. Which is surprising as I’ve studied art history and consider myself pretty well-read on. But I think the idea that esoterism was influential to some of our more well-known artists has been seen as something embarrassing.

Of course I couldn’t abstain from not starting any new books, so I also read Stone and Sky by Ben Aaronovitch, the latest Rivers of London novel. I found it enjoyable, but not remarkable. Though I always like the inclusion of Abigail and the talking foxes.

Never Flinch by Stephen King. A return to Holly Gibney and her PI agency Finders Keepers. This time we have not one murderous person, but two. One that wants to kill a popular feminist, another who kills as revenge for a man who has been murdered in prison before it’s revealed he was wrongfully imprisoned. I like Holly as a character, but I kept putting this book down and then forgetting about it, so it’s safe to say it didn’t grab me.

And that’s it, so far for July.

What I finished reading in June was the first four books in the YA Lockwood & Co series by Jonathan Stroud, The Screaming Staircase, The Whispering Skull, The Creeping Shadow and The Hollow Boy. Husband wanted to rewatch the Netflix show, and as I hadn’t seen it, I joined in. I liked it, and as it ended after one season, which covered book 1 and 2, I promptly started to read the books.

The concept is that the UK is suffering from a spreading ghost infection, and as being touched by a ghost is fatal unless you get medical aid, it’s not a good thing. It doesn't help that only children and teenagers are able to actually see the ghosts. So gifted children work for ghost hunting agencies, which is a pretty nifty device for putting teenagers in the forefront of the action, while still not always being very sensible, because teenagers. The narrator is a girl, Lucy, who starts working for the very small agency Lockwood & Co, and gradually they are getting closer and closer to why this ghost infection has started.

I find the books very enjoyable. Lucy is a pretty engaging narrator, if not always a stellar character. But my favourite character is Skull, a ghost trapped in a jar that only Lucy can talk to.

I also actually counted the books I’m in various stages of reading… Yikes! I think I should focus on finishing some of them this month. Here they are, in no particular order.

The Empty Grave by Jonathan Stroud

Det ockulta sekelskiftet (The Occult Turn of the Century) by Per Faxneld. How occultism influenced a number of Swedish artists in the late 19/early 20th century.

Never Flinch and Fairy Tale by Stephen King

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. (A re-read.)

A Better Man by Louise Penney

Furstinnan (The Princess) by Eva Mattson. A biography over the 16th century Swedish queen Catherine Jagiellon.

Curious Tides by Pascale Lacelle

The Amazing Mrs. Pollifax by Dorothy Gilman

Towards Zero by Agatha Christie

I Never Promised You A Rose Garden by Joanne Greenberg

The Treasure by Selma Lagerlöf

This Wretched Valley by Jenny Kiefer

Midnight Rooms by Donyae Coles

As usual, almost half a month until I get to my monthly reading post… Oh well. I read more again, which is nice, but I seem to have developed a habit of picking up books, reading half of it, and then forgetting about them. I always read more than one book at any given time, but this is ridiculous! Anyway, in April I finished these books, all new to me:

Kingdom of the Blind by Louise Penny. This is the 14th book of The Inspector Gamache series, which I have been slowly reading through the past 2 years. I read the first four books years ago one after another, and grew tired of them, so when I went back to them I I decided to pace myself. I re-read the first books and then continued, and have enjoyed them. In case you haven’t read Penny, she is a Canadian author, and most of the books centers around a village, Three Pines, close to the border to the USA. It’s pretty much an ideal place, with a bistro serving yummy food (don’t read if you're hungry), friendship and art. And of course murder. In this book Inspector Gamache finds himself the executor of a very strange will of a woman he never met. There is a very new murder, but also a very old mystery, which was intriguing, but I still had a hard time getting through the book. Partly because the mystery didn’t pick up steam until after ⅔ of the book, but also because of a sub-plot about fentanyl smuggling which has lasted several books, and that I don’t care for at all.

