Alexander McCall Smith: Heavenly Date and Other Flirtations

So I read on the bus. Shoot me.

My husband bought me this with some gift vouchers he had. The sweetie. He also bought me the sequel to 44 Scotland Street, so stay tuned!

Heavenly Date... is a collection of short stories, dealing with falling in love, or dating, or simply sex. They are a little more sinister in tone than I am used to, and demonstrate quite well that McCall Smith is one of those writers who studies people and has a lot of experience in human behaviour and emotions. Some are better than others (I'm not mad keen on the one with the angel baby), but it's a good read on the whole. The cover quotes a newspaper review saying that he is "reminiscent of Roald Dahl", and that is actually not a bad comparison. But tell you what I was suddenly reminded of - Ray Bradbury. Granted, different genres, but they share that slightly dreamlike, old-fashioned quality, and the focus on people. Bradbury's science-fiction is never about gadgets.

Yesh.

I was first trying to read R is for Ricochet by Sue Grafton. A few chapters in I was sure I'd read it before. It's the one where Kinsey is hired by a wealthy man to go pick up his daughter who is being released from prison. Sounds a simple job, but turns out the daughter took the fall (note my extensive knowledge of US crime vernacular) for her boss/lover, and now the FBI and the IRS want her to turn stool pigeon (see, I talk the talk).

For the life of me I can't remember how it ends. And it clearly isn't my favourite, since I found it so hard to get into it. Even though Kinsey has sex.

Maybe Graftons are only meant to be read once?

So I put it aside, and picked up Last Seen Wearing by Hillary Waugh, a book I'd never heard of. But apparently it's a classic. Written in -52, it's an attempt to write a crime novel about police procedure. It must have been one of the very first, if not the first, to focus on procedure and forensics. Wikipedia entry here. Now, it almost makes me cringe to read how they break into the subjects house to gather evidence. Anybody hear a "mistrial" being shouted from the back? The (probably very accurate, but still) sexism grates a bit too. By which I mean that I find it hard to find love inside me for the heroes.

The book is about a freshman who goes missing from college, and how the police find out what happened to her by doing stuff the police does, like questioning numerous people, draining lakes, vacuuming cars - no easy ways out. Well, apart form being able to gather evidence with a spot of B&E then.

It's highly recommendable, if nothing else because its an excellent document of its time. I'm not sure if that was even English what I just wrote, but I'm leaving it there.

My blogging will hopefully be highly erratic for some time now, since I started writing my essay again. Unless I decide to blog about law books....

Caroline Graham: The Killings at Badger's Drift

I've sort of neglected reading Caroline Graham, which is a bit of a shame, since she is very funny in an understated way. (I blame all deficiencies in my reading on the library's selection and availability of literature though!) The cover of TKABD has a quote from the Yorkshire Post:

Probably the most underrated British crime writer. Her talent is rare, combining wit, pathos and an entertaining narrative.

Very true. I offer you this quote as an example:

Troy re-entered the room, giving Barnaby what he fondly imagined to be an imperceptible shake of the head.

Barnaby is Head Cop, Troy his cocky sidekick. The descriptions of Troy's desire to appear cool and competent, like something out of a film, are all first-rate.

This is Graham's first novel. I had previously read one of her later ones (the latest one, perhaps?), The Ghost In The Machine. In that book the sarcasm and cynicism was twisted another notch, slightly OTT as I remember it. TKABD is a good blend of the cynical and the emotional. Graham's Barnaby novels have been televised as The Midsomer Murders. The TV series is an very bleak and shallow version of the novels. It's usually aired on Swedish telly every summer, and this summer is no exception. I tend to watch because there's nothing else on, but I'm not a fan. It's bland, boring and simply unfunny.

Plotline: an old woman witnesses a couple having sex in the forest, and is later found dead. Her friend insists that it can't be of natural causes. Barnaby starts investigating, and discovers that she's been poisoned by hemlock (ha, just like in my recently read Poison in Athens).He discovers blackmailers, child abuse, adultery and incest.

It's a good read, and I recommend it. Plus - it's dedicated to Christianna Brand "with grateful thanks for all her help and encouragment". Now that's cool. Christianna Brand is a classic crime fiction name, and it seems as though she's almost forgotten nowadays (much as Josephine Tey appears to be). But Green for Danger is still a marvellous detective story.

