Mapp and Lucia

from Telegraph website

from BBC website

This remake made the grade but will this one?

I loved the 1980s series when I was a teenager and then devoured all the books. I often visit Rye, where the series was filmed, and still see it, not as an attractive south coast town but as Tilling, a hot bed of petty goings-on!  Over there is 'Mallards'; these are the narrow streets that Susan Wyse travelled by Rolls Royce to order provisions from the grocer, relayed through her chauffeur of course; that's the church tower from where Mapp saw Lucia doing callanetics in the garden when she was meant to be too ill to meet Countess Faraglione, who might realise Lucia actually doesn't really know a word of Italian........

I will watch - but with trepidation.  Geraldine McEwan, Prunella Scales and Nigel Hawthorne were absolutely perfectly cast as Lucia, Mapp and Georgie. Oh I really don't want to be disappointed.  

Au reservoir!

I positively pounced on this one when I saw it on the 'New Titles' shelf at the library.  A new Ann Cleeves!  What a day!

You know what it's like when you find an author you like, drink up all their back catalogue and are then left gasping for their next offering.  Can't they write any quicker!!!

Thin Air is the latest  in the Jimmy Perez saga, set in the Shetlands.  I confess I much prefer the Vera Stanhope stories.  Both series of books have tv adaptations and for me  ITV's Vera, played by Brenda Blethyn, is far superior.  What I see on screen tallys more with the written word.  Oddly, I haven't managed to sit through a single episode of the BBC's take on the Shetland stories.  Douglas Henshall looks absolutely nothing like the description of Jimmy Perez in the text.  Where are the Spanish good looks?!  

Shetland is so far removed from my own interpretation of the text that I shall stick to the written word.  I just wish there were more of them!

Someone At A Distance

The Church, Lanhydrock House

We've recently returned from a week long holiday in Cornwall. It rained. A lot.

At least it gave me a chance to read the latest book being discussed on the Persephone Forum - Someone At A Distance by Dorothy Whipple.

Whatever next

I've broken my reading mould! Rather than reading a Ruth Rendell crime or novels set in the early twentieth century, where women buy hats, worry about servants and eat boiled eggs for supper, I've just devoured two books written by men, set in the Noughties AND one was about American football!!

After watching the TV Book Club on Channel 4, I visited my local library to borrow those featured. It had a stand dedicated to the programme but the only books on display were those from the previous series. So, I took out The Silver Linings Play Book by Matthew Quick and Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby and really enjoyed both of them. Whatever next?!.......

from Juliet, Naked

"It was OK, Duncan thought, that he and Annie had never been in love. Theirs had been an arranged marriage, and it had functioned perfectly well: friends had matched up their interests and temperaments carefully, and they'd got it right. He had never once felt itchy, in the way that two connecting pieces of a jigsaw never felt itchy, as far as one could tell. If one were to imagine, for the sake of argument, that jigsaw pieces had thoughts and feelings, then it was possible to imagine them saying to themselves, 'I'm going to stay here. Where else would I go?' And if another jigsaw piece came along, offering its tabs and blanks enticingly in an attempt to lure one of the pieces away, it would be easy to resist temptation. 'Look,' the object of the seducer's admiration would say. 'You're a bit of telephone box, and I'm the face of Mary, Queen of Scots. We just wouldn't look right together.' And that would be that."

Persephone Forum - Mariana

I really enjoyed taking part in last month's Persephone Forum on William - An Englishman. Such a good book.

The post for book 2, Mariana by Monica Dickens, is now live. I was a bit irritated by it the first time I read it but my second reading is turning out more calming. Perhaps the sunshine is helping!

The Uncommon Reader

Currently reading: The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett

A quick, delightful read about the Queen discovering the joy of reading after stumbling across the Westminster travelling library parked outside Buckingham Palace.

I wonder if HM knows reading is very much enhanced by a cuppa in a huge Cath Kidston mug!

