dittybox

Crisp as a new banknote and structured with the precision of an architectural drawing. This book is impressive. The running theme is accumulation of great wealth through skilled manipulation of stocks and shares, and how that wealth can be used either philanthropically or manipulatively.  Constructed in four parts, the reader is left to realise for themselves just how they fit together.  There will be several moments during reading when something suddenly clicks, and light blazes back down the story illuminating the path behind. Hernan Diaz is concise with his writing but, my goodness, two deftly chosen words can conjure a whole mood or a facial expression in an instant.  His first novel, Distance, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and he has more awards to put on his wall than might be strictly considered polite.   Highly recommended, but be warned, you may spoil the next half dozen books you read afterwards. This is a tough act to follow.

  Tracy Chevalier is a very good author with some brilliant books such as Girl with a Pearl Earring and Remarkable Creatures behind her, and I am wondering if this one sold so many copies because people were expecting more of the same. I suspect I am bang smack in the centre of the target audience for this one.  Lady of a certain age who is not adverse to a bit of nostalgia, does a little tapestry and has a great fondness for Winchester Cathedral, but no, I wasn't struck by it at all.  If I had misplaced it half way through I don't think I would have spent too much time searching for it. The lead characters just don't seem as convincing as the people in her other novels, and I felt as though Tracy Chevalier put too much emphasis on including facts from her research books, to the point that even the first page feels as though some of the text was cut from the cathedral guide book. We follow the (mostly) uneventful life of Violet Speedwell who, like so many other women in t...

One Friday evening, way back in the early 1970s, my father and I were making our weekly visit to the town library when I came across a book documenting the illustrations painted by Norman Rockwell.  It was a big colourful coffee-table book, and I was usually encouraged to leave those alone, but this time Dad was just as keen as I was to borrow it because 'Norman Rockwell is the greatest illustrator in the world.'   He was not wrong and I have remained a loyal fan of Mr Rockwell ever since. I always meant to track down a copy of the book to have for myself, and while I was looking for it online recently, I came across this great lump of a biography that I didn't even know existed.  As Christmas was just around the corner, one of my dear sons offered to buy it for me as a present and I can honestly say I have loved every page of it.  In fact I loved it so much that I re-organised all our bookshelves so that my art section is now at nose level in the dining room. N...

  Love can be a tricky emotion as it can so easily drift into a desire for possession.  Love may be blind to start with, but after a while we seek commitment and a return of our invested feelings, otherwise that love can morph into something destructive.  Very few people could agree to share the object of their affections but what if that was the only way to keep them? This story begins in the 1950s and could only ever exist in that period of time.  A time when women were expected to marry in their late teens or early twenties and single men were treated with suspicion.  Companies and organisations chose family men for promotion and homosexuality was very rarely referred to.   Marion is a schoolteacher besotted by her friend's handsome brother Tom and, at 22, she now sees him as her only chance to be rescued from a life 'on the shelf'.  She and Tom are friends, and meet regularly, but there are no outward signs of romantic love and he seems conten...

  Set in the same period as Jane Austen's novels, this book tells the story of two women who were not part of the Assembly Room crowd.   Two women with dirty hands and ruined gloves who spend their days grubbing about on the beach at Lyme Regis looking for fossils. Not a suitable way for a gentle lady to spend her days, but Elizabeth Philpot is resigned to her fate of being a life-long spinster and has long since given up on doing the social rounds looking for a suitable husband.  At the start of the book, Mary Anning is a young girl who pushes her way into Elizabeth's life after she discovers that Elizabeth has started to collect fossils.  Mary and her brother spend their days picking up ammonites and 'devil's toenails' (gryphaea) from the beach and selling them to passing tourists to try and earn enough to keep the family from the workhouse, and she has never met a woman of Elizabeth's standing who was prepared to do such a thing.  Under any other circums...

  Here are two people, who were destined to meet, but circumstances allow them only a short time together before they must part and never meet again.  They don't know each other's histories and won't know what will happen to the other after they walk away in different directions, but that brief connection is key to both their lives. The book begins in the years leading up to the Second World War and the story follows two children; Marie-Laure who is blind and lives with her father in France and Werner who is an orphan living with a kindly woman in Germany.  The chapters are short and the story flips between the two characters until we know who they are and how they learnt their moral values. When the war comes they are swept up into the conflict and policy dictates they must be enemies, but in peacetime they would have shared a common interest and become friends.  Choices are taken away from them and each finds themselves tested both morally and physically.  I t...

  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...