SusanJ's 75 Books Challenge - Thread 7

Hello, and welcome to my seventh thread for 2013.




This year I've been trying to read more non-fiction, with a view to reading one-third non-fiction to two-thirds fiction. It's not quite working out like that, as my tickers show.







And I thought I would put my ROOT ticker here too, so that I can keep an eye on it.

I am going to use this space to confess record my purchases for the year.

1. A Life of Contrasts by Diana Mosley
2. All He Ever Dreamed by Shannon Stacey
3. Sold to the Enemy by Sarah Morgan (yes, it's a romance - how did you guess?)
4. Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld
5. The Last Mughal by William Dalrymple
6. To Dream of the Dead by Phil Rickman
7. Tooth and Claw by Jo Walton
8. An Invitation to Sin by Sarah Morgan (yes, another romance - what gave it away?)
9. The Pursuit of Laughter by Diana Mitford
10. Falling for Gracie by Susan Mallery
11. Somebody to love by Kristan Higgins
12. Just One of the Guys by Kristan Higgins
13. The Next Best Thing by Kristan Higgins
14. The Best Man by Kristan Higgins
15. My One and Only by Kristan Higgins
16. Sons for the Return Home by Albert Wendt
17. Big Sky Mountain by Linda Lael Miller
18. Virgin River by Robyn Carr
19. The Language of Spells by Sarah Painter
20. Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh
21. Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan
22. The Light Years by Elizabeth Jane Howard
23. The Honeymoon Cottage by Barbara Cool Lee

Oh my, I think I'm first!

#3: Nancy, you are first! Welcome!

Tonight I am going to see Peter Gabriel in concert here in London, in the firm's corporate box. Woo-hoo! "Who's Peter Gabriel?" one of the Young People asked me, mystified. I nearly cried.

"Who's Peter Gabriel?" one of the Young People asked me, mystified.

The things Young People don't know these days! He was at the peak of his career during the years I lived in London. It's hard to imagine that there are people there who haven't heard of him.

Have fun at the concert!

I am smiling at your shoe story. Years ago, my schoolteacher mother accidentally wore mismatched shoes on the first day of school. My friend and I (both teens) noticed it when she got home, and had a great time teasing her. From then on, it was a tradition to "helpfully" ask Mom about her shoes on the first day of school.

Have a great time at the concert!

*Assumes a comfortable lurky position in the corner of Susan's new thread*

So, so jealous of the Peter Gabriel show! I saw him once, on his "Us" tour in 1992. Wow, that was a long time ago.

About a year ago J went to school wearing one black school shoe and one brown walking boot type shoe. He couldn't find the other school shoe and said he thought he'd get into less trouble if he wore at least one of them! I'm not quite sure I see the logic myself.

Happy new thread, Susan!

Congratulations on #7!!

Peter Gabriel concert... Whoo hoo!!!! I was just listening to some of his stuff this morning - Sledgehammer, Shock the Monkey, Big Time - soooo jealous that you get to go and enjoy a live performance in the corporate box, no less!

"Who's Peter Gabriel?" one of the Young People asked me, mystified.

LOL... really funny once you get past the "OMG, I feel OLD?!" emotion. I remember having a conversation about the song "Head it through the grapevine" and having one of the Young People tell me how much they liked the California Raisins....... 'nuff said, I think. ;-)

Speaking of which, Gladys Knight has a new album out--anyone heard it? I liked Gabriel both in Genesis and solo.

Happy new thread. Susan, and enjoy your concert.

#5: Carrie, I do worry about the Young People :-) But then I suppose I wouldn't know (or like) acts from the 60s, and that is what it's like for some of them. The lawyer with me last night was born in 1981! Fortunately the client was my age, so we immediately started gabbing about the awesomeness of 80s music. He was a huge Peter Gabriel fan, with all the albums, and he'd even gone online and found the set list.

#6: Carol, I did check my feet carefully before I left last night :-)

#7: Hi Bekka! Welcome! I hope to have an actual book to add in the next day or so...

#8: Ursula, that must have been amazing. Last night's concert was fabulously awesome. He's touring Europe - maybe it will come to somewhere near you?

#9: Rhian, I can sort of see the logic - he wouldn't get told off for wearing *entirely* the wrong shoes...Mine were at least the same colour, and a similar style, and both from the same company, but still...

#10: Hi Katie!

#11: Thanks Reba!

#12: Lori, he did all those songs! There were some songs at the beginning and then he performed the whole album "So" and then there were a couple of encore songs, finishing with "Biko". My office pal had had the choice of going to this or a heavy metal concert featuring a blue-haired, multi-pierced young lady he likes a great deal, so I was a bit worried when he said before the concert that the only song he'd heard was Sledgehammer (and he didn't like it) but by halfway through the concert he said he was glad he'd picked Peter Gabriel because it was fantastic (even if it was the oldest audience he'd ever seen at the venue - sigh).

#13: Hi Roni - I haven't heard the new Gladys Knight one, but it's good to see that not everything new is Miley Cyrus or Rihanna. One great thing about last night was that, despite the energetic 2 hrs+ performance, there was no twerking :-) It also started on time and finished on time, unlike some other recent concerts where there have been complaints about 1.5 hour waits for the "star", and everyone having to leave early to catch their trains home. I suppose if you have real talent you don't have to bother with all that drama.

#14: Hi Judy! I'm going to try and add a picture in a second...



This is the view from the box - pretty close to the stage and not as high up as some of the seats. As they were filming it for a DVD to be released next year, I was quite glad we were up high because there were lots of cameras on the ground floor level.

The Peter Gabriel concert sounds amazing. I loved most of his stuff but Sledgehammer was so overplayed I got sick of it. It was a fantastic video though!

