The Life of Rebecca Jones

Read 28/03/2021-30/03/2021

Rating 5 stars

Angharad Price’s novel The Life of Rebecca Jones is a fictionalised memoir born of family documents and photographs, some of which appear in the text. It’s a clever and affecting book that paints a picture of farming life in the Maesglasau valley in Merioneth across the 20th century. Written in Welsh, the original novel has the title O! Tyn y Gorchudd, which can be translated as O! Pull Aside the Veil. I read Lloyd Jones’s excellent translation into English.

The Owl Service

First read 1982/3

Re-read 21/03/2021- 27/03/2021

Rating 3 stars

Alan Garner’s The Owl Service is set in a Welsh valley not far from Aberystwyth. The valley contains an ancient, mysterious power. Teenagers Alison, Gwyn and Roger somehow unlock that power and have to deal with the consequences.

How Grey Was My Valley / Mor Llwyd Oedd Fy Nghwm

This isn’t really a review. It’s more an overview. How Grey Was My Valley is a photo essay using images taken by Peter Halliday that explores various examples of post-war modernist architecture in Wales. It includes images and descriptions of buildings I have known, some in passing, others more intimately.

Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere

Read 15/03/2021-21/03/2021

Rating 5 stars

In Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere, Jan Morris explores a place that had deep personal meaning to her. I picked it from my local library as my second book in this year’s Dewithon, hosted by Paula at the Bookjotter blog. It is my first experience of Morris’s writing. I thought it would be a travel book. It is, but it’s also a number of other things.

Dewithon 2021

Happy Saint David’s Day! Or rather, Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Hapus!

I’m joining in with Paula’s annual Wales Readathon, hosted at her Book Jotter site. For the month of March, I’ll try to read as many books by Welsh authors, writers who have spent a substantial part of their lives in Wales, or books that draw upon Welsh literature and folklore as I can manage.

famished

Read 16/12/2020-23/12/2020

Rating 4 stars

famished is a collection of ultra short stories by Anna Vaught. The minimalist, modernist cover contains 17 baroque horror stories, all centred on food or eating, and influenced by writers from Angela Carter, Henry James and Edgar Allan Poe to F Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner and Carson McCullers.

These tales are strongly feminist, peopled by women who are taking control. The subtext is often ‘eat, or be eaten’.

Mortimer and Whitehouse Gone Fishing: Life, Death and the Thrill of the Catch

Read 31/08/2020

Rating 4 stars

Book 10 in my 10 Books of Summer reading challenge.

Mortimer and Whitehouse Gone Fishing is a companion book to the BBC series of the same name. You don’t need to have watched it to enjoy the book (although I hope you do watch it, it’s quite the antidote to much of the rubbish on the box). Nor do you need to be an angler or interested in fishing. You don’t even particularly need to be a fan of either Bob Mortimer or Paul Whitehouse. The book is more than the sum of its parts.

British Forests: The Forestry Commission 1919-2019

Read 14/06/2020-27/06/2020

Rating 5 stars

Book 3 in my 10 Books of Summer reading challenge.

This centenary publication about the history of the Forestry Commission is a fascinating insight into the origins of the organisation, in the immediate period after the First World War, and its development over the last 100 years.

The Men Who Stare at Goats

Read 01/03/2020-08/03/2020

Rating 5 stars

Read for Dewithon 2020.

The Men Who Stare at Goats is a book and a film. I knew when I picked it up that I hadn’t read the book. It was on my To Read pile after all. The film is one of those that I think I’ve seen, because it has George Clooney in it and I love Clooney, but I haven’t watched it yet.

I decided to shuttle the book to the top of the pile because it was Saint David’s Day when I finished my last book.

Over on Book Jotter, Paula is running the second Dewithon, a reading challenge that celebrates Welsh writers. It starts on Saint David’s Day. There’s a group read, which sounds wonderful, but I’ve banned myself from buying books and my local library doesn’t have a copy for me to borrow. So I’m ploughing my own furrow and knocking a title off my To Read pile.

Six Degrees of Separation: from Fleishman is in Trouble to The Saga of Erik the Viking

I had 55 minutes of the first Saturday of the month left as I typed this, and I just about remembered that it’s Six Degrees of Separation day. Head over to Books Are My Favourite And Best to find out more about this monthly challenge.

This month’s starting book is Fleishman is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner.