Read in 2013 - 26: The Cuckoos of Batch Magna

Last month, quite similar to Omar's email, I had a message from another author asking whether I felt like reviewing his book. This time, though, it was a novel: "The Cuckoos of Batch Magna", and the author is Peter Maughan. 

You won't be at all surprised to hear that my answer was yes, and not long afterwards, I had "Cuckoos" on my kindle and was ready to start reading. Before I did that, though, I checked out Peter's website. There, I learned that a lot of what I was to expect in the book was based on personal experience: In the 1970s, Peter was a houseboat dweller on a converted sailing barge, part of a small colony of houseboats on a river in Kent.

You can just tell when someone writes about things they really know about, can't you!
Yes, there are differences: while Peter's houseboat colony was in Kent, his book is set in Batch Magna, a village on the border between England and Wales. While his houseboat was a sailing barge, the ones in the book are paddle steamers. But everything else, I trust, is quite near to what it will have been in real life: 

A small, close-knit community living on boats next to a village; sometimes in conflict with the village people, but most of the time co-existing peacefully. The river, and how it changes with the times of day and night and with the seasons throughout the year. Life on the boats, different from boat to boat (some are family homes, another one has just one single occupant and his dog, while yet another one is home to an elderly couple) and yet having in common an undefinable quality of leisure and freedom that some of the people in the village do not understand. 

The plot is quickly told: The old squire (who owns pretty much everything in sight, including the houseboats) dies, and title and estate go to a distant relative, Humphrey (or Humph, as he wishes to be called), a short-order cook from the Bronx. The new baronet arrives in Batch Magna with just one purpose: to do what is necessary to convert the estate (river and all) into a holiday experience of rural England for US millionaires. That conversion of course means eviction for the houseboat dwellers, something not everybody in the village is unhappy about. 

But knowing that "Cuckoos" is the first of a series of books about Batch Magna, it is clear from the start that Humphey's plan won't come about. While this knowledge does take away a little of the tension, there is still plenty to keep the reader in its grip: the characters, all lovingly portrayed with their strengths and faults; the various relationships between them and how they develop; the landscape, the boats, the manor house and the village. It's all there to keep you interested and make you want to know more, and it is easy to envision this almost magic world of the not-so-distant past because of Peter's descriptive, sometimes outright poetic, language. 

Take this, for example:

"The mist had rolled up to Batch Magna's High Street, and as far as the castle above the river, the last grey wisps of it drifting among its ruined stone like cannon smoke, like the ghost of old battles. The trees on the lower slopes of the hills were ragged with it, and it was as if snow had fallen elsewhere, the hawthorn of the valley piled with blossom. A green and white scented world that seemed to have bloomed overnight."

Or:

"Lucy was standing at the rail of the Belle, holding her face up to the moon as if to the sun, its light falling like dust in the air. The river was sluggish with light, stirred with it midstream to a thick inky silver, and black with shadows under the trees."

Otters have a part in the book that is not huge, but highly symbolic - although you can of course simply read the book and enjoy it, it doesn't need interpreting to be a good, entertaining and sometimes rather touching read.
 

It is good to know that the end of this story is not the end of Batch Magna, and that we will have a chance to meet the houseboat dwellers again.

- - - End of my review - - -

Again, similar to what I did with my review of Omar's book, I invited the author to have their say here as well, and this is what Peter wrote:

It surely must be unique among book blogs, even in a publishing and literary world turned upside down, for there to be a spot featuring a review of a review. Meike has turned the knife (or gun or blunt instrument, perhaps, in the case of a crime novelist) round and handed it, handle first, to the author. Your turn now. 
It is brave of her, and speaks I think of her integrity as a reviewer.
Reviews of course, as far as the author under review is concerned, are either black or white, good or bad (leaving aside something called ‘constructive criticism’, behind which less altruistic motives sometimes lurks, or which, in incompetent or clumsy hands, the result can be not so much constructive as destructive, or at best sow doubt in ground that isn’t yet ready for it).
The bad, to put it baldly, often says what  he or she knows in their heart to be true, but wants of course to be told otherwise. The good says what he or  she waits more anxiously, more ardently, than the worlds of any lover to hear, while already knowing them in their heart. There are other versions of the truth of course when it comes to the subjective nature of writing, but those I think are the walls between which all else, weeds and flowers, grows.
I should say here that I am writing this (at Meike’s invitation) as a novelist whose book, The Cuckoos of Batch Magna, is the subject of one of Meike’s reviews. A review I have yet to read (for the present, the handle of the knife is still in Meike’s hand).
But having read other reviews on her blog (the reason I approached her with a review request in the first place) I know that the result will be an honest,  intelligent and informed one, and that it will combine insight and imagination. No author could - or should - ask for more.
Peter Maughan

