Berlin Books

I So Need To Go Back There Soon!

I’ve been to Berlin twice in my life, in reality, and it’s not enough. There is something about the German capital city that just clicks with me. You can describe most major cities with words such as “cool” and “confident”, it’s all a matter of opinion. In my opinion I love Berlin. To be honest the last time I was there was in 2013 (too long ago). So why do I regard it so highly? Apart from great museums, food and music (both times I’ve stumbled across a free outdoor concert), I guess places are personal things based on personal experiences – I always travel by myself and I just feel like I can function there. Berlin is a city you can be alone in and not feel like you’re missing out.

The city has featured in TV series and in films many times, but of course if you can’t visit there as much as you want to, or you really want to get under the skin of a place, there are always books. Without wanting to put too much emphasis on it in this blog, of course there is a difficult history there and my love for the city is for what it mainly is now, the past is the past; I say “mainly” as all cities having some things that stop them from being perfect. When you get to books though this difficult history is woven into tales, often of hope, often of lessons, sometimes just because it’s a good story.

Elsewhere on this blog I’ve spoke about Christopher Isherwood’s Goodbye To Berlin, a perspective of an Englishman living there in the 1930s, and there are many other good reads set in the city, often name-checking it in the title.

I’m still on the search for modern novels set in the German capital, ones from the 21st century so if you have any suggestions let me know in the comments below, but I wanted to write about two books, one from each half of the twentieth century, that I really enjoyed.

Berlin Blues by Sven Regener is set in the 1989. This is the first part (or third part) of a trilogy, this being written first and the two preceding books published later. I wanted a book that dealt not with the big picture of Berlin, but with the people who lived there; with issues that aren’t specific to a resident’s life but handled within the German culture – Berlin Blues does this.

Telling the story of Frank Lehmann (or Herr Lehmann as he is know- which is also the German title of the book). Frank is soon to turn thirty and he’s increasingly being made to think about moving forward in his life even though he’s fairly happy as he is. The course of the novel places him amidst the lives of his friends and compares how they feel they are progressing and his own views on the matter. Against what becomes rather a larger canvass this is still somewhat small scale, but it has an absurd humour as we get Frank’s true thoughts on what is happening around him.

‘Listen, you pair of lovebirds,’ said Karl, who had come up to the table unnoticed by either of them, ‘I can see you’ve really hit it off, the two of you, but I think mademoiselle had better get back to the kitchen. I mean, I hate to say it, but-‘
‘Okay, okay.’
‘What do you think, Karl? Does time go faster or slower when you’re drunk?’
‘Is that the sort of thing you’ve been talking about? You’re two of a kind.’
‘Don’t hedge. It’s important.’
Karl thought for a moment. ‘I reckon it goes faster. But it evens itself out the next morning.’
― Sven Regener, Berlin Blues

Going back to the 1940s Alone In Berlin (sometimes known as Every Man Dies Alone from the German title Jeder Stirbt Für Sich Allein), by Hans Fallada, was published in 1947 this is said to be one of the first novels published in German that dealt with the terrible events of the Nazi era.

Once again this is somewhat small stakes when compared with history but it becomes meaningful when you discover it is based on a real life couple. Otto and Elise Hampel (Otto and Anna Quangel in the novel) were ordinary people who decided they weren’t just going to put up with what was going on, but they were going to make a stand to the best of their abilities against Nazism. They start by anonymously leaving postcards with what they feel is the truth written on scattered about the city, which back then was a missive risk. Not part of any support group this couple were alone in their efforts and so their lives become harder as they begin to get noticed. If true events are anything like their counterparts in the book, they were brave brave people.

“Anna Quangel felt herself trembling. Then she looked over at Otto again. He might be right: whether their act was big or small, no one could risk more than his life. Each according to his strength and abilities, but the main thing was, you fought back. Still”
― Hans Fallada, Alone In Berlin

Berlin though is in the 21st Century and as I said I’ve said both times I’ve been there I’ve had such a good time. Books that tell of a city’s past have a place but sometimes it’s also worth going there and seeing what a place can achieve now for yourself. As mentioned I’m still on the look out for Berlin books, they don’t have to have city’s name in the title, although with everything else I want to read it could be a while before I get back there, and I guess that goes for a real life visit too.

