Michael J. Ritchie's Blog, page 11

“Between The Stops” by Sandi Toksvig (2019)

“When I was about seven my father gave me my first watch.”

I try hard not to get too worked up about celebrities. I don’t know them, and while I may enjoy what they produce, we only really know what they allow us to see. There are a few, however, who I would definitely want to sit down with and have a good old chat, and one of those is definitely Sandi Toksvig.

In her long-awaited memoirs, Between the Stops, the Danish polymath explores her life via the route of London’s Number 12 bus. As she tr...

“Mrs Death Misses Death” by Salena Godden (2021)

“When I called for change, did you pass me by?”

Death comes for us all, although hopefully it waits until we’ve done all we wanted to do with our lives. In most fictional stories involving a physical character inhabiting the role, however, it’s a man or at least a male-esque figure who comes for us. But why is that? In her novel, Salena Godden hands the scythe over to a woman.

Mrs Death has had enough, and is looking for someone to unburden her conscience too. When a young London writer called W...

“Stone Heart Deep” by Paul Bassett Davies (2021)

“The image is blurred.”

I’m sure there are many communities on small, remote islands that are entirely normal and well-balanced, thank you very much. Paul Bassett Davies here introduces us to one that is not.

Adam Budd is an investigative journalist approaching burn-out. After he wins a prestigious award, he learns that his estranged mother has died, leaving him her entire estate, which includes a derelict mansion, Stone Heart House, on a remote Scottish island. Not knowing anything about the ho...

“The Outward Urge” by John Wyndham (1959)

“Ticker Troon emerged from his final interview filled with an emulsion of astonishment, elation, respect, and conviction that he needed refreshment.”

I was reading the other day about NASA’s Artemis Project, which intends to get people (the next man, and the first woman) onto the surface of the moon by 2025. It feels strange, sometimes, that the idea of travelling through space feels like something from our future, when no one’s been up to the moon for fifty years. Space travel is, for us right ...

“The Body In The Library” by Agatha Christie (1942)

“Mrs Bantry was dreaming.”

A library with a dead body in it these days feels like something of a cliché. However, according to Agatha Christie’s own foreword, it was already a cliché in the 1940s. I’m always surprised when I find I’ve not got a review of a certain Christie on the blog already, as it means I’ve not read it in a long time. In this case, it’s been over a decade since I picked this one up, which at least meant I was coming in with fresh eyes and no clue whodunnit. Let’s dive in.

Co...

“Agatha Christie: An Autobiography” by Agatha Christie (1977)

“One of the luckiest things that can happen to you in life is to have a happy childhood.”

I started tracking all the books I’ve read at the beginning of 2011, and while this means this milestone is entirely arbitrary, but this is the one thousandth book I’ve read since then. I had to choose a title that would be meaningful and I was sure I’d enjoy. There only seemed to be one candidate.

Agatha Christie began her memoirs in 1950 and wrote them over the next sixteen years. However, once complete t...

“Three Shadows” by Cyril Pedrosa (2008)

“Back then, life was simple and sweet.”

Three Shadows begins with a father, mother and their son Joachim living a peaceful, blessed existence in the woods. Trouble comes, however, when three shadowy figures appear on a distant hill. Whatever the family do, the shadows stay. The mother seeks help from an old friend, but it is the father who takes the step of travelling away with Joachim, determined to protect him. But wherever they go, the shadows follow. How are they supposed to escape them, and...

“Address Unknown” by Kathrine Kressman Taylor (1938)

“Back in Germany!”

Although I try and avoid books about war, simply because it’s all too much for my small brain to deal with and I like my books more joyful, some of them just have to be read. If Anne Frank’s diaries and Maus should be compulsory reading, so should Address Unknown.

A very short novella, the book is told entirely in letters dated between 1932 and 1934. Martin, a Gentile, has returned to Germany and continues a friendship by letter with his Jewish colleague in America, Max. In 19...

“Temporary” by Hilary Leichter (2021)

“There was the assassin.”

Work, work, work. The capitalist system has us by the short and curlies in the west, and everyone is obsessed with work. It’s often one of the first questions asked when you meet someone new: “And what do you do?” Our narrator in this novel has an especially unique relationship with the working world, able to take on any role given to her, as long as it’s temporary.

Temporary is about a female temp worker who can do anything. Contacted by the mysterious Farren at “the a...

“The Galaxy, And The Ground Within” by Becky Chambers (2021)

“In the Linkings, the system was listed as Tren.”

It’s always a bittersweet feeling when you reach the end of a series, especially one that is so wonderfully written. This is the fourth a final part of Becky Chambers’ outstanding Wayfarers series. For the last time, here we go.

The planet Gora is not a destination, more somewhere that you pass through on the way to somewhere else. It houses the refuelling station Five-Hop One-Stop, run by the Laru Ouloo and her child, Tupo. When all the satellit...