The Sunday Philosophy Club

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I was apprehensive to see what I’d make of McCall Smith outside of Botswana, but The Sunday Philosophy Club, luckily, did not disappoint. It doesn’t hurt, of course, that the setting is Edinburgh, a place I – unlike Botswana – already know and love. And then you’ve got to love a man who can write paragraphs like this one:

‘Perhaps,’ Cat had said, but she had been looking away then, at a jar of pickled onions – this conversation had taken place in the delicatessen – and her attention had clearly wandered. Pickled onions had nothing to do with moral imagination, but were important in their own quiet, vinegary way, Isabel supposed.

Isabel Dalhousie is a charming main character, on the whole, and to make it even better she might eventually make me understand cryptic crosswords. I am certainly looking forward to the next installation, if there is one, which I hope…

Take Me With You – Brad Newsham

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Brad Newsham’s Take Me With You has been on the shelves for a few years now, so I have no idea why I’d never heard of it before. I picked it up because it was on a «buy one get one half price» sale at W.H.Smith when I already had The Sunday Philosophy Club in my hands from the same promotion. With the sub-title «A round-the-world journey to invite a stranger home», Take Me With You was, at the very least, intriguing. It reads – as a review quoted on Newsham’s webpage says – like a page-turner. Well, unless you happen to have heard of it before, since the reason it reads as a page-turner is that you have no idea who of the various people Newsham meets on his travels will be the person to receive an invitation in the mail.

I enjoyed it for another reason, too, a fortunate side-product of the main purpose: There are more conversations with strangers and portraits of characters in this book than your average travel journal. This is a good thing. I have no doubt the scenery Newsham travelled though was spectacular at times (and he mentions it, too, at times, in case you wondered), but when you travel – at least when I travel – it’s the company you keep and the people you meet who set the mood, and I always miss that when for one reason or another a writer does not provide this.

Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination

In which we are thrilled, but perhaps not in the way intended.

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Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination by Helen Fielding is a strange book in that it is somehow both a romantic comedy of sorts and a thriller. I think it suffers slightly from the association with Bridget Jones, because the combination should not really be impossible, but because Bridget is so very… well… fluffy, Olivia somehow becomes fluffy by association, which really isn’t fair (not that I don’t love Bridget, you’ve gotta love Bridget, but she’s hardly a heavyweight, is she?). So the thriller never really becomes a thriller because you never really manage to take poor Olivia seriously (well, I didn’t, anyway). It’s still a cracking good read, though unlikely to become the cultural phenomenon Bridget did.

Blast from the Past

In which we are entertained, but not much more.

I brought Ben Elton’s Blast from the Past to Scotland this time, because I figured I probably wouldn’t want to read it again so once I finished it I could dump it. This proved to be an accurate assessment. I find Ben Eltons books entertaining but insignificant somehow. It’s not as if the points he tries to make are insignificant, it’s more that he doesn’t quite get through to me. Blast from the Past is about obsession and about corporate (though in this case the corporation is the army) politics, there is a stalker involved and it all gets very tense towards the end. Very entertaining, as I said, but nothing more than that.

The Full Cupboard of Life

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There was, of course, no other option than to devour The Full Cupboard of Life the moment one got hold of it (at a Waterstone’s in London). It is quite simply perfect, and if it’s supposed to be the last in the series about Mma Ramotswe, I am not going to complain (though I would like more), that is how perfect it is.

Mohawk

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More rereading, this time Richard Russo gets the benefit (or, perhaps I ought to say that I get the benefit of Richard Russo? Anyway:) Mohawk is a tale of small-town USA which grabs you and stays with you. Russo makes the people of Mohawk come alive in a way that makes their lives and actions instantly recognisable on a human level. Reading Russo is always very pleasant and quite unpleasant at the same time. The story ambles along, making for a pleasant read, but once you stop to think you have absorbed something about humankind and society which is not entirely pleasant to consider – there is something about being trapped and of destiny being predetermined, but there is also a sense of goodwill towards people in general, even the most pathetic are portrayed in a not entirely unsympatetic manner.

Davita’s Harp

In which we enjoy old friendship.

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I find I always reread books when I’m a bit under the weather, which may explain why I suddenly got the urge to reread Davita’s Harp. It’s my least favourite of Chaim Potok’s novels (excepting I am the Clay, which for some reason I can’t get through at all), but as he’s one of my all-time favourite authors, that really isn’t saying much. As with the majority of Potok’s work, the main theme of the book is the finding a balance in life between religion and your other convictions, but for once we get the story from a female point of view.

Du visste om et land – Vilde Bjerke

Jeg har hatt lyst til å lese Vilde Bjerkes biografi om hennes far en stund, men har liksom ikke kommet så langt som til å kjøpe den. Her om dagen var jeg på biblioteket for å låne Bjerkes samlede dikt og fant fram Du visste om et land i samme slengen, jeg tenkte at det jo ikke er nødvendig å kjøpe alle bøker man skal lese heller.

Desverre stemte det litt for godt. Boka var litt skuffende, selv om jeg ikke helt kan sette fingeren på hvorfor, og jeg kommer derfor neppe til å ha lyst til å lese den igjen og vil gladelig levere eksemplaret tilbake til Deichmanske. Jeg visste lite om Bjerkes liv på forhånd, så sånn sett lærte jeg en del nytt, men var allikevel altså noe skuffet. Det er mulig jeg hadde helt feil forhåpninger, blandt annet var jeg lite imponert over Vilde Bjerkes språkføring, men det er vel egentlig urimelig å vente at hun skal skrive eksepsjonellt godt bare fordi hennes far gjorde det.

Castle Waiting – Linda Medley

I went to the library to borrow André Bjerke’s collected poems Monday, and picked up a few new (well, new to me) comic books at the same time. Castle Waiting was one of them, and a very good read it was, too. I’ve made a reservation on volume two, there only seem to be two, actually, which is a pity, but can’t be helped.

Knots and Crosses – Ian Rankin

In which we are not sure quite what to think

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I’ve been meaning to try reading Rankin for a long time, and so I borrowed Knots and Crosses from my mother some time this spring an now finally got around to it. And I don’t know quite what to think. It’s engaging, I’ll give Rankin that, and having to put it away at arrival at work with only five pages to go was not good – I contemplated hiding in the ladies’ until I’d finished it (though didn’t). But there was less Edinburgh flavour than I’d been led to believe (that’s obviously not Rankin’s fault, it’s a miscommunication between me and the people I’ve heard about the series from). And I’m not entirely sure that I like John Rebus. Or rather, I’m not entirely sure I respect him, which is almost worse. This is partly due to my usual lack of enthusiasm at any sort of infidelity (Rebus goes home with another woman after starting a tentative relationship with a colleague – not a very serious breach of trust, perhaps, but enough for me to lose respect), but partly something else which I can’t quite define.

So. Not entirely sure. I think I might read at least one more Rebus book and see whether my interest vanes or vaxes. If the former, I’m likely to give the series up as a bad job…