dovegreyreader scribbles

I love...

Well I love Bookhound of course and all my family, I'd better say that first, and the cats, best not forget them, but can I own up now and get this out of the way?
J'adore Torvill & Dean.
There I've said it now and I feel a huge weight lifted off my shoulders. I should probably explain for anyone who has been living on Planet Pluto for the last umpteen years that Torvill & Dean were the UK's most successful ice dance partnership of all time and a recent TV programme on Bolero and the 1984 gold medal win in Sarajevo brought it all back. The tension of the competition, the unveiling of the new routine, the music and then the return to Nottingham and discovering those very costumes in the Nottingham museum and somehow I miss it all.
Even the Kayaker watched with interest and we figure he may have subliminally absorbed it first time round at the age of eleven months because I was sure to have made everyone watch it...except the Gamekeeper who we hadn't even invented then.
Plus, don't Jane and Chris (we are on first name terms)  look sort of preserved in time now? Must be the ice, they haven't aged a bit.
Here in the UK we had got unusually accustomed to ice skating success over the years with John Curry and then Robin Cousins (and I expect we claimed Sonja Heine was half British) and I've decided this is what used to keep us jolly through dismal Winters in the olden days.
Ice skating success conquered all our failures on the ski slopes and the bobsleigh runs back then, helped us forget those staggering interest rates and inflation.
The thrill of the Figures component and then the Set Dance and then the big build up to the Free Dance. Nation on the edge of their skates and apparently 24 million of us watched Bolero when it happened.
Talking of ice, knitting is back to normal after the excitement of the dovegreyreader patent pending Hot Water Bottle Cover for Canada, which has arrived and I'm assured is working its magic.
This took exactly 100gms of Noro Kureyon 100% wool (shade 170) bought here and I loved loved loved it. This week's knitting output confined to a concerted effort on the baby llama jumper (wool from...not jumper for) which I must get finished ready for the Summer (bound to need it). To be frank I'm still in a terrible state about Janice cutting the wrong cuff of her Fair Isle heirloom a few Saturdays ago so I'm concentrating very hard.
I needed it like a hole in the head but couldn't resist a greatly reduced offer from Colinette for the wool to knit a sort of scarf-shawl-stole-wrap thing. As I wound the skeins of hair thin Parisienne kid mohair along with the more substantial cotton Banyan it occurred to me that, as in not appearing on stage with children and animals, I might soon be having similar thoughts about knitting with baby Angora goats.
Meanwhile I've been also been watching all the old Torvill & Dean routines  and then had to decide which was my favourite, Let's Face the Music ? Mack & Mabel?
Difficult to choose but in the end it was this one (treat yourself to half a minute's worth, it's magic) and even if at the time we might have been paying 15% interest rates and foregoing holidays to pay the mortgage and the electricity bills (no government bail outs then ) Winter suddenly feels jolly again and it's nearly March 4th and that can only mean one thing, the dovegreyreader scribbles third birthday and we have a nice surprise lined up, more tomorrow.

John the Revelator by Peter Murphy and prize draw copies

I'll just fess up first if that's OK.
If there is one serious sin of dovegreyreader omission to be avoided at all costs it is Sin Number One, not scribbling down my thoughts fairly swiftly after I have turned the final page of a book.
Sometimes I will intentionally leave a book to simmer for a week or so, sometimes I don't but I never leave a book to slow-cook for two months and mea culpa big time, I'm not quite sure how I'm going to fare with John the Revelator by Peter Murphy, published by Faber.
Book thoughts not reviews , that's what I tell everyone, covers a multitude.
But nor do I want to do Peter Murphy a disservice with incomplete recollections of his first novel which I enjoyed hugely back in January and which now seems light years ago. But you can bet your bottom euro that if I leave it out it will win the Booker or something and I'll have more egg on my face than Margaret Atwood right now (Dubai? Censorship? Who said what? Big mess?)
Nor did I indulge in my usual copious scribbles in the book which might have helped get me out of this black hole.There's usually only one reason for that, I'm reading a good book and I don't want to interrupt the flow.
It's coming back to me now though because here's yet another new introverted male adolescent voice to ponder in the shape of John Devine who lives with his single mother Lily and is frequently in the care of the rather overbearing and strange Mrs Nagle. Set in small town Ireland, initial concerns that I had accidentally tripped into a miserable Irish childhood novel were confounded and quickly dispelled as I warmed to John and his circumstances. I loath the MIC genre with a passion after overdosing on Frank McCourt very early on in the genesis of the species and to find myself unwittingly mixed up in one would have been little short of a tragedy.
John was the original holy terror of a screaming colicky premature baby and according to his single mother only spared a pillow over his head because he had the good fortune not to have been baptised; for his devoutly Catholic mother this would have been a sin too far. Eventually Lily finds the key, in fact exactly that because singing to John seemed to render him unconscious for hours and with these revelations begins a  simple,strangely respectful and loving mother-son relationship.
Life however does have its defining moments and for John those moments are thrown into sharp focus when he is befriended by local lad about town James Carboy. Events run out of control alongside the increasing concerns for Lily's health and slowly but with great poignancy the events of Lily's past life slowly emerge. There are some heartbreaking moments to bear and something about grief-stricken teenage boys crying inwardly if not outwardly always does for me.
That's about all I can manage and, to make up for this dog's breakfast of a mess, my thanks to Faber who have kindly offered three prize draw copies of John The Revelator to three lucky winners here so that at least three of you can sort this out for yourselves, names in comments as usual.
But I was also intrigued enough by the title to do some digging on the subject of John the Revelator and then to cast around in my mind for connections but was completely waylaid by the song. After my Thin Blue Smoke blues moment and the arrival of the CD with some of the music from Doug Worgal I'm afraid I'm doing a lot of swaying to the blues right now.
Then thinking I'll have to make some sort of excuse for what's coming next and apologise profusely to Peter Murphy wholesale because he's probably wishing I hadn't even mentioned John the Revelator now and I suddenly discover that the same Peter Murphy has contributed the notes to a forthcoming remastered edition of the Anthology of American Folk Music, so perhaps I'm not that far off the beaten track after all.
In any case I just had to share this from Blind Willie Johnson.

The Blue Fox - Sjon

So it was a dog last week, this week it's a fox, a blue one, and I'm just wondering what it might be next week (suggestions?)
But firstly I'm also wondering how a publisher like Telegram Books has passed unnoticed in my reading life to date?
Why hadn't I heard of them?
Should I get out more?
Do the reps get this far because surely I'd notice books like these on the shelves?
The Telegram list is that perfect blend of old and new with plenty of fiction in translation which I always love, writers from Turkey, the Faroe Islands, Lebanon, China and my first Telegram read Iceland.
What with being a snow expert now, Iceland seemed an appropriate place to read after my Alafoss Lopi moment but I have also read a few other Icelandic authors and enjoyed them, though I'll admit I'm building slowly to tackling Halldor Laxness (fortify me someone, tell me I'll be alright)
However to The Blue Fox by Sjón.
That queen of Iceland Bjork thinks this is a 'magical novel' whilst A.S.Byatt finds it 'comic and lyrical' so I must see what it is all about.
The author I discover is actually a poet, lyricist and song writer too, Sigurjón Birgir Sigurðsson and the pen name Sjón means 'sight'.
This all bodes well if he can pull it off.
Well I have to agree The Blue Fox is magical, as events during a week in January 1883 unfold and the Reverend Baldur Skuggason sets off on an ill-fated hunting expedition in the teeth of a howling blizzard. Meanwhile his neighbour Fridrik Fridjonsson is dealing with something else entirely.
Having returned to settle his parents' affairs in the neighbourhood fifteen years earlier and intending just a brief sojourn, Fridrik found himself tied to his home again by an act of kindness with the discovery of Hafdis Jonsdottir. Calling herself  Abba, Fridrik finds the young girl with Down's Syndrome manacled and ill-treated in a ship which had run aground. 
His life with Abba since has been one of pure revelation and when events with Abba weave inextricably with those surrounding the blue fox and Rev. Skuggason, I realised that I was reading one of those deceptively simple but deeply meaningful fables with a hint of fairy tale and perfect elements of myth and mysticism.
Poets, if they can successfully make the transition to fiction, do it with that special word-gift. That minimalist approach, a paring down to the very essentials and you know every single word holds power and meaning. In The Blue Fox, a single sentence on a page requires careful thought, not a quick flick onto the next page and I was frequently stopping to consider

' The sun warms the white man's body, and the snow melting with a diffident creaking, passes for birdsong.'

Or this beautiful description of the Northern Lights and my apologies, I can't credit this photo, it arrived in one of those e mails that do the rounds but I had to use it, it fits Sjon's words perfectly.

'The rim of daylight was fading.
     In the halls of heaven it was now dark enough for the Aurora Borealis sisters to begin their lively dance of the veils. With an enchanted play of colours they flitted light and quick about the great stage of the heavens, in fluttering gold dresses, their tumbling pearl necklaces scattering here and there in their wild caperings.'

The book has its amusing moments too.
Man stalks fox who lures man on deeper and deeper into unknown territory, fortunately man has packed lunch with him,

'Hand thick slabs of lamb, rye cakes with sheep's butter, sour as gall, topped with mutton sausage, a dried cod's head, pickled blood pudding, dried fish, curd porridge and a lump of brown sugar.'

Good, sounds worse than...than...yes, bubble and squeak or heaven forfend...um...tripe and jellied eels (I'll bet someone out there loves tripe as much as all the b&s fans) because even this early on in the book I'm beginning to think this may be just what Reverend Skuggason deserves.
As always hats off to the translator Victoria Cribb. I have always understood that Icelandic is a fiendishly difficult language to grasp, making that capture of the essence of a book like this all the more impressive.
This one would make a splendid book group read because even as I have written this new revelations have come to mind, that fox is still beckoning and I know there is plenty that I have missed in my first reading. All adding to the value of a book like The Blue Fox, it will hold up to many visits and countless interpretations and actually I can't wait to read it again.

dovegreyreader asks... (and also gets some prize-draw copies)

It's time to plump up the cushions and focus the brilliant glare of the standard lamp on a writer once more, make a pot of tea, lashings of scones and clotted cream and today it is my pleasure to flip out a napkin onto the knee of Elizabeth Baines whose book of short stories, Balancing On The Edge of the World quite swept me off my feet.
Elizabeth Baines is a writer of prose fiction and prize-winning plays for radio and stage. Her short story collection, Balancing on the Edge of the World, was published by Salt in 2007 and was long-listed for the Frank O'Connor International Award for the Short Story 2008. Her novel, Too Many Magpies, will come from Salt in late 2009. Elizabeth was born in South Wales and now lives in Manchester. She has been a teacher and is also an occasional actor. She writes the critical-commentary blog Fictionbitch  and also has her own author blog

When I first wrote about Balancing On the Edge of the World I envisaged you hunched over a magnifying glass, the finest, most delicate of brushes in your hand, painting exquisite little miniatures, which all suggests observation of the minute details in life, is this how you envisage what you are doing? 

This notion of a lens is a good one, but as I said on Sarah Salway’s blog  , I don’t think of what I’m doing as focusing ON tiny details so much as hoping in each story to use some detail – an image or object, some small aspect of life or a tiny incident – as a lens itself, a telescopic one in fact, to look outwards at some bigger picture.
Take for instance one of the stories in the book, ‘A Glossary of Bread’. This tells the story of a girl’s itinerant childhood, and it does it by structuring the story around a list of dictionary definitions of the different kinds of bread the family encountered as they moved from place to place. On the surface, therefore, the story may seem to be focused on bread or definitions of bread, but what it’s REALLY about is the bigger, more important things that are revealed in the process: a history of existential unhappiness and domestic violence and in the end a deeper history behind that, one of racial/religious persecution. The same notions, racial prejudice and domestic violence, along with class prejudice, are the real substance of ‘Star Things’, but they are revealed only gradually through the unknowing perspective of a small child who is focused on closer, more concrete details as she follows her friend into the wood in search of flowers, the ‘star things’. ‘Who’s Singing?’, the story of two neighbours, an opera singer and a Professor of Medicine, appears to concentrate on suburban and domestic things, the gardens of the two neighbours and the domestic routine of the hospital where the Professor works and where the opera singer must go for an operation. But it does so ironically, to show in the end the very uncosy, even fatal effects of fame and vanity and academic self-absorption. In ‘Going Back’, which features a family walk in the dunes, the details of the environment conjure up the deep unease at the heart of this apparently idyllic scenario and the potential savage unraveling of the family, all with hints of environmental disaster and a vaster history of changing climates and seas. 

This technique, looking at the big things behind the little things and concentrating some huge idea into something concrete and vivid, is something which I think the short story as a form can do brilliantly (and which it shares with poetry), and indeed is its great strength. For me it’s especially useful, as one of the things I’m constantly trying to do in my writing is to explore the way we can gloss over terrible truths, and to expose the unacknowledged undercurrents in our lives.

 

Novel v Short Story? Is there a defining moment in the process when you know you have one or the other in front of you or do you set out with only one format in mind? In other words could you tell us a bit about the writing process and we do always like to know if it's a fountain pen (make, ink colour etc!) raven quills or a laptop involved, special slippers, Balzacian white robe and lots of coffee, must have been for a ten mile walk before can sit down to write,  etc etc. 

I always know immediately whether an idea is going to be a short story or a novel. A short story usually comes as a single image or phrase, very intense and vivid (the lens!), and with the sense of a single clear idea behind it (the bigger picture) (though I won’t always know yet what that idea is). With a novel, I’ll have a more conscious knowledge of the overall unifying idea, but it will also be an altogether more complex package of images and ideas, with the sense of lots of other sub-ideas and extra-ideas and story paths to be discovered along the way. 

