Mary's musings

Until Mary gets the links working I am posting on her behalf. She is a voracious reader and it would be a pity to miss sharing her opinions and recommendations. She is also suggesting we should add publishers, date and ISBN No., if we have this info to hand when adding our reviews to the blog - to assist in locating, especially useful when so many of us are traipsing around the globe.

"I finally read Infidel by Aayan Hirsi Ali. I found it oddly uncompelling. She walks us minute by minute through her thoughts and life history, too much detail perhaps, without really conveying the atmosphere of it all. Perhaps....... Of course there are many interesting details, her own "excision", more dreadful stories of marriage of young girls etc. And her gradual realization, once she got to the West, that the submission demanded by Islam is really Slavery for women, as we have known for years ourselves, makes a good case.

I found a Mary Stewart compendium by my bed here in Santiago and read one of the novels; a long one called The Ivy Tree which I rate as one of her Worst. Then re-read Dick Francis' Reflex. Having no memory left is sometimes a great advantage, as I was gripped by the excitement of it all again. He really is a master of the Genre. As one of my friends said "all I know about horse racing, I learned from Dick Francis".

I am now reading Travels in a Thin Country, by Sara Wheeler. She writes about her travels from North to South in Chile. She really projects her personality and I find that I am enjoying her company, if that isn't too weird. Her writing is beautiful and some of her descriptions and analogies are breathtakingly beautiful (in terms of language) without being labored or overdone.
She is a Brit. and the book was originally published in London by Little, Brown, 1991. My paperback edition was published by Modern Library in the US and Canada in 1994, in case you want to try to find it."