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The Sun always shines on TV - A-ha

Wait Till' the Sun Shines, Nellie - Buddy Holly

Reading The Great Fortune, the first volume in Olivia Manning's Balkan Trilogy. Growing on me - this series could become addictive!

13. Co-Wives, Co-Widows by Adrienne Yabouza ***** Having reached fifty books in my Reading the World project just before Christmas, I've had a brief hiatus whilst I get my United States tour back up and running: i initially intended only to start this global journey after finishing the American trip, but was too keen to start, and the problem then became that the latter then slid rather on to the back-burner. I'm still pressing on with it (40 reached now), but can't leave this alone much longer - it's too addictive! So, a book for a country (Central African Republic) in a continent that's been a bit of a revelation: I've really enjoyed pretty much every African book so far having read so few before. This latest is apparently the first adult novel from CAR to be translated into English. As Ann Morgan says on her Reading The World website (in several places!), there's a danger in this sort of situation for a book and author to be almost forced to adopt the mantle of 'representing' a country, and i suppose that's true of any book in a project such as mine too, but on the positive side, it's still broadening my range of reading, and these books are increasingly serving as an introduction to a whole range of literature that I'm looking to explore further. Co-Wives, Co-Widows is a slim volume, barely 120-odd pages, in the Dedalus Africa series. It focuses on the impact of the unexpected death of their husband Lidou, a successful builder, on the lives of his two co-wives, especially when Lidou's family led by cousin Zouaboua, a nasty piece of work!) try to take over Lidou's property and money. Ndongo Passy and Grekpoubou have a fight on their hands if they are going to secure their and their children's future. The novel touches on a range of serious subjects, including the situation of women in a highly patriarchal society and systemic corruption at all levels (it is set against the backdrop of a presidential election). However, it's written with such a light touch, that it's the wit and humour that is the main aftertaste, but it's a wit that cuts with a very sharp knife. Yabouza says much in very few words, so few that on occasions it's almost too easy to miss, a single word changing the slicing direction of a sentence, a severe beating of the two wives summarised in barely four or five lines, the brutality underlined by the succinctness and matter of factness of the writing, but easily overlooked if not paying attention! The language feels simple and direct belying a subtlety that took me a while to appreciate. Much of the narrative has an uncomfortable feel from a westerner's perspective (the patriarchy!), but one begins to understand that the women involved (not just the two co-widows) are going to 'succeed' (read survive perhaps, but hopefully also change things) by working within the system rather than always against it. I found this a very quick but thoroughly rewarding read. It initially feels a 'simple' read too,being fooled by the directness of the language, but I was soon disabused of that! Whilst I enjoyed this from the very first page, it was a book that definitely grew on me as I read it, and is one that I will almost certainly return to in the future. And, in the same way that I have started to enjoy exploring the back catalogue of Latin American specialists Charco Press, I'm now looking forward to trying out others in the (smaller) Dedalus Africa series, which has opened up previously hard to come by introductions to other non-English speaking countries from this continent too.

The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters * Well, that was an interesting one. This was the choice for for one of my book groups. The novel is set around the disappearance of a young Mi'kmaq girl whilst the family, from Nova Scotia, are blueberry picking in Maine. She has been kidnapped by a local childless couple, and the novel examines the impact of this event on both the girl herself, Ruthie (renamed Norma by the couple), and her family. Amanda Peters herself is of mixed heritage, part Mi'kmaq, and the book is aimed partly at highlighting the racial prejudices the Mi'kmaq have faced historically, even very recently. It wone an Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. What?! It's not often our very varied group is in complete accord in our feelings about a book, and on the one or two occasions where we have been in complete agreement, it's been as to how good a book has been, so this one achieved something unique to date for us: unanimous, almost vitriolic, dislike! 'Pedestrian', 'poorly written', 'bland', 'two dimensional' and other similar descriptors were agreed to by all. We were lucky that one of the group had visited one of the Mi'kmaq communities whilst on holiday in Nova Scotia last year, and was able to provide some valuable insight from the introduction she had been given by community members, as this novel provided little if any - indeed, this was regarded as perhaps the most disappointing aspect of the novel, that it could have been set pretty much anywhere in the world. One of our group, with personal insight into being brought up in a family of different heritage, found the character of Ruthie simply unbelievable. We were staggered that this book had won any sort of prize, and bemused by the positive reviews we'd read. All we could think was that the book's cause had given this novel some sort of 'worthy' status that had influenced reviews and jury opinions. TBH I was, if anything, relieved! I'd read this book with a rapidly sinking heart, and only managed to reach the end with massive stints of skim reading. Unrelentingly dreary, tediously predictable in plotting and stereotypical, cardboard cutout characterisation, lacking in any narrative suspense, this was for me representative of the worst sort of mis-lit, a style and genre of writing that I really dislike anyway, and I dreaded being the 'odd man out' at our meeting, convinced that, given the consistently positive reviews from media and online, I was missing something substantial, and going to be on my own. I should have had more faith in the rest of the group! It was interesting talking round the group, how many had feared the same! I struggled to give this one star.

