Miss Marple - The Complete Short Stories - Agatha Christie

There is something about this time of the year - long dark nights, I get lots of colds and want to stay indoors out of the cold - and I turn for my reading to 'comfortable' books that don't challenge me much. I haven't read Agatha Christie for years - after all there are plenty of adaptations on TV. However, I think I may well return to her books from time to time. Sometimes the plots are a bit obvious, unlikely in the extreme, but there is regularly a surprising twist, and once you are used to the formula you can suspend disbelief sufficiently to be drawn in. Miss Marple is by far my favourite Agatha Christie 'detective', she is very smart, and her people watching is the key to all her solutions. She's more of a puzzle solver than a true detective - and that is attractive too. In this collection of short stories dating from early on in her career, and then towards the end (illustrating nothing if not that her author is consistent) of her career. They are typical puzzles about deaths in unusual circumstances and although you often say - 'Well that is obvious' that isn't really the truth - they just illustrate that human behaviour and motivation doesn't change. Each is entertaining - none a dud. I liked them. Rating: 8/10

Fathers and Children - Ivan Turgenev

I'm not sure how appropriate this illustration is - it appears extremely Stalinist in tone and

Turgenev is from a different century - and another age. This story is set about the time of the emancipation of the serfs, and inevitably is concerned with the ruling class who seem to live lives so detached from reality as to make the reader believe that this is beyond fiction - more like fantasy. I suppose the author is attempting to satirise this elite - the peasants spend a great deal of their time making fun of their rulers, the aristocracy spend a great deal of time discussing in theoretical terms the 'peasant problem' 'the agricultural question' or 'the poltical system' - but never actually do anything about it. the sons are all passionate, enthusiastic, scientific and modern - the fathers stuck in the past, clinging to religion and superstition. Both sets of people seem hindbound by convention in all matters (even though one of the characters claims to be a nihilist) especially those relating to romance, family, marriage and love. I found this an immensely frustrating book - full of irritating characters and stereotypes - and I'm not convinced I'll return to Russian C19th literature for some time. Rating 5/10

Southwold Literature Festival & Chris Patten in conversation with James Naughtie

A review of both these 'book related' events will appear shortly on my 'Steve's Journal' blog......

The End of the Affair - Graham Greene

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society - Mary Ann Shaffer

I was really pleased to have this suggested to me - it is a real find and I've given copies to several of my friends. The format reminds me strongly of Helene Hanff's 84

Charing Cross Road - a series of letters and telegrams. Shortly after WWII journalist and writer Juliet receives a letter out of the blue from someone in Guernsey who has picked up one of Juliet's second hand books. This leads her to a whole variety of correspondence with people who lived through the German Occupation of the Channel Islands. Most of them got through the bad times through the Literary Society that begins as a front organisation to fool the German occupiers. Juliet learns so much about these people and soon becomes their friend and supporter and at the same time discovers much about herself and who her true friends are. Rating 8/10.

The Age of Reform - Sir Llewellyn Woodward

This is part of the massive The Oxford History of England series. I was prompted to read it

because I have been listening to the wonderful BBC series This Sceptred Isle. There was a reference to the fall of the Melbourne Government in the 1830s because of an issue over the Jamaican Representative Assembly.

Excellent Women - Barbara Pym

Barbara Pym is one of my favourite authors, not to everyone's taste, but I return to this book regularly, and it always makes me laugh.