The Peppermint Tea Chronicles by Alexander McCall Smith

 The Peppermint Tea Chronicles cover

The Peppermint Tea Chronicles by Alexander McCall Smith was published in 2019 and it’s the latest in the 44 Scotland Street series.

This was an enjoyable read, perfect really for bedtime reading as the chapters are very short so if you suddenly get tired it isn’t far to the end of the chapter.

At the end of the last book the ghastly Irene decided to do a PhD at Aberdeen University, leaving her husband Stuart to look after their son Bertie and Ulysses who isn’t Stuart’s son, although Irene doesn’t know that we all know that! Everyone is glad to see the back of her. It’s obvious to Stuart that Irene will be continuing her relationship with the fellow psychologist and father of Ulysses in Aberdeen, so he feels that it’s the end of the marriage, even although Irene seems to think that Stuart is still very much hers to use and abuse. Will he have the guts to break free completely?

Bertie’s life has become more varied as his mother isn’t there to plan out all of his waking hours with psychology appointments and things he doesn’t want to do.

Big Lou, owner of the coffee shop discovers that having a child in her life has very much complicated matters.

Elspeth’s life out in the sticks, with a beautiful house and no money worries looks idyllic, but she’s bored stiff. I would tell her that she should try looking after her triplets herself, but I doubt if that would appeal to her!

Anyway, these books are humorous but also feature small ethical dilemmas. Not all of the characters work well for me, but probably everyone has their own favourites and might be different from mine. For me as ever it was pleasant to be in Edinburgh and the surroundings again, at a time when I haven’t been allowed to travel the 30 miles into the city from my place.

Library Books

Books Again

One night a few weeks ago, it was probably some time past midnight, and for some unaccountable reason I had the urge to request several books from the library. I suspected that the winter was going to be a long hard one and the thing that would cheer me up was the prospect of plenty of decent books to read – while ‘coorying doon’. So that is why I ended up going to the library yesterday to pick up eight books! Don’t ask me why I feared I might run out of books of my own to read as that’s just never going to happen. Shamefully I don’t even recognise most of the books that I got, but I do know that several of them were recommended by fellow book bloggers – so it may well be your fault!

The first three books were completely my choice.

1. Anna, Where Are You by Patricia Wentworth
2. The Case of William Smith by Patricia Wentworth
3. The Peppermint Tea Chronicles by Alexander McCall Smith

I really enjoy Patricia Wentworth’s Miss Silver mysteries so these should be nice murderous comfort reads for me, and the Alexander McCall Smith book is a continuation of his 44 Scotland Street series, I’ve read all the others and I’m a bit of a completist so I’ll read it although a few of them have been a bit hit and miss. They come under the heading of comfort reads too.

4. The Children’s Book by A.S. Byatt. It’s a mystery to me as to why I requested this one although it was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, often a reason to avoid a book for me! I have a horrible feeling that I tried reading a book by Byatt before and abandoned it fairly quickly, and I rarely abandon books. I see it has a worrying 617 pages.

5. The Arms Maker of Berlin by Dan Fesserman. I have not a clue who recommended this one but I think they loved it, I hope I do too.

6. In the Light of What We Know by Zia Haider Rahman. It’s another chunkster at 556 pages. Have any of you read this one?

7. The Lotus Eaters by Tatjana Soli. I have a feeling that it might have been Helen at She Reads Books who enjoyed this one. I borrowed it a while ago but had to return it before I got around to reading it as someone has requested it. It’s a James Tait Black winner and I have a project on the go to read all of those winners. It’s a hard task as so many of the books are going to be nigh on impossible to track down, but I’m giving it a go, albeit very slowly.

8. Personality by Andrew O’Hagan. I was attracted to this one while reading some blurb or a blog, the words ‘Scottish island’ jumped out at me so I decided to give it a go. However I’m not sure about it as I believe it is loosely based on the life of Lena Zavaroni, the young Scottish singer who had such a sad and tragic life.

Have you read any of these ones?