Buy Berlin Blues – by Sven Regener,
Buy Alone In Berlin – by Hans Fallada

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Agatha Christie: Part Two

Over A Century Of Love (Which When She Was All About Murder Seems Weird…)

On the edge of a sleepy village in Oxfordshire, not too far from the River Thames’ meandering path towards London, lies St Mary’s Church; the graveyard overlooking the fields of the surrounding countryside. At the far end of the yard is a headstone on which are written the names Agatha Mary Clarissa Mallowan and Max Edgar Lucien Mallowan, for not far from this here, from 1934 to 1976 lived one of the most read writers in the world.

It was only on a trip to Vienna, where I just missed out on visiting the grave of Beethoven, that I realised the people who I admire from throughout history can still be respected by a visit to where they lie. I lived abroad for many years, but being English and therefore enwrapped in its culture to a large degree, the majority of the writer’s graves I’d like to visit were over here. On my return to Britain a few years ago I made a list of the places I wanted to go. Cholsey, Oxfordshire is not too far from where I lived so of course I wanted to visit Agatha Christie, (elsewhere I’ve discussed my visit to Jerome K Jerome who is buried not to far from the Mallowans, and so the day was a sad but literary one).

No one else was about the quiet spring day I arrived. To be honest I’d been before one cold January Saturday but had lost the pictures so on a warm afternoon in spring 2020, with lockdown easing and the need to finally get outside and be somewhere interesting, a return visit to Jerome and Agatha was made (as well as a trip to Wallingford which is lovely).

The fact is that Christie’s books have for over a century constantly and consistently been published, read, adapted, quoted, praised and loved more than we can accurately identify says a lot. In fact January this year, 2021, saw the one hundredth anniversary of her first published novel in the UK The Mysterious Affair at Styles and since then the appreciation has been non stop.

Even if someone has never read a Christie novel they know the short cuts her name means in cultural terms and conversations, they know the tropes, ‘I’ve brought you all together to this room…’, ‘In the library with the lead piping’ etc. (See my previous blog for a beginner’s guide if you want to get started and don’t know how.) I grew up knowing from a young age what it was all about although I was born a few years after her death, however it wasn’t until the mid eighties that I properly experienced one of her stories.

Elsewhere on here I’ve talked about my love of Doctor Who, when in the late eighties it was moved to week nights it would be followed by the BBC adaptions of Miss Marple. Don’t tell anyone but I used to tape Doctor Who off the telly to watch again, (I still have the tapes though I’ve not seen them in decades – I have the DVDs) and I’d start recording before the episode started so I wouldn’t miss a second of it, therefore I had the still and the announcement of the Miss Marple story that would follow, of course at the time I stayed and watched it even if I didn’t record that. However as some of them were the same format, a story split over a few weeks it all seemed natural to me this was the way to enjoy the story.

Joan Hickson as the definitive Miss Marple

I don’t care what anyone says – Joan Hickson IS Miss Marple, no one else will EVER be good enough. I’ve not watched the ITV versions for this reason (and also because apparently they mess with the plots too much and even put her into stories that Christie didn’t write for her). As a rule I don’t watch adaptions of books I’ve read so I’ve given a miss to the David Suchet Hercule Poirot ones despite the fact that from all accounts they are very good, however since I watched Joan Hickson before I read the books I can continue to enjoy watching these brilliant screen plays, yes I now have them on DVD.

When it comes to watching Christie’s works of course the one MUST is seeing The Mousetrap. When you feel it’s safe to do so I highly recommend you do. I was very pleased to make it until I actually saw the brilliant production in St Martin’s Theatre in London before I found out who the murderer is. Don’t leave it too long and take the risk, find out the way nature intended! The fact the ending is not general knowledge says to me the respect her work is given.

It’s a bizarre thing standing at the grave of one so famous from history and someone that I admire (I try not to use the word “hero”, it never means what I want it to), especially when you are there alone. Just me on a warm spring day looking at the last resting place of someone so brilliant. I don’t believe in any way she’d have heard me if I’d said anything, which I didn’t – to me she’s gone – but standing there I was still very very grateful to her for the hours and hours of joy she brought into my life and continues to do so.

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10,000 Downloads! Thank You!

21 September 2021

Just want to say another big Thank You. The combined total of downloads of Beck’s Game across all six parts have now passed 10,000 downloads with each part now over at least 1,000 downloads each.

Thank you all for your time and support.

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Agatha Christie: Part One

Where To Begin?

