Blether means to talk in a sort of gossiping way. If you are blethering it is never serious communication, it tends towards being unimportant and light-hearted chatting.
However, a lot of time can be spent having a blether with friends and neighbours and it all adds to the spice of life.
I’ve been avoiding reading this book for a very long time because the subject matter didn’t really appeal to me. I’ve never watched a Frankenstein film either but when I saw the book in my local branch of The Works at the amazing price of 10p – I took it as a sign that it was time to read it. Also, I just realised that I can make it my first book which counts towards the Gilmore Girls Challenge.
I did enjoy the book, it wasn’t really what I had been expecting at all. Frankenstein isn’t the monster but is actually a chemist who has managed to construct a monstrous form of life, which is a really crazy idea. The monster escapes and Frankenstein believes that he has let loose a murderous being on society.
The monster learns about human life whilst hiding out close to a family and being able to observe them he develops language and teaches himself to read, hoping that he will be accepted by society despite the fact that he looks so scary. But he is driven away by the family and his anger and loneliness change him from a gentle beastie into one consumed with bitterness and rage. He decides to track down his creator with the intention of making Frankenstein create a female monster to alleviate his loneliness.
The action switches from Switzerland to Britain with Frankenstein hoping that he can avoid the monster there. Frankenstein and his friend Clerval travel round Britain from London to Oxford, Derby and then to Scotland visiting Edinburgh, including Arthur’s Seat and St Bernard’s Well before travelling on to Cupar, St Andrews and Perth, ending up on a remote Orkney island, which is where the monster caught up with him. Obviously this is just a brief outline of the story and I’m not going to go any further with it. I think it is the sort of book which you could read umpteen times and find something new in it at every visit.
Mary Shelley wrote this book during a holiday in Switzerland with her husband Percy Byshe Shelley and Lord Byron. The weather was dreadful with the sun being unable to break through the atmosphere which had been polluted by the eruption of Tambora on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa.
During this dark and spooky time they had entertained each other reading German ghost stories and decided they would all write their own, but Mary’s was the only one which was completed.
I was really surprised when the action moved to Scotland, close to where I live. It seems that every book that I pick up at the moment has a Scottish dimension.
Anyway, I’m glad that I read this one at last and I may even do so again.
I came across this list on Rose City Reader and I just had to see how many of them I have actually read. The answer is 12 but by a crazy coincidence I just borrowed Lady Audley’s Secret from my local library a couple of hours before I found the list, so I should be able to add that one to my ‘have read list’.
I think that a lot of these would probably be deemed to be unreadable nowadays but I’m going to have a bash at the ones that I can get hold of anyway.
To my shame I have never read any by Sir Walter Scott, although I’ve walked past his monument in Edinburgh plenty of times and I have no excuse as I inherited a lot of books by him. The books that I have read are in bold.
The Tower of London by W. H. Ainsworth
Old St Paul’s by W. H. Ainsworth
Windsor Castle by W. H. Ainsworth
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
Pere Goriot by Honoré de Balzac
A Window in Thrums by J. M. Barrie
The Golden Butterfly by Walter Besant and James Rice
Robbery Under Arms by Rolf Boldrewood
Lady Audley’s Secret by M. E. Braddon
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Shirley by Charlotte Bronte
The Deemster by Hall Caine
Valentine Vox by Henry Cockton
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
The Last of the Mohicans by J. Fenimore Cooper
The Pathfinder by J. Fenimore Cooper
The Prairie by J. Fenimore Cooper
Mr Isaacs by F. Marion Crawford
Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens
Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens
The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens
Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
The Firm of Girdlestone by Conan Doyle
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
Scenes of Clerical Life by George Eliot
Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
Joseph Andrews by Henry Fielding
Mary Barton by Mrs Gaskell
The Aide de Camp by James Grant
The Romance of War James Grant
Gabriel Conroy by Bret Harte
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Elsie Venner by Oliver Wendell Holmes
The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope
Tom Brown’s Schooldays by Thomas Hughes
Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
Toilers of the Sea by Victor Hugo
Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
Two Years Ago by Charles Kingsley
Alton Locke by Charles Kingsley
Hypatia by Charles Kingsley
The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn by Henry Kingsley
Soldiers Three by Rudyard Kipling
Guy Livingstone by George Lawrence
Harry Lorrequer by Charles Lever
Charles O’Malley by Charles Lever
The Atonement of Leam Dundas by E. Lynn Linton
Handy Andy by Samuel Lover
Rory O’More by Samuel Lover
Last of the Barons by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Night and Morning by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Rienzi by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
The Caxtons by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
The King’s Own by Captain Frederick Marryat
Peter Simple by Captain Frederick Marryat
Jacob Faithful by Captain Frederick Marryat
Midshipman Easy by Captain Frederick Marryat
