Hello in December from Mrs Mac

Tis the season to be jolly, fala lala la, la la la la!
          But whether you are jolly or not,  
                     my best wishes to you all.  

Seasons Greetings!

 And in case you are wondering what to read over Christmas.....  because I missed my December suggestion, I have nothing to say - except if you get books as a gift, surely one of those will whisper "read me, read me"?  Certainly two book shaped parcels are calling to me as I write this!  

But as a matter of interest..... do you have titles to suggest to me?   No chic lit or choc lit about romance in the snow purleeese!  No gore and violence set around Christmas.  No Golden age of Crime set around Christmas, either, as I have read my quota of that for December.  Any suggestions gratefully received.

And before I finish today, I ordered a book from an American site for myself, because of Nan at Letters from a Hill Farm

I found Nan some years ago, and I like her reading lists.  She reads Gladys Tabor from time, and so I took the plunge and ordered one of hers to read.  It is Country Chronicle,  for that is what Gladys wrote about - her little bit of the country (she lived in New England, as Nan does).  It will take a few weeks to get here, but it is my self indulgence at the end of the year.  Nan's a bit of an Anglophile, too, and reads English authors, and watches any amount of old British TV  - if you are reading me, Nan, have a lovely time over the holidays.

Have a good one everybody.

The Death of Sweet Mister - Daniel Woodrell

Daniel Woodrell writes of what he knows - and he knows the Ozarks.  Whilst I wouldn't want to know the characters in this short book, I did get to know them, and very quickly.  If you were an overweight thirteen year old whose father calls you fatso and who beats you at the slightest provication, you might well hate him.  And if your beautiful mother, who refers to you as Sweet Mister and who is as pretty as a picture is also beaten, and is reliant on pocket change to get by, you might well want to protect her from him.  What if you can't?  What if this just goes on and on?  And then, what if your mother takes up with a new man friend?

The characters are drawn so well you can smell the drink on their breaths, the sweat on their bodies, and know the hate in their hearts.  This is a harrowing read, but one that I won't tell you to steer clear of;  for in reading this, you may come to an understanding about how crimes happen and why, and how some children don't get the breaks they deserve (and frankly may not know what to do with anyway).  The tale is told in the first person by Shuggy, the Sweet Mister of the title, whose real name is Morris. He has a particular rythm which took me a few pages to get into.  After that I was off and running and couldn't put it down even though I was filled with dread from early on.  And then, that ending...... oh, I couldn't contemplate it, but somehow knew it was coming.

The Empress of Ice Cream - Anthony Capella

History and Ice cream together in one book?  Oh yes!  And to think I would never have picked this one myself.  This was passed on to me by a friend because I was short of a book for a category in a challenge I'd entered.  But I digress.

The lady in question was one of many mistresses of King Charles II of England, a girl from the landed gentry of Brittany, France.  Her job was to get the King to do the bidding of Louis XIV of France, and join him in a war against the Dutch.  Oh! and to persuade him to become a Catholic.  Her name? Louise de Keroualle, anglicised to Louise Carwell.  The intrigues of the English Court and parliament at that time were as much an eye opener to me, as they were to her.  Alongside her story is that of Carlo Demirco, the man who (supposedly) invented ice cream.  His story is a fiction, although certainly icecream was served to the King and Court at that time, and in any case, the descriptions of his flavours and how he got them are really worth a book of their own - although there are definitive books about ice cream which are described in the acknowledgements at the end of the book.
She decided that love would never take the place of politics; and he?  Well, he loved her but was never going to have her to himself.

This is historic faction and a lot of fun.  Easy to read, I polished off the 400 pages in a couple of days and enjoyed every mouthful!  And tell me, if you can, whatever happened to white strawberries?

  

The Blessing - Nancy Mitford

One of those books that has remained on the shelf for years..... and so glad I read it when I was looking for something short and light.  This entertaining tale, set immediately after WW2 is an eye opener if you know nothing of the English and the French class system. (Ooops!  the French have a class system?  What about the Revolution?) You have to take this book at face value remember the year it was published (1951).  If you do that you should find yourself amused by the behaviour of the French aristo's and their circle in Paris.  Poor Grace, who marries Charles-Edouard in haste because in true Parisian fashion he sweeps her off her feet, finds life in Paris very different indeed from a rural gentrified upbringing in England.  How she copes with it is the basis of the book.  The Blessing?  Ah now.  That is Sigismonde (Sigi) their son, and he is less than a blessing due to the influences of Nanny, an absentee father, a perhaps too-loving mother and many others. 


