Book Sale at St Andrew’s and St George’s Edinburgh

14 May 2013 23:56

We got up early on Saturday morning so that we wouldn’t be too late in getting to the book sale in St Andrew’s and St George’s Church in Edinburgh, the proceeds all go to Christian Aid. It was Linda from Edinburgh who reminded me of the sale, so a big thank you to Linda!

St Andrew's & St George's Church
By the time we got to the church it was really chucking it down with rain and the books outside the church all had plastic covers over them and everbody had packed into the church – it was heaving with folks and it made it very difficult to see the books, but I persevered, and we went our separate ways. I ran out of money, had to find Jack, found him in the crowd, waved madly, he didn’t see me, he went in the opposite direction, the woman at the stall seemed to think I was going to nick her books, but in the end it was all sorted out and the upshot was I spent a lot of money and Jack didn’t spend nearly as much, that’s usually the way of it. As you can see from the photo above, by the time we got upstairs the rain had stopped and the crowd had thinned.

I couldn’t resist taking this photo of the newly redecorated church, it has had a lot spent on it recently and the organ has been refurbished.
St Andrew's & St George's Edinburgh

It was the ceiling which really attracted me though, beautiful, but I’m glad I didn’t have to paint it. Internally the church is really lovely with pale wood, maybe golden oak and the pews all have blue velvet buttoned cushions, I’m sure in my young day that would have been seen as being un-Presbyterian and just too comfy for church-goers. How times
change!
St Andrew's & St George'sChurch Edinburgh

Anyway, to the books, here they are.

books

The three in the middle are:
The House That Is Our Own by O. Douglas
The Provincial Lady in Wartime by E.M. Delafield
Hons and Rebels by Jessica Mitford. I’ve read it, but it was over 30 years ago I’m sure and was a library book.I want to read it again.

The other one which can’t be seen very well is:
We Are Still Married by Garrison Keillor. I’ve never read anything by him but I enjoy listening to him on Radio 4 extra on Sunday afternoons whilst cooking the dinner.

Two of the vintage crime Penguins I haven’t even heard of.

The Content Assignment by Holly Roth
Comes the Blind Fury by Douglas Rutherford

The third Penguin is Captain Cut-Throat by John Dickson Carr.

The Things We See is a Penguin book which just screams 1950s at you and is about design. It has some lovely photos and even the endpapers are 1950s design.

Civil To Strangers by Barbara Pym. I’ve read quite a lot of her books but most of them so long ago, I can’t remember if I’ve read this one or not. If so, it’s due a re-read.

Anna Buchan and O.Douglas by Wendy Forrester is a book which I’ve been looking for.

The Prince and the Pilgrim by Mary Stewart is one I’ve been meaning to buy for ages, it’s the last in her Merlin/Arthur series and I’m going to read it for the up and coming Mary Stewart readalong at Gudrun’s Tights.

Oasis of the North by Dawn MacLeod is about Inverewe Gardens in the north west of Scotland.

Scottish Highland Watercolours by Sutton Palmer is a collection of 16 watercolours of the Highlands, all very scenic.

I could have bought a lot more books and this week I’ve been restraining myself from getting on a bus and going back for another look because I really didn’t get a chance to look at the many gardening and craft books which were on sale. But I think I’ll be good and resist the temptaion, particularly as there is another library book sale locally on Saturday. The George Street, Edinburgh book sale continues until the end of the week.

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The Ivy Tree by Mary Stewart

26 March 2012 23:58

The Ivy Tree is Mary Stewart’s version of Josephine Tey’s vintage crime book Brat Farrar. I read that one last year and really liked it so I was a bit dubious about reading the Stewart take on the same sort of storyline.

It’s set in a farm in Northumberland in the north of England, Roman Wall country. The elderly owner is failing fast and there’s doubt as to who the property will be passed on to after his heir, his 18 year old grand-daughter Annabel, walked out after a row eight years previously, never to be seen or heard of again.

His great-nephew, Con, is desperate to get his hands on the farm and when one day he sees Annabel’s double, a young stranger from Canada, he and his half-sister Lisa cook up a plan to secure the farm with the help of the doppelganger.