As for what I wear to write the things! Well, it would be nice to be able to paint a glamorous picture, but I have to admit that mostly I wear my grandmother’s old homemade jumper in mustard and navy-blue stripes. In fact, Lynne, as an expert knitter you may be interested to know that my grandmother was a keen knitter, but also an absolutely terrible one. When she died I inherited a pile of her stripy jumpers, and every single one had dropped stitches which I had to sew up, except this mustard and navy-blue one. This jumper was her triumph. I really love it. It’s short and wide, as she was, but it’s very cosy; it makes me feel like a busy bee, and of course it reminds me of her and keeps me in touch with my childhood self, which as I was saying last week on my visit to Vanessa Gebbie’s blog  is a really important thing for a writer. I also have my grandmother’s beige-and-russet patterned carpet on the floor of my study, with a bare patch on one edge where the moths got it under her piano, and I can never look at that patch without thinking of her house in the village near Bridgend where I come from. My grandmother was a Hopkin, and she claimed to be descended from the family of the plasterer-bard Will Hopkin. I don’t know the truth of this – though possibly every Hopkin around Bridgend is descended from the same family! – but in any case she was both rather proud of this and yet somehow at the same time took it for granted, so I grew up with the idea that writing was both a wonderful and a natural thing for an ordinary person to do.  

I have to sit at the window: for some reason I need to gaze out while I’m thinking. I have never, ever written fiction straight onto the computer – although I write everything else that way nowadays. I write fiction in longhand on Pukka Pads with a Silver Cross fountain pen and Lamy ink, and if I run out of Pukka Pads or mislay my pen I go berserk and think I can’t write. Which is of course really stupid, because before there were Pukka Pads and before my partner John bought me the pen one Christmas I wrote on ordinary pads with any old biros to hand. But Pukka Pads are really beautifully smooth, and I am now so used to the particular feel of that pen in my hand, and the flow of ink from the nib, and they are now so bound up with that psychological process of sinking into a story… Mad, I know, and if all the pens and paper disappeared from the world, clearly I’d just adapt. 

As if you haven't guessed we are indeed very nosey here at dovegreyreader scribbles so we would love to know which writers inspire you and who MUST we read? 

WG Sebald’s Austerlitz is probably the book I’d say I recently found most inspiring, but my long-term inspirations include Nabokov, F Scott Fitzgerald and Margaret Atwood. Your inspirations tend to change, I find: when I first started writing I found Graham Greene very inspiring, but I don’t any longer, perhaps because I’ve so long ago digested the narrative techniques I found in him. I find Will Self very inspiring: he’s so fizzing with ideas and verbal energy I can’t help but be infected and want to rush off and write something of my own, however different, every time I read him. I haven’t read Tom McCarthy’s The Remainder; it’s beside my bed waiting, but I have already found just glancing at it inspiring. 

Sebald is one I’d urge everyone to read. Also Bernhard Schlink’s The Reader and Richard Yates – not because of the recent films, these last two: we read The Reader and Yates’s Revolutionary Road a couple of years ago in the reading group  I belong to, and they were unanimously voted our best reads so far in five years of monthly meetings.

My thanks to Elizabeth for polishing off all those scones and the cream and also for calling me an expert knitter (some may question that) and my thanks also to Salt Books who have offered three copies of Balancing on the Edge of the World to three lucky winners here, names in comments and the cat who didn't get the cream will oblige with the prize draw.

Cover story

Aren't there enough pictures in the world for this not to happen?

CCTV

Corpus Christi Trimble Victorious and her team the toast of the nation today and deservedly so after snatching the University Challenge trophy last night from what looked like the jaws of defeat and a very strong Manchester team.
Suddenly the Trimbleites came storming through to take the lead with a starter question I'm a bit vague about now but along the lines of how many buckets will be filled in three weeks by so much rain falling at such and such a rate if  the bucket was £1.99 in B&Q and the raindrops are medium-sized in accordance with European legislation...well something like that. Manchester got it wrong, the Corpus Christi chap on the end had meanwhile been frantically and quietly computing digitally albeit on his fingers and came up with the correct answer of eight and they were away.
There was much nervous tricoteusing going on here to help me cope with the stress of it all and some fascinating debate in the press today about how we pay millions to people for acting stupid whilst the likes of Gail Trimble are pilloried for being clever (and apparently some of it has been very nasty)
What a strange old world I'm getting older in.

Sweets from Morocco by Jo Verity

A steady influx of lovely books arriving here as usual and I'm working a new system which is what I do every so often when I get fed up with an old one.
When I was a real Health Visitor with a General Practice caseload, as opposed to the virtual one I am now  with a very different online remit, I used to get booking forms from the midwives telling me that a baby was due to be born and when. For thirty years I actually used the same system wherever I worked because I never got fed up with it and never thought of a better one even though a computer arrived on my desk in the meantime. I had a simple A4 folder, divided into months of the year and the booking form went in under the due month and hey presto that was me organised. The file would come out when the midwives walked in and we'd go through it every so often just to keep me in the loop, I'd check ahead on who needed a home visit before the baby was born, brilliant, foolproof, worked.
Well it occurred to me with the constant flow of books most with press releases and publication dates several months hence that I could apply the same system because they are almost like pre-book-birth announcements.
Shelve the babies books under due date and let them reach full gestation, file the booking forms press releases in an A4 folder divided into months and bingo, because books probably do feel like babies to their authors. I'd also be slightly more organised in my mood-driven slightly haphazard reading life and could if I felt so inclined read a book nearer to publication date rather than thinking I wanted and had to read everything that arrived on the day it arrived.
Well it's working like a dream but none of that was relevant to the arrival of Sweets From Morocco by Jo Verity and published by Honno Press because this book was already birthed and out there fending for itself.
I balked briefly at the nigh-on 500 pages because that's a good two weeks plus reading and, though I compartmentalise each book because I weave in about six at once, long books still need to be good to draw me back and hold my interest.
Well no word of a lie, hand on heart my soul gave a little leap when Sweets of Morocco's turn came around because I loved picking it up every single time.
It's 1954 and children Tessa and Lewis Swinburne are most unimpressed by the arrival of baby brother Gordon. So much so that Tessa hatches a magic voodoo plot to make him disappear which involves gathering together some Gordon-related items and leaving them with a plasticine replica baby in a distant telephone box (bet they pressed button B while they were in there). To their utter horror some weeks later Gordon disappears from his pram left outside the paper shop by Mr Swinburne and the family's troubles begin in earnest.
As a brief interlude and lest there be any doubt what 1950's English babies looked like in prams, here's baby dovegreyreader in hers and thankfully, to my knowledge, I wasn't snatched from it.
Understandably father Dick and mother Peggy are utterly devastated, Tessa and Lewis are wildly confused and frightened and at this point it becomes clear that life may never be the same for the Swinburnes ever again.
What follows is an exceptionally well-written book, structured around sections, thus moving from events in 1954 and catching up with the family in 1962 in Book II, 1968 in Book III, 1976 in Book IV and so on right up to 2005 in Book VII. This is a format that I find makes for hugely satisfying reading with the slow revelation and the subsequent discovery of what may have happened in the intervening years and Jo Verity handles it all with absolute precision.
The tendrils of the tragedy insinuate themselves into the lives of each member of the family as Gordon casts his lengthening shadow of absence and blights the future. Each reacts differently to this 1950s tragedy and it is the historical placement that resonates here. This was the era of post-war stoicism, no place for self-pity no matter what the circumstances, just pick yourself up, dust off, brush it under the carpet and get on with it. The days when lies, secrets and silence could pervade, because to share and acknowledge the grief would be to admit defeat, hadn't we just won a war with an armoury of stiff upper lips, defeat of any description wasn't in the 1950's psyche.
Compare to now with the plethora of counselling and revelation, our knowledge of the effects of grief and loss, the impact on children, all the sharing and talking therapies, coping strategies, resolution and closure all denied the poor Swinburnes and the desolation becomes inevitable. It is the children who are the prime focus and this works well, whilst never minimising the impact of the pain on Dick and Peggy, to have focused on it excessively would have meant 1000 pages. Jo Verity has resisted that temptation offering sufficient blue touch paper for this reader to ignite and retire to ponder from a safe distance.
I think comparisons to other books could be unhelpful because I'm mindful that as many readers here disliked Philip Hensher's The Northern Clemency as much as I lauded it, but if you did enjoy that for the portrayal and progression of ordinary lives over a period of time then I think you will love Sweets From Morocco.
As Jo Verity herself describes it,

'It's my job to help the reader appreciate how extraordinary 'ordinary' people can be; how well or badly or crazily they behave when a spanner is cast in the works.'

I'm also interested in this my first read from Honno Welsh Women's Press which I discover was established in 1986 as a community co-operative with a remit  'to develop the writing talents of women from Wales, giving them new and exciting opportunities to see their work published and often to give them their first break as a writer.'
Jo Verity already has the Richard & Judy Short Story Award on her mantlepiece and if she is writing novels like this perhaps she should keep some more mantlepiece space free, my thanks to Jo, Sweets From Morocco has been a cracking good read.

and the winners are...

Copies of Guernica by Dave Boling will be on their way to Clara, Deb Baker and Bill Rogers who should have heard from the gato gordo by now.
We've been plumping up the cushions again, don't miss another dovegreyreader asks...on Wednesday and prize draw books...and then another one next week and more prize draw books.

Obits

How is it that someone else's local newspaper can be so fascinating?
We get the Tavistock Times week in week out, often say we won't bother but actually rarely miss it, head for the deaths column just to see who's crossed the bar, read the letters which are usually about either

• the public toilets
• army firing on Dartmoor
• planning decisions
• post office closures
• lost jewellery / mobile phone / dog

Then see what a Limousin Steer might be selling for...£890 for two, breeding heifers £780 for six in amongst news of local groups, university graduations, village pantomimes, new hairdressers and more adverts than we really need.
Then there are the funeral pages and the reports of recent ones.
I think death is quite high on the public agenda here in the UK at the moment as we watch Jade Goody's courageous and very public fight for life against the cruellest of diseases knowing she has little time left and will leave two young sons behind. If you have been following this don't miss Justine Picardie's heartfelt and sensitive piece here which I think captures everything I would want to say on the subject.
But back to the funeral pages.
A very brief resume of a life condensed into just a few lines and followed by acres of column inches citing the names of every single person who attended the funeral, all of them and now I wonder exactly why we all need to know that?
What about the life that has just ended?
And that's what set me thinking because this week I've been reading another newspaper and discovering how much better the residents of Kansas City manage all this
I don't usually take the Kansas City Star but I had a lovely parcel from Doug Worgul last week, author of Thin Blue Smoke and now I discover one time editor of that newspaper.
Any patchworker will know The Kansas City Star as the source of some of the best patchwork patterns from the 1930s onwards, I have unwittingly made many of them and Doug very kindly sent me several things all neatly wrapped in last week's edition and as I caught up on happenings in KC I was intrigued.
The local issues are remarkably similar. KCS has a lovely picture of the local quilting group, a great advert about stabilising your dentures which compares with an advert in the Tavi Times for a solicitor specialising in dental negligence. In Kansas City Julie Andrews is doing an evening on Our Favourite Things while we're making do with Jean Genie, a Bowie tribute band and the Treorchy Male Voice Choir.
But it was the Remembrances pages (note the plural, everyone gets a good hearing) which had my undivided attention. I'm a great reader of obituaries but these were something else.
Really fulsome and lovingly heartfelt tributes to deceased family members and an in-depth and fascinating life story for each along with a small picture. Family history, where they'd lived, where they'd served, what they'd done and what they loved.
Ordinary sounding lives...there was Helen, she enjoyed being a homemaker, taking delight in her children, gardening, cooking and lifelong friends in her women's neighbourhood club...she was known for her quiet, polite demeanour...she loved quilting and was always working on a project...she was a keen bowler...she loved doing crosswords with her son.
Then another beautiful tribute to a little nine-year old boy Grant...he was an intrepid adventurer, fearless explorer, lover of small creatures, avid animal rescuer and mighty warrior...for the service the attire is casual, please wear green, Grant's favourite colour or pink (his secret favourite colour) and it all made me think how stitched up, buttoned up and hopelessly formal we are here in the UK.
I also notice that public visitations seem to be the norm in the US, a period of time for viewing the deceased I assume, that is unheard of here in the UK.
Is it the openness of American culture that allows for this whilst for us it's all still a bit of a taboo?
Here in the UK we seem to use as few words as possible to announce a death and not many more to report a funeral yet how nice it would be to read tributes to every life not just the important ones.
Local papers could manage it surely?
And why not a photograph?
Couldn't all those funeral directors (surely one of the few businesses not to be touched by a recession) sponsor those pages making it free of charge?
And another thing, who decides who's important and merits an official obituary anyway?
To assuage my mood now verging on melancholy I immediately turned to two books on my shelves for some uplifting words on the dear departed.
Chin Up Girls A Book of Women's Obituaries by Georgia Powell and Katharine Ramsay and Well-Remembered Friends Eulogies on Celebrated Lives collected by Angela Huth but they only served to make me realise what I had already decided, that every single life deserves to be celebrated in words.

Sunday Salon - Onward Christian Snowdrops.

