Remember These? Books beginning with ‘A’

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A few weeks ago I mentioned that I was planning a series of posts looking at some of the books I recorded in my old reading diary. The diary spanned my teenage years to my early twenties, so most of the books mentioned below will have been read during the 1990s and although I’ve included my original ratings, these do not necessarily reflect what I would feel about the books if I read them again today!

I gave the books ratings out of 5. The symbol * means I loved the book. X means I didn’t finish it.

Books beginning with ‘A’

Here are a selection of the books that appeared on the ‘A’ page of my notebook. Some of these are classics that many of you have probably read. Others are very obscure, so if you’ve read them I’d love to know what you thought of them!

Animal Farm by George Orwell (5/5*)

I obviously loved this when I first read it. I’ve reread it a couple of times since then and I still think it’s a great book.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (5/5)

One of those children’s classics that can also be enjoyed by adults. I haven’t read it for a long time; I wonder if I would feel any differently about it after reading Alice I Have Been earlier this year?

A Home For Jessie by Christine Pullein-Thompson (4/5)

My best friend and I bought this book and the next two in the Jessie series (Please Save Jessie and Come Home Jessie) from the school book fair when we were about 10 or 11 years old. The series follows the adventures of a boy called Matt and the black Labrador puppy that he rescues from being drowned. This was my favourite Jessie book and I loved it so much I re-read it many times, even after I was ‘too old’ for it (can you ever really be too old for a book?) and it made me cry every time.

All the Rivers Run by Nancy Cato (3/5)

This was recommended to me by my mother because I had enjoyed The Thorn Birds and she said this was a similar book also set in Australia. I can’t remember much about this one, though.

Acorna: The Unicorn Girl by Anne McCaffrey and Margaret Ball (3/5)

I’ve never been a big reader of fantasy novels, but I must have enjoyed this enough to give it a 3/5 rating.

A Kind of Thief by Vivien Alcock (3/5)

I can’t remember reading this at all, and even the Goodreads description doesn’t bring back any memories for me: “When her father is suddenly arrested and put into prison, thirteen-year-old Elinor finds that she has to face many unpleasant truths about him and their way of life.”

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (3/5)

I really need to be in a Christmassy mood to appreciate this book. I’ve read it several times over the years and would probably have given it a different rating every time! I re-read it on Christmas Eve last year and really enjoyed it. The edition shown in the picture is the one that was given to me as a Christmas present when I was a child and is a beautiful hardback with colour illustrations.

A Proper Little Nooryeff by Jean Ure (2/5)

I forgot about this one when I did my post on children’s ballet books a few months ago. It was about a teenage boy who becomes a ballet dancer. Nooryeff, if you were wondering, is a mispronunciation of the name (Rudolf) Nureyev.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce (2/5)

I remember my English teacher at school telling us about this book but saying it was suitable for a ‘more mature reader’ so I didn’t actually read it until after I had left school. The chapters describing the fires of hell must have left a big impression on me because that’s all I can actually remember about the book. I’ve never wanted to read anything else by Joyce though, so I don’t think he’s an author for me.

Across the Barricades by Joan Lingard (2/5)

We read this at school in English Literature. It would have been very relevant in the 1990s, as it was set in Northern Ireland and told the story of Kevin, a Catholic boy, who falls in love with Sadie, a Protestant girl. Although I didn’t know it at the time, this was actually the second in a series of books about Kevin and Sadie. I think maybe the fact that I was made to read it at school affected my enjoyment of it.

Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume (2/5)

Like many children/young teenagers I used to read a lot of Judy Blume books. This was one of her most popular books, so I’m sure some of you will remember reading it too. I don’t seem to have enjoyed this one very much though.

A Likely Lad by Gillian Avery (1/5)

I can’t remember reading this but I only rated it 1/5. According to the product description on Amazon, ‘Pressured by his father to leave school for a career he doesn’t want, a nineteenth-century Manchester boy runs away and gains a new perspective on his future.’ This actually sounds like something I would probably enjoy more if I was reading it now!

An Air That Kills by Andrew Taylor (x); Act of Violence by Margaret Yorke (1/5); A Thin Dark Line byTami Hoag (3/5)

These three are crime novels which is why I’ve grouped them together, but I can remember absolutely nothing about them and even looking up the descriptions on Amazon doesn’t help bring them back to my mind. I must have thought the Tami Hoag one was okay. I did go through a phase of reading a lot of crime novels, but now I almost never read them (I think I’ve only read one in 2010).

