dittybox

Iceland 1829.  Two men have been murdered and three people have been arrested then found guilty and sentenced to death.  One of the accused is a man in his late teens known to be a sheep-killer, the second is a young servant girl aged around fifteen and the third is Agnes, also a servant and in her late twenties. The verdicts have been sent to Copenhagen to be approved by the King, and while the local officials wait for authority to carry out the executions, the three prisoners are separated and Agnes is sent to live with a farmer's family in a remote croft.   This is no 'cosy crime' novel.  The words lie cold on the page as Agnes's story slowly unfolds, and there is very little to lift the dark atmosphere as the weather closes in for winter and the family must accept this potentially dangerous woman inside their croft.  Nothing is private when there is only one room to sit and sleep in, so when the priest comes to speak to Agnes and prepare her for her fat...

To look at Rory you would imagine he would have to wrap up well to go to the local garage to buy a Kit Kat, but do not let his outward appearance deceive you.  Rory is as physically resilient as a mountain dog, and endowed with such a sense of self confidence that he believed he could walk for twenty months across the mountains of Afghanistan, through the winter, and not get himself killed.  Sometimes he came close to getting killed; and at various times he was shot at, punched, had stones thrown at him, and was threatened by random men brandishing weapons left behind by the Russians and the Taliban.  Whenever anything like that happened, he squared up to his assailants and insisted he was a historian writing a book, and he had every right to be there as he was carrying letters from various leaders he had stayed with along the way. Rory is indeed an historian, and the purpose of his walk was to follow in the footsteps of Babur, the first emperor of Mughal India.  He ...

  Alright, a...... No, No, won't write that, too obvious.  There's more to Mr McConaughey than that infamous quote.   This is a memoir punctuated with the lessons he learnt from life, and every time MM finds something that allows him to move forward, he sees that as a green light and on he goes. I don't think there are too many people who could have experienced his childhood and then come out the other side so well balanced, but there are no victims in here.  Despite the physical violence between his parents and the use of corporal punishment meted out to the three boys in the family, MM considers he was bought up with strong values that made him who he is today. He learnt he could do wrong, even steal, but when questioned by his father he must never lie.  Once when he and a friend went to Pizza Hut and left without paying, the other boy's father called to let MM's father know what had happened.  MM was given two chances to confess that he knew the foo...

  I was given a book token back in early May and it has taken me all this time to decide what to buy. I'm sure most of you have a comprehensive wish list, and would never find yourself in this kind of quandary, but my book choices generally come from the library and I just randomly select books without really knowing what to expect before I start reading. Anything I don't like just gets hauled back the following week. Luckily, I happened to listen to a podcast where Jordan Peterson spoke to Matthew McConaughey about his memoir, and it seemed full of tales that Texans would like to hear in a bar after enjoying the hospitality for a while, so that was my first choice. The second was Rory Stewart's account of his long walk through Afghanistan. I've lready read his book Politics on the Edge, and discovered i had underestimated Rory in every way. Let's see how this one goes! I'll let you know how they pan out.

  ' Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are.'                                                                                                          Machiavelli  Not a quote from the book, but a line that kept coming to mind as I read on through the life of Mrs Bridge.  All those of you who think that our lives have never been put through such scrutiny should spare a thought for the Country Club classes living in Kansas between the wars. The picture on the cover is very apt because the story is told through a collection of short accounts that gradually develop into a detailed personality portrait of India Bridge.  Throughout...

  I grew up in a household where transmission of radio signals was part of our daily life.  My father spent his life researching radio signals, and having spent the last few months writing about his career, I felt as if this book was calling my name. It has the writing style of a Dan Brown blockbuster with particle physics and the existence of a multiverse taking the place of cryptic symbols and religion.  The plot line is complex, and it's a big book at 500 pages, but everything moves along at pace and has plenty to keep the reader's interest. Tyson Klein is a quantum physicist working with the Large Hadron Collider and in the course of his work he has discovered sub atomic particles that appear to be carrying some kind of radio signal.  It soon becomes clear that the signals carry a code that could have moved across space and time, and Ty's DNA is identified by the message along with three other people who all have skills that will help save the planet in the quest...

  This is about family, or more specifically three generations of Irish women, who have to work out how to deal with the men who weave in and out of their lives.   Nell is the youngest of the three, just starting her independent life after college, and her mother is Carmel who has never told Nell who her father was.  Carmel's mother was Terry who was married to, and then abandoned by, a (fictional) well-known Irish poet, Phil, whose work is referenced throughout the book.   In each case, the women link up with men who they imagine to be better than they are, and so form relationships with a vision of a man rather than the reality.  Men come and go throughout the book, but it is the women who remain in their places and each generation carries on as best they can. Women carry the weight of the family despite all the squabbles and personality clashes. Anne Enright is a master of fine detail that can be unexpected and all the more powerful for that: 'Ronan...