Con's Book Meme

I started the year aiming to read a book every week on average and to blog about them here. Well, it looks like I got up to the Mons book in February and came to a halt! I didn't come to a halt reading books though and I have been documenting them in Goodreads. What happened was I got frantic in the lead up to going on long service leave (as well as my home PC being in death throes) and then I went off overseas for a couple of months.

When I came back I discovered that everyone (well everyone who matters!) had undertaken to blog every day of June! I was back too late to start this exercise but thought an easy way to get back into this book blogging thing would be to do a reading meme that Con (@flexnib) introduced to the June blogging crowd.

Do you snack while reading? Not usually

What is your favourite drink while reading? Coffee (strong black), tea or herbal tea. I often read in bed in the evening with chamomile or in the morning with coffee. People who follow me on Twitter (@polyxena) will be more than aware of this.

Do you tend to mark your books while you read, or does the idea of writing in books horrify you? I never write in books. I stick bits of paper in or post-its or make a note if anything strikes me. Evernote is good for that.

How do you keep your place? Bookmark? Dog-ears? Laying the book open flat? I bookmark. I have heaps of bookmarks but they never seem to be with me when I want them - so scraps of papers, dockets, public transport tickets. I don't turn over pages: this aversion may go back to the very strict rules instilled in me by the local public library when I was a child.

Fiction, non-fiction or both? I read both fiction and non-fiction. I particularly like crime fiction and am a member of Sisters in Crime. In terms of non-fiction I read history, biography, archaeology and cookbooks mainly though I have been reading a bit of travel lately :).

Do you tend to read to the end of a chapter or can you stop anywhere? I prefer to stop at the end of a chapter but as I read in bed sometimes sleep overtakes me.

Are you the type of person to throw a book across the room or on the floor if the author irritates you? I don't throw books (or anything else) across the room.

If you come across an unfamiliar word, do you stop and look it up right away? I don't usually look a new word up as I can normally work out the meaning by context or by its roots. If I am puzzled I'll look it up later.

What are you currently reading? Nothing. I will have to make some choices about books on my to be read pile.

What is the last book you bought? The little stranger by Sarah Waters (in paper form) and Three act tragedy by Agatha Christie (in ebook).

Do you have a favourite time/place to read? In bed

Do you prefer series books or stand-alones? No preference.

Is there a specific book or author you find yourself recommending over and over? No - I recommend different books and authors to different people depending on their interests and reading tastes.

How do you organize your books (by genre, title, author’s last name, etc.)? My fiction is in one bookshelf with authors loosely together (I don't always reshelve very well). Non-fiction is organized in broad DDC i.e. all the 700s in one bay etc In some areas e.g. history they are in chronological order, in others they are random within the hundred e.g. cookbooks.

Barbara’s additional question: background noise or silence? I usually prefer "silence" in the sense that I don't have music or the radio on (though sometimes I do). "Silence" does, however, mean lots of ambient noise like traffic or cats purring or the dishwasher going.

Book 13: The Feasts and seasons of John F. Kelly

Book number 13 of my 2010 reading has turned out to be Robert Pascoe's The Feasts and seasons of John F. Kelly (Allen & Unwin, 2006). I say has turned out to be as I have had a few books on the go, both fiction and non-fiction this happens to be the one I finished first! John F. (or the Mons as he was later known) was born in Mansfield in 1910 and thus lived through an amazing period of the Catholic Church in Australia. He was an intellectual and book-lover who often at Lent tried to give up going to bookshops (he seems mostly to have failed in this ambition); his name was also synonymous for many years with the Catechism, the Catholic Education Office, with Pre-Cana conferences and with Y.C.W. (Young Christian Workers). His lifetime covered the Second Vatican Council, the Movement, the Labour Party split, and archbishoprics of Mannix, Simmonds, Knox and Little.

Whilst ordained in 1928 and having worked as a curate in parishes, his main work was outside parishes until 1968 when he "retired" to become parish priest of Deepdene in the City of Boroondara. The Mons was at Deepdene until he really retired to a house he purchased in Inglesby Road, Camberwell. I had heard of John F Kelly all my life as my introduction to history was through the textbooks he wrote for Victorian Catholic primary schools and a large proportion of his library now adorns the Armadale presbytery where my friend Brendan Hayes presides.

I enjoyed reading this book, though at times I was a bit irritated by inaccuracies such as where Pascoe goes on about the Palace Hotel in Camberwell and the affects of Camberwell declaring itself a dry zone. No, Mr Pascoe, the Palace Hotel was only affected by the dry zone by getting an increase in business as the Palace in on the Hawthorn side of Bourke Road!

