Books I read in September

I said I'd been busy! Hence the rather short list

Andrew Rawnsley The End of the Party
I haven't quite finished this actually, but it's been my evening sofa read for the best part of the month - a hefty hardback too big for the train. Meticulously researched and entertainingly written account of the latter years of the Labour government. Bit of a swizz - the paperback's just out with two new chapters!

Sophie Hannah A Room Swept White
Usual addictive preposterousness

Ruth Rendell The Monster in the Box
I used to really like Ruth Rendell. Back in the days when she'd only written forty or so books, I had all of them. But lately she's been coasting on her reputation and this must be the worst yet: repetitive, didactic and clunking; no atmosphere, no suspense, no subtlety.

Michael Sandel Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?
This was for work (I get to do some political theory teaching this term! Huzzah!), but I'd heartily recommend it regardless. A really thought provoking book with excellent, albeit American, examples to illustrate the points and dilemmas, and the best exposition of Kant for beginners I've ever read. The only disappointment is Sandel's argument of his own position towards the end, which still fails to convince.

Books I read in August

More than expected...

Charlotte Bingham The Chestnut Tree Attempt at WWII saga that has the air of having been written by a fourteen year old.

Vena Cork Thorn Genuinely chilling stalker tale.

Stephen Booth Blind to the Bones Another hit, well drawn secondary characters (the protagonists I still find a little sketchy) and plenty of brooding atmosphere.

Andrew Taylor Call the Dying I've been impressed in the past by Taylor's more psychological thrillers. This is the first I've read of his 50s-set Lydmouth mysteries; workmanlike but not exactly engrossing.

Stephen Booth The Kill Call I was pleasantly surprised to find this newest Booth when browsing in Smiths, but it's disappointing; it lacks the gripping atmosphere and sense of menace of most of his other books.

Ian Rankin The Complaints While I rate Ian Rankin, unlike many I wouldn't count the Rebus novels in my top three; I find them sometimes a trifle laboured and over-complicated. This - non-Rebus - is excellent though, even if the plot does still run away a bit at the end.

Sophie Hannah The Point of Rescue Preposterous plot, but lovely detail, and actually a real page-turner.

Books I read in July

... and at the end of June, which I didn't manage to fit into last month's post.

Tom Foxon Number One
Tom Foxon Following the Trade
Bought both of these from the HNBOC stand at Braunston and proceeded to devour them immediately. Readable, informative, but definitely a specialist interest.

Stephen Booth The Dead Place
Booth is a new favourite of mine. Atmospheric settings, possibly slightly overdone characters, but whodunnit plots that actually get you puzzling.

Gerald Box Clinging On: The Moira Cut, Coal, and the Last Days of Carrying
Read for Chertsey research purposes. Slightly mad, but another piece of the jigsaw. Shame the Ashby Canal Association don't seem to have kept their own records...

Frances Fyfield The Art of Drowning
The difference good writing makes! Scary, menacing tale of misplaced love and loyalty.

Stephen Booth Dancing With the Virgins
As above. Subtle villains; no one's black and white.

Lance Price Where Power Lies: Prime Ministers v. The Media
Almost work, this one (if the 'Propaganda and Persuasion' module ever signs up any students) but a rattling good read full of fascinating facts about how PMs from Asquith to Brown have dealt with - and been dealt with by - the media. I learnt lots of incidental history too. That's where I got the snippet about Baldwin's famous phrase having been written by Kipling.

Alex Callinicos Against the Third Way
Yes, this is work, but I did read it from cover to cover, so I'm counting it. Readable and interesting (up to a point) and could certainly reignite an interest in Marxist theory that is rather jaded after so many years spent at Sussex.

Stephen Booth Black Dog
Can't believe this is the third Booth I've read this month - just chanced across it in the charity shop on Wednesday, and was up until two this morning finishing it. It's the first in the series, and quite possibly the best of those I've read so far, which is to say, it's very good. Only a couple more I've not read now.

Books I read in June

Phil Rickman The Fabric of Sin
Enjoyable in complicated romp through Freemasonry, the Knights Templar and Welsh Nationalism with a female C of E exorcist.

Cath Staincliffe Bitter Blue
Short (read-at-one sitting) female private eye, completely predictable plot.

R.D. Wingfield Frost at Christmas
Managed to avoid seeing the TV dramatization (not a fan of David Jason). Good story; good characters.

Books I read in May

Roger Alsop and Graham Dodkins Working Boats
A lovely read and another important piece of the jigsaw.