Ngaio Marsh: Enter A Murderer

Goodness, had forgotten I had bought this! Was very pleased to spot it in the bookshelf this weekend, waiting for me to remember. Right next to the phone (that had stopped working, again, dammit. We're phonedicapped here. Telephonically challenged. I can't understand it.).

This is her second Marsh novel, from 1935, although I have a late Fontana edition from -74 (with a fugtastic cover). Alleyn still has Bathgate the journalist as a sidekick, but Fox is becoming quite prominent (which is good, because I like Fox), and is referred to as Foxkin a lot, but not as Bre'er Fox. FYI.

Bathgate takes Alleyn to a play, in which a man is to be shot in the final scene. Naturally the stage gun is not loaded with blanks this time, but with real bullets, and everyone on stage has had motive and opportunity for switching the bullets.

Best thing with this book is the references to the drug trade. There really is nothing new under the sun. At the core of the plot is smuggling and selling of heroine and cocaine. Drugs are dope, and when you're high on them you're dopey. It all seems almost quaint in its 1930s setting.

Another book I need...

... is anything by Jaqueline Winspear, author of the Maisie Dobbs series. They're always gone from the library (and now in the summer we have summer loans, lasting until August, so poo). :-(

Close Call: Gillian Slovo

I think I've read one of Slovo's before. Am googling, trying to jog my memory. In the meantime - this may have been Slovo's last novel featuring journalist Kate Baeier. Published in 1995 it also deals with a darker economic period, not to mention a time when Europe was again torn by war. Kate has returned to London from working as a war correspondent abroad for five years. She left after the death of her lover, and feels distant and alone, emotionally. She has alienated/fought with her best friends, and is troubled by her father's renewed attempts at communication. She meets a policeman she fancies, gets arrested, is drawn into complicated cover-up with a dirty cop gang.

Not bad, but quite bleak. I'd like to read some more, must remember to do so. And juxtapose it with some happier stuff!

Catnap. I may have read Catnap, the novel before Close Call. I recognize the cover...

I need to get a hold of....

Babes in Beijing by Rachel Dewoskin, and more importantly När rött blir svart by Qiu Xialong (don't know English title, not important since original language is Chinese...). The latter is a detective story y'see. And just noticed that it's published by editor friend's publishing company. How handy! *starts plotting bribery tactics*

Edited to say that Qiu Xialong writes in English, so title in English is When Red Is Black, and I'm an idiot, and now I need it in English.

Anabel Donald: In At The Deep End

This was lovely crime fic! Donald's heroine, television researcher/PI Alex Tanner, is an intelligent, feisty, independent delight. The kind of person you can actually visualize yourself hanging out with. After reading this (finished it at work, slow day thanks be to God) I ran back to the library to get more books by Ms Donald, but they only had Smile, Honey, which is a novel, not a detective story, and reading the back of it I realised I'd already read this, years ago. I mean years. Maybe 12 or so. Wow, I'm old. Anyway, it made quite an impression on me, since the epilogue has stuck with me all these years, without me being able to quite place it. I recommend Anabel Donald in general.

This book is set in the early nineties. The recession is in full swing. I find it hard now to remember what it was like then - the feeling of hopelessness, how there were no jobs, property value was plummeting... Anyway, the general scarcity of money is what prompts Alex Tanner to undertake a doubtful investigation of a teenager who died in a diving accident at his military-style private school. The boy was the son of an English-French celebrity couple, obviously modelled on Gainsbourg and Birkin, which is freaking hilarious. I saw a documentary on Gainsbourg on the telly once (no the whole thing, because hello? Boooring...), and the man is quite mad. He said "I want to fuck you" to Whitney Houston on television! No wonder the woman is on drugs, he's a creep. Donald creates a bogus tv interview for her fictional couple (the Mouches) in the same vein:

I filled her with my angel-milk and she became a slave to love

I also love that Alex's boyfriend brings her two Sue Graftons and a Paretsky when he returns from a business trip to the US. Alex likes Sue Grafton best, so her instinct is to read the Paretsky first, but

on the other hand you shouldn't read two books by the same author one after another because the mannerisms get on your nerves.

