The shadows resumed their jerky dance

The Silence of the Sea
by Yrsa Sigurðardóttir
translated from Icelandic by Victoria Cribb

I picked up this book because Sigurðardóttir was recommended by Gav Reads and Savidge Reads, whose taste I often share. I managed somehow to start this crime series with the sixth book about lawyer Thóra, but I don’t think that spoiled the story and she seems pretty badass.

In this episode of Icelandic noir, a luxury yacht crashes into Reykjavik harbour wall with no-one on board, not one of the seven people known to have boarded in Lisbon. The parents of one of the missing people employ Thóra to prove that their son Ægir is dead – they really need to claim his life insurance money to be able to afford to raise their (now presumably orphaned) granddaughter.

A second timeline follows Ægir from the day he, his wife and their older two children leave Lisbon on the yacht. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to experience luxury beyond their means – the yacht is being repossessed by the bank Ægir works for. But from the surly skeleton crew to hideous seasickness, it’s a nightmare from the start. One that only gets worse.

Continue reading “The shadows resumed their jerky dance”

Sunday Salon: 10 years in Bristol

1 Comment

The Sunday SalonThis past week I celebrated 10 years in my current job, which means that last month Tim and I completely missed celebrating 10 years of living in Bristol. 10 years! For Tim that’s the longest he’s spent living in one place (though not quite yet the longest in one house as we have moved around Bristol a little); I still have a ways to go on that front as I lived in the same house from age 0 to 20. But I’m happy enough in Bristol that I can well believe I’ll still be here in another 10 years.

I love Bristol. And not least because the music scene here is fantastic. This week I’d made a note that Amy Rigby was playing at a pub near our house, but then realised we wouldn’t be able to see her because we already had tickets to see Kate Tempest that night. Which I can’t complain about at all because the Kate Tempest gig was one of the best of my life. Absolutely incredible.

She performed her new album Let Them Eat Chaos in its entirety, which is the only way to do it as it’s a single story told in poetry, rap and song over the course of 50 minutes or so. It is smart, politically and socially motivated, beautiful, funny, angry and hopeful. As when we saw her perform this without musical backing at the Downs Concert, Kate put so much of herself into it that she was in tears at the end, and not just one or two stray tears either. I love Kate and truly think she is a force for good and positivity in this world that seems to be sorely lacking in those things far too often.

Continue reading “Sunday Salon: 10 years in Bristol”

What a ripping thing life was

uneasy-moneyUneasy Money
by P G Wodehouse

I needed to read a book published in 1916 for my Books on the Nightstand Book Bingo and it was surprisingly tough to find anything that appealed. But then this jumped out at me. It’s not a Jeeves and Wooster title but the style of writing is much the same. This leans more towards romantic comedy than skewering of the upper class, but there’s plenty of that too.

It’s the story of Lord Dawlish, or Bill, a lovable chap whose title came without a fortune but is happy working as secretary to a London club in exchange for free lodging and £400 a year, which is plenty enough to play all the golf he likes and give away a few shillings to every fellow with a sob story. Happy enough, that is, except for the fact that his fiancée, the beautiful but only moderately successful actress Claire, is determined that Bill must have more money before she will marry him.

Continue reading “What a ripping thing life was”

My Lorelai moment

talking-as-fast-as-i-canThis blog post is part of a blog tour organised by Virago for the release of Lauren Graham’s new book Talking As Fast As I Can: From Gilmore Girls to Gilmore Girls and Everything In Between. Obviously I am very excited about this book, and the new Netflix series Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, and the excuse to talk about Gilmore Girls.

Gilmore Girls used to be a guilty pleasure for me, until I realised how very much love there is for it, allowing me to stop hiding my love and full-on geek over it! It’s basically a really high quality soap opera. I’ve always related to both the main characters, Rory and Lorelai. Rory is a bookish nerd, as I was as a teen, but Lorelai is cool, capable and almost always cheerful, as I aspire to be now. I can never hope to be as beautiful as Lauren Graham or Alexis Bledel, but I can definitely learn a lot from how Lorelai is such a great friend and all-around person.

Which brings me to my favourite Lorelai moment. I suppose this includes some minor spoilers if you’ve not watched any Gilmore Girls, but most of these details aren’t intrinsic to the longer plotlines through the series.

Continue reading “My Lorelai moment”

New Gilmore Girls reading list

4 Comments

gilmore-girls-year-in-the-life

When the new Netflix series Gilmore Girls: a Year in the Life was announced I was so excited I marked the date in my diary. But it turned out that last weekend was the only date I would be able to see my best friend before the end of the year, which is basically the only thing that could possibly have delayed me shotgunning those new episodes the second they became available. (The three-day delay was totally worth it. We had a fab weekend together at the seaside.)

Once I did get back home to our own sofa and TV, it didn’t take me long to watch the new mini series. And because it’s what I do every time I watch Gilmore Girls, I kept note of every book, author and play mentioned. I don’t think these should count towards the original Gilmore Girls Reading Challenge, so I haven’t followed my usual rule of limiting the list to only Rory and Lorelai’s reads. And I know I’m not the first to do this. But I figure it’s still interesting, and probably not just to me, so here goes.

