Strange goings on

No you are not mistaken... the lay out and look of the blog has changed!!!! Although the person writing it has not changed... no new template for that. I found this new option to edit the look of your blog and had a little play around. Managed to find a really appropriate background, some nice new colours and now it looks a bit more snazzy. Once I figure out how to change the picture again I might even do that!

The book I have just finished is a non-fiction one and there is not plot to spoil so I will not be putting any "spoiler alert" up for this review. So if you don't want to know if the book ends with and index or not do not read on!!


This House is Haunted - Guy Lyon Playfair
The subtitle of the book is "The Investigation into the Enfield Poltergeist".
I remember coming across the name Enfield Poltergeist years and years ago. I am not really sure any more why I came across it but I can remember many years ago reading something about it and thinking "jeez that's interesting". At the time I did not find out much more about it other than the fact that there was some weird stuff going on in England. Actually, looking at it now, if it played out in '77-'79 I was just a young lass so maybe I heard something on the news or read about it in some magazine or other. I was one of those weird kids who loved to read and look up stuff in books when other kids were off playing hide and seek. When, years later, I started reading more about ghost stories, ghost hunting and all sorts of other weird and wonderful things I came across the name again. The final time the Enfield case came back into my life was when I went on my book buying trip to Hay on Wye last year. I found this one shop (they actually sold more than two books on ghosts) and I noticed this one so I just had to get it.
The book gives an account of what happened in a house in Enfield over a period of almost two years (the trouble started in August 1977 and ended mid 1979). The case came to the attention of the SPR in 1977 and was taken up by Maurice Grosse. He visited the house on several occasions, talked to all the people involved and kept extensive records of what went on in the house. The author of the book was also involved with the investigation himself and spent days, weeks and months collecting data, talking to family member and witnessing events as they unfolded in the house. The book has one of the best opening lines I have ever seen:
"What would you do if a piece of your furniture suddenly slid along the floor in front of your eyes? Think for a moment, and be honest with yourself. What would you actually do? [p vii]

This is a very good question. I would probably freak out and think "I did not just see that!!". Then I would probably call mr Playfair and ask him if he would mind awfully stopping by my place at his earliest convenience. By asking the quesstion of what you would do the author very quickly tries to involve you into his experiences. He gets you to think about what you would do if it was happening to you and makes you curious as to what the people did in the case he investigated.
In essence the books is a blow by blow account of the events that happened in this normal looking house in Enfield. You gain a very good insight into what happened to this unassuming English family and I must say it is simply staggering: pieces of furniture are moved, tables turned upside down, voices heard, people being thrown out of bed, puddles of water appearing out of nowhere, tape recorders being switched off and on at will, doors opened and kept closed... the list goes on and on. Even if half of the things that have been recorded in this book happened to the family it is a miracle that not all of them went stark raving mad. Apart from Grosse and Playfiar telling you their experiences they also relate what happened when various "experts" and experts came round to the house and what their findings were. Not surprisingly our investigators meet with a lot of criticism, disbelief and ridicule. Many of the "scientists" that visit the house seem more keen to prove them wrong than that they are willing to look at what is happening objectively. However, our duo they keep on investigating, gathering evidence and in the end build up a solid case of the events that took place over the almost two years that they were visiting (and at times living with) the family. Some things that the experts suggest make the situation in the house more livable whereas others just seem to aggravate the situation. In the end it feels that with all the things they have seen and recorded they have managed to construct a very strong case for the existence of poltergeists and that this was a genuine case of a family being haunted by one (or more than one perhaps?). It seems very unlikely that the whole family, over a course of almost two years would disrupt their own lives so several and be consistently reporting the same phenomena just to have a bit of media attention.
It is interesting that after all their investigating neither Playfair nor Grosse have been able to come to a clear conclusion on what the exact entity/force/energy is that defines the poltergeist. Playfair and Gross seem to be leaning towards the explanation that:

"there is a still unidentified natural force generated by human beings in certain stressful conditions, and that this force can be manipulated by a secondary personality in such a way that it gives us the impression of intelligent action by a separate individual." [p 289]

However, in the Enfield case even when one of the centres of activity is removed from the house strange things still happen, albeit less often and extreme than before. At one point Playfair also suggests that poltergeist are like a variety of Gilles de La Tourette syndrome. As in Tourettes acts by poltergeists are sudden, uncontrolled, in the Enfield case the voices speak in obscenities and swear a lot and there are grunting barking like noises also produced by Tourettes sufferers. However, I don't quite see how the two are linked and Playfair does not really seems to pursue the link too far?

