I'm going on holiday until May 17th, and may not be able to access the Internet during that time. I will answer comments and may post book reviews if I do get Internet access, but if not, you can expect several reviews when I return - I intend to read plenty of books!
Used & Rare; Slightly Chipped (book collecting) - Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone
I read these two books by Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone one after the other. The first, Used and Rare: Travels in the book world, is about why and how they started accumulating a library of used books, how they gradually began to understand the language of book collecting and recognise the value of books, and how their collecting escalated until they were buying expensive first editions, and how they finally came to their senses and decided it was more important to get good reading copies of many favourite books than to spend thousands of dollars on a few first editions. This is a charming book about the development of a hobby that the authors show can be both affordable and enjoyable, even for people of modest income, as long as they don’t get carried away with first edition fever.
The second book, Slightly Chipped: Footnotes in booklore, which on the dust jacket is somewhat pretentiously called a “companion piece” to the previous book (it is fact an ordinary sequel), is about their continuing interest in books, friendships made through book-collecting, and adventures, such as when they attended the Edgars (mystery book awards) and the auction of the estate of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. This book is padded with pages upon pages of information about authors and book trivia, and one gets the impression that it was written in haste. Some of the charm of the previous book is still there, but this book is not as solid a piece of work.
Note: Call me grumpy, but I thought books had to be proofread before going into printing. I have never in my book-reading life come across as many typing and spelling errors in any book as I have in those two, errors that any decent computer proofing tool would have found. It is all the worse in book one because it is not a first edition and someone should have corrected the spelling errors before it went into paperback. The second book has rather fewer proofing errors, but the ones that there are, are much worse, terrible typing errors that have gone unnoticed at the proofing stage. Of course, should this book ever become collectible, this will probably make the first printing of the first edition more valuable, but that is no consolation to the poor reader who has to put up with the errors. For this reason I am withholding one star from each book, and giving Used and Rare 3 stars and Slightly Chipped 2 stars.
I just finished reading this collection of short stories and poetry by Neil Gaiman. Previously, I had read Stardust, Neverwhere, American Gods, Good Omens (collaboration with Terry Pratchett) and the Sandman comics and enjoyed all of them, as well as his illustrated children’s books, Coraline and The Wolves in the Walls.
(I don't have the book with me, so there may be some errors in the story titles below.)
The stories and poems in this collection are mostly fantasy, and in fact there are stories for lovers of just about any subgenre of fantasy. You will find humorous stories (Chivalry, Bay Wolf, Shoggoth’s Old Peculiar), dark stories (Only the end of the world again, The White Road), supernatural stories (The wedding present, The daughter of owls, Black cat), weird stories (Eaten alive, The facts in the disappearance of Miss Finch), folkloric stories (Troll bridge, The white road, Snow, glass, apples), detective stories (Murder mysteries, Bay Wolf), horror stories (Snow, glass, apples, Eaten alive), vampire stories, werewolf stories. Gaiman plays with themes familiar from his novels and graphic novels: myths, legends and folktales, literature (Beowulf, HP Lovecraft, Oscar Wilde), popular culture, sex, blood, and death.
The stories and poems vary, but the overall quality is quite good. 3+ stars.
Now reading: Used and Rare: Travels in the book world by Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone. Non-fiction, about how the writers became book collectors.
Worthy of mention: I have been listening to a BBC dramatisation of JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and enjoying it very much. The narrator is not overused like in some book dramatisations I have listened to, and the voices are so distinctive that it’s not a problem to know who is talking. Some of the sound effects are terribly cheesy and the music (especially composed for the play) is a bit heavy, but the actors do a great job. I don’t know if it was because of my familiarity with the movies, but the actors playing Sam and Gandalf sounded to me almost exactly like their counterparts in the movies. I got this one from the library and have to return it soon, but it is going on my audio book whish list.
Story: The relationship between Min Dobbs and Cal Morrisey begins on a sour note when she overhears her ex boyfriend, David, make a bet with Cal that he can’t get Min to have dinner with him. A further bet, which Cal does not accept but both Min and David think he has accepted, says that Cal can’t get her into bed with him within a month. Min, upset and slightly drunk, decides to piss David off by going out with Cal, and thus begins a rollercoaster relationship that involves food, friends, families, in-laws, statistics, snow globes, a frantic ex-girlfriend, a jealous ex-boyfriend, and a stray cat with a talent for mischief.
