Books and high places

Today (30th November) is not only the last day of Book Week Scotland 2014, it is also St. Andrew's Day, a day on which Historic Scotland properties across the country are thrown open to the public free of charge.*

Last year my family and I visited Stirling Castle thanks to this offer; this time we decided to visit Doune Castle. We chose Doune because it is not very far away from us. I also thought that it might be fun to finish my reading pledge for Book Week Scotland (which was to read a piece of Scots literature to my family every day) by reading an excerpt from Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe in a genuinely mediaeval setting. I was delighted therefore to discover from a display in the castle that it was used as one of the locations for a TV adaptation of Ivanhoe! Actually, Doune Castle has been used as a film location a number of times, the most famous being for Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I have to admit that I did succumb to temptation and lean off the battlements to shout, "Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!" at some baffled-looking tourists ("What did she say?" asked one of them, shaking his head). I won't have been the first person to do that; it's practically de rigeur for visitors to the castle...

The excerpt I chose to read was part of the scene in which Rebecca (my absolutely favourite character in Ivanhoe) is imprisoned in a turret room, and the evil Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert comes up to have his wicked way with her; she successfully holds him off by climbing onto the balcony and threatening to throw herself to her death if he comes one step closer. Impervious to pity, he is however impressed with her courage and self possession.

We sat by the window in the upstairs room pictured in the photo above. I read from the book whilst my daughter looked at the drop and considered how very unpleasant it would be to throw yourself out! I absolutely loathe heights so I must say it certainly brought the scene to life in a very visceral way...

I'm thrilled that we had such a dramatic end to our week of readings for Book Week Scotland. Over the course of the week we have read from the works of Burns, Scott, Stevenson and Conan Doyle as well as a contemporary poet, Kona MacPhee. I'm very aware that we have only scratched the surface - I for one will certainly be reading more Scott in the near future. Recommendations from Scott fans welcomed!

As this is the seventh and last day of Book Week Scotland, I'd like to thank everyone who has followed this blog, and also everyone who has retweeted or otherwise shared my posts about Book Week on social media.

Above: Doune Castle 

* The free tickets have to be ordered in advance, so be sure to look out for this offer next time!

The speckled band

Today was day 6 of Book Week Scotland and it probably presented the biggest challenge yet in meeting my reading pledge, because we were out nearly all day visiting friends in Glasgow. I had had some idea of reading to my family in the car on the way to their house, but as there was a bike in the boot with the front wheel sticking out between the two rear seats (!) I was unable to sit in the back with the children as planned. Also, I had to map read. I don't think reading a map of Scotland is quite in the spirit of my reading pledge...

After we arrived at our friends', we went for a walk and the boys went mountain biking, then we had tea and cake, and then we had dinner and wine. By this time it was very dark outside. It was patently going to be impossible to read anything on the journey home, and too late to do it when we got there. So in the end, I left the adults chatting over coffee, lured my daughter into the hosts' kitchen and read to her in there. The boys missed out but I gave them a recap of the highlights on the trip home. I hope honour was satisfied.

Tonight's reading was The speckled band, a Sherlock Holmes story by Edinburgh-born Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, one of whose other, non-Sherlockian tales I read earlier in the week. I chose this story because I have a particular fondness for it. When I was a child, my father had a couple of vinyl records with dramatisations of Sherlock Holmes stories on them, and The speckled band was one of them. This was in the days before audio books and indeed even before CDs. I think there were at least four recorded stories, but the only one I can remember was The speckled band. I think that was the only one I was actually interested in listening to, because I found it incredibly scary - evidently I had a taste for the macabre even at an early age. I remember I used to listen out for the moment when Julia Stoner chokes out the words, "It was the band! The speckled band!" with a kind of horrified fascination. It was a moment of supreme and grotesque drama.

I very much enjoyed revisiting this story with my daughter. If you would like to read it, it is available online at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1661/1661-h/1661-h.htm#8 but personally I think it is worth investing in a copy of your own. This is the one I read from (also pictured above): The Adventures & Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes Wordsworth Classics but there are many other editions.

I'll be back again tomorrow (Sunday 30th November) with my final reading for day 7 of Book Week Scotland!

"There was a man of the Island of Hawaii..."

It's day 5 of Book Week Scotland, and I am continuing with my pledge to read a piece of Scottish literature to my family every day! As it's Friday evening and for once none of us had to rush off anywhere, I had time to read something a little longer than the things I have been reading for the past few days, namely, Robert Louis Stevenson's story The Bottle Imp. 