Too true, but that didn't stop me running to the library. *blushing*

Margaret Doody: Poison in Athens

Margaret Doody has written a series of detective stories set in ancient Greece, starring Aristotle the philosopher as detective together with his sidekick Stephanos. I have previously read Aristotle and Poetic Justice, in which Stephanos finds his bride-to-be. Poison in Athens is set later in time, as Stephanos tries to prepare for the nuptials to actually take place, sometime in a near future.

The story centres around several high-profile lawcases. A prostitute is accused of impiety, a well-respected citizen of hogging a female slave for his own sexual pleasures, a widow of murdering her husband with hemlock. Sex and the role of women is a theme of the book. Doody does not make it easier for us by creating a central character with modern views and thoughts. Aristotle and Stephanos are firmly rooted in their society. Women are the property of their families, slaves of their owners etc. Frankly, this became a bit tedious to read at times, which is why the blog update has been delayed. There was a lot of oratory; on why slavery is necessary in society, on morals good and bad, on philosophy. On the whole I think it's well worth it though. This series is not a bad introduction to Ancient Greece. I prefer Lindsay Davis' cynical Falco, but this is well written and well researched.

The final speech by the female slave Marylla is, I suppose, a little too modern - perhaps her ideas are just a trifle too sophisticated for a female slave of the time... but how can I know? Just an idea.

Julie Parsons: The Hourglass

Wham! After reading a few gentle, civilized mysteries I picked up the latest Julie Parsons at the library. Damn, the woman throws you straight in with the wolves, doesn't she? As the cover quote from Irish Tatler says: "You won't be able to put it down and you won't be able to sleep". Too right. The thing with Julie Parsons is that she might just kill everyone, you can't be sure. I was so tense reading The Hourglass that I just had to check the last pages to see who dies - because someone does, count on it. Also, the book starts with a - what's the opposite to flashback? flashfront? whatever - to events occurring near the end, so you know Bad Things are coming.

This book is about Lydia Beauchamp, an old garden designer, all alone in her old house in Co. Cork. Her husband killed himself years ago, and she hasn't seen her daughter for twenty years. She meets a young man, whom she takes into her confidence, but he is there by design, to exact revenge for things that happened a long time ago.

The villain of the piece is superbad indeed, and very scary. Indeed, I was a little disappointed by the end, because with such an efficient killing machine out and about you'd expect more slaughter. She chickened out a bit actually, did Julie. Not that I'm complaining, I'm a wimp. From a literary point of view though it feels almost a trifle unresolved.

I especially love Parsons' books for the insight into a modern, darker Ireland they provide. Growing up half-Irish I had to put up with a lot of "ooo, lovely country, everyone so friendly, lovely pubs, leprechauns" nonsense. Made me want to go "ooo, xenophobia, institutionalized racism, alcoholism". I haven't been to Ireland for over a decade, and I need these glimpses of modern Ireland now and then.

Now, must go help Minima wrap parcel, before she combusts.

Edit: remembered what I wanted to ramble about, really. This is the second Parsons novel I've read where one big theme is the strong love/same sex relationships forged in prison, between people who would otherwise not identify themselves as gay. In the first book, Eager To Please, the relationship was between women, here it's between men, and has more destructive power. Another theme is what prison does to inmates, how destructive it is. I wonder what personal experience Parsons has of prison life? Must try to find some interviews.

The Sunday Philosophy Club

By Alexander McCall Smith.

I've been eager to read this one, because I wanted to see what AMS has to say about his hometown Edinburgh. The novel centres around Isabel Dalhousie, a middle-aged lady of independent means who is editor of a philosophical magazine. She also heads the meetings of the Sunday Philosophy Club, a club that is mentioned but never brought into action here. Anyway, Isabel witnesses a young man fall to his death, and becomes obsessed with finding out how.

I found the book a little lacking in drive, but the exerpt at the end from the next one in the series (Friends, Lovers, Chocolate) looked a lot more promising in that respect. I did like it though. Isabel has a lot of internal discussions about ethics and philosophy, so that's fun. This is the one to make my husband read, to introduce him to AMS.