You think that you would be disappointed that at the end of the book Playfair and Grosse are no closer to finding out how of why things happened in Enfield than they were when they were first called in but I was not. What is clear to me is that the field of psychic research has some some slippery customers to deal with, ones that are not easily categorised, defined or labeled. This might explain to some extent why some people struggle to believe events like the ones that occurred in Enfield. The human race tends to want to be able to poke or prod something to see what it does and we like things to do the same thing every time. Science likes to have something tangible to test and study but unfortunately this is not always what the world of psychic research gives us to study. To me it makes life more interesting.


PS: and for those who want to know, there is no index!!!


Title: This House is Haunted
Author: Guy Lyon Playfair
308 pages
Sutton Publishing
ISBN nr 978-0-7509-4836-4

Books to be read: 73

Great Heights

I noticed that it has been a while since I last finished a book (I might need to adjust that planning of a book every 2 weeks), but now that the world cup has ended and I am curbing the time spent playing Mahjong on my Nintendo DSI I seem to have some time to read/finish a book! It has also helped that I am not spending this weekend helping a friend move house. So, after getting nearly to the end last night I have today managed to finish my book.
It's a detective one and is part of my "Reading the Detectives" reading plan. Apart from ghost stories I really like reading detectives as well and the plan is to read as many different ones as I can. Judging from the crime sections I have seen in online shops and in the major book shops in town I still have a fair way to go before I have read at least one of each crime author but hey.... I've got time, patience and a great ferocity to read on my side!


#### SPOILER ALERT ####

On Beulah Height - Reginald Hill
This was the first one of this author I have read and it was a good one! It features the detectives Dalziel and Pascoe (known from the tv series named after them). I must say I never really got into watching them on telly but have seen bits of some of the episodes. In a way this was good because I could use the look of the actors I know to have played them in my head but not have them impede on my interpretation of what they did and how they acted too much whilst reading.