Starling House by Alix E. Harrow. Someone recommended this book to me and it’s been in my to-read pile since forever. When I finally picked it up I finished it in two days, reading until 3 in the night. It has been a long time since I did that. Easily the best book I have read this year.

Opal is a young woman working a dead end job in a dead end town in Kentucky. Her main focus is to get enough money to get her young brother to a good school and eventually a better life. But she also has a fascination for Starling House, a mysterious manor house built by the equally mysterious Eleanor Starling who in the late 19th century wrote a very strange children’s book, before she disappeared. Needless to say Opal finds herself entangled with Starling House in a very Gothic story. I loved everything about this story, from the plot, the language and the characters. I also found the ending satisfying, which I often think is the weakest spot in Gothic novels.

The Ten thousand Doors of January also by Alix E. Harrow. As I already had this book by Harrow, I went straight to it after Starling House. It’s set in the early 20th century and follows January as she grows up in her wealthy guardian house while her father, who works for him, travels the world to bring back artefacts. Though January is well treated, she chafes agaínst the restraints put on her. She also, once, found a door to another world, though that door is immediately destroyed. One day she finds a book about a girl who also finds doors to other worlds, and as January’s world is turned on its head, she slowly realises she has a very real connection to the book.

I didn’t like The Ten thousand Doors of January quite as much as Starling House, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it. I did, a lot, and I look forward to reading more from this author.

Build A Flower by Lucia Bakrazarand Pappersblommor (Paper flowers) by Sofia Vusir Jansson. Both are non-fiction books about how to make paper flowers from crepe paper. There’s this amazingly talented woman in Sweden that makes paper flowers that are so lifelike, I felt inspired to try to make themselves. So far I have produced a poppy, which I’m pleased with for being the first try ever. Not that I need a new hobby, but at least it’s a fairly inexpensive one, and for a sewist it’s quite the thrill to finish a project in an hour… I plan to do a couple of rehearsal flowers, trying different ones, and eventually create a flower arrangement for a decorative pot we have that is cracked so you can’t have live flowers in it. Both these books were informative and easy to read.

I loved fairy tales as a small child, and I continued to read and love them long after my friend outgrew them. My parents had a book on Vietnamese tales, and one with Swedish ones, and later I found Andrew Lang’s Fairy books with tales collected all over the world. I was fascinated that tales like the Cinderella story had many different versions. In the Swedish one, for example, Cinderella went to three balls, dressed first in silver, then gold, then in a bejewelled gown, and though she dropped the shoes, it wasn’t made of glass. She also only had one stepsister, and the story didn’t end with the wedding. No, the stepsister pushed Cinderella into the sea, where she was going to be forced to marry a sea monster, while the stepsister made herself look like Cinderella. Luckily the prince noticed, and managed to save his bride, though not before she was turned into a serpent that he had to dip into three baths, winter, milk and water, to save.

When I was around 10, my mother took a university course on children’s books, and read Bruno Bettelheim’s The Uses of Enchantment, which I picked up and which had a profound impact on my ability to comprehend and analyze my reading. I’se been a long time since I read it, so I’m quoting Wikipedia on it.

Bettelheim analyzed fairy tales in terms of Freudian psychology in “The Uses of Enchantment” (1976). He discussed the emotional and symbolic importance of fairy tales for children, including traditional tales once considered too dark, such as those collected and published by the Brothers Grimm. Bettelheim suggested that traditional fairy tales, with the darkness of abandonment, death, witches, and injuries, allowed children to grapple with their fears in remote, symbolic terms. If they could read and interpret these fairy tales in their own way, he believed, they would get a greater sense of meaning and purpose.

