In the Bookswap Bag

Read and Enjoyed

Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders - John Mortimer

This was quite fun – we see the first meeting of Rumpole and She Who Must be Obeyed, and his first great success in court, but on the whole I preferred the chapters in the here and now. Our younger, less confident Rumpole is really just old Rumpole in embryo, with no particular distinguishing features of his own (parents, Uni, siblings? Surely there should be something), and here we see him also have his first sip of the wine that later becomes his usual tipple and his first encounter with the cheerfully criminal family he goes on to defend through the years – which was, frankly, too many firsts for one book. One for the completists, really, but not for those of us who prefer our Rumpole fully formed.

The Nursing Home Murder - Ngaio Marsh

I’ve already reviewed this as part of my Marsh re-read. I’d completely forgotten it and really enjoyed it, but made a point of putting it in the bookswap bag as if I put it on my shelf it will sit unread.

Thank you Jeeves and Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit - P G Wodehouse

I've let quite a few of these Jeeves' go, despite enjoying and rereading the stories more than once. It's at least partly because I don't really like the editions I bought new in the early 90s. There's a nostalgia factor - I associate them with being a teenager, sitting at the bus station in Guildford waiting for the 715 (later the 415, and then the 515, each renaming accompanied by a shortening of the bus route) but it doesn't make up for their being annoyingly chunky and the covers too bright and brash. If I'm going to own them I want something older, more aesthetically pleasing. Ideally orange penguins or the same sort of small hardbacks I have some R L Stevenson and Jane Austen in. Meanwhile I can borrow from various London libraries until I see copies I like the look of.

Sober as a Judge - Henry Cecil

This was an entertaining and good natured read. I bought it in Copperfields in Wimbledon, a second hand bookshop in a street hidden behind the cinema/supermarket complex (where they put the fake grass and deckchairs out for the tennis, and where there are sometimes craft and Christmas markets which I always browse through when I see them but never actually buy from).

Like all the best secondhand shops Copperfields used to have boxes of books to browse through on trestles outside, and also a bookcase built just to the right of the doorway which was filled to head height (in fact well above my head height) with penguin paperbacks. Unfortunately they closed about this time last year, and this was one of my last three purchases.

I’d never heard of Cecil but Sober as a Judge is clearly one of a series, and good enough that I may try and seek out the rest. 

Confabulations - John Berger

I’m afraid my main reaction to this was that it was interesting and made me think, but wasn’t as good as Ways of Seeing. That’s at least in part because it felt more specialised, and so left me feeling as if I was eavesdropping on half of a discussion or had done a small piece of a jigsaw but was missing the rest. I’ve got Portraits from the Verso books sale and intend to give that a go.

Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

There isn’t a great deal new anyone can say about Jane Eyre. This is a duplicate copy which I bought for my OU course as I had to use the Oxford University classic. I have a small hardback I much prefer.

Merry Hall - Beverley Nichols

Fun tale of buying a house and doing the garden, but rather light. I was very slightly irritated by what seemed like gratuitous criticism of women towards the end but I suspect Mr Nichols was fed up of being asked the same dratted question and obviously writing 'there is no significant female other in this book because it's men who interest me in that way' wouldn't have been an option at the time.

Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

I really enjoyed this but won't read it again. Also my edition is a whopper, for some reason. It’s also a difficult book to describe without spoiling it, so I won’t.

On Shopping - India Knight

This is a slim penguin, part of the 'ideas' series, the cover is great (all the covers for these are great) and she's funny, and introduced me to Etsy, but no, I don't need it.

What the Grown Ups were Doing - Michele Harrison

Read and enjoyed. I had to go back a page at one point because she reveals what she later found out about one of her best friends, and she never even suspected. It's a real splash of cold water.

Paradise News - David Lodge

I’m tempted to call this one of Lodge’s campus novels, but it isn’t really, that’s just the jumping off point. It’s not exactly upbeat, but it’s a forgiving sort of book. I’d rather go on reading new (to me) Lodges than start collecting ones I’ll never open again. In fact reading all David Lodge’s novels in order might be a nice easy project for next year when I’ve finished with re-reading Marsh.