There are several stories that play out in this book. One of them is about some girls who went missing in the little village of Dendale about 15 years ago. This storyline tells you a little about who was lost, how the investigation was run (Dalziel was one of the officers investigating what went on then) and who was thought to have been involved in the disappearances. The main part of this story is told by the testimony of one of the local girls who was attacked but managed to get away. The rest of the blanks are filled in by various people reading the report on the Dendale case and with the memories of the officers that were involved with the case then and are still in the force now.
Then there is the present day where, 15 years later another girl has disappeared close to where the others went missing and Dalziel and his sidekick Pascoe are called in to find out what happened. Before the investigation even gets out of the starting blocks Pascoe is pushed to the side lines by his daughter becoming really ill and hospitalised. He spends most of the time in the book at her bedside but in spite of that manages to play a very important role in the unfolding of the case. His instincts leads one of the other detectives (Novello) on to discover some major leads and get hold of the major players. There are also the more personal and individual stories of the main characters involved. Dalziel bumping into an old lover, Pascoe's daughter being ill and his recent discoveries about his past, Wield with his gay relationship, his life in the countryside and his love for a little monkey, Novello and her getting to grips with the investigation and how to deal with Dalziel and the male dominated police force she is in. All these are very neatly woven into the main reason for the book - the disappearance of another little girl. The story of what has happened to the little girl does not unfold at a blistering pace but takes its time and it almost seems that the author is more interested in telling you the store of the people in the village and their actions than he is in moving the plot along. When the reveals come they are not in a look at me, thunder and lightening, big flashy show stopper kind of style but almost understated and it seems as we all just happened to stumble on this information and now we know better what happened. As with every good detective story we are not told what exactly leads the detectives to the right man/woman in the end but the story is very nicely wrapped up. There is not one big thing that really leads you to any one suspect. As the investigation goes on things are discovered that could implicate people but nothing definite. Sometimes one person looks a bit guiltier that the other but we get nothing definite until the end chapters. There is off course the obvious red herring, Geordie, but from how he is dealt with (character not developed that much, too much emphasis on him as a potential suspect) you almost know from the start that he will turn out to have nothing to do with the disappearances past or present. He's an opportunist and a slick operator but not a killer. Actually the other red herring is Barney. He is the brother of the man all the villagers thought was responsible for the initial disappearances. His presence lingers through some of the story but he is never emphasised or the character developed so much that you think he is actually the killer.
one of the nice things of the story line is that all the officers involved - Dalziel, Pascoe, Wield, Novello get to contribute their bit to the outcome of the story of the missing girl. Each managed to get important information in their own way that moves the story on. Dalziel even manages to spend some time between the sheets with an old lover! Little discoveries keep being made about the story and little by little the whole thing becomes visible but still we as readers only get little clues and are in the dark for most of it. For me one of the main clues comes when Pascoe's daughter wakes up and points out someone she saw on the day a little girl went missing. We get told she points at someone and as a reader you know the picture she looks at but it is one of 5 people she could be identifying so you are still left with lots of options for the plot to develop.
We get another clue from a revised report from a young girl about the original disappearances and another one when a body is found in the cellar of a house in Dendale. So you do get something but the exact implications are clearer to the characters in the book than they are to you as a reader.
In the end the story focuses on a small group of people who by now are obviously involved. Each of them has some link to the girls that disappeared in the past or were near to where the new girl went missing. Naturally the truth comes out but I must say that the truth was not what I thought it was going to be. Yet when you find out what really happened and think back over the story it all makes sense... why they behaved the way they did and why they kept the secrets that they did for all these years. It's a very human drama that unfolds but yet not overly sentimental of bombastic. Like the rest of the story not everything is spelt out and you as a reader are left to imagine for yourself what happens after the final confession.

What I find interesting as well is the way the characters speak. Hill has given his Dalziel a broad accent. He is described as a big, burly man and his accent and speech seem to fit him to a tee. Pascoe is more understated, educated and pensive - he tends to think more before he speaks and encourages those around him to offer opinions. He is more of a slender guy and more sensitive. Novello is still trying to find her voice. At the beginning of the book she is not sure how to approach either Dalziel of Pascoe and she has to learn how each of them wants to get the fact that she has discovered presented to them. She manages this fine and you can see that she will be a valuable asset to the team in future. Wield is to the point, precise and knows when not to talk. He is perhaps them darkest horse in the squad, the most private and the one that seems to be the least likely to have a major influence on anything yet he manages to bring people together and often is the link between two people making discoveries. Hill defines his characters well and they have a depth to them that is nice to see. Some of the characters on he side line are not that well defined and lack some depth but as you only encounter them a few times that is okay. All his main characters are fleshed out well, have their own motivation for doing what they do and have a developed personal life that is relevant to them and influences and is influenced by the developing plot.


Title: On Beulah Height
Author: Reginald Hill
440 pages
Harper Collins
ISBN nr 0-00-649000-X


Books to be read: 74

Tense moments

Once again it has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that I am not to be trusted to walk in to a bookshop whilst carrying any form a valid currency or plastic and not come out with a purchase. Yep.. I went to the bookshop in Wolverton and before I knew it I was holding three books and paying for them at the till. Ah well.... just a few more books won't hurt.

Books bought: 3
Books to be read: 76

In between doing usual stuff during the week and over this weekend I have also managed to finish another one. And what a corker it was!


