Michael J. Ritchie's Blog, page 46
December 27, 2017
“The Escape” by C. L. Taylor (2017)
[image error] “Someone is walking directly behind me, matching me pace for pace.”
I got through my two festive books this year long before Christmas had even begun, which put me in the strange position of reading a tense psychological thriller on Christmas Day – the moods didn’t match in the least. Did it contribute to Boxing Day melancholy? Or is that just tiredness and the inability to move after doubling my body weight in chocolate? Maybe we’ll never know. Anyway, C. L. Taylor was a new one on me, and i...
December 22, 2017
“Wake Up, Sir!” by Jonathan Ames (2005)
[image error] “‘Wake up, sir. Wake up,’ said Jeeves.”
Despite, according to some, giving off the air of a man who appears to have fallen out of a Jeeves & Wooster novel, I have very little experience with P. G. Wodehouse. I’ve only read one of the novels, and just haven’t got round to getting anymore done. I’ll count this as an attempt though. Set in nineties New Jersey, this novel takes the concept and updates it, turning Bertie Wooster from a British aristocrat to Alan Blair, a Jewish American alcoholic...
December 16, 2017
“Portrait Of A Murderer” by Anne Meredith (1933)
[image error] “Adrian Gray was born in May 1862 and met his death though violence, at the hands of one of his own children, at Christmas, 1931.”
One of the key features of many Christmas celebrations is surrounding yourself suddenly with people that you perhaps don’t really want to be spending time with, namely: your family. When families come together, often arguments follow soon after, as we’ve seen in numerous books. When the Gray family return to the nest for their festive party, things are perhaps a l...
December 10, 2017
“Gods Behaving Badly” by Marie Phillips (2007)
[image error] “One morning, when Artemis was out walking the dogs, she saw a tree where no tree should be.”
It’s not been long since I last delved into Greek mythology, but I couldn’t resist another visit so soon, but this time in a very different world. I actually first read this book in 2008. I was at university, and for my screenwriting class had just begun working on a pitch for a sitcom involving the Greek gods living undercover in modern London. A week later, I found this novel in Waterstones – a sto...
December 6, 2017
“A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens (1843)
[image error] “Marley was dead: to begin with.”
I have been asked before how I can consider myself such an avid student of literature when I have (until now) entirely bypassed Dickens. Alright, not entirely. Great Expectations was one of my set texts at university, but I tired of Pip and his accomplices after four or five pages, discarded the novel, and blagged my way through the associated essay. (Stay in school, kids.) Finally though, at the age of twenty-nine, I have read an entire Dickens story. It’s a...
December 4, 2017
“You” by Austin Grossman (2013)
[image error] “So what’s your ultimate game?”
Video games are a good way to spend some down time in between books, I find. I’m not an avid gamer by any means, but I play occasionally, usually something like the Portal series, or The Sims, which is an excellent game to binge on now and then. I’ve also been playing quite a lot of Civilization IV lately. I like a big, sprawling world where you don’t necessarily have to follow a prescribed path. Some people like simply shooting everything in sight. Games are b...
November 28, 2017
“Madness” by Roald Dahl (1944-1977)
[image error] “Louisa, holding a dishcloth in her hand, stepped out the kitchen door at the back of the house into the cool October sunshine.”
Roald Dahl is best known for his subversive and dark children’s novels like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda and The Witches, populated usually by useless and abusive adults and children who were always capable of outwitting them. Far fewer people are aware, however, that he also wrote extensively for adults. This is the first time I’ve ever delved into hi...
November 22, 2017
“Curtain” by Agatha Christie (1975)
The end of an era…
“Who is there who has not felt a sudden startled pang at reliving an old experience, or feeling an old emotion?”
The exact date I first picked up an Agatha Christie novel is lost to me now; it was before I had started recording everything I read. 2009, most likely, as I was just finishing university and it was a lecture there that had inspired me to finally pick up one of her novels. It was Death in the Clouds, and I was hooked from the very first moment.
The world has chan...
November 19, 2017
“The Red House Mystery” by A. A. Milne (1922)
[image error] “In the drowsy heat of the summer afternoon the Red House was taking its siesta.”
A. A. Milne, despite all his work as a playwright, poet, comedic journalist and soldier, is these days remembered primarily for just one thing: Winnie the Pooh. His life story, or at least the part focused around Pooh, featured heavily in the recent film Goodbye Christopher Robin. It is therefore easy for many these days to assume that that was all he did. However, four years before a certain bear of very little...
November 14, 2017
“No-One Ever Has Sex On A Tuesday” by Tracy Bloom (2014)
(Incorrect.)
“There are those who get to choose the father of their child and those who don’t.”
It’s easy to be conned into buying a book if it’s got a silly title. There was something weirdly captivating about this one. I even ignored the unusual grammatical choice, but that alone should have clued me in to the fact that I was about to embark on something ludicrous. If Bridget Jones’s Diary is the Waitrose of this genre, then No-One Ever Has Sex on a Tuesday is Lidl.
Our heroine, Katy Chapma...