Endsleigh Salon met last week and somehow the bookish conversation morphed into favourite flower places.
It transpires that  we all have our secret locations for seasonal flower viewing, snowdrops, primroses, daffodils and bluebells, except mine aren't secret because I tell all of you. This year of course we do expect to have the National Collection of daffs in our own garden after our extensive planting marathon and let me tell you there are signs of life.
However already sighting primroses chez dovegreyreader we decided it was high time we went to wander amongst our favourite little cluster of snowdrops before they vanished again, as we've done each February since we stumbled across them by accident on one of those grey Winter afternoons when you bundle small children in the car and all get out in the pouring rain or go mad.
I know I've taken all of you to Lewtrenchard Church before when I was writing about John Betjeman's lovely book Trains and Buttered Toast. John Betjeman loved this little church as much as we do, once the living of the Revd. Sabine Baring Gould of Onward Christian Soldiers fame.
I couldn't manufacture a bright sunny Devonshire day yesterday but no matter, the snowdrops there faithful as ever and we then spent a happy hour in nearby Okehampton checking out the bookshops.
So just so you can get your bearings, out of the gate from home and turning right along the lane and you'll notice we are all crammed in the Landie today, apologies if your teeth are rattling but it's worth it, the views are better.
Heading up three miles towards the village school most benevolently built in 1829 by the 6th Duke of Bedford and strategically placed at the junction so that Duchess Georgie could see it and be reminded of family generosity as she drove out from Endsleigh in her carriage. The Kayaker and the Gamekeeper both went here and by some miracle it's still standing.
Off along the deserted back lanes and stupendous cold hazy views down to Cornwall
Then we turn back in towards Devon county and visible for miles around there's Brentor with the tiny church of St Michael on the top in the distance and Dartmoor beyond.
Whizzing along past one of the many old toll-houses that are a local feature. I wouldn't live in one, they are all at strategic points along the road (obviously) and always taking a clout from passing lorries. Take this bend a bit too fast and you'd end up in the sitting room.
Getting stuck behind a tractor helpfully gives us a fleeting glimpse of the old Coryton railway station complete with platforms and now a very nice residence. Sabine Baring Gould surely used to catch the train here.
Are you alright in the back? Anyone feeling a bit sick?
Are we there yet?
Nearly, but don't miss this beautiful walled garden which supplies the old Baring-Gould family home of Lewtrenchard Manor, (now a hotel) its usual privacy revealed to passers by with the helpful collapse of one wall. Baring Gould inherited the estate of 3000 acres in 1880 and designated himself both squire and parson.
Y'ere we be and this is probably where Sabine parked his horse
and there's our little carpet of snowdrops.

 

I also learn that in his novel The Moor, Laurie R.King makes Sabine Baring Gould the godfather of Sherlock Holmes, what a wonderful combination, I must read it.
As we drive off round the back of Sabine's manorial residence we ponder quite what on earth was going on here and where the other half of this little house might be.
But now it's off to Okehampton for even more madness to see the man on the wall, we still haven't found out who this is.
Pot of tea with scones and cream anyone before we drive home into the sunset?

A Book Meme

I don't get a lot of time for memes and now seems like a good time to apologise to anyone who tags me for one, I'm so sorry, I'm not ignoring them honestly but I seriously don't know where the time goes.
Did I used to go to work?
Well I still do that except I now work from home, barely half the hours I used to so no excuse. I met with a colleague yesterday bearing a message about a return to the coalface, I said no chance unless I could turn up in my pyjamas. Tempus does indeed fugit however carpe the diem and thus avoid any more mea the culpa I said to myself and stop and ponder this lovely bookish meme from Harriet.

The book that’s been on your shelves the longest.

This would probably be my Mum's copy of What Katy Did which she probably put on a shelf for me the day I was born along with a Ist edition of Vera by Elizabeth von Arnim (because she was called Vera.) This is the Herbert Strang library edition which seems to have been published by Oxford University Press.
The pictures sealed the characters in my imagination for ever, consequently Aunt Izzie is very tall and has a halo of wispy auburn hair, and now I see this book warranted a library ticket of my own making because playing libraries was what I did when I wasn't out on my roller skates or my Mobo scooter.
Just to repeat for any who may have missed it; What Katy Did responsible for many years of pronouncing Imogen with a hard 'g' and only being tactfully put right when I was about eighteen.
My apologies to all the Emowguns out there, now I know it's Immerjin.

A book that reminds you of something specific in your life (a person, a place, a time).

So many of these but among the treasures are three books, film tie-ins for The Sound of Music , the real story of the Trapp Family Singers (by Maria von Trapp, not Julie Andrews)  and Born Free and then a copy of National Velvet that my brother bought for me for long-ago birthdays.
It will be thirty-four years next month since my brother died and, whilst he remains twenty-four in my memory and I've done the ageing thing, I will always miss him.

A book you acquired in some interesting way

I'm not sure how good I feel about this one.
I was trawling around eBay back in 2004 when I came across something that I knew I wanted badly, needed to be the guardian of for a little while. After Sylvia Plath's death you may recall there was a lodger living in the flat downstairs, Trevor Thomas, who was judged to have cashed in mercilessly on being the last person to see Sylvia alive by self-publishing Last Encounters, a series of poems about her death.
Living downstairs Trevor Thomas was also rendered unconscious by the gas that killed Sylvia but he alleged that a week later at about 2.30pm on 18th February 1963 he fell into a trance, not a sleep, and when he came to at 4.30pm he had unwittingly written six poems and was exhausted. This kept happening until, and with the added bonus of visitations from the late Sylvia, he eventually had enough poems plus his account of events and published this booklet in 1989.
Ted Hughes took out an injunction, libel writs flew over false accusations about noisy parties and unsold copies had to be withdrawn, but there were still a few of the 200 numbered copies out there and one with a genuine provenance came up for sale on eBay. I have collected Ted & Sylvia for years, and suddenly I had to have this and so I bought it. I was up against a US bidder but by this time I'd recklessly decided I needed to save this for the nation and so I did.
It's an amateur production and difficult to discern whether this is the work of a deluded mind or someone who genuinely believed what he wrote, but re-reading it again now no wonder Ted was furious. Janet Malcolm probably gives the best account of these events in her book The Silent Woman. Meanwhile now that I have a copy I never quite know what to do with it, somehow it seems wrong to shelve it in Ted & Sylvia's corner.

The book that’s been with you to the most places.

Well I've carted a whole heap of books with me wherever I've gone, a complete trunk full from nurses home to nurses home around the entire city of London and thence to Devon, so it's difficult to pick just one, but probably my old school prize copy of Jane Eyre. Apparently I was making 'Progress' in Form IE at Mitcham Grammar but then with the onslaught of comprehensives I had to change schools and never won a dickie bird after that.
Never mind, it's the taking part that counts.
The most recent addition to your shelves.

My most recent purchase (well actually Bookhound spotted this on Alibris and bought it for me) I Have What I Gave - The Fiction of Janet Frame by Judith Dell Panny to add to my ever- increasing Janet Frame shelf.
I'm desperado to understand the many nuances of Janet Frames writing because it's iceberg stuff I'm sure of it, 9/10ths concealed beneath the surface so I'm tracking down whatever commentaries I can find.

Your current read, your last read and the book you’ll read next.

I'm reading a book by Peter Manseau whose name keeps cropping up everywhere right now (well admittedly not in the Tavistock Times, but just about everywhere else) Songs for the Butcher's Daughter and I'm loving it. Last read was The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley, loved that too, and next I'm looking at Songs My Mother Never Taught Me by Selcuk Altun (which suddenly seems like a whole lot of singing lately) unless something comes along and nudges it out of the way.

So that's me all memed out, please feel free to pick up and run with that in comments (or your own blog) if you want to, you know how nosey I am, I'd love to know.

Magnolia Buildings by Elizabeth Stucley

I'm finding this Inner Child reading so interesting and in so many ways and not just for the flood of memories, though plenty more nostalging today.
So far I discover that books which captured my heart as a child are now just refusing to be read with any degree of adult criticism, somehow it would feel like criticising my younger reading self. Thus Magnolia Buildings by Elizabeth Stucley, a memorable favourite, has been allowed fairly broad license in its depiction of a solid working class family living in a block of flats and first published in 1960. The illustrations are by Dick Hart and they add something quite special.
The Berners family, Mum and Dad and daughters Ally and Doreen and sons Val and Lenny plus Auntie Glad are all squeezed into their tiny high rise flat, number 49 Magnolia Buildings. The only water is in a scullery and the bath is under the kitchen table and if you want to dry your hair expect to do it leaning over the electric fire.
The relentlessly cheerful Mrs B is up at crack of dawn to do her cleaning jobs while the curmudgeonly Mr B is off to work on the railways lifting not much of a finger to help with anything, returning home for dinner and doing his pools coupon before a night out drinking at the The Cock. The invisible Auntie Glad looks after herself and silently glides off to her dressmaking job and the children seem to sort themselves out and struggle off to school. 
This is the children's world of gangs, the Eleven Plus, Saturday morning cinema and the ever-present threat of Approved School or Borstal for anyone who gets into trouble. Everyone dreams in their own way of escape but without money that seems nigh on impossible, but dreams have potential and there can be little doubt that the clever Doreen will educate her way out of Magnolia Buildings, whilst Alli will snip her way out as a 'glamour' hairdresser and Auntie Glad has a surprise or two up her sleeve too. As for Val and Lenny, well the future for the boys interestingly far less certain than that of the girls.
Mrs B keeps her ship afloat with vast amounts of humour and light-heartedness but have no doubt,when the going gets tough she stands no nonsense.
But yet again a flood of childhood memories, what about the excitement of the fair?
Mitcham Fair was the highlight of our year and this is actually it in 1963. We were there somewhere for sure.
Then the circus coming to town.
It's here somewhere, my programme from Billy Smart's Circus...yes, she who throws nothing away has found it.
Believe it or not and hate the thought as many may well do, that night we saw amongst others the Chimpanzees, oh good grief...trained Polar Bears (I ask myself trained in what?) , the Flying Leotaris from Germany, the Five Katyanas from Hungary on the high trapeze, the Digger Pugh Aerial Ballet from Australia, the 'mighty herd of Elephants' and a Wild West show with warnings of a considerable amount of gunfire.
Then there's the sunburn on the seaside holidays, the Berners children all burn to a frazzle, peel and then tan nicely, well I don't know about you but we all did that.
Did suntan lotion exist?
I'm sure I was about thirteen and on my umpteenth layer of skin before a bottle of Ambre Solaire oil was invented, and even then that just helped us burn more evenly.
The trip to the maze at Hampton Court...been lost (and scared) in there a few times.
Guy Fawkes and Penny-for-the-Guy. Whatever happened to that?
Legitimate begging on the streets by children.
Pressing the B buttons in the phone box in case some change fell out...go on own up...
It's all there in Magnolia Buildings.
On the forgiveness-over-criticism front, one or two racist undertones from Mr Berners not in the least unusual for 1960s Britain as we know all too well, but all thankfully rapidly dismissed by the wonderful Mrs Berners.
Little seems to be known about Elizabeth Stucley beyond her origins in North Devon and her descent from Sir Richard Grenville of the Revenge, but by all accounts a varied career in teaching, wartime service as a driver in France and work as a children's occupational therapist. At one time, before eventually moving to Bath, her home on Clapham Common a mecca for local children where she started The Adventurer's Club and Magnolia Buildings apparently written for and about those children.
Imagine doing all that without a Criminal Records Bureau check and Ofsted inspections these days.

and the winners are...

Sorry I've been a bit tardy dragging the cat off the mat to do the draw for the three copies of The Glassblower of Murano but we've managed it so congratulations to Jo (atkinsjo), Pia Carreman and Sobia Aijaz who should all have had a hurriedly typed e mail from Rocky before he decided that as he was awake he might as well go and sit by his bowl and wait for dinner to be served...it's a cat's life.

Creating a Legacy

I don't know whether anyone else subscribes to this but publisher Hamish Hamilton will regularly e mail you a free copy of their literary magazine Five Dials and I've been consistently impressed. I know these are yet another means for a publisher to set out their stall but this one is in a league of its own and I'm starting to look forward to its arrival now.
Here's what they say about this month's edition

"As other magazines crumble into dust, contract to skeleton staffs, or fill their pages with globs of colour to attract reader's eyes, we are carrying on, embracing our lovely B&W illustrations, and releasing our biggest issue yet. (Don't get used to this unchecked growth. There's a limit to both our ambitions and your printer's capabilities.)
What do you have to look forward to in Five Dials 5? Where else can you find Kurt Weill and Roger Deakin in the same issue? The centrepiece is a set of maxims from W.G. Sebald, collected from two of his former students. We also have contributions from a Pulitzer winner, a Nobel winner and a desperate amateur theatre director from Essex. As always, the issue is free."

For any fans of Max Sebald don't miss it and double whammy, Roger Deakin on Max Sebald too, all reminding me that a return to unread Sebald is due any day now. Except he is also one of those rare authors for whom a re-read seems just as tempting; my first thoughts on Rings of Saturn, The Emigrants and Austerlitz I suspect may seem naive and uninformed second time around.
This segues perfectly into something else because I would have been unlikely to venture into the world of Max Sebald but for encouragement in comments here and his books now much-loved residents of my library shelves.
I have been fascinated to read KevinFromCanada's thoughts on his blog and the brilliant idea of Creating a Legacy that has followed on from reading posts and comments here about Inner Child reading and Folio Editions.
I love this idea a lot

'Those of us who buy a lot of books are making an investment that is not expected to produce monetary returns but returns of the mind.'

and I love this one even more

'All serious readers know about the great historical family libraries which can never be recreated.  We are in a different world now.  One of the things that exchanging thoughts about books and literature on the net does is give us the chance to begin creating our own.  We have so many more friends to give us advice on what should be there.'

One of my lasting memories from 2008 was that fabulous dovegreyreader evening that Catherine St Germans very kindly hosted with Justine Picardie at Port Eliot to talk about Daphne.
Further etched in my memory, the journey there.
But then what happened next will stay with me for ever.
After a tour of the house we sat in the family library and Catherine showed us just a few of the many volumes that she felt were special, from shelves packed full of the family's centuries and centuries of reading. This room isn't open to the public, it's personal family space and it was a true privilege to sit in there for a few hours and breath in the atmosphere of a book legacy (oh yes,and sit in George Bernard Shaw's chair, mustn't forget that).
Kevin's thoughts confirm what many of us have known and hoped; that though our own book legacy might not be quite so grandiose, we are nevertheless creating a lasting heritage on our own shelves and I know I have added precious volumes (not necessarily of monetary value) to mine from suggestions that have been made here and will continue to do so.
Along the way and when finances have permitted I have indulged in some signed first editions and other unusual books which are treasures for the time that I may own them, and no, it has to be said, I don't scribble in my Ted Hughes - Sylvia Plath collection.
Don't miss Kevin's thoughts and do leave comments, he'd love to know what you think. Be warned you might wish you hadn't set eyes on those leather-bound Penguin special editions, they look just a little bit sumptuous, imagine sniffing and polishing those?
Even better imagine Max Sebald's books in editions like those?
I'd be first in the queue.
Meanwhile, I'm sure it will be time for Port Eliot to open to the public again soon.Keep an eye on the website for details and don't miss the only blog I know written by a dog. I'm booked to do a dovegreyreader event at the Port Eliot Literary Festival this year, I expect bloggers Roo and I will do a double act.