This story is a particular favourite of mine. I've blogged about it before, in a post called Tempered in the flames of hell, which is a quote from the story. It concerns a "man of the Island of Hawaii" who buys a bottle containing an imp who will do the bidding of whoever owns it. There are two catches: firstly, that if someone dies whilst in possession of the bottle they will go straight to hell, and secondly, that it can only ever be sold at a loss. So the price is forever going down, and as it becomes lower it becomes more difficult to sell the bottle on, because when there is no lower price the last owner will be irrevocably damned.

Bottle Imps, as I've explained in my previous blog about them, were not invented by Stevenson, but he gives his own style and character to the story with its beautiful and exotic location, and the gorgeous language and descriptions. It also has a very satisfying ending, and if there is one thing I hate it is a cop-out ending; this isn't.

I can't say much more without risking an enormous spoiler, but if you wish to read the story for yourself, the entire thing is available online here: The Bottle Imp. I thoroughly recommend it!

Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!

Today is day 4 of Book Week Scotland, and I have been continuing with my reading pledge to read aloud a piece of Scottish literature to my family every evening.

No such selection would be complete without a contribution from Robert Louis Stevenson, so this evening I read chapter one of Treasure Island. There are many exciting passages in this book but I decided to read from the very beginning because I'd hate to create any inadvertent spoilers - I'm hoping that listening to some of these excerpts and stories will encourage us all to read further.

The first chapter of the book mainly deals with the arrival at the "Admiral Benbow" inn of a highly disreputable old sailor, who drinks prodigious amounts of rum and terrorises the other customers with his uncertain temper and domineering ways. At the end of the chapter, he meets his match in the quietly-spoken Dr. Livesey, who is not only a doctor but the local magistrate. Enraged by the doctor's refusal to fall silent at his command, the old sailor threatens to stab him with his clasp-knife, but the doctor, unruffled, promises that unless he puts the knife away he will hang at the next assizes.

The doctor also tells the old sailor that, "if you keep on drinking rum, the world will soon be quit of a very dirty scoundrel!'
My daughter was thrilled by this. "Such sass," she remarked, happily.

If you wish to read the chapter we read tonight, Treasure Island is available here online: Project Gutenberg Treasure Island - however, I'd say it's well worth investing in your own copy.

Above: Long John Silver, the anti-hero of Treasure Island, is a favourite character of mine, 

as I recently explained to the Sunday Mail!

Tails

I'm rather late with this post about our reading for day 3 of Book Week Scotland, because we were out all evening yesterday. To recap for anyone who hasn't seen my previous two posts, one of my pledges for Book Week is to read a piece of Scots writing to my family every day, whether a story, poem or extract from a novel.

As with Tuesday's reading, I chose something brief for Wednesday evening because I knew we would be busy. In the event, all the rushing about meant that dinner was a hastily-snatched burger in McDonald's in Perth, so I did my reading there! I should apologise to the work and its creator for the unglamorous setting...

I felt that having read a poem by Scotland's most famous poet, Rabbie Burns, on Tuesday, it would be nice to follow it with a poem - or poems - by a modern poet living and working in Scotland. As it happens, I have two collections of poems by poet Kona MacPhee, who was born in London and grew up in Australia, but who now lives and writes in Crieff, Perthshire. I love Kona's work and have heard her read some of it at a joint event we did at Strathearn Community Library a while ago, along with fellow poet Patricia Ace (we called the event "Two poets and a novelist").

I selected two poems from Kona's collection Tails (pictured). One of them was Elegy for a climber, which was written in memory of Brendan Murphy, who died in an avalanche in India aged only 33. I don't think I am going to attempt to "review" this poem; it would need another poem to do it. Suffice to say that it is both moving and beautiful.
The other poem was Yode, which is one of my favourites. It is preceded by a quote from that great philosopher, Yoda out of Star Wars: Do, or do not. There is no try. The poem expounds upon this theme, which is one with which I heartily sympathise.

If you want to read these two poems, you'll have to lay hands on a copy of Tails, which is available on Amazon. Kona's website does offer another of her poems, The gift, which you can read online here: http://www.konamacphee.com/words/the-gift/

Incidentally, the library I mentioned above, at which we held our joint event, is also my local library and the one to whom I addressed my "love letter to a library" for Book Week Scotland. You can read the letter here: Dear Strathearn Community Library

I'll be posting again soon with our reading selection for today, day 4 of Book Week Scotland!