dittybox

  I liked everything about this book and I found myself picking it up at every opportunity as I almost missed it's company when I wasn't reading it.  It even took over the times when I usually scan through reels on Instagram, so it must be good. Thomas Hart is a journalist writing a weekly column for a local Essex newspaper, and he is one of those people who seem to have arrived from another era with his well pressed suits and charming manners.  He is the newspaper's longest running contributor and his editor wants him to come up with something interesting to write about as the circulation numbers are down.  The editor suggests he write something about the moon; 'Five hundred words, please, and six if the night is clear.' The moon turns out to be a revelation to Thomas, and it's almost as though he has never seen it before.  Once he starts observing it properly, he finds himself falling in love, and it is not long before he reads up on all things astronomical, i...

  Aaah!  How annoying!  I got to the end of the book before I found out that this is book three of a trilogy and it's a Lars Mytting!! I hate reading a series of books out of sequence, and now I'm not even sure if I will want to read the other two books as now I know how it all ends up.  Fortunately, the book works very well as a stand alone and I enjoyed it a lot, but why can't publishers state in big writing on the front 'Book One of trilogy' etc so readers don't get caught out. Oh well, too late now.  Lars Mytting is worth reading, even out of sequence, and this a translation from Norwegian, although that never detracts from the pace of the text, in fact the translation by Deborah Dawkin is brilliantly done.  The book begins in 1613 when a farmer comes across a dying ewe in the deep snow of the mountains, and she has used the last of her strength to protect her young lamb form the biting cold and snow piled up all around them.  Eirik Hekne carries b...

Cities of the Plain is the final volume of the Border Trilogy set in the parts of America either side of the Mexican border.  It's one of those books that you could read in isolation, but without the backstories you would be missing out on a lot of depth.  It really is worth reading all three and immersing yourself in cowboy culture. After I read the second volume I was sorry to find that young John Grady from the first book wasn't in it, and I had to get to know Billy Parham instead.  This was no bad thing and now I have reached the third book I find I can read about both of them working on the same ranch.  Time has moved on to the end of World War Two when John Grady is nineteen and Billy around thirty.  Neither served in the war as John Grady was too young and Billy was turned down at three different recruiting stations because of a heart murmur.  The ranch they are working on belongs to the very elderly Mr Johnson, who Billy has known all his life, and ...

In my last blog post I reviewed Book One of the Border Trilogy by Cormac McCarthy, and I said that his writing stayed in my mind long after reading the books.  Well, now I'm on Book Two, I'm starting to think that these books will not only stay in my mind, but will possibly alter it.  I feel that McCarthy knows things about humanity that can only be conveyed through story telling.  If fiction writing was described as churches, then these books would be cathedrals. Time has to be set aside to read these books because McCarthy will not be rushed.  There are long, long, monologues where a character is allowed to express their innermost thoughts on such heavy topics as the nature of God, life and the possibility of justice in the world.  There are also many lines in Spanish, and once again, McCarthy is not interrupting the flow of his thoughts to translate all that for you.  You either understand it or you don't, but it's surprising how quickly I was starting t...