The Dog by Kerstin Ekman

"In the first place, the fable must exhibit the animals as being endowed with human reason, and initiated into all the customs and conditions of our mode of living, so that their behavior has nothing at all odd in it." -- Jacob Grimm

I was trying to decide whether Kerstin Ekman's book fulfilled the publisher's promise of 'a beautiful fable exploring the unique bond between man and dog.' and have to put my hand up and admit that I didn't know quite exactly what defined a fable. I knew what I thought a fable was but it was good to define it. Howeve before I got that far I found myself completely discombobulated by the recent edition of Waterstone's Magazine.
For a start I'd completely forgotten this comes free to Waterstone's Card Holders and I of course was one of the first of those. Piloted in the South West (not sure why) so I felt it incumbent on me to spend like a thing possessed just so the scheme would be considered a huge success and the rest of you could benefit from the nationwide roll-out.
So I picked up the latest edition to see what Waterstone's think I should be reading and I turned the page to see this picture which rang a tinkle of a distant bell that had little to do with The Outlander.
No, surely this was the cover of a recent translation of Kerstin Ekman's The Dog published by Sphere, which I happened to be reading.
I've had a close look and I think there's been some skullduggery with the dog but clearly this is a popular Getty Images picture.
Then when I started to think about it both books did have odd similarities. In many ways The Dog could be perceived as a mini-canine version of The Outlander, making a few allowances and taking into account circumstances, and a minor detail about the number of legs etc. There is a good deal of wandering, escape, starvation and injury in both, fear, deprivation and confusion, uncertainty and sense of unknowing, plenty of anguish followed by a recovery and a re-homing of sorts and of course lashings of snow.
When I think of bookish dog narrators my thoughts immediately turn to Lassie-type moments but Kerstin Ekman doesn't fall into the trap of dog-speak, settling instead for a sort of third person narrative, dog-stream- of-consciousness, short sentences and a dog's eye view of the world.
This is dog-cam writ large on the page.
The beginning will break every dog-lover's heart into little pieces as the puppy wanders off after his mother whose master, the man,had put his coat on to set off on an ice fishing trip and the mother-dog can't stop herself, she had followed out of instinct. The puppy is quickly lost,

'He crept backwards into the hole and ate snow. It triggered his hunger, and his stomach began to ache. He whined but no one came. He whimpered, listening. No paws crossing the linoleum, no voice.'

Sorry, I did try to warn you.
However the book doesn't descend into sentimentality, it's a tough old world and the puppy is going to have to be as resilient as any other wild animal might be. Fending for himself it is his sense of smell that will initially keep him alive as he eventually finds food

'Eighty-four dawns were behind him when the sun rose, and he wouldn't have made it through a single day more if he hadn't found the moose carcass in the marsh. No one can live long on hare droppings.'

and so his wanderings begin.
There is confusion and a good deal of stealth required as he is forced to fall back on his instincts to survive in the wild, but if your heart was broken into tiny pieces at the beginning, worry not because domesticity is also in the dog's genes and this bodes well when a hunter spots him and knows exactly how to gain his trust.
Hunden has been much-loved by Swedish readers since 1986, this new translation now making it available to the rest of us and I have to say it's a must for all dog-lovers, you won't let that puppy out of your sight after reading this one.

When is a book not a book...

When is a book a book and when is it something else entirely?
I hate to admit that the book in my hand as an artefact in itself does matter when I should really be saying 'no no of course not, it's the words that are important.'
I can and do read old books and buy plenty of them and my recent second or maybe even twelfth-hand discovery of an old and obviously well-read copy of  The Once & Future King by T.H.White was a prime example of an old book that had been lovingly read and I wanted to read it lovingly too.
I found it on that bitterly cold day in Honiton which does have several excellent second-hand bookshops all sited along the main street and all with several floors and rooms, but every one was freezing cold and whilst sales persons and their dogs were hugging little fan heaters, the rest of the shop was labouring under Arctic conditions. It all spoke of recession and entirely understandable economies but nevertheless it all felt slightly dismal and depressing. Too cold even to take gloves off but how much longer would we have stayed and how much more money might we have spent but for needing to go and find somewhere warmer.
So many people have recommended The Once & Future King, best known presumably for Book One The Sword in the Stone but less known for the others in the quartet...quartology, the right word suddenly escapes me, The Witch in the Wood, The Ill-Made Knight and The Candle in the Wind.
But then hand me a pristine new copy of a book and I'm strangely equally engaged at a much deeper level which actually could be seen as shallow rather than deep. Whereas who knows who may have gone before me as I open The Once & Future King, the new and pristine book feels like mine alone, like virgin snow.
But then there are ordinary new books and then new books that are in a class of their own.
I have never trusted myself to join The Folio Society. For years I've gazed covetously at the adverts and then balked at the price and the commitment and scared myself off. I've bought a few second-hand editions down the years, plenty of Trollope's and other favourite books that it's a treat to have in special editions, The Diary of a Provincial Lady, To the Lighthouse but when I was contacted by The Folio Society and asked if I'd like to read a selection I'm afraid I waited a polite ten seconds before whizzing off a reply in the affirmative.
So I'm a marketing puppet?
I stand accused but can you blame me?
Times are tough out there in the publishing world I'm sure but I say yes to just about everything else I'm offered, we must play fair after all.
The parcel arrived on Thursday and I was still hyperventilating on Friday afternoon.
The Letters of Jane Austen, The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliffe (can I possibly let my Inner Child sticky fingered self hold that?) and Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy.
I spent an entire evening looking, touching, sniffing, stroking and wondering whether I'd be able to summon up the courage to put the books into the TBR pile or should I get a glass display case and never touch them again.
For those of a delicate book disposition perhaps have your paper bag to hand at this point ( a bookshop one would be ideal) and if the hyperventilating thing happens, and you are sure you don't have any underlying causes beyond dovegrey Induced Book Shock (dIBS), just breath into the bag and out again v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y, those spasms in your hands will subside I promise.
So would I embellish these Folio editions with my library stamp and might I write in them as I write in every book I read, or would these feel untouchable, too sacred to scribble on?
I can see some of you fainting at the mere suggestion, that's it breath slowly...you're doing really well.
Well I think I probably might.
Jane Austen is bound in a beautiful sprigged silk moire fabric that Jane herself would most certainly have wanted for a dress. To see her letters enrobed thus is nothing short of inspirational and the feel of that fabric in my hand as I read is a sumptuous reminder that Jane wasn't averse to a little luxury now and then. Having reported to Cassandra that mother was hearty despite bowels not entirely settled, asthma and dropsy, water in her chest and a liver disorder, Jane (probably with some relief) turns her mind to fashion

To Cassandra Austin Tuesday 18 - Wednesday 19 December 1798

'I have changed my mind & changed the trimmings of my Cap this morning; they are now much as you suggested; ...I beleive I shall make my new gown like my robe, but the back of latter is all in a piece with the tail, & will 7 yards enable me to copy it in that respect.'
Rosemary Sutcliffe's The Eagle of the Ninth is majestically copper-leafed and with an introduction from Kevin Crossley-Holland and strikingly intricate illustrations by Roman Pisarev. This is already reserved for next month's Inner Child reading weekend on March 7th and I'll wash my hands first and not eat a sherbet dip at the same time (remember how you used to choke on the licorice tube straw)
Philip Pullman must be as pleased as punch with His Dark Materials, Peter Bailey's illustrations are stupendous and the author's introduction supplied me with new information and the impetus to finish reading this trilogy of which I managed one. In fact perhaps I'll start again.
I'm sure plenty of people probably collect Folio Society editions and never open them or put white gloves on when they do, and I daren't look but I'll bet there's a lucrative market and probably some rarities out there worth a small fortune, and so I'm very grateful to The Folio Society for making this whole bookish episode possible, I doubt I'd have managed it on my own.
But in the end a book is a book and to my mind these are far too good to leave unread on the shelf; of course I'll be reading them, and yes maybe even pencil  'scribbling' in them as usual, they are living breathing books and my particular attentions will bring them to life for my own shelves,(though may kill them for yours) but you'll be pleased to know I might be a bit more careful about where I put my cup of tea and all right, if you insist, I won't read them in the bath...that's it nice and slowly, breath in...breath out...and in...

and the winners are...

Copies of Thin Blue Smoke by Doug Worgul will be wafting their way to Barbara, Laura (despite thinking bubble and squeak is wonderful...vile I tell you, vile) Carole (the knit-one Carole) , Susan too (bluegenes)  and Joanie who should all have had e mails from the drawmaster by now.
Congratulations one and all, a truly lovely book which I hope you'll enjoy as much as I did.

Guernica by Dave Boling & prize draw copies

'The painting screamed, and they heard it immediately, but it took time for them to catch the whispers.'

Recent reading has all left me feeling like the ignoramus of the century what with Darwin et al, but perhaps in my defence I could suggest that my hand is now reaching for books on these 'great unknowns' to fill the waiting memory chasms left behind since the mental clear out of leaving the NHS.
The sum total of my Guernica knowledge had stuck at the famous Picasso mural painted as the artist's symbolic memorial to a massacre in a Spanish town; massacre by whom, when and why was information that had conveniently slipped beneath the radar.
Enter Dave Boling to sort out the dovegreyreader ignorance and confusion with his splendid novel Guernica, published last week by Picador.
Dave Boling a US based sports columnist, related by marriage to a Basque family and possibly before that who knows, might have known as little as me about Guernica (doubtful), but immersed in the Basque culture and heritage it soon became apparent that here was a story waiting to be told.
I have strange memories of a sunny July Sunday afternoon in Bilbao, cutural capital of the Basque region on Spain's northern coast.
We'd done the Guggenheim and yes, I'll admit we looked normal for Dartmoor but perhaps a bit unusual for Bilbao, shorts, walking boots, rucksacks whilst everyone else seemed to be promenading in their Sunday best.
After a while we both began to realise that every single person in Bilbao was staring at us intently, really intently, very intently and the stare said quite clearly ' you don't belong here'. It was one of the most uncomfortable feelings imaginable and we took refuge in the station to wait for our train to Barcelona.
To this day I haven't really been able to explain that, but reading Guernica goes some way to helping. This fiercely independent people, as Dave Boling explains, have an unwavering loyalty to their heritage and their families, they are passionate and determined and perhaps we had broken the cardinal Sunday dress-code, who knows.
Dave Boling sets the scene by populating his Guernica with a wealth of wonderful and unusual characters, ordinary but incredibly resilient people as he merges history and fiction into a single perspective on a clearly complex political situation. and yet another one not covered in Miss Spencer's history lessons.
Inevitably as I read I quickly learnt what this was all leading up to, the massacre perpetrated by a German Luftwaffe flexing its muscles in readiness for the Second World War.

'For the Basques it was an attack on the soul of their ancient nation; for the world it was an attack on humanity.'

Dave Boling invests such a tragedy with a tangible pulse, a beating heart, adding flesh, bones and blood to the symbolism of Picasso's painting for me which it could be argued has easily achieved the artist's intention of framing the event in an unknowing consciousness like mine. Picasso steadfastly refused to explain Guernica's imagery but I was completely fascinated by the analysis I found here.
One well known and oft-quoted anecdote
During World War II Picasso suffered some harassment from the Gestapo in Nazi-occupied Paris. An inquisitive German officer, coming into his apartment, noticed a photograph of Guernica lying on a table. "Did you do that?" he asked Picasso.
"No, you did," said Picasso.
With his themes of oppression, tradition, community, patriotism and loyalty all flourishing in this page-turner of a book and though I guess the final twist at the end is clearly telegraphed that doesn't detract from the read in the slightest, just kept me turning the pages to be sure things happened as I suspected.
No plans to return to Bilbao dressed like a hiker any day soon but I have come away from Guernica knowing I've read a good book and with a profoundly improved understanding of something of which I knew so little and that has to be a good thing.
Three copies of Guernica waiting to be posted from Picador to three lucky winners worldwide so names in comments and while we're on the subject, last call for entries to this prize draw happening later today and this one happening on Wednesday.

Snow + felines v canines

Firstly my absolute favourite of all the recent snow pictures. This one from Bookhound's camera which was out and about slightly earlier in the day than mine.
These days there's a huge divide between canine and feline chez dovegrey and reading a book about a dog and snow (thoughts coming later this week) has given me cause to consider it all.
The canines live and eat al fresco whilst the felines rule within and both seem happy with their lot.
Should the two meet outside there are hackles and the fur flies...dog fur where Rocky's concerned of course.
Feline supremacy indoors has achieved new and dizzying heights since I've been home this Winter.
The sitting room has become the hub of my day and is now so completely reorganised in order to cope with my every craft-like whim that really it should probably be renamed a studio.
Central to the comfort of course is the woodburning stove and a steady supply of logs which heaven knows how seem to appear with great regularity outside the door from the Log Fairy.
So the cats come back in each morning (we do evict at night) bolt a dish of food and each assume their fire-hugging position for the day, whilst the working dogs, who have had a very busy Winter, snuggle up in the kennel and straw with no knowledge of what a fire is, but they seem to thrive on it.
They are not pets and can't be treated as such.
However the Tinker sent me a picture reminding me that 'twas not ever thus.
This dog is our dear old wall-eyed Border Collie Ben who was our first-born indoor house dog.
You know, the one you get when you're first married and figuring our whether you have it in you to raise a family and think perhaps you'll raise a puppy first and see how that goes.
Ben came from a local farm and was adorable as well as intelligent beyond his species which made us tentatively think we might be able to cope with children. As a newly qualified health visitor back then I reckoned he was up with the average 18 month old child, it was the expressive speech and language that halted his progress though his comprehension was excellent and of course in some developmental areas he excelled, out of nappies  house trained at three months, slept through the night, ate everything put in front of him, obedient to commands he liked the sound of by nine months. I did take him to nursery obedience classes and of course he was a disaster, there are some things that are beneath a working sheep dog and he wasn't having any of it and the goody four-paws Shitzu bullied him so we decided to home school.
Anyway this was all a doddle, so it was with some trepidation that we decided now we must see what life with two children might be like and  accepted the offer of a kitten, Charlie.
None of our cats wear collars now and a bell would be a positive hazard when they are lying low and out of the way of foxes, but this was town living and clearly this was the fashion in the late 70s...anyone else have that Dorma duvet cover?  Quite thinking there would be jealousy and behavioural difficulties and regression, probably a tantrum or two from Ben it was to our complete astonishment that this attachment happened instantly
and that was it, we were convinced, parenthood beckoned...on the subject of which I'm not saying another word other than at least they are all good friends now.
 

