dittybox

  Fine is a funny sort of word isn't it?  Used in this context, it's one of those words that is only ever used as an answer.  We never go up to anyone and ask them if they are fine today, but almost everyone will use the word if they are asked how they are.  It's a word that is heavily dependent on the preceding words (or lack of them) to determine the full meaning.  If someone answers, 'Oh, you know, I'm fine.' they may be keeping a little something back, but there's no cause for alarm; if they just say 'fine' rather sharply, then their significant other had better watch themselves; and if they say they are 'completely fine' then it means the exact opposite and you are expected to shut up and go away. This book tells what happens when someone refuses to just shut up and go away and choses to stick around and be there for someone who could really use a little friendship.  There are not many people in the world who know how to show that kind o...

  People all over the world are being displaced by war, famine and disease and many countries are experiencing a rise in numbers of migrants seeking a place of safety. Here in the UK, thousands of people have arrived on small boats and every news bulletin tots up the cost of finding them somewhere to stay until they have been processed.  The numbers are overwhelming the official process that was designed to help them, and because there are so many, it is easy to forget that each individual person has a terrible background story that has bought them such a long way from home. The Beekeeper of Aleppo reminds us that the migrants just want somewhere safe to live, and most of them would probably have preferred to stay in their own country, but sometimes there is simply no choice.  You either run or you die and you have to be desperate to even contemplate journeys such as these. The author, Christy Lefteri, does not preach about the politics but simply tells a story of one man...

  Keith Ridgeway is apparently a writer in the 'modernist tradition in Irish Fiction' (whatever that means), but this is not like any other Irish writing I have come across in my (admittedly limited) experience.  There are no farms, no endless cups of tea, no mean auld Mammys driving all fifteen children to drink/drugs/atheism, and not even a mention of mashed potatoes (well, I don't remember any anyway).  This is a collection of short stories about a group of people living their lives in suburban London.  They have their jobs and when they come home they potter about.  There is a lot of pottering about doing all the stuff people do at home - including the private stuff that they wouldn't want you looking in on - but there you are peering into their lives as though you have a set of binoculars trained on their windows.  The writing style is conspiratorial and you keep watching and watching until you are lulled by the normalness of it all and then you get th...

  This is another non-fiction book that caught my attention amongst the display of new books in the library.  This one is a mix of biography, diary and travel journal by the award winning Danish writer, Dorthe Nors. The 'Line in the World' that the title refers to is the west coast of Denmark, stretching from the northern tip down to where the Wadden Sea meets Holland, (and for those of us who are not terribly familiar with the area, there is a nice little map in the front of the book).  Generations of Nors's family have lived on this coastline, and after many years living in cities, she decided to take a year to explore her homeland and delve into it's history. Denmark is not all that far north in the great scheme of things, but the weather along the west coast can be ferocious. For hundreds of years great storms have ripped into the land and in some cases have claimed the lives of thousands.  The very worst storm in 1362 is known as the Great Drowning of Men, which...

  OMG you guys.  This book was sooo intense.  I can't even right now. LOL.    Alright, I'll stop it before I embarrass myself even more.  This is a book about teenagers, and probably aimed at the YA audience, but dear old Nanas like me can still borrow a copy from the library.   To be honest, I initially thought I might have made a mistake in choosing this one as the first few pages made me think it was only going to be about girls mooning over boys at school, and that is not terribly high on my list of preferred literary genres.  However, this is a Colleen Hoover book, and having already read It Ends With Us, I knew she would do better than that, and she did. In addition to the love lives of teenagers, there is a strong sub-plot that carefully draws in some serious issues that could affect young people, and Hoover does not shy away from the big topics such as suicide and physical abuse.  I was particularly impressed by the way the autho...

  A tale of the fragile space that fills the gap between the past and the present, the living and the dead.  Here there is no certainty of which is dream or waking and anything imagined can be as real as what you see in front of you (if indeed you know what it is you see). I read this twice.  Once to get the frame of it and then to fill in the gaps, but even still, there was no telling if I had it right. I don't want to define this book or tell you what I think it all means because I want it to stay a fluid concept in my mind.  That's how I think it works best; no labels, no neat little boxes, just a glimmer of an idea passing through like light on water.

  This is an attractive little hardback that I picked up at the bowls club for the princely sum of twenty five pence.  The club has a book corner where everything is sold for that same price but, even so, much of the stock has celebrated several anniversaries sitting unloved and gathering dust on the shelves. Apparently there is not much of a market for dog-eared cookery books or old copies of Readers Digest, but every now and then an unwanted gift is dumped on the top, and I suspect that is how this one came to be there. Published in 2016, this is the story of Mata Hari, the exotic dancer and courtesan who achieved great fame in the early part of the twentieth century but was executed as a spy in 1917.  She billed herself as a Hindi artist, although she was actually Margaretha Zelle who was born in the Netherlands and had married an officer in the Dutch colonialist army.  The marriage was not a success, and her husband refused to let her have custody of their d...