Your future, mole drainer
My old work had a spam filter that provided a list of quarantined emails, so you could go through them and pick out any real ones. While I was there last year, I collected the best subject lines to use as my headings in the post-Cartland era. Today's is one of my favourites. It raises so many questions. Mostly variants on: What does it mean?
January books read
* A Monstrous Commotion: The Mysteries of Loch Ness - Gareth Williams (2015) ★ ★ ★ ★
This isn't about the Loch Ness Monster at all; it's really about the people looking for it. The first part of the book is a straightforward telling of the history of monster sightings, placing them in historical context. During this part, I found myself wishing someone would make a TV series of it. It's got everything: colourful characters, giant egos, true believers, charlatans, homemade gyroscopes, and people wanting to blow the monster out of the water with explosives. The second half of the book works backwards, looking at each photo and sighting with a critical eye and tracking down some known hoaxers, before retracing the earliest sightings in light of that. I enjoyed it enormously. (Admittedly, it mirrors my own thoughts on the monster, which is: it's a romantic idea, but not true).
* The Last Tudor - Philippa Gregory (2017) ★ ★
I wouldn't normally choose the fourteenth book as the place to start a series, but I was given this in my work's Secret Santa. This is the story of the three Grey sisters: Jane (the Nine Days' Queen), Katherine and Mary. I know that there are other books in the series about Queen Elizabeth I, so I would guess this is about filling in the blanks; maybe we hear her view of these events elsewhere? I'll never know, because I don't plan to read them. This book was weirdly paced, and while all three sisters were very badly treated, they were all also unlikeable. I'd have put them all in the Tower for being annoying. (Poor Jane, in particular, gets very short shrift. It's a pity the story had to be told from her perspective, when I'd really rather have found out just what the people who crowned her thought they were doing.)
* Lying in Wait - Liz Nugent (2016) ★ ★ ★ ★
This is a superior entrant in the current domestic thriller market, and a top notch summer holiday read. In the first sentence, a milquetoast judge and his odd wife kill a prostitute, and the book explores the fallout of that through alternating chapters of Lydia, the wife, Laurence, their son, and Karen, the victim's sister. It takes a while to get going, but once it does, it fairly zips along.
* Night Music: Nocturnes Volume 2 - John Connolly (2015) ★ ★ ★ ★
I picked this up on a whim, and it turned out to be a good one. This is a very fine collection of short stories with a supernatural flavour: a sweet ghostly love story, a library that's also a home for famous literary characters, a five-part novella about an otherworldly book, bootleggers meeting something nasty in the woods. I wouldn't mind seeking out more of the same.
* Throne of the Crescent Moon - Saladin Ahmed (2012) ★ ★ ★
I really wanted to like this. And I did, but not as much as I wanted.
This is a fantasy novel, but instead of the usual mediaeval hinterland, this is set in a sort of mediaeval Middle East. An ageing ghul-hunter and his band of helpers (a dervish, a shape-shifter, a magus and an alchemist) are trying to find a powerful wizard who is trying to usurp the Khalif; meanwhile, a self-styled people's prince foments rebellion with the same aim. There was a lot to like, but it was a bit clunky. I would have preferred a little more development of the world and a little less repetition about each of the heroes' one character traits.
* After Many Years: Twenty-One "Long-Lost" Stories - LM Montgomery (2017) ★ ★ ★
This is a collection of stories dated between 1900 and 1939, which haven't been re-published since their first run. A mixed bag, this: most of the early ones were for children, so they are very wholesome; a few of the later ones were re-jigged to be used in her novels; a couple of the later ones are unexpectedly (and enjoyably) dark.
* Hangsaman - Shirley Jackson (1951) ★ ★ ★
I'm not sure what to make of this. It's a sort of coming of age novel, although the blurb carefully tells you that it's based on a true story of a college student who disappeared. Knowing that, and with Jackson's foreboding writing style, even the positive-sounding ending might actually be more sinister. There are three sections to the book: at home, Natalie prepares to go away to college for the first time and is possibly sexually assaulted; at college, Natalie doesn't fit in and meets some horrible people; after a trip home, Natalie goes back to college and has a day out with her new friend, Tony. As it progresses, Natalie loses touch with reality, and so does the reader, as it become impossible to tell what is actually happening and what's in Natalie's head. Part black comedy and quite a bit unsettling.
