This time Alexander Call takes us from Botswana to Edinburgh, where Isabel Dalhousie meddles in things which are none of her business, solving a murder case along the way. And still you can't help liking her. A very easy and pleasant read.

Here is the list of the participants:

- landrellec (Rennes, France)
- aiyla (Paris, France)
- icila (La Chapelle sur Erdre, France)
- kanapoutz (Nice, France)
- bilbi (Chambéry, France)
- silentmiaouw (Vaud, Switzerland)
- portable-solace (Texas, USA)
- sweetpea0678 (Florida, USA)
- tesslouise (Tennessee, USA)
- grover3d (West Virgina, USA)
- rendiru (California, USA)
- VeronikaMM (Innsbruck, Austria)
- washti (Glinde, Germany)
- ben-nevis (Bochum, Germany)

I hope you'll enjoy the book!

Edit 09.10.: The book is on its way to Landrellec

Got it. Thank you Lesezeichen !
It made my day having this kind of parcel in my letter box.

By the way, Edinburgh is indeed a wonderful town, full of energy.
Gotta go...There's a book awaiting.

So far, I've read a few pages and I'm already keen.

Quite a pleasant read, but pleasant isn't that good for a book, is it ?
I should have read it all at once I think.
The end is disappointing, but the building of the mystery is really interesting, and the relationships described as well.
Since it takes place in Edinburgh, I cannot dislike it, but I don't feel wholly satisfied with it...

RELEASE NOTES:

On the way to aiyla.

28/10/2004 =I haven't heard from Aiyla yet, so I give her a few more days to get her address.

30/10/2004 = Got her/his address.In the post on Tuesday.

02/11/2004 = posted!

Picked up the book at post office this evening. Looks good. Looking forward to reading about Edinburgh. It is a lovely place but Glasgow is miles better ! lol
Lovely enveloppe too. Thankyou !

Picked up the book at post office this evening. Looks good. Looking forward to reading about Edinburgh. It is a lovely place but Glasgow is miles better ! lol
Lovely enveloppe too. Thankyou !

I really enjoyed it . It isn't really a mystery story but full of philosophy.
It reminded me of Sophies World by Jostein Gaarder . A book to read if you enjoyed this.
Sent off to Icila today .

Got it. I love Edimburgh and I love A. McCall Smith, I expect a good time in this book.

I'm sorry, I have not enough time to finish this book.
Too many people are waiting for it, I send it to Kanapoutz.

Received the book today!
Thanks Icila!
Et MERCI pour la photo :-D
:-*

The book was an easy and fairly enjoyable book, but I don't know, I feel the same as landrellec, it was a bit disappointing!
I much prefer "the N°1 Ladies Detective agency" serie...
I liked the characters though, I think Alexander McCall Smith creates great strong female characters! The men are never that interesting.

On the same page, two French towns were mentioned : "Lyons" and "Marseilles"; whye the S at the end for both?? Surprising...

I really liked "the Really Terrible Orchestra", and I found out that it actually exists, and that the author is one of the founders (he plays the basson and his wife the flute, just like Jamie and Isabel!).

Off to bilbi!

Wow ! Let's get to Edinburgh now ! Just two books before starting this one and I'd tell you about it...
Thanks lesezeichen for the 'ring and kanapoutz to send it to me :*

I'm a bit disappointed too by the book and especially by Isabel. I found her mean, she's always talking bad of people whereas she's the "moral guide", isn't she ? She's a lot prejudiced about anyone : Germans, French, and so on. I do prefer Jamie or Cat. Isabel is always philosophing about how people should behave and she's the first to be nosy (for instance).
I wonder whether Scottish people are as unfriendly as Isabel ! I hope they are not !
Nevertheless the plot was enjoyable to follow !

I can asure you BILBI that we scottish are lovely people. You should try a trip to Scotland some time and you'll see that we are very friendly. They may have the reputation of being mean, a bit unfair i always thought but this word should be replaced with econom is more exact.

Received on my desk today! thanks bilbi and lesezeichen, will start reading right away (any excuse to keep me away from Ulysses).
kanapoutz - Lyons and Marseilles are the English spellings of these two places, the same as you say Edimbourg and Londres for Edinburgh and London. They are pronounced Laï-unz (comme les fauves) and Mar-sailz (rhyming with tales). Don't ask me where the s came from.

Picture: an Elizabeth Blackadder. I had to look her up. Her pictures are mostly flowers and cats, a bit wishywashy.

Waow, I had no idea! Thanks Silentmiaouw, je me coucherai moins bête ce soir :-)

Well, I haven't got very far yet but I can't help thinking that I much prefer Mma Ramotswe. OK, I know I shouldn't compare the two. But Isabel seems so - stingy. I can't decide whether it's done on purpose or whether McCall Smith just doesn't know about such things, but honestly I was a bit surprised at the meal Isabel gave her guests. Salad and risotto made with dried porcini, and Australian wine. So it was only her niece and boyfriend, but still. At the risk of sounding like a food snob (I'm not really), if I made risotto for guests it would be made with at least fresh porcini, or better, truffles. And what about the parmesan? And she put it in the oven to keep it warm - surely it would have dried out? A risotto should be sloppy! It was left up to Cat to bring smoked salmon. All right, she has a delicatessen, but surely the host should provide the most extravagant part of the meal. And wait a minute - the wine, was it red? Red Australian wine with salmon and risotto! Served up to someone whose father is a wine importer! It isn't as if Isabel is poor, she has plenty of money to buy paintings for her walls.
Despite all this, I'm curious to know what happens...

