Signing off for Christmas

Your intrepid reader is now signing off for Christmas and will be back again in the New Year. I hope you all have a nice, relaxing time (or exciting time if that's what you prefer!)

I'm reading Agatha Raisin and the Perfect Paragon. Having Agatha open a detective agency has given M C Beaton the opportunity to introduce new characters to interact with the old ones. What I like about Agatha is that she is so human. Flawed characters are so much more fun!

Happy reading, everybody!

Day 77; Book 74

The Unquiet by John Connolly

I finished this last night and it was excellent. I really recommend the Charlie Parker series by John Connolly. Here is John Connolly's website for those who are interested in this author. You will notice it is a suitably black colour for these "Maine noir" books!

Day 76; Book 73

Happy Birthday Holly!

It's the Rock Chick's 21st birthday today, so I can be pretty sure that I wasn't doing any reading on this day all those years ago ...

More John Connolly

I read another in the Charlie Parker series, The Black Angel, and I think this was the best one yet. More mysteries, supernatural stuff, flawed hero and wisecracks! Now I'm half way through The Unquiet which I thought was the last but I see that The Reapers has come out so I definitely want to get that (it's probably still only available in hardback though ...)

For a bit of light relief I had ordered two books from Amazon, The Cat that Could Open the Fridge: a Curmudgeon's Guide to Christmas Round Robin Letters and The Hamster that Loved Puccini: the Seven Modern Sins of Christmas Round Robin Letters, both by Simon Hoggart. Luckily they came within a couple of days. I have never received a round robin letter myself, but the examples given (with the names changed to protect the guilty) were hilarious, the letters obviously having been sent by people with absolutely no self-awareness of how pompous, boastful and plain boring they were! Part of the fun is Simon Hoggart's commentary. He manages to point out the faults of these awful letter writers without being mean-spirited so that we can laugh without feeling too guilty.

I should finish The Unquiet tonight but then I have to decide what to read next ... so many books, so little time.

Day 75; Book 72

Every Dead Thing by John Connolly

Finished this although it took me two days. I now have several other John Connollys to read, which seem not to be part of the Charlie Parker series. I wonder if they will be as dark.

Thanks to Jo I now have some more Agatha Raisins to read. You couldn't call these dark, even though at least one person dies horribly in each novel. They are in the Great British tradition of "cosy" murders! Also on my holiday reading list: Alison Lurie (new to me and again thanks to Jo); more Marcus Didius Falco mysteries thanks to Anna, and P G Wodehouse and Jackie Kay thanks to Lorraine. I should have called this blog "A book a day for a year - without having to buy any!" Thanks everybody.

Day 72; Book 69

Half-way through

I'm only half-way through Every Dead Thing by John Connolly so I can't give you a proper report yet. It has a powerful start, then gets a bit confusing, but now is completely on track and I can't wait to get back to it!

In the meantime, here is a useful website for anyone who is interested in the origins of languages (scroll down when you get to it). You probably know that English is descended from Indo-European, but did you know that our specific branch is Germanic? French, Italian and Spanish are from a different branch. Basque is unrelated to any other language at all! And surprisingly (to me) Persian comes from Indo-European but Arabic has a completely different origin.

For Scots words fans, you may be interested to know that the expression "to thole" is directly descended from Old English and features in Beowulf!

Day 71; Book 68 - must get a move on!

Beowulf translated by Seamus Heaney

I decided to read Beowulf again (in translation! This is a Book a Day, not a Book a Decade! Although Lucia of Mapp and Lucia would have pretended to read it in the original while keeping the translation to hand, ready to be covered up at a moment's notice ... )

There are many translations of Beowulf available but I recommend this one because Seamus Heaney is a poet in his own right, and will choose the right word for the right effect even if it is not always the "correct" translation. He also gives helpful marginal comments as to what is happening, useful because it is not always obvious otherwise when a scop in the poem declaims another poem, for example.

Now that I have gone back to basics, I might be brave enough to watch 2007's animated Beowulf on DVD. I've been avoiding it because I didn't want to be one of those people who say "but that's not what it should be like!" Now that I've refreshed my memory I've also remembered that there were no doubt many versions of the original tale anyway, and that this is just the one that was lucky enough to be written down and to survive.

Day 70; Book 68