Generally there are three authors I turn to when in need. That is the need to read something but don’t know what as well as something not too heavy going: James Herriot, Gerald Durrell and Agatha Christie. Fortunately between the three of them they wrote a lot of books. The most prolific was or course is Agatha Christie. With over seventy novels and lots of short stories there is plenty to keep a fan going; but this of course can be a bit disconcerting for a newcomer. I had read one once on holiday in Nice, France. I’d run out of the books I’d taken with me and there was a small English section in a second hand bookshop, I say small I think it was a shelf. There was not much on it that grabbed my attention but I saw a copy of this Murder On The Orient Express and thought I’d give it a go… I loved it.

Later in Ireland, where I was living at the time, I went to Easons (a chain of bookshops) and decided to buy another, the shelves was crammed with what appeared to be hundreds of different novels and I felt a bit lost. They were all the Signature editions, beautifully designed covers with simple images, so spent some time looking at them hoping to find the one I was going to buy. I don’t read the back of books, as mentioned elsewhere as I want no spoilers, but this can create something of a challenge. In the end I went with By The Pricking Of My Thumbs as it was a Shakespeare quote. I’ll admit I was somewhat disappointed when I read it because neither her great fictional detective Hercule Poirot, nor the wonderful Miss Marple appear in the book, instead were a couple I’d never heard of, Tommy and Tuppence Beresford. The novel was enjoyable but it wasn’t the typical “I have brought you all into this room to announce who the murderer is” style I was hoping for for a second read. Still a good book, but maybe one for later on the list of reads; you don’t want the genre subverted when you are starting off.

The fact is with over seventy novels to her name she was brilliant enough not to keep writing the same tropes and so amidst all the posh country houses and bodies in libraries she creates other styles. Adventures across the deserts, isolated islands where everyone is murdered and solving cases from many years previous, to describe a few, she really goes for it.

Of course nothing is perfect and there are maybe some attitudes her characters have that today we would probably highlight a bit more as being “very not ok” and I think it is worth pointing that out as sadly some mindsets from years ago were not as they are today.

So what books would I recommend for someone wanting to start out? Personally I like her Miss Marple novels the most (I’ll do a Part Two more about this and adaptions etc) and surprisingly she only wrote twelve of these (plus short stories). I’ve read all but one (I’m savouring it as I don’t want to run out, therefore The Murder At The Vicarage may not be read for a while). Of the eleven I have read they are different enough for each one to stand out, and I’ve enjoyed them all but I would recommend A Murder Is Announced to begin with. It’s a clever concept as the murder really is announced beforehand and it’s nice to see Miss Marple put all the pieces together as the plot goes along. Once you’ve read this one, honestly take any of the others you will enjoy them.

“In an English village, you turn over a stone and have no idea what will crawl out.
Miss Marple”
― Agatha Christie, A Murder Is Announced

As for Hercule Poirot, there are… well the number of novels is debatable as some may not include plays etc, but over forty is a safe statement, so more than half Christie’s out-put. Of course Murder On The Orient Express is the obvious starting point for many, but actually I’d save that one for a bit later. I’d suggest Evil Under The Sun to begin with. It’s that traditional set up of a group of almost isolated people and one of them is murdered, you are left guessing who of the others did it and there are many possibilities.

“There is no such thing as a plain fact of murder. Murder springs, nine times out of ten, out of the character and circumstances of the murdered person. Because the victim was the kind of person he or she was, therefore was he or she murdered! Until we can understand fully and completely exactly what kind of a person [she] was, we shall not be able to see clearly exactly the kind of person who murdered her. From that spring the necessity of our questions.”
― Agatha Christie, Evil Under the Sun

What is interesting is that in both the Poirot and Marple ranges Christie uses her hero characters in different ways, in some they barely appear whilst in others the plot revolves around them, and then there is everything in between. This is brave and clever, but again if you are picking up a book in that range for the first time expecting Jane Marple to be central to it all and find she just appears near the end it might be a bit confusing.

These are my two recommendations but if you have others put them in the comments. In the next blog I’ll write about some of the adaptions and her non Marple/ Poirot mysteries.

Buy A Murder Is Announced by Agatha Christie
Buy Evil Under The Sun by Agatha Christie

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Beck’s Game, Due

06 July 2021

London is not just one place. There are stories and truths and lies all merged together to make the city. Different worlds. Some are on view, some are hidden, worlds going on around you that you only catch out of the corner of your eye, but you don’t know what it means so you ignore it, forget it. But some of them are worth discovering. Do you want a way out of your problems?’

Since last summer I’ve been working on a new project, it wasn’t planned it was just an idea that came to mind and then merged with others that had been percolating for many years.

The result is Beck’s Game, and I’m doing something different with it.

The story is based on and around the London Underground and there might just be a whole lot more going on down there than you may have suspected.