A series of catch up reviews - a long time since I last posted. The first two: 11. Rhine Journey by Ann Schlee ****** Charlotte Morrision is a middle-aged (?) spinster on holiday with her brother and sister-in-law on the German Rhine. Life has become rather unsettled for her as the man she for whom she has acted as housekeeper (thus providing her with occupation, a home and an income) has died, leaving her a small legacy sufficient for independence, if that's what she wants, which is uncertain. On the boat, she's sees a man who she initially mistakes for a previous love and, whilst almost immediately recognising the mistake, it sets off a series of events that become ever more unsettling, particularly as she gets to know the man and his family. I had noted this book owing to a recommendation read somewhere - I thought it was her on Club Read, but can't find the reference anyway - and browsing it in our local bookshop persuaded me almost immediately. Sitting down to read, I was immersed from the word go. It was a three sitting read, but could easily have been one if I'd had the time. I was reminded of one of my favourite writers, EM Forster, both in content - a mixture of A Room With A View (although Germany rather than Italy!) and A Passage to India (startling event turns single woman's life upside down) - and style. This may be the early 1850s (soon after the 1848 uprisings, which do affect the plot) rather than Forster's early twentieth century, but there remained the atmosphere of a woman pushing against the bounds of a patriarchal society (almost without realising in Charlotte's case), with Charlotte submissive to the rule of her tract-waving brother, and en route to the conventional life of a live-in maiden aunt. Although told in the third person, we see the world through Charlotte's mind's eye, including dream sequences which she, and we, are in danger of mistaking for reality - one needs to pay close attention! This book scored on all fronts for me: I loved the sense of place and the atmosphere - reminding me of a cycling trip up the Rhine of a few years ago, even if this was, and felt, over 150 years ago - and the narrative was strong enough to propel me steadily through the book, still with time to savour the words - I just loved the writing, and positively enjoyed absorbing each word and phrase. This was not a book I wanted to rush through. It was good enough that when, at the end, I briefly went back to the start to check up on a few details, I found myself ready to carry on reading all the way through. Overall, a read that really chimed with me, and a full 6 stars. Whether it's a 'favourite', time will tell! 12. A River Runs Through It and Other Stories by Norman Maclean **** Read as the fortieth book in my Tour of the United States, for the state of Montana. Published in the 1970s, this was a trio of pieces of autofiction set in the pre-WW2 years in the country around Missoula, and based on Maclean's outdoor experiences. The eponymous novella (ARRTI), positioned first, is centred on his relationship with his brother Paul, particularly seen through their mutual love of fly-fishing (inherited from their minister father) and a specific holiday in one 1930s summer. The other two are earlier, the main one (USFS 1919) being another 100-page novella on another summer working with the US Forestry Service in the Montana hills, whilst the third, positioned as almost as a 20-page interval between the two longer pieces, focused on time spent logging and, again, on Maclean's relationship with another individual, this time a logging colleague (they weren't friends!). The book was worth reading for ARRTI alone. There was an emotional engagement both through the family connections, and through Maclean's obvious passion for fly-fishing: I know nothing of the latter, but I found myself almost as completely immersed as he obviously was - I loved the technical detail, and his deep involvement in both activity and landscape. The time, the place, the people, particularly the three men (the brothers and, later, the father) were all brought vividly to life, and I was surprised how emotionally involved I became and felt at the end! The other two pieces, although fine pieces of writing, lacked the same intensity to me. They were lively, entertaining, and provided insight on time and place, but never quite reached the same level: I wanted to go back and reread sections of ARRTI, but the other two I found myself content to leave and let live at the end. So, whilst ARRTI was a solid 5-star read, the other two meant that overall the book landed up slightly lower, even if still a good read.