Calamity in Kent - John Rowland, Murder in Piccadilly - Charles Kingston, Murder Underground - Mavis Doriel Hay

All from the British library series. The more of these I read the more I think I’m in it more for the historical context than the mystery.  Here we have murders in the tube, a murder in a clifftop railway, and various side orders of chorus girls, intrepid reporters, brightish young things, boarding houses, spoiled young men who don’t want to wait for their inheritance, and professional criminals.  I like Murder Underground best. 

Green for Danger - Christianna Brand

I did review this briefly. Loved it but, as with Lodge, would rather read something new by her than hoard this one.

Beware of the Trains - Edmund Crispin 

If I feel an urge to read Crispin I invariably reach for the full length books I have - Gilded Fly, Moving Toyshop etc. rather than this book of short stories. It can go.  

Three Men in a Boat - Jerome K Jerome

Another duplicate - this time in error.  They're both nice editions - one an orange penguin and the other one of the green penguins that were available for £2 in a plain green cover. It's hard to believe the book is over a hundred years old. There is something perennially fresh about our three heroes, and if they gently mock others they mock themselves far more. 

A Spaniard in the Works - John Lennon

Purchased and reviewed for the 1965 challenge. Very much of it's time.

The Punch Bedside Book 

I don’t think there was a single joke in here I found funny. Which is curious because I have Punch annuals from the 50s and bits of those are still funny, and I read Punch in the late 80s, so I can only think whoever put this together had a very different sense of humour to me.   

Unread

The Costa Short Story Finalists

I never read it and these are finalists from years ago, so clearly I am never going to.

The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy

This may be excellent, but it's sat on my shelf too long without me finding out.

Three slim paperbacks from the Penguin 'sagas' series. The fall of Jerusalem by Josephus, Sagas and Myths of the Northmen, and Siegfried's Murder.  I haven't picked them up in 15 years and probably won't.

Similarly Happy Birthday Jack Nicholson by Hunter S Thompson, The Play of the Eyes by Elias Canetti, and Claudius the God by Robert Graves. Although that last one may get a reprieve. I have dipped.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid - The Meltdown

This was part of my cousin's boy's Christmas present, but he has it. I meant to return it but never got round.

Begun and abandoned

The 12.30 from Croydon. I've read about half of this. It's an inverted mystery. It's fine, but I drifted away and read something else.

The Limehouse Golem - Peter Ackroyd

I’m fairly sure I got this quite recently from a very reasonably priced secondhand bookshop in Morden Hall Park, which is walking distance from me. It looked interesting but was just a tad too grim. Enjoying it's own grimness. I can recommend the park though.

The Namesake - Jhumpa Lahiri

I loved In Other Words, Lahiri’s book about her love of the Italian language, which she wrote as articles or chapters in Italian and which were then translated back into English by others as she was determined to write only in Italian for a period while she was living there.

(I also wished my Italian was better so I could read the original language rather than skim through picking out words, unsure whether her language skills were improving or not.)

So I picked up The Namesake at the bookswap at work, read two chapters and – lazy, lazy – jumped to the end and killed my desire to read the whole thing. Foolish of me, but at the time I was writing the introduction/premise of my dissertation and was maybe too distracted and impatient to read for pleasure.  I do still want to read something by Lahiri as (apart from the distraction) I was enjoying it.

The Lonely Passion of Miss Judith Hearne – Brian Moore

I think I bought this at Copperfields too, but two chapters in I got bored. I may actually put it back on the shelf until I’m more in the mood for it, as it’s very well done and the life Miss Hearne is leading is very much of her place and time. At another time I’d probably find the minutiae and attitudes far more interesting. 

Read and unloved

Who Moved my Cheese - Dr Spencer Johnson

I won't be sorry to see the back of this. It was a bookclub book at work (I thought I'd given it back).