Books to be read.

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly and with diligence and attention.

Francis Bacon 1561-1626

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Over at Charlie’s http://thefirstbookoftesticles.blogspot.com/ yesterday I was reminded of the awful Sheriff Joe Arpaio - a monster in charge of the prison written about in the blog Jon’s Jail Journal. Jon whose real name is Shaun Attwood is British and determined to write about his experiences and expose what went on within the walls of the prison As I wrote some time back, Shaun was awarded a mentor – Sally Hinchcliffe who wrote the excellent thriller Out of a Clear Sky. Shaun’s book Hard Time is now available from Amazon.

Leigh Russell http://leighrussell.blogspot.com/ another Blogger has her second thriller Road Closed also available at Amazon and Kate Lord Brown http://katelordbrown.blogspot.com/

has had her debut novel The Beauty Chorus bought by Corvus.

A different kind of book and one I look forward to receiving from Blurb shortly is Kim’s book of photographs http://kimayres.blogspot.com/taken from his exhibition Staring Back. You can see a video of the photographs on his blog.

Not for the first time, a review by Charlie impelled me to read Rooftops of Tehran. by Mahbod Seraji. Apart from the fact I found it enthralling it was a real eye-opener for me who had been imbued with the belief that the Shah of Persia and his beautiful, tragic wife Soraya were the beautiful couple of the fifties to be respected and admired and I remember my excitement when they arrived at the theatre where I was watching Separate Tables. The book paints a very different picture of a despotic regime where innocent people were imprisoned and tortured.

Don’t let that put you off – it’s funny, enchanting and a love story so romantic you can see the stars in the Persian sky. I make a point of emailing any author whose work has moved me – where possible – and had an immediate, charming response from the author yesterday.

Preparing yesterday’s lunch-time salad I was listening to MTL’s radio which is always tuned to Radio 4 and heaven help anyone who fiddles with it. I pricked up my ears as a woman with a pleasant voice talked of how – reasonably healthy and independent but in her nineties - she decided to live in a retirement home in Highgate. It sounded so attractive I said:

‘If ever we had to move that’s the sort of place I’d like to go to.’

It got more interesting – her name was Diana Athill and she had her memoirs published when in her eighties. She had had a happy childhood and had her heart broken as a teenager. You can imagine my double take! However she never married, never had children and had a dazzling career in publishing. I look forward to reading her book Life Class (a title used by two other authors) which should be on its way as we speak. It was interesting that she also was greatly inspired by Alice Herz- Sommer who I did a post about recently.

I did have second thoughts about the retirement home; London after this haven would take too much adjusting - to say nothing of swapping our big old place for a large room however attractive.