I Can't Wait - Stevie Nicks and Tom Petty

I Can't Dance ~ Genesis

find the Cosy Book Nook's key under the back door mat. Can you put half a dozen potatoes in the microwave too? I've only had a few nibbles tonight. I'm starving!' Bunty's prodigious appetite was impressive. I did as she asked, made a large mug of tea, grabbed a handful of shortbread biscuits and and started going through the book bucket discards. To my surprise ...

a bag of bog

The Hospital (1989) Ahmed Bouanani I should start by saying this is the kind of book which, had I read it at another time, in another mood, I might have despised it. I think this is precisely the kind of book where you have to let it catch you at the right time, in the right frame of mind, otherwise it will infuriate you. On this occasion, however, I was evidently in that very place because I rather liked this and found some of the writing, and the almost delirious fever dream nature of the piece, to be very effective, often beautiful. I only bring up the idea of being in the right mood because I don't want to recommend it lightly as I'm sure there will be people who will loathe this thing. It would be too simplistic to say it's a Marmite book; more accurate to say it's one of those books that will need to find you (you know, the way cats choose their owners, like that). Anyway... The basic premise (and it is very basic) is that a man is taken to hospital by the sea in Morocco. From this point on, the book becomes a plotless narrative whereby the narrator, without name, flits in and out of consciousness, daydreams, fever, nightmares, and an uncertain reality even when awake. The whole book is a swirling madness of delirious hallucination and reminiscing. The hospital itself never seems to have any patients who recover, or any doctors (there is mention of a male nurse) and the other patients our narrator does meet (all given rudimentary nicknames like Guzzler, Rover, and Fartface) appear equally lost or forgotten. There's no sense of time, only a building, Moroccan heat, and ambiguous illness. The narrator is often hard to follow but this is compensated for by the sheer quality of writing which often hits wonderful heights. Sometimes you will read a sentence more than once just so that you can enjoy it all over again. I was reborn, quite despite myself, in a worn down universe, amid a vanquished, humiliated humanity, resigned to an absurd destiny of flowering graves that led to an uncertain future in intolerable paradises. I was heading toward a mythology of survival, leaving behind in my rotting limbs a prehistory of one thousand and four hundred years of hate, vainglory, and putrid nostalgia, under the clear sky of a false Andalusia where our murders has been in the making since our birth. Right now, he's standing in front of his childhood home with the despair of someone who's completely lost, trying to recognise a door with a bronze knocker, a low building with windows so minuscule he can't imagine what purpose they could serve, a place that once observed him growing up on thin grasshopper legs, the neighbours' oddly horizontal stairs, dark and stinking of urine and weak stew, which in a faraway time provided a refuge for a romantic idyll. The book isn't perfect and as I said at the beginning there are those (I'm certain) who will simply hate this thing. But some of the writing really did seduce me, to the extent that I found the piece to be ultimately mesmerising. Funnily enough, there are obvious comparisons with The Blind Owl by Hedayat which makes sense but only in so much that there is a dreamlike quality to events (otherwise not much in common given that I hated The Blind Owl). Likewise, there are Kafka references but I've always viewed Kafka as a man who dealt with the nightmare of bureaucracy rather than an eddying descent into a surreal and delirious lunacy. This, to me, was a more delicate and pleasurable madness, intriguing, odd, and immensely hypnotic. You can smell the incense, feel the desert heat, the dry atmosphere, and almost taste the hish-hash. The book is strangely pleasing, like being stoned, but always with a sense of comfort and ease. Despite Bouanani tackling death and disease, and, despite the curious, other worldly setting of the book, it never felt to me like it was ever bleak or dark, only lost in romantic thought and confused memory. I think I liked it better during the periods when we were somewhere inside his delirium, his dreams, his ethereal delusions, rather than when we were present with him in the (admittedly unclear) reality of the hospital. Not perfect by any stretch (and not to everyone's tastes) but this one kinda spoke to me. 7/10