Unfortunately, he's already been through Belgium a while back, I believe. Either way, I looked up tickets at the time and they were 1. very expensive and 2. sold out anyway.

I think I saw he's coming back to Germany.

It looks like you had a great view of the show!

#16: Heidi, it was a great night out. I seldom go to concerts but even the young heavy metal fan I went with said it was one of his top 5 gigs of all time, and he goes often.

#17: Ursula, that's a shame. But the DVD will be out in April next year, I think :-)



142. What's in a Surname?: A Journey from Abercrombie to Zwicker by David McKie

Where I got it: Library
Why I read it: I read a good review in the paper

This is an interesting book, and looks at surnames from a variety of different viewpoints - how they arose, how they changed, how they migrated around the country, how names are chosen by writers for their fictional characters and how surnames are changing in the UK as immigration changes the population.

The author looks primarily at six villages called Broughton in various parts of the country, and how the names have changed, and what is going on in the wider area and across the country as a whole. It was also interesting to read how some names today are derived from embarrassing earlier versions, or in some cases how families toned down their surnames so as not to appear posh, or to appear to be an entirely different nationality.

There was also a little bit about the names that catch people out because they are pronounced very differently to how they're written, making them a bit of a secret test (Mainwaring, Marjoribanks, Cholmondeley, Featherstonehaugh = Mannering, Marshbanks, Chumley, Fanshaw).

The first part has a lot about family history research, and various sources are referred to and listed in the appendices (Hi Lori!).

After reading The Small Mine recently, I particularly liked this paragraph, about names in Wales,

"In Wales, where the spread of names is so restricted, one has to find a way of sorting Dai from Dai and Jones from Jones. A BBC local radio station collected a wealth of such names from its readers. A miner was so often absent that he became known as Dai Sick Note. An undertaker in Aberdare was known as Dai Death and another, in Penygraig, as Dai Coffin. In Llanhilleth, Thomas Thomas was known as Tommy Twice - though a latter-day schoolboy with the same name was called Dai Sat Nav (after the trade name Tom Tom)"

Sounds like a fun book. You cracked me up with the accurate pronunciations of those names.

Susan - I've already decided that if I get that book, I'll have to order it from BookDepository since it is not readily available in the U.S. It's on my list. I'm just waiting to see if I can identify another book or two to make it worthwhile to order from overseas!

#19: Reba, it was a good read for people interested in how surnames developed in the UK, and where some of them got to.

#20: Lori, it's very new here, so maybe it might be a bit more available in the US later on.

We are getting ready for a big storm here in the UK, particularly in the southern part of the country, and already it is pretty windy. Not the 80mph forecast for later, but good drying weather for (firmly pegged) laundry. Also good for reading and catching up with TV and Coursera lectures.



143. A Very British Murder by Lucy Worsley

Where I got it: Library
Why I read it: This is the book that goes with a recent series of the same name broadcast here on BBC Four.

Although I'm not a big crime novel fan, this was a really good series tracing the history of the British fascination with murder, which the author dates from the Ratcliffe Highway murders in 1911 (just up the road from where I live - oooh). Faster communications meant that all the gruesome details could be sent around the country much more quickly than had previously been the case, and the whole population was therefore aware of what had gone on, and many people started trying to solve the mystery of who had done it.

More crimes followed, covered extensively in the papers and they then become a staple of fiction writers, replacing the Gothic novel that had previously been popular. The book traces the development of murder as a national hobby, and the way in which detective novels changed with time, ending with the "Golden Age" of female murder writers, Dorothy L Sayers, Agatha Christie, Marjory Allingham and Ngaio Marsh. I've now reserved books by all of these writers, as apart from some Agatha Christies in my teens I don't think I've read any of them.

As it's about British detective fiction it doesn't cover the "cosy" genre which is so popular in the US, saying instead that interest moved on to spy thrillers but it was interesting to read that the writers of the inter-war detective novels wrote in the style they did (few gory details, small village "Mayhem Parva" setting) as a reaction to all the awfulness of WWI - everything neatly wrapped up, motives clear and order quickly restored. I wonder whether that's also true of the cosies. Are they a reaction to the horribleness of the modern world (and the egregiously gory details of current crime novels) or did they always exist like that?

Happy new thread - I don't know, I go away for a week and you move thread!
I have an unusual spelling of a fairly common surname. I blame my husband. Everyone misses the double L, it's usually a single L.
And I saw the Worsley series on the TV - thought it really very interesting. Especially the way that fact influenced fiction in the development of the genre.

#21 I'm useless at catching things on TV so completely missed that series but will look out for the book.

The news about the storm is really confusing - at first they said not might be the worst since 1987 then it was only the worst since 2008. I don't remember a big storm in 2008?!

#22: Helen, yes, it made me think about crime writing in a different way, too. As I don't read much of it, I tend to lump it all together but the way it developed over the years was really well described.

#23: Heather, I'm sure it will be repeated at some point. They seem to do a lot of that on BBC Four. I think we're back to "worst storm since 1987" now - Sky News just spent 17 minutes on it as the first item in their 6pm news. But London isn't supposed to get it until 8 - 10 tomorrow morning now. A lot of the train companies aren't running any services until at least 9am tomorrow, but so far there is no news on the Underground. I'm not that keen on the idea of sitting on a bus tomorrow morning either (assuming they're running) with things being blown around. I think, even though I'm not a driver, I might follow the RAC advice to stay at home. I'll work if necessary but otherwise I have enough leave left to take it as holiday.