I’ve also realized I missed a book in my list on books which impacted me, namely One Thousand and One Nights. My father’s parents has a lovely edition in a set of 6 books, which I used to read every time I visited. I was very happy when they gifted the set to me when I turned 16. It’s a 1920s edition with gorgeous illustration by Gudmund Hentze. Also abridged- too racy sequences are edited out, though the book helpful points out that even if the edited text is “very amusing,it doesn’t conform to our time’s view on morality”. It’s also not all of the stories, though I’m unsure how many there should be.

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Not very surprising, the earlier books that made an impact on me were picture books. Historien om någon (The Story About Someone) written by Åke Löfgren and illustrated by Egon Møller-Nielsen. And The Book About Moomin, Mymble and Little My by Tove Jansson. They were both published in the 50s, 1951 and 1952, and haven been out of print since then. Funnily enough they are both mysteries, and both have very interactive layouts, which excited and intrigued me as a small child. Reading the books now still makes me relive those feelings.

In Historien om någon we get to follow the mysterious Someone, who has taken grandmother’s ball of yarn, and leaves a yarn thread through the house. On the way someone drinks all the milk, and does other kinds of mischief, and finally, in the attic, it’s revealed to be a kitten called Nisse.

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I was a little surprised that four books on my influential book list are books with a horse focus. The Horse and His Boy by C. S Lewin, Melka by Joan Penney, Dick och Dalli, which i now realize has been translated to English, it’s called The Snow Ponies by Ursula Bruns, and Flambards by K. M. Peyton. And they weren’t the only horse books I loved as a child, I was also an avid fan of Walter Farley’s Black Stallion-books, and My Friend Flicka by Mary O’Hara. I’m surprised because I never was horse-mad as a girl. In fact I am afraid of them, and though I find them beautiful to look at, being near one makes my heart beat very fast, and my mouth runs dry.

The Horse and His Boy is of course part of the Narnia Chronicles, though it’s quite different from the others as it’s completely set in the world of Narnia, though actually not in that particular country. I really loved Bree teaching Shasta to ride, and I also like Aravis a lot, and her journey. Their adventures in Tashban and the ride through the desert was something I read with the same excitement, every time I reread it- and I’ve probably reread this Narnia-book the most. Also, Bree is a great flawed character and drama queen.

Melka and The Snow Ponies were books my father had as a child, and I first came to them because he read them for me. Melka was written in the 1930s, and is about a horse, Melka, born in a Sudanese village, where she has some foalhood adventures before she is sold to an English family and is brought to a city. She gets a close friend in a donkey called telephone, and grows close to the boy who rides her. As she is found to be very good at jumping, she is stolen and dyed brown (she’s a white horse), but is eventually reunited with her huma. In the end the family goes back to England, and Melka ends up living in a manor stable in the countryside. I haven’t read this book since I was a child, and I’m not sure I dare to read it again. I’m not sure how well the depiction of Sudanese natives has stood the test of time…

It's been a very long time since I read The Snow Ponies as well, but I remember it as a very funny book. It's about two teenage girls who live with their grandmother and aunt on a stud farm where they raise Icelandic horses and Shetland ponies. They are mad about Vikings and get very excited when their cousin Ethelbert is coming for an extended stay, as they think having a Viking name must make him like one. But Ethelbert is a spoiled hypochondriac and his presence a nuisance more than anything else. I guess it comes as no surprise that Ethelbert, who is pretty much a soulmate to Eustace in the Narnia books, will be forced to do a hard look at his own actions, and change. But with horses, instead of dragons.

Flambards is really the first part of what I read as a trilogy as a child, because those were the only ones translated to Swedish but it’s actually a series of four books. I read the last one as an adult, and didn’t care for it much. Anyway, it’s set before, during and after WWI, and is about rich orphan Christina who is sent to her uncle in the British countryside. He is very posh, and also impoverished, and Christina eventually realizes the hope is that she will marry her cousin Mark, to get the manor house Flambards back to its glory days. Everyone there is horsemad, except her cousin Will, and Christina soon grows to love horses and Flambards as much as Mark does. Pity Mark is such a bastard. I regularly return to the three first books in this series, and there was also a television series I remember liking.