Initially I thought it was a wee bit of a cheek on Mary Stewart’s part to so blatantly nick Josephine Tey’s idea but she mentions her several times in The Ivy Tree and I like to think of Stewart reading Brat Farrar and saying to herself “I could do better than that” – and she did!

There were unexpected twists and turns right to the end of The Ivy Tree, and you can’t say fairer than that.

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Stormy Petrel by Mary Stewart

3 August 2011 23:01

Mary Stewart is another of those authors whom I’m trying to read my way through and ticking them off my list as I go. This book was first published in 1991 but my copy is a Hodder and Stoughton which was published this year.

Rose Fenemore is an English tutor at Cambridge but she’s also a secret but popular writer of science fiction. She’s got a bit of writer’s block so when she spots an advert in The Times- ‘Ivory tower for long or short let. Isolated cottage on small Hebridean island off the coast of Mull. Ideal for writer or artist in search of peace.’ – she decides to write off to the box number in the hope of renting it for a holiday. I know, I know – it’s very similar to Elizabeth von Arnim’s An Enchanted April but on the other hand it is something which lots of us do from time to time. Well we do anyway.

Rose’s brother decides to join her in the cottage as he’s a keen photographer and he wants to photograph the wildlife on the island, particularly the elusive stormy petrel, a small sea-bird. Things don’t go exactly to plan and Rose realises that she can’t find peace to write even on the tiny island of Moila, off the Isle of Mull.

This was a quick read and it’s perfect if you’re looking for some light holiday reading and you particularly enjoy books with a Scottish setting. Or even if you just want something to take you away from all the horrible news which we’re getting on a daily basis, from all corners of the world.

I always look to see who a book has been dedicated to because it can be really interestng. Mary Stewart dedicated this one to Culcicoides Pulicaris Argyllensis with respect.

She obviously has a sense of humour as that is the Latin name for the teeny wee midge which plagues the west coast of Scotland and eats people alive! Luckily they very rarely bother me!

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Long weekend and books

6 June 2011 23:56

This weekend was a long one in this part of Scotland, for schools anyway, and there are just four weeks left of this term and then it’s the summer holidays.

I made the mistake of walking into town on Friday and I couldn’t manage to get past the Salvation Army shop without going in to scrutinise their bookshelves. The result of that was that I ended up with three more books added to my TBR pile. I only chose two to begin with but when I took them to the counter the chap there said It’s three for £1 so I just had to go and find another one. The chap obviously thought he was helping me but I think he is what is nowadays called an addiction enabler.

The books are:

Stormy Petrel by Mary Stewart, it was first published in 1991 but this is a brand new Hodder and Stoughton and I know that I haven’t read this one yet.

Doorways in Drumorty by Lorna Moon which is a collection of short stories which are set in the author’s home village of Strichen in Aberdeenshire at the turn of the century. It’s a reprint and the book was first published in 1926. It looks unread but spookily when I got it home I noticed that a man had written his name on the inside cover and it was the same name as my late father-in-law, and his name wasn’t a common one.

The third one which I had my arm twisted to choose is The Passion of New Eve by Angela Carter. I haven’t read anything by her yet and frankly it sounds a wee bit weird but it’s a Virago and I usually really like them so I’m ever hopeful. Again the book looks unread but then all of my books are still in pristine condition after I’ve finished with them too, even the paperbacks.

So Friday was bad enough book purchase-wise but on Saturday we went to Abernyte which is an antique centre near Dundee, not with the intention of buying things, more with a view to get rid of some of what will be excess furniture when we downsize. But of course there are a couple of booksellers there and I just couldn’t resist the temptation to scan their shelves, the result of which is that I found an old Angela Thirkell hardback, The Duke’s Daughter. I’m really chuffed with that one because I have just started Peace Breaks Out by the same author and I didn’t have any others by her after that. It’s nice to have one waiting to be read as I count them as comfort books.

Back to the decorating tomorrow. What an exciting life I lead!

