Category Archives: Books

# 1962 Club – The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard

Posted on by

The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard isn’t exactly an uplifting read. I was trying to imagine how it would have felt to read it back in 1962. I imagine that it wasn’t quite as  unnerving as I found it to be. The fact is that the world in which the story is set is getting too close for comfort nowadays.

Global warming isn’t actually mentioned as that phrase hadn’t been coined by then, but that is what is causing the death of the Earth. The temperatures are reaching unbearable heights (some places have already reached the temperatures mentioned) and the consequences are the growth of rampant tropical jungles which are being over run by all sorts of alligators. The year is 2145.

It’s a watery world which is clogged with sargasso type weeds and only the tops of tall buildings poke out of the water. Later in the book it’s revealed that the city below the water is actually London.

Solar radiation has melted the polar ice caps and has caused much of the world to be engulfed with water. The main character is Dr Robert Kerans and he’s part of a group of people who have been sent to study the flora and fauna that is appearing in the lagoon which is covering London. Kerans is living in a penthouse in what had been The Ritz Hotel, poking above the lagoon. The scientists are all having nightmares, but one of them, Beatrice, has decided that she won’t be leaving her hotel room when the time comes for them to leave the area, despite the fact that she wouldn’t be able to last long with the heat becoming ever more unbearable and food running out.

When a group of pirates headed by a man called Strangman turn up things go from bad to worse. They’re looting whatever they can from the water above London and they have quite a haul of gold, jewels and historical artefacts.  It all turns into a horrific experience, particularly for Kerans.

So, as you will realise, this was not a relaxing and enjoyable read although I found the characters and the situations to be believable.

This is the first book that I’ve read by Ballard, but Jack has read most of his books and he says they tend to be depressing. It’s probably not all that surprising given that as a teenager he spent two and a half years in a Japanese internment camp during WW2. I dread to think what he experienced then.

 

 

# 1962 Club – Previous 1962 reads

Posted on by

Karen of Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings and Simon of Stuck in a Book are jointly hosting another of their ‘Club’ weeks and this time it’s the 1962 Club. So we’re reading books published in that year. I had quite  a tough time deciding what to read, mainly because as you can see from the list below, I’ve already read so many books that were published in 1962. I’ve opted to read The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard and The Ipcress File by Len Deighton, both of which belonged to Jack and were living in the overflow bookcases in the garage. I’ll be reviewing them both soon and should be able to fit in another 1962 read, if I can find another book to read.

The Tightening String by Ann Bridge

A Murder of Quality by John le Carre

My Friend Flora by Jane Duncan

Blood on the Mink by Robert Silverberg

Girl with  Green Eyes by Edna O’Brien

Apple Bough by Noel Streatfeild

The Nonesuch by Georgette Heyer

The Game of Kings by Dorothy Dunnett

The Demoniacs by John Dickson Carr

The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken

Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck

 

Death of a Chief by Douglas Watt

Posted on by

Death of a Chief by Douglas Watt was first published by Luath Press Ltd in 2009.

Tthe setting is Edinburgh, it’s 1686. To begin with there’s a ‘prelude’ which tells of Lachlan MacLean’s experience as a youngster on the battlefield of Inverkeithing where he had lost two of his brothers. But now he’s Sir Lachlan MacLean, clan chief, but not for long as he is the chief referred to in the book title.

When Sir Lachlan’s body is found in his bed in his Edinburgh lodgings it’s not clear if his death was murder or suicide. The victim had borrowed money from people for years and often hadn’t been able or inclined to pay his debts.

The Edinburgh lawyer John MacKenzie is tasked with the work of investigating, helped by his young scribe Davie Scougall. They have to travel to the Highlands to Sir Lachlan’s home to look through the papers in the chief’s home, looking for clues. Davie Scougall had barely been out of Edinburgh before and he had certainly never been to the Highlands. He’s nervous about the journey as he has heard so many stories about the lawless area which is apparently populated by violent marauders. Even his granny has warned him never to go there! There’s a possibility of clan warfare to avenge the death, but there are plenty of suspects, including the new clan chief.

This was a quick read at just 187 pages but it’s an enjoyable read with some likeable characters, it’s well written by an author who prior to writing fiction was more used to writing about Scots history. He wrote The Price of Scotland: Darien, Union and the Wealth of Nations. I might give that one a go – sometime. I borrowed this one from the library.