I’m always so late with these posts…

I have been better at concentrating on my reading lately, even if I’m still far from my usual pace. And I only managed to finish two books, namely part 1 and 2 of Shadow of the Leviathan-series, The Tainted Cup and A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett. Several people on my f-list had read and liked them, and so did I. Basically they are crime novels in a fantasy setting, with the main character, Dinios Kol, being the Watson to the very strange, but brilliant detective Ana Dolabra. I guessed who the villain really was early on in both books, but I usually do, so that didn’t diminish my enjoyment of the mystery.

I also liked the fantasy setting, which I found original, and a bit unsettling. In this world the country is invaded by gigantic sea monsters once every year, wrecking havoc until they are killed. And their dead carcasses are used to help enhance humans in various ways. Kol, for example, has perfect recall, others have their sense of smell or sight improved, and so on. I found Kol a likeable protagonist, and I very much look forward to part 3.

In my previous post you can find a link to the 102 books I feel have affected me the most. Mostly fictional, and a lot are books I read quite young. And as I love to talk about books, and listing these have made me think about them a lot, I will amuse myself, and perhaps some of you too, with talking about some of these books in particular. And first out will be Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë and Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers.

I’m lumping these two books together because no other literary characters have had so much impact on me personally. If I was to name my role models, then it would be Jane Eyre and Harriet Vane. I read them when I was around 13-14, and they made a deep impact on me, and has, I know, had a direct impact what kind of person I wanted to be.

I came to Jane Eyre through the 1983 TV-series with Timothy Dalton and Zelah Clarke, which I loved with a passion, and made me hunt down the book. It’s still the adaptation I think is the best, as it covers nearly all of the book, while most movie adaptations just focus on the love story. Anyway, I read the book, and feel even more in love with Jane. I’ve often seen Jane being accused of being too meek and wishy-washy, but I think that's so wrong. She is quiet, and clearly an introvert, but she has a very strong sense of self. Even as a small, abused child she has a sense of self-worth, and she never budges. She has integrity and independence, and even if she loves Rochester deeply, she never allows that to derail her from what she feels is right. If she had been meek and weak-willed she would have submitted to him, but instead she leaves. I’ve always loved that about her, and I still do.

I’ve never changed my perception of Jane, but I’ve profoundly changed my view on Rochester. Teenage me found him profoundly romantic, nowadays I think he is rather horrible. He has a sense of right and wrong, which dictates some of his actions, like taking care of his illegitimate daughter, but he is also perfectly willing to deceive Jane to get what he wants. There is also that scene where he seems on the verge of actually raping her. In my teens I thought Jane overreacted a bit when she fled, but as an adult I think she is acutely aware of how much power Rochester has by being a rich male, and how utterly helpless she would be if he decided to keep her against her will. No, I'm not a fan of Edward Rochester anymore. (I don’t, however, blame him for his treatment of Bertha. From a modern POV he does treat her horribly, but if you consider how mentally ill people were treated in the early 19th century, he is actually treating her much better than most. Mental asylums were hellholes without any actual treatment, and even though Bertha is locked up, there is no indication that she lacks food and comfort, and she has an one on one attendant, even if Grace Pool isn’t completely reliable.)

I found Gaudy Night because after reading my parent’s collection of Christie in the bookshelf which contained crime novels, I moved on to the books after, which happened to be Sayers. (Then I moved to the books in front, which is how I started on Raymond Chandler.) My parents only had Strong Poison, Gaudy Night and Busman’s Honeymoon, and as I had no idea the books had an internal order, I chose the one which the title I liked the most. The Swedish translation is “Kamratfesten” which means something like “a feast of friends”, and it appealed to me. And I didn't get half of what happened in it. I got the actual mystery, but all the discussions that went on that seemed to have little to do with it, mostly went over my head. But I still loved it. Somehow I realized that I would be able to unlock the book if i had been older and more experienced, and so Gaudy Night was the book I grew up with. I re-read it at least once every year for at least a decade, and little by little the book fell into place for me.