I had Thursday and Friday as holiday and I had four brand new hardbacks from the library, so I sat down and read a couple of chapters from each, in rotation, before deciding what to continue with. If I do stay home tomorrow I think I could make good progress with Elizabeth's Bedfellows, which was an impulse borrow after a friend recommended it. And of course there is Deerslayer, which is a lot better than I thought it would be. Hmmm, maybe I should charge the Kindle, just in case.

Fingers crossed it doesn't smoosh London too much. It's oddly calm here at the mo - pouring rain but the wind has dropped off a bit from earlier. Of course I am nowhere near the edge of the island so it could be worse there. BBC doesn't seem to think we are in for it till midnight-ish.

#18 I always like looking up my maiden name on t'internet - it's all yorkshire/lancashire in the UK. But worldwide there are pods in USA and Australia - oddly enough my Dad's best mate went to Oz a few years ago and took a fishing trip (he and Dad are both fishing maniacs) only to find that the fishing tour guide had exactly the same name as my Dad - down to the Cris-without-the-H!

#25: Bekka, my brother is in a Facebook group for our weird name. There are quite a few in the US and Canada, but all the ones in NZ are descendants of my grandfather, which is sort of cool I suppose. If you meet any two of us, we're related. Of course, people in the UK assume that everyone in NZ knows everyone anyway, so when a NZ chap at work here asked me if I was any relation to {name of my brother}, whose class he'd been in at school, and I said that in fact I was his sister, we agreed never to speak of it again.

I hope you don't get smooshed either. I have no emergency supplies in the way of a wind-up radio, or even a torch, and I'm not sure two packets of pot noodle will carry me through a lengthy stay in the house. Actually I have a little bit more than that, but none of it much use in a power cut. Secretly I'm most worried about the TV aerial right on top of the building, because it would be very annoying to have a day off work, and power, but no telly.

Hope you get through your tempest without starving or losing power, Susan. And am glad you are liking The Deerslayer better than I did. I would have liked to take that Coursera class, but it was impossible for me to manage two of them. Don't know how it is possible to take a full course load AND work too!

#18 In Wales, where the spread of names is so restricted, one has to find a way of sorting Dai from Dai and Jones from Jones.In South Wales in the 1980's my father had a friend who was known as Trevor the Box - an undertaker by profession.

Hope everything blows over okay, Susan!

I hope the storm does not cause you too many problems...it sounds like a good excuse to stay home and read!

#26 LOL - names not potential TV loss :) I think we ended up missing the worst of it - we got a LOT of rain but I think most of the wind missed. Hope that doesn't mean it got you more instead!

Hi Susan. Just checking in to see how you are after the storm. I think the worst has gone over us now but the trains seem pretty bad so I'm taking the day off work.

#27: Charlotte, I saw on your thread that you'd finished the Ancient Greeks. That went fast! They might repeat the historical fiction one, so you could always watchlist it and see what happens. I have an EU law one watchlisted - there was just so much reading that I had no hope of doing it when the course started the first time round.

#28: Rhian, I love it!

#29: Roni, it's nearly gone, I think. The general opinion seems to be that there was a bit too much doom and gloom beforehand, but at least 40,000 people have lost power so I suppose they had it worse than most of us.

#30: Heidi, that was my grand plan. But my bus route was fine, so I found myself on the bus this morning with a whole lot of other people who looked like they too might have been planning a storm day at home :-)

#31: Bekka, we had strong wind from about 6 - 7 (strong being strong enough to bang all the doors in the stairwell) and then about five minutes of rain, but it mostly seems to be gone now. But Canary Wharf is the windiest place in London anyway, so it would have to be pretty bad for us to notice in the office!

#32: Heather, the trains seem to be in total chaos, due to trees on the line, so I think you've made the right decision. Even when they start running the stations will be mobbed.

ET remove the picture of blue sky I posted, which won't show up. Hrmph.

I came over here to be sure you are okay. Louise Penny is in London right now and posted on Facebook that there were deaths and a lot of trees down. I'm glad you rode the storm out with no damage.

We got a lot of the wind and some of the rain here in Gent. I hear that Antwerp and the Netherlands got more of it. But I don't think there were any issues with power going out or anything like that. Glad you didn't have anything too terrible/unusual for the day.

#34: Roni, it's so kind of you to visit. Four people have died since I posted earlier, and 600,000 homes lost power according to one report. But it has mostly gone now so hopefully there will be no more deaths.

#35: Ursula, I saw some pictures of Belgium at lunchtime. I think I also read somewhere that it's causing problems in Denmark now (unless my geography is totally off).

Susan, I'm glad you're safe. I remember getting stuck in central London during the hurricane-force storm on Burns Day in 1990. I lived in St. Albans then and it took me 3 hours to get home using a combination of underground, bus, and car. It was normally a 20-minute journey from Kings Cross to St. Albans on the Thameslink if I caught the fast train. However, the storm closed the Thameslink.

Glad everyone seems to be OK. A big storm is no fun and can take an age to get back to normal. We seem to have been safely north of the trouble, it's been blustery but that's about it. I've had a post holiday laundry day, but decided not to risk the washing line.

Glad to hear you are okay, Susan. I need to look for some photos online.

Glad you ok but too bad about having to go to work!

Very happy to learn that you have weathered the storm. Joining Heidi in saying its sad you have to go into work... but no 'free reading day', what a bummer. ;-(

Hi Susan, the storm was highlighted on our news here in Canada this evening. It looks like it has really messed up transportation over there. Glad to hear that you came through safe and sound.

#37: Carrie, that must have been a horrible trip in the bad weather. A lot of people just stayed at home yesterday, and we were also lucky because it was the first day of the school half-term holiday, so no need to do the school run, which must have kept thousands of parents and children safely inside.