The Far Cry

Currently reading: Persephone No 33 - The Far Cry by Emma Smith

Packed with such rich descriptions of India that you can hear, feel and almost taste the place.

"The rich and the poor were there, princes and paupers jumbled together, silk to cotton, shoulder to shoulder; naked perfumed flesh rubbed against the naked diseased. Fat paunches and empty bellies were neighbours with only their different hungers dividing them. One blessing, one mercy alone, was shared by every creature, wretched or fortunate, in that conglomeration of human beings: the warm air, the warm soft air of night that allowed no man, however poor, to die of cold, and no man, however rich, to shiver."

Daddy's Gone A-Hunting

Currently reading: Persephone No 77 - Daddy's Gone A-Hunting by Penelope Mortimer

Penelope Mortimer intrigues me: her six children by four different men, her extra-marital affairs, her breakdowns, her unhealthy marriage, her written fiction-based-on-fact, her chaos.

In Daddy's Gone A-Hunting, emotions simmer under the surface and things go unsaid. Ruth, the main character, needs to be given a good shake and told to "pull yourself together woman!"

"She was wondering, Ruth knew, why the girl didn't comb her hair or put on some decent clothes or stand straight or have a few manners. What would she think if she knew, if Ruth said, 'She's pregnant and we are just going to meet the father of her child at The Tea Kettle Inn to talk about finding money for an abortion.' What, standing there in her pearls and her leather jacket and her crocheted hat, would she do? For a moment, backing towards the door, she had an insane temptation to find out. She swallowed and blinked, shaking her face into an uncertain smile."

Mariana

Currently reading: Persephone No 2 - Mariana by Monica Dickens

"When Mary went downstairs, Denys was in the hall, finishing a drink. 'Can I have one?' asked Mary, to prolong the time in which they would be alone together. He ordered two cocktails and then they each had another, and by the time Mary pushed through the revolving doors into the street, she felt very light-hearted; and as if her cheek bones were higher than usual, and she must smile."

After seeing this book described as being a funny, readable, perceptive account of a girl, Mary, encountering life and love, I was really expecting to be engrossed by an enjoyable read but was disappointed. The ending had me gripped, as did the account of the 8 year old Mary getting herself home by tube from central London late at night, but the bulk of the book was just tedious. Mary did not come across as likeable so I didn't really care what happened to her.

Mary's mother's life as a widowed single parent, who "bluffed her way into the job of teaching dressmaking at a Domestic Science College" and by the end of the book is owner of a dress shop in South Molten Street, would have made a far more interesting tale!

One Good Turn

Currently reading: One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson

".... and listened to the messages on the answering machine. There were so many now that the later ones had erased the earlier ones. Gloria thought this was how her own memory worked, except the opposite way round....... Pam fluttering, oh Gloria, can I have your recipe for Turkish cheesecake, I know I've written it down somewhere but I can't put my hands on it. It was a very good recipe - a packet of Philidelphia, a tin of Fussell's sterilized cream and half a dozen eggs beaten together and poured into a caramel-coated mould and cooked gently in a bain-marie. It was the kind of recipe a person treasured once they had been given it. Careless Pam would not be getting it off Gloria a second time."

Indeed

Currently reading: Past Imperfect by Julian Fellowes

"There is a religion somewhere in the world that believes we all die twice; once in the normal way and the second time when the last person who really knew us dies, so one's living memory is gone from the earth."

So many words! I thought it would never end! An interesting read but the ending, possibly because I couldn't wait to get to it as I ploughed through the pages, left me disappointed.

Ancient as the Hills

Currently reading: Ancient as the Hills by James Lees-Milne

"Joan Evans lunched .... Truly she is a horrid old thing. She spat the meat into her fingers and on to the table without using a fork. She gurked, and farted. In speaking to me at luncheon she let fly an enormous piece of artichoke. I saw it coming and ducked. She saw me duck and rise again and resume the conversation as though nothing had happened. How absurd social conventions are when you do not know people well enough to laugh over these incidents. Neither of us betrayed by one muscle of the face what both had noticed."