Work for Idle Hands: December 2019 Archives

Archive Entries for December 2019

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Tuesday December 31, 2019

Books in December

The Lunar Cats by Lynne Truss
A sequel to the very funny book Cat Out of Hell - which I read as long ago as 2015. This all begins when Alec, as a retired librarian, takes up a strange research request by email - and then (foolishly) is beguiled into taking in an innocent little stray kitten...
Maybe not quite as laugh out loud this time but still lots of fun - despite (or perhaps because of) the rather outlandish horrors that the heroes have to endure. I especially enjoyed the ship's cat diaries from the Endeavour, where the cat tries to introduce himself to Cook, expecting his due respect on board as an eminent (cat) scientist, but instead is met with the expostulation: "whose fucking cat is that?!"

Heresy by S.J. Parris [read by Laurence Kennedy]
Helen thought I would like this book - lending me this first in the series - and she was not wrong. It's set in the time of Queen Elizabeth I, and is recommended to "those who like CJ Sansom - and Hilary Mantel" (although the latter is rather in a different category I think). At first I was a little resistant but it took only a few pages to win me over. Stephanie Merritt is a writer/journalist (and critic) rather than a historian but her books are well researched, making for delightful and wholly convincing reading about character, time, and place. She sticks to what is known about Bruno - and in the way of all good writers, splendidly fills in the rest ("the novelist begins with the parts of the story where the historical record raises questions or leaves gaps").
In this first installment, we meet Giordano Bruno - a real-life Italian philosopher - in the later stages of his life when he was traveling around Europe. In 1583 he was resident in England as a guest of the French ambassador, Michel de Castelnau, and this plot takes him to Oxford on a commission from Walsingham.

The County Guides 1-4: The Norfolk Mystery, Death in Devon, Westmorland Alone,
and, Essex Poison by Ian Sansom [read by Mike Grady]
I never cease to be amazed when I find a set of books that are apparently new, original and interesting. Very arrogant of me maybe but you would think that most things had been tried by now wouldn't you?
I admit these books have themes that are right up my street, being set in the 1930s, and with an amusing hero in the shape of Morley, a writer, educator, and self-styled expert on "everything" and who plans to travel the country and write about all 44 counties in the space of 2 years. [I've subsequently discovered he's based on Arthur Mee about whom I know nothing but sounds pretty amusing in his own right, and also travelled about England writing about the counties - 43 of them. I should also mention there are fewer counties than that but they defend their choices].
For me, what sets these apart from being superficial works of satire is that they are very dark. The narrator is Sefton who is forever trying to escape the nightmare of his time fighting in the Spanish Civil War - in fact a large part of the first book is taken up with his dismal and horrifying experiences in Spain - and at the time of taking the job as Morley's assistant, he has reached the point of becoming a homeless down and out. Sefton always sees his job as temporary - or that he has not really taken the job at all. Add to this Morley's wayward daughter, the very acute Miriam, and you have the perfect band of anti-heroes. [On top of all this of course you have the murder mysteries - but again, for me, they are far from the real interest of the books].

I can't leave this topic without talking about the narrator, Mike Grady. I listen to most of the books I "read", and I feel that one cannot give enough credit to the narrator; he can improve an average book beyond measure, or make a book that might be good on the page seem quite dull, and all without the listener really being aware of that (I exclude narrators who are positively annoying....). Mike Grady is superb in this narration - especially in his personification of Morley. At this stage of his career, Mike is probably best known for his long-running role in Last of the Summer Wine - a TV program in which I had little interest - I appreciated its gentle understated humour, but after a few series I felt it became a caricature of itself. He has had dozens of TV roles over the years, but I love him most for the ever loyal Ken in Citizen Smith in the 1970s. In various interviews he comes across as a dedicated actor who really knows and works at his craft - and I just love to hear (or read in this case) him talking about being an actor.