The last bit was when I finally read it in English and realized the Swedish translation is missing several scenes. Scenes that often are references later on, which makes for some confusion. If you haven’t read Gaudy Night, the book is really a discussion, on several levels, and including the mystery, of a woman’s place in society. Is an equal relationship possible? Can a woman have both a career and marriage? Basically every conversation in the book revolves around it, and we are given several viewpoints. And, sadly, a lot of it is still relevant though the book is 90 years old.

Harriet Vane with her honesty and integrity has been as important to me as Jane Eyre. Harriet isn’t flawless, she struggles with low self esteem and a temper, and I love her so much. She has always felt so real to me, And opposed to Rochester, Lord Peter Wimsey has remained a favourite romantic hero.

It says something about my stress levels that I can’t finish the books I start. My usual pace are one or two books finished weekly. This month I have finished three… Agatha Christie's The Hollow that will get its own post.

The Tomb of Dragons by Katerina Addison. I liked it, but I’m glad I re-read the previous books in the series, as there are a lot of references to the previous books. Actually, all the books in The Cemeteries of Amalo trilogy follow so closely to each other that they could be read as one book in three parts. It feels like it came to a natural conclusion, but I still want more. I like Tara and would love to read more about him, but I also feel that the stories of his friend the opera director and his colleagues still have stories that need to be told.

Dorothy Gilman The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax. I read one Mrs. Pollifax book in my early teens, but had no idea it was a series until someone here on DJ mentioned it. They are Cold War thrillers, with this the first book published in the late 1960s. Mrs. Pollifax is a widow who is rather bored, and decides to do something about her childhood dream of becoming a spy. And so she finds herself in Mexico to pick up a secret package for the CIA. And everything promptly goes wrong. This was not the Polifax book I have read, and I enjoyed it, though it’s very much a product of its time. Americans are heroes and Communists are baddies. But Mrs. Pplifax is a charming and resourceful character and I enjoyed the book..

I’m currently reading, on and off in all too short snatches; France Hardinge’s Fly By Night, Ben Aaronovitch The masquerades of Spring, Dorothy Gilman The Amazing Mrs. Pollifax, Louise Penny’s The Kingdom of the Blind, Jenny Kiefer’s This Wretched Valley and Donyae Coles’ Midnight Rooms.

After watching, and not liking, the new adaptation of Towards Zero, I have been thinking a lot about Agatha Christie’s books. And I think I’m going to embark on a re-read. I have read all her novels written under her own name, some multiple times, but not for the last decade, or so. I have been thinking of doing a reread before, but always felt I ought to start with her first one. The problem is that I don’t like The Mystery at Styles much, so I never felt the urge to get started. But really, why should I read them in publishing order? Only the Tommy and Tuppence books have an inner chronology anyway. So instead I’m going to read them roughly in the order of how much I like them. And I may not reread some I don’t care for much.

I read my first Christie when I was 10. It was Death in the Clouds, and I got interested because the cover showed a giant wasp in front of a plane. I was definitely too young for it. I remember enjoying the beginning when they were in the plane, and I really enjoyed the description of what the passengers had in their handbags and pockets. But the rest when Poirot interviews the suspects, I found it very boring. But a few years later I saw the 70s version of Murder on the Orient Express, loved it and promptly found it in my parents bookshelves, and was hooked. I quickly went through the Christie’s we had, The ABC Murders, Sad Cypress, Cyankalium and Champagne and Hickory Dickory Dock. I don’t usually remember where I find the books I read, but somehow remember my first Christie's. I found Nemesis, Sleeping Murder, Three Little Piggies, 4.50 From Paddington, Appointment With Death, Posterns of Fate and Mrs. McGinty Is Dead at our local library. From both sets of grandparents I found At Bertram’s Hotel, A Caribbean Mystery, Death On the Nile, Evil Under the Sun, A Murder Is Announced, Lord Edgware Dies and A Pocket Full of Rye. I also started to collect titles from used book stores. In my late teens I started to read books in English and switched to buying the titles in English instead of Swedish. The last Christie I read was The Hollow.