#### SPOILER ALERT #####

The Day of the Jackal - Frederick Forsyth
I had no problem making my mind up on this one. I loved reading it! It had a great pace, good tension build up and the characters in it were interesting and intriguing.
In essence the story if that of an assassin who is hired by a group of plotters who would rather have De Gaulle dead than looking dapper in his uniform. One of the plotters comes up with the idea of a foreign assassin, a complete unknown to the police in France. This type of man seems to be the only one who might be able to rid them of their political leader and start a new era for the plotters. After an extensive search they find their man (An Englishman), agree a code name (The Jackal), and agree a fee to be paid (Half a million dollars) and leave the stranger to his own devices. He has a contact that can feed him information if need be but he will essentially carry out the planning of the hit himself, on his own. Not even the plotters will know when he will strike. There are a number of small things that reveal the existence of a plot to the authorities and at first they are baffled as to how they are to discover a man who has no name and no known whereabouts. However, through dogged police work, some neat little coincidences and some sheer good luck they manage to find out what passports he is using and who he could be impersonating. The Jackal has prepared himself well for this one and he has four different identities he can choose from. The man who supplied him with these does not live to tell the tale but apart form that the death toll our Jackal leaves behind is not that high. He is obviously a very clever and cunning man and can blend into any background. He is not know to any authorities and therein lies his strength. He manages to stay one step ahead of the police almost until the very end. He does get caught in the end and it is good that the man who has headed the investigation in France is the one who ends the hunt. Then in the last few pages you find out that it was a pure stroke of luck that they actually found the name in the first place (will the real Charles Calthrop please stand up?!) and the whole thing seems even more amazing.
What stuck me with this one was the way the book was written. The style is very "meticulous" like the Jackal. It's concise, clean, organised and precise. The whole book feels like that and I guess that is reflected in the character of the Jackal as well. Forsyth does not use elaborate descriptive language to entertain us but he sticks to the facts and lets them speak for themselves. He changes perspective from the Jackal to the other in players in the story so you get to see their reactions to what happens and this makes the whole thing more interesting. There is some distraction away from the main storyline as some of the characters' actions are given some attention but these asides do not stray from the main story too far and serve to develop the plot forwards to the next step. The story moves on quickly, it seems even quicker the nearer we get to the end of the book, as we draw nearer to the time of the hit the developments go quicker and the tension mounts. The reveals are timed well and you as a reader are in sync with them happening so you are neither anxiously waiting for the next reveal or impatiently wanting to see what happens next. The only thing I did think at one point as the Jackal was cruising around France in his car was "does this guy never have to stop for petrol". Fortunately for me the next page he did.
It would take up far too much time to explain all the little twists and turns that lead to the discovery of the Jackal, who he is and where he is holed up. Suffice it to say that if nothing else the story shows how many little things when connected can show you the big picture. At first glance this picture seems to suggest being one thing and then, just when you think you know what the picture is going to be, it changes in front of your eyes into something different and you have to go back and start again. There are so many times the policemen are close to catching our Jackal but each time they miss him by days or hours. The Jackal stays cool, focused and concentrates on getting the job done by whatever means necessary (hence the slight increase in the body count at the end) and he just about pulls it off too. It was a joy to read this one!


Title: The Day of the Jackal
Author: Frederick Forsyth
382 pages
Corgi Books
ISBN: 0 552 09121 0


Books to be Read: 75

Stuck in the middle

I think the heading for this review is as good as it's gonna get as I am not really sure what to make of this one. I kind of liked it and kind of did not. I usually have a kind of defined opinion of the book I am reading. You feel when you read it if you are getting on with it or not. You get through some books easily, some take more attention and care when you read them and will make you slow down your reading speed but still... as a reader I tend to know when I like a book or not and with this one I am just not sure. I like some of it but not all... Let me elaborate.. but first....