My Pink Elephant

It is a formal indictment of the severity of the Winter weather when I am reduced to wearing my greatest ever knitting travesty.
Look it really was quite snowy, even the Gamekeeper was on foot.
I gather from the Tinker that when I'm as old as him I'll be given money by the government to keep warm and then I'll be able to walk around indoors in a vest and shorts all Winter, but whilst I wait for the years to pass, needs must and I have to resort to this.
The fact that I even have the nerve to get it out of the cupboard should tell you how cold it's been, but then you all know how cold it's been and though to Canadians this is probably sub-tropical, even so please understand and forgive.
It's my Pink Elephant, my worst ever knitting nightmare, the Alafoss Lopi wool jumper. They obviously know a thing or two about warmth in Iceland.
Nice Rowan pattern, tension was fine but  as I knitted I knew things were going awry and if I tell you I nigh on needed a block and tackle to get that neck picked up and knitted that should help you visualise the process.
Now years on there's really no accounting for the effects of time and gravity on a jumper that weighs a ton, bobbles and sheds fur faster than three cats and now resembles a pink fluffy knitted frock (which even I couldn't be persuaded to wear unless it was near Arctic, which it was). In fact by the time I'm the Tinker's age (deo volente) and taking into account old lady height shrinkage, there's every chance this will be a lovely Alafoss Lopi ballroom gown.
I have to overcome the gales of derisive laughter but to be honest I've gone beyond the point of caring, it hadn't been that cold in eons, and even though this thing had grown at least a foot since I last looked at it so now it's reaching my knees, it's keeping me as warm as toast.
Meanwhile other knitting has been in progress but I can't share pictures here yet because it's the hot-water bottle cover that I offered to knit in very part-exchange for this most memorable and much-loved gift.
Hot water bottle covers to Canada feels like Canada sending pasties to Cornwall, but Canada put out the plea and I responded. After a protracted search I found the most perfect wool and managed to get the design out of my head and onto the needles and to fruition with minimal frogging.
This free-range knitting is quite a new departure for me so bless Bookhound, I was working it all out loud to myself on the drive home from the woolshop in Honiton; he'd possibly glazed over by Okehampton,
'You see if I cast on enough stitches and knit one big piece...'
'Perhaps I should do it on circular needles...'
'I wonder if Canadian hot water bottles are bigger than English ones...'
'What do you think if I cast off half the stitches and carried on knitting the other half, would that make an envelope flap?'
'Would that look right?'
'Oh I've got a good idea, I could pick up and knit a sort of neck thing...'
'Got to think how to get the hot water bottle in and out though...'
Then Offspringette came over halfway through and there was further consulation and debate, it's been a right old family affair until yesterday when we finally sent it on its way and Hilary at the village post office (closing later this year...'what will you do Hilary' I asked...'I'll get a life' she answered quick as a flash) looked up Canada - air mail and we did dispatch.
Anyway, it has been a joy to knit and now it's on its way to Calgary and we can but hope that Mrs KevinfromCanada's feet enjoy it.
Back to the baby llama wool jumper and I'm keeping a very tight rein on that lest it get Icelandic notions.
Do you have any knitting travesties to share?
I'd feel comforted to know it wasn't just me.

The Otterbury Incident by C.Day Lewis

"Inspector Brook gave one look into the crate which Toppy had forced open. He muttered something about 'right under my nose - and it took a gang of kids to find out'."

It took an absolutely iron will to set aside my Grown-Up reading last weekend.
To leave The Seamstress for a few days was agony because I am loving it, but I did and as quick as a flash there I was curled up with The Otterbury Incident, my original copy and gradually noticing that all the foxing of the pages was at little person's hand level, presumably mine.
The story recounted in The Otterbury Incident actually derived by Cecil Day Lewis from a French film of the 1940s A Nous Les Gosses, but relocated in post-war England where bomb sites provided an exciting part of the landscape for adventurous children, the black market was a fabulous source of intrigue for the child detectives and the post-war gung-ho battle re-enactments offered the staple of 1950s childhood play.
We were after all the generation of children exposed to a weekly Sunday afternoon dose of monochrome war glory as the films emerged that translated all the derring do into heroic and victorious encounters of courage and bravery, and with it came a steady stream of heros and heroines to emulate in play. That said I don't remember playing at being Violette Szabo very often but Bookhound was heavily into Spitfires and Lancaster Bombers.
To this day he and I are often heard to remark on a cold, grey Sunday afternoon,
'I could just fancy watching The Dambusters...Reach for the Sky...633 Squadron'.
There will be a fanciful attempt at the theme music, bit of thumb and forefinger reversed over eyes for goggles stuff, some 'chocks away'  and ' the Mohne Dam's gone Gibbo', then I'll say how I always cry when Guy throws the dog lead in the bin at the end and we'll be over it.
That's fifty years on so little wonder then that the boys (girls didn't really count) in The Otterbury Incident published in 1948 are taking it all so seriously as the rival gangs work out their ambushes, attacks and defensive tactics in the language of the war,

' When I give the word, this party will attack the tank with automatic weapon fire. Their objective will be to divert the attention of the tank-crew and the escorting troops from the main attack.'

And so power is again handed to the children as the boys regularly gather at The Incident, which now I remember was the name given to the bomb site but by the end of the book has also come to mean another Incident of far greater import as the boys track and corner whoever has stolen their hard-earned money. The money that was supposed to pay for the repair of the broken school window (football). The rallying signal is a whistled rendition of Lillibullero and when the two gangs merge to solve the crime and go into the final battle there is no messing about; airguns, dummy hand grenades and bows and arrows abound (is this where we got the idea?) and they beat each other black and blue for real.
The book was unputdownable again and this is still amazing me, Bookhound had read it as a child too and remembered far more than I did,  but there was even more amazement to come.
How can I know someone for thirty four years and only just discover that while I was sedately learning to skip in an infant's school playground south of the River Thames, somewhere north of the river the six-year old Bookhound was being marched to the headteacher by the playground ladies.
Once in the presence he was advised that his gang actually had to disband because it had got too big and they were frightening the girls.
'What in heaven's name were you doing' I asked with some trepidation.
Apparently it was what we might now term a health and safety issue, joining hands in a great sweeping line across the width of the playground and then running full pelt the entire length, probably shouting geronimo or something, but bodies went flying and it had to stop.
'What did you do then' I asked.
'Picked flowers' he said...
Lest his leadership skills and courage be called into doubt he quickly added that he made membership cards for his next gang in the juniors, and this did involve ambushes and treacle bombs. Thankfully no fatalities but it must have been a close run thing.
This all leads me to believe that perhaps l was much safer south of the river chairing my PDSA Busy Bees club and saving milk bottle tops to turn into Guide Dogs and that thankfully my eventual meeting with Bookhound was still some sixteen years off.
Final word to Marcus Crouch in The Nesbit Tradition for a grown-up's verdict on The Otterbury Incident

'In the telling the absurd plot is given the illusion of realism by a skilful selection of details, and its improbabilities are masked by pace and brilliant timing..'

I'd have to add yet again... and the boundless limits of a childhood imagination, it all seemed perfectly plausible to me.

Happy birthday to...

I had it all planned, we'd throw a little party for Charles Darwin's 200th birthday today.
Wouldn't that be nice?
I'd have read The Origin of Species and would present a coherent account of evolutionary theory and perhaps we'd have had a little foray on board the Beagle too.
Best laid plans and all that and true to form I haven't managed either but I'm sure that's only because I've been more engrossed in The Young Charles Darwin by Keith Thomson to be published by Yale University Press any day now.
It is to Keith Thomson's credit that having opened a book that seemed unlikely to hold my attentions, he then had me interested enough in Darwin's early evolution (sorry it had to happen eventually) into that much older bearded man of the fixed and intense gaze that I am more familiar with and I kept reading. Actually, and not that strangely for me, I've always been as interested as Charles Darwin himself in his mysterious array of medical symptoms. The poor man was a walking Black's Medical Encyclopaedia with frequent vomiting, abdominal pain, flatulence, constipation, nausea, headaches, joint pains, neural tingling, the eczema flare-ups and all the twenty-first century diagnostics now favouring some form of inflammatory bowel goings-on.
No wonder the poor man descended into galloping hypochondria with panic attacks and I always find it a salutory reminder to think quite how the challenges of ill-health, doubtless made far worse by many of the remedies, must have made focused thought so much more difficult for a man like Charles Darwin. The eczema alone must have driven him to distraction and most of these symptoms well entrenched by the age of thirty though he lived to be seventy-three, all making his intellectual output even more exceptional.
I just keep picking this book up and sneaking a bit more and a bit more.
I know plenty of people who are home all day and seem to feel some strange and agonising guilt about sitting down to read in the mornings.
How can the rest of us help the poor souls?
I overcame guilt about anything at all to do with books years ago, guilt and books are completely incompatible, from spending money to spending time, the years tick on and I still have a lot of books left to read so I'll read whenever I can.
But if you do feel the slightest bit guilty and consequently furtive about morning reading then I'd say pick up non-fiction because that's studying really isn't it?
What better time to study than in the morning?
Even better a book like this and you learn so much, the Neptunists..it was the sea that did it...Vulcanists...blame it on the crust.
So now I'm home-based I'm allowed to read whenever I want; an evolution of sorts which brings me back to where I should be and Charles Darwin who also clearly suffered thus, reporting to his sister

'I have been most shockingly idle, actually reading two novels at once.'

Have no fear, the young Charles was studying medicine at Edinburgh so he was also reading A Practical Treatise on Various Diseases of the Abdominal Viscera by Pemberton and  Introduction to Conchology by Brookes.
I don't know what I thought Charles Darwin's background was or the historical context of his youth, in fact had I ever even considered the question?
Probably not but now I see that being born in 1809 places Charles Darwin in the midst of Jane Austen's (1775 - 1817) most productive years and you just wonder, were those novels hers,?
Could Jane have influenced Charles?
Then a few clicks and you see that someone else has already been there. and thought of all that.
So a book like this is taking me into the realms of new knowledge and some off the beaten track thinking, and the thrill of science and discovery that must have captured Darwin's imagination is wholly evident in Keith Thomson's very readable study.
And as I settled down to pick up the book one dark and snowy morning I had cause to consider an evolutionary puzzle of my very own.
What is it about cats and blankets?

Ten minutes ago...

...thankfully the Barn Owl alive and well in our bit of the Tamar Valley despite scarily dwindling numbers, this one perched outside the book room window several afternoons this week. Apparently lumpy, unkempt tussocky grassland is their favourite habitat, can't think of a better way of describing our garden at the moment.
 

The Glassblower of Murano by Marina Fiorato and prize draw copies.

I have always enjoyed a good historical novel, ever since those Anya Seton's and Jean Plaidy's used to fly around the Form 3C classroom and I still have some of my contributions to the central lending pot. We'd all buy different ones and then they'd start the circuit, nothing nicer than opening your desk lid to drag out the French vocab and find a well-thumbed Jean Plaidy waiting for you.
However in recent years I think I might have been suffering from Headless Woman Fatigue Syndrome.
So many historical novels now sporting the headless heaving bosom, even dear old Jean's gone headless, and whilst I appreciate the significance in that many of the women did indeed end up sans capita (sorry is that a bit of a mongrel invention, a French-Latin concoction)  it nevertheless seemed to be sending me a subliminal message along the lines of 'read one I've read them all,' which of course is rubbish.
But place them together like this and what a stunningly rich and alluring design feature they make and the marketing thought doubtless exactly that, read one and love it and you'll safely pick up and read every other Headless Woman book, yes even War & Peace.
So I felt I needed to find a way back in to join the party again and have The Lady and the The Poet by Maeve Haran lined up but plumped for The Glassblower of Murano by Marina Fiorato published by Beautiful Books to set the head ball rolling.
Firstly I've never been to Venice so I bring to this book nothing beyond the assurance from everyone else that it is a magical place and really we should go one day and preferably on this.
Leonora Manin, a direct descendant of the great 17th century Venetian glass artist Corradino Manin heads to Venice to follow in Corradino's footsteps and ply her trade as a glassblower on the Isle of Murano. There is of course treachery afoot and the past is inevitably going to reveal its darkest secrets as Leonora becomes the advertising gift that the company have been looking for. If a Manin can't turn around the ailing fortunes of the business then no one can.
Interestingly given the current financial nightmare dominating the news right now,the book more than dips a toe, albeit unwittingly, in the real world
Now please don't think I'm being derogatory or judgemental when I say this isn't high end literary fiction, more one of those books you'd read on holiday or when some relief from the rigours of serious reading call. After a bout of ultra-serious reading of late The Glassblower of Murano was the perfect antidote. The plot weaves back and forth from 17th century Venice to the present day as old feuds surface and Leonora's life starts to become deeply embroiled in that of her elusive ancestor's. Having perfected the art of mirror-making it was obvious Corradino might be head-hunted (sorry) by the very person who needed a big batch order fulfilled and the unravelling of quite how Corradino becomes Versailles mirror-maker extraordinaire to Louis XIV of France kept me involved to the final page.
Don't worry, I've given nothing away, this much is on the back cover blurb.
Twists and turns abound and I was also intrigued by Marina Fiorato's technical detail here. Making a flawless mirror took a lot of puff and one heck of a great big parison which you've then got to put on your pontello, carefully slice your bubble and watch what happens. Plenty can go wrong at the next stage too which is the mercury dip and of course no COSHH regulations in 1681.
It was all fascinating enough to make me want to have a go...could I do it in the Aga top oven?
So if you fancy a trip to Venice from your armchair with a headless woman for company it's easy, names in comments because there are three prize draw copies of The Glassblower of Murano ready and waiting for Beautiful Books to send to the lucky winners, and in the meantime I'd love some good recommends from the Headless Woman genre, any suggestions?

and the winners are...