Tana French The Likeness
Once you get over the rather implausible initial premise, this is marvellous - whodunnit, psychological thriller and more. Multi-layered and complex but never confusing. I couldn't tear myself away.

Graham Hurley Blood and Honey
Competent, formulaic police procedural. Set in Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight.

Susan Hill The Vows of Silence
This pained detective might start to grow on me. Worryingly, though, as well as multiple murders, a member of his close family seems to die in every volume.

Andrew Taylor Bleeding Heart Square
Taylor is good. This reminded me of Sarah Waters, menacing, weird to the point of almost seeming supernatural, but all too real in the end.

Jane Hill Grievous Angel
Short, apparently lightweight psychological thriller/love story, but with far more depth than first appears. Glib ending though.

Val McDermid Starstruck
McDermid's Kate Brannigan books are a contrast to her darker stuff; an enjoyable, undemanding read.

Susan Hill The Various Haunts of Men
The first of the four Simon Serailler novels, and the best of the three I've read.

Andrew Taylor The Barred Window
Marvellously atmospheric, sinister family saga. Another hit from Taylor.

In addition this month, I was pleased that J.G. Farrell's Troubles won the 'Lost' Booker. It was the only one of the nominees I've read, and it's a book whose atmosphere left a deep impression on me. While I only half remembered the plot, and wasn't sure of the title or the author, I was so haunted by it I had to seek it out to read again.

New album

Thanks to another recommendation from Paul, I have got hole of a copy of the Shire Album of Canal Barges and Narrow Boats by Peter L. Smith, published in 1975. This is very exciting, as it appears to contain three photos of Chertsey.


This is the first one I recognised - they're a bit like babies; they all look the same to outsiders, but after a while you recognise your own instinctively. This photo also appears in Smith's Pictorial History of Canal Craft (Batsford, 1979) which I got a couple of days later. Here he gets the build year right (see below), but says the boat's composite. Just goes to show you can't believe everything you read in a book.

This would seem to confirm it - a lovely fore end shot, and identified as Chertsey, albeit with a bit shaved off its age. Both of these on the Ashby, where Chertsey is known to have hung out in the 70s.


And finally this one - unidentified, and taken on the Trent and Mersey, but I think it's my baby again.

Romance - at last!

Thanks to Paul H. (will chimney pics tomorrow do Paul? I just went out and took a load, then realised that I've only got one usb lead and it's currently connecting my computer to the phone on account of the router finally having thrown all its toys out of the pram and awaiting the attentions of a fat man with a greasy pony tail)... Anyway, thanks to Paul, I just bought a copy of Roger Alsop (and Graham Dodkins)'s book Working Boats: Reliving the Romance of the Last Days of Commercial Traffic on Britain's Canals, published by David and Charles in 1988.

Roger Alsop worked (briefly, it seems) for Willow Wren in the mid-1960s, and the book describes his attempt, 21 years later in 1985, to recreate a typical trip, to see whether it could still be done, and in the time demanded by the company. He tracks down the original motor (Comet) and one of the butties he used (Barnes) and persuades their owners to allow them to take part in the adventure. The book is then an account of the 1985 trip, interspersed with flashbacks to the 1960s, comparisons with then, and little nuggets of information. It's striking to think that another 25 years has elapsed since he made his nostalgic journey. It's a slim volume, easily read at one sitting, with lots of superb and moving photos. If the text does sometimes get a little confusing as to whether we're in 1964 or 1985, that's a small price to pay; it's well written, very atmospheric, and above all affectionate. Romance? Well, it seems bold to put that in the title, when we're all supposed to know that there's nothing romantic about seventeen hour days, backbreaking labour, and coal dust in everything, but in a way it is honest; there will always be something romantic about something that's been lost, no matter how appalling it was at the time. Just look at coal mining.

The book's primary recommendation was that it has a picture of Chertsey on page 22. I have pored long and hard over this, and yes, it certainly could be Chertsey, loading coal at Gopsall Wharf in 1970, bound for the papermills on the Grand Union, in the very, very last days of this traffic. The photo is one of a series taken by Harry Arnold, of which a couple of others were reprinted in the HNBOC newsletter before last (2009/4). I wrote to Harry Arnold to enquire about acquiring copies, but as he runs a commercial photo library, the cost and copyright restrictions (both perfectly understandable) made it hard for me to justify the outlay. However, he seemed certain that the photos are of Chertsey, and I think I will get back and ask him if it is actually positively identifiable in any of the shots. I'm not sure it was even displaying a name at the time though!

