Reading With Tea

Miss Julia Stirs Up Trouble – Ann B. Ross – 6/10

Fluff May 2, 2013 Leave a comment

“That was what I call starting off on the wrong foot – the one he always started with and the one he pretty much stayed on.”

Miss Julia, southern lady with a soft spot for a little sleuthing, dashes to help her friend Hazel Marie when the household help sprains his ankle. Hazel Marie’s cooking skills being totally non-existent, Miss Julia rings around her friends to compile a simple cookbook, complete with tutorials, for Miss Hazel. But when Mr Pickins’ eye seems to be wandering, James is sending cheques to charities of dubious origin and Brother Vern seems intent on living at Hazel Marie’s for ever, life gets a bit chaotic!

I have to confess, I found this one confusing.

On the one hand, it was very enjoyable and easy to read – I raced through it in a morning. There’s a bit of sleuthing, with a highly amusing ending, and plenty of laughs along the way. Most of the characters are sweet people for whom one really does wish the best and/or funny caricatures - I particularly liked Lloyd and Granny Wiggins.

The book is littered with recipes, many of which look very appetising; all of them look like I would die an early death of heart disease. Surely this cannot be the staple diet of 20 US states?

On the other, do people really still have live-in hired help in the South today? I would have thought the book was set in the 1960s (like The Help) except that they have mobile phones and internet. A bizarre mix of the times – or else not written for anyone outside the South.

This is a very mild, cosy mystery which is really more of a gentle story of malaise and misadventure in the southern States – if only it didn’t seem such a caricature.

Additional information:

Copy kindly provided by the publisher (Viking – Penguin Group USA) in return for an honest review.

Publisher: Viking – Penguin Group USA, 352 pages (hardback)

Order Miss Julia Stirs Up Troublefrom Amazon*

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Notes from a Big Country – Bill Bryson – 6/10

Non-fiction April 30, 2013 1 Comment

“People have become so habituated to using the car for everything that it would never occur to them to unfurl their legs and see what they can do.”

Having read and loved Notes from a Small Island and Down Under, I dutifully collected all of Bryson’s books… this one is a collection of columns he wrote for a British newspaper after returning to the USA with his family, having left it as a young man.

Bryson pokes fun at nearly every aspect of life in the US – wranglings with immigration, the fact that no one walks anywhere, statistically aberrant accident rates, guns, diners, obesity, motels (there are several chapters on motels, actually), baseball, basketball, the local Ivy League college – everything. As I’m used to, it was generally funny with occasional snorts of laughter (to be suppressed on public transport).

Bizarrely, or perhaps just unexpectedly, Bryson appears much more positive about his time in the UK than the prospect of being back in his homeland – while the purpose of the column is clearly to be amusing to UK readers, week after week Bryson lampoons his new, re-adopted country. At first this makes a non-US reader feel rather smug but after a while I felt a bit bad, like hearing someone bad-mouth their other half. Given that the writing was intended to be episodic, it can come across as mildly repetitive, and eventually his negative tone (while often funny) can grate.

Probably not to be recommended to people who live in the USA and like it there.

Additional information:

Copy from Bookmooch

Publisher: Black Swan, 399 pages (paperback)

Order Notes From A Big Countryfrom Amazon*

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Sunday Salon – employment

Thoughts and other Miscellany April 28, 2013 Comments: 3

Big news of this week was that The Physicist was offered a job (yay!) in London (yay!) in a field that really suits him (triple yay!). So things are quite happy in the RWT household.

I am spending all of Sunday ~~at the edge of the world~~ at the Kent coast playing cricket in a place that is closer to France than to my house. I just checked – Google Maps suggests it’s 2/3 of the way to Calais. Hopefully it will not be rained off after I have spent 2 hours driving down there. Last weekend’s cricket match was pretty dire (it was fun, but we played appallingly) so surely it can only get better.

Work is still busy. I don’t know why. Work is supposed to get calmer in April, but I am still getting into the office about 7.15 am and leaving at 7.15pm.

This week I managed to read Bill Bryson’s Notes from a Big Country, which was quite enjoyable – review to come.

Simple Saturday – Manuscript Found In Accra part III

Review copies April 27, 2013 Leave a comment

Previous entries: 1, 2

Unlike the previous two of these koans, I pretty much agree with that one. I’ve seen it referred to in The Lady of the Rivers, the idea of a cycle of fortune. Sometimes one is at the top, sometimes at the bottom. It always changes.

Thoughts?

Simple Saturday – Manuscript Found In Accra part II

Review copies April 20, 2013 1 Comment

Last week’s entry

My cynical world view disagrees with this one. Yes, love may be, like the Mastercard adverts, priceless, just like the Beatles told us, but I think even the most hopelessly romantic among us would agree that there is a cost to any love.

Thoughts?

Silenced – Kristina Ohlsson – 6/10

Thriller April 16, 2013 Leave a comment

“And by the time they found her, she was already another person.”

Having really enjoyed Ohlsson’s debut novel Unwanted, I was thrilled to have the sequel to hand as soon as I finished it.

Having eventually concluded the Sebastiansson case, Alex Recht’s team is back at work after the summer holiday, struggling with a variety of cases that have been pushed their way. Fredrika Bergman has finally been made to feel at home in the police force after a rocky start, but a troublesome pregnancy is sapping her of her fiery investigative style. Peder Rydh’s life seems to have gone totally off the rails, not improved by the arrival of a smug new transfer from the Sodermalm force. Are the two apparently open-and-shut cases they’re working on related?

Having aired a strong position on domestic abuse in Unwanted, Ohlsson turns her attentions to asylum seekers in this novel. A pastor whose covert support for asylum seekers over decades has ripped his family apart and attracted some unwelcome attention appears to have lost his daughter to drugs, shot his wife and committed suicide. Why can’t the police track down his other daughter? In Thailand, why won’t Johanna’s email, flights, hotel or phone recognise her? Why is she being silenced? And why did a man who died in a hit-and-run appear to have no records at all?

Perhaps by the nature of its multi-crime plot, Silenced reads less coherently and focussed than Unwanted. The police characters have been better developed (I was pleased to see Peder called to account for his ridiculous behaviour, and Fredrika soften up a bit), and the newly introduced characters were consistently strong, but I felt the plot was too disjointed, flicking back and forth between the family drama, the anonymous victim and the woman in Thailand being shut off from the world… when we did get to the climax, I got really confused.

Still a gripping read, but not as good as Unwanted. I can’t wait for the third in the trilogy (out in mid 2013!).

Additional information:

Copy kindly provided by the publisher (Simon & Schuster) in return for an honest review.

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 468 pages (paperback)

Order Silencedfrom Amazon*

* this is an affiliate link – I will be paid a small percentage of your purchase price if you use this link, which goes towards give-aways and site hosting