Over the years Christie has got a lot of slack for being a bad writer, but I think she is the opposite. She’s an extremely economical writer, basically everything that happens in her books is relevant to the mystery. But it takes real skill to be able to pare down your writing to the bare essentials and still be able to write a compelling story. And her writing is compelling. She wouldn’t still sell, if people found her books dull. Many of the Golden Age writers are forgotten today, but there is a timeless quality over her books that makes them easy to access. She’s not perfect, of course. Many of her books show the prejudices of her time, which can certainly be galling. And though I don’t think her characters are the cardboards they are sometimes accused of, she does use stock characters over and over again. The grumpy patriarch/matriarch, the vamp, the downtrodden spinster, the never-do-well, and so on. But just when you think you have her pegged, she turns round her narratives and surprises you.

I think reading Christie in my teens was good insofar as all the detective tropes she uses were new and exciting to me. Which they were for her readers when the books were first published. Because very, very often, Christie was the one who invented them in the first place. So I look forward to this reread, starting with my all time favourite; the Hollow.

If you enjoy podcasts, I can really recommend All About Agatha (can be found on Spotify too). It goes through every single Christie novel in depth, and most of the short stories as well. They also include discussions on the various adaptations. A word of warning, though. One of the hosts died very suddenly a few seasons in, and I found it a bit shocking to hear.

A bit belated as a good chunk of March has gone by. I don’t seem to be able to concentrate when reading right now, so I have jumped around between books more than usual, and finished fewer.

New books
The Frozen People by Elly Griffiths. This is the first book in a new series. Ali is a police officer in her 50s who works for a cold case unit in London. Only they actually go back in time to solve the crimes. A high-ranking politician pulls strings for the unit to look into his great-great-grandfather who was rumored to have killed several women in the 1850s But instead of an hour in the past, Ali gets stuck in time, and while she is, the politician is murdered and her son gets accused of the crime. I always enjoy Griffiths books, and I liked this one too. Historical mysteries are always my cup of tea, and despite the fantastical premise, the book still felt grounded. Ali is a likeable character, and I always like it when middle-aged women get to be the hero. I also appreciate that Griffith clearly does her research. The description of 1850s clothes was very accurate, which pleased me. I look forward to continuing the series.

Open Season by Jonathan Kellerman. It’s been a long time since Kellerman’s Alex Delaware-books have been anything formulaic, so sometimes I wonder why I still read them. Perhaps because it’s nice to read things that don't surprise you at all. This one was entirely as expected. An oddish kind of murder that makes Alex's police friend Milo call him in. Interviews with surrounding people, broken up with eating. Alex spending time with girlfriend and adorable dog. The murder being a psychopath serial killer, though no one, before Alex, realized there was serial killing going on.

Rereads
The Brimstone Wedding by Barbara Vine. I never liked any of Ruth Rendell’s novels written under her name, but even if I don’t like all of her Barabara Vine novels, those I like I really like. The Brimstone Wedding is one of those I like, but I haven’t reread it for many years. Last time I was the same age as Jenny, in my early 30s, and now I’m a generation older. Makes my perspective a bit different. Anyway, the Vne-books aren’t typical crime novels, even if many of them contain a murder. This book certainly has a mýstery, but it’s also a book about friendship. Jenny works as a nursing assistant at a home for old people, where she befriends Stella, who is 70 and dying from cancer. Initially Stella is very reserved, but eventually she starts talking about her life, and Jenny gets the feeling there is something she really wants to tell her. One says Stella asks Jenny to check out a house she owns. A house, Jenny soon realizes, has stood empty for many years, showing signs of having been abandoned very quickly.