Book 12: Split

My latest book was the final Tara Moss that I had not previously read. It is the second in the Makedde Vanderwall series and filled in a few gaps for me that were referred to in later books. This books takes Mak back to Vancouver where she is still doing a bit of modelling and photo shots but essentially using the work to pay for her Ph.D. studies in forensic psychology. Needless to say she comes in contact with a psychopath again - though it is not what you first think!

It took me a while to get into this title and think that maybe it is not her best and a bit pedestrian in places. However, once I got into it the tension built and I found the need not to put it down until I finished! So I look forward to her next one which she says is finished!

Song for Library Lovers Day

Today is Library Lovers' Day so great day to watch and listen to LibrarianIdol's song!

Book 11: Strangers in company

The latest book I completed is also an old favourite cosy thriller, Strangers in company by Jane Aiken Hodge which appeared as the paperback above and also in a Hodder hardback. Jane Aiken Hodge, sister of children's author Joan Aiken, was a prolific writer of historical and contemporary thrillers who died in 2009. You can read about her in the Wikipedia article or on Goodreads. I also regularly reread her Private life of Georgette Heyer which is a great book about one of my all time favourite authors. Hmm maybe that's another I could read soon?

Strangers in company wasn't written as an historical novel though some might find it so now. It is set in the Greece of the Hounta, the Colonels' Greece, and written in 1973 contemporaneously. I lived in Greece soon after the fall of the Hounta and find it nostalgic rather than historical though many of my young friends and staff would not have been born then. I love reading fiction set in Greece and enjoy the places in which this book is set.

The story is that of Marian who embarks on a bus tour of classical Greece as the paid companion of a young woman, Stella. Marian had been feeling paranoid in London as though someone was watching her and was she ever right! I love the familiarity of Athens, Delphi, Sparta, Mycenae, Tiryns, Nafplion and other places I travelled around close to the time the book is set. I hadn't read Strangers in company for a long time but I still found it both gripping to read and comfortable to put down and take up again. I've been very tired and busy recently so it was great. Jane Aiken Hodge is a good writer who creates a great sense of place and suspense. The leadup to and scene in Mystra is a good example of this. A nice little touch is one of the characters reading My brother Michael by Mary Stewart, another novel set in Greece which I always enjoy immensely.

Book 10: Forbidden fruit

If you like cooking, cats and crime (three special things for me!), Kerry Greenwood's Corinna Chapman series is for you! Forbidden fruit (Allen & Unwin, 2009) is the fifth book in the series about Corinna, the baker and reluctant investigator, and the amazing group of people who live in her Insula in the Melbourne CBD. The book is redolent of smells of baking and other types of food and cooking and drinking and eating and I just love the cat characters, Horatio, The Mouse Police, Belladonna and the other minor cat players. The author obviously knows cats and I enjoyed finishing the last couple of chapters in bed this morning with Hecuba and Xena who had retired for post-breakfast naps. Serena the flower-selling donkey also plays quite a part in this story set in the lead-up to Christmas, as do other traditional (and nontraditional) crib animals.

The storyline may be a bit slight and I did work out part of the plot in advance, but it is a good cosy crime read set in a city I know and in places I enjoy recognizing such as the Abbotsford convent, the Collingwood Children's Farm and the old CUB site. As always with Greenwood novels, the sense of place this book conveys is an important part of my enjoyment. The scene is a sizzling Melbourne in the lead-up to Christmas: Corinna hates Christmas and the hype but carols, Christmas cooking, freegans, vegans, a crazy religious cult, gypsies and two young runaways all have a role to play as the plot unfolds and all ends happily on Christmas Day. Dion Monk is only a minor character in this book but I always savour his character and particularly the wordplay which creates his name. Vale ADP! The wordplay is such a fitting trigger to memories of one whose way with words was legendary.

And, of course, there are recipes included so you can try your skills. I always like the good press Kerry gives to public libraries and Forbidden fruit is no different. In the recipe section (p. 299) she advises: "Borrow an armload of vegie cookbooks from the library and see which one makes you hungry as you read." What great advice!

I've been slack about this series. I really enjoyed the first, Earthly delights, and loved Dion Monk there but I hadn't read any others until now when Forbidden fruit leapt out asking me to buy it while I was browsing on the Benn's Books stand at Sisters in Crime on Friday. I had better get on to the other ones and find out what some of the allusions in this one refer to. Don't be put off by that! This book forms part of a series but is perfectly able to be read as a stand alone story. Meanwhile, I have another three books to put on my "to-read" list: Heavenly pleasures, Devil's food, and Trick or treat!

Kiss of Death book trailer

Now I haven't quite read this one yet but it is on my "To read" list, particularly after seeing PD Martin at the Sisters in Crime event last night!