The three lucky winners of Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie should have had an email from The Paw himself by now, congratulations to Lucy WW, Janice (jisho) and Cate (rosesbleu).

Le Bal - Irene Nemirovsky

I'm still slowly working my way through available Irene Nemirovsky's and this litle book, Le Bal which also contains Snow in Autumn was next on the shelf.
Two novellas it is possible to read in one sitting for each.
I've now had to look up the difference between a novella and a short story again and I'm still as confused as I ever was, though I think these both fit the novella definition

'a fictional tale in prose, intermediate in length and complexity between a short story and a novel, and usually concentrating on a single event or chain of events, with a surprising turning point.'

Le Bal has to be the nearest to an autobiographical yet fictional account of Irene's own troubled and distant relationship with her mother. Might writing this have purged Irene of any revenge she wished to wreak on her mother?
Antoinette Kampf is an impressionable Parisian teenager, the daughter of a German Jewish immigrant Alfred who converts to the Catholicism of his wife Rosine, she of the very uncertain background. Once unaccustomed wealth arrives via the Stock Market the couple enter into just about every misguided endeavour and pitfall that it is humanly possible for the nouveau riche to stumble upon. 
To watch it happen from the wings as a reader is excruciating, both wry in the observation but in reality hopelessly sad.
Likewise Antoinette maintains a detachment from the follies of her parents whilst engaged in the particularly unpleasant all-out war she has with her mother. When Rosine decides to give a ball to affirm their position in Parisian society and, on the spur of the moment, Antoinette then settles on her revenge I was completely torn between feelings of glee at the come-uppance and mortification at Rosine's embarrassing fate which is inevitable.
This little story an object lesson in something we all know now and which still to an extent remains wrapped and tangled in the lasting remnants of class, money doesn't buy status and especially so in 1930s Paris, whilst the final little human twist of the knife, 'the surprising turning point' of the novella that Irene Nemirovsky offers at the end of this story, closes this little piece in a pitch perfect key.
Nicely contrasted is Snow in Autumn, still displaying those poignant underlying themes of exile and loss so intrinsic to Irene Nemirovsky's writing  but in this case matters are reversed as the 'haves' become the 'have-nots' as the wealthy White Russian Karine family find themselves dispossessed and fleeing to Paris to escape persecution in their homeland in 1917. Told through the eyes of the faithful family nanny Tatiana who seems to observe so much more than the family themselves in much the same way as Antoinette.
Irene Nemirovsky seemingly so good, and the more I read the more I see it, at choosing exactly the right pair of well-placed eyes to see and tell her story, a writer capable of looking through many different windows as she constructs her House of Fiction.
Both these novellas confirming for me Jonathan Weiss's assertion that Irene's 'Russian and French selves were inseparable'. Like many of the upper class population Irene grew up in Russia speaking only French, the Russian language considered suitable only for the lower classes if I recall my Orlando Figes Natasha's Dance correctly, which along with the frequent fleeing into exile, though doubtless adding to confusion of identity, most certainly also prepared Irene to think and write across this broad and varied spectrum.
I'm going to have to ration soon, only two translated books left.

Calling Australia...

... we've been watching the news from Victoria here this morning, ignore our whinging pom bit of snow, your fires look utterly devastating, hoping that all dovegrey visitors and family and loved ones are safe, thoughts are with you all.

PS Thin Blue Smoke Prize Draw copies.

Postscript: A lovely e mail from Doug this morning to let me know that you can find all the recipes and playlists for Thin Blue Smoke here and my thanks to Macmillan who have offered five prize draw copies which they will send worldwide, so names in  comments on that post (not this one or Rocky will get confused) and we'll draw in a week's time.
Also last chance saloon for entries to the Burnt Shadows prize draw, the draw master is waking from his slumbers and thinking about exercising his paw.

Thin Blue Smoke - Doug Worgul & prize draw copies

'Thin Blue Smoke is an epic redemption tale, the story of two men coming to terms with their pasts. It is also a novel about faith, race, storytelling, bourbon, the language of rabbits, and the finer points of barbecue technique.'

Right, so a novel about barbecues (for heavens' sake don't spell it barbeques, LaVerne and A.B. would see you coming a mile away) a fairly heavy emphasis on both Evangelical and Episcopalian Christianity with some full-on services and a sermon or two recounted verbatim, a man who thinks Richard Adams is in charge of the world and Watership Down is the blueprint for life (I'm not sure how Warren...yes he's really called Warrren... felt about crossing the road, probably not good)  and masses of Delta Blues and Gospel musical references that don't feature in my albeit rather limited collection of Joni Mitchell CDs, and you could be right in thinking that this would be a book I'd shove to the bottom of the pile and get to eventually.
I so nearly did and I'm so very delighted that I didn't because this has been another great read from the Macmillan New Writing stable which so far haven't disappointed. It got the first fifty page treatment and I carried right on reading and I have only one complaint, where's the CD?
If ever a book should come with a CD this is it, or a Thin Blue Smoke iTunes download?
Because I am now desperate to hear the playlist that I accumulated as I read including,
Come on Children Let's Sing - Mahalia Jackson
Roadhouse Blues - The Doors
Chain of Love - Big Joe Turner
Riverside Blues - Robert Johnson
and then the Rabbit CD, oh I have to hear that now, every rabbit song ever, brilliant.
Next let's get this sorted right away and I must therefore own up to the shockingly awful state of my US geographical knowledge because this book is set in Kansas City which I thought was bound to be in Kansas and Kansas was probably...er...well...in the middle somewhere.
Well, almost right because Kansas is sort of in the middle but also wrong because Kansas City is in Missouri and I expect you all knew that, but for anyone else who wants to brush up here's some help.

So now that we've sorted the location, and it really helps to do that because this book has a profound and powerful sense of place, what of the book?
Ordinary people living ordinary yet fascinating lives in the hands of  Doug Worgul and all centred around a barbecue joint on the corner of 17th and Walnut called Smoke Meat owned by ex-baseball player LaVerne Williams and his teacher wife Angela. This is America held in the thrall of Martin Luther King and gathered behind the counter and around the tables at Smoke Meat a cast of wonderfully engaging characters creating a place that rather oddly I actually felt I belonged to for the duration of the book. The narrative flows effortlessly back and forth filling in histories and events in everyone's lives, each chapter often feeling like a short story in its own right but all wrought with a finely balanced blend of seriousness and humour that isn't easy to achieve.
I knew when to laugh and I knew when not to is about as simply as I can put it.
Infused with themes which sound a bit hackneyed but trust me they are not, of love and forgiveness, faith and doubt, giving and receiving, prejudice and tribulation and a sense of a community somehow in touch with its inner godliness, whatever that might mean and wherever it lay. Thin Blue Smoke has been a mouth-watering, soul-feeding pleasure to read and I emerged nicely marinated in the old ways of Kansas City, Missouri, as if I'd lived there and if I'd known the tune I'd have hummed along to the congregation singing at LaVerne's baptism in Trinity River,

'When peace like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot thou hast taught me to say,
It is well; it is well with my soul.
It is well with my soul.
It is well with my soul
It is well; it is well with my soul.'

Even lapsed Anglicans like me can still appreciate the old glory and a bit of delving revealed something else I didn't know about this hymn, and now I see that in the context of this moment in the book, its placement is pitch perfect.
However mention of mouth-watering reading does lead me to my final beef complaint.
No recipes...actually I'm wrong the ingredients for LaVerne's beans are in there, but now I want to try Vinegar Pie (seriously, everyone else was eating masses of it, except me) and what about LaVerne's barbecue sauce (I know it's a secret recipe but I wouldn't tell anyone) and I'm worried to ask but what is 'Pulled chuck' or might I prefer ' Burnt Ends'?
So in the absence of the CD, the iTunes download and the recipes we'll have to make do with this...absolutely top drawer brilliant, makes me want to read the book all over again.

Postscript: A lovely e mail from Doug this morning to let me know that you can find the recipes and playlists here and my thanks to Macmillan who have offered five prize draw copies of Thin Blue Smoke which they will send worldwide so names in  comments and we'll draw in a week's time.
Also last chance saloon for entries to the Burnt Shadows prize draw, the draw master is waking from his slumbers and thinking about exercising his paw.

Sunday Salon - The Lane in Snow

There's nothing like a week of snow confinement to prolong that wayward Domestic Goddess Thermal and time to work the regular kitchen miracle.
To get to either end of the house all traffic must pass through the kitchen, it really is the heart of the home, the main arterial route and most traffic deposits detritus in transit. Eventually someone just has to leg it all around in the general direction of its owner and this is far quicker than waiting for the owner to return and collect, and it's often me.
But Agas also seem to create dust and so there are always shelves to wipe and yes, I love the open plate racks, they look perfect but have you tried to clean them? Then we have a heady mix of Delabole slate, granite and maple surfaces which all benefit from some tender loving care now and again.
So no matter what needs doing things begin with a big sink of hot soapy water and the view from the sink is of a lovely little shelf and window that used to look out onto garden but now looks out onto jars of marmalade and more kitchen (my north facing ice-cold larder is also in there) leading to more house, but it's a perfect little spot for contemplative pondering and the shelf always houses a bookstand with book and some 'nice' things to look at.
This year I have returned to Poem for the Day for the bookstand. We've done both volumes several times over on this shelf so to help decide between Volume One or Volume Two I decided I'd look for a sign, a message from within.
I turned to February 7th in both, Volume One was stirring stuff

' This royal throne, this sceptered isle.
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-Paradise;
This fortress built by nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war;
This happy breed of men, this little world...

and I was convinced I had a winner, John of Gaunt, Richard II, surely nothing could eclipse this?
But then I turned to Volume Two and there it was, The Bee's Last Journey to the Rose by Brian Patten

'I came first through the warm grass
Humming with Spring,
and now swim through the evening's sunlight gone cold.
I'm old in this green ocean,
Going a final time to the rose...'

and all you need to see now is a picture of all the little things that sit on this meditative shelf to know why I chose Volume Two for this year's sink contemplations.

I can't imagine anyone anywhere wants to see another single picture of UK snow because the world must be sick of hearing how we don't cope, but it does make everything look so perfect I'm afraid I couldn't resist. These pictures are the dregs of everyone else's snow so not that deep, but still a generous amount for the normally temperate Tamar Valley, but then of course the next night we had the first pickings, snow of our own which we then generously sent on to the rest of the nation.
Yes, the West Devon heap big blizzard took everyone by surprise mainly because, having huddled around the local TV weather forecast to be assured that we would be having slushy rain and the snow would only affect the Eastern side of the county, everyone went about their travelling business as normal and had to be rescued, except us, we stayed indoors and ate marmalade...oh yes and we fed the birds who were in a terrible panic over their buried table.

As for the sight that will be most unusally welcome this week?
Well our love-hate relationship with the Calor Gas tanker continues, that great big lorry that blocks the lane and splurges hundreds of pound coins into our big underground tank (well that's what it feels like, I can never bear to watch), this week the love-hate thing takes a new turn, I may have to hug the driver when he finally shows up because very soon we'll be heating water, the Aga and us on fumes alone.

Is this the way to wear a Billow?

I just KNOW there's a tune for those words somewhere...do you sense it too?
I wonder whether anyone else has controlling and emotional feet like mine?
I can look at a shoe like this, nothing outrageous, nice pair of Manolo's and my mind will think...hmm imagine what they'd do for my height, take me up to about 5ft 10, wouldn't my legs look long and slender, wouldn't I look elegant, wouldn't I feel elegant... and my feet start to curl up and throb and say don't be so ridiculous and cry.

Then I look at these and think.. hmm, boring, staid, old-fashioned, frumpy, country bumpkin...and my feet start to smile and glow and radiate good cheer.
To walk any distance or stand for any length of time these days I have to be wearing my Brasher shoes and Smartwool socks, there can be no other combination.
 