Kantians would be in no doubt about the answer to that, but that was the problem with Kantian morality: it was so utterly predictable, and left no room for subtlety; rather like Kant himself, she thought. In a purely philosophical sense, it must be very demanding to be German. Far better to be French (irresponsible and playful) or Greek (grave, but with a light touch).

Keith Oatley: The Case of Emily V.

I stumbled across this book in the crime fiction section of the library (all crime fiction obligingly marked with a yellow dot and grouped together, I only have to browse...). My attention was caught by the title, and on the back I read that it's

a terrific quasi-mystery set in Vienna and featuring a melancholic Sherlock Holmes, a smug Sigmund Freud, and an entirely engaging young classics teacher named Emily V.

Well, I had to borrow it then, didn't I? After all, I had to check if it was comparable to Laurie R. King's fantastic Sherlock Holmes pastiche.

Well, quasi-mystery is right. This is not really crime fiction, as the crime is very much by-the-way. The background idea is that three manuscripts from ca 1904 (or something) have been recovered, one by Emily V., one by Dr Watson, and one by Freud. They all centre around the same events, from different points of view. Emily V. was sexually abused as a child, and now blames herself for the death of her abuser. She starts seeing Freud on the advice of a friend. And later Holmes and Watson show up, investigating the death of the abuser, who was also a British diplomat and spy.

The novel combines these three manuscripts into one. It's cleverly done, with Oatley capturing the original narrative styles of Doyle and Freud (no that I've read much Freud, but Oatley's a professor of psychology himself, so I'm sure he knows what he's about). The last chapter is a postscript by a dr Ellen Berger, which analyzes the manuscripts you've just read. An interesting twist! I can't find her name on Google, so I'm not sure if Oatley has made her up entirely or borrowed bits of her from medical accquaintances...

This novel reminds me of Sofies värld by Jostein Gardner, in that it presents an area of learning in a more accessible manner. Or, for that matter, Nils Holgerssons Underbara Resa... If you want to be introduced to Freudian theory it might be a good place to start.. or if you want some long-winded flowery descriptions of people having sex. The only good thing with that passage is that it is "put into context" in "Berger's" analysis at the end. (I'm too old to be interested in reading about sex, or seeing it on film. I prefer having it. I am no longer 14.) It took me a while to finish the book, partly because of said long-windedness, not only on matters of lesbian sex. It's part of the early 20th century style the book is written in, but it's a bit tedious. Well, at least if you were expecting more crime novel. The story tends to drive itself forward then.

To sum up, recommended, on the whole.

Finally: In today's DN there is a review of the Swedish translation of Dan Brown's novel Digital Fortress (which I've read. It's crap, but I liked it better than the others, probably because I'm ignorant in computer matters so he was able to feed me shite while calling it soup and I wouldn't have noticed). In the last paragraph the journalist mentions that what is truly terrifying is that Brown previously taught "creative writing". Where will this lead? Will we be flooded with "thrillers" in ten years time?

Scary thought indeed. Let's hope the students surpass the teacher, in that case.

Another dentist visit

Today we didn't discuss literature, but Little Britain. I did however read, namely a brochure that places me in premium group 2 (out of 11, 0 being perfect teeth) for dental insurance thingie.

I am ridiculously pleased with this.

I may have to order

This book seems interesting. Maybe I could find out if there is anyone writing about a male homosexual detective. For some reason there are several lesbian heroines in the genre, but I have yet to come across a gay man. Which is interesting in itself.

FYI, my birthday is in October. :-P

Bryson and Bentley

Hb has commented, on my Bryson post below, that he does visit his family in Notes From A Small Island. And that is true. And that reminded me that I should have updated that blog entry, since after writing it (naturally, why do research before you write, when you can publicly humiliate yourself afterwards) I googled a little, found some interviews, and deduced that he just doesn't write about the family trips. Also he confirms that his books are not meant as, and in fact are rubbish if read as travel guides. (That was a bad sentence. But I can't piece it together in a better way at the moment. Very annoying.) So colour me embarrassed and efterklok.

Spent all weekend feeling sorry for myself as I have a cold. Reread Trent Intervenes by EC Bentley. This is a book I picked up somewhere quite accidentally, and I'm glad I did. Bentley only wrote three books featuring his detective/journalist/artist Philip Trent, and they are hard to find. By which I mean that no library in town has even one copy, and I haven't come across them in any second-hand book stalls. I'm not desperate enough to start trawling the internet for copies, but that day may come. Trent Intervenes is the last in the series. It was published in 1938, and preceded by Trent's Own Case in 1936 and Trent's Last Case (great title, considering!) in (wait for it) 1913.

