The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs

Mirthful

sausage_dogs I was planning to wait and read The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs only after I’d got my hands on Portugese Irregular Verbs and so read them in the proper order, but it was lying so handily nearby when I was looking for a new book to start that I decided to be improper, just this once.

This, incidentally, is a book of the Laugh Out Loud variety. There is the unfortunate incident of the sausage dogs and the lecture and then there is the even more unfortunate incident of the sausage dog and the veterinary institute and towards the end there is the rather catastrophical incident with the sausage dog and… Oh, but that would be telling, so I’d better not.

The Sword in the Stone

Mirthful

I tried reading The Sword in the Stone once, ages ago, and never got anywhere with it. I only had to read a few pages in this time before I A. realised why I found it uninteresting back in the late eighties and B. burst out laughing. This may be common knowledge to the rest of you, but The Sword in the Stone is a seriously funny book. I always though it was a rather solemn tale of King Arthur’s childhood and ascension to the throne. However, I quite see that I would not have found it anywhere near as funny when I was twelve or so – a lot of it would simply have made a whooshing noise while passing over my head. But I know better now, and I intend to let the world know, starting with YOU. Go. Read. Now.

The Sunday Philosophy Club

Mirthful

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I was apprehensive to see what I’d make of McCall Smith outside of Botswana, but The Sunday Philosophy Club, luckily, did not disappoint. It doesn’t hurt, of course, that the setting is Edinburgh, a place I – unlike Botswana – already know and love. And then you’ve got to love a man who can write paragraphs like this one:

‘Perhaps,’ Cat had said, but she had been looking away then, at a jar of pickled onions – this conversation had taken place in the delicatessen – and her attention had clearly wandered. Pickled onions had nothing to do with moral imagination, but were important in their own quiet, vinegary way, Isabel supposed.

Isabel Dalhousie is a charming main character, on the whole, and to make it even better she might eventually make me understand cryptic crosswords. I am certainly looking forward to the next installation, if there is one, which I hope…

Take Me With You – Brad Newsham

Mirthful

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Brad Newsham’s Take Me With You has been on the shelves for a few years now, so I have no idea why I’d never heard of it before. I picked it up because it was on a «buy one get one half price» sale at W.H.Smith when I already had The Sunday Philosophy Club in my hands from the same promotion. With the sub-title «A round-the-world journey to invite a stranger home», Take Me With You was, at the very least, intriguing. It reads – as a review quoted on Newsham’s webpage says – like a page-turner. Well, unless you happen to have heard of it before, since the reason it reads as a page-turner is that you have no idea who of the various people Newsham meets on his travels will be the person to receive an invitation in the mail.

I enjoyed it for another reason, too, a fortunate side-product of the main purpose: There are more conversations with strangers and portraits of characters in this book than your average travel journal. This is a good thing. I have no doubt the scenery Newsham travelled though was spectacular at times (and he mentions it, too, at times, in case you wondered), but when you travel – at least when I travel – it’s the company you keep and the people you meet who set the mood, and I always miss that when for one reason or another a writer does not provide this.

Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination

Mirthful

In which we are thrilled, but perhaps not in the way intended.

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Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination by Helen Fielding is a strange book in that it is somehow both a romantic comedy of sorts and a thriller. I think it suffers slightly from the association with Bridget Jones, because the combination should not really be impossible, but because Bridget is so very… well… fluffy, Olivia somehow becomes fluffy by association, which really isn’t fair (not that I don’t love Bridget, you’ve gotta love Bridget, but she’s hardly a heavyweight, is she?). So the thriller never really becomes a thriller because you never really manage to take poor Olivia seriously (well, I didn’t, anyway). It’s still a cracking good read, though unlikely to become the cultural phenomenon Bridget did.

Blast from the Past

Mirthful

In which we are entertained, but not much more.

I brought Ben Elton’s Blast from the Past to Scotland this time, because I figured I probably wouldn’t want to read it again so once I finished it I could dump it. This proved to be an accurate assessment. I find Ben Eltons books entertaining but insignificant somehow. It’s not as if the points he tries to make are insignificant, it’s more that he doesn’t quite get through to me. Blast from the Past is about obsession and about corporate (though in this case the corporation is the army) politics, there is a stalker involved and it all gets very tense towards the end. Very entertaining, as I said, but nothing more than that.

The Full Cupboard of Life

Mirthful

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There was, of course, no other option than to devour The Full Cupboard of Life the moment one got hold of it (at a Waterstone’s in London). It is quite simply perfect, and if it’s supposed to be the last in the series about Mma Ramotswe, I am not going to complain (though I would like more), that is how perfect it is.

Mohawk

Mirthful

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More rereading, this time Richard Russo gets the benefit (or, perhaps I ought to say that I get the benefit of Richard Russo? Anyway:) Mohawk is a tale of small-town USA which grabs you and stays with you. Russo makes the people of Mohawk come alive in a way that makes their lives and actions instantly recognisable on a human level. Reading Russo is always very pleasant and quite unpleasant at the same time. The story ambles along, making for a pleasant read, but once you stop to think you have absorbed something about humankind and society which is not entirely pleasant to consider – there is something about being trapped and of destiny being predetermined, but there is also a sense of goodwill towards people in general, even the most pathetic are portrayed in a not entirely unsympatetic manner.