#38: Helen, there are lots of trees down in London, although fortunately none on top of people here, but I feel so sorry for the people who were hit, and especially that young girl in the caravan in Kent.

#39: Lori, it was nothing like an American storm (there was a follow-up story on the news this morning about Hurrican Sandy, including all the houses still not fixed) but it was unusually windy for us, and there are still recriminations about the failure of the weather forecasters to forecast the "Great Storm" of 1987, so I think they now err on the side of the worst case scenario.

#40: Heidi, I'm waiting for a snow day now :-)

#41: Lori, as four more books arrived at the library for me yesterday I could have done with a few hours of reading! Even worse, one of the books is in a three-novel volume, and I can't really send it back and then order it again, so I have six books...

#42: Judy, gosh, I wouldn't have thought it would get much attention in Canada, when your weather is so much more challenging. But it was pretty much the only news story here. There was lots of criticism of the train companies for stopping services, but not as much as there would have been if a high-speed train had hit something on the line and derailed so I can see their point. There are still a lot of people without power, but fortunately it isn't that cold at the moment so it could have been worse.



144. Marriage Material by Sathnam Sanghera

Where I got it: Library
Why I read it: The author is one of my favourite writers for The Times, and this is his first novel

Set in Wolverhampton, the narrative moves between the late 1960s and the present day. The present-day narrator's relationship to the 1960s characters isn't entirely clear to begin with, but is slowly revealed in a very effective way, and then the two strands of the story join together. I thought it was very well done, and there is a lot of wry humour about life in an Indian family, and life as immigrants in the UK.

I want to get the author's memoir now, which was published a few years ago, and which I read bits of when it was publicised in the paper. But I have the six library books first. This morning I started Whose Body?, which is the first in the Lord Peter Wimsey series, so that is a little bit of progress.

Glad you're safe and sound. It boggles my mind that Europe is being hit by hurricane force winds (although we got close one time when I was living in the Netherlands). The "weirding of the weather" continues.

#44: Reba, yes I think there is quite a bit of weirding going on! I think the highest speed yesterday was 99mph on the Isle of Wight.



145. Whose Body? by Dorothy L Sayers

Where I got it: Library
Why I read it: Dorothy L Sayers was one of the authors from the "Golden Age" of detective fiction discussed in A Very British Murder which I read recently.

Tube travel around London allowed me to read this in a single day, which I'm glad of as I think I would have forgotten key details if I'd dipped in and out of it. It was interesting to read it in the light of the commentary from the Lucy Worsley book, and I want to continue with the series although I did think that the ending was a bit neatly wrapped up with the murderer's lengthy written confession :-) Also I wasn't entirely sure about the motive, but I liked it anyway. I was very amused to see Bunter use the word "buttle" in a letter to Lord Peter. I use it myself ("tea and coffee were buttled in to the meeting") but I had no idea it was a real word!

October wrap-up

Books read: 16 (much better)

Fiction: 11
Non-fiction: 5 (excellent)

ROOT tomes: 0

Books acquired: Three



146. The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light by Paul Bogard

Where I got it: Library
Why I read it: I saw the excellent review on Jennifer's thread and reserved it immediately

I can't do better than Jennifer's review, which is on the page for the book, but I can say that this will be one of my top reads for the year. The author goes in search of real darkness, as so much of what passes for "dark" these days isn't dark at all. This was my favourite quote, from one of his interviewees:

"Everyone's grown up in cities. We have no idea that it can be any other way. People no longer realise that you should be seeing thousands of stars. You should have stars from the zenith to the horizon. People see that orange glow, the colour of the sky back home, and think, Okay, well, maybe that's just the way the Sky is."

Alarmingly, there's another passage which discusses London, one of the brightest cities in the world, and says that it is so bright here that modern Londoners' eyes never transition to night vision. We now see things differently from when the streets were lit by gas lamps, so that gas looks dim to us, whereas when gas lamps were first introduced they seemed to be the perfect artificial light.

All week while I've been reading this I've been checking for stars, but the author is right - there aren't any. And his description of what SHOULD be out there left me amazed. I've been thinking back to when I was a kid, living in Auckland. I don't remember specific stars but I'm sure there were at least a few. But now the lights are planes, and sometimes people say they can see the space station as it goes past. The rest of the time the sky is a grey-orange colour, with nothing in it at all. I could easily read a book in the middle of the street at midnight. I really struggled to imagine a world in which you literally couldn't see your hand in front of your face. The closest London has got to that was probably the blackouts during the war, when all the artificial light was turned off or blacked out, but I still couldn't ever quite imagine how dark it was when I've read things set in that time.

Living in a "Bortle 9" light zone (the brightest) I find I'm now hankering to go further down the scale and to see some stars. I wonder whether I ever will.

Nice review, Susan!

That's really interesting. I've often thought about the concept of real darkness as it was experienced by people before artificial illumination, because when I am out in the middle of nowhere and it's seriously dark, it freaks me out!

When I lived in the Bay Area of California, of course there was a ton of light pollution, but I've been lucky enough to be out where you can see the stars plenty of times - the mountains of Colorado, Yellowstone National Park, places in Wyoming and South Dakota. It's amazing to realize how many stars you don't see most of the time.

Interesting book there. We're lucky in that we're not in a large town, and so do get to see some stars, but there's still a glow in the sky in certain directions. We used to live in Norfolk where a fair number of villages had no streetlights at all - it is very dark at first, but it's amazing how much you can see once you get your eye in.

I do remember something on the BBC about this, one of those sort of large scale involvement things, where you had to hold a toilet roll to your eye and look through it at the moon at a certain time of evening. There should have been something like 30 stars in that area, but in the cities most people were seeing just the 1.

