March reading list

March turned, at first inadvertently, and then deliberately, into a month of only allowing myself to re-read books. It also provoked me into having a mild purge of the bookcases, evicting books that I wasn't prepared to re-read. If I have no desire to read it, and more than a decade has passed, I think it's fair to send it to a better home. Currently "better home" translates to "sitting in a pile and getting in the way in the hall", but I aspire to improve upon that. Perhaps when charity shops are open again. Meanwhile, here is the selection of books that featured last month...

Hide and Seek - Ian Rankin

The second Inspector Rebus novel. Again only vague recollections of it. Again not the Rebus I remember from the later novels. I'm rather enjoying re-reading them as new though, and currently prefer the character of Rebus that I am (re)discovering more than I remember doing either first time round, or in the books that I have a stronger recollection of. Either the odd decade has changed my outlook on grumpy middle-aged characters, or my memory is flawed. Or both.

Sweet Danger - Margery Allingham

Due to a catastrophic failure in the internal library system, what I was expecting to be the second of the Albert Campion books turned out not to be, but I was committed and didn't want to abort a few chapters in once it dawned on me that there was a chunk of chronology missing. I more-or-less remembered the plot of this, as it can only be five to ten years since I started reading Allingham. Rather silly, and fun, but horribly, horribly sexist and racist, so occasionally difficult to fully enjoy the silliness.

Faceless Killers - Henning Mankel

Ah, Scandinavian crime novels, a great way of depressing oneself. BigBear introduced me to the Wallander books sometime round about 2005/6 ish. And I think I've only read them all once, so this was another foray into realising how little of the plot of a murder mystery I remembered. The characters were at least familiar, unlike with Ian Rankin, so it would seem that I have some ability to hold onto the essence of who I'm reading about, if not what I'm reading about.

Ash, A Secret History - Mary Gentle

A proper, epic historical-fantasy set in a not-quite real Burgundy of the 15th century, with many battles and much bloodshed. I last read this when BrotherBear spent a year on sabbatical in Japan and deposited his books with me while he rented out his house. This gave me the chance to read large quantities of books that I didn't own without even having to go to the library. This one stuck with me as a rollicking adventure, so I have recently bought myself a second-hand copy, and now seemed a good time to tackle it again. At 1,100 pages, "tackle" feels like an apt term. Curiously, though I did remember quite sizeable chunks of the plot, it was all chopped up and swapped around in my head, so events that I thought occurred a good half way through were actually in the first couple of chapters.

At 550 pages in I was wondering how it was going to fill another 550 pages. Most of what I recalled had happened, bar (obviously) the exciting denouement, so I genuinely couldn't fathom how it could be stretched out even further. But it could. And not all of it was descriptions of armour. Though there were a lot of those. I suppose if you've gone to all the effort of researching 15th century mercenary armour in Western Europe, you want to make sure you shoehorn all that research into your masterwork.

Armour aside, it was still as entertaining a read as it was fifteen years ago, though I had forgotten how irritating I found one of the literary techniques used. The entire book is presented as though it is a translation of a newly discovered text, and thus is interrupted every few chapters by the email correspondence between the supposed translator and editor. Both of whom I wished to throw out of the nearest window.

Tooth and Nail  - Ian Rankin

I am absolutely convinced I've never read this book before. But since all the Rankin's are mine, not BigBear's, this seems unlikely. Curiously, though only the third book in the series, it opted for the old chestnut of taking the protagonist to a new location for a bit of variety. Which the series didn't really need yet. But it worked, and I enjoyed reading it for the first(!) time. I'm beginning to wonder if the Inspector Rebus of my memory actually exists, as he's not the one who's appeared in the first three novels.

44 Scotland Street - Alexander McCall Smith

I have loved these books, though not returned to them recently. The cast are primarily the residents of a single building in Edinburgh that is divided into flats, and the series of books simply explores their lives, loves, foibles and minor domestic adventures. The books was originally written as a newspaper serial, with a new chapter appearing every day. The compilation of very brief episodes that manage to hold together as a single narrative is unusual nowadays, but captivating. There is very little in the way of actual plot, it's all character-driven, which interestingly meant it all seemed a lot more familiar than any other books I've re-read after a similar length of time away - the nature of the characters has stayed with me far more than anything mundane like who killed whom. The downside of this is that it repaid a return visit somewhat less than the rest of this month's offerings.