This is sad enough in December, even more so in August and stylishly elegant they are not.
So when Justine Picardie mentioned that she had bought a pair of Billows and her feet and subsequently her back were both in seventh heaven I was intrigued and had to explore further.
I just imagine Justine's feet to be clad in the height of fashion after all, in fact I've shared a platform with Justine's feet and I know that they are, and even if they're not she still looks stylish and elegant (me, I'd just look like I was wearing a pair of wellies,) so if Justine says Billows are allowed then I'm alright.
It can be tricky to keep abreast of the fashion trends hiding down here and to be honest I don't really try. I browse the catalogues for the styles and then see what I can cobble together myself and what I must avoid at all costs. Then I revert to my old Monsoon denim skirt and some Primarkartney (sounds better and please I know it's wrong and I'm sorry, but I just can't face thinking about the ethics of the shop) layers and carry on as usual.
The Toast catalogue is my favourite, can't justify the cost of any of it (except the trousers which are my perfect fit) until it's reduced by at least 80% in their archive sales and then only a pair of fingerless gloves, but the catalogue itself is always a beautiful work of art.
Then there's Boden and much as I love the occasional Boden garment I can't really be seen wearing most of it, mismatched skirts, a conglomeration of polka dots and florals, plus I'm sure I still have post-traumatic stress disorder from going to a Boden sale and I get flashbacks. Really, it was much worse than the blackhole of Calcutta, I rang Bookhound from the corner I was trapped in by a solid and impenetrable phalanx of screaming babies in buggies, while their mothers scrambled over tables fighting for a jumper reduced by 10%, and he rang Boden and they rang the people at the sale and the room was cleared, it was hideous.
So I took a look at the Fitflops Billows and listened to what my feet had to say.
My feet replied instantly, in fact they positively screamed 'buy them this minute' so I had no choice, when my feet scream I listen
Fitflops were apparently last year's hottest thing which I hope doesn't mean they will be this year's 'so last year' thing but I care not because my shearling-lined Billows floated in and onto my feet and I embraced the wobbleboard technology soles within seconds. Apparently this is the way to exercise your legs and glutes without knowing a thing about it, how good is that? Reduce plantar pain, even better.

Remember the 1960's excruciating agony of Dr Scholl's wooden exercise sandals? Crippled as your toes gripped that wooden sole for dear life because they were all the rage, look mine even had psychedelic flowers clipped on, but there was still no way I could run for the bus in them that's for sure. As you can see this was also my mum's hand-knitted aran jumper phase and don't miss my homemade velvet choker whatever you do. Don't laugh, that skirt and shirt came from Martin Ford's, anyone remember them? 28/- from my Saturday job in Woolworth's and I could afford an outfit in Martin Ford's and still have some left for trousers from Chelsea Girl.
I think I could probably walk miles in my Billows and catch many buses but my only mistake has been to mention the patent-pending triple density micro-wobbleboard insole element because this has unleashed a mass of Rolf Harris jokes along with several lines of Tie Me Kangaroo Down whenever I walk in the room, but I am impervious because my feet are quietly cocooned and in a condition of pure bliss.
I just can't decide the right way to wear them.
Fur up or fur down? Please advise.

Inner Child Weekend 2

Second weekend in the month, time to set aside my Outer Grown-Up reading and heed the Inner Child again and I have been looking forward to this at least since the last one ended. I'm wondering how easy it will be to set aside the grown-up reading this time because I have some brilliant books on the go, but as my last choices all worked their magic bar one I shall just have to be disciplined about it in that eight-year old way I used to be so good at.
Somehow Malcolm Saville did not survived this time round. Perhaps I'd topped up my Inner Child sufficiently and needed no more but sadly The Mystery at Witchend remains unfinished.
However a big part of the anticipation has been thinking exactly what I will pull off the shelves this time and I think I have another fine selection.
We used to spend family holidays in the early 1960s with one of those honorary aunts and uncles that your parents collect for you; their friends who you'd call Auntie and Uncle because to use first names would have been considered incredibly precocious and impolite. Uncle B. ran a market garden in Tintagel before Tintagel was ever commercialised and Auntie P. taught at the primary school in nearby Delabole. They had three boys and we would all head off (well one was still a baby so we sensibly left him behind) sans grown-ups, to explore Valency Valley, St Nectan's Glen and Merlin's Cove, all very adventurous and as the only girl I really had to fly the bravado flag and keep up.
Being a teacher Auntie P. knew all the right books for 1960's children and it was whilst staying in Tintagel that I first and most memorably read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S.Lewis. But another Auntie P. book selection was The Otterbury Incident by C.Day Lewis and I remember being enthralled by both the story and the delightful Edward Ardizzone illustrations, so that has gone onto my pile for this weekend. I can't for the life of me remember quite what the Incident was (DON'T TELL ME) so I'm looking forward to this one and this is my original copy, even better.
Next, The Family From One End Street by Eve Garnett.
This was a school Going Home Time read and I can see Miss Butteriss (Butterdish) reading it and see myself sitting on the floor in Blue Class listening intently and not wanting it to end. Before we knew it it was prayers and chairs on desks and we were out, but I'll bet I wandered down Sherwood Park Road in Mitcham towards the 118 bus stop, thinking deeply about the Ruggles family. This would have also meant my brother and I would not have been having our usual debate about whether to spend our bus money in the chewing gum machine instead (because the arrow was pointing forward and this meant a free packet next go) and then walking home across Mitcham Common and a quick explore of Seven Islands Pond ( OMG imagine that now... a Common and a pond) and having to explain why we were so late when we finally walked in the door. I suspect the state of our shoes gave the game away.
I can't keep my hands off Magnolia Buildings by Elizabeth Stucley a minute longer either. A book erased from my memory until I found it in Topsham a  few weeks ago and recognised the cover in an instant.
But how old was I?
Looking inside the book I'm now recalling the recent furore over age-banding children's books because interestingly each of these old Puffins gives an age-banding inside and this one is for 'ten years and over'.
Finally The Silver Sword by Ian Serraillier and this one I know was one of the library holiday reading contest reads but my recollections are sketchy verging on non-existent, which all goes to prove I was reading like the blazes to get my card ticked, I'll slow down this time round.
Well, that's me sorted, how about you?
Anyone want to join my gang?
Password - sausages, but don't tell anyone else.

London Belongs to Me by Norman Collins

Without leaving Devon I seem to have spent an inordinate amount of literary time away recently, New Zealand, France, Austria, Japan, Afghanistan, New York, Russia, Kansas (twice), Canada, Sweden but not a lot on home turf and I hadn't realised this until  London Belongs to Me by Norman Collins arrived from Penguin Modern Classics. Suddenly I felt that literary homesickness, I've been away a bit too long, time to settle down and read about home.
I've unwittingly gathered a few in this series with the striking greyscale  covers and the tiniest hint of an orange Penguin lest we forget, and I like them.
I had never heard of this book or of Norman Collins but I now discover that he initially worked in publishing for Oxford University Press and then Victor Gollancz before moving into a career in broadcasting ending up as head honcho at BBC Television. This having previously been the initiator of Woman's Hour and the creator of Dick Barton whilst Controller of BBC Radio's Light Programme in the mid-1940s. Just looking at the show list of the Light Programme is enough to start a huge wave of nostalging, The Clitheroe Kid, Does the Team Think?, Hancock's Half Hour, Music While You Work, The Navy Lark...
After something of a fallout Norman Collins left the BBC in 1950, taking all his insider knowledge with him no doubt, and set up Auntie's first real competitor ATV. See, you learn something every day and I'm delighted that in amongst all this Norman Collins found time to write books too and even more delighted that I'm reading London Belongs to Me.
I love London and feel a real exhilaration whenever I visit. Gone are the days I used to know when London  went quiet in the evenings, it feels constantly vibrant and the bustle never ceases to excite. It's only two hours on the 7.52am train from Exeter now so I often go up for a day armed with a list of places to visit...Loop in Islington, Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood, The Women's Library, something at the V&A, stop off in Bloomsbury and of course my plans are far too ambitious and I end up collapsing onto the train home that evening having managed about two of them.
I wonder if Norman Collins would have been insulted or honoured if I called him a sort of male version of Barbara Pym? Because after a hundred pages of this very wry, very funny and acutely observant and readable book that's where I'm at with my early thoughts. At 738 pages, early thoughts will have to do for now because I'll be an age reading this.
First published in 1945, London Belongs to Me kicks off on Christmas Eve 1938, this is ordinary London unwittingly on the brink of war but with life carrying on as usual. Centred so far around Mrs Vizzard's respectable boarding house at 10 Dulcimer Street, Kennington one of the residents Mr Josser has just returned home to start his retirement having been blessed with a rather embarrassed farewell from his office colleagues of forty-three years and the gift of a weighty and by all accounts ugly marble clock (which he drops on the way home as he gets off the tram). I was instantly reminded of Barbara Pym's excellent Quartet in Autumn with much added humour but also poignant undertones of sadness that could only be applied retrospectively.
We all know what's coming in 1939, Mr Josser et al didn't.
It's early days I and I think there's a murder in the offing so the Pym analogy might fall by the wayside. I also discover that there was a 1948 film starring Alistair Sim and Richard Attenborough which I surely must have seen.This book so deserving of a reincarnation and a priceless fictional look at London as it was, 884,000 copies sold first time round, that might be a bit ambitious in this day and age but it deserves to do well again.
Happily alongside I have the second in Allen Saddler's trilogy The Long and The Short. The first Bless 'Em All was set in London during the Blitz and I warmed completely to the story and to Allen Saddler's honesty,

'... peopled by a lovable and sometimes less lovable cast of characters, and not always the stereotypes we might assume.You get a real sense of the desperation and disruption of people's lives and the hardships and constraints of the constant bombing.There were few if any reasons to be cheerful and more often than not people weren't and Allen Saddler certainly tells it very much like it probably was.'

Burnt Shadows - Kamila Shamsie... and three prize-draw copies

...a time
               to recollect
every shadow, everything the earth was losing,

a time to think of everything the earth
and I had lost,of all

                that I would lose,

of all that I was losing.

- Agha Shahid Ali,
A Nostalgist's Map of America

Just one of two beautiful epigraphs used by Kamila Shamsie at the beginning of Burnt Shadows and if an epigraph is to pave the way for what comes next then this one appealed instantly and completely to my sensibilities. Something told me I was going to love this book.
There's nothing more welcome in January than a beautifully wrapped review copy of a book, the cockles of my heart glowed as it came out of the envelope robed in blue and with the discovery still not quite complete, another layer to remove and somehow my heart leaps with it all.
See what a marketing push-over I am?
Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie then revealed with one of those breath-taking book covers, the sort I'd decorate a room to match,
That's it, my soul is already paying attention.
I had heard very little about Kamila Shamsie since I read Salt and Saffron so long ago I will need to revisit it now, but tucked inside my copy was an interview with Kamila published in the Daily Telegraph in April 2005. Fascinating to read now because it obviously presages Burnt Shadows and Kamila Shamsie's words remains true to this new and astonishing book,

'I am writing about actual Pakistanis rather than stereotypes, the knock-on effect is to confront those stereotypes. People come up and tell me that my novels give them a very different idea of the place.'

The fact that I had kept this means that Kamila Shamsie was on my mental 'A' list of writers to read about and follow, then I sort of forgot and somehow missed reading the subject of this piece Broken Verses, but with themes of fundamentalism and its effect on people's lives I suspect it was a book that intuitively led to the writing of Burnt Shadows.
This is a brave and exquisitely crafted novel, beautifully written and a clever book too because Kamila Shamsie takes as her over-arching theme sixty years of history but begins in the here and now with a prisoner, as yet unknown, arrested in 2002 and about to be taken to Guantanamo Bay.
Identifying and exploring the possibility of connections between events from Nagasaki to Indian partition thence to New York in the aftermath of 9/11, whilst weaving in Afghanistan ever-present in the background and occasionally the foreground and thereby creating  a huge and potentially sprawling canvas to work with, is nothing less than ambitious. Keeping order over such a vast amount of material no mean feat, like herding narrative cats, yet Kamila Shamsie maintains perfect command leaving me beyond impressed as I turned the final page.
The people are the matrix as the book unfurls in Nagasaki on August 9th 1945 and with a telling first part of the book entitled The Yet Unknowing World. We know of course that the unlikely couple Hiroko Tanaka and her Berlin friend Konrad Weiss are about to face yet again the devastating trauma that just four days previously had been unknown to mankind. Hiroko is wearing her mother's kimono and here begins the significance of the three black cranes on the cover of the book, those birds embroidered on the back of the kimono burn themselves into the skin on Hiroko's back, a brand that will remain with her for life.
Cranes symbolic of so much, an intermediary between heaven and earth, immortality, a herald of death or war, protective motherhood, vigilance (I didn't know all that by the way but J.C.Cooper did, his Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Traditional Symbols never far from my right hand and at times like this can reveal hidden depths)  and so many of these themes surface and are explored in Burnt Shadows that I can hardly imagine a better choice.
Hiroko survives 'that unspeakable day' now forever to be known as 'hibakusha' and deciding to leave Japan she travels to India to seek out Konrad's sister and her family.

'She had not thought of destination as much as departure, wheeling through the world with the awful freedom of of someone with no one to answer to...a figure out of myth...who loses everything and is born anew in blood.'

Konrad's sister Ilse instantly recognises that from the crucible of intense suffering something very special and indelible has been cast and forged in Hiroko

' Here was one who would squeeze the sun in her fist if she ever got the chance; yes, and tilt her head back to swallow its liquid light.'

Carefully Kamila Shamsie plants the foundations of the insidious tentacles of terrorism within this cataclysmic nuclear event and plots them intuitively through the events of history and across continents whilst paying careful attention to so much else besides.
There is a profound sense of place to everywhere Kamila Shamsie turns her attentions. Nagasaki, war-torn but still revealing elements of sheer beauty, 

'the glassy loveliness of frost flowers in winter, seas of blue azaleas in summer...'

Delhi oppressively hot,

'The sun is possessive of this city in the summer - it wants all its beauty to itself, so it chases everyone away.'

Afghanistan another war-torn country but a place of vast and impressive beauty and constantly lingering in my mind the question, who is going to be the prisoner of the first page, shackled, stripped and about to be dressed in the orange jumpsuit who wonders to himself

'How did it come to this.'

It is rare indeed for a book to ambush me with welling tears but Burnt Shadows did it more than once, and I am left feeling as sure as I ever can be that this will be one of  the year's important novels and whilst I am making no predictions...oh hang it all why not...this book has got Booker long list (if it's entered that is....waving to James Naughtie... call it in if it's not) and who can know what else, writ large and I have no doubt we will be hearing much more about it in the months to come.
There I've been and gone and said it now and it's only February but don't fret, you too can have a chance to decide for yourselves, Bloomsbury have three prize draw copies of Burnt Shadows ready to post out worldwide to three lucky winners. At the last count dovegreyreader now gets visitors from ninety-eight countries so that includes all of you, names in comments and perhaps start thinking about decorating the room to match the book whilst I, talking of herding cats, go and wake the slumbering draw master.

