Wednesday, 23 June 2021

Books ......Borrowing, Reading, Buying and Remembering

This post will be a bit boring if you don't like books!
 
 I have 25 books reserved at the library ........the maximum allowed. Out of those there are 6  already waiting for me and  more  'in transit'  will be there for when the van's next round on the 1st July.
The problem is the 1st July is a week away and I got to the end of the June books last week - a bit too quickly because 4 are going back unread including the two British Library Crime Classics on the right which I just couldn't get into to enjoy.


Also unread is the Magpie Murders - I believe this is the second go at his books without actually finishing. I'd borrowed The Garden Farmer by Francine Raymond before so just a quick flip through reminded me there was nothing really relevant to the garden here. Even the book by Alys Clare on the top of the pile didn't appeal. It's the second in a new series. I know I read the first but just couldn't be bothered with this one - the plot was too guessable.

The books I've finished are.............

Alys Clare - The Lammas Wild. Crime Fiction.(Published 2021) I raced through this as it has been a very good series of mystery, magic and crime and this is the last one. 
Josie George - A Still Life. Non Fiction (Published 2021) This is a memoir about her life with an unexplained painful illness that sometimes reduces her to having to rest for days on end. She writes about her small world between her home, her son's school, her friend's home and the community centre. It is beautifully written, noticing all the small things and finding joy in life as it is for her. 
Stuart Pawson - The Judas Sheep. Crime Fiction (Published 1996) I read a couple by this author many years ago .They now seem very dated
Jacqueline Winspear - The Consequences of Fear. Crime Fiction(Published 2021). London 1941, bombs are still falling and 12 year old Freddie Hacket is a message runner for a government office. On one errand he sees two men  fighting, quickly hides and realises he is watching a murder and then is terrified to discover the man he has just seen is the person to whom he has to deliver the message. The police do not believe him so he turns to Maisie Dobbs - the private investigator.
Danie Couchman - Afloat. Non Fiction. (Published 2019). Fed up with flat sharing and the rush of central London, on one of her walks Danni finds the Regents Canal and after a while she buys a Narrow boat.
 
 I've just counted how many books are on my Amazon wish list...............79!, although some of them are just there to remind me to order from the library sometime as they are non fiction books that I don't want all at once. There are several fiction listed that are not yet published.......... the British Library Crime Classics appear on Amazon months before their publication date and of course the Furrowed Middlebrow reprints from Dean Street Press. Then there are some that I doubt will ever be cheap enough for me - or anyone else to buy for me - like the half dozen Angela Thirkell books that I haven't got in my collection.
 
I gave myself permission to buy books more often but that's not as easy as it sounds after years of necessary frugality. Buying fiction that will only be read once really goes against the grain and buying non-fiction that the library has in stock seems silly. So in reality I don't buy many at all!
Apart from finding 3 Persephone and the Witches spell book (mentioned the other day) these are what I've bought secondhand from Amazon or Abebooks in the last 3 months, so not too extravagant. I'm reading Wanderland at the moment.
 The book on the top by Irene Soper "The Romany Way" is all due to a new blog called Farms on my bookshelf. 
Miki is in the Netherlands and is reading books by people who've got away from it all and finding out more about them, where possible. I've read some of the books she has written about but hadn't heard of Irene Soper who wrote about living in the New Forest. On Amazon it's nearly £10 but  Romany Way was only £2.25 with free postage and a subject that I'm interested in. (Do you remember those wonderful days before Covid when books were to be had for 1p?)
Other books Miki has mentioned by Elizabeth West, John Seymour, Jeanine McMullen and Eileen Atkins I've read already. So I had a look through by Book-of-Books-read to see if I could remember anything similar and came up with the following
 
Hope Bourne - Wild harvest
Neil Ansell - Deep Country
Denise Hall - Stones and Stars
Sally Borst - Self Deficiency 
Daniel Butler -Urban Dreams, Rural Realities 
Anne Cholawe - Island on the Edge
Patrick Rivers - Living on a Little Land
Katherine Stewart - Croft in the Hills
Hilary Burden - A Story of Seven Summers
 
Another I thought of but couldn't find the details for was about  couple who lived in a remote place in Scotland and ended up writing and photographing a recipe book - Turkish or Isreali? I'll have to have another look.

Back Tomorrow
Sue
 
 
 


23 comments:

  1. Why not pop along to a charity shop and pick up a few random books to tied you over? They're mostly only 50p or a £1 or £2 and you could try authors you've never tried before.

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    1. I've got plenty on my shelves here! There's now 11 arriving on the mobile next week.

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    2. Oh, so you don't have to consider buying.

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    3. Now I have my pension.......Have money, will buy books!

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    4. Ha ha! I rarely buy, only broke the rules during lockdown when I was desperate.