A Touch of Practical Magic by Robert Gould (x)

I recognise the title and can even picture what the cover looked like, but I have no idea what it was about. It seems to be out of print and I can’t even find a synopsis online. I obviously didn’t like it enough to finish it anyway, so I won’t spend too much time worrying about it, but if anyone remembers this book please let me know!

Coming soon… Remember These? Books Beginning with ‘B’.

The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett

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The Queen has never had much time for reading but when she discovers a mobile library parked behind Buckingham Palace and decides to borrow a book, a whole new world is suddenly opened to her. With the help of her new friend Norman she reads one book after another and discovers that she has a real passion for literature. Unfortunately, not everyone shares her enthusiasm – and some people are prepared to do whatever it takes to stop Her Majesty from reading.

I have a feeling I’m one of the last people in the world to read this book (as usual) but I’m so glad I finally got round to it. Alan Bennett is one of my sister’s favourite writers and as we have such different reading tastes I never thought I would like him too. I’ve never been more pleased to have been proved wrong! This is a lovely, light-hearted, whimsical story that still contains a lot of witty observations, profound insights and wisdom.

In The Uncommon Reader, Bennett takes a humorous look at what it’s like to be the Queen and the pressure she’s under to conform to other people’s expectations. She is portrayed as an endearing character discovering the joys of reading for the first time and who just wants to be left alone with her books! It was interesting to watch the Queen progress as a reader, from being initially overwhelmed by the number of books available and relying on Norman to choose titles for her, to being able to make her own choices and develop her own tastes. Eventually, her reading begins to change the way she approaches her public duties and the way she views herself and the world around her.

There are some very funny moments, such as when the Queen perfects the art of waving from the royal carriage while holding a book in her other hand below the level of the window, and when one of her books is exploded because security think it’s a bomb.

Being a bookworm myself, I loved Bennett’s insights into the philosophy of reading and on almost every page there were quotes that every book lover will be able to identify with. I’ll leave you with a few of them…

‘I think of literature’, she wrote, ‘as a vast country to the far borders of which I am journeying but cannot possibly reach. And I have started too late. I will never catch up.’

‘Can there be any greater pleasure’, she confided in her neighbour, the Canadian minister for overseas trade, ‘than to come across an author one enjoys and then to find they have written not just one book or two, but at least a dozen?’

‘Books are wonderful, aren’t they?’ she said to the vice-chancellor, who concurred.
‘At the risk of sounding like a piece of steak,’ she said, ‘they tenderise one.’

The Wilding by Maria McCann

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The Wilding is set in England in 1672, just after the end of the Civil War. Our narrator is Jonathan Dymond, a young man who works as a cider-maker. Jonathan lives with his loving parents and leads a quiet, happy life, travelling around the neighbouring villages with his mobile cider-press. But when Jonathan’s father receives a mysterious letter from his dying brother, Jonathan grows suspicious and decides to visit his uncle’s widow to investigate. At his Aunt Harriet’s house he meets Tamar, one of his aunt’s servants, and begins to unravel the circumstances surrounding his uncle’s death.

Due to the fast pace and the plot twists, I would recommend reading this book in as few sittings as possible. I had started off reading it in small portions alongside another book and found it difficult to get into the story; when I decided to put my other book to one side for a while and concentrate solely on this one, I found that I flew through the rest of the novel. The story was entertaining, very compelling and kept me turning the pages.

McCann evokes the period very well. I liked the way she portrayed a small rural community in 17th century England. I also learned more than I could ever wish to know about cider-making and apples…

What does Solomon say? ‘Comfort me with apples.’ Everything about them is kind and comforting: the mild eating apple, the sharp or bitter fruit that crushes to a miraculous sweetness, the homely apples, like tried and trusted friends, that serve all purposes.

But to me, the difference between a good book and a great book is having strong characters that I can connect with – and unfortunately I felt that most of the characters in The Wilding had very little depth. As the narrator, Jonathan was boring and not very engaging. Tamar and her mother were both interesting, well-drawn characters, but as we only saw them through Jonathan’s eyes, I didn’t get to know them as well as I would have liked to. It would have been nice to have had part of the story told from Tamar’s perspective, because Jonathan was just too weak and I felt no emotional involvement with him at all.

So, I thought The Wilding was a good book but not a great one. I would recommend it to people who like well-written, fast moving historical fiction with plenty of twists and revelations.