The House of Lost Shadow by F. G. Cottam. As a young man in the 80s, Paul offers to help his girlfriend out with a paper. While researching Pandora, a socialite and photographer active in the 1920s, Paul gets a number of spooky encounters, culminating in a horrific visit to an abandoned house, which shatters his life completely. Fifteen years later he learns that a group of students have visited the same house, leaving one of them dead, and the rest psychotic. And, of course, Paul is the only one who can help.

Cottam is a good horror writer, very atmospheric, and he is often even good at endings, which is often the weakest point in horrors. He also makes heavy use of one of my favourite plot devices where an old mystery is slowly revealed through archive materials. I’m a sucker for that. I don’t think The House of Lost Shadow one of his better books though, possibly because it’s one of his earlier works. The 1980s sequence works well with Paul researching and obsessing over Pandora, but the present day parts feel a bit disjointed. And the ending is rather Deus Ex Machina. I also feel weirded out by Cottam using real life persons as the bad guy. I guess Alisatir Crowley is pretty mythologized by now, but he also elevates an author, Dennis Wheatley into a supernatural villain. Wheatley, who wrote many books with occult themes isn’t very well-known today, and Cottam might as easily have made up a fictive character. In later books Cottam makes up a fictitious occult cult, The Jericho Society, which works much better as villains, and The House of Lost Shadow is part of that canon, even if the cult isn’t mentioned in it. Which is why I re-read it, as I recently read Dark Echo which partly ties in to this one.

I just realized that now that Neil Gaiman can no longer be in the running, all my favourite authors are women. It’s not that I don't like some books written by men, and I certainly haven't been conscious of how female oriented my favourite list is, until very recently. In no particular order, here are the authors I return to again and again, and whose books have had a great impact on me.

Jane Austen
Charlotte Brontë
Dorothy L. Sayers
Selma Lagerlöf
Anna-Karin Palm
Diana Wynne Jones
Barbara Vine
Lois McMaster Bujold
Ursula K. LeGuin
Frances Hardinge
Elizabeth Kostova

As you can see, these authors span over 200 years, and that made me think that even though female authors always have been fewer than men, they seem to survive much better. And I’m tentatively coming to the conclusion that one of the reasons they do, is because they write both women and men as full human beings. Lizzie Bennet, Jane Eyre and Hariet Vane are certainly women of their time, living within the boundaries their society gives them. But they also maintain that they are full human beings, worthy of respect and consideration. Men so often describe women in misogynic terms, but women rarely return the favor. So my idea is that female authors survive through time because the human beings in them are all human, women are never described as the lesser sex, Which makes them more readable for the modern reader. What do you think?

I’m desperately trying to remember which book this is, and I thought I would ask you if you recognize it. It annoys me no end that I can't come up with the title! I’m sorry for being fuzzy on the details. It's been more than 10 years since I read it. It’s definitely a crime novel.

The male protagonist comes into contact with a young woman and her small son. I’m pretty sure it’s through his work. The father of the child is no longer around, it’s possible that he is dead. The woman is murdered and the child disappears. The protagonist finds out that the paternal grandfather is famous. Either he used to be a movie star, or he is a cult leader. (Or he might have been both). He and his family live on some sort of compound that the protagonist sneaks into. He finds the little boy, who sleeps in a vintage bed shaped like a car, likely the bed his father once used. He is not, however, treated well. The protagonist hears a woman (the child’s grandmother?) berate him for crying. The protagonist is captured, but before he is killed the police arrive. In the aftermath they find at least one murder victim buried in the grounds.

I was sure this book was actually one of the Alex Delawere books by Jonathan Kellerman. But I have re-read them now, and this book never came up. Granted, there are so many of them, so it may be a Kellerman book that I have somehow missed. I’d be so grateful if anyone knows which book this is!