Continue reading “New Gilmore Girls reading list”

November reading round-up

2 Comments
(Corrado Ricci 1858-1934)
(Corrado Ricci 1858-1934)

Well we had three weeks of autumn before winter arrived. I quite like winter – Christmas and my birthday! – but I’ve realised in the last few years that at the start of both summer and winter, my lupus flares. In summer it’s the UV, that’s easy to figure out. In winter, well I guess cold isn’t good for arthritis, which is closely related to lupus, plus I have low vitamin D all year round anyway.

Which is a long-winded way of saying I’m not feeling all that healthy but I know it will pass soon. In the meantime I have been watching Gilmore Girls: a Year in the Life, which is both perfect and really not perfect at the same time. I’ve kept a log of books, authors and films mentioned, of course, which I’ll blog about soon.

I have one month left to complete my Books on the Nightstand Book Bingo card, and it’ll be tight but I think I can do it. If you want to help me pick my book for the “500 pages or longer” category, you can vote in my Twitter poll!

Continue reading “November reading round-up”

It is poverty only which makes celibacy contemptible

emmaEmma
by Jane Austen

In my late teens I went through a serious period drama phase, fuelled by TV miniseries based on classic books. A particular favourite was the 1996 ITV production of Emma starring Kate Beckinsale. I loved that show and watched it so many times I can still picture every scene now, a good 15+ years after I last saw it. Plus, of course I’ve seen the Gwyneth Paltrow film (meh), the 2009 BBC series starring Romola Garai (okay) and the greatest (or at least the most fun) Austen adaptation of them all, Clueless.

So you’d think I would have read Emma long ago. However, to date my experience of Jane Austen has not gone so well. I quite liked Northanger Abbey but I gave up multiple times on both Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, finding the stuffiness outweighed the wit. I can’t say finally reading Emma has won me over; largely I think I only got through it because I already knew it so well.

Emma Woodhouse is young, rich, devoted to her family and determined to be cheerful. Her elderly father doesn’t like to go out and she doesn’t like to leave him home alone, so ever since her governess Miss Taylor left to marry Mr Weston she has been pretty bored. She makes friends with Harriet Smith, a girl of unknown parentage who was raised by the local schoolmistress. Harriet is dull but straightforward and quick to adore Emma. Emma’s friend and adviser Mr Knightley (her sister’s husband’s brother, who lives nearby) thinks she would do better to befriend Jane Fairfax, who is intelligent and accomplished. But Emma has always found Miss Fairfax cold and distant, not to mention being a little jealous of her musical skill.

Continue reading “It is poverty only which makes celibacy contemptible”

Great swaths of her life were white space to her husband

fates-and-furiesFates and Furies
by Lauren Groff

This is some ways the very epitome of “literary fiction” and yet it defied my expectations many times. I had expected to like it, after thoroughly enjoying Groff’s previous novel The Monsters of Templeton. This is quite different, but once again, really good.

It’s the story of a marriage, that of Lotto and Mathilde. What makes this book different is that the entire marriage is told from Lotto’s perspective, and then from Mathilde’s. The narrative voice, revealed occasionally in square-bracketed asides, is first the Fates (for Lotto) and then the Furies (for Mathilde). As you might guess from that, Lotto’s story is all about his fate: who he is meant to become, what is meant to achieve. Mathilde’s story is largely about her fury, how it drives her.

“The Buddha laughed in silence from the mantelpiece. Around him, a lushness of poinsettias. Below, a fire Lotto had dared to make out of sticks collected from the park. Later, there would be a chimney fire, a sound of wind like a rushing freight train, and the trucks arriving in the night.”

Continue reading “Great swaths of her life were white space to her husband”

The lens feels like another person in the room

someday-someday-maybeSomeday, Someday, Maybe
by Lauren Graham

I’ve been meaning to read this novel for a couple of years, and this month it seemed that all signs point to it. Lauren Graham is the star of Gilmore Girls, which I love and which is coming back after nine years in a Netflix miniseries that starts on 25 November. It’s marked in my diary and I am very excited. Someday, Someday, Maybe was Graham’s debut novel, soon to be followed up by Graham’s collection of essays Talking As Fast As I Can (pub date 29 November; apparently it includes some spoilers of the new TV show).

This novel is pretty nakedly inspired by earlier events in Graham’s own life, though I wouldn’t go so far as to call it autofiction. It’s about Franny Banks, a wannabe actress struggling to make it in New York City. She has given herself a strict three years to achieve her goal – that is, to earn enough from acting to live on – and that deadline, when the book opens, is six months away. She’s not a hopeless case – she’s done an advert, has an agent and goes to acting classes run by the highly selective and respected John Stavros. But her agency only books commercials, her only income is from working as a waitress at a comedy club and her dream of one day appearing in An Evening with Frances Banks at the 92nd Street Y is receding.

Continue reading “The lens feels like another person in the room”