Reading Round-up

Eight months into the year already! I’ve only read 19 books so far. I’ve been working my way through Martha Grimes Richard Jury series. I’ve collected these books for several years but never started them because I was lacking the first in the series. I put them all in a box for the thrift store when we moved but drug them along with us and stuck them in the garage. I found the first one at the book sale this spring and thoroughly enjoyed it so I drug the books back in the house and am starting book 10 now! I like Inspector Jury! There’s only a couple I don’t have out of the 25 in the series and I can get those at the library. I read 1-9 non stop and then took a break and read something else. Something non-mystery, Rumer Godden and Monica Dickens. Slid in an old Doris Miles Disney, a quick read, a mystery with the murderer known right up front and the mystery was if he would get caught or get away with it. It was good.

In order of how I read…

Sad Cypress by Agatha Christie

Summer Doctor by Charles H. Knickerbocker I enjoyed this one, set on an island in Maine, one of my favorite locales. Good story, good characters.

A Pocket Full of Rye by Agatha Christie

The Wintringham Mystery by Anthony Berkeley

The Spoon Stealer by Leslie Crewe Sounded so good I found a copy at the library but was a little disappointed in it. Ended up scanning the last section just to get to the end.

The Foolish Gentlewoman by Margery Sharp

The Man with a Load of Mischief by Martha Grimes

Bel Lamington by D.E. Stevenson

The Old Fox Deceiv’d by Martha Grimes

The Anodyne Necklace by Martha Grimes

The Dirty Duck by Martha Grimes

Jerusalem Inn by Martha Grimes

The Deer Leap by Martha Grimes

Help the Poor Struggler by Martha Grimes

I am the Only Running Footman by Martha Grimes

The Five Bells and Bladebone by Martha Grimes

The Last Straw by Doris Miles Disney Good police procedural. We witness the murder upfront and then watch the good guys catch their man.

An Episode of Sparrows by Rumer Godden this one turned out to be a joy to read for me. Each character on their own journey of growth. Very satisfying.

The Room Upstairs by Monica Dickens Strange, dark tale about fear and growing old. Kept me turning pages though. The end was a little unsettling.

I’m not sure I could pick a favorite Inspector Jury so far. I did like Help the Poor Struggler a lot. We are introduced to Inspector Brian Macalvie. He’s a fun character, hot tempered, enamored with the American side of his bloodline and American detectives. He’s a dog with a bone and usually right. A formidable partner for Jury. At first I didn’t like him. But he grows on you! He was in the next book too. I hope to see him again. I love the whole cast of regulars in the Inspector Jury series. Sgt. Wiggins and all his herbal remedies and cough drops, but under that hypochondriac persona is a shrewd detective who is a real asset to Jury and will go far. Melrose Plant is a friend of Jury’s that always shows up and helps out in a way only a civilian can and his American ‘aunt’ tries your very patience. Jury is one of those guys you just can’t help falling a little bit in love with. He’s so thoughtful and kind to children and animals, tall and good looking. Mrs. Wasserman is an old Jewish woman who lives in the apartment below him and she is always terrified and sure she is being followed (a result of the holocaust). He is so gentle and kind to her. I love the progression of all the regulars relationships. I really can’t believe they haven’t done a TV series on these books! Germany did but I haven’t figured out a way to watch it yet. Come on BBC, get with it!

I’ve been dealing with extreme dry eye for sometime. Just using over the counter drops and got my family doc to prescribe a steroid drop the old eye doc in Pennsylvania gave me once. It worked well so I got doc to give it to me to save me going to another doctor. Bad idea! I finally broke down and went to the eye doctor and she said the steroid is great for short term but long term can cause high eye pressure and rapid growth of cataracts. Guess what? I have high eye pressure and a healthy start on cataracts now. The pressure will decrease on its own now that I’ve stopped the steroid drops. All along I’ve had a feeling I had rosacea in my eyes. I looked it up and you can get it in your eyes. I have it! it is in the oil glands of my eyes. That’s why my eyes weep and burn my skin and the edges of my eyelids get red and puffy. So I am on a regiment of antibiotics for that and have replaced the steroid with Restasis. Hopefully this will help. I just want to sit with my eyes closed all the time as they burn like crazy and are so bloodshot people probably think I’ve been at the whiskey! And my vision is quite blurry. Dr. Urban said it will take a little while but we should notice a difference. She put in temporary tear duct plugs to give me some immediate relief and we will cauterize the ducts later. If this doesn’t help she said there is a clinic specifically for dry eye syndrome. I pray we get this under control soon as it makes it so hard to read! Thank God for our vision!

