bookshelves: published-1932, britain-scotland, winter-20112012, series, aberdeenshire, paper-read, one-penny-wonder, bucolic-or-pastoral, epic-proportions, families, historical-fiction, period-piece, bedside, wwi, winter-20142015, re-visit-2015, conflagration, lit-richer, classic, class-war, incest-agameforallthefamily, poison, suicide

REVISIT VIA BBC: Listen here

Description: Divided between her love of the land and the harshness of farming life, young Chris Guthrie finally decides to stay in the rural community of her childhood. Yet World War I and the changes that follow make her a widow and mock the efforts of her youth.

Episode 1/2 (1 hour): Chris is torn between the love of the land and her ambition to be a teacher.

Episode 2/2: After her father's death, Chris is determined to work the farm, alone if needs be.

watch a dramatised production. Not the best of quality but hey! who's going to be so picky at this stage. There is, allegedly, a new film in production as we speak.




PAPER READ: fireside, sipping scotch and toasting Rabbie Burns.

Edited with an introduction by Tom Crawford. Map of Kinraddie

Dedication: To Jean Baxter

Arbuthnott is the real Kinraddie

Opening - KINRADDIE lands had been won by a Norman childe, Cospatric de Gondeshil, in the days of William de Lyon, when gryphons and such-like beasts still roamed the Scots countryside and folk would waken in their beds to hear the children screaming, with a great wolf-beast, come through the hide window, tearing at their throats.

Dunnottar Castle.

I know there are many historical-fictionistas out there who dislike dialects and there is a further modernist warning:

Gibbon's style is one of the great achievements of the trilogy and should be seen in relation to Scottish forerunners like John Galt as well as in the context of modernist innovators such as James Joyce, Gertrude Stein and William Faulkner (Tom Crawford, Canongate Books)

Read from July 30 to August 03, 2012

One from the boxes that will nicely fit my personal seasonal challenge.

Withdrawn from Swindon Borough Council Library Services.

Dedication: To the memory of my mother

Opening quote: 'Tush.' The old woman winked glitteringly. 'Who are you to question what happens? here we are. What's life anyway? Who does what for where and why? All we know is here we are, alive again, and no questions asked. A second chance.' She toddled over and held out her thin wrist. 'Feel.' The captain felt. 'Solid ain't it?' she asked. He nodded. 'Well the,' she said triumphantly, 'why go around questioning?'

'Well,' said the captain, 'it's simply that we never thought we'd find a thing like this on Mars.' Ray Bradbury, 'The Third Expedition'

There is no present in Wales,
And no future,
There is only the past
Brittle with relics...
R S Thomas

Opening: The coastal plain to the spouth of Aberbreuddwyd seems, at first sight, to do little more than fill an awkward gap between the sea on one side and mountains on the other. It is a thorny strip, a mile and a half wide, of marshy fields, small tenant farms, clumps of Douglas firs, abandoned aerodromes, toppled cromlechs and disused sheds of black tin.



Beautifully written and will search out the next.