The Secret Christmas Library

 by Jenny Colgan

Mirren Sutherland stumbled into a career as an antiquarian book hunter after finding a priceless antique book in her great aunt's attic.  The book is on display at the British Museuim with a note giving her credit for finding it.  A man in the museum asks about who found the book and Mirren introduces herself.  He tells her needs someone to find a book for him, she thinks he is joking but eventually calls him.

She is sent by her company to the man's scottish castle, ostensibly to survey the building.  While she is there the owner Jamie, his sister Esme, Theo, an antique book dealer prowl around the castle which has books piled haphazardly everyone around the house.  The books had been collected by Janie's grandfather.  Jamie is stressed because he has inherited the castle but it is in very poor condition.  His grandfather had hinted at a valuable book.  So the four young people set out to solve various puzzles they find from the grandfather.  

It is a stormy winter and their lives are threatened as they look through a maze for clues.  To get out of the maze they set fire to a section thinking that the snow will put out the fire.  Unfortunately the fire is not put out and eventually reaches the castle and destroy's most of it.  As they search for clues they find letters that indicate the grandfather had a love and likely affair with a housekeeper.

However Jamie and Mirren are able to find a valuable book in the housekeeper's house. The housekeeper had passed away but her granddaugher has been working as the sole housekeeper.

In the end Mirren is laid off from her job, no explanation of if her salary for doing the supposed survey was ever paid.  She moves to Scotland to be with Jamie.  They have rescued some books and offer tours of what is left of the property.

It was an okay read, a bit slow going at times but you knew Jamie and Mirren would eventually hook up. 

The Midnight Bookshop

This is the story of three people who meet at a food bank.  One is a rich girl who is dropping off food, another is a woman who is in an abusive relationship and whose husband doesn't earn enough money as a car salesman and another, a teen whose mother is ill with fibromyalgia and can't work.  His brother has him delivering drugs for him because if he gets caught he will get a lighter sentence as a youth.

 The three people briefly meet and get a brochure which invites them to go to a midnight bookshop.  They are reluctant at first but decide to go.  They find a magical place and a strange woman who invites them to find a book that wants them to find it.  The rich girl finds The Great Gatsby, the older woman finds Oliver Twist and the young boy finds One flew over the Cuckoos Nest.

They read the books and come back to discuss them later.  They find the books reflect on their own lives, the rich girls parents are like Gatsby, the young boy is trapped like the characters in the Asylum and the older woman has an evil controlling man in her life.

Eventually the married woman is able to get rid of her husband, the young boy flushes his brother's drugs down the toilet and gets beat up by drug dealers and the young girl decides to move out from her parents home to get away from the loveless family.

The older woman invites the boy and his mother to come to live with her, with financial assistance from the rich girl.  She also decides to apply for a job in a library.

As they go back to the library they realize that the place is magical and the bookseller seems to have been around for more than 100 years.  Once is it is clear that they have written new lives the bookstore disappears.

Five years later the young girl and boy are living together.  She has become a teacher and he is working on an English degree.

It was a cute story, obviously with a feel good theme. 

 

The Paris Express

 by Emma Donoghue

This book is one of the bestsellers right now.

It is the story of one journey on a steam train that leaves from Normandy heading to Paris.  The author creates some very detailed depictions of the various travellers on the train and the crew.  The engineer and his assistant are working hard to keep the train on time, despite various delays including a big wig politician insisting he have his private train car attached to the middle of the train.

The friendship, comraderie of the engineer and his assistant is well detailed.  Some of the passengers include a prostitute, a priest, a young pregnant woman, a Russian woman, a young black American painter, a young female scientist, a businessman and his mistress, a rich man travelling with his wife and sick daughter, and several politicians.  One passenger of note is a young woman who has brought on board a lunch box in which she has concocted a bomb.  She is against the establishment and plans to blow up the train, and herself, in protest.

As the story proceeds some of the passengers engage in some conversations among themselves.   

As the story nears its end two tense situations develop.  The engineer decides to speed to make up ten minutes they are behind schedule because he wants the Christmas bonus the company gives for good perrformance, and the young pregnant woman does into labour.  While this is all going ont the Russian lady suspects that the young girl might have evil plans but when she tries to bring this up to the officials they are too worried about the late train to listen to her.

As the train approaches the young girl is called to help with the pregnant woman and doesn't explode her device and the braking mechanism fails on the train so it ends up careening into Montparnasse station and the engine ends up going through the far wall of the station.

The author does a wonderful job or portraying the jobs and concerns of the crew, of depicting what life would be like for people and on the train at the time so it was an interesting read.

The story is based on an actual historical event in which no passengers were killed but a woman newspaper seller was crushed by debris in the station, 

 

Life at the Precipice

by R.F. Vincent

This is an absurd story about a man who hears about a fabled settlement in northern Vancouver Island, a land cut off when there was an earthquake which modified the landscape.

He makes his way to the area and is welcomed into the settlement which is centred around a lake surrounded by steep cliffs.  Some of the locals belief and ogopogo type monster lives in the lake and one man has a home in a tree at the edge of the cliff so he can watch for it.  