[Nancy Mitford was herself a member of the English upper classes, and was one of six sisters who together form a very interesting and colourful family group.

 Deborah went on to become the Duchess of Devonshire;  Unity was a guest of Hitler at the 1938 Nuremberg Rally and attempted suicide at the outbreak of war in 1939; Pamela never married;  Diana's second husband (the first was heir Bryan Guinness) was fascist Sir Oswald Moseley; Jessica eloped with her second cousin and became a journalist in America.]

Guernica - Dave Boling

I'll bet you thought I had won the lottery and run away, no?  Sorry faithful readers.  New kitchen being fitted does slow down the reading, but here I am:

Because of the the goings-on in Barcelona earlier this year, I pulled this one off the shelf for my Remembrance Read in November.  Guernica is in Spain, but in the Basque region, and they have always been fiercely independent.  Prior to the Spanish Civil War and WW2, they declared total independence from Spain, and elected their first president.  And then along came Generalisimo Franco, a fascist, supported by Mussilini and Hitler who changed the face of Spain.  What he also did was encourage the Nazi party to bomb a Basque town (a sort of practice for the Blitz in London?).  Guernica, the centre of Basque culture and tradition was chosen, and the commander of the bombing squadron was a relative of Richthofen the Red Baron.

Picasso, a Spaniard living in France, never returned to Spain, but he painted a large canvas of the same name, based on reports received in Paris shortly after the bombing.  It is now on permanent exhibition in the Queen Sophia Museum, Madrid.

The book is the story of a family and those that come in contact with it. The story of love of many kinds; love of town, love of family, love of culture.  It is also full of truth too, for this dreadful thing really did happen, and it behoves us not to forget it.  I do not look lightly on things that came after - the Blitz in London by the Luftwaffe; the carpet bombing of Dresden by the RAF;  Hiroshima by the American Air Force - and any other dreadful warfare that is currently happening around the world.  The words "Never Again" are used too often, because somewhere in the world, as I write, someone hates another enough to start planning the same kind of thing.  How sad that is.

But this is a book worth reading for many reasons.  If you are interested in the Basques as a people, their traditions, their family ways, this may appeal.  If you are interested in Spain as a nation and why small groups of people all round the world want their independence, you will find this an eye-opener.

The Reminders - Val Emmich

I really enjoyed this refreshing and different book about death and a worrying condition - because of an injury, ten year old Joan has a photographic memory for certain things, and Gavin has just lost the love of his life. The two come together because Joan's parents are friends of Gavin and his dead lover Sydney. When Gavin realises that Joan can remember things Sydney did on his visits to New York from California, he wants to know everything..... and that's when the mystery starts - because he made several visits he never told Gavin about.
 

This is the author's first novel - and it's a good one. Written in alternate chapters by both Joan and Gavin and told in the present - I am going; he points; etc, this is just the right style for the storyline. And how nice to find a book that is a little different - a love story, but one of an entirely different kind, with characters I loved too. It's divided into sections headed by Beatles song titles, and within those sections, each chapter is quite short. A different style, and a book I kept wanting "just another chapter" of.

 

 

 

 

Mrs Mac says OOOPs! because she forgot What to Read in November

Visitors from Canada, a completely new kitchen fitted,  complete (or nearly!) exhaustion, loss of a set of front door keys (found them) and all sorts of small stuff.  Remember that book called Don't Sweat the Small Stuff?   Sadly, whilst excellent advice, that is exactly what I have been doing for a month.  but now the cupboards are filled, the drawers are stocked, and only the tiles to go on the walls, and the new cooking facilities to be wired.  So let us move on, people!

November 11 is Remembrance Day - remembering the fallen of World War 1.  Around this time I always want to read a book either about that time, set in that time, or moving on from that time.  Sometimes that "moving on" means a book set in WW2.  Whatever I read, I am joined by a group of bookie internet friends. 

So this month I suggest you do the same - there are a lot of titles available. I am going to read

The Return of the Soldier - Rebecca West