A Time of Love and Tartan by Alexander McCall Smith

A Time of Love and Tartan by Alexander McCall Smith is one from the author’s 44 Scotland Street series and the setting is of course Edinburgh although towards the end of the book there’s a bit of a keek into Orkney. This book was published in 2017 so I’m a bit late in getting to this Scotland Street catch up. These books aren’t great literature, but it’s always good to find out what is happening to the inhabitants. Bertie is probably everybody’s favourite character and he’s still seven years old, he seems to have been seven for about three books. and he’s a bit of a miracle child as he has managed to survive and even thrive despite the behaviour of his ghastly mother Irene. At last it seems like things are looking up for him and his father Stuart, there are changes afoot for them. Will they ever get to that promised land – Glasgow? It’s a place they both hanker after although Bertie had decided that he would have to wait until he was 18 before moving there.

Pat has an encounter with Bruce her ex boyfriend, it’s one of those moments when all readers will be saying – no don’t ever go back!. Matthew, the father of triplets gets into a very embarrassing situation involving an old teacher of his. The newly married Domenica is wondering if she has done the right thing and Big Lou is as ever keeping everyone going with her coffee.

The doings of the characters are interspersed with lots of philosophical and ethical meanderings and even some comments on artists by the Scotland Street artist Angus Lordie.

Alexander McCall Smith uses these books to register his own opinions about modern life, and in this one he takes on the rampant feminism that we have in many government workplaces now where he believes men are at the bottom of the pile when it comes to promotion as political correctness has gone crazy. I think that any job should go to the best candidate, no matter which sex they happen to be, so I have sympathy with his sentiments. This is an enjoyable read, although a bit disjointed.

Library books

I had to go to the library today to pick up a book that I had requested called The Love-charm of Bombs Restless Lives in the Second World War. I know that I scooted over to the Fife libraries catalogue after reading about it on someone’s blog – but of course I can’t remember which blog.

I had truly intended staying away from libraries so that I wouldn’t be tempted by the books because it’s absolutely fatal to the ever growing piles of unread books of my own. Inevitably I also borrowed The Driver’s Seat by Muriel Spark and A Time of Love and Tartan (a 44 Scotland Street novel) by Alexander McCall Smith. Well those ones will count towards my personal reading Scotland challenge.

Have you read any of these ones?

On a more personal note – I’m going to get my hair cut tomorrow! Who knows what I will end up looking like? Past experiences have made me quite hair salon phobic but anything must be an improvement surely as at the moment I feel like Dill the dog from The Herbs and if you want to know what he looked like have a wee keek here. Minus the black nose of course.

The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art

Modern One

Some years ago I blogged about the art installation that has been added to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh. I thought it was just a temporary thing, a reaction to the financial melt-down of 2008 but obviously it isn’t. In Alexander McCall Smith’s recent Scotland Street book The Bertie Project he mentions this installation. He’s not happy that the word ‘alright’ is there instead of ‘all right’. He has his character Domenica complaining of the use surmising that it must be deliberate as Kingsley Amis desribed ‘alright’ as ‘gross, crass, coarse and to be avoided,’ and Bill Bryson, hardly a fuddy-duddy describes its use as ‘illiterate and unacceptable.’

Domenica admits that she feels very old-fashioned in expecting people to be able to spell. It’s one of McCall Smith’s meandering conversations that often bring in modern morality or ethics.

But a more recent installation in the gallery across the road and several years on from the melt-down is taking a much more pessimistic and possibly Calvinist attitude to our situation.

View from Dean Gallery

It seems we’re done for!

View from Dean Gallery

20 Books of Summer 2017 update

I’m doing quite well with my 20 Books of Summer 2017 list this year although I had meant to do a bit of a half-way roundup before now. I have veered slightly from the list for various reasons, but I’m still hopeful of finding my copy of Sir Walter Scott’s Redgauntlet before September. I did a fatal tidy up before some visitors arrived and now that book is lost in the stacks which is very annoying as before that I knew exactly where it was – on the floor!