The settlement has several queer characters who live in strange dwellings designed by a local eccentric architect.  The architect has an assistant, he will not let the assistant into his house but invites the guest.  He explais that the assistant cannot enter until the house is finished, however he admits it is indeed finished.  It has a huge exterior and a small room inside in which he dwells. Another house is shaped like a book, you enter through the spine of the book.  The characters and the description of the houses were very creative.

The community is fed by a local couple who won a lottery years before.  They bring in supplies periodically.

The book introduces us to the various eccentric people who live there include a man who writes a local newsletter which he circulates out into the world on occasion.  

The book is interesting in its description of the characters and their housing options.  In the end the narrator of the story decides to stay there.  I guess that is no surprise but it seemed somewhat anticlimatic.

A Slowly Dying Cause

 by Elizabeth George

This is the first book I have read by this author.  It is a book about Inspector Lynley and Sgt Havers.  I have to say I did not enjoy the book, Lynley and Havers only showed up about 3/4 of the way through the book.

The book is about a man who is murdered.  He had divorced his wife after falling in love with a 19 year old girl them met on a cruise for his wife and his 25 anniversary.  The man is an artisan working with metals that are mined near his property.  The man and other local people are being wooed by an agent who is trying to buy their land or get licences for their property to mine for lithium.  This agent has left his wife and is in love with a 17 year old girl who is anxious for them to wed.

The book jumps from the present back to text by the dead man about his life.  The book is very very wordy, almost 600 pages.  

The dead man has a father and his somewhat slow son working for him.  The young man is found murdered based on very incriminating evidence.  The sister of a love interest of Lynley's asks Havers, who is on leave after the death of her mother, to help prove the young man innocent.  Eventually Lynley finds out and steps in to help investigate.  The story also considers whether the man's children might have murdered him to get money from the sale of the property.

We eventually find out that the young woman and the dead man's husband convinced the slow son that she was being abused by her husband, he gets so worked up that he does kill the man to protect her because he really cares for her.

I felt there was too much verbiage, and the extra storylines of extra family members, the lust of the agent, and visits by Havers to Lynley's family home which is in crisis because of the need for major repairs. I forced myself to finish reading it and am glad I did, sort of, as I wasn't expecting the ending, nor Lynley professing his love for his love interest.

I am not sure I will read other books by her....

There is a new series on TV with Lynley and Havers but it isn't nearly as good as the original. 

 

 

 

 

Aflame

Pico Iyer

This is a book by a travel writer about his time spent at the Mount Baldy Benedictine Monastery in California.

He finds out about the monastery when he becomes homeless because his mother's house is destroyed in one of the devastating california wildfires.    He goes there and finds a cheap, very peaceful place that promotes contemplation.  

He takes a lot of time for himself but also meets other visitors and some of the monks.  One of the monks he becomes friends with is Leonard Cohen.  He is as also acquainted with the Dalai Lama.

He talks about how the silence stimulates his mind and spirit and how he goes there to escape when life gets too hectic.   He references various philosophers and authors, Lichtenstein, Camus, Thoreau.

The book is a bit slow, understandably I guess,  it is a meditation on being still, communing with nature, the value of solitude but also the value of community and connections.

The book ends with:

"You can just se the lights through the mist," I saym looking up, to where people robed and otherwise are sitting in rich silence.  Cyprian (the head monk) turns to e, and with a quiet smile says ' Yes".

In the acknowledgments the author says " The book is about the beauty-- you could say, the sanctity of clarity and ssilence.  It's also aobut how something of such treasure are available to us in many settings, not always monastic.

He wrote the book at the Banff Centre for the Arts where " I have been given the greatest of presents: the freedomm to think, to wander and to lose myself in what's around me." 

 

Snap

by Susin Nielsen

This book is by a BC author and takes place in the Vancouver area. It is a sad book at times but also funny.  The story is about three people who are assigned to take anger managment sessions and do community service cleaning up local parks.  The three people are a girl who was sexually approached by an old actor while she was a costume assistant on a tv program set, when she is approached by a leche in a mall she pushes him down an escalator, the second person is a children's author who is going through a divorce because her husband has decided he is gay.  The author has a meltdown at a school when a young student is rude while she is talking.  She takes him by the shoulders and shakes him.  This episode goes viral and she loses her publishing deals and her school talk income.  The third person is a man who wanted to buy into a muffler franchise and after he has put down a downpayment finds his boss is having an affair with his wife.  He defaces the bosses car and pees in his fountain.

The man's husband wants to get sole custody of their son, the man is really upset about this.  The two women try to talk to the boss to get him to remove a restraining order removed and also encourage his lover to let her ex have access to the son.  The boss recognizes the children's author and this is bad news for the man when he goes to court.... he is associating with a child abuser.....

Eventually all three become close friends supporting each other, and each find some peace in their lives.

The book was funny, the references to local bc made it interesting.  I enjoyed it and especially how the story developed.