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  2. So glad your pension has come through. Despite being told on January 12th that I'd get mine on April 18th, I have yet to receive anything. I am so frustrated by all the phone calls and apologies

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    1. I had a letter to say the 8 weeks backdated to my birthday went into bank this week and the next payment (it's all paid in arrears) goes into bank in early July. Haven't actually checked the bank yet!

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    2. I am really surprised to hear what Angela says. I have nothing but praise for the DPW. Hope it soon works out for you Angela, maybe there is a problem with bank details you have given. Sue you need a banking app on your smart phone and then you can check these things easily. Not sure if you have a smart phone!

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  3. I love the library for exactly the reason you stated. I don't want to spend money on a book I will only read once. Reference books (usually gardening for me, cars or building for husband) are different, as I would consult those time and again. -Jenn

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  4. I can highly recommend Island on the Edge: A Life on Soay by Anne Cholawo. It's about her moving to a remote Scottish Island where the population has been much reduced due to lack of available work etc. Downloaded to my Kindle (a free one at the time, I think). Pollie

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  5. I also buy a bunch of books from charity shops, read them and then give them back.
    All at an outlay of £2 or so, all the money going to charity.

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  6. I love to read and am a big user of our local library. I am too cheap to buy books. I enjoyed the Maisie Dobbs' books as I am a fan of mystery / detective books.
    I just finished several books by Marie Benedict which were historical fiction so a nice change for me. They are all about women who were influential to men without getting much notice (or credit) for it. "The Other Einstein", "Lady Clementine", "The Only Woman in the Room" were a few of the titles I read by her.

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  7. The Hope Bourne book is a delight. A friend gave me a copy and I can remember putting a chair in my first walk-in plastic greenhouse at our old home, and sitting down and devouring a big chunk of it. She was incredibly frugal, and I believe grew all her own vegetables, and lived off wild greens when she could. She was truly self sufficient. She moved to Exmoor in 1950, from Hartland in N. Devon. I have her other books too, Living on Exmoor and A Moorland Year. All an absolute delight to read. I have just gone through all my bookcases to find them and have brought them down to read bits of again. One I haven't got (yet!) is A Little History of Exmoor.

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    1. Would you believe I once had all of them - back in the day - before moving house twice! Now I don't have any.
      She was a one-off wasn't she..... shooting all her own wild meat which she had for breakfast as well as dinner!

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  8. I'm eager to read the new Maisie. I'm sorry you didn't like Magpie Murders. I don't like all his stuff but I do like this one. The Brit Crime Library can be hit or miss.

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  9. The author from Scotland you are looking for is Ghillie Basan who lived in a small cottage in Glenlivet, Moray not that far from where I live, in fact I have walked past her cottage

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    1. Thank you - that's the one I couldn't find in my book-of-books-read. Now I've found it. The book is called "The Moons our Nearest neighbour" .

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  10. Interesting. I always love to see what others are reading. I get marvelous ides for my own reading pleasure.

    God bless.

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  11. You need a Kindle! There are many free books, plus all your faves for a treat. I have had so much fun this past year and a half re reading favorite series that I have stored [so not as extravagant as it seems]. Currently I'm reading all 25 Kate Ellis/ DI Peterson books in order. I don't spend money on travel or cinema/ theater visits, same old clothes, etc---so Kindle books are a designated expenditure for me. You can use your Kindle and still get library books. In fact your library may have e books to download.

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  12. I love books. There are just so many of them and I find it difficult to resist buying 'new' ones. Charity shops have some great books and many of them are new releases as people tend to read them once and then give them away - especially in the summer when people are just buying something to read in the garden or beach.

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  13. We like so many of the same books don't we, although I sold both the My Tiny Home Farm book and The Garden Farmer at our last car boot sale as I just didn't find them helpful, although they were nice to look through. I'm just about to start reading Earthed, it's been on my bedside table waiting it's turn for months now.

    I've bought far too many books over the past few weeks, I shall have to find space in the annexe for them once I move ... I'm sure I'll manage ;-)

    It's five years until I qualify for my pension so in the meantime I'll just keep spending the kids inheritance, and living off £10 a week for food to fund my book buying habit!!

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  14. Thank you so much for mentioning me! It so happens that I bought a 2nd hand copy of My Tiny Home Farm a few days ago in Maastricht! To many of you the name will only make you think of " treaty", but is actually a lovely old town in a part of the Netherlands that to us Rotterdammers feels a bit foreign: being close to the borders you are surrounded by Germans and Belgians, and the locals speak a, to us, incomprehensible dialect! And there are hills! We nipped over the border into Aachen, which felt very exiting after a year of not being able to go abroad. Anyway, your suggestions have all been added to my list. Thanks again.

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