1. London Match by Len Deighton
2. I Claudius by Robert Graves
3. Highland River by Neil M. Gunn
4. The Demon in the House by Angela Thirkell
5. The Dove of Venus by Olivia Manning
6. City of the Mind by Penelope Lively
7. The Progress of a Crime by Julian Symons
8. Antidote to Venom by Freeman Wills Crofts
9. This Rough Magic by Mary Stewart
10. Flowers for the Judge by Margery Allingham
11. Claudius the God by Robert Graves
12. Pied Piper by Nevil Shute
13. Miss Ranskill Comes Home by Barbara Euphan Todd
14. Katherine Wentworth by D.E. Stevenson
15. The Bertie Project by Alexander McCall Smith
16. A Memorial Service by J.I.M. Stewart
17. The Madonna of the Astrolabe by J.I.M. Stewart
18. Redgauntlet by Sir Walter Scott
19. High Rising by Angela Thirkell
20. Wild Strawberries by Angela Thirkell

The Bertie Project by Alexander McCall Smith

 The Bertie Project cover

The Bertie Project is the latest offering from Alexander McCall Smith’s Scotland Street series. I was in two minds whether to read this one or not despite the fact that I’ve read all the others but as I recall I didn’t enjoy the previous one so much, mainly because life for Bertie is moving so slowly – it’s not getting any faster.

Bertie is still on a treadmill of his mother’s making such as – Italian conversazione lessons, yoga, weekly visits to a psychologist (it’s Irene his mother who needs those).

Stuart, Bertie’s father is just about at the end of his tether. He has been completely emasculated by Irene who it transpires even made him walk down the aisle to her when they got married and insisted that Stuart promised to obey her.

So when a chance meeting with a pleasant woman in Henderson’s vegetarian cafe leads to him realising that not all women are obnoxious like Irene – the inevitable happens and Stuart falls for her.

Hallelujah! (I said anyway) and Stuart’s mother said something similar when she found out as it hasn’t been easy for her to watch her son being bossed and bullied by Irene. Honestly I thought Irene was going to get her comeuppance – but not for long. I suppose the ghastly Irene is just too good a character for McCall Smith to think of getting rid of her permanently – I live in hope of it though.

Jack read the first Scotland Street book as it appeared in a ‘must read’ list of Scottish books, but he was less than impressed by it, mainly I think because it was so obviously meant for throwaway publication in a newspaper. You can read what he thought of it here.

McCall Smith’s own attitudes are really beginning to annoy me though. He’s labeling Irene a fascist, well she’s definitely intolerant of anyone different from her, but she’s also apparently (shock horror) a Guardian reader, something that the author seems to despise. Also I’m a bit fed up that the only time he veers away from wealthy Edinbuggers as characters was to ‘slum’ it in Glasgow where the characters were criminals!

I’m beginning to think that these books will be looked back on in years to come as being terrifically snobby, even more so than say Angela Thirkell’s books are nowadays. I suppose though he is just writing about the Edinburgh that he has experience of.

An amendment on the inside flap of this book says: Oops! On page 1 of this book and elsewhere, the Turner Prize, as Bertie would be quick to point out to us, has been misprinted as the Turner Prise; no disrespect to the prize was intended. The problem is due to a computer error whereby words ending in – ize e.g. size or seize have been changed to -ise endings.

Oops indeed, especially as there are quite a few mentions of Turner Prise due to the author having a bit of a bee in his bonnet about it.

I read this one for 20 Books of Summer 2017 and the Read Scotland 2017 Challenge.

The Revolving Door of Life by Alexander McCall Smith

 The Revolving Door of Life cover

The Revolving Door of Life by Alexander McCall Smith is the latest in his 44 Scotland Street series. I didn’t enjoy the previous one as much as I had some of the others, but this one was better I think.

Bertie is still only seven years old, I reckon that that is the third book in which he is still seven. At the end of the previous book Bertie’s mother Irene has gone on a trip to the Persian Gulf and she has somehow ended up being taken captive in a sheik’s harem there. Irene is a very pushy and truly ghastly sort of female Edinbugger, a keen devotee of the child psychologist Melanie Kline and that has led to her trying her best to emasculate poor wee Bertie – perish the thought that he should want to do anything ‘boyish’ or even wear anything normal such as blue jeans. Bertie must wear pink dungarees. Her long suffering husband Stuart is enjoying the respite and fears that Irene will find her way back to Edinburgh all too soon. Meanwhile his mother has come to help him look after his two sons – Bertie and Ulysses.

