Opening lines

With flagrant disregard for my new year’s resolution to stop re-reading books, I’m currently re-reading The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes.* I started reading it on holiday, when I thought the resolution probably didn’t count, and I don’t seem to have stopped yet.

But it’s not my fault! This morning I read the opening lines of The Three Garridebs:

It may have been a comedy, or it may have been a tragedy. It cost one man his reason, it cost me a blood-letting, and it cost yet another man the penalties of the law. Yet there was certainly an element of comedy. Well, you shall judge for yourselves.

Would you be able to stop reading there?

*I wanted to link to the classic orange, black and white Penguin edition, which is the one I’m reading, but Amazon don’t seem to stock it. The first version I read was a facsimile of the original Strand Magazine stories, complete with Sidney Paget’s illustrations, which I can still remember vividly and which are so firmly ensconced in the collective consciousness that every film and TV adaptation looks exactly like them. Unfortunately Strand Magazine was magazine-sized, and the book was book-sized, so the text was minuscule. But it was worth squinting over.

Books about trains

I’ve been forgetting to mention the books I’m reading. This month I finished two which have nothing in common except being less about trains than their titles suggest…

Off the Rails by Lisa St Aubin de Teran is subtitled “Memoirs of a train addict”, but as it turns out trains are only a tangential part of the story. It seems to be out of print, which is why I haven’t linked to it, but in any case I would heartily recommend not reading it. What it loses in loving descriptions of trains and train journeys it gains in loving descriptions of Lisa St Aubin de Teran and how wonderful she is. I’ve no doubt it’s true, but it didn’t endear her to me, nor make for an enjoyable read. Plus, I wanted to read about trains, so I was doubly disappointed.

Closely Observed Trains, on the other hand, is a light, sweet, melancholy read that I forgive for not having very much to do with trains. I enjoyed it very much at the time, but - having moved on to very different things since - can’t remember all that much about it.

Neither of them is as much fun as my favourite book about trains, which now I come to think of it is also not about trains. But Murder on the Orient Express, which runs it a close second, is. That’s how you write a train book that stays in print, Lisa!

Adventures in Austin

I forgot that I also read The Great Psychedelic Armadillo Picnic, Kinky Friedman’s guide to Austin, Texas. I had no plans to visit Austin, Texas, but Kinky’s writing is so evocative that whenever he writes about a place I want to go there, so now it’s next on my list. Well, after San Francisco and maybe one or two other places. Mainly, I’d just like to be wherever Kinky Friedman is, because he’s super-cool.

Local history

I’ve just finished The Dreaming Suburb, which I am ashamed to say is my first attempt at reading anything by R.F. Delderfield who, as well as writing about places I know, is a distant relative and therefore somebody I should have investigated earlier. It’s a domestic saga set between the wars, which makes it sound much less fun than it was. It’s plotty and absorbing, and every so often there’s a beautiful piece of writing that lifts it above the gently engaging story of unassuming folk that it otherwise is. Plus, it’s fun spotting the places I know and reading them described as they were eighty years ago. I was particularly excited about the single mention of Elmers End.

Winningly weird

London’s Strangest Moments loses points to begin with by being listed on Amazon as “London’s Strangest Tales”, making it almost impossible to find. It also loses points for being badly-written, poorly edited and having no index. But it makes all of that back up - just - by being genuinely engrossing. I kind of wish it had been written by a real writer and published by a real press, but, you know, it’ll do.

Shadders!

Billy Liar is one of my very favourite films, so I wasn’t expecting the book to match up. And it didn’t, because it was even better.

Things, and stuff

The Size of Thoughts: Essays and Other Lumber had me engrossed from the first line and kept me there right up to, but not quite including, the 150-page essay on the word “lumber” that closes the book. Although I got quite excited when I came across the word “lumber-room” in the book I’m currently in the middle of, so some of the relentless enthusiasm must have rubbed off.

Hanging in there

The Kite Runner I began by really enjoying until it seemed to lose its way a bit around three-quarters of the way in, before redeeming itself with a last chapter that was kind of perfect. I have, however, already forgotten most of it.

A series of highs without any lows

I Served the King of England is a lovely fairy tale of a book, but it really needs to be read when you’re on holiday or laid up in bed with the flu. I read it in ten-minute bursts on the tube, and it’s not the kind of book you can read in a disjointed way. I will take it with me when I next go on holiday (currently scheduled for approx. 2010) and give it another go.

Slight expectations

Great Expectations was much funnier than I was expecting, and the ending was a nice surprise, as was the fact that it didn’t contain a single character called Mr Shitstick, which had been my previously expressed fear, although it came pretty close with “Gruffandgrim”.