Read in 2013 - 25: Travel: Out of the Workspace and Off the Clock

A long title for a not-so-long book. "Out of the Workspace" is a collection of travel reports by Oliver Gunther, to places as distant and different from each other as Dusseldorf (Germany), Ghana, Borneo, the Yellow Sea, the Himalaya and more. Each chapter is accompanied by photographs, which on my Kindle (the basic model, i.e. no colours) still come out as beautiful and unique as I imagine they must look "for real".

Most appropriately, I read this book while travelling. Getting to where my family live takes the best part of a day, which means you can get a lot of reading done, especially while waiting at the airport and on the plane (not so much on the train, because I love looking out at the beautiful scenery of the Pennines and the small towns and villages out there).

I could not find any information about Oliver Gunther online with a superficial research, and sadly, Amazon does not seem to offer anything, either; I guess I was lucky to have found the book for free in the Kindle store a year or so ago, since it is apparently not available right now.

In the book itself, the author mentions that he is from Toronto and his wife, Maria, is curator at the Toronto Zoo. Together, they make an interesting travel team; through Maria's connections, they are allowed into an orang-utan sanctuary in Borneo and other places where possibly the average tourist would not have access.

The couple seem well organized and equipped for their travels, but every now and then, a situation arises that is potentially dangerous; I certainly do not envy them their chances to get to such exotic destinations, Yorkshire will do for me anytime :-)

You can tell Oliver Gunther is not a professional author. He writes like most people keeping a travel log will do, but his style comes natural and is therefore enjoyable enough.

Some parts of the book are rather touching and give the reader a lot of food for thought, such as the visit to Elmina, a castle in Ghana that was used for the "storage" of African slaves before they would be shipped across the ocean to the Americas.  

A useful feature of the book is a list of further reading and links after each chapter, so that you could plan your own trip to the same places if you wanted to, or simply to learn more.

The last chapter describes Oliver and Maria's encounter with the oldest known living being on Earth - a bristlecone pine named Methuselah (following the link will lead you to the wikipedia page about this particular tree) in the Inyo National Forest, on the White Mountains of California. Had anyone asked me what I think is the oldest known being on our planet, I wouldn't have known the answer - and I must admit I have never thought about it before. But reading of Methuselah here, and the thoughts passing through the author's head during this encounter, make for a fitting last chapter to this allover fascinating little book.

Before I go...

...just a quick post to make sure I haven't got much of a back log by the time I'll return from Yorkshire next Sunday.

Here's a bit of a random collection of things that I did this past week:

My downstairs neighbour (the family Lucky lives with) is from Calabria (southern Italy). The other day, he knocked and brought me a calabrese specialty, telling me exactly how I should prepare it. The fresa (I think that's what he called it) is a ring of hard bread, sliced in the middle. To enjoy it the classic way, all you need is some olive oil, salt & pepper (garlic wouldn't hurt, either), a bit of water and fresh tomatoes.

Open the tap and quickly wet the bread ring. Don't soak it, just let the water go over it once. Put the ring on a plate. Now, slice and dice the tomatoes (no need to peel them or boil or fry them or anything). Pour a bit of olive oil on the bread ring, which by now has had a few minutes time to soak up the water. I used a brush to spread the oil evenly on the ring, but of course you can simply just dribble it on directly from the oil bottle. Next, add the tomato bits, salt and pepper to your liking, and if you have some fresh basil, that will make it just perfect. Let it all sit there for another 5-10 minutes, and enjoy!

When I was younger, for 10 years I spent nearly every summer on Sicily with what was then the family I had married into. I do recall that, occasionally, we'd have something similar, only that we called it ciambelle.

On Tuesday, after work I met up in town with my sister. We browsed a clothes shop we both like, and I found two bargains I simply could not pass on: two dresses I can wear both for work and play, depending on how I'll team them up or down. 

If you have been reading my blog for a while, you'll know that I can not resist a nice dress - especially not if it's at a really good price! This one was already reduced (summer sale), and because my sister has a customer's card at that shop, it was reduced even more at the counter. The brand is the same as the polka dot dress.