#### SPOILER ALERT ####


Tales of Mystery & the Macabre - Elizabeth Gaskell
This is a collection of short stories (according to the blurb "a dark anthology) by this author. I have never read any of her other work so cannot compare it to that. I believe she is most famous for writing North and South and I ave heard some really good thins about that one so I will have to go and find that one too. But, back to the bundle at hand. The stories are said to be mysterious and/or macabre but I had to look pretty hard to find any of that in the tales in this volume. Yes - some of them have something marginally strange happen in them but they are not on the same scariness level of an MR James or Joseph Le Fanu. Not by a long shot!
As I said I am not sure what exactly ails these stories? Maybe nothing and perhaps I am just used to pacier and more concise ghost stories but at times there seems to be something lacking from these ones. Maybe it is pace, maybe it is that they are too elaborate or too well developed or end too suddenly with the anticipation of more to come and none that follows. Some of her writing is very touching and beautiful and you can tell that she is skilled in her art but... I don't know what they lack... let me go through them and see if I can clarify.

The Old Nurse's Story
This one is set up as and old nurse maid telling children the story of their mother's experiences when she was young. Apparently the mother was orphaned as a little girl and sent to live with her family in a big old house of which part was closed off. Everything seems to be okay except sometimes at night the nurse maid hears this music from an organ. Then one time the little girl is lost and when they find her she is curled up in the snow cold as ice. she survives but tells tales of a woman and another little girl that coaxed her away from the safety of the house. In the end we find out that this woman was the sister of the present resident the house and she was turned out by her own father (who is the guy playing the organ - well, that was a dead give away). The only ghostly hing that happens that we get a scene where the betrayal of the one daughter over the other is acted out. There is some booming noises and some shouting and fainting, someone dies and then that's that. Some of the dialogue is well written and the emotions that the characters have is really well presented. You feel for them but in the end, for me there is no real tension and no real scare. There are a few plots that intermingle and it all comes to a sudden end. It's almost as if she is trying to hard to put something else or extra in to try and make it work and for me it does not really come off. She had the story of the organ playing but then the girl has to wander off and the whole business of the daughter being cast out by the father is brought up as well. Either would have done for a ghost story but she throws them together and she really did not have to.

The Squire's Story
This one is even more of a let down. No ghosts, nothing even remotely scary or worrying, nothing to make you go "wow really?!" Basically, a stranger comes to a new town, charms everyone, obviously blinds them by his presence and manners and marries one of the best catches in town. Then he turns out not to be who says he is. The whole thing meanders a bit too much, does not get to the point and calls in all kinds of other side characters than the main ones to move the story along so it distracts you from the main story and the whole thing loses it focus slightly. It is very neatly rounded up in the last paragraph or so.. a bit too nicely and too quickly for my taste.

The Poor Clare
This one had me wondering the entire story why it was called what is was called. I kept thinking who is this Clare and when is she going to turn up. I'll put you out of your misery right now - they are actually a religious order who give away everything they have to help the poor and sick. They sacrifice what little they have so others may live.
This one is good but suffers from the meandering disease. It seems to start out as a family history but then turns out to be more about the woman servant and her daughter. They do not see eye to eye and the daughter goes off to build her own life. This does not go well but she does have a child. Before you find that out, however, you have to read your way through a story about a man being cursed and our narrator being sent to find heirs to a small fortune and falling in love on the way. Just as you are about to lose the will to live and wonder where this is going you find that the servant woman is the long lost grandmother of the girl or narrator has fallen in love with. Then we get another sub plot that sees out narrator go abroad, get caught up in a war, find the his love interest's father and the girl's Grandmother (the servant from the first story) who turns out to have turned to God for assistance in cleansing her soul so her granddaughter can be forgiven and lead a normal life with our narrator. The whole story could have been condensed and differently arranged to make it flow better. I kind of felt cheated that in the end it was all coming together like that. Not that you do not have any doubts that that is the way it will work out for Gaskell never introduces a character that does not serve a purpose somewhere along the line. Again the emotions described are put on the page very well. Gaskell knows how to evoke an interest in her characters and you really feel for the old Clare as she struggles to put right with love and service to God what the curse that was cast in a burst of fury.
I just cannot help thinking that the story would have been better if it would not have kept going from her to there and then back to somewhere else and someone else.

