As per madly busy with dentist, children, grandchildren et al and am off to London again tomorrow to keep Daughter 2 company while her husband goes off walking in the Brecon Beacons. Why I ask myself and then think well he works bloody hard and perhaps a bit of peace and tranquility will do him good. So The Mother has been summoned to help and look after grandchildren. No hardship. We all love Strictly so will be sitting down on Saturday night watching that. I will be blogging about it but I usually wait until two weeks have gone by and I have a vague idea who the contestants are, some of whom I have never heard of, some I have, and some I wish I never have to see again. Hey ho.
So catching up on my reading. First up a book set in a bookshop. PERFECT.
Shaun Bythell owns The Bookshop, Wigtown – Scotland's largest second-hand bookshop. It contains 100,000 books, spread over a mile of shelving, with twisting corridors and roaring fires, and all set in a beautiful, rural town by the edge of the sea. A book-lover's 
paradise? Well, almost …
In these wry and hilarious diaries, Diary of a Bookseller Shaun provides an inside look at the trials and tribulations of life in the book trade, from struggles with eccentric customers to wrangles with his own staff, who include the ski-suit-wearing, bin-foraging Nicky.
He takes us with him on buying trips to old estates and auction houses, recommends books (both lost classics and new discoveries), introduces us to the thrill of the unexpected find, and evokes the rhythms and charms of small-town life, always with a sharp and sympathetic eye.
Any novel or diary set in a bookshop always catches my eye and I thoroughly enjoyed reading this. Having worked with the public for a large chunk of my adult working life I know just how totally potty, irritating and stupid some people can be. I was a librarian and one would think that readers who wanted to read, borrow and reserve books were bright and intelligent. Believe me, it ain't necessarily so.
When I read a personal diary like this I do sometimes wonder how much exaggeration is contained within. When I read My Family and Other Animals I began to doubt that every single Greek met on their island could possible be as wildly eccentric as they all appeared to be; when I read A Year in Provence I felt the same and had my doubts, but then if you only wrote about the normal, perhaps boring folk you met, the book would be a dead bore.
And this certainly isn't
Great stuff
The Chilbury Ladies Choir by Jennifer Ryan
This sounds one of those charming quirky books along the lines of Letters from Skye or the Guernsey Literary Potato Peel Pie Society. I was looking forward to reading it but the charm soon wore off as I realised the author had decided to go for whimsicality. It is in epistolary style, as are the two books I have just mentioned, and is a style I normally like very much. We are introduced to all the stock characters, wicked squire, dodgy midwife (what she gets up to stretches the bounds of credulity), two sisters one sweet the other a vamp, a downtrodden widow, a bossy lady in charge of the WI etc. They are all there.
You can tell what is going to happen to all of them as soon as you start reading. The bad punished, the downtrodden find strength and happiness, the vamp falls in love, the baddies see the light and achieve redemption and so on and so on.
I did enjoy this book, honestly, I did but I felt it had all been done before (Henrietta's War, The Provincial Lady Goes to War etc) and, for me, though enjoyable, not memorable.
Princes at War – Deborah Cadbury. I recently reviewed her marvellous book Queen Victoria's Matchmaking, here, and when I was in the library looking at the returned shelves spotted this one. I had honestly never heard of this author before and here she was popping up again. In the prologue we are witnessing the abdication of Edward VIII and the deep distress of his brothers. The future King George VI is in a pitiable state, feeling scared and totally inadequate for the job ahead – he knows he will have to rely on his brothers for help and support and wonders if they are also up to the job. Henry the Duke of Gloucester and George, Duke of Kent who leads a very raffish lifestyle.
As with the book on Queen VIctoria, I found this immensely readable, well written and I was unable to put it down. Spent most of the last Sunday afternoon reading it. We may think out Royal Family are not the sharpest tools in the box from an academic point of view and that is probably right, but this book reveals just how hard and how conscientiously these three brothers dealt with WWII. The Duke of Gloucester, travellled the length and breadth of the country, viewing preparations, visiting endless air fields, factories and meeting 
soldiers, airmen and sailors bolstering their patriotism, encouraging, praising – he never seemed to stop and, having thought of this particular Duke as a nonentity for years, I was left seriously impressed by him.
The Duke of Kent, who was closest to the Duke of Windsor and influenced by him, was a at first a different kettle of fish, bored with the job he was giving and missing his easy louche lifestyle, but in the end he also buckled down, worked hard, married Princess Marina and supported the King in everything. He died in a tragic plane crash which was a huge blow to the family.
And King George? Well, he stuck at it. Thought of as rather dull compared to his charismatic elder brother, in the end the British people took him to their hearts. They may have been fascinated by Edward VIII and his charm but they recognised a good thing when they saw it and by the end of the war King George was immensely loved. Most interesting throughout this book is the correspondence with Winston Churchill, a man who had supported the ex-King but who ended up appreciating the King and whose friendship he treasured.
And as for the Duke of Windsor, the more I read about him and Mrs Simpson, the more glad I am that he met her and abdicated. A self centered, childish egoist in total thrall to this demanding wife who, it is clear, never loved him, and doing all he could to placate her in her fury at not being give the HRH title. This is the harshest critique I have read of her for some time.
A thoroughly enjoyable and fascinating book I am going to keep an eye out for this author in the future.
I was given a couple of books by Sarah Paretsky featuring her VI Warsheski a private investigator, but though I read them I just could not get on with them at all. I remember I tried her a few years ago and abandoned them. Shame because, on paper, they are right up my strasse. I did read U is for Undertow by Sue Grafton this week as well, another PI and these I love. I am trying to work out why I like one and not the other. Odd.
I also had a lovely weepy afternoon reading Pollyanna but will save that for another time.
Off to London tomorrow then and I will take a book with me. Why I ask myself as I never have time to read it!
Au reservoir
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