The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton

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Kate Morton’s latest book, The Distant Hours, is getting a lot of attention at the moment but I thought that before I decided whether to buy it I should really read the previous two books of hers that have been sitting on my shelf unread for a long time. I’m so glad I finally decided to pick up The Forgotten Garden because, although it wasn’t perfect, I loved it overall.

In 1913, just before the beginning of World War I, a port master finds a little girl with a suitcase sitting alone on the docks at Maryborough, Australia. With no sign of the child’s parents and no clue to her identity, he takes the girl home with him, where he and his wife name her Nell and raise her as their own daughter. But what was Nell doing in Australia? Who were her real parents? And what is her connection with the mysterious Eliza Makepeace, writer of fairy tales?

When Nell dies in 2005, she leaves everything to her granddaughter, Cassandra – including a cottage in Cornwall, England. When Cassandra travels to Cornwall to investigate, she begins to uncover some secrets about her grandmother’s identity and attempts to solve the mystery of Cliff Cottage.

At first I thought I was going to have a problem with Kate Morton’s writing style. She has quite a flowery, descriptive style which you’ll either love or hate. For example:

Was it always this way? Did those with passage booked on death’s silent ship always scan the dock for faces of the long-departed?

As the book went on though, the writing bothered me less, because I was becoming so absorbed in the story. It had a wonderful atmosphere and was very reminiscent of The Secret Garden in places (the manor house, the invalid cousin, the walled garden – and Frances Hodgson Burnett even makes a brief appearance!) It also felt a bit like a Daphne du Maurier book in places (particularly the Cornwall scenes) and the Swindell family whom Eliza lives with in turn-of-the-century London could have come straight from a Dickens novel. Some of Eliza’s fairy tales are even included in the book which I thought was a nice touch although I wasn’t too impressed with the stories themselves.

The biggest problem I had with this book was the constant jumping around in time and place. One chapter would be set in London in 1900, the next in Brisbane in 2005 and the next in Cornwall in 1975, which disrupted the flow of the story and made it difficult to follow. We also switch narrator with every chapter, which made me even more confused, particularly as there was almost nothing to differentiate between the voices of Cassandra, Nell and Eliza. It was too easy to forget who I was reading about. Eliza’s storyline was by far the most interesting of the three though and I think it would probably have worked on its own as a straight historical fiction novel.

The solution to the mystery was made very obvious to the reader from early on in the book, so when it was finally revealed it came as an anti-climax. This didn’t really spoil the story for me but it was slightly frustrating to watch Cassandra trying to solve the mystery and knowing that she was getting it completely wrong. I would have appreciated it if some of the clues could have been kept from the reader until nearer the end.

Other than those few points, I loved this book, which was great because I really hadn’t expected to. For such a long and complex book it was surprisingly quick to read.

Those of you who have read all of Kate Morton’s books, how does this one compare to The House at Riverton or The Distant Hours?

The Dressmaker of Khair Khana by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

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When journalist Gayle Lemmon was looking for a subject that hadn’t already been given a lot of news coverage, she became intrigued by the topic of female entrepreneurs working in war zones. Travelling to post-Taliban Afghanistan, Lemmon intended to report on women who were running their own businesses. Unfortunately finding female business owners at first proved more difficult than she had expected, but eventually she heard about Kamila Sidiqi. In The Dressmaker of Khair Khana, subtitled Five Sisters, One Remarkable Family, and the Woman Who Risked Everything to Keep Them Safe, Lemmon tells Sidiqi’s amazing story.

After receiving her teacher training certificate from college in 1996, Kamila Sidiqi was looking forward to going to university and becoming a teacher like her elder sisters, when the Taliban took control of Kabul and everything changed almost overnight. Suddenly women found their freedom stripped away from them. Required to wear the chadri (full-length burqa) and unable to go outdoors without being accompanied by a male relative, the options available for a woman to earn her living became very limited.

Trying to find a way of making money that would still comply with the Taliban’s rules, Kamila decided to set herself up as a seamstress, making clothes in her own living room and selling them to local tailor’s shops. As the weeks and months went by, Kamila’s dressmaking business grew in size and reputation until eventually she and her sisters and several of their neighbours were working round the clock to meet their orders. Kamila also came up with the idea of starting a school to teach other girls from the neighbourhood the basics of dressmaking, enabling them to support themselves and their families.