That book sounds interesting, Susan - great review! I will check to see if our library has it. We can see quite a few stars from our back deck in the evenings, which is nice. Craig's family own a lot up in Minnesota on Boy Lake, and up there you can see everything. The darkness at night is pure and the stars are a dazzling display - one of the most beautiful sights I have seen.

Even in my rural community it's never truly dark since most properties have outdoor lights for security reasons. I do remember enjoying the nights at church camp in my teens. Our camp is in a very remote area and isn't close to any major cities. On a clear night you could see thousands of stars and it seemed like you could just reach up and touch them.

The End of Night has caught my eye, along with your observations. It is shocking how 'light pollution' as ursula aptly put it can impact us. When I first moved from Calgary - a city that is really big on high wattage night lighting - to Victoria, I struggled for the first year adapting to living in a city that doesn't try to max out the regional power grid with its street lights. Now, when I travel back to Calgary to visit family I am shocked at how bright that city is at night, and understand why my parents hang heavy, insulated curtains in the house - it helps keep the light out when you are trying to sleep.

#46 The End of Night sounds really interesting Susan. I remember having difficulty sleeping when I lived in the Docklands a few years ago because it was so bright at night! I had to buy one of those travel masks.

Nice review for The End of Night. One of the things I love most about camping way out in the boonies is how many stars you can see on a clear night. We have stars at home, but nothing like you see way out in the middle of nowhere.

Catching up Susan. I'm glad you made it through the storm.

Glad to see I'm not the only one who's been inspired to dream about travel to a starrier place by The End of Night. We went to the Florida Panhandle one summer and you could look out over the waves at night and see thousands of stars. It was amazing.

I'm adding my voice to the chorus of persons who enjoyed your review. Those places out in the middle of nowhere are harder and harder to come by.

Hi Susan, I feel like an echo here, but that's an excellent review of The End of Night.

Just to change the subject a little, I was happy to see you tried a Dorothy Sayer mystery. I am working my way through the Lord Peter mysteries and enjoying them very much. Shouldn't everyone have a Bunter in their life?

#47: Thanks Katie!

#48: Ursula, I'm beginning to think it would freak me out too! But at the same time I'd love to see it.

#49: Helen, yes that glow on the horizon causes a lot of problems, doesn't it? There was a strong white glow from the direction of Greenwich a week or so ago - like a fire except that would have been orange. I never did find out what it was.

#50: Mamie, the author of the book is from Minnesota too, and he used it as a comparison as he travelled around to other places. I'm fascinated by Minnesota since I discovered the Hannah Swensen cosy mystery series set up there (and all the details of life in really cold weather) and now it has stars too!

#51: Carrie, hold on to that memory! The author says one of the most worrying things is that in a generation or so, no-one will remember what a really starry night looked like, and efforts to preserve the dark might even stop because no-one will know what they're trying to achieve.

#52: Lori, the book explains why you would have struggled with the change in light between Calgary and Victoria. There are parts of your eyes that you just don't use when you live in a light polluted area. Scary! There was one particularly interesting photo comparison of a back yard taken at night under high lighting and then with very little lighting. Only in the second picture could you see the "burglar" at the gate. The bright light obscured him completely. And of course bright light makes it easy for criminals to see the best way into a house, and out again.

#53: Heather, I know exactly what you mean about the Docklands! Although, to be fair to Canary Wharf, the lighting now is a lot less bright than it used to be. Now it just looks like a slightly dimmer Christmas tree :-) Some of the new apartment buildings are lit up in colours, right up and down them. Wholly pointless and very polluting. I've been using an eye mask for a couple of months now, as part of my campaign to sleep better, and the difference is remarkable. And they're much cheaper than blackout curtains!

#54: Carol, the more I think about it the more I think there must have been stars when I was little. We used to camp too, and right out of the city. I never did learn the names of any, though, but perhaps that was just because my parents didn't know them either. The author was writing knowledgeably about all the different shapes and names - quite a mystery to me!

#55: Hi Roberta! I think we're all waiting for snow now. There was some up North yesterday but we just have fog.

#56: Jennifer, I think Sark might be my best bet, or certainly the closest. Now I just need an excuse to go to Sark...

#57: Lori, that is so true.

#58: Thanks Judy! It's really staying with me. I wonder whether the light pollution issue is the next "big thing". There was a chapter on what it's doing to noctural animals, who start behaving strangely when there is no night-time, and that has an effect on all the useful things they do for the world. (Even moths, apparently. That surprised me). I'm going to reserve the next Dorothy Sayers book when the library catalogue is fixed. Currently a number of her books show up in a search on my borough (but not the second book) but when I expand the search to all London boroughs it says there are none of her books anywhere. I hope they fix it soon!



147. Elizabeth's Bedfellows by Anna Whitelock

Where I got it: Library
Why I read it: A friend recommended it

This is subtitled "An Intimate History of the Queen's Court" (the Queen being Elizabeth I) and the "bedfellows" were mostly her ladies in waiting, one or more of whom often slept in the same bed with her at night, to keep her company and to keep her safe. It was a detailed look at the inner circle of courtiers and advisers, seen against the backdrop of the larger political events going on at the time. There are lots of gory deaths in it, but fortunately not too much detail of them. The author also looks at how artistic representations of the Queen changed over the course of her reign, and why there are no paintings of her looking old (or at least none ever displayed in her lifetime). The Tudor portraits are my favourites at the National Portrait Gallery here in London, and there is a good exhibition on at the moment of paintings of Elizabeth I and courtiers and other people of the time, so my finding this at the library just after seeing the exhibition was quite timely. Highly recommended for anyone interested in the Tudors.

148. Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy by Helen Fielding

Where I got it: Library
Why I read it: It's the third in the Bridget Jones trilogy

Oh Helen, you should have given up while you were ahead.

Yikes, don't like the sound of your review of Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy. What a disappointment after her brilliant earlier Bridget novels.

Oh dear, a single line review - doesn't encourage one to pick it up (particularly seeing I never read Bridget first time round - no really, nor seen the film)

Thanks for that PSA regarding Bridget Jones Susan. I will stop right where I am. In my mind Mr. Darcy is still alive and that is the way I like it. If I decide to kill him off then I will bring him back as a ghost who falls in love with a certain lady from Texas who doesn't have big hair. LOL!

Sounds like you took the hit for all of us, Susan. I think I will leave my memory of Bridget intact and living the good life with Mr. Darcy. (Although I wouldn't mind reading about Darcy's ghost and a certain lady from Texas!)

Just bobbing out of autumnal hibernation to wave :) Hope you are having a good weekend.

#61: Nancy, it certainly was.

#62: Helen, this is not the one to start with!

#63: Roberta, I preferred it when he was alive too. I agree with Judy, though - I would read the ghost story!

#64: Judy, that was my Good Deed for the year :-)

#65: Hi Bekka! I feel a bit hibernated today too. But it's been good for finishing off some books.



149. Birthright: The True Story that Inspired Kidnapped by A Roger Ekirch

Where I got it: Library
Why I read it: I was watching a programme recently about the amazing story of James Annesley, who was kidnapped by his wicked uncle to stop him inheriting estates here and in Ireland, and sold into indentured labour in the US. It took James years to escape and get back, and then he began legal proceedings to reclaim his inheritance. It was a really interesting story, but the book dragged in parts, which could be my fault for reading other things at the same time.



150. Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson

Where I got it: Kindle
Why I read it: Because the story in book 149 was the inspiration for it, so I wanted to see what Stevenson had done with the story

But really the only thing the stories have in common is the kidnapping. The first is set in Ireland, Kidnapped in Scotland. The first moves to America and looks at the issue of white indentured labour, and the huge numbers of Irish people who emigrated long before the famine of the 19th century. Kidnapped stays in Scotland after the ship is wrecked along the coast, and the main character begins a long and crashingly dull walk home through Scottish politics of the time, meeting various Highland warlords as he goes. And it all ends happily when he gets there, with no need for legal proceedings at all. I'm not really sure how James Annersley's story inspired Kidnapped other than the kidnap, but apparently kidnappings for transportation overseas weren't even that rare at the time. But it's another classic I can say I've read, I suppose.



151. A Man Lay Dead by Ngaio Marsh

Where I got it: Library
Why I read it: This is another one of the books I'm reading from the "Golden Age" of detective fiction, following the recent BBC Four series here which I've mentioned above. I liked it, and fortunately the volume has the first three novels in the series in it so I can move straight on to the second one. Well, straight on after the next Hannah Swensen mystery, which also came into the library this week...That's my project for tomorrow, as I have a book about pirates in transit, and also The Invention of Murder which I snaffled from the library this week because it was sitting right there. And I am weak.

And I am weak. You are not alone!

When I start my career writing fan fiction I will start with a short ghost story and let you and Judy edit. ;-)

I guess I am in the minority in living in an area with hardly any light pollution at all. In the summertime, on a clear night, you can see millions and millions of stars. My favorite nights are the ones where you can see the milky way. Once, when DH and I were first dating, we slept in sleeping bags on the beach and watched the Northern Lights. I think I would hate living in the city where I couldn't see the stars.

Cobscook> How nice that must be! Earlier today, a young man got caught on a floor as we were turning the lights out in the library. When he came down off that floor, he was commenting on how spooky it was up there. What's bad is that there should have still been light coming through the windows, and we keep at least one bank of lights in a central location on overnight at security's request.

#67: Roberta, it's a deal!

#68: Heidi, you are so lucky with all those stars!

#69: Lori, I wonder just what he thought was going to jump out of the shelves at him...



152. Sugar Cookie Murder by Joanne Fluke

Where I got it: Library
Why I read it: It's the next book in the series

This was a quick read, and turned out to be a novella rather than a full-length novel. The second half of my hard copy was the recipes from the recipe-testing event that was the setting for the story - nearly 200 pages of them. I was pleased to see a recipe for Minnesota Hotdish in there. And Hannah is still forgetting to unplug her jeep before setting out into the winter cold.

After a day of rain yesterday we've had sun and blue skies today, which was a relief when it was time to go to yogalates. It should only pour during the working week, when I can watch it from my office window.

Interesting subject - light pollution. It's kind of scary to think that people might not know, one day, what a starlit sky is!

I can see stars very well in winter where I am. It's in the summertime that I have difficulty. Too dang many leaves overhead! Also cloud cover is a problem. Not many clear nights in southern New England.

Will now be avoiding that Bridget Jones book - thanks, Susan. Must read Kidnapped tho and perhaps the book that inspired it. Read The Master of Ballantrae last year and liked it pretty well.

#71: Charlotte, I saw a bit of a programme on TV the other night, set in Chile, and it was night-time and the stars were amazing! It was something sciencey so they sky wasn't made up. I still keep looking out of the window hoping for a star or two, but no luck. In the book the author said that turbulence was a problem for clear viewing, which is why the best observatories are on western coasts, but then I'm sure there was a big observatory on the east coast of the US that he visited.