Previously I’ve put my novels, complete, on Amazon as paperback and Kindle and left them to it, but the shape of this story meant I could be more flexible; and so I have split the story into three “Series” and each “Series” into six “Parts”, with a new one to be released each week on this very blog as a PDF of about 20 A4 pages (with a gap between each Series, although I have written the whole thing at this point). I wanted to build a part by part adventure, hey I’m a Doctor Who fan it’s in my DNA, and so we have smaller stories a developing alongside a much much bigger canvass; to say more might just drift into spoiler territory.

I’m not going to charge for downloading each part but if you want to make a donation for them I would be very grateful and that will be set up when Part One goes live (it was just easier to do it that way).

Series One, Part One: Oxford Circus will be released soon!

I did ask TFL what imagery I was allowed to use without breaking copyright and they have yet to get back to me, I guess they are busy running a transport network, so everything from the picture and sounds are not actually from the London Underground network so copyright is not an issue. The pictures are by by Johannes Plenio and Dil (www.instagram.com/thevisualiza), many thanks, and the design is my own.

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Foxing: Part Two

My Adventures With…

James Herriot’s Yorkshire, fortunately the cow was well.

When I started writing the blog about foxing it ended up being a lot longer than I’d anticipated so I decided to split it in two parts. You can find Part One here and it discusses how I’d noticed that some of my books, which I aim to keep in as pristine condition as possible, had started to fox, that is have brown spots appear on the pages, and this was very nearly the end of the world for me.

The other weekend I was in the Yorkshire Dales. I’d gone because I needed to get away but decided I wanted to go where there were few people and also because I love James Herriot’s books. I also wanted to visit The Stid (nothing to do with writing but it’s interesting as it’s said to be the world’s most dangerous stretch of water – yes in Yorkshire! Google it and don’t fall in.)

Just as I was on my way back to the car park by Bolton Abbey I noticed an antique bookshop, Grove Rare Books. It occurred to me that they might have some literature they could sell me that would answer my questions of what to do, and they would have a clear authority on the subject of how to look after books. It turned out they didn’t sell literature about the actual upkeep of books, but the man who worked there was very helpful. He, of course, had his own collection of texts on how to look after his products and so spent some time helping me look up what I could do. To be honest I think he knew it anyway, he seemed the kind of person who knew very useful things, but he wanted to show the authority from the books – he obviously understood his customers well. We found the below in an older text book:

Advice from the old book

The book the man showed me was written a long time ago, I forget exactly when but many decades; it was in impressive condition and suggested a few options. Chloramine T seems to be a thing, I have no idea what it is, if it works, or even if it’s legal in the UK or other places so I’m not recommending it, I did discover it has a use for fish though. The other option was The Antifox Company in Guildford in Surrey as they had a liquid called Antifox (do not drink this! the book clearly warns) and a powder with which to treat the pages. “£5.00 + £1.00 for shipping by surface only”. Not that I was going to purchase it, but on googling the company it seems it no longer exists so maybe it doesn’t work, all you get is websites about actual foxes in Surrey, and from searching the address there is nothing of note there.

The man who worked there did reassure me that foxing doesn’t spread from book to book but is just a reaction to impurities in the paper, it’s not like mould. This is what the British Library’s guide said just without the fungal word (I almost just used the first letter but then thought better of it when I reread it), and to be fair the British Library guide is about mould and just happens to mention foxing as an aside so it’s not saying it is fungal.

The Strid

As someone who looks after a lot more books than I do, and which are worth far far more, I believe the man in the shop. He reassured me that it wasn’t a threat to the rest of my collection but I just have to live with it. A damp environment might contribute to the foxing. I had moved recently so my mind started panicking, was my current home damper than my previous ones? I don’t think so but it’s made me more careful to ensure in future I don’t store them in damp rooms.

I was also advised that if my collection was expensive there were services that I could investigate that would restore each page, but I have have a load of paperbacks not Gutenberg Bibles or Shakespeare First Folios (which are probably not the versions Radio 4 will give you on the desert island either).

I’m a lot more confident now and I’m beginning to return my foxed books to the their shelves. I’m far more aware of foxing and have noticed since January I carefully examine the book I’m reading, and any in detail before I buy them for marks, but I have to accept the fact that both myself and my books are getting older.

Oh and if you are ever near Bolton Abbey pop in to Grove Rare Books, they are good people.