I do now have one nice A5 size copy, in the book, and it raises a few more questions. If it is Chertsey, what happened to the pigeonbox? Is that a Lister badge on it, and if so, was this the mysterious intermediate engine that left unaccounted-for patches in the roof panel? Likewise, when did that oil pressure guage (if that is what it be) disappear? Where is the exhaust? When were the castles painted on the back doors? Because the roses are there in the photo, pretty much as they are now, but the top panels just seem to be peeling. Other things in the photo do look very much the same as the Chertsey I know now, but could equally be other boats - the engine breather vent; the gear wheel; the dents in the counter are consistent with Chertsey's, but possibly with a number of other boats' too. The cabin is still clearly the old ply one; the rear gunnels and cants appear still to be wooden. In a nice touch, there is a tin of Brasso on the roof of what is overall a very tatty looking boat. Of course, you will have to have your copy in front of you to make any sense of that, as I dare not risk Mr. Arnold's ire by reproducing the photo. (I think the front cover is fair use...)

But even if it hadn't had this fascinating photo, the book was still a wonderful read, and thoroughly recommended. Abebooks were showing quite a few copies, at least one other one priced, like mine, at 65p. Very well worth it - many thanks for the tip Paul.

Late night report

Made it back just in time from our jaunt to the Little Venice Cavalcade, where we had a most enjoyable day, saw some old friends, met some new ones, got wet, and collected a chimney... More about that tomorrow. And when I got home, another treat - the copy of Roger Alsop's Working Boats that I'd ordered through AbeBooks for the princely sum of 65p had arrived, complete with wonderful photo of Chertsey in 1970.

Books I read in April

Val McDermid Fever of the Bone
McDermid's titles rarely bear much resemblance to the contents. This one was OK, imaginative plot, and sympathetic characters, but she's not the best writer around and the exposition is sometimes laboured. Tony inherits a narrowboat though!

Natasha Walter Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism
Thought I should read something improving for a change. Rather depressingly confirmed what I thought anyway - I belong to the most fortunate generation of women, and things are steadily getting worse again.

Ruth Rendell Portobello
Coasting on her reputation - unengaging characters, not very interesting plot, and not very credible premises.

Reginald Hill A Pinch of Snuff
1970s period piece now, in which you can render a household incommunicado by cutting the phone wire, and it's possible to destroy all the copies of a film. Readable as always.

Paul Adam Knife Edge
Formulaic but well written thriller, set in the murky world of Fenland migrant labour and supermarket exploitation. A bit didactic in places, but in a good cause.

Shirley Williams Climbing the Bookshelves: The Autobiography
Doesn't write as well as her mum. Boring with occasional unintentionally hilarious pomposity.

Peter Robinson The Price of Love
Short stories don't really work for me when it comes to crime. All plot and no character.

Mo Hayder Skin
Preposterous plot but strangely unputdownable.

Susan Hill The Pure in Heart
Pained artistic detective (where have we heard that before?). Doesn't quite convince. Think I may be getting a bit bored with the genre.

Who greases the books?

I would have loved to have written that in Latin, but sadly a classical education eluded me. One of the sites/sights that Amy and James showed us was the magnificent Giles Gilbert Scott University Library. I absolutely loved this building, possibly even more than my own, contemporaneous but in some ways very different, one.

Outside is an example of the now-ubiquitous public art to be found in all new developments (the building itself dates from 1934, but there have been many subsequent extensions). Called Ex Libris, it is a row of columns of stacks of books, cast in bronze. Some are solid, but in some of the stacks, the books can all be rotated individually, leading to hours of fun as the more anarchic spin them randomly, and the tidy-minded come and straighten them up again.

Amy demonstrates...

But I wonder how many people go round them looking for the grease nipple? Oh, just me then. Because (pointless as they may be) they are so beautifully engineered, and rotate so smoothly, they must be being greased somehow. Ah well, ars est celare artem.

Books I read in March

Ann Granger Shades of Murder
Another decently crafted village whodunnit. I could read the series.

Penelope Fitzgerald Offshore
Wonderfully economical and evocative, more a poem than a story.

Sarah Waters The Little Stranger
A wonderful treat which I've been saving since the paperback came out to immerse myself in it. I managed to resolve it in my own mind without recourse to belief in the supernatural, but there's no glib tidy explanation at the end - you have to decide for yourself.