Apparently Dorothy Sayers was a Bentley fan, which is of course a mark of quality. The book itself is a collection of short stories. Trent sometimes aids the police, sometimes acts alone to help a friend or an accquantaince. He always reserves the right to choose how to act on what he has discovered. They are clever, not complete whodunnits as Trent has more information than we do, but close, as there are enough clues so as to help us guess the truth. Recommended.

Marsvinets paradox

Ur dagens DN:

Det vi inte får se fyller katalogen ut med anspråksfulla curatorstexter. På golvet står ett litet marsvin med propeller på ryggen, knöligt skulpterat av Malin Bryntesson. Varför? Jag har svårt att ryckas med av katalogtextens tal om att verket tvingar till reflektioner över "marsvinets paradox - att det å ena sidan symboliserar begreppet experiment och å andra sidan passiviseras som husdjur i stadsmiljö".

Det är sånt här som ger konstnärer dåligt rykte.

Bill Bryson Thoughts

So while reading In A Sunburned Country I was struck by the fact that Bryson always travels alone. Sometimes he'll have a companion, but it's never family, instead perhaps an old high school friend (Katz, in A Walk In The Woods) or a colleague. Maybe he never writes about his travels with his family? Maybe that's too personal? It would be sad to think that his kids never get to see all the things he sees. I was thinking that while his solitary travelling gives him time to think about what he sees, ponder and take notes, and then write these great books that I love, it at the same time makes them vaguely useless as travel guides for those of us who lug the kids along. Hm. What I'm trying to say is that instead of feeling like I want to follow in Bryson's footsteps, I feel like there is no way I can. At the same time he writes in such a way as to make me feel as though I am there too, and so I've already been where he's been.

If you see my point. Rambling though it may be.

Why is Agatha Christie so popular?

Uh-huh.

My copy of Unnatural Death has about a thousand printing errors in it. I am seriously disappointed. Luckily I have read it before, so I knew that it wasn't meant to be incomprehensible in the places where it was incomprehensible. Now, do I chuck the book (that rhymes, pleasingly)? I can no longer lend it to my editor friend, she'll go into crazy work mode and explode.

Then I re-read Ten Little Niggers. Note: I have never read the book in English, and it's been at least ten years or so since I read it in Swedish. This time around, I was struck by how mediocre it was, really. Not at all as scary as I remember. Plus, the constant use of the word nigger really grates on you. Makes you want to turn up on the island and smack everyone upside the head. In the Swedish translation it was neger, which is not, you know, good, but it's better than nigger. Must've been an excellent translation on the whole, since it made me love the book so much for so many years. She's terribly overrated, Agatha Christie. Don't understand it at all. This is the only book that's ever done anything for me, and now I find out it's all a lot of ... ... ... ... at the end of every single fecking sentence.

Then my husband's colleague (also my former teacher, did I mention that? Pretty cool) lent me 44 Scotland Street, not knowing that I've read it. Still very sweet gesture that I appreciate, and I also got a present! A little Reading Diary. So I shan't be needing to blog anymore, I guess. ;-)

Then I got sick. *coughs* So I'm mostly lying in bed reading Bill Bryson's In a Sunburned Country, laughing out loud. Because, let's face it, Australians are funny without even trying. The accent is enough. Bill Bryson just ices the cake, really.

Blue Shoes and Happiness (and More)

Blue Shoes and Happinessis the latest from Alexander McCall Smith. My darling husband borrowed it for me from a colleague (so this is the first one I've read in hardback, incidentally).