New books

A Coronet For Cathie by Gwendoline Courtney. One of my childhood’s favourite books is a book by Courney called Stepmother (or Those Verney Girls orElizabeth and he Garret Theatre), a children’s books from the late 40. It’s still one of my go to comfort reads. What I didn’t know until I was an adult was that Courney wrote several books, most of which have been out of print for decades. A Coronet For Cathie is fairly recently republished by Girls Gone By Publishers. In this book teenaged orphan Cathie finds out that her grandfather is a duke about five minutes before he dies and she inherits the title. The first part is about Cathie finding her feet as a duchess as well as recovering from a serious illness. The rest, and longest, part of the book is about her going to school incognito, as she doesn’t want people to be friends with her because of her title.

This is one of the books I know I would have loved to bits if I had read it in my early teens. As an adult I found it enjoyable, but no more than that. I don’t think it’s as good as Stepmother, but I know I’m biased there. Cathie is likeable, as is her supporting cast, though I wouldn’t be the least surprised if Sarah Crewe was the main inspiration for her. I will still try to hunt out Courney’s other books.

The Green Man’s War by Juliet E. McKenna. Part 7 of an ongoing series. My husband described this series as “Rivers of London, but in the countryside”, and that is quite apt.

Infamous Lady by Kimberley L. Craft. A biography over Elizabeth Bathory. I found it well-written and extensively researched, and had some interesting thoughts on how a human being devolves into a torturer and murderer of young girls. However, as the author included a lot of translated witness statements, it also describes in detail how these children were tortured and murdered. I really don’t like to read that, so I skipped large parts of the book, but read some before I realized what was going on. I know, perhaps I should have expected it considering the subject, but I’ve never come across anything this graphic before

Rereads

The Goblin Emperor, The Witness For the Dead and The Grief of Stones by Katherine Addison. As the third book in The Cemeteries of Amalo is coming soon, I thought a re-read was due. I really enjoy these books, and it was a joy to re-read. I would love another book about Maia though. If you haven’t read these, but enjoy fantasy (with a strong steampunk flair) and crime novels, then I think you would like those.

A Skinful of Shadows by France Hardinge. I love Hardinge’s YA novels which are always inventive and interesting. This one is my favourite, set in Civil War England, where a young girl, the illegitimate daughter of a nobleman, finds out that what she has inherited from her father is the ability to take up dead people’s spirits in her mind.

Deeplight by France Hardinge. Fantasy set in a cluster of islands which was once ruled by a number of terrifying and unpredictable sea gods. But the gods are dead now, and people have slowly started to learn to live without them. Teenage friends Hark and Jelt find a strange object in the sea, an object that can heal- and more. Is it possible for the gods to return? Despite finding Hark’s troubled friendship with Jelt painful to read, I will enjoy this book a lot. Also, one of the main characters, the girl Selphin, is deaf, which I don’t think I have encountered in a SFF novel before.

A Civil Campaign, Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance, Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen by Lois McMaster Bujold. Bujold is one of my favourite authors, and I’ve been doing a selective re-read. I’m not a huge SF fan, but Bujold has the knack of writing interesting plots and compelling characters, even down to minor supportive ones. I can’t recommend her books enough!

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Entries tagged with reading

What I have been reading, October edition

The Agatha Christie reread: 4.50 From Paddington

What I have been reading, September edition

The Agatha Christie reread: Sparkling Cyanide

The Agatha Christie reread: Murder on the Orient Express

What I have been reading, July/August edition

What I have been reading, (almost) July edition

What I have been reading, June edition

What I have been reading, May edition

The fairy tales

Picture books

The horse books

What I have been reading, April edition

The books that counted

What I have been reading, March edition

Rereading Agatha Christie

What I have been reading, February edition

Favourite authors = female authors

Looking for a book

January reading