Fashions change

I'm still in reading mode. Reading is definitely taking pride of place and writing has taken a bit of a back seat. Still doing it, but stealing every moment I can to read. So what has caught my imagination?
Well, Helen started it all with her gift of books for my birthday. Then I bought a copy of Sansom's Lamentations and I'm saving that up to read when I start writing Matho 2 since a) I really like Sansom's stories and style  b) his story and mine are set in almost the same year - 1544.

My reading list is nothing if not eclectic. The last few weeks has featured Ian McEwan, Tess Gerritsen, Robert Goddard, Lee Child, Hugh Howey, and Sarah J Bolton to name but a few. I've bought Ross Poldark by Winston Graham, first published 1945, in preparation for the tv series due to screen in March this year. Writing style will have changed since then. I wonder how he will compare?

It is an age since I ventured into a book shop. In actual fact, it is an age since I went into town or the Metrocentre. Buying things and having them delivered is so easy these days. Not what bookshops or any other kind of shop want to hear, but that's the way it goes.

I thought in the dark, dismal days after Christmas you might all appreciate a reminder of what summer looks like - so here you are - a shot across Blackhead Beach in Australia.

Notable Books

I expect every independent author/publisher received a lengthy explanation about how VAT on e-books will work after the turn of the year. I got mine. So it looks as if it is happening. The consoling thought is that Amazon might be paying more tax too.

The New York Times has published a list of notable books of 2014 - http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/07/books/review/100-notable-books-of-2014.html?_r=0

As my eyes scanned the list, several thoughts occurred to me. Firstly, I have read none of them. Secondly, they all seem to be on gut-wrenching topics. Thirdly, where have all the happy books gone? Why does everyone want to read about other people's misery and anguish?

When I was much younger and worked in a public library, I ordered/requested many books and read them with a greed for knowledge of the human race. I didn't think of it in those terms then, but it seems to me now that that was what I was doing. I don't do it any more. By my late twenties I had moved away from what I thought of as the agonising stuff, and looked for more escapist fiction, something that would excite me and keep me reading late into the night. Dorothy Dunnett fitted the bill admirably. She had more "bite" than Mary Stewart, wrote so much better than Jean Plaidy, and her mind was so devious I was always surprised by her plotlines.

Now it seems to me that the book world is geared to supplying the stuff that I wanted to read as a young person starting out into adulthood - but there also seems to be a hint that this is what we all ought to be reading. Is this, I wonder, because the editors and reviewers are twenty-somethings themselves?

I read some notable books in the last year, but by the time I get to them, they are likely to be a couple of years old. Burial Rites by Hannah Kent was one title I  would have put on my personal list, and Longbourne by Jo Baker was another. When I read Lamentations by C J Sansom, that will no doubt be added, as I thought highly of his preceding books. Some that missed the mark, like Queen's Gambit (Freemantle) and Bring Up the Bodies, (Mantel) I enjoyed at the time but found they didn't stick in the memory. When I think of more titles, I shall build my own personal list of Notable Books.

PS Tim shows up well in any situation - a flash of white among the dark trees!

Fantasy land

Two silver horses drew me to the edge of the water while dh examined the Falkirk Wheel (more of which later). As I edged around looking for the best shot without said wheel dominating the horse sculptures, I noticed the panda in the background. Yes, a panda. A panda looking as if s/he is pleading with a higher authority about something. I include a blow up taken from the original to prove it. What the story was there I haven't a clue, but somebody, somewhere, ought to incorporate it into a novel. Along with the horses, of course.

I had a really good moment today on visiting Blackwells bookshop in Newcastle. My book was there on the shelf for all the world to see. In the A-Z section, along with author C J Sansom, whose wonderful Tudor-set stories I've recently read. Really good historical novels, though I've seen them shelved in the crime section. The hero, lawyer Matthew Shardlake, solves a crime, sometimes two crimes in one story, but the world he inhabits and moves through is chillingly Tudor.

I recognised some of the "set scenes" he uses from my own research, and sighed, wondering if that meant I couldn't or shouldn't use the same pieces. Or if I could, as long as I presented it a little differently. After all, a piece taken from original documents of the 1540's is almost an event, and can be used over and over, just as Anne Boleyn's execution "happens" in more than a few stories of the time.

The BBC promises a new history website in 2011 and I'll certainly be on the look-out for that. THIS is the link if you're interested.

Revelation and AT

I have discovered C J Sansom, and I'm loving his work. Somehow I assume the writer is male, though I have not checked.

I grabbed Revelation because it is set in 1543, the exact year in which I am working in my (as yet titleless) wip, and would have read it for that alone but it has become a fascinating read. A hunchback lawyer on the trail of a serial killer and a background of religious fanaticism. I am aware three or four titles from this author have been on the bookshop shelves for some time now, but the covers gave me the impression that they would be heavy, slow and slanted towards religion - not my usual fare!

However, my expectations were so very wrong. The story is lightly conveyed in modern dialogue so easy to read that it slides by without effort. The detail comes in the workings of the court and officials, the backgrounds, the lives lived by those who suffered under the dissolution of the monasteries - detail, yes, but in a way that fascinates rather than bores. 600 plus pages are whizzing by.

It makes me realise all over again how important covers are in attracting a reader to a book. I've seen a rough copy of my cover for TILL THE DAY GO DOWN and I like it ~ a sumptously gowned lady of the correct period, if a tad more richly attired than the heroine's status would have allowed. So difficult to get it exactly right without spending a fortune with graphic artists and design studios.

My latest work is going well, if slowly. I tend to write dialogue and then go back and build up the scene around it. Seems to work for me. I think I may have got some happenings out of sequence by a day or two, but then - it may well have happened like that.

Today we live in such a world of immediate and global announcements that we don't think how confusing it must have been back in the days of handwritten letters delivered by a man on a horse or a man on foot and then relayed by mouth to those who could not read for themselves. News would have taken days to filter down except in case of war, when it would be announced from the market cross or similar. I wonder if the gossip was more accurate then, or did the Chinese whispers effect have a hand in things then, too?