The Rose and The Yew Tree – Mary Westmacott

 I should state right off the bat that I’m no Romantic fiction snob. I’ll lap up a Mills and Boons sap fest as readily as I would savor a Jane Austen (Although I haven’t been able to bring myself to read the Twilight books yet. What can I say; vampires just don’t do it for me.) Perhaps you will feel differently about the Rose and the Yew tree if your standards are higher than mine. It will still be fairly easy on the sensibilities.

          Mary Westmacott is Agatha Christie’s literary alter ego. She adopted this pseudonym to write non crime novels that wouldn’t be burdened by her formidable reputation.  While I grant that The Rose… is a completely different genre, it has many elements that are what may be termed the essence of Agatha Christie. The impeccable character sketches for one. You feel quite sure that you’d know these people anywhere. There is also that strange edginess that springs up when u least expect it. Even when everyone is acting true to form, there is an undercurrent of something that is faintly unsettling.

          All the above mentioned qualities make her mystery novels such a phenomenon. However I find that in a Romantic novel, or rather a “crimes of the heart” novel, the constant atmosphere of menace and foreboding works against it. I don’t mean that there is anything wrong with a thread of suspense running through the entire book, but I felt the Ending did not justify it. This is really the only thing I have to say against the novel and even this is really just nit picking.

          Overall the book has some memorable characters, some interesting insights and a peep into the political attitudes of that era (how accurate it is, I couldn't say). It is nowhere as great as any of her mystery novels, but in saying that I only negate the very reason Agatha Christie used a pseudonym in the first place. Judged on its own merit, without the mystery queen’s enormous shadow hovering over it, The Rose and the Yew Tree is an engaging and interesting, if not memorable book.

Where do you find the time to read?

I’m often asked this question and usually answer by mumbling something about naptime. Before baby I used to go through roughly 5 books a weeks. I was a fast reader and even with a day job and house work, I still seemed to have plenty of time to read.  Then the little tyke came along and suddenly all my “spare” time was taken up by other boring stuff like sleeping, eating and bathing. For almost a year, I read nothing but baby board books and the occasional instructional manual on a breast pump. Riveting though that was, I was itching to get back to books that didn’t feature Winnie the Pooh (or breast pumps). And I did. Here’s what I found helpful.

Always carry a book. Always. Everywhere.

Obviously, this works much better if you are carrying a light paperback as opposed to a hardcover, leather-bound edition of the Brothers Karamazov. Still, you might do that too and call it your workout with weights. You wouldn’t think you’d find many pockets of time when you’re out and about, but you do. While waiting for coffee at the coffee shop, while the kid is frolicking in the pool or while your hairdresser is trying to get out the stickers in your hair which your sticker happy kid lovingly applied on you earlier.

Carrying a book around isn’t a problem for me since my everyday handbag is a giant sack that holds a gazillion toddler necessities like diapers, wipes and severed heads of toy animals. If you’re in the habit of carrying tiny bags or clutches, maybe you could keep a book in the car. Or buy really tiny books.
Get used to reading in bits

I remember when I would curl up with a book on a lazy afternoon and the next time I looked up it was midnight. That was fun. But I realize that it’s impossible now. While I would ideally like to have at least an hour at a time to read, sometimes 15 mins is the only available time slot. I’ve learned to make do. As long as you get back to the story within a reasonable amount of time, you don’t lose connect with it. I’ve often heard people say that they would rather not read at all if they couldn’t read in leisure. I beg to differ, I would always rather read. Any way I can.

Unplug. Disconnect. Log off.

“A book commits suicide every time you watch {insert crappy TV show name}.” Can’t remember where I read this line but it’s a novel thought. Electronic media of any kind, be it TV or the internet or even mobile phones seem to take up way more time than we ever intend to spend on them. I haven’t watched TV in over a year now and I don’t miss it for a second. Thankfully my cell phone only has games I suck at and applications I can’t figure out so that’s no temptation either. But Lord, how the laptop beckons with its promise of easy info and pretty images. I tell myself I’ll only check my mail and before you know it, the evenings gone and the boy’s back from the park and my book lies untouched. I’m working on restricting and scheduling my laptop time, but it’s still a work in progress.

Consider books on tape

Now this is not something I have tried and quite frankly I don’t feel inclined to try it either. Largely because I don’t like being read to. I like to take books at my pace, in my style and hear it in my head in my voice. They say, a book belongs to the author only while he/she is writing it, when you are reading it, it belongs to you. I feel like it wouldn’t belong to me if someone else were to read it out. However I realise this is just prejudice, probably baseless. Some of my friends swear by books on tape as a great way to use commuting time or even treadmill time. Also as I said before, any way of reading books is better than not reading at all.

So, where do you find the time to read? Do you think ebooks and kindle-like devices help greatly? 