It feels a bit repetitive to gush about how much I enjoy these books, so I was going to say that I first found myself a little disappointed in this one. I think I was a little surprised that there weren't more references to stuff that has already happened, like the adopted children and the Kalahari Typing School (note to self: you haven't read that one). But then I found myself backtracking on that sentiment, since this book is a little more introspective than the others. Just a little, but it seems like the theme is a different - the action takes place as much on the inside as on the outside. And there are still beautiful passages (that yes, make me cry), such as this one:

She thought of her father, the Daddy as she called him, every day. And when she had those dreams at night, he was there, as if he had never died, although she knew, even in the dream, that he had. One day she would join him, she knew, whatever people said about how we came to an end when we took our last breath. Some people mocked you if you said that you joined others when your time came. Well, they could laugh, those clever people, but we surely had to hope, and a life without hope was no life: it was a sky without stars, a landscape of sorrow and emptiness. If she thought that she would never again see Obed Ramotswe, then it would make her shiver with loneliness. [...] And there was somebody else she would see one day, she hoped - her baby who had died, that small child with its fingers that had grasped so tightly around hers, whose breathing was so quiet, like the sound of the breeze in the acacia trees on an almost-still day, a tiny sound. She knew that her baby was with the late children in whatever place it was that the late children went, somewhere over there, beyond the Kalahari, where the gentle white cattle allowed the children to ride on their backs. And when the late mothers came, the children would flock to them and they would call to them and take them in their arms. That was what she hoped, and it was a hope worth having, she felt.

Oh Lord, that has me in tears again. On to something funnier.

I also reread Dorothy Sayers' Strong Poison, which is still brilliant. Got so bitten that I'm reading Unnatural Death now. So a quote from the latter:

'I wish you wouldn't talk so much', complained his friend. 'And how about all those typewritten reports? Are you turning philantropist in your old age?'

'No - no,' said Wimsey, rather hurriedly hailing a taxi. 'Tell you about that later. Little private pogrom of my own - Insurance against the Socialist Revolution - when it comes. "What did you do with your great wealth, comrade?" "I bought First Editions." "Aristocrat! à la lanterne!" "Stay, spare me! I took proceedings against 500 moneylenders who oppressed the workers." "Citizen, you have done well. We will spare your life. You shall be promoted to cleaning the sewers." Voilà! We must move with the times. Citizen taxi-driver, take me to the British Museum. Can I drop you anywhere? No? So long. I am going to collate a 12th-century manuscript of Tristan, whole the old order lasts.'

I just realised typing that (whew!) that it might just be several slurs against Jews. The words pogrom and moneylenders in combination... Which would not be funny at all. But I never saw it like that before, maybe largely because I have never viewed DLS as an antisemite. As a matter of fact, in Strong Poison, Lord Peter's friend Freddy Arbuthnot announces his engagement to a Jewish girl, and the whole thing has a anti-antisemitic feel to it. Hm. Must think about that some more.

Anyway, Eurovision in 10 minutes now!

Dental Literature

So today I went to the dentist. At 8 o'clock in the morning no less, which translates into "stupid o'clock in the morning", although not as stupid as 7.40 which is when my youngest went the other week (yawn). So I'm thinking "mutter mutter, brilliant start to the day this" and to ice the turd cake someone I really would rather not meet or even see was in the waiting room... :-((( But anywhoo. I get up on the chair, and we start chatting, and we went from anaesthatic to pulling out teeth to Louis XVI (I thought it might have been) to my dream of future dental care, which will involve the extraction of all my (crap) teeth and then the stimulation (via tricorder or similar instrument) of my genes to grow new, sparkly ones, and then conversation turned to science fiction.

See, I don't like going to the dentist. They always get on my case about not flossing etc., and refuse to listen when I say that it's really hard for me to floss, because my teeth are all cramped into my mouth and the floss WON'T FIT, and I think they should cut me some slack because the dentists obviously let me down bigtime when I was a kid. But when I first walked into this dentist's office I knew he was okay, because he had a Matrix screensaver on his computer. And this was before Matrix 2 and 3, which are rubbish. So he's pretty cool.

We ended up chatting about sci-fi books (I'm going to have to read Asimov now, as per his instructions) and films, and Swedish literature as taught in schools, and

Nurse: "Remember that phase when we read all those Russian authors? Tolstoy, Gogol..."

Dentist: "Gogol...Gogol... Dead Souls... and what was the other one?"

Me, with mouth full of stuff: *points to nose*

Dentist: "Nose? The Nose?"

Me: "Mrgh."

Dentist: "Don't remember it. Hang on, I'll let you speak in a moment."

And so on.

Not a bad way to start the day after all.