153. Enter a Murderer by Ngaio Marsh

Where I got it: Library
Why I read it: This is the second in the Roderick Alleyn series, and my book has the first three in it

Set this time in a theatre, the murder takes place during the play, which the detective happens to be watching with young journalist Nigel Bathgate, who featured in the first novel. There is lots of running around London and various red herrings, but everything is solved at the end.

I went to a great exhibition at the British Library this morning - "Georgians Revealed: Life, Style and the Making of Modern Britain". http://www.bl.uk/ Highly recommended for anyone visiting London, and there's a lovely accompanying book available which would make a good (but quite heavy) souvenir. I've never entirely got to grips with the Georgians, but there was an excellent timeline at the entrance, along with pictures of the four Georges, and then all sorts of exhibits looking at housing, furniture, entertainments, fashion, the rise of newspapers and magazines, the new fashion for travel etc. The theory behind it was that the Georgians were more like us than we think, and that many of the things we think are "modern" inventions (non-stop news, "celebrity", the middle classes, the consumer society) in fact started 300 years ago.

The exhibition sounds interesting. I've been wanting to read more about this era of British history since I visited my brother while he was working in Germany last summer. He was based near Hanover, and most of the tourist sites I visited had some connection to the House of Hanover.

I am able to report that I did see a very bright star in the southern sky as we were leaving work on Thursday evening. There may have been others, but I got distracted by trying to break into a stranger's car in the parking lot. Well, not break into it exactly, but I was tugging on the door trying to get it open. In my defense, it did look just like my friend's car (we are car-pooling again) and besides she tried to get into it too!

Am drooling with envy, Susan! I love museums. One of the perks of big city living, I think. We've got one. It's small. It's about whaling. I've been to it four times. And I don't even like the ocean. Am looking forward to the day when they finally get the train running between here and Boston. Then maybe I can see something more interesting than whale skeletons. You've seen one giant oily ribcage, you've pretty much seen them all.

#73: Carrie, I can recommend Wedlock: How Georgian Britain's Worst Husband Met His Match, which I read a few years ago and still think is one of my top non-fiction reads. They had a copy in the gift shop yesterday which made me want to read it all over again.

#74: Charlotte, I'm laughing about the stranger's car! I'm glad you and your friend realised in time and aren't in custody :-) I think I would like the whaling museum, but maybe only once, as you say. I've never seen a giant oily ribcage. When I was a kid there were only two museums in Auckland - the Imperial War Museum and the Museum of Transport and Technology. I think we knew all the contents off by heart. And my father used to say that he knew all the animals at the zoo by name.



154. The Nursing Home Murder by Ngaio Marsh

Where I got it: Library
Why I read it: It's the third in the Roderick Alleyn series

I received a "pre-overdue notice" for the three-volume book yesterday, so I wanted to finish it and return it. I almost never use up the three weeks, and always feel a bit guilty if I do. But I looked up my loans and this one was actually renewable, so at least there's no-one waiting for it. I will return it tomorrow and try and concentrate on non-fiction for the rest of the year. I'm not going to get to one-third of my reading being non-fiction but I should be close.

155. The Deerslayer by James Fenimore Cooper

Where I got it: Kindle freebie
Why I read it: It was on the reading list for the Coursera course I'm doing, but I'd wanted to try a James Fenimore Cooper novel since reading Prairie Fever last year (I think), which looked at how the colonial US was portrayed to people overseas in popular novels of the time

I tried to read this imagining myself to be living in the UK in the mid-1800s, when it was written, and knowing little or nothing about the US other than what biased news reports and sensationalist fiction had told me. From that point of view, I could see how effective the descriptive passages about Glimmerglass lake were, because it is like nothing in the UK (as far as I'm aware). And then, of course, there were the strange, "exotic" Indians - Chingachgook and the beautiful Wah-ta-Wah, set against the baddies of the local tribe, who were intent on scalping everything they could find.

How Natty Bumppo, the Deerslayer of the title, finds himself in the middle of all this is set out at some length at the beginning of the story, where his own, moderate, views are set against the more extreme views of Harry March, with both then contrasted against those of the Hutters, father Thomas and daughters Judith and Hetty. The number of times Hetty's "feeble-mindedness" was referred to, including by Hetty, was maddening, but otherwise I enjoyed this, although it took me too long to read. The story takes place over a single week and it would benefit from being read with that in mind. Otherwise it's easy to read a couple of chapters, put it down for a week and pick it up again to find that the next chapter is just a continuation of the same scene you thought you'd finished with.

I definitely want to continue with the series, and it was interesting to listen to the course lecture about the Leatherstocking series and how and when it was written. Although this is the first in time in the series, it was written last, as a prequel to the other four books. I also want to read the Mark Twain essay criticising Cooper, which is said to focus on The Deerslayer and The Pathfinder.

How nice of your library to send "pre-overdue" notices. Our public library only has two week loans on print books. I really wish they'd go the 3 week route.

Lori, I just wish they'd call them "Due Date Reminders" or something a bit less odd! But it is a handy feature of the system, along with their emails when reserved books come in.

Despite my plan to focus on non-fiction for the rest of the year, I started Frances Burney's Cecilia yesterday on my Kindle. I've decided always to have a classic going on the Kindle, for the bus and general waiting around. I'm 25% of the way through the first volume (of three) and I was surprised at how readable it is. It was mentioned in the exhibition I went to see on Saturday as being hugely popular at the time it was published (in the 1780s) and, while the language isn't modern, exactly, it's a lot more readable than Clarissa, which I struggled through last year, and which was only written 40 years earlier. Also Cecilia seems like a much more interesting character than the whiny Clarissa. I've kept away from spoilers so I have no idea what's going to happen, which isn't usually the case with old books.