Lois the Witch
An orphan girl gets sent to live with her family in the newly settled colonies of America. always an outcast she gets unjustly accused of being a witch and hanged.
Again the story meanders a bit too much -the girl has an amorous cousin to deal with and a jealous cousin as well. she is not loved by her new family and never really fits in. She remains an outcast and you really feel that in the writing, in how the girl speaks and acts. Again, Gaskell writes about the human emotion very well. She gets you to feel sorry for this little innocent girls that is pushed into a strange world that she does not know or understand with no-one to protect her, staying with people that really do not want her there and she is having to cope with her emotions on her own. The final part of the story where she is in jail is really hear wrenching and emotional. But.. also again, the story could have been condensed down to just dealing with the girl, her story, her emotions, the accusations against her and how she deals with them. I think it would have been more powerful then. Not sure what the mysterious or macabre element in this story is but hey.. let's not quibble over details.

The Doom of the Griffiths
At the risk of sounding like a broken record... the intro in this story is way too long. Gaskell could have gotten to the point a lot sooner. The point being that a curse was placed on a family that the son would kill his father and in the end that is sort of what happens. But it does not transpire before we get the tale of three generations of fathers raising their sons to be spoilt brats and not learning from it. Just as you think one is going to be able to escape the prophesy tragedy hits and people die. Nothing scary, strange in this one and not a ghost in sight.

The Ghost in the Garden Room
There is actually a ghost in this one. It is mentioned in the introduction of the story and it is the ghost that tells our narrator the story we are about to read... although by the time you get to the end of it you tend to have forgotten there was ever a ghost in it.
A couple marry late in life, have one son whom they spoil and indulge a bit. He gets to go to school and later on to London to go into business. He comes home to see if his father will give him some money to buy into a business, which the father (rightly) refuses. we by this time know the boy is a cad and a bit of a bad boy. When he does not get his way he "disappears" and the parents left behind are wondering what could have happened to their golden boy.
Years onwards the house of the old coupe gets robbed and he is one of the robbers, they get a fright and their boy gets away.
There is a court case, they have to testify against theirson and this part is very moving and well written. Once more Gaskell shows her skill at portraying the human emotion and you wish the old couple were just left alone to deal with their grief of discovering their own son tried to do them wrong. There is the subplot of the "love interest" of the son. A cousin comes to stay with them as a child and becomes sort of betrothed to him. However, he treats her badly, she sees through him and ends up dedicating her life to the boys parents, her uncle and aunt.

The Grey Woman
She is grey because she stayed inside a lot because she was afraid to go out in case her mad, villainous first husband was still out there looking for her.
A group of tourists on holiday are given shelter by a miller who has an interesting portrait on his wall. The story of at woman is told here. The story is basically said to be a set of letters a woman writes to her daughter to explain why she was so shocked at meeting her daughter's choice for a husband (though I admit I had to go back a few pages to see why the name was so important... still not really sure I get it?!).
It is a tragic story of a woman married to a man who turns out to be a hoodlum and a killer. She ends up relying on her maid to disguise them to be able to escape her husbands clutches but she manages in the end. She does not like going outside from fear of being discovered and this is why she looks the way she does. It does end well in a way as the woman's first husband is caught, she marries again and has a loving husband but she never does leave the house very often.
This one meanders a bit less, seems better organised but the disguise of the whole thing being put together from letters is not really necessary. It would have stood up on it's own without this narrative device.

Curious, if true
Man fall asleep plodding through a forest in the dark and dreams of going to a party in some weird castle. Well what do you expect?! the gag is that the characters in the story are well known fairy tale characters gone haywire.
Cute descriptions of the different characters but this one kind of left me with a "is that all there is to it?". Yet it's shortness gives it more punch and direction so good in that respect.

Disappearances
Does what you expect it to do. Tells you about some "mysterious" disappearances.
It seems to be more a catalogue of anecdotes thrown together, disguised as being potentially interesting tales and the promise of more. Maybe she should have used some of these mini plots and developed them into more substantial short stories? This last one did not do it for me.
Oh goodie.. that was the last one.. good!