The lack of Irene is probably why I enjoyed this book more as she is so annoying. As ever there are moral decisions to be taken by many of the characters in the book. Such as – is it fair game to set up someone you know to be a gold-digger in order to rid your father of her attentions? Everybody makes the correct choices and everything is hunky dory – if only real life were like that!

Bertie’s ambition is to move to Glasgow as soon as he legally can – and he thinks that is when he is 18, at this rate he’s never going to reach there which is a real shame because I would love it if McCall Smith continued the series in Glasgow at some point.

I read this one for the Read Scotland 2016 Challenge, my 35th or possibly 36th.

Fatty O’Leary’s Dinner Party by Alexander McCall Smith

 Fatty O'Leary's Dinner Party cover

Fatty O’Leary’s Dinner Party by Alexander McCall Smith is a very quick read at just 174 pages of fairly big print, so it’s ideal for taking with you to the beach (if you’re that way inclined, I’m not) or to a hospital appointment or bus trip, as it’s not something you have to concentrate on, it’s a piece of light entertainment.

Fatty O’Leary lives in Arkansas with his wife Betty, they’re very happy, were childhood sweethearts and can honestly say that they never argue. They’re really very contented, but Betty wants to surprise Fatty with a birthday present of tickets to Ireland to visit his roots. It’ll be the trip of a lifetime for them.

Unfortunately things go badly for Fatty from the very beginning when their flight has been overbooked and they are looking for someone to volunteer to miss the flight and go on a later one. When no volunteer comes forward it’s suggested that Fatty should be bounced off the flight due to him being rather overweight. Poor Fatty, he’s mortified and when he does get to Ireland he discovers that his case is missing so he has no clothes and he can’t find anything to fit him in Ireland.

The whole thing is a complete disaster with Fatty and Betty left feeling they have been very poorly treated by the Irish as they suffer one indignity after another and so they opt to go home early.

This has some hilarious situations in it, it’s a bit of a hoot in a completely silly way and although on the surface it might be viewed as being ‘fattist’ it isn’t really and eventually has a happy ending.

I had a cheeky wee keek at Goodreads to see what other people thought of this book and I think it really depends on how much of a sense of humour folks have. It is supposed to be very tongue in cheek I’m sure but the negative comments made me laugh almost as much as the book did. One reader said that – as Fatty was an antique dealer he couldn’t be that stupid as they were sure you had to have qualifications for that job. Really! Well it made me laugh my socks off.

This one counts towards the Read Scotland 2016 Challenge.

I am left wondering how Alexander McCall Smith finds the time to write so many books, maybe he has managed to clone himself!

Emma by Alexander McCall Smith

I’m really not all that keen on the idea of Jane Austen’s books being rewritten by famous contemporary authors, so I don’t really know why I decided to borrow this one Emma by Alexander McCall Smith which was published in 2014.

Actually I ended up quite enjoying it. It’s yonks since I read the original Emma, but I think that McCall Smith goes into more detail over some of the characters’ backgrounds, unnecessarily really, but otherwise it was fine.

Emma Woodhouse is of course being brought up by her father as her mother is dead. Mr Woodhouse was born during the Cuban Missile Crisis, a time when everyone was half expecting to be going up in a big nuclear bang. The stress of it all has affected his mother and she transferred her stress to her baby, which explains Mr Woodhouse’s extreme fear and stress over just about every aspect of life.

As Emma grows up he employs a Scottish governess for her. Miss Taylor comes from Edinburgh and is a typical Presbyterian, all conscience and hard work ethic. This gives the author a chance to delve into the philosophical, moral and ethical questions that he so much enjoys writing about, but those passages can sometimes fall with a clunk into the book.

I gave this one three stars on Goodreads. I see that there were six authors who were doing these rewrites, one of them was Val McDermid who rewrote Northanger Abbey and is one of the more successful ones. I think I’ll give that one a go sometimes. Have any of you read any of the others?