Alastair Campbell All in the Mind
Disappointing, rather pedestrian and heavy handed; too many characters, none of them really fully formed. I'd like to see him try a political thriller though.

Reginald Hill Midnight Fugue
A bit far fetched, as I've come to expect, but pretty gripping and unexpectedly moving.

Stephen Booth Blood on the Tongue
Lots of Peak District atmosphere and a police team you could get to know and like. And a good strong plot. I'd read more of these.

Simon Kernick A Good Day to Die
A rather old fashioned sort of thriller (and none the worse for that) that started well, but became rather far fetched towards the denouement.

P.D. James The Private Patient
Cardboard cut-out characters, wooden dialogue, preposterous plot, with moralising and political polemicising thrown in randomly, and old fashioned in all the wrong ways - just why is P.D. James so highly rated?

John Harvey Lonely Hearts
And the first shall be last... Now this is more like it - instantly engaging, really human, characters; credible plot and an outcome you can care about. Wish there were more where this came from (there are ten, and now I've read them all). And at last I know where the bloodstain came from.

One person's rubbish

Is another person's treasure. Sean-next-door popped round with this a couple of weeks ago, a 1979 edition of Rolt's Inland Waterways of England in perfect condition which he had found at a local tip. Thanks Sean! I must get round to reading it now.

Books I read in February

John Harvey Rough Treatment
One of my missing Resnick novels that I didn't get to read over Christmas. Slightly disappointing after all the anticipation.

John Harvey Easy Meat
Much better. More involving, more convincing. Perhaps the series gets better as it goes on.

Lynsey Hanley Estates: An Intimate History
Part history of council housing; part memoir; part polemic. Marvellous.

John Harvey Still Water
Another hit - with bodies in the canal, including one at Worksop - I could picture that vividly. What more could one ask.

Sue Gee Reading in Bed
Picked this up because the one of hers I read last year was pretty good. Not so this - completely unengaging and a real struggle to finish.

Anna Minton
Ground Control: Fear and happiness in the twenty-first century city
From why you can't take photographs in Paddington Basin (what first alerted me to the privatisation of public space), to the planned demolition of hundreds of thousands of perfectly serviceable terraced houses whose only fault is that they're not profitable, to why they are likely to be replaced by estates that look like prison camps, and how Britain has more CCTV cameras than the rest of Europe put together and still the most insecure and unhappy people - an articulation of everything that is wrong with a planning policy that puts profit before people. Tails off a bit in the final section, but... my book gets a mention!

Nicci Gerrard The Winter House
Terribly sad, sometimes to the point of being over the top, but some beautiful descriptions of feelings and turns of phrase.

Reginald Hill Dialogues of the Dead
Never sure what to make of Dalziel and Pascoe... touches of comedy and sometimes downright weird. Lots of entertaining reading in this, but I think I like a bit more credibility to my police procedurals.

Ann Granger A Restless Evil
Ligthweight but reasonably engaging mystery of the Sinister Village genre.

I've decided to do this every month now. It should keep me from reading the most egregious tripe, knowing that I have to publicly confess to it, and it is nice to look back on a record of those books I've read which would otherwise be instantly forgettable.

So, that's seven works of fiction, of which five were crime novels, and two non-fiction, at an average of slightly more than two books a week. And that doesn't include work reading (although the two non-fiction ones this month were relevant to work) - unless it's a pleasure as well. Where do I find the time, I hear yoy ask. Well, apart from three hours on the train each day I go to work (three or four times a week, that accounts for most of it)... how do you find the time to watch TV?

Another month, another 28 posts

Did you notice? I did manage to post every single day in January - despite going nowhere near Chertsey and having nothing substantial to write about, I still waffled on for 31 posts. Now I just have to keep it up for the rest of the year.

Which hopefully will not be - could not possibly be - so fallow in terms of boating activities.

In the meantime, have you looked at Diamond Geezer yet? If not, you really should. It's the only non-boating blog I read without fail every day. A lot of it's about London - meticulously researched and beautifully written - and other bits are, well, just DG. This year he's going to trace London's lost rivers, and he started last week with the Westbourne. Wonderful stuff. (And so well organised too)

Anyway, the reason I mention this now is that in February, every year, DG counts things. Inspired by this, last year I decided to do something... completely different - to record all the books I've read in February. Here's last year's list. Lucky I wrote them down; I'd have forgotten most of them otherwise.