We waited and we waited until...

...finally this morning we get the rest of the country's left-overs...

Shadow - Karin Alvtegen

The arrival of a Karin Alvtegen is always a fine enough reason to set aside other books and indulge in something I know will keep me agog from cover to cover and Shadow was no exception.
It's some time since I'd read Shame and I was intrigued to go back and read my thoughts of June 13th 2007 as well as noting a comment from Andrea at Canongate about the publication of Shadow in February 2009. I see that this was also the moment I created my Literature in Translation shelf and it was good to read that because I'd been hunting high and low for Shame this week,so I'm delighted that I've reminded myself where it is. The translation shelf is still there and I love that particular book corner, it would now seem odd to remix these books in with the main.
The shadow in question hovers throughout the book, whether as the shadow of the past, the child walking in the shadow of the parent, that vicious cycle that past events can create for the present and one profession particular comes in for Karin Alvtegen's particularly astute brand of scrutiny. If you want to avoid one line of work that can be about pressing the self-destruct button and watching the carnage descend then whatever you do don't become a writer.
Noble prize-winning author Alex Ragnerfeldt lies in his nursing home bed, a victim of locked-in syndrome, paralysed but for the occasional and rather unpredictable use of one little finger, a great man reduced and imprisoned in a body that won't work but with a mind that will. Meanwhile it is Alex's son Jan-Erik who cuts a rather arrogant figure as he parades around the literary circuit to keep his father's name and work in the Swedish nation's literary consciousness.
But uppskakande and ohygglighet (that could be really wrong) there are skeleton's in cupboards and the desertion of a little boy on the steps of a fun fair carrying a note 'Take care of this child. Forgive me,' sets the ball rolling for them all to start rattling.
Except whose cupboard is rattling?
This is the joy of Karin Alvtegen's writing because you can never be sure until the final page and there will be plenty of little false trails along the way, but in the process expect to see the seamier side of a writer's life exposed with all its glamour and glory, lies and secrets, all the deceits and conceits and a book that will take you willingly to the final page to find out. These are interesting books to try and categorise, not quite crime though there is enough of it, not quite thrillers, not quite suspense but a wonderful mixture of elements of all three and I love them for that
One sentence of many that rang so true,
'A life without sorrow is a symphony without bass notes.'

Suddenly I realise I've opened a Nordic reading thread without meaning to because alongside I have The Dog by Kersten Ekman and am reminded that I opened and closed Blackwater many moons ago having decided the time wasn't quite right for a book about

'hideous murders...bodies stabbed so violently that the feathers from their sleeping bag scatter the ground...dark and quite unexpected conclusion...disturbing...'

Then I see that I've dated the arrival of the book as January 2006 which probably explains it. I know my limits in January.
The Dog meanwhile is I suspect one of those books to twang the strings of a dog-lover's heart and then settle them down again by the end, at least that's what I'm hoping or I shall wish I hadn't started that one in January either. If this dog ends up in a trap or worse a casserole, I won't be happy.
More Swedish reading now flashing at me from the Nordic shelf since I've browsed there.
The Emigrants by Vilhelm Moberg was so good I dashed off and bought the other three in the series so it might be time to open Book Two, Unto a Good Land.
Just exactly how many times have I started Kristin Lavrandsdatter by Sigrid Undset and come unstuck with all the Nordic names?
Then again perhaps for me despite the allure of all that snow, the Nordic shelf is best visited in the bright,light, long endless days of summer.

White Guard by Mikhail Bulgakov

'As is always the case in Russia, the legend is beautiful. History is terrible.'

The scour of the shelves for some new Russian reading unearthed a very nice copy of White Guard by Mikhail Bulgakov published by Yale University Press, incidentally Mikhail Bulgakov's first and most autobiographical novel, and in this edition complete with an incredibly insightful introduction by Evgeny Dobrenko. I discover that he is a professor in the Department of Russian Studies at Sheffield University and therefore knows what he's talking about when he elaborates on the suggestion above and further that,

'To live in history is always disagreeable. In Russian history it is unbearable.'

Mikhail Bulgakov another of those writers I'd read bits of but never quite completely immersed myself in. A Country Doctor's Notebook was about the extent of it plus the knowledge that he was a trained doctor. I hadn't realised that Bulgakov had given all that up in 1920 to devote himself to literature thus bringing with him that rare doctor's eye view of any given situation.
Increased and regular Russian reading is proving fruitful and very rewarding because I'm finally starting to get my bearings, albeit still a bit shaky, within the time frame of Russian history. I'm sure Miss Spencer didn't cover this at school back in the 1960s; with the Cold War at its height she probably thought it was safer to stick to the Egyptians and throw in some Tudors, which she did with gusto and which I loved.
Evgeny Dobrenko's introduction therefore became something of a frequent reference point for the reading of this book, because it provides both backdrop and explanation often not evident within the narrative of White Guard and without it I would surely have floundered. However the shaky grasp on who's who and what's what possibly forgiveable given Bulgakov's own experience of ten out of fourteen coups, but all the same Evgeny was a godsend.
So to Kiev and 'Great was the year and terrible the Year of Our Lord 1918,' and prepare to live through the turbulent days of revolution when it was virtually impossible to know which side was winning, and if you did discover who was in charge it was likely to have changed within days, often hours.
The life of the Turbin family is surrounded and infiltrated by this chaos and confusion, replete with misinformation and terror, and thanks to Mikhail Bulgakov's wonderfully immediate writing style it was akin to being at the epicentre of the earthquake with a very astute but chatty friend as events unfolded. As the leaden atmosphere starts to descend on the city, flagstones boom under footsteps, people are distraught and crushed and every so often a blanket of snow submerges all, but the fear and sense of doom are palpable,

'In the north, the blizzard kept howling, and here, under the their feet, the earth's belly, alarmed, rumbled forlornly and growled. The year 1918 was rushing to a close, and each day it was even more terrible and bristly...the city was noisy but in a muffled, evening way...'

Bulgakov adopts a matter-of-factness, almost a detached eye to the wider violence and I wonder whether that was a combination of the doctor's eye for black humour combined with the sheer quantity of heads leaving bodies neath rattling sabres, yet when it comes to delineating illness or injury to a member of the family I quite thought I was in the room too. The descriptions of pain defy description, if you see what I mean. Bulgakov clearly capable of bringing both a medical and a literary element to these moments thus creating something immensely powerful

'...it read 39.6...Great he said licking his dry lips from time to time...I hope the arm can be saved because without my arm...a dry stinging fever reached from his wound all the way to his armpit and spread through his body. Sometimes if filled his entire chest and muddled his head, while his feet turned numb with cold...the dense silver ball had climbed and reached the 40.2 mark...'

Hats off to the translator Marian Shwartz who helpfully explains the difficulties of preserving the language of a text that is something of a 'kaleidoscopic whirl' and one which,

'teems with imagist sights and sounds, which not only give the page an exciting experimental texture but form a web of connections.'

I for one picked up all of this and more as I read, so for me this translation was a huge success and I knew I'd read a classic when I turned the final page but talking of Mikhail Bulgakov's superlative imagery how about this,

'The world's best shelves of books, which smelt like mysterious old chocolate'

Go and sniff one now...he's right.

dovegreynewsround

I get all sorts of interesting e mails in the course of the week so I thought an occasional news round-up might be handy to pass it all on.

From Penguin news of a forthcoming book

'How Not to Write a Novel: 200 Mistakes To Avoid At All Costs If You Ever Want To Get Published.  Hundreds of published and unpublished novels have passed over the desks of the authors, Sandra Newman and Howard Mittelmark, in the course of their work as editors, teachers and published novelists. In How Not to Write a Novel they present examples of how not to write - offering witty, wise and entertaining advice on how to ruin plot and character, how to mangle style and settings and how not to find a publisher – in the hope they can prevent oft-repeated tragedies from occurring in the future.'

I wasn't sure until I checked out the cover here and thought, yes, this book is probably going to be very funny indeed.

From The Daily Telegraph

"Alexander McCall Smith (author of No 1 Ladies Detective Agency) is writing an online novel on the Telegraph site, called 'Corduroy Mansions', with a new chapter written each day. The project started in September, and will finish in February. You can catch up online at www.telegraph.co.uk/onlinenovel 

Corduroy Mansions has been running for a few months, and it's easy to catch up. You can read the chapters on the site, as an rss feed or email update, as a downloadable widget, or you can follow the project on Twitter www.twitter.com/corduroymansion"

From the New Zealand Book Council newsletter

Not that I'd want Alexander to think I was stalking him or anything but I happened to read this,

Monday 9 February, Wellington
Best Selling author Alexander McCall Smith will be visiting New Zealand to promote his new book in the bestselling series the No 1 Ladies Detective Agency.
Dominion Post/Dymocks Literary Lunch at 12.30 pm
Venue: Holiday Inn, 75 Featherson Street, Wellington
To book tickets: phone 04 498 3774 

Tuesday 10 February, Auckland
Alexander McCall-Smith is visiting Auckland:
Dymocks Literary Lunch at 12.30pm, Venue: Stamford Plaza, Albert Street, Auckland
To book tickets: phone Jane (09) 912 6850. 

and also a snippet about one of our favourites

"The new group Katherine Mansfield Society now has a website, thanks to hundreds of hours of voluntary work by Mansfield scholars and enthusiasts on the board of the Society. This site aims to become the hub of all information about New Zealand's best-known short story writer."

The KMS site also contains some fascinating new information that has come to light about a lesser-known period of Katherine Mansfield's life with the very recent online availability of the 1911 UK census returns.

From Allen Saddler

PLAY ON TOUR 
What happens when a Care Home closes? What happens to the residents? Whose fault is it? 
Nothing Personal, a new play by local writer Allen Saddler, will be on tour in the South Hams (Devon) area from the 8th-17th of March under the banner of Searchlight, an organisation for investigating the plight of the elderly. 
The play is fully professional production, actors and production in the hands of experienced professionals. The play hopes to provoke debate. 
Allen Saddler’s recent work is a trilogy of novels about war time Britain, called Bless ‘Em All, The Long And The Short and And The Tall.
The play can be seen in Home Meadow, Totnes, Torquay, Dawlish, Dartmouth, Paignton, Bovey Tracy, Newton Abbot, Ashburton, South Brent, 
For times and venues please ring 01803 864107 or 01803 862935

Sunday Salon - Ask the Blog - anyone recognise this book?

I'm currently deeply immersed in The Glassblower of Murano by Marina Fiorato and really enjoying imagining myself standing in front of a roaring Venetian glass furnace on a bitterly cold Devon afternoon. But now a plea from a visitor to dovegreyreader to help find this book on a similar subject perhaps, bare bones of plot but no title and my betting is someone out there is bound to know the answer...

'I'm trying to find a book I read some years ago about a female glass
artist, I think it was set in Wales. It dealt with her struggles as an
artist, an upcoming exhibition and all the doubts that go with
that, and life as a creative woman in general...'

Over to you.

Marmalicious

Contrary to expectations of a very brief flotation on the Domestic Goddess thermal something has gone seriously if not very amiss and I'm a bit stuck on it, can you believe it, pictures of Aga activity today, what on earth is going on?
This is what comes of catching a snatch of The Archers.
I'm an intermittent Archers fan, have phases when I am addicted and then I lapse, but I do find that a quick dose can work wonders, never leaves me confused or out of synch, ten minutes and I'm back in the Ambridge loop. This little bout saw Jill and Phil having some sort of marmalade-making contest, Phil's technically perfect approach went hopelessly wrong when the thermometer exploded, whilst Jill's know - thy - setting - point by instinct method resulted in jar upon jar of National W.I.competition standard breakfast condiment.
Gosh can that woman do smug or can she do smug?
Making marmalade in January had been one of my first and now I think rather bizarre pledges to restored domesticity early on in the retirement-which-isn't-really process...Oh it'll be lovely I'll make marmalade...
That's all down to Mary Azarian yet again.
We're so lucky, it takes very little for us to live in one of her beautiful pictures. So I'd chop and boil and jar up, pop in my waxed discs, stretch the wet cellophane over the top, make pretty floral fabric lids and feel really good about this storing up of provisions. Time ticked on and I decided that if I didn't actually actively seek any Seville oranges I couldn't possibly fulfill the pledge, what a pity, lots more time to read books and knit, never mind, you just don't see them in the shops these days do you?
My guard was therefore down when I nipped into Morrison's for some cat food to be confronted by a massive Seville orange mountain and that was it, I was snookered and had to honour and complete.
Taking over your own kitchen when the ravenous Kayaker hordes are gathering for the snowboarding in Bulgaria expedition is a fraught business, salopettes and goggles everywhere, funny boots and boards in and out, but amidst it all I found me an apron and boiled, peeled, scooped, chopped, grabbed passing snowboarders and begged them to chop, seived, warmed sugar, waited for my rolling boil, boiled some more, sent Bookhound up the shed to find the jars, did the pucker setting test on the saucer...ten times and six hours later (this includes the two hours that the oranges simmered in the bottom oven to soften which I spent working out if the recipe says 3lb oranges, 4 pints of water, 6lbs sugar what do I need for 4lbs of oranges, it wasn't instantly clear, maths not my forte)  behold what do we have?
We have a very, very sticky kitchen floor, a sink piled high with congealed sugary mess-laden pots, jugs, plates and spoons various but there, centre stage,11lbs of hopefully delicious real marmalade.
I feel noble and virtuous, I have made provisions, should we be snowed in we'll be fine, don't worry about us, we have marmalade.
It's a shame this isn't a scratch and sniff blog but hopefully you get the gist and in the end it was all heavenly and as always I was glad I had bothered.
That said, I'm just hoping this will all stop now, that's quite enough of the Domestic Goddess Thermal this time round...hot buttered toast with marmalade anyone?