I’m fast becoming a fan of Jennifer Crusie. Not only does she write great romance, but her novels (at least those I’ve read) are funny and the characters great. This one is no exception. In the last Crusie novel I read (Fast Women) I felt there were too many side characters that drew the attention away from the main couple, but in this one the focus is mostly on one couple, with a large supporting cast. Crusie has toned down her obsession with strange and ugly animals, and is generally getting better all the time.
Rating:A great screwball comedy of a romance. 4 stars.
Many of my fellow bibliophiles are fond of good eating as well as good reading. They are not all full-blown foodies - the culinary equivalent of bibliophiles - but they do enjoy good food and some combine both pleasures by reading at the dinner table – a pleasurable but fattening practice.
Here is a selection of my favourite food-related non-fiction, in no particular order:
Kitchen Confidential - Anthony Bourdain. Memoir of a life lived with food. The combination of a very entertaining, no-holds-barred memoir and an inside look at the restaurant business. The author is a chef and his love of food is exuberantly expressed in the narrative. Includes some useful kitchen and restaurant advice.
A Cook’s Journey - Anthony Bourdain. Travel & food. By turns gross and hunger-inducing - but always entertaining - this is the story of Bourdain’s round-the-world journey with a camera crew in tow, in search of good food, with diversions into gag-inducing cuisine (beating heart of cobra, anyone?).
The Man Who Ate Everything - Jeffrey Steingarten. Essays and articles on food. Essays on all sorts of food related topics, such as French, sorry, Belgian fries, fruitcakes, water, bread, truffle-hunting, chocroute, and Italian ice-cream, all pursued with tenacity, stamina and a seemingly inexhaustible cache of money. You have to admire someone who is this obsessed with food.
The Encyclopedia of Cookery and Cooking Techniques (Icelandic translation) - Anne Willan. Food reference. Chock full of mouth-watering recipes, every-day and exotic foods, descriptions that make the fiddliest of cooking techniques look easy, and gorgeous photographs of food, ranging from the common to the exotic, and cooking utensils, ranging from necessary to weird.
Íslensk matarhefð (Icelandic food tradition) – Nanna Rögnvaldardóttir. Food history. A history of food and cooking in Iceland from settlement to modern times. A brilliant book.
The Raj at Table - David Burton. Social (and food) history. The various aspects of food, cooking and eating in Raj era India are examined, along with the effects of Indian cuisine on British cuisine, with many quotations from people who were there, and several recipes, some of which I use regularly.
The True History of Chocolate Sophie D Coe and Michael D Coe. Food history and science. This is a definitive history of one of the most irresistible foods in the world. Starts out dry, but begins to mellow when the botanical chapters end and the history chapters begin. Will have any chocolate connoisseur drooling before the end.
History of Food - Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat. Food history. An informative and not too academic history of food. Naturally not all inclusive, but traces the main developments from hunting and gathering to modern cooking and food production methods.
A Year in Provence and Toujours Provence by Peter Mayle. Travel. They may be stereotypical examples of the “living the good life abroad” genre of travel literature, but they do have some excellent descriptions of food and eating. I expect I would probably like Frances Mayes’s books about Tuscany for the same reason.
We of the Never-Never by Jeannie Gunn. Memoir. Has some delightful and funny scenes with food, including the author’s first attempts at making damper bread and a description of a magnificent Christmas feast served in the sweltering heat of the Australian summer.
These three are part fiction, part non-fiction:
Nanny Ogg’s Cookbook - Terry Pratchett et al. Cookbook/comedy. A wonderfully quirky cookbook with recipes for some of the food mentioned in the Discworld books (leaving out the secret ingredients), with advice and notes from the marvellous Nanny Ogg. You can find all sorts of delicious, not so delicious, and downright dangerous foods here, like the dried frog pills the Bursar eats in order to stay (relatively) sane, Nobby’s mom’s Jammy Devils, Mrs. Colon’s curry with sultanas, assassin bon-bons, etc. Funny as well as useful.