January books read
* A Monstrous Commotion: The Mysteries of Loch Ness - Gareth Williams (2015) ★ ★ ★ ★
This isn't about the Loch Ness Monster at all; it's really about the people looking for it. The first part of the book is a straightforward telling of the history of monster sightings, placing them in historical context. During this part, I found myself wishing someone would make a TV series of it. It's got everything: colourful characters, giant egos, true believers, charlatans, homemade gyroscopes, and people wanting to blow the monster out of the water with explosives. The second half of the book works backwards, looking at each photo and sighting with a critical eye and tracking down some known hoaxers, before retracing the earliest sightings in light of that. I enjoyed it enormously. (Admittedly, it mirrors my own thoughts on the monster, which is: it's a romantic idea, but not true).
* The Last Tudor - Philippa Gregory (2017) ★ ★
I wouldn't normally choose the fourteenth book as the place to start a series, but I was given this in my work's Secret Santa. This is the story of the three Grey sisters: Jane (the Nine Days' Queen), Katherine and Mary. I know that there are other books in the series about Queen Elizabeth I, so I would guess this is about filling in the blanks; maybe we hear her view of these events elsewhere? I'll never know, because I don't plan to read them. This book was weirdly paced, and while all three sisters were very badly treated, they were all also unlikeable. I'd have put them all in the Tower for being annoying. (Poor Jane, in particular, gets very short shrift. It's a pity the story had to be told from her perspective, when I'd really rather have found out just what the people who crowned her thought they were doing.)
* Lying in Wait - Liz Nugent (2016) ★ ★ ★ ★
This is a superior entrant in the current domestic thriller market, and a top notch summer holiday read. In the first sentence, a milquetoast judge and his odd wife kill a prostitute, and the book explores the fallout of that through alternating chapters of Lydia, the wife, Laurence, their son, and Karen, the victim's sister. It takes a while to get going, but once it does, it fairly zips along.
* Night Music: Nocturnes Volume 2 - John Connolly (2015) ★ ★ ★ ★
I picked this up on a whim, and it turned out to be a good one. This is a very fine collection of short stories with a supernatural flavour: a sweet ghostly love story, a library that's also a home for famous literary characters, a five-part novella about an otherworldly book, bootleggers meeting something nasty in the woods. I wouldn't mind seeking out more of the same.
* Throne of the Crescent Moon - Saladin Ahmed (2012) ★ ★ ★
I really wanted to like this. And I did, but not as much as I wanted.
This is a fantasy novel, but instead of the usual mediaeval hinterland, this is set in a sort of mediaeval Middle East. An ageing ghul-hunter and his band of helpers (a dervish, a shape-shifter, a magus and an alchemist) are trying to find a powerful wizard who is trying to usurp the Khalif; meanwhile, a self-styled people's prince foments rebellion with the same aim. There was a lot to like, but it was a bit clunky. I would have preferred a little more development of the world and a little less repetition about each of the heroes' one character traits.
* After Many Years: Twenty-One "Long-Lost" Stories - LM Montgomery (2017) ★ ★ ★
This is a collection of stories dated between 1900 and 1939, which haven't been re-published since their first run. A mixed bag, this: most of the early ones were for children, so they are very wholesome; a few of the later ones were re-jigged to be used in her novels; a couple of the later ones are unexpectedly (and enjoyably) dark.
* Hangsaman - Shirley Jackson (1951) ★ ★ ★
I'm not sure what to make of this. It's a sort of coming of age novel, although the blurb carefully tells you that it's based on a true story of a college student who disappeared. Knowing that, and with Jackson's foreboding writing style, even the positive-sounding ending might actually be more sinister. There are three sections to the book: at home, Natalie prepares to go away to college for the first time and is possibly sexually assaulted; at college, Natalie doesn't fit in and meets some horrible people; after a trip home, Natalie goes back to college and has a day out with her new friend, Tony. As it progresses, Natalie loses touch with reality, and so does the reader, as it become impossible to tell what is actually happening and what's in Natalie's head. Part black comedy and quite a bit unsettling.