No More Meadows

by: Monica Dickens   first published in 1953

‘Times are changed with him who marries; there are no more bypath meadows where you may innocently linger, but the road lies long and straight and dusty to the grave.’ So wrote Robert Louis Stevenson. Christine feels bound to agree. ‘My wife can do anything,’ Vinson says. Struggling to comply with this statement, Christine has to adjust to life in America, whilst catering to Vinson’s idea of a good spouse. She must force a sycophantic smile for the wife of Admiral Hamer (who wears patent-leather shoes like bananas) in an effort to ease his promotion. There must be a cold Turkey and a cold ham at every party and she must suffer her ridiculous mother-in-law. Bitter arguments are relieved by bleak silences. As the realities of married life wash away her rosy dream of it, Christine begins to wonder if Vinson is really what she wants.

No More Meadows unravels the threads of a very real marriage. Full of her inimitable warmth and sense of idiosyncratic character, Monica Dickens explores Christine’s heart-warming – and at times heart-breaking – search for happiness.

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My copy is a Mermaid Book, published by Michael Joseph/Purnell & Sons. I have three of these lovely little books, all Monica Dickens books. I’ve read Thursday Afternoons already and still have My Turn to Make the Tea to read. You can read about Mermaid Books here. They are small, laminated cardboard books, sometimes referred to as limpbacks.

I always enjoy Monica Dickens books. She writes characters very well, I’m always immediately invested in them. This story about an English girl who marries an American Navy Officer and moves to America shortly after the war, England still had rationing going on, was a nice look at some of our differences. Christine and Vinson were as different people as the US and England are as countries. She came from a gregarious, loving, argumentative family and a house full of animals. He came from a divorced family that wasn’t close at all, in fact went years without seeing each other. I’ve never read a book that had both such a sad and happy ending at the same time. I was taken by surprise at the ending of this one.

Thursday Afternoons

by Monica Dickens
first published in 1945

‘Successful, admired, fairly happily married and ambitious, Steven Sheppard is very much a pillar of the community. But inside him lurks a little demon of boredom which prompts him to ask if there isn’t more to life than this.’

My first Monica Dickens book. A little slow to start, but before I knew it I was reeled into these peoples lives in the hospital and medical clinics! A simple straightforward story centered around charismatic Dr. Steven Sheppard and his practice and his Thursday afternoons as Honorary Physician at St. Margaret hospital. Set in 1939 with impending war the main topic of conversation. Dr. Sheppard is successful, well liked and sought after yet he feels put upon and that something is lacking. Life should offer him more. Maybe if he only had more time to himself it would improve. Maybe he could that book he’s been working on finished. Maybe if he enlists in the Navy for the war and gets stationed on a ship out to sea he might have time to himself.

Full of lovely characters…
Ruth, his over dependent wife
Nurse Lake, madly in love with the doctor and prone to wild fantastic daydreams about him and her!
Young Potter, practicing to be a doctor under Dr. Sheppard
Marion Marshall (the woman Dr. Sheppard should have married) and her husband George
Mrs. Garrard and her son Tom, hiding from an abusive husband, now a maid in his house
Stephanie, his friend the publisher’s secretary and his new girlfriend
Lots of wonderful patients and last but not least, Ugly the dog and Dr. Sheppards best pal!

The ending was very dramatic and very surprising! To abrupt and left me feeling very unsatisfied with the read. I’m not sure why she ended it this way and it will give me pause for thought for sometime I think. Have you read it and what did you think of the ending? I will definitely read more of her books though, I liked her way with words. Here’s a couple little samples of why …

‘As Steven was getting the car out of the garage, with Ugly shouting directions from the back seat,”

‘The outer door opened and a tall man with untidy grey hair and thick-rimmed spectacles came in. His mouth had spoken so many millions of words in its day that it was a flexible as old machinery belting.”

My copy is a Mermaid Book published in 1954. I had never come across one of these type books before and it was one of the main reasons I picked it up. It is a board type book put out by publisher Michael Joseph. I can’t find anything about them online. This is what is printed in the front of the book ..

Mermaid Books
During the last few years a new delight in brightness and color has emerged – a delight which deserves to grow and prosper. To catch this spirit for book production is one of the aims of Mermaid Books. The literary quality of the books themselves is naturally always the decisive factor: but the conviction behind the production of Mermaid Books is that books at a low price can look more attractive, more colorful, without sacrifice of dignity or durability. This conviction has been amply confirmed by the warm welcome given to the titles published so far.

Have you every came across one of these books? Have you read any Monica Dickens and which one would you recommend?