The Last Witch in Edinburgh

 I decided to read a fantasy for a change, but books that are historical are my preference.  This book opens in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1824 where they were having a witchcraft hysteria, and hanging women accused of being witches.  It's The Last Witch in Edinburgh.   

                                 

                   

 The author Marielle Thompson is aware that this is alternate history.  According to a Wikipedia article on Witch Persecution in Scotland, the last executions of women for witchcraft happened in  1706 and the last trial of a woman for witchcraft happened in 1727.  I'm not exactly sure why Thompson wanted to situate such events nearly a century later.

Much later in the narrative, an important character is raped while she was a college student, but it didn't go to trial.  This happened in the 21st century.  I learned from A paper published by the government of Scotland that the conviction rate for rape in Scotland is lower than for any other crime.  This is probably why the rape that happened in this novel was never reported to the police.

I was intrigued by a reference to a Clootie Well in this book.  This is a holy well with a tree growing beside it.  Strips of cloth or ribbons are tied to the tree to memorialize a deceased person. The memorial tree established for a murder victim in The Last Witch of Edinburgh seemed similar but there was more investment in it.  There was a portrait of the murder victim and numerous other portraits of deceased people significant to the college students who gathered at the memorial tree.  The tree seemed to become a metaphor for all the grief in that community.  It was very special to them.

I was touched by The Last Witch of Edinburgh, but I tend to want more from a book on an intellectual level. So I considered it very good, but not excellent.

                                         

 

Home By Nightfall: My Musings on a Mystery Taking Place in the Victorian Period

I wanted to have read a mystery in February for the mystery book club that I attend,  so I picked out a mystery from the top of a book pile.   It was Home by Nightfall by Charles Finch.  This is the first book I've read by this author.

                                  

 

The novel takes place during the Victorian period which is one of my least favorite historical contexts. Not only does it contain  the aristocracy of earlier periods, but hypocrisy is rampant.  There is nothing that I find attractive about this era.  So why did I actually read the entire book?  

Maybe it was the fact that Muller, the missing man, was a pianist.  I think I was hoping for some musical content. Alas, there wasn't any. Muller being missing was the pretext for the book.  There wasn't much focus on him as a character or on his professional activities.  

There were moments in Home By Nightfall that amused me.  Charles Lenox , the dectective, had said that his brother Edmund was wasting his time by teaching women how to read.  I enjoyed Edmund's cutting response.  He asked Charles if the time of Molly, Edmund's deceased wife, had been valueless.  He also told Charles, "I shall teach the horses to read if it pleases me."

I learned the origin of the phrase "reading them the Riot Act" from Home By Nightfall.  I already knew that King George I, the first Hanovrian King of England, was afraid that the Jacobite supporters of the previous dynasty would overthrow him.  I first read about Jacobites in the work of Robert Louis Stevenson when I was child.  Stevenson caused me to have a sentimental attachment to Jacobites. Far more recently, I wrote about Jacobites in a review of  a Steve Moretti novel on this blog here.

 I have to say that if Home By Nightfall had been about Jacobites, I would have been more receptive when I read it. Victorian characters put me in a sour mood. I gave it a C grade which I consider the equivalent of two stars.  Fans of the Victorian era may want to disregard my perspective and substitute their own.  

 

                                                                      

 

                                    

 

 

  

Hidden Libraries

 With a degree in library science, no one will be astonished to learn that I love libraries.  Through Hidden Libraries by D. C. Helmuth, I discovered libraries whose existence was totally unknown to me.

                                    

I knew about Little Free Libraries which are small collections on the street.  I didn't know that the first Little Free Library was begun in 2009, and that there are now 75,000 of them in 88 countries.  

I also picked up a book from a Little Free Library for the first time recently.

It was mentioned in Hidden Libraries that two librarians stocked a cart with books that local homeless people said they wanted to read.  I thought that was a wonderful idea.  

I very much disliked the woman who requested The Lord of the Flies "to teach a friend what the world was really like".  When I read The Lord of the Flies, I remembered thinking that it was what the world would be like if it were populated solely by adolescent boys, or people who had the mentality of adolescent boys. 

I discovered that there were cards in the front of library books because you were supposed to sign the card and leave it with library staff.  No one did that anymore.  I think I did it with books I borrowed from my university's library, but never with books from public libraries.  It wasn't expected from users at public libraries.

I was disgusted to learn that in Bogota, Columbia  the wealthy threw books they purchased in the trash after they were finished reading them.  This happened every day!  A man found these books that had been thrown in the trash and established a library with them.  I could never throw a book away myself.  Even if I disliked it, someone else might love it.

This book stated that deaf children were isolated unless they were taught sign language.  This gives the impression that there is a single deaf sign language that is used all over the world.  There are different deaf sign languages in various countries, or even local deaf sign languages.  I even read about two deaf children who created a language to communicate with each other. 

I thought that The Think Differently Book Exchange was an amazing idea.  This collection existed in New Zealand.  It was in a catering refrigerator which was full of books that individuals donated because the books caused them to think differently.  I personally would want to keep books that caused me to think differently.  I would have to buy a second copy of such books to donate.

There were numerous types of libraries mentioned that I haven't discussed here.  This was absolutely fascinating. I considered this a book about alternative libraries and graded it A.