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The Wicked Day by Mary Stewart

6 June 2011 00:39

The Wicked Day cover

I went through a Mary Stewart phase as a teenager and I read the first three books of this series way back in the 1970s and I absolutely loved them. The Merlin trilogy comprises of The Hollow Hills, The Crystal Cave and The Last Enchantment and The Wicked Day is the fourth and I didn’t even realise until recently that there was a fouth and fifth book. I sort of wish that I had gone back to the beginning and read them all in order but I didn’t really think it was necessary because I remembered the books so well. The trouble is that although I enjoyed the book I wasn’t as into it as I was with the others in the 1970s. I don’t know if it’s an age thing because I’m certainly not a teenager anymore but then again even as a teenager I was never one of those daft romantic girls, it was more than just King Arthur which appealed to me. The 1970s serial ‘Arthur of the Britons’ was on TV when I got home from school and I have to admit that I loved it and the actor playing Arthur Oliver Tobias was a big PLUS!

Anyway, back to the book, I did enjoy it but at some point when I don’t have such a big backlog of books still to be read in the house I’m going to go back to the beginning of the series again. Will that day ever come, I ask myself?

You might remember that Arthur was duped into sleeping with Morgause who unbeknown to him is his half-sister and when Morgause gives birth to the resulting son Mordred she farms him out to be brought up by an old couple who are fisher-folk on an Orkney island in the North of Scotland. Merlin had prophesied that Mordred would be Arthur’s doom and as Morgause hates Arthur she hopes that Merlin is right.

Eventually Mordred is taken from his foster parents and goes to live with Morgause and her sons by her dead husband King Lot. King Arthur hears about this and takes Mordred to live with him at Camelot, and although the half-brothers go too, they aren’t happy about Mordred being given special treatment by Arthur, Mordred’s paternity is a secret, even to him.

Mordred’s half-brothers are a wild bunch and mayhem ensues. If you’re at all interested in Arthurian legend then this is a book for you. There have been plenty of stories throughout the centuries and Mary Stewart has taken some of them and come up with a good storyline.

There is a map on the end papers of the book and it has various places of importance on it. One of them is Dumbarton and I was agog the whole way through to find out what part the place was going to play in the story as it is the town which I grew up in. However it wasn’t mentioned until near the end of the book and it was only that Mordred’s youngest son was born there. If you look to the top left hand of my header you will see Dumbarton Castle Rock and this is where his son was supposed to be. Another name for Dumbarton Castle is Arthur’s Castle as it is in the west and Arthur was supposedly King of the West. The name Dumbarton is a corruption of Dunbritton, meaning fort of the Britons.

That’s your Scottish history lesson for the day! I’m now looking for the last book in the series The Prince and the Pilgrim, but I’m not in a hurry to get it as I’ll need to seriously get stuck into my TBR pile first.

If you want to know what Oliver Tobias looked like wayback in the 1970s have a look here.

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Thornyhold by Mary Stewart

21 March 2011 12:54

This book was first published in 1988 which is why I hadn’t read it before. Most of my Mary Stewart reading took place in the 1970s and really the only ones which I remember clearly are The Hollow Hills, The Crystal Cave and The Last Enchantment, in other words her Arthurian/Merlin trilogy, which I really enjoyed.

Thornyhold is different in that most of it is set just after World War II, so we’re back with rationing again. Geillis has had an unusual childhood as the only child of a vicar and a woman who had white witches in her family background. It was a lonely, poverty stricken time for Geillis but she had occasional visits from her mother’s cousin, another Geillis, the only bright spot in her childhood.

By page 39 both parents are dead and Geillis has inherited a house from her cousin Geillis who had been a bit of a herbalist.

Thornyhold cover

I’m trying to remember if herbalism and witchcraft are staple themes of Mary Stewart’s writing, I think probably they are and that would have been quite appealing to the younger me.

This is another cosy read in a similar vein to Rosy Thornton’s books. Or maybe it’s just that I don’t read much in the way of romance and they always run along these lines. I would call it a comfort read, something you want to consume now and again like Turkish Delight, but you wouldn’t want to live on it.

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Mazo de la Roche and Audrey Erskine Lindop

7 February 2011 23:06

I think a lot of us have been casting our minds back recently, trying to remember authors whom we’ve enjoyed in the past, I know I have been anyway and other bloggers and commentators have weighed in with their suggestions too. So my author list is ever lengthening in fact it’s just growing and growing like Topsy!

I’m hoping to read more Mary Stewarts soon, in fact I bought a hardback copy of The Wicked Day for pennies from Amazon so I’m looking forward to reading that. And I’m looking for more by Angela Thirkell and D.E. Stevenson. Niranjana (Brown Paper) has just reminded me of Elizabeth Jane Howard.

