What makes you cry?

I’m struggling to get through the book I’m reading so I decided to take a break and read something else. Bit of a mistake because I went from a book where I couldn’t really get behind any of the characters to something where I really could, and nearly ended up in tears. Which got me thinking about books that make me cry – and having thought about it for a while I concluded that there aren’t many that have achieved that. Books that have achieved this are The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (his new book Bridge of Clay is out later this year!) and also Selected Letters of Charlotte Bronte by Margaret Smith. The latter because after reading it for so long I felt that I had come to know Charlotte Bronte a little bit through her letters, so I was genuinely distressed when the last letter was from her husband to a friend to say that she had died. So when my housemate asked why I was crying I had to confess that it was because Charlotte Bronte was dead. It was a weird moment but we got through it.

Anyway what books have made you cry and why? Or have any brought you to tears because they are so bad?

Libraries and Gladstone

I may not have finished a book in time for this week but my excuse is a good one. I’ve been just outside Chester exploring Gladstone’s library. It’s the kind of place you dream of reading in – a library full of old books from floor to ceiling. Which is what I did for a little while. And next week I will tell you about what I read. In the meantime you should check out the library’s website in case you need to go exploring too.

Sofa Spotlight - Endless Night, Agatha Christie

Endless Night is the last Christie I’m going to read for a while, but it’s definitely my favourite so far. There’s no Poirot or Marple, or any detective at all, just a narrative of how the murder happened. In my opinion the ending wasn’t as strong as it could have been. I would have liked so see the murderer made more of, but they just seem to crumble, somehow it just didn’t seem to fit.

The story is told through the narration of Michael Rogers, who is a working class guy who meets a rich heiress, Ellie. They get married and Michael’s friend Rudolph Santonix, an architectural genius, builds them a house on Gypsy’s Acre.

There are so many ominous things that happen in this story. Santonix says some very telling things to Michael though out the story. He might be a brilliant architect but he is dying, although I was never overly sure of what it was that he was ill with. When he does eventually die his final words to Michael seemingly mean nothing, but Michael puts a meaning to them later on when he sees a ghost.

If you’re not a fan of ghosts and stuff that’s spooky I would leave this one alone.

Gypsy’s Acre is the crux of the story. The local folklore is that the land belonged to some gypsies, who were forced to move off the land, which didn’t make them very happy, so they put a curse on the land. Esther Lee is the local gypsy, and she keeps popping up warning Ellie of the curse and lots of strange and frightening things happen that all attributed to Esther. It all comes to a head when Ellie dies and then all the threads of the story come together.

The title comes from William Blake’s poem Auguries of Innocence, which I attempted to read but didn’t get very far with. What really interested me was the dedication, which is to Nora Pritchard and says that it was from Nora Pritchard that Agatha Christie first heard the legend of Gypsy’s Acre. Which gets me thinking – what is the original legend of Gypsy’s Acre. I’ve asked google and Wikipedia tells me who Nora Pritchard is but that’s it. So if you know what the legend is, let this curious one know.

Not sure what I’m going to do now that I’ve overdosed on crime fiction for over a year. I do have Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks by John Curran if I start to have withdrawal symptoms.

Sofa Spotlight - The Glory of the Cross, Tim Chester

It isn’t Lent anymore but here’s what I read for Lent this year. It’s a devotional for Lent that goes through parts of the book of John. (A detail I failed to read on the front cover and wondered why all the readings were coming from John and no other Gospel). 

I didn’t read it alone – I read it with a friend and then we met and talked about what we read – or messaged about it. I’m not a huge reader of devotionals so I wasn’t sure I would make it through, but I surprised myself and stuck with it.

The first thing that I learnt was that there are a lot more weeks in Lent than I realised. Each week of Lent has a different section and each section starts on the Sunday. You read a big chunk of John and then the rest of the week is spent looking at little bits of what you read on the Sunday. By big chunk I mean part of a chapter – but some of the chapters in John are quite long.

I also played around with what time of day I was reading this. At the start I was reading it last thing at night – but on Sunday nights when you have to read more I found I wasn’t taking it in as well. The problem with first thing in the morning is that there’s a rush to get ready for work and so by the end I was reading it on my lunch break – when I was properly awake and didn’t have to be anywhere.

One of the reasons I’m not so keen on devotionals is if you miss a day you have to play catch up. Probably the fear of catch up is what kept me reading and on top of it. I did miss a few days though but that was ok – during the week the readings are short enough to catch up but not feel like you’re rushing to get through it for the sake of it. The other thing that probably stopped me giving up was reading it with someone. There was no way I was going to show up with nothing to say so I had better get on and read it.

I would definitely recommend it though – and maybe don’t even wait for next Lent to start it. It was nice to read parts of John and see a different take on them. For me the biggest surprise came right at the end on Easter Sunday with the start of John 20. There was something there that I hadn’t noticed before (you need to read it and get to the end if you want to know what it was) and because I was taking my time over it I got to not only notice but think deep about it too.

Sofa Spotlight - Ivanhoe, Sir Walter Scott

It’s taken me about three months to get through Ivanhoe. Partly because it is fairly long (my penguin edition is around 500 pages) but also parts of it require quite a bit of concentration.

Anyways it’s a story about Ivanhoe – a knight who has come back from the crusades, but at first no one knows who he is. Which, as you keep reading, becomes a bit of a theme in this book. There’s quite a few characters who keep their true identity hidden at first. Although often you can see through it straight away. But back to Ivanhoe. He wants to marry Rowena who he has known from childhood. The problem is his father does not want Ivanhoe to marry Rowena because Rowena is a Saxon princess and he wants her to marry Athelstane, heir to the Saxon throne, so that they can put a Saxon back on the throne of England. So Ivanhoe ends up getting banished because he won’t stop wanting to marry Rowena.

Which is the Saxon part of the story.

The Norman part is about Richard the Lion Heart and Prince John and also Robin Hood. So basically the whole story is about who should be King of England.

The whole thing about Saxons and Normans made the start of the book a bit hard to get through. But at the start you meet two of the best characters, Gurth and Wamba, who are both at the bottom of the food chain but are brilliant and probably braver than some of the knights. Gurth – another one who hides his identity for part of the story – runs off to follow Ivanhoe and although later gets in trouble for it ends up saving the lives of Ivanhoe’s father. And Wamba isn’t far behind him when it comes to heroic rescues.

Along with Gurth and Wamba you have some characters that are supposed to be serious but come off as hilarious. Brian de Bois-Guilbert needs to make up his mind about whether he is good or bad, and ultimately about what he wants. Athelstane, probably not meant to be serious, but all he is about is food and drinking and at first I wasn’t a fan of him, but he comes good in the end.

Robin Hood also features, but not as much as I thought he would. While everyone else is charging around on their horses he is keeping an eye on things and making sure he is always handy with his bow and arrows when needed.

Oh and Ivanhoe spends most of the book wounded and out of action. Yet makes at least two people fall in love with him.

For all that I did enjoy reading it. Scott makes you love or hate the characters he creates and the story is exciting. I just wouldn’t take his novel as historical fact or anything like it.