Last night at 8.00, I ran my hometown's CityRun. That's 10 km, which is the longest I ever run - usually, for my leisure runs out on the fields, I do a maximum of 8,5 km. I wrote about the CityRun before; this year, my gym whose team I usually run with did not set up a team, which meant I did not have to wear their tent-like t-shirt :-) Instead, I wore what I like best for running:

It was a good run. Without really giving it "everything" (what for?), I completed the 10 k in 57 minutes, two brief stops included when I had to re-tie my shoes. It's not a great time; last year, I was 2 minutes faster, but who cares? I did it, and I had fun doing it!

And now, I'll pack my little red suitcase and leave. Read you all again next Sunday!

Read in 2013 - 24: Gold of the Gods

After I've been somewhat unlucky with free ebooks lately, this one was a good find:
"Gold of the Gods" by Arthur B. Reeve is a mystery involving an ancient Peruvian dagger, poisoned cigars, a beautiful heiress, a journalist/investigator, professors and doctors and a host of other characters crucial to the story.

The book was first published in 1915. By then, Arthur Benjamin Reeve's series of mysteries involving Professor Craig Kennedy (sometimes dubbed "the American Sherlock Holmes") and his sidekick, journalist Walter Jameson, had become something of a household name. Altogether, he wrote 18 novels featuring these two characters, and several short stories appearing first in papers and later being published strung together as "pseudo-novels".

In "Gold of the Gods", a wealthy Peruvian business man is found murdered in his New York apartment. His stab wound is of a peculiar shape and can be traced to an ancient Peruvian dagger that has gone missing from a museum. The dagger is thought to bear a mysterious inscription, clue to an immense gold treasure that people have been looking for since the days of the Conquistadores. A curse is said to lay on whoever owns the dagger and tries to find the treasure.
The victim's beautiful daughter hires Professor Kennedy to investigate the case, who is not afraid of curses and spells. Instead, with an analytical mindset and a scientific approach (and a bit of help from his sidekick), he goes about solving the mystery.

Relatively soon, I was quite sure of who the murderer was, mainly because the obvious suspects were really too obvious. Still, there was tension enough for me to keep going, and the end, although not surprising, was satisfying.

The setting of New York in the early 1900s, the writing style and language (and almost no typos to be found in the entire book!), the description of the scientific methods employed by the professor (and meant to be rather avantgardistic in 1915) - all added up to a good read.

I thought of Scriptor Senex when I came across an expression I had not heard before but understood perfectly: "Alfonso was rusticating for his health". It is something I can imaging finding on his word blog - if you don't know it yet, I can highly recommend it to anyone who loves unusual words and ethymology.

Not for the 4th of July...

...but simply because they do this every year in the summer, and it happened to be on the 6th of July this year:
Fireworks above Ludwigsburg.

The palace and palace grounds are used for many fêtes, festivals and celebrations almost all year round, and the July fireworks is one of the most beautiful ones. What is really special about this event is not only the beautiful setting in the palace grounds - it looks stunning, fireworks above and against the backdrop of the palace - but also that the fireworks are timed to music. Each and every bang of them!
Maybe some of you know that a German composer, Georg Friedrich Händel, composed "Feuerwerksmusik" for his then employer, King George II of England. That music was composed and performed to match a fireworks display in 1748.
The musical fireworks held every summer in my home town naturally have been set to that music, too, but there is a different musical theme every year. This year it was selected pieces from Verdi's most famous operas, one year it was a Hollywood theme with bits like the main theme from the Harry Potter movies, another year it was Ravel's "Bolero", and one year the theme was "Glam Rock", featuring T-Rex, Abba and others.

This year, I had completely forgotten about the event and was having a quiet night in after the community summer fest described in my previous post. Only when, some time after 10.00 pm, I heard the first loud BANG from the direction of the town center, I remembered that it was fireworks' night.

I watched it all from my kitchen window - well, what I was able to see above the buildings and trees between my house and the palace grounds.

And I even managed to take a few pictures that did not turn out so bad!

Twenty minutes or so later, it was over, and while I was sorry for not having been there, I was still glad that I had at least caught some of it.

Guest Post By My Mum: My 45 Grandchildren

It's been a while since my Mum's last guest post; if you missed that one, you can find it here. It is, I believe, well worth reading.

Now for today's guest post:

My 45 Grandchildren

Though I have no biological grandchildren, I have 45 "adopted" ones. How is that? Well, I do  voluntary work at a kindergarten with 45 kids between 3 and 6 years old. 