 

Mrs Porter Calling by A.J. Pearce

Posted on by

Mrs Porter Calling by A.J. Pearce is the third book by the author with the setting of WW2 London and the problems of running a women’s magazine called Woman’s Friend.

It begins in April 1943. Emmy Lake had begun knowing nothing about journalism but she’s now really confident about what she’s doing. She’s the agony aunt and she really wants to help the many readers who write in asking for her help.

Unfortunately the magazine’s owner Lord Overton dies and it transpires that he has given his niece the ghastly Honourable Mrs Porter the complete ownership of Woman’s Friend. Mrs Porter is only interested in high society and the best things in life which include clothes and make-up that no ordinary woman would be able to contemplate buying.  All of the readers’ favourite articles  are being dropped and worst of all the problem page is going too.

Within a very short time Mrs Porter has changed the magazine from a financial success that advertisers are queuing up for space in, to a magazine that very few women are buying.

With the help of Bunty, Thelma and Guy as well as the magazine team Emmy sets about trying to save the Womans’ Friend.

As with the two previous books in this series it all feels very authentic, the author has done her research. Inevitably as it’s wartime there is sadness and disaster, but they just ‘put their shoulders back’ and get on with it, as people had to. This was another enjoyable read.

Natasha’s Will by Joan Lingard

Posted on by

Natasha’s Will by Joan Lingard was first published in 2020. It was a Federation of Children’s Book Groups’ Pick of the Year. I must admit that I’ve never heard of that group. It’s a very quick read at just 166 pages.

This is a dual time and place setting. It begins in contemporary Scotland where Natasha has just recently died. She had been over 90 and had been cared for in her own home by family friends of generations’ standing.  Natasha had started life in St Petersburg where she had a very privileged life – until the revolution in 1917. After a lot of difficulty danger and disasters Natasha and her mother had managed to make their way out of Russia and eventually ended up in Scotland, along with Eugenie, a friend who marries a Scot.

Years later it’s Eugenie’s family that look after Natasha in her own home until she dies. Natasha had always said that she was going to leave the family her house, but her will can’t be found anywhere, and it’s thought that she didn’t actually get around to writing it. It’s a disaster for the family, especially when Natasha’s official next of kin turns up to claim his inheritance. This was a good read with plenty of tension although I was pretty sure  that everything would turn out right in the end.

As ever it’s a plus when you know the locations and I was happy to be able to recognise St Petersburg as well as Scotland. I didn’t know anything about this book when I saw it in a charity bookshop in Edinburgh, but I’ve started to collect Lingard’s books whenever I see them, which isn’t that often, even in her hometown of Edinburgh.

 

Holiday book purchases

Posted on by

I managed to buy quite a lot of books while on our recent UK road trip. We stopped off at Penrith in the north of England. There’s a nice wee secondhand bookshop there just across from the old church. They had quite a lot of Elinor M Brent-Dyer Chalet School books, just paperbacks though.  I’m on a bit of a re-visit to that series, a nostalgia trip I suppose, so I bought:

Mary Lou at the Chalet School

The Chalet School Wins the Trick

Excitements at the Chalet School

Chalet School Fete

In various other towns I bought:

Viking’s Dawn by Henry Treece

They Were Sisters by Dorothy Whipple

Another World by Pat Barker

Zennor in Darkness by Helen Dunmore

Madame Claire by Susan Ertz

An End to Running by Lynne Reid Banks

The Measure of Malice – Scientific Detective Stories ed. Martin Edwards

Murder in a Heatwave  – (classic crime mysteries for the holidays)

Then we found a lovely old bookshop in Bradford on Avon (Ex Libris) old and new books, I bought three nice hardback Miss Read books:

A Country Christmas

Summer at Fairacre

Farewell to Fairacre

Then in a National Trust secondhand bookshop I bought a couple of non-fiction books:

Beastly Bath (Irreverent quotes about Bath from its greatest visitors)

Goodnight Children Everywhere (Voices of Evacuees)

Have you read any of them?

 

Yours Cheerfully by A.J. Pearce

Posted on by

Yours Cheerfully by A.J. Pearce which was published in 2002 is a sequel to Dear Mrs Bird, you can read my thoughts on that one here.

With the departure of the ghastly Mrs Bird at the end of the last book things at work in the offices of the magazine Woman’s Friend are improving hugely for Emmeline Lake. She can now reply to the problems page letters as she would like to instead of going behind Mrs Bird’s back.

The bombing of London has eased up somewhat, but Emmy’s best friend Bunty is still carrying the scars both physically and mentally from her experiences.