Visiting

Last night I finally went to visit Kezia on her boat Demetrius, moored on Lisson Wide. When Kezia first started, and we were all in the same department, I was her mentor - chosen by the head of department on the basis that Kezia lived on a boat. Since then we have all been reorganised, and scattered to the four corners of Bloomsbury, and there are lots of nice people I no longer get to see as much as I'd like. So when I found myself sat next to Kezia at the Recruitment Working Party last week I lost no time in inviting myself over.

I love seeing other boats, especially when they're lived on. It's paradoxical, but although I can't help being very tidy (I blame my mother) I envy and love visiting people who, along with their boat/house, are more relaxed and laid back, whose places aren't all neatly aligned and sharp edges. Not that Demetrius was untidy, far from it, but it was lovely, warm and lived in, alive with books and velvets and rugs and a rather marvellous chaise longue.

Kezia cooked a lovely meal and the evening flew by so fast that suddenly I realised that I had to dash to get the last train home. We'd arrived via a rather long walk and a bus ride, so I was a bit worried, but in fact it turned out I was only ten minutes from Marylebone tube station and I got to Victoria with twenty minutes to spare. Kezia lent me a book I hadn't come across before - although it won the Booker prize in 1979: Offshore, by Penelope Fitzgerald, which appears to be about people living on houseboats on the tidal Thames. In return I have promised to lend her John Seymour's Voyage into England. Being an environmental geographer Kezia was already aware of his work on self sufficiency and sustainability, but not that he'd written a book about boating.

And, being the perfect well mannered boater that I am, I got through the whole evening without using the toilet.

Somewhere hotter

Finally, five years after the rest of the population, I have read Terry Darlington's Narrow Dog to Carcassonne. I'd kept meaning to get around to it, but it seemed too frivolous a book to buy, but last weekend, after plying me with lethal brandy cocktails, Craig (aka Dr Duct and some time Warrior crew member) insisted on lending me his copy. So over the last few cold dark evenings, I have found respite from the snow and ice sitting in front of the fire and reading about the baking Mediterranean sun.

Narrow Dog is a book that a lot of people clearly love, and quite a few hate. I quite liked it. I wouldn't like it if every book were written in Darlington's somewhat strained epigrammatic style, but mostly it works here. The biggest downside of the rather dry, throwaway approach is that it treats really dangerous and exciting events the same as mildly amusing or annoying ones. Very stiff upper lip and all that, but it makes for a lack of variety within the book - there's no change in tone - and sucks the excitement from episodes that clearly must have been terrifying. The style best suits the amusing parts of the book; the descriptions of people and their reactions to Jim, the titular whippet, and the (flawed) canine hero himself. I laughed out loud in only a couple of places, but on the whole it made a very pleasant and undemanding read for a cold winter's evening.

Sheriff of Nottingham

illustrated with a random photo of Nottingham

Before Christmas I went to visit my friend Dean in his new house in Brighton, and we went to the local church fete (you do that if you're a Londoner newly moved to the provinces). We got there just as it was winding down and got lots of bargains. I won a bottle of wine on the tombola, and bought a very large jar of pickled red cabbage (let no one say I'm not good to Jim), and on the bookstall, reduced from a pound to fifty pence each, six books by John Harvey. I'd read other books of his as part of my random library trawl and really enjoyed them - well written atmospheric thrillers with good, sympathetic characters - but these were even better - six of the ten books in his series featuring Nottingham detective inspector Charlie Resnick; a great police character, a loner with a liking for jazz, cats and messy sandwiches. I read them (six in a row - what a wonderful indulgence) over Christmas, and have ordered the other four from the library.

I don't know Nottingham well - I've been there a few times, but mostly only to the University, which is out of town, and we went through by boat last year, but the sense of place in the books is very evocative and accurately represented. The canal and the river get a good few mentions (and we will forgive him one reference to seeing a 'longboat'), but I was particularly fascinated by this brief extract from the final book in the series, Last Rites:

Romanticising [about the old terraces at Notts County, this was], Resnick knew, and as dangerous as the efforts to dress up the past and sell it sanitised that drew tourists to the Lace Museum and Tales of Robin Hood and even the Galleries of Justice, where for a few pounds you could inspect the old police cells and the tunnel along which deported prisoners were shepherded into canal boats on the first part of their plague-ridden journey to the colonies.

I've had a look at the Galleries of Justice website, but it doesn't mention this particular aspect of their offering. Has anyone been, or know anything about this practice?