In my home town we have a social network called "Vorlesepaten", literally meaning "read-out-godmothers (or -fathers)". It sounds a bit odd in English.... Altogether, there are about 60 of us, 50 women and 10 men, who visit kindergartens or elementary schools weekly to read to the children (picture books, fairy tales or other stories).

We have many children with an immigration background who nobody ever reads to at home, at least not in German. It is also a question of focusing; my task is to teach them how to sit and listen, to be quiet and to understand what they hear. Of course they are allowed to ask questions, and often they are very eager to tell me something very, very important of their own experience, for example, when I read a story about a little dog, or a teddy bear, they can contribute a lot to the subject.

It is really very cute, how they enter into the stories, they mostly take it for real. I love going there on Wednesdays so very much. The kids know when I come, and they run to me, hug and kiss me, chatting and telling me their news, show me a new dress, new shoes, or a new hair grip and tell me what happened to them recently.

And the kindergarten teachers are very nice, too. They invite me to their fêtes, outings, Christmas and Easter celebrations. Everyone makes me feel very welcome, and very much part of it, and those hours with the kids give me a lot.

- - - End of guest post - - - 

Actually, one of those outings was already mentioned in a previous guest post of my Mum; you can find that one here. 

I think it's great that my Mum does this voluntary work! What she has not told you is that she is the one who organizes all the other volunteers of this program. She gives them very valuable tips on how to deal with the children and the staff at the institutions where they read (which is by no means always a piece of cake!), helps choosing books appropriate for the age of the children, and so on.

Last Saturday, we had a community summer fest for our part of town, held at the school centre (it comprises an elementary school and two schools for further education as well as a sports centre and a branch of the town library). My Mum had been asked to read to the children at the library, and my sister and I went along.

 

The weather was wonderful, and many activities for children were taking place outside; that made for an audience a bit smaller than expected. Still, it was very nice for us to see our Mum "in action"! Of course, I did not take any pictures when the children were there; these were taken before the reading started to give you an idea of how nicely everything had been prepared.

Here's my Mum's biggest fan, can't wait for the reading to start :-D

Afterwards, we took a stroll across the fest, had something to eat and drink, and an ice cream later; we talked to people we knew and people we'd never met before, had a look at all the stalls and eventually walked home on this beautiful sunny afternoon.

Read in 2013 - 23: Making God Laugh

Another free ebook find on Amazon's kindle shop, I only found out now, a day after having finished reading "Making God Laugh" by Charley Warady, that it is actually the sequel to his first published novel, "5ive Speed". Admittedly, come to think of it, I felt that the introductory chapter was rather abrupt, but some authors do that because it is their style and they want to avoid lengthy introductions to each and every character, and not because there is a prequel out already.
Never mind; the average reader of average intelligence (i. e. me) can work out who is who very well and very quickly.

Emily and Foster are a married couple, as are Zara and Donald. So what, you may ask. The tricky bit is that until about a year ago, Zara was married to Foster and Emily was married to Donald, and the daughter of the first couple married the son of the second couple, which means that now Chloe (Zara's and Foster's daughter) and Zack (Emily and Donald's son) have not their wires crossed, but their parents and in-laws. Still, so what? Yes, that is what I thought. Let them be happy, all those newlyweds. But Zack doesn't see it that way. He takes the "inter-marrying" of his parents and in-laws as a personal affront, and like a stubborn child, he refuses to speak to any of them, even when Chloe finds out that she is pregnant, and all four future grandparents should be told.

In the meantime, Emily's alcoholism becomes more of a problem every day, a very challenging case presents itself at the lawfirm co-owned by Donald and his best mates from college, someone finds out they have cancer, and a relationship more or less comes to an end because one of the two parties involved falls in love with the other party, something that was not part of the mutual agreement.

It all sounds like a mixture of contemporary sitcom and addressing very serious issues that can, in one form or other, crop up in nearly everyone's life at some stage. And it IS a mixture of contemporary sitcom and serious issues addressed. What can be more fun and more serious at the same time as love, life and death?

Editing could have been a lot better on this book, I'm afraid. Many times, tenses are thrown about in a manner that suggests this is not a means of style the author uses, but an accident. A few other typos are there, too. (Again: this was a free ebook, so I probably should not expect much in terms of quality.) But still, after the first few chapters I really began to care for some of the characters, most of all Emily. Her struggle with alcoholism is portrayed very realistically, and what she thinks and goes through ties in well with "Craving", the book I recently reviewed in this post.

"Making God Laugh" ends as abruptly as it starts, and I was pleased to find out on the author's website that a sequel is already in the making.