Throughout the book you can never forget the danger Kamila was in and the risks she was taking. For example, there’s a frightening moment where she and two female friends are caught taking a bus to Pakistan without their mahram (male companion). Kamila’s courage and quick-thinking really shines through in situations like this.

Lemmon has a nice clear writing style, and the book is as easy to read as fiction. As well as being a fascinating story, I also found The Dressmaker of Khair Khana completely inspiring. Kamila and her sisters refused to be defeated, searched for solutions to every problem and managed to prosper despite the oppressive conditions they were forced to live under.

Recommended.

The Dressmaker of Khair Khana will be published by HarperCollins in March 2011. I received a review copy as an ebook from NetGalley.

Remember These? A possible new series of posts

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I started my blog in October 2009 and have kept a list of every book I’ve read since then. Of course, I’ve been reading books for much, much longer than that – before I had ever heard of blogs or the internet (or even had a computer). So how did I used to keep track of the books I had read? Naturally, I wrote them down in a notebook.

I started my notebook in 1993, listing the books from A-Z and giving them star ratings (with a couple of special ratings for books that I particularly loved or hated). Although I can’t remember exactly when I stopped writing them down I know it was sometime around 1999/2000 when I was at university and had less time to read for pleasure. Unfortunately, I didn’t note down any other thoughts about the books, so when I look back now I have no idea why I thought a particular book deserved one star or five stars. I can’t remember what a lot of them were about and some of the titles don’t even seem familiar to me at all. It makes me feel sad to think that I’ve read so many books that have now been forgotten…and so I’m hoping to bring them back into the spotlight with a new series of Remember These? posts.

I’m planning to dedicate a separate post to each letter, going through my list of books in alphabetical order. Some letters of the alphabet have over 100 books listed and a lot of them are YA or children’s books; I won’t look at all of these books in-depth, but will choose a few to focus on. I’ll also reveal the ratings I gave, but please bear in mind that if the ratings seem harsh or strange or not what you would expect from me, all I can say in my defence is that my reading tastes have changed quite a lot over the years!

What do you think? Would anyone be interested in reading these posts? Did you keep a record of the books you read before you started blogging?

Blacklands by Belinda Bauer

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Twelve year-old Steven Lamb’s family has never recovered from the disappearance of his Uncle Billy almost two decades ago. Billy, who went missing aged eleven, was thought to have been murdered by the serial killer Arnold Avery. However, although six of Avery’s other victims were found buried on Exmoor, Billy’s body was never found.

Steven’s grandmother still can’t accept that her son is dead and stands at the window every day watching for him coming home. In an attempt to set his Nan’s mind at rest and restore some peace to his family by finding out where Billy is buried, Steven decides to write a letter to Arnold Avery in prison – but what he doesn’t realise is that by doing so he could be putting his own life in danger.

Blacklands is a dark and atmospheric psychological thriller, but due to the subject matter it won’t appeal to everyone. Although there’s nothing very gory or graphic, the book does takes us right inside the head of Arnold Avery, getting much closer to the mind of a serial killer than I was comfortable with. Of course, this type of thing should be disturbing and chilling, so I think the author has done a great job of creating a character who is genuinely frightening to read about.

Belinda Bauer said in her author’s note that this was originally intended to be a story about a boy and his grandmother and not a crime novel at all, which I thought was interesting because the family scenes were the aspect of the book that I really liked, rather than the crime plot. I was impressed with the way Bauer portrayed twelve-year-old Steven’s sad, lonely life and showed us the long term effects one tragic incident can have on future generations of a family.

The book explores Steven’s relationships with each member of his family. His Nan, still grieving for her lost son, is distant and detached, unable to move on with her life. His mother, a stressed single parent finding it difficult to cope in the aftermath of Billy’s murder, doesn’t have much time for Steven and lavishes most of her attention on his younger brother, five-year-old Davey. To make things even worse, Steven is being bullied and doesn’t feel he can tell anyone about it. His only moments of happiness come when he’s working in the garden with Uncle Jude, one of the many boyfriends who pass in and out of his mother’s life. Although he sometimes seems older than twelve, I found him a very believable character and it’s sad to think that all over the world there are real-life Stevens.

I can’t say that I ‘enjoyed’ this book, because how can you really enjoy reading about a child killer? But I did find it very gripping and didn’t want to put it down until I was finished. This was an impressive debut novel and although I don’t usually read a lot of crime fiction, I’ll look forward to reading more of Belinda Bauer’s books.

I received a review copy of this book from Transworld