Elma Turner library book chat - September
Bookchat is a place where we get together to talk about books we have recently read. Come along and tell us about what you have been reading, or just come to hear what titles other people have enjoyed. We meet on the second Tuesday of the month from 10:30am in Rūma Mānuka.
Here's a roundup of what we discussed last month.
The Hallmarked Man - Robert Galbraith
This novel is part of the Cormoran Strike Series.
The main character Strike, and his female detective operative have an on again off again, will they won’t they relationship.
It is set in London, however the investigation spans from Shropshire to Scotland and the Channel Islands.
It is called ‘The Hallmarked Man’, as the lead character has the sign for Stirling silver carved into his back.
The detective agency is approached by a very strange man. And at the same time a very large collection of masonic silver which was supposed to be delivered to his shop, has completely gone missing. It becomes a very interesting case, because the expected delivery is a very heavy collection of antique silver, so where’s it gone, what’s going on.
The more you read, the more you realise that some of the fascination that you expect with that Masonic background in all the history of conspiracies and rituals. But it seems not to be as interesting as it suggests it will be.
So, despite all in mystique the emphasis falls back on the relationship between Cormoran Strike and his female operative who’s now a partner in the business. This becomes the centre of the book.
Although it’s interesting it’s not quite interesting enough.
Sorry Robert Galbraith, aka JK Rowling. Even though I kept reading it, I did so because I kept wanting it to go in a different direction, but it never quite did.
Sympathy Tower Tokyo - Rie Qudan (coming soon)
This book is utterly fascinating. And it is still very new.
Its author is Rie Qudan. That of course is not a Japanese name, but it’s not all written in and for Japan.
It’s quite short, rather like the one that won the Booker Prize last called Orbital.
I think perhaps this book is about AI.
A woman architect named Sarah Mahina, however she spells her last name MACHINA, as a machine. She is employed to create a counterweight architectural feature on the Tokyo landscape to match the arena that was at the stadium that was built for the Olympics. She is given a space right next to the major gardens in Tokyo.
There is a sort of inevitability once the design starts to arise. She has a romantic interest whose name is Tech TAKT. This could be seen as a coding term for AI.
The longer it goes on the more you begin to wonder, who is real and human, and who is AI. The tower itself is fascinating as it posits that the Japanese government has decided to commit to creating a tower block which has like a utopia for prisoners that could be sympathised with. The top of the tower building is a library. Well worth a read.
Only the dead can tell - Alex Gray
The author is of Scottish decent and has written many books
This book is part of the Detective Lorimer series. The storyline has some gruesome bits, set in Glasgow. However, it was a good light read, a good escape book.
The Homemade God - Rachel Joyce
Joyce has written six previous novels, all of which have been lighter reads.
The Homemade God is probably the longest and most complex book from this author.
The father in the story is an artist and dominated his family for years.
His wife died when his children were young. However, we are privy to get to know them throughout the book and their thoughts. The book is really full of sibling rivalry and family angst.
Rebel with a clause - Ellen Jovin
This book is a fascinating read about an American woman who’s been writing and teaching grammar for decades. She has also studied 25 languages for fun.
Her story is set in the 60’s, but in 2018, she came up with the idea of setting up a table in public places with the sign ‘Grammar Table’, where she answered many grammar questions from passersby. The first time she did this was from an apartment in New York, and it didn’t take long for people to begin approaching her.
She was an amazing listener, and she never judged people. She was very pedantic regarding her point of view. She was soon to be on the move to other places in New York. But her husband came up with the idea of a road trip.
They had hundreds of grand table encounters across 47 states which was later made into a movie with the same title as the book. You will find this book very educational from a grammatical perspective.
At the end of each chapter there is one short question to keep you on your toes.
A story about Moscow’s most daring wartime spy.
This author has written several books about WW2 and spies. He also wrote a book a few years ago about a Russian who spied for the UK, which was brilliant.
The main character makes a daring escape through Finland which puts a real gripping inclusion.
Agent Sonya spied for many years on behalf of the Soviet Union. She was was born with the name Ursula Kinski. Born into a left-wing Jewish family in Germany in the early part of the 20th century. She is a passionate anti-fascist, and this eventually gets her connected with the communist party, which is just the beginning of her collaborations. When things become too hot in Europe, she eventually goes to Shanghai for a while. After the war she returns to the UK and continues spying on behalf of the Soviets. Sonya was a wife and Mother which made for a pretty good cover. There was always suspicion of her, but they did look a bit seriously at her husband and his activities.
She managed to maintain her cover for many, many years, but eventually she was outed and fled to East Germany.
The book was written after she passed away, so the author doesn’t have the privilege of being able to interview her. However, he did have access to her children and some of her notes. It is a very compelling and interesting read.
The Spy Who Loved - Clare Mulley
This book is about the life of Christine Grenville. She was born into what most would say a sort of a minor nobility Polish family. After the invasion of Poland, she escapes and goes back to Hungary, but she flies backwards and forwards several times to Poland in winter to gather intelligence. She goes on to become a spy, basically for the British. She dearly wants to return permanently to Poland, but she was always under suspicion by the Polish because they were never quite sure who she was working for and the same for the British.
She was an interesting character as a woman as she obviously attracted every man she met. There were just legions of men who were in love with her. She had a couple of husbands. But they eventually disappeared. Although she did have at least one long term lover.
Towards the end of her career, she was parachuted into France where she worked with the resistance in France. It seems that the author did a lot of research in order to create an intriguing story.
All His Spies - Stephen Alford
This is a biography of Robert Cecil, who is a minister, an ambassador and spymaster for Elizabeth V, and then James VI. So it’s based around the end of the 16th and beginning of the 17th century. A compelling read. And interesting to compare to another story about an interesting man...
Chiffon Trenches - Andre Leon Talley
An autobiography of a fashion writer and vogue editor. Based around the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries. Both Talley and Robert Cecil (above) had to overcome disability - in the case of Robert Cecil who had scoliosis, so was humpbacked, rather frail looking, and had poor health. His was in an age where people believed that a deformed outside meant, you were evil inside. Andre Leon Talley was a black man in what was a fashionable white, women’s world, and he came from a average background raised by his Grandmother in the South. But his escape room as it were, was a library. He was bullied as a child, so he used to read the fashion magazines. Because of all this, he became enamoured of all things French, so he took French school very successfully, and went on to obtain scholarships to university and was doing a doctorate when he abandoned his doctorate to go into the world of fashion journalism.
Andre Leon was sexually abused as a boy, and he was brought up by his strictly religious Grandmother. He had no means of communicating to anyone about what was happening to him when he was younger. Therefore, he was never able to form any stable relationship with anyone. Later in life he compensated by binge eating. He often went on retreats that would bring his weight down and then he would be back in the cycle of binging and falling off the wagon over and over. The time Vogue was trying to shift its image from using extremely thin models to more of an acceptable mid-range look. Andre worked with Elizabeth 1st in her later years around the time that he rose to prominence. He also worked for Anna Wintour of Vogue, who was notoriously difficult to work with and eventually they fell out. He was almost completely cut off. Andre had a mentor who took up his cause and recommended him for jobs. But nevertheless, it was quite boring. You never got a sense of the main character beyond the ‘poor boy’ from the south in this glittering company being offered this magnificent job.