But what I really want to know is: Has anybody read anything by Mazo de la Roche? She wrote a lot of books and in the first library that I worked in there was a shelf full of them, but that was in the 1970s and they were regarded as being old-fashioned then. As I recall the shelf was just one big mass of pink covers which never moved. I have an urge to try them out now, the Jalna series anyway but I’m wondering if they are worth reading. Her name sounds very exotic but she seems to have been a Canadian writer.

I have a vague feeling that I have read at least one book by Audrey Erskine Lindop but so long ago that I can’t remember for sure. Has anyone read anything by her? If so, would you recommend giving her a go?

It would seem that a lot of readers have been quietly ‘doing their bit’ to save neglected books. If you haven’t already read her post have a look at what Danielle at A Work in Progress has written about it.

I know that libraries have to make space for new books but it means that books are sold off or they languish in the Reserve Stock where ordinary readers can’t browse. I love the idea of readers going around borrowing books in the hope of saving them for another generation of readers.

If we were doing it for anything else other than books we would be a pressure group and have a proper name. I’ve been amusing myself thinking of what we could be called. From an Edinburgh point of view we would have to be The Book Resurrectionists. Or is it more akin to defibrillating – Book Paramedics or The CPR Book Group.

Anyway if you pick up a book in your library and it’s a good long while since it has been borrowed, make it happy and give it a go. After all it was once somebody’s ‘baby’!!

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Book haul

23 January 2011 00:53

You might know that I’ve been avoiding buying books recently, mainly because I’ve got so many unread books in my house. But last week I bought a few in Edinburgh and that sort of opened the floodgates.

As it was a lovely day today we took ourselves off to St Andrews and ended up (well actually we began) in the bookshops. This lot is the result.

Winter Solstice by Rosamunde Pilcher
Love by Elizabeth von Arnim
The Courts of the Morning by John Buchan
Look to the Lady by Margery Allingham
Hamlet, Revenge! by Michael Innes
Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey
The Singing Sands by Josephine Tey
Miss Pym Disposes by Josephine Tey
Thornyhold by Mary Stewart

The book gods must have been hovering above me today. Only one Virago mind you but what a one, I love Elizabeth von Arnim. There weren’t any books by the authors that I was actually looking for, except for The Braddons by Angela Thirkell but I requested that one from the library so there wasn’t any point in buying it.

It’s just as well that I’ve got more time for reading now that we don’t have a house full of boys any more.

On to Dundee to try out Duncan’s local fish and chip shop which was very good. Then we had coffee towers from Fisher and Donaldson – so bang went the healthy diet. And bang went another Saturday too.

Well, if you’re going to fall off the wagon you might as well do it in style.

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Mary Stewart / Arthurian trilogy

12 January 2011 13:57

I found myself in possession of a few small but sturdy boxes recently. Ideal for packing books in I thought because as you well know, bigger boxes are useless for books because they quickly become too heavy to budge.

So I decided to pack some books away in them and started having a rake around bookcases where I have books ‘double parked’ on wide shelves. I had thought that I could take the opportunity to weed out unwanted books to pass on to a charity shop. Some hope!

I think I must have already parted with everything which I’ve read and didn’t want to keep. I couldn’t even part with my old Penguin Classic books, Bronte, Hardy, Eliot and such, most of which I bought when I was about 13 or 14. Since then I’ve inherited lovely old editions of a lot of them, but I had an inkling that charity shops don’t cherish classics, preferring to have best sellers donated to them. So I thought my old books probably wouldn’t be given good homes and decided to keep them.

But I did unearth my copies of the Arthurian trilogy by Mary Stewart -

The Crystal Cave
The Hollow Hills
The Last Enchantment

I remember that I really enjoyed reading those books and others by her way back in the 1970s, I think they’re due a re-read by me. They set me off on an Arthurian phase and I went on to read and enjoy The Once and Future King by T.H. White and being keen on Mark Twain I just had to read A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur, both of which I still have.

I can’t think what else I read though so I suppose I must have got others from the library.

If you’re interested you can read an interview here in which Mary Stewart answers questions about the trilogy.

Although Mary Stewart was born in the north of England, she married a Scot and has lived most of her life in Scotland so I think she can be regarded as a Scottish author.

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