Personal wordfest

Wheezing a lot means reading a lot so in the last two weeks I have ploughed through almost a shelf-full of novels reaped from Amazon and the Red Cross shop. I still prefer hardbacks and 1st editions when I can get them cheaply!

Mankell: 'The Troubled Man' which was sad but satisfying. Although they aren't obvious comfort food, being rather sombre in mood, I think his books will be on my re-read list. There are always flashes of dry humour. I've already said a lot about his writing. except perhaps the novels that aren't crime and don't have Wallander, which I also read with rather less pleasure perhaps.

Next, inspired by a crawl through Google for 'cult recovery' sites after a conversation with someone on the perennial 'what makes a group into a cult?' question, I read Alison Lurie's 'Imaginary Friends.' Written in the 70's it often made me laugh as she described a small group of ordinary folk in a dull, ordinary town in the US . Probably unconsciously wanting something outside the confines of small-town mind they crystallised into a cult around a young girl displaying extrasensory powers who is channelling beings from Outer Space. It reminded me of so many people I met in the 80's who were still waiting to be taken away by the Space Brothers, eagerly poring over their latest messages. Nice twist to this story (plot spoiler alert!) One of the two sociologists who infiltrate the group to study them gets entirely taken in by it all and goes off his rocker. Ultimately I found it a bit depressing. Maybe it was too close to the bone for although I promise I never had any belief in the SB's and was fairly cynical about everything else, I too went through a time when I badly needed something outside my own reality and did occasionally chant the Great Invocation from Alica Bailey (which Lurie misquotes for her group to chant as a mantra). It begins 'From the Point of Light, within the mind of God, Let light Stream forth into the minds of men..' two reasons in the opening lines alone for me to give it up later!
.. Probably shan't read it again but I'm glad to have it on the shelf.

Then another Patrick Gale: 'The Cat Sanctuary". Not as memorable as Notes at an Exhibition. but maybe I just wasn't as interested in the story-line. Everything else was as good, language, atmosphere, imagery etc. Maybe his style and characters are too recognisable already. I have ordered another to help me make up my mind.

Then a descent into the charity shop for hardback crime brought a P J Tracey 'Snow Blind' PJT are a mother and daughter crime writing team. Shan't bother with them again. It didn't even last me the evening.

Stuart MacBride's 'Broken Skin' set in sleazy Aberdeen was much much better. Shall look out for him again. Can't think why I haven't come across him and it's a serious oversight as he lives in this area. He's not the usual style of crime writer I favour being more Val McDiarmid than Dorothy Sayers - gritty is the word to describe I suppose, (though it's a cliché now and I hate clichés) Happily he is a whole lot lighter in timbre than VD. He has a very jolly web site and blog: halfheadblogspot.com

Margaret Atwood next obviously: 'I've read several in the past and got her to sign a paperback of 'The Handmaid's Tale' for me. I dislike that book very much, not for the writing obviously because she is GOOD but for the concept of a bleak dystopia in which some women are set aside for breeding purposes. It's one that has stayed with me for it's unpleasantness, so that was my choice to be signed. I also bought an early novel: 'Surfacing' which was equally dark and uncosy in a different way. She always surprises me though and it's a long time since I read any so, on the whole a worthwhile experience. Ahead of the last two crime novels on literary merit, without question!

Next up: Reginald Hill 'The Stranger House' which I found I had read before and forgotten but anyway enjoyed more this time so probably I read it with less attention the first time. It's a bad habit. My dyslexic daughter reads slowly and remembers everything on her first read, whereas I rush through for the main plot or to follow the process of a character or just because I'm unfocused. It's what makes re-reading so pleasurable.

I think I've said lots in the past about my liking for RH so no need for more.

Next: Len Deighton 'Spy Hook.' - a 1st of an early novel found in the Red Cross that I am rather pleased with, not only for the 1st ed. but for he story which I found more engaging than some of his work which takes me into a world I have no imagination for.

Now I'm struggling with Iain Banks 'Transition.' Banks is always a challenge for me, perhaps because I'm a lazy reader. Sometimes he's worth the struggle. I suppose the ones that I get through are his 'Speculative Fiction' which is how Atwood describes her futuristic books, disliking the term Science Fiction for them. Her reasoning being that her novels are projections into a future that might arise from conditions and trends in the present whereas sci-fi isn't.