Diana of the Crossways by George Meredith
John Halifax, Gentleman by D. M. Mulock
Under Two Flags by Ouida
It is Never Too Late to Mend by Charles Reade
Peg Woffington and Christie Johnstone by Charles Reade
Hard Cash by Charles Reade
The Headless Horseman by Captain Mayne Reid
Virginia of Virginia by Amelie Rives
The Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner
Tom Cringle’s Log by Michael Scott
Cruise of the Midge by Michael Scott
Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz
Rob Roy by Sir Walter Scott
The Bride of Lammermoor by Sir Walter Scott
Old Mortality by Sir Walter Scott
Kenilworth by Sir Walter Scott
Guy Mannering by Sir Walter Scott
Woodstock by Sir Walter Scott
The Talisman by Sir Walter Scott
Frank Fairlegh by Frank E. Smedley
Roderick Random by Tobias Smollett
Peregrine Pickle by Tobias Smollett
On the Face of the Waters by Mrs F. A. Steel
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne
Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
Soapey Sponge’s Sporting Tour by Robert Smith Surtees
The Wandering Jew by Eugene Sue
The History of Henry Esmond by William Makepeace Thackeray
The Newcomes by William Makepeace Thackeray
The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Orley Farm by Anthony Trollope
Robert Elsmere by Mrs H. Ward
£10,000 a Year by Samuel Warren
The Wide, Wide World by Elizabeth Wetherell
Market Harborough by G. J. Whyte-Melville
Inside the Bar by G. J. Whyte-Melville
East Lynne by Mrs Henry Wood
As I said in an earlier post, I am quite embarassed that I have only read 45 books on the list. The books which I have read are in bold print and I’m hoping to be able to change a few more to bold before the end of the year.
I’m never going to read any by Terry Pratchett and I won’t read Gone with the Wind as that was my mother-in-law’s comfort book and I don’t want to trespass.
Any suggestions for what else I should read from the list would be gratefully received.
1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
4. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
19. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
22. Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone, JK Rowling
23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling
24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling
25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
26. Tess Of The D’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
27. Middlemarch, George Eliot
28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
30. Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
38. Persuasion, Jane Austen
39. Dune, Frank Herbert
40. Emma, Jane Austen
41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
42. Watership Down, Richard Adams
43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
46. Animal Farm, George Orwell
47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
53. The Stand, Stephen King
54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
56. The BFG, Roald Dahl
57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
65. Mort, Terry Pratchett
66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
67. The Magus, John Fowles
68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
71. Perfume, Patrick Süskind
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
74. Matilda, Roald Dahl
75. Bridget Jones’s Diary, Helen Fielding
76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
78. Ulysses, James Joyce
79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
81. The Twits, Roald Dahl
82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
83. Holes, Louis Sachar
84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
89. Magician, Raymond E Feist
90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac
91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
95. Katherine, Anya Seton
96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
100. Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie
Skelf is the Scottish word for a splinter of wood, usually stuck in your finger but I suppose it could be anywhere on your body. I have noticed that this word is not used nearly as often as it used to be and people tend to be using splinter – which drives me nuts. Use it or lose it.
I was watching a T.V. programme about language a few years back and it mentioned that words beginning with ‘sk’ nearly always derive from Scandinavian words originally. So I suppose we have the Vikings to thank for this one.
It makes sense to me as my own surname begins with sk and although you won’t usually find my name in a list of Scottish surnames, it does appear in a list of ancient Scottish surnames deriving from Scandinavia.
I’ve been meaning to read this book for ages, mainly because John Buchan was a local lad, having been brought up in Fife. His father was a Free Church of Scotland minister in Kirkcaldy.
The book was first published in 1915. Buchan had been ill and had run out of reading material so decided to entertain himself by writing the sort of book which he enjoyed reading.
His main character Richard Hannay finds himself on the run from the police and whoever had murdered his neighbour who had been hiding in Hannay’s London flat.
The murder victim had warned Hannay of an assassination plot which could bring the country to the brink of war.
Hannay makes for his native Scotland with both the police and the murderers hot on his tracks. Travelling all over the country he is helped by various inhabitants but still finds himself in sticky situations.
I enjoyed reading this classic adventure book and will read the sequel Greenmantle too. Good bedtime reading, I think.
The local legend is that Buchan named the book after the 39 steps leading down to the beach at the side of Ravenscraig Castle in Kirkcaldy. Here is a photo of the steps. (There are actually more than 40. We counted.)
The 44 Steps
But like every other coastal place there are plenty of steps to choose from leading down to various parts of the beach.