On raising a bookworm

The hubby and I both read obsessively so when baby kafkatokindergarten was born, we could barely wait until his eyes had started to focus before we bought cartloads of baby books and started to accost the poor dear with it. I’m happy to report that our plan of action seems successful. At the age of 2, our little bookworm ADORES books. He can be enticed to eat green mush and even submit to face wiping if we dangle a book before him. I never leave home without board books with me in the diaper bag and they have saved my sanity more than once. It makes me giddy with pride and joy to see the boy quoting from his books and lugging them everywhere. Now if we could just keep the TV switched off for another 18 years or so…

          I thought I’d share with you some of our favorite books:

1.       Red Fish Blue Fish by Dr Seuss

A rhyming rollicking book about creatures real and imagined. In here you’ll meet a Gox who likes to box, a Yink who drinks pink ink and a Wump with seven humps.

2.       I Can Read With My Eyes Shut  By Dr Seuss

What a brilliant way to convey the pleasures and benefits of reading to the little ones without lecturing them about it.

3.       Guess How Much I Love You By Sam Mcbratney

A fun and playful book about a Big and a Small Nutbrown Hare and a game they play with each other. So while Big Nutbrown Hare stretches out his big hands wide to show how much he loves the little one, Small Nutbrown Hare claims to love his dad as far as the moon.

4.       Ferdinand The Bull By Munro Leaf

An amusing and sweet tale about a bull that would rather smell flowers than fight a matador. Although I doubt any bull would actually prefer to be poked at in a ring, the book underlines the thought that it’s ok to have dreams that are different from anyone else’s. Besides Ferdinand’s mama cow is awful cute.

5.       The Runaway Peppercorn by Suchitra Ramadurai

This one is set in Kerala and recounts the many adventures of a sprightly little peppercorn who resists all attempts to grind him into chutney. A colorful supporting cast, who are all intent on catching the super-pepper and delightful illustrations make this book a thrilling ride for the young and the not so young alike.

In looking for books for my son to read, I prefer books with more pictures than text and not too complex a story. Too many characters get confusing. Too many descriptions will bore a 2 year old. Dialogues are more fun to read out, especially if you use different voices for each of the characters.

This post is inspired by The Brooding Hen who has a HUGE list of children’s books listed here.

Any other must-have children’s books you would recommend?

2 ½ Pillars Of Wisdom - A book review

“The English were very difficult to read; half the things they said were not meant to be taken seriously, but it was impossible, if u were German, to detect which half this was”. Many such hilarious ‘words of wisdom’ are to be found in Alexander McCall Smith’s 2 1/2 Pillars of Wisdom. His best known series, “the No 1 Ladies Detective Agency” has many snatches of gentle humor strewn in with the suspense and the softened vignettes of Botswana. However, the 2 ½ pillars… is perhaps the first time the author dives head first into funny land.  And what a dive it is.

      2 ½ … is a trilogy comprised of Portuguese Irregular Verbs, The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs and The Villa of Reduced Circumstances. The novels are about an “unnaturally tall” German professor called Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld. The blurb on the book suggests that he is a bit of Frasier Crane with a dash of Inspector Clausseau thrown in.  Pompous and gauche he may be, but von Igelfeld is also so much more. Gentle and introspective, he is acutely conscious of being fair and truthful always.  He, along with his friend, fellow philologist Prinzel, constitutes 2 pillars of wisdom while the clearly inferior Unterholzer (von Igelfeld’s nemesis) is the 1/2.

             Our hero himself (the author of such esteemed literature as Portuguese Irregular Verbs deserves to be called one) is not really funny. Far from it. He is actually the stereotypical German character who finds jokes perplexing and frivolity revolting. In fact these books are filled with stereotypes of every kind. The holy man from India, the patriarch from Rome, the guerilla revolutionaries from South America and many more. Yet, it is impossible to take offence at any of this because it’s written with such an obvious lack of malice.

        To be honest, this was not one of those books that gripped me from the very first page. It was some time before I could feel any involvement in the protagonist and his world. But then, I had felt something of the sort when I read my first Blandings castle novel.  By the time I was 15 -20 pages in, I was hooked. The Blandings castle analogy is particularly apt because 21/2 pillars does remind me of Wodehouse’s gentle wit and the sublime world he created for us in his books. A world that no longer exists, perhaps never did anywhere in the real world. While I confess I know little about the world of academia, I suspect that von Igelfeld’s idyllic world too exists only in the mind of its creator and is all the more beautiful for it.

          

          The past week has been a tiring and rather lackluster one for me and I’ve enjoyed escaping into the world of Romance Philology every chance I got. Warm and mellow yet enthralling. This isn’t laugh a minute standup comedy, but I guarantee the smile will never leave your face while your nose is buried in 2 ½ pillars of wisdom.