rambling – Page 2 – of words & books

– Reading –

I’m not sure if I can bear to read Go Set A Watchman. I enjoyed To Kill a Mockingbird and daren’t risk sullying the memory of Atticus or Scout. Some risks are just too large to take. 24817626

Sequels and myself have a shoddy sort of footing. A sequel to Sherwood (‘Robin and the King’) is sitting on my shelf right now and I’m not certain I can face it. What if they all die? I can’t have Robin Hood die. Or, or Marian.

Who would want to read about that? And even though I’ve had a bad experience with another book, I refuse to read spoilers. Which is either a very stupid thing or a thing of great wisdom.

– Writing –

floweringarden — fig 1.something: held sunshine. Taken in June. June! Where hast thou gone?

After a Big Effort (publishing a book or finishing a manuscript) I often go through a period of what can be summed up with one noise: ‘eh’.

Writing dribbles and drabbles and the inclination to pull up a sheet of paper or a Word document simply cannot summoned. Last month, Our Accidental Adventure was published (yours for only 0.99, ~~four thousand years of servitude and your firstborn child. Terms and conditions apply~~) and suddenly, that was that.

Writing? Pah! Stare out of the window and watch some clouds instead.

Editing, you say? So last season.

Library books? Give me. Now. Forget eating, working and other reasonable and worthy occupations. Let me at ’em!

– ‘rithmetic –

Life flows on, as it always does. Sometimes I believe it goes altogether too fast. It’s like sand trickling through your fingers and no matter how hard you grasp at it, it still flows through. Where has this year gone?

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/a5/9f/e3/a59fe3444c02c81aeb847e4f3370a5eb.jpg — via Pinterest

Mary Stewart is a favourite of mine. However, I have a bone to pick with her. Oh, and what is below has spoilers. You have been warned.

This isn’t a review. It’s a Recounting.

2748817

First, the blurb from Goodreads. (One must always have a blurb.)

Lovely Vanessa March, two years married and very much in love, did not think it was a strange for her husband to take a business trip to Stockholm. What was strange was the silence that followed. She never thought to look for her missing husband in Vienna — until she saw him in a newsreel shot there at the scene of a deadly fire. Then she caught a glimpse of him in a newsreel shot of a crowd near a mysterious circus fire and knew it was more than strange. It was downright sinister.

Vanessa is propelled to Vienna by the shocking discovery. In her charge is young Timothy Lacy, who also has urgent problems to solve. But her hunt for answers only leads to more sinister questions in a mysterious world of white stallions of Vienna. But what promises to be no more than a delicate personal mission turns out to involve the security forces of three countries, two dead men, a circus and its colourful personnel. And what waits for Vanessa in the shadows is more terrifying than anything she has ever encountered.

Airs Above The Ground is an exciting book with plenty of adventure, wonderful writing and a sensible heroine who is, to my immense satisfaction, married. I quite like books in which the heroine is married. I’m not entirely sure why.

Lewis, the Husband, is the epitome of dashing and debonair. BUT – and here is my bone – I wish that he wasn’t so, so chauvinistically inclined. Oh, he doesn’t mean to be, to be sure. He is a classic Hero. But, by golly, I wish that Vanessa would be less … less, I don’t know, willing to step back and let Lewis sort it all out?

To be sure, he is much more able to deal with the Villainous Villains. Indeed, Vanessa is probably quite right in letting him take over. It is, in fact, entirely realistic for her to do so. He has much more experience in doing such things than she.

But it doesn’t stop me wishing that she wouldn’t. It doesn’t stop me wishing that, in the final show down, she took down all the Villainous Villains by herself with hitherto unknown ninja skills or sudden inspiration or intrepid daring, or a mixture of all three. Instead, she fights the poker-bearing woman who’s angry about the damage done to her kitchen. And her dish. Her beautiful dish.

“My dish! My dish!” It was only later that Lewis translated for me, but the source of her emotion was unmistakable. “My beautiful dish! You destroy my house! Burglar! Assassin!” And, poker raised high, she bore down on Lewis.

Bone picking and lack-of-ninja-skills aside, this book has horses! Secret identities! Tension! Lots and lots of tension! Chases! Nail biting chases! A circus! Villainous Villains!

And it also has Timothy. I love Timothy.