All in all I struggled with this one. Gaskell has a very nice writing style and I could not really say I was bored by her writing. I was disappointed by her stories as they seemed to me to lack purpose. At times she seems to keep inventing another twist and turn in her stories to "make it more interesting or the reader" but in that she loses focus and the story just meanders off into a different direction. You do get pulled back to the main character and the main point but a times I have sort of had enough by then and just want to get to the end of it to see how it will finish. At times it is almost as if she is trying to write an epic 500 page novel but then tries to pull it back in into a short story as she realises that this is the name of the game she is playing. As I have said, she is excellent at writing about the human emotion and getting you to feel the character's plight, sorrow and grief (and there is plenty to go round) and this is why I like in the stories however a a reader she did not engage me enough in the plot and story line to really pull me in hook, line and sinker.


Title: Tales of Mystery & the Macabre
Author: Elizabeth Gaskell
305 pages
Wordsworth Editions
ISBN 978-1-84022-095-7


I have to confess that I have bought one book in the meantime as well so I think we are even on the book count but let's check....

Books bought: 1
Books to be read: 74
and...

Books read: 1
Books to be read: 73

Yep... still quite a few to go.

On to reading The Day of the Jackal. It's proving good so far.

Progressing nicely.....

Okay... so the year is only 52 weeks and not 53... it's not gonna make a lot of difference on the grand scale of things and in the amount of time it is going to take me to read all my books. But I guess we must correctly represent the scale of the current status of my book supply and the time it will take me to read them!

Okay... so I bought another book... just the one though. The guy said that if I returned it to him before 17 Sept I would get £1 back on it. I almost wanted to laugh at him and ask him where the camera was but he was serious. Trust me, there is no way this book is ever going to find it's way back to his book stall! I never give a book back once it is mine!

The reading of my present book is going well but at present I am being somewhat delayed in my reading efforts by this little thing called the World Cup. I am still finding the odd hour here and there to read some so it will get finished eventually.

Books bought: 1
Books to be read: 73

Literary Day in London

Went to London yesterday for a little wander, trip down the bookshop and some sushi. In the process also decided to have a look round the Dickens Museum which was in the area we were wondering around. And very good it was too. Not too big but interesting, nice to look round a house where Dickens lived and wrote some of his books. An added bonus was the coffee shop which had one of the nicest strawberry cakes I have had in ages! It was a little suntrap, courtyard garden at the back of a normal looking London house but it was great to have a sit and ponder life... and chat to B my friend who was my travel buddy on the trip.
Then off to the bookshop. Hidden away in the basement of the Brunswick centre lives Skoob. It's a great little place to have a look around. They have a wide selection of books, lots of penguin books old and new (only strange that one of them had an old, original price sticker on it of £2.99 and the sale price was actually £3.50?!).... anyway, you know where this is going. A wise man once said "Nowhere is the human nature as weak as in the book shop" and how right he was! I succumbed to three. Only three though.. that's not too bad. London prices kept me from splashing out more. Sometimes when you go to the charity shops here you can pick books up for as little as £1 or even less but the one I got I have not seen down here so that's why they went home with me. One of them is a Ghost story one and the other two are biographies - Raymond Chandler and Agatha Christie. They will be read in due course.
Calculations show that if I read a book every two week I will have finished reading my 70 odd books in about.... ehm.. hang on, 70 books, two weeks er book (about), 140 weeks, divide by 53 weeks of the year= 2.69 years. Then of course there are times when you read less or take a little reading break so I guess we'll call it even at 3 years... right, so it will take me 3 years to read the ones I have now.... well.... mmmm, I'm off to read some more.


Books bought: 3
Books to be read: 72

What shall we play today?

This time round I have stepped out of my normal sphere and gone for something completely different. I had read part of this book years ago when I did my "Introduction to Teaching" course but decided it would be worth going back to it to give it a bit more attention.
I will not be putting up spoilers for this one as there is no real plot to reveal so am going to dive right in!