The book was made into a film by Alfred Hitchcock in 1935, but the film is completely different from the book. The most memorable part of the film doesn’t even appear in the book – when Hannay is scrabbling about on the Forth Bridge. But who could blame Hitchcock for changing things, the bridge is a gift for a thriller.
Hitchcock definitely improved the storyline thriller-wise as the Forth Bridge is such a wonderful iconic structure that it seems a huge gaffe on Buchan’s part not to include it in the book. The bridge also featured in the 1959 film starring Kenneth More. Maybe Buchan was just a bit blasé about the bridge – as you tend to be if something is in your own back yard.
I reviewed this book as part of the Thriller and Suspense Reading Challenge.
I had a bit of a culinary disaster the other day when I tried to make fudge using a recipe from one of those fund-raising booklets that the local kirks publish. I don’t know what happened but I ended up with a solid block of brown sugar which I couldn’t even get a knife into.
I hate the thought of waste so I added some likely ingredients and boiled the whole thing up again and came up with a real winner this time. It isn’t quite tablet as the consistency is denser and to me it tastes very like Orkney fudge which you used to be able to buy, but I haven’t seen it for years. This is actually easier to make than tablet.
I’m swithering about calling it Fablet or Tudge, but leaning towards Fablet as it does taste fab.
1 1/2 lbs demerara sugar
6oz unsalted butter
3 large tablespoons golden syrup
300 ml carton single cream
Put all the ingredients into a heavy bottomed pot and bring them to the boil. At this stage it is a lovely toffee sauce but if you continue to simmer it for between 20 and 30 minutes the mixture should darken and thicken. When it looks quite gloopy as it simmers it should have boiled enough.
Remove from the heat and using a wooden spoon stir well until you feel the mixture getting thicker and heavier as it cools.
Carefully tip the mixture into a metal tray. A Swiss roll tin is ideal. When it has set score the surface with a knife to whatever size suits you best.
I think that if you continued to boil the mixture for another 10 minutes or so it would turn into a lovely toffee, which would be great if you don’t have to worry about your fillings being pulled out by it. Unfortunately I do.
I went to school with a girl called Rosabelle a very long time ago in the west of Scotland and I had never heard of anyone else with that name until quite recently when I came across the poem Rosabelle which was written by Sir Walter Scott.
When I read it I realised that he had written it about a local lass, the daughter of the Saint Clair (Sinclair) family who owned Ravenscraig Castle, the remains of which are situated about a mile from the esplanade in Kirkcaldy. For some reason Scott changed the name to Ravensheuch.
Ravenscraig Castle from path.
Ravenscraig Castle from beach.
It has seen better days. Unfortunately the locals have used the building as a handy place to gather stone from for whatever they wanted to build in the past. But if you find yourself in that part of Fife it is worthwhile stopping to take a look at what is left. You can park your car at Ravenscraig Park, the castle is on the edge of it.
I’m not going to do an in depth review of this book, I’m just going to make a few observations. It’s a fairly hefty tome at 627 pages, this is partly because it was originally printed in a weekly magazine and I suppose the editor wanted so many words each week to fill the allotted space for it. You can down-load it in instalments if you want to go for the authentic Victorian experience and I think I might have preferred that, then you get the cliff-hangers which Collins wrote for the end of each piece. Also, I imagine that if you are waiting a week for the next instalment then you are bound to think about it more and try to guess which turn the story is going to take.
I did think whilst reading it that the Count Fosco – Sir Percival relationship was what the Victorians would have deemed to be ‘unnatural’. There was the constant repetition that Count Fosco had a strange power over Sir Percival and in my Penguin edition on page 214, Marian describes Sir Percival as having a mania for order and he is upset even by flower-blossoms which have fallen on the carpet.
I think that Victorian readers would have seen such behaviour as ‘womanish’ and definitely suspect in a man. Coupled with Count Fosco’s flamboyant clothes and Sir Percival’s assertion that there was no chance that Laura would be having any children, it does seem to add up to me, but nobody else seems to have noticed it so I might be going off at a mad tangent with that thought. However I see from the introduction which I have just read – I always keep that for last – that Oscar Wilde was given the nickname of Fosco when he was a student.
So, it’s very wordy with masses of description and doesn’t really have much in the way of humour in it. Mrs. Catherick is a tragic/comic figure in her determination to appear to be respectable, but I did enjoy reading it although I probably wouldn’t read it again.
I reviewed this book as part of the Thriller and Suspense Reading Challenge.
Stravaig means to wander about the place with no particular destination or reason. Just an aimless meander around.
It would originally have been on foot but I suppose nowadays you could be described as stravaiging if you took a trip in your car, mystery tour style, with no set plans, just happy to be out and about.