The government is starting a campaign to get women into the wartime factories to do their bit, the Ministry of Information want the women’s magazines to promote the idea, but those women who are already working in factories are having a tough time of it. Although the government realises that nurseries are needed to let the mothers of young children get back to work, the men who run the factories have no intention of changing anything, in fact they’re sacking women if they have childcare problems. Of course the women aren’t even being paid the same as men for doing the same jobs! Emmy gets involved.

This is a really enjoyable read with the relationships between the women of varied classes being to the fore, with no snobbery involved. The author did plenty of research to get the nitty gritty details of wartime Britain, including the fact that wives first realised that their husbands were either dead or missing when his army pay was stopped and they got no money! This happened several times to my father when the merchant ships he was on were torpedoed. No ship, no pay, but I suppose he was just glad to be picked up by another ship. I used to work with a woman who got a telegram saying her husband was missing and after six months they would begin to pay her her war widow’s pension, but what was she supposed to do for money for those six months?! The day before those six months were up she got a postcard from Italy from her husband who was a prisoner of war there!

My mother was of that WW2  generation and she worked in a factory sewing military uniforms, but that was before she was married with children. It was the most memorable time of her life though and every conversation came back to her wartime experiences. This book feels very authentic and true to the times. I’m looking forward to reading the next one in the series which is called Mrs Porter Calling.

The Derbyshire Dales by Norman Price

Posted on by

I like old travel books and I like Derbyshire so I was happy to see this book The Derbyshire Dales by Norman Price in a secondhand bookshop. It’s illustrated by Frederick J Knowles and has been printed on nice thick paper. I’ve had it for quite a while now but have only just got around to reading it. It was published in 1953 which just adds to its interest for me.

Robinsheugh by Eileen Dunlop

Posted on by

Robinsheugh by Eileen Dunlop was first published in 1975.  The setting is the Scottish Border Country, but it begins in London’s King’s Cross Station where Elizabeth has just boarded a train bound for Scotland. She’s not at all happy, her parents are going to America for months and Elizabeth had been desperate to go with them, but it couldn’t be afforded and Elizabeth is having to go to stay with her aunt, a historian who usually lives in Oxford but at the moment she’s doing research at Robinsheugh into the family that lived there during the 18th century.

When Elizabeth reaches her destination she’s absolutely miserable, it’s evident that her aunt has very little time for her and she’s more interested in the past. But when Elizabeth finds an old hand mirror which by coincidence has her own initials on it strange things begin to happen and she finds herself being drawn back into the past to become part of the 18th century family.

I liked this one although I was almost rolling my eyes at what at first seemed to be the usual cliche of the old mirror and a time slip, admittedly there is something strange about really old mirrors. It’s the thought of all the people who have looked at their reflection in the glass that you’ll never know, and what were they thinking, what did they look like?

Anyway, it turned out to be not such a cliche. Apparently this was the first book by Eileen Dunlop who was born in Alloa and was  a teacher at Dollar Academy.

Camerons on the Train by Jane Duncan

Posted on by

Camerons on the Train by Jane Duncan was published in 1963. Jane Duncan is probably better known as the author of the ‘My Friends’ series for adults. Camerons on the Train is aimed at children around ten years old I think. It’s an adventure tale which is told by Shona, the only girl in the Cameron family. She has three brothers, Neil who enjoys being dramatic, Donald who always likes to have something to read and Iain who is only three years old so doesn’t feature much in the adventure.

They live in Scotland near a village called Inverdaviot, but during the school holidays they always travel by train to stay with an aunt in the Highlands in a village called Jennyville, and this year they have been deemed old enough to travel there by train on their own. Iain will be staying at home with their mother, he isn’t well and she doesn’t want to take him out in the cold.

The journey from Inverdaviot to Rioch where their aunt lives is fairly unveventful and they can see their aunt at the end of the platform when they get to Rioch, but Shona realises that she has left her watch in the loo and dashes back to get it, her brothers follow her and they end up getting knocked down by three men who had been hiding in the loo, they were obviously small men!

This is a very quick read at just 125 pages. The tale has an authentic feel of being told by a young girl and it features an exciting adventure. I have a feeling that I read it when I was about ten but I can’t say for sure. I would have liked it just for the Scottish setting as at that age I just wanted to move to the Highlands and live in a wee white cottage, half of me still does, but I’m a Ggemini, so the other half of me wouldn’t!