External Hard Drive...

Savage Magic Has Arrived!....

As you may remember, I have become a big fan of Lloyd Shepherd, author of The English Monster and The Poisoned Island, in my opinion the best new historical fiction series in the last few years. (You can read my review of The Poisoned Island here...).

Well today I've finally received my copy of Savage Magic, the latest in Lloyd's series of stories revolving around the investigations of Constable Charles Horton, set in the early 19th century.

I've not read it yet, but I'm confident it will live up to the last two stories, so buy yourself a copy and judge for yourself!!

Happy reading.

Stevie at B.L.M.

My Week In Books 10, 11, 12 and...13....

Ok, so due to a lack of productivity and focus, this is essentially My Month In Books this time around... If anyone can tell me where time disappears to, other than working, reading, sleeping, eating, drinking etc.. I'd be grateful.

Reading:
What have I been reading? Well, quite a mixture, though I'm definitely on a fiction roll at this point in my life I have to confess. In the past few weeks I've finished Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John Le Carre, arguably the ultimate example of the spy-fi genre. It's twisting complex plot and deeply thought out characters are almost cliched now, but as the grand-daddy of such stories it is only the adoption by later authors of Le Carre's style that makes it appear to be so. The story is all to believable, scarily so in fact, a testament to the author's own time and knowledge in the British secret services earlier in his career. Definitely a must read. 

I've also finished Graham Greene's The Power And The Glory. For some this is Greene's greatest work, I'm not prepared to agree with that personally, indeed for the first fifty or so pages I found it somewhat frustrating and difficult to follow. The subject matter plunges deep into Greene's lifetime obsession with Catholicism, which, if I'm honest as an atheist, probably put me in a position of negative bias to start with. I'm glad I stuck with it, for all that, as the human story it portrays is a deeply moving one, even if, with my atheist head on, I found most of the characters so frustratingly narrow minded!

Sticking with the tried and tested authors, I've also read through around a dozen of Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot Short Stories from various anthologies I have lying around. I've developed a fondness for these little bites of entertainment, perfect for a read on the train, or for light relief between more 'substantial' works. 

Currently I'm about halfway through George Orwell's Coming Up For Air unsurprisingly as an Orwell fan I'm throughly enjoying it. His ability to bring humour to his caustic, often sarcastic description of the lives of others is wonderfully bitter-sweet. 

New Additions:
As usual I've not been shy about spending my hard-earned cash on lots more books for the library here at Book Lovers base camp! There are far too many to list here, well it has been a month.... but in summary I managed to get my hands on a collection of twelve Penguin Colonial Facsimiles, produced in the 1970s. Whilst a bit faded and foxed, they are in sound condition and I can't wait to start cramming up on stories of bushrangers, convicts and adventures in the early days of the colony!

I've picked up a handful more old orange Penguins too, as well as a little splurge on four books about my home town, Brighton in England, to feed my genealogical desires that rise to the surface now and again. 

That's about it for this time, I will of course continue to feed your desires for pictures of books alongside cats, amusing book-related memes and pictures of libraries, before subjecting you to my next rambling journey through my week in books.

Stevie at B.L.M.

I'm Smoko...

I'm Smoko, and my owner, Stevie, said I had to pose for this picture, but I can't read...

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City Basement Books.... A Little Slice Of Heaven In The CBD....

Thanks to an early finish at work I was lucky enough to finally get around to visiting City Basement Books  ( www.citybasementbooks.com.au ) in Melbourne's CBD this afternoon!

I added them to our Listings page on the website a few weeks ago at the suggestion of Paul at Allsorts Books in Northcote, ( 275 High Street Northcote) and I can reliably inform you that they are well worth a visit.

As you can imagine, parking is suitably difficult being on Flinders Street, so make sure you're armed with some small change for the meter!

I was met by Verity, the owner, and Kerry who were both very friendly and helpful, Kerry sharing a taste for one of my favourite authors for many years, Bernard Cornwell.

The shop has that wonderful quality I most appreciate in a bookstore, an appearance of organised chaos with every spare inch crammed with pre-loved titles across the whole arc of literary interest. Lot's of good old orange-spine Penguins dot the shelves, a particular favourite format of mine at the moment as many of you collectors may know. I make no apology for starting to collect books based on such trivialities, I still only buy those I intend to read, I just like the style too!

