Boy Meets Girl by Ali Smith

I didn't really like the look of this ... anything without conventional punctuation is going to have that effect on me! The story was interesting in the way details about the characters were gradually revealed, and there were some very funny as well as touching moments. Overall however I felt the author's message was too obtrusive. I like a novel to be firstly plot. If any deeper meanings are revealed then all the better. However I don't like the message to come first and then the plot to be devised around it, as seemingly happened here.

Agatha Raisin and the Fairies of Fryfam

I've finished the last of my borrowed Agatha Raisins, and that started me wondering just what it is I like about them. I don't think it's the mysteries particularly. They are not really intriguing enough to keep you on the edge of your seat, desperately turning pages to find out whodunnit. Much of the enjoyment of the Agathas is the humour, and that is based on character. Agatha gets to say all those things you wanted to yourself, but never dared to, and she is hilarious as she punctures pomposity, hypocrisy or simply speaks out about poor service. Ironically Agatha can be pompous and hypocritical herself, and it's funny to watch her get herself into awkward situations. She is basically good-natured though, despite all her intentions to the contrary, so at the same time as laughing, you are cringing with her and hoping she can get out of her latest scrape.

The characterisation is consistent throughout, from Mrs Bloxby's real goodness, to Charles's tight grip on his wallet, to the all-round awfulness of the Boggles. (Bring back the Boggles by the way! They haven't featured enough recently!) However, the characterisation is not static. M C Beaton can still surprise us with new details, such as Charles's addiction to Star Trek on Sky Television (naturally he watches Agatha's, presumably being far too tight to pay for it himself).

An added bonus to the stories is that although each one can be read individually, other story lines are developed across the whole series. (I think this is what is meant by that dreadful phrase, story arc).

Finally, I think there is a basic humanity to the characters, murderers excepted (and thankfully they always come to a satisfyingly-bad end).

I need some new books

Actually I want to keep reading my* Agatha Raisins (I read Agatha Raisin and the Witch of Wyckhadden last night), but that must be getting a bit boring for anyone reading this blog ... I'll see what else I can come up with.

* I mean Jo's, because I borrowed them!

What not to read

I've just finished another amusing Agatha Raisin detective novel, the Wizard of Evesham, but I've been thinking about other books I HAVEN'T liked. In fact, there are a few books I have never been able to finish at all. I've had two goes at Moby Dick but never got past the first few chapters. I've never been able to finish anything by Joseph Conrad either. Henry James has pretty much left me cold except for The Turn of the Screw (which I must re-read now that I've thought about it), and E M Forster does nothing for me either. Hazel Holt is a modern writer of murder mysteries but I've had to abandon her too.* Fortunately there are many more authors still to enjoy! In fact I have been receiving so many suggestions of books to read that I am going to have to organise my "recommended" list into categories.

*I've just had a look online and Hazel Holt has published numerous novels. Somebody must like them! Maybe I will try again but the one I started to read was almost stream-of-consciousness in its tedious detail ... is it just me? Is there anybody out there who can explain the attraction of Hazel Holt?

In which your intrepid reader reaches the limits of her brain power

My latest book was The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks. Sacks is the doctor whose work was fictionalised in the film Awakenings. Here he discusses neurological case histories from his practice. The case histories are fascinating and in some cases baffling, but the doctor's own humanity comes through in every instance. Some of the scientific discussion was rather beyond me I am afraid but overall this was a very interesting book.

Photography books

First up was Vietnam by Larry Burrows. Burrows was a photographer for Life magazine and covered the war in Vietnam from 1962 until his death in a helicopter crash there in 1971. His photographs have an immediacy which draw you right in. Some of them have a huge emotional impact, the kind which hits you with a shock of feeling giving you a lurch in the stomach. The first of these is the frontispiece which has no text but speaks for itself. Three soldiers are pictured but what is horrifying is that they look like young teenagers. One still has his baby-faced features, even though presumably he must be at least 18. This photograph brings home the youth of the soldiers more than any statistics about average age. Many of them weren't men, they were boys. Another photograph had a particular impact for me. It was a shot of the marines landing at Da Nang to defend the airport, early in the war. I had a jolt of recognition as I realised that these were "my" marines, the ones I had just been reading about in Philip Caputo's Rumor of War.

Of a completely different nature was Diary of a Century by Jacques Henri Lartigue. This is a charming book, illustrated by photographs taken by Lartigue right from the time when he was given a camera as a small boy about 1900. When you think of photographs from around this time you normally think of them as being stiff and posed, but Lartigue took action photographs of his mischievous brothers and cousins as they leapt down steps, plunged into pools and raced carts. Lartigue was fortunate to come from a wealthy family with a country house outside Paris, as well as having supportive (and brave!) parents who encouraged the boys in their various pursuits such as building and trying to fly gliders. However as the later photographs show no one is immune to tragedy in their life. The photographs continue right through 2 world wars to the end of Lartigue's life.

Slang of the Day

Looks like my little Slang of the Day box is running out of slang ... today it is telling us about the importance of voting! Stoppit, Slang of the Day! I signed up for new slang words, not lectures!