The Little House Cookbook - Barbara M. Walker. Literature/recipes. A well-researched literary recipe book with recipes for all the food that is mentioned in the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Brings back memories of my childhood, watching the TV series every Sunday and devouring the books one by one as they were published.
One that I’m looking forward to read:
The Literary Gourmet - Linda Wolfe. Literature/recipes. Passages describing food and meals from various famous works of literature, with menus and recipes.
Readers: Please post you favourite non-fiction foodie books in Comments.
I just finished reading this prequel to Sharyn McCrumb’s Zombies of the Gene Pool and I think it’s a really good story. Not only is the mystery strong, with several interesting suspects, a likeable hero and a loathsome and rather tragic murder victim, it is also a very funny description of people one is likely to meet at a sci-fi and fantasy “con” (“convention” to the uninitiated, although “gathering” is perhaps more descriptive). The title itself, just like that of the sequel, is a parody of the kind of titles you’re likely to come across on a pulp sci-fi novel. 4 stars.
Warning: slight SPOILERS
The story: Jay Omega has written a sci-fi novel, and his girlfriend, Marion, thinks he should do more to promote it, even if he is deeply embarrassed about the title which the publisher gave his novel. So he goes to a local sci-fi and fantasy convention, where he runs into all sorts of weird and weirder members of the “fen” (slang for “fans”). When the other featured author and star of the con, the miniature and malicious Appin Dungannon, author of a series about viking hero Tratyn Runewind, is murdered and Jay is asked to be Dungeon Master in a game of Dungeons and Dragons featuring Tratyn, he sees an opportunity to draw out the murderer whom he has decided must be either one of the many who hated the dead author or a rabid fan out to rescue Tratyn from being killed off by the author, who hated his creation more with every published book (don’t you just love long sentences?).
Mystery reviews: The Flanders Panel and The Man on the Balcony
The Flanders Panel by Arturo Pérez-Reverte is a murder mystery tied up in a chess-game in a painting and in reality. The painting is a 15th century panel by a Flemish master, which the heroine, an art restorer, must clean and restore before it can to be auctioned off. She discovers a hidden inscription in the painting, and when her ex-lover is murdered and a mysterious person starts leaving cards with chess moves on them where she can find them, it looks as if the two events are connected. She receives assistance in solving the mystery from a chess-player, and from her two best friends, an art gallery owner and a slippery antique dealer.
This is a good, spooky, twisty mystery with a chess game at its heart. Even if you know nothing about chess, you can still enjoy it – I only know how the chessmen move around the board, and I liked it. 3 stars.
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The Man on the Balcony by Maj Sjöwall & Per Wahlöö is a totally different kind of crime mystery. It is a police procedural, the third in a series, and features Martin Beck and his co-workers at the Stockholm CID. The story is bleak and gloomy, but thrilling, and describes the massive search for a serial killer of children who is on the loose in the city. The story is all the more chilling for the realism in the narrative, and could easily be a true account of a real crime.
This is an especially good read for lovers of realistic and true crime stories. 3 stars.
I have sometimes mentioned book covers and how important they are. I may also have mentioned the standardised covers found in genre literature, and especially romance novels. As individual artwork, some romance covers are beautiful and evocative, but taken as a whole, the genre suffers from some pretty cheesy artwork that sometimes makes one wonder if the artists are all copying each other's work. I have especially noticed this with traditional Regency romances, serial romance and historical bodice-rippers. Sometimes the covers really invite you to have fun with them, and that is just what this guy did: Longmire does romance novels
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About me
What this blog is about:
Reading and books.
If you’re wondering about the name 52 books, it stems from a book-a-week reading challenge I set myself. The challenge is over, but I'm still reading, and will continue to blog about the books I read and my reading experiences, and other stuff connected with books and reading.
I rate the books (if I feel like it), giving them stars ranging from zero to 5.
Books I have already read (sporadically updated):Cover gallery
Note: Some of the entries are linked to the months the reviews appeared in, because I made several entries for each book. I have marked those reviews with an asterix (*). If you want to read the whole review from beginning to end, you must scroll down and read from the bottom up (but you probably already knew that ;-) >