Games people play - Eric Berne, M.D.
The subtitle for this one sort of gives you a better idea of what the book is about: The Psychology of Human Relationships. Don't fret it's not a book that is filled with a deep and meaningful babbling analysis of the human race and the relationships humans have developed with one another.
The way I see it it basically boils down to this: people have a need to interact with one another and there is a certain structure to how this happens. This is itself should come as no surprise to any human being but what I like about how Berne approaches the subject is the way he analyses these relationships and structures.
According to Berne each individual has three ego states: Parent, Adult and Child. In short "Everyone carries his parents around inside of him, ... Everyone has an adult, ... Everyone carries a little boy or girl inside him.". The Child has the qualities of intuition, creativity and spontaneous drive en enjoyment of life. The Adult in each of us is busy with processing data and computing probabilities so we can deal effectively with the outside world (how far away i that car and is it okay for me to cross the road?). Our Parent allows us to be effective parents and takes care of routine matters in our lives (things get done because that's the way things are done). So what?!... I hear you say. Well... when we interact with one another we can do this on any of these three levels sometimes this works sometimes it does not. A question can provoke different reactions in different people. Both the person who asks the question as well as the person that responds will react from a certain perspective (Adult, Parent or Child).

To the normal Adult question: Do you know where my cuff links are?
The Adult response would be: On the desk
The Child response would be: Why don't you keep track of your own things? You're not a child any more.

The first respondent sees the question for what it is - a request for information on the location of the cuff links and responds from his adult state of mind by saying where the cuff links are. The second respondent see the question as an example of the questioner's incompetence to take care of his own stuff and the response implies that it is not the first time this has happened. It implies criticism of the behaviour and the finger of blame is firmly being pointed, like a parent criticising a child. Basically, as long as people react on the same level with one another then there are no issues. As soon as people switch roles in their responses problems arise and doors start slamming. People may say something at one level but the underlying motive of the question/remark is totally different. Example: Flirtation is not what it seems.
Person A says: Come and see the barn
B replies: I've loved barns ever since I was a little girl

See... innocent enough as two statements about barns, however, what they are really saying is:
A: wanna go and have some fun in the barn?
B: I'd love to go and have some fun with you in the barn!

When people play the Games that Berne mentions this is exactly what happens. People have conversations but there is always an ulterior motive in their question or behaviour, people do not play fair! The Games consist of a certain series of interactions, responses and behaviours
and can be divided into various categories, most of them are sort of self explanatory and easily recognisable.

Life Games
Alcoholic
Debtor
Kick Me
Now I've got you you son of a bitch

Marital Games
Corner
Courtroom
Frigid Woman
Harried
If it weren't for you
Look how hard I've tried
Sweetheart

Party Games
Ain't it awful
Blemish
Schlemiel
Why don't you - Yes but

Sexual Games
Let's you and him fight
Perversion
Rapo
The stocking game
Uproar

Underworld Games
Cops and robbers
How do you get out of here
Let's pull a fast one on Joey

Consulting Room Games
Greenhouse
I'm only trying to help you
Indigence
Peasant
Psychiatry
Stupid
Wooden Leg

Most people will know (or have played) at least one of these games without me even going into any big explanations of them. Anyone will recognise these games as having been played with them at one point of time or another... and that is the great thing about this book. It seems a very simple premise to look at the roles that people give themselves and sees if there is any structure to how people interact in these roles.

I am not going to go into all the games and all the roles here as that would take up way too much space. Let me just say that when you read through the games, look at the people around you (your colleagues, friends and family) you will see more clearly how you interact with them and they interact with you. You might be able to see how some interesting relationships have developed over the years and what your role is in them. Depending on how you feel about being in that role there is always the option to go and change your role but beware that this will impact the other people involved in your game(s) as well!

Needless to say people do not continuously play games and not all people play games to the same extent or degree but it is still fascinating to see how much familiarity there is in many of them and it makes you stop and think on how the human mind works. It made me think about how I interact with some people and how people around me work and interact with me.
A wise man once said "Knowledge is power" and knowledge about yourself is always a good thing.

Title: Games People Play
Author: Eric Berne M.D.
164 pages
Penguin Books
ISBN nr 978-0-14-002768-6

Books bought: 0
Books to be read: 69