I picked up a copy of Graham Greene's Monsignor Quixote, a couple of additions to my Bernard Cornwell collection, Battle Flag and the Bloody Ground, and a hardback copy of Edward Rutherfurd's Russka, one of the few works of his I'm yet to read. Both Cornwell and Rutherfurd feature in my earlier blog on my favourite historical fiction titles, that you can check out here: http://bookloversmelbourne.blogspot.com.au/2014/03/top-ten-historical-fiction-books-of-all.html

Prices are wonderfully low, selection is extraordinarily high and the shop is underground and suitably labyrinthine to appeal to the most fussy of bibliophiles, so please pay them a visit and buy some books!! (Don't forget to tell them I sent you!!)

Happy Book Buying! 
B.L.M Stevie

Book Review: "Goodbye To All That" by Robert Graves.....Not Just For Boys...

Goodbye To All That (1929)
Author: Robert Graves
BLM Rating 9 / 10
Acquired at: Hill Of Content, Melbourne CBD

I picked up this book back in April. It's one of a series of Penguin Australia reprints on a theme of war, that have been printed in khaki colours to mark the centenary of the start of World War I. Granted it doesn't sound too exciting.... mmmm khaki.... but I'm not responsible for their marketing ideas! 

The book itself however is well worth reading, in any format or colour. Robert Graves was, for those who don't know of him, a poet, novelist, critic and classicist who published over 140 works in his lifetime. Graves was born in the late Victorian era and this autobiographical work does an excellent job of showing the transition the upper-middle classes of Britain went through in the early part of the 20th century. 

There are many cliche's apparent here, living as we do in a time when mass-media has given us all a fixed perspective of the 'toffs' going off to war 'Downton Abbey' and 'Upstairs Downstairs' style, but one has to remember that this is not a work of fiction, but one man's recollections who lived in extraordinarily harrowing times. 

I really want to impress upon you that this is not a 'book for the boys', as many readers might imagine. It's all too easy to dismiss war stories as something to stimulate the testosterone fuelled reader. The book is beautifully written, sensitive and emotional, a testament to Graves' talent as a poet as much to his skill as a raconteur. When it was published, the uncompromising efforts by the author to represent a true account from his perspective led, sadly, to his estrangement from many of those he mentions in the memoir. Indeed the title stems from the fact that in 1929, he also split from his wife and family, consequently choosing to leave his old life behind him and move abroad.

This is a wonderful piece of history that documents a complex time period from one man's perspective. I'd definitely recommend it. Khaki or otherwise...

My Week In Books 9... A Week With a Sailor And a Spy......

Due to a bit of time off, and being on a couple of days training which involved a few hours sitting around waiting for results and other things to happen, I've had a HUGE amount of time to read this week! You just can't help good luck eh??

So, I've finished four books in a single week! Something of a record, though two of them were, in all honesty, very short...

As I mentioned earlier in the week, I finished Brighton Rock, which I've already reviewed here... and I also finished my latest instalment in the Hornblower series Lieutenant Hornblower, by C.S. Forester, which I've decided not to review in detail, not because I didn't like it...(I did, I loved it...) but because I've figured you have better things to do than read a review of every book I read... Suffice to say that if you're into historical fiction of the Naval 'derring-do' style, you will do no better than to continue joining young Horatio Hornblower on his adventures!

I've also, in just two days managed to rattle through two John Le Carre short novels: A Murder of Quality and Call For The Dead, two George Smiley stories, the character some of you may know from Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley's People...

These two were my first foray into Le Carre territory and I loved them. Short, direct, well written, gritty, atmospheric, they are truly greats of the sixties spy genre.

Again, I'm not going to write full-blown reviews here at this point, I'm not convinced that my readers are that interested in everything I read, but I would recommend you give them a go. They only came into my sphere of interest because of my recent urge to collect old Penguin paperbacks, and I'd be hard pressed to find a collecting fad that has given me so much pleasure so quickly.

I guess the moral of this post has to be: if you want to start collecting books, buy old ones, cheap ones, short ones and well known ones. You'll probably never get rich from them, but you'll get hours of entertainment, and before you know it, you'll have a substantial collection!

Happy reading.
Stevie at B.L.M.