Picture here is Vettriano's Amateur Philosophers, which Isabel is not sure about...

Hm, I do not know if agree about the dried porcini. I think they are are quite a "delicatesse" and may be superior in taste to the fresh product, the same as sun dried tomatoes... For the rest, o.k. Anyway, I'm getting hungry ;-)

Arghh, give me fresh ones, any day. Do you know they are called porcini because they are plump like little pigs? (I don't go in for dried tomatoes, either, nastly leathery little things!).
Meanwhile, I'm enjoying the paintings (have posted a few in my entries). And I've nearly finished the book.

This picture is the Reverend Robert Walker, skating. Strangely enough, I've had a copy of this on my desk for quite some time (I've been working on a guide to Scotland and it was one of the pix submitted by a photographer). I really like it and didn't realise it was famous.

Note added later: now I have googled porcini and found websites extolling the virtues of dried porcini for risotto so I shall eat my words. And probably Isabel paid a lot for them, especially as they were in a muslin bag and not commonplace cellophane. But I still think there should be stock in there, and parmesan cheese....

Note added even later still: my comments led to a spirited discussion on the French forum about the merits and demerits of dried mushrooms, and I even bought some dried porcini to try them out. Well they are not so bad, though not very expensive, either. Fresh ones would cost a lot more, here at least. So Isabel was probably giving her guests a big treat (even though Kat had to bring the salmon).

What??? You are working on a guide to Scotland??? And will it be published??? I love Scotland (and I love the pictures)!!!

Well thank you silentmiaouw and lesezeichen, all this is getting much more interesting than the book was! ;-D
Thanks for the food tips and the paintings :-)

Finished it. Not quite to the end in the train coming home, but it was hot, so I sat by the church under a tree and read the last two chapters.

A silly notion occurred to me, that this book was in layers, something like a mille-feuille (which some call a Napoleon. If you don’t eat a mille-feuille properly, all the pastry squashes together when you bite into it and the filling oozes out of the sides. I bit into the book in a most unseemly manner and the filling spurted all over me and set me onto many tangents: looking up pictures; fathoming crossword clues; remembering the days when I worked on scientific journals; recalling a long-lost and short-lived romance with a Scotsman called Robin (he said I was “fast”. Fast! Pure and innocent me, fast! He was a prude); following Isabel’s walks on a map… The proper way to eat a mille-feuille, and I’m sure Isabel would do it that way, is to lay it on its side, on a plate, and tackle it with a fork. After all, she knows that you mustn’t cut your bread roll with a knife. (And I remember that when I stayed in Germany, in the 1960s, I was practically scolded at table for using a knife on my potatoes...)

Well, here is McCall Smith’s recipe for a Sunday Philosophy Club millefeuille:

A pastry base: the Death – the fall from the gods – incident to the whole thing and in the end, insignificant, but necessary to hold it all together.

Then a thick layer of confectioner’s custard – Isabel’s rather stodgy life of ethical musings, working at home editing and pondering, uptight, disapproving and meddling, sticking to her routine of crosswords and middle-aged gentility. She seems so terribly old. Older than me and I’m way past my forties.

Next, an in-between, soggy layer of pastry – Isabel’s pathetic love life. She needs some sparkle. I was dying for her to do something exciting and daring and passionate like jump on Jamie while she had him there, in her flat, well dined and wined. And she fancies him. What is she waiting for?

Now, another layer of custard. The shaky, shady, quivering world of banking and insider trading, laundering ill-gotten gains by buying works of art (this subject is dealt with in Pandora, a very funny book by Jilly Cooper, by the way).

Some pâtissiers add fruit to the creamy layers. Fruity bits that give colour, flavour and bite to the story are some of the characters - Grace, Eddie (both of whom I would like to know more), as well as the art interest (and non déplaise à Isabel I like Vettriano’s paintings, they remind me of my dad, for some reason), the Really Terrible Orchestra concert and especially their Yellow Submarine party piece, the whisky tasting, the crossword clues and learned words like zeugma, the Scottish words like bizz, breeks and so on. Not forgetting the crushed-strawberry corduroy trousers, which crop up several times, in fact three times on the same page.

Finally, there’s top layer: the city of Edinburgh, proud and dignified, gracious, chic and arty - the icing on the cake.

I like a mille-feuille now and again, even if they are a bit on the heavy side, and I enjoyed this book down to the last crumb.(But I like the Botswana ones better).

Now waiting for portable-solace's addy.

PS for lesezeichen: the Scotland guide will be published one day, but please don’t ask me when. I just don’t have enough time to finish it. The layout has been sitting in a cupboard since last Christmas.

It is now on its way to portable-solace in the USA. I included the text of WH Auden's poem, Musée des Beaux-Arts which is mentioned by Isabel on the first page; she thought of Icarus, and the poem inspired by the painting by Breughel. Here is the poem for anyone interested:

Musee des Beaux Arts
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

I just received this in the mail today and will begin ASAP!