Save the last Dance - The Drifters

the separation of Tolkien from Tidsdale, Teasdale etc .... get me? The books bucket is a bucket full of useless books . Go through it, take your pick, remember my charity in your will, and help yersen to tea, coffee, and sugar. I will be feeding and walking 2 cats, Ruffles and Duffles, both angelic tabbies, you will.....

Save Your Kisses for Me ~ Brotherhood of Man

that, she tossed her cape in a manner that would have made Puss in Boots proud. 'Do you want a hand? I'd be glad to escape all these earnest wannabe highbrows,' I said. Anything to get out of cleaning up after they'd stuffed their self-opinionated faces. 'Come along then, come along. You can help me with ...

biker dos, hen parties for Yorkshire lesbians, and macrame knitting classes for the over 40s', said Trev Lost, 25, a bricklayer, once of Birmingham. 'Now now watch it, sweet cheeks', said Bunty, 'or I will set his wife Rosie on yer..you'll rue the day', she said,sausage roll crumbs falling freely down her purple khaki get up, ' another thing..these hippy types do not know their literature..despite their complaints to the contrary, they only read Socialist Challenge, Spartacist, and the Guardian...' 'Socialist Challenge?', I scoffed, ' I bet you must be an oldie if you're reading that lost relic of Thatcherite Britain.' 'Oh being personal, are we?', said Bunty, eating a bacon pie with chive mustard and a spicy hollandaise,' you'll not manage to deflect me from my aim..to rid academic bookstalls of neo Communist liberals in shorts, Che Guevara hairpieces, and flavoured lemonade..now I have work to do', and with.....

Save the Last Dance for Me - The Drifters

Gunner Gibbs. 'I'm neither your bruv or your luv, but I share your disappointment with the absence of any animal protein in the fare provided. Just look at the motley assemblage here tonight! Skinny, washed-out looking lot. Probably go round hugging trees and talking to their pot plants. There's a definite whiff of pot plants about them,' Bunty sniffed. I had to laugh. 'How did you come to be here tonight, Bunty? I thought you always went to ...

Save a Prayer - Duran Duran

the samosas. A choice of green 🌶 peri peri, spicy samosas, piri piri spuds with habanero sauce, carrot soufflé, and chilled peach with cream. A man asked, 'wares ve me@t, brav?' 'Meet for what?', said Bunty, astonished at this request about meetings, when this meeting so evidently exists, as if it ain't sufficient for these weirdo vegans. 'Meat lav, meat', said

I Say a Little Prayer - Dionne Warwick

pretentious looking. Since Felicia had joined us, she'd been organising these 'intellectual lectures,' as she called them. I called them something quite different but since they attracted a large number of paying patrons, I kept my thoughts to myself. He waded straight into some spurious pseudo-science theory that the audience appeared to be lapping up. I snuck away and headed for ...

peruse a volume of Dickens.'Grub is up', chimed Felicia, ' and as a particular treat, we welcome Jonas K Numpty, head of ecosystem endeavour at Colne Polytechnic, here to talk on the interrelationship between amounts of potato curry eaten, and long life longevity..over to you Professor....' 'Well hellew all', smiled a skinny yet erudite, man, long grey pony tail, fiercely blue suit , winklepickers on feet,all pomp and circumstance, decidedly... ..

Yes I must admit it's not up to the standards of the other series, and I did find Matthew a bit annoying, as I mentioned in the review, he's getting a bit whiny! She has said that she plans to write at least one more Vera book, and the new Perez book is a real surprise, though at the moment she says it's a one-off.

To be honest I find this series dull and I love Vera and Jimmy Perez.