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Foxing: Part One

My Adventures With…

Those dark spots on the page or across the fore edge (the opposite to the book’s spine) might make the book looked aged and interesting, but I hate them. I like my books to remain as close to a pristine condition as I can possibly keep them, and for the most part I succeed. A cracked spine will have me worrying for days and you should never fold the page corners. However if you have a collection of books it’s inevitable that you will come across foxing. The British Library describe foxing this way:

“Foxing is the term used for the brown spots and stains seen on affected paper which may be fungal in origin but may also be caused by chemical impurities in the paper.”

The word fungal is alarming!

Over the winter I started to read a novel (Doctor Who: Festival Of Death by Jonathan Morris if you’re interested) which, just because of the way of things, took a longer while to read than it normally should. I’d take it to and from work and read in my lunch break; one day I noticed it had started foxing.

This really worried me. I have never seen this before on the other BBC novels I have, and I own nearly all of them (and every Virgin!), so I hastily went and checked the rest of my collection. All but two of the BBC Doctor Who novels were clear, neither as bad as this one, and to my immense relief it was on none of the Virgin books, which are really important to me (there’s an entire blog coming folks). I immediately isolated the the affected ones and searched the rest of my other books. There were some that had marks on them but most seemed fine.

What worried me the most was Festival Of Death was only published recently, well in my head. It has since been republished in different editions because it’s a very good novel, but I’d been collecting from first release and as I had first editions of all the others when I started to look to fill in the gaps, of which this was one, I had to keep to the same format; look it up it’s not that cheap these days. Oh and it turns out that the “recent” publishing of the first edition of this novel was actually in the year 2000, longer ago than I remembered but I have books way older which are still pristine.

I tried to think back to when it had arrived in the post probably about a year previously. I would have noticed if it had been marked back then surely? I can only think that as it had been over the cold part of the year and as I’d sometimes leave it in the car during the working day this is what must have cause the foxing to happen, but I’d done that before to other books and I’d never seen this. Quite what caused this, specifically to this book, I needed to find out. But my main fear was to stop it from spreading.

Not one of my books

To be honest I’d never really gave it much thought before. I assumed that if I looked after them, all neat and tidy on a bookshelf in dry conditions, then they would not begin to show signs of damage like this. After having had a book collection for nearly all my life though as I get older so will the books.

The night I noticed it I did a search on the internet and there is some fairly confusing information out there, the British Library seemed to be the most qualified to advise, but that word “fungal” made me very uncomfortable.

I can be a bit dramatic at times, hey I’m a writer ok?, so I had visions of all my books turning to mould over night, a life time’s collection gone! What could I do? In moments of not so clear thinking I continued to search the internet for any solution. One place suggested I microwave the book to kill anything, stupidly I did this.

How long you cook the books for was not instructed so I decided I’d try a minute and see what happened. When I opened the door the book was damp and letting off an alarming amount of steam, the glue binding the pages together had melted and it looked sorrier than before I started, but just to be safe I put in back in for another thirty seconds.

I let it cool down, wafting the steam out of it and left it dry. Nearly half a year later no further foxing has occurred but I STRONGLY DO NOT recommend this as an option. I think it can probably cause more damage that way. It turned out it would be a while before I found out exactly what was happening to resolve the issue; in Part Two of this blog, coming later, you can see what happened next.

Incidentally the novel Festival Of Death is about a decaying spaceship, sort of, so it was kind of appropriate and it’s also well worth reading.

The Beautiful Death is the ultimate theme-park ride: a sightseeing tour of the afterlife. But something has gone wrong, and when the Fourth Doctor arrives in the aftermath of the disaster, he is congratulated for saving the population from destruction – something he hasn’t actually done yet. He has no choice but to travel back in time and discover how he became a hero. And then he finds out. He did it by sacrificing his life.
― Jonathan Morris, Doctor Who Festival Of Death

Buy Doctor Who: Festival Of Death by Jonathan Morris

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Indoldrum FREE This Weekend 19/20 June

19 June 2021

Over the weekend of 19th and 20th of June my novel Indoldrum is FREE from on Amazon Kindle.

UK here – USA here – Or on your local Amazon site.

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Tidying Up The News Page/ Books Back On KDP

14 June 2021

I’ve been meaning on sorting out the News and Information part of this blog for a while. So some older items have been re-posted and some now no longer current have gone.

I’ve also once more made made three novels available on Amazon KDP (so free if you are signed up for it) -For the moment they will be there until 11th September 2021. I will decided if to extend it nearer to that date.

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Interview

28 November 2020

Recently had the pleasure of being interviewed by @SmartCherrysTho . Thanking him for his time. (I suggested the title).

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