Our library also has 3 week loan and 3 days ahead of the due date as a "pre-overdue" e-mail. Which, you're right, is a very odd way of phrasing it, but does the job of reminding me I need to read it.

My public library sends out email notices 3 days before the due date too. The email heading is "library notice" and the message says that it's a reminder that the material is due in 3 days. The email includes the policy and instructions for renewing the material. It seems like a good idea to provide that information at the point of need. It sets a helpful tone and doesn't carry the hint of threat that "pre-overdue" does.

>76 susanj67:, I've never read The Deerslayer, but it's on my TBR list. I have read and enjoyed The Last of the Mohicans though. There is a nice film version of that one with Daniel Day-Lewis as Natty Bumppo, but it does depart rather significantly from the novel at points.

My local library still does book reservations by having the patron fill out a form that goes in an index card box behind the desk. Suffice to say, there are no "pre-overdue" notices for us, although we do get the books for three weeks.

#79: Helen, it must be a library system that they've rolled out everywhere!

#80: Carrie, I agree! It's definitely a good idea to remind people, but ours sort of assumes that you're a day or two away from an infraction of the rules.

#81: Jennifer, that sounds like the system we had when I worked part-time at the public library in high school (in the olden days)!



156. The Invention of Murder by Judith Flanders

Where I got it: Library
Why I read it: It was one of the sources referred to in Lucy Worsley's A Very British Murder earlier in the thread

This is a long and very detailed look at how murder became a source of national conversation and then entertainment in Britain. Starting with the Ratcliffe Highway murders at the beginning of the 1800s, it looks at various "trends", such as the poisoning panic of the 1850s, the garotting panic of the 1860s, and so on. The Ratcliffe Highway murders came at a time when communications were beginning to improve, so that the whole country quickly knew of a terrible crime being committed, and murder began to seem more common than perhaps people had previously thought.

Legal nerds like me will marvel at the iffy police investigation and criminal justice system, as well as the apparent total lack of rules about the reporting of investigations and trials (which often referred to suspects as "the murderer" before they'd been tried, let alone convicted).

Crime fiction fans will enjoy the way the author traces the influence of high-profile murders on the themes and plots of popular novels and plays of the time. And there is also quite a bit about souvenirs that were available, including pottery figures of the main "characters" and buildings where crimes took place, and Madame Tussaud's Chamber of Horrors, which had not only waxworks representing murderers and their victims, but which also bought up the clothes of the deceased and possessions and furniture from the rooms where the victims met their end.

The book ends with the Jack the Ripper murders in the 1880s, so long before murder had become the subject of the Golden Age of detective fiction when details of crimes were fairly sanitised. In that respect the book looks at a narrower time period than Lucy Worsley's book, but in far more detail.

157. Spanish Gold: Captain Woodes Rogers and the Pirates of the Caribbean by David Cordingly

Where I got it: Library
Why I read it: I read a good review of this when it came out a couple of years ago, but there was no sign of it in the library catalogue. I cut out the title and author and found the piece of paper about a month ago, so I looked again and reserved it

This is the story of Captain Woodes Rogers, who started his career as a privateer, and caught one of the famous Spanish galleons that made their way across the Pacific Ocean each year (one going west to the Philippines, the other east to Acapulco) before becoming the governor of the Bahamas during the "Golden Age of Piracy". He is credited with helping to rid the Caribbean of pirates, and I was amused to read that the Bahamian motto used to be "Expulsit pirates, restituta commercia" (Pirates expelled, commerce restored) but is also thought to have been one of the sources for "A History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates" by someone called "Captain Charles Johnson" and to be one of the people responsible for publicising the amazing story of Alexander Selkirk, who was castaway on a little island off the coast of South America for four years. Some commentators say that Selkirk was the inspiration for Robinson Crusoe, but it turns out that there are many other possible models for the character.

I wanted to read this as part of my pirate-themed non-fiction a couple of years ago and I'm really glad that I finally got hold of it. The only trouble is that now I want to read Robinson Crusoe, and the book about the "pyrates"...Over to Amazon I go.

Susan it looks like you are doing a fair amount of good reading lately. I read The Deerslayer in high school but don't remember too much.

The Invention of Murder sound really good. Off to Amazon I go to wishlist it.

Have a wonderful week.

ETA: Apparently I already wish listed the murder book. Ha!

I enjoy a good pirate tale, fiction or non-fiction, from time to time. I have a friend whose ancestors were pirates. He's told me a few stories about his family. Of course, that is just one side of his family, but he's glad that they left a few records of their involvement!

Hi Susan, I've mostly been lurking so thought I'd pop out and say hello!

#84: Hi Roberta! I'm pretty pleased with how the reading has turned out recently. I had a while where I just couldn't seem to read anything good, but I hope that's behind me.

#85: Lori, how remarkable to have pirates in the family! I know that in Australia it is quite fashionable to have a transported convict somewhere in the family tree but I haven't heard anyone admit to pirates before.

#86: Katie, ha! I've been lurking on your thread too. I mostly read threads on the Kindle in the morning and don't dare subject people to my iffy typing and the infuriating predictive text. I'm glad you had a good trip to Seattle and another LT meetup.

I'm continuing to make good progress with Cecilia, but yesterday I started The Courtiers by Lucy Worsley, mostly because it's a non-fiction book that I have on my Kindle, but I had forgotten that it's about courtiers at the Georgian court, so it fits perfectly with Cecilia and also really well with the exhibition I went to a couple of weekends ago. I couldn't concentrate on Cecilia in the doctor's waiting room because apparently that's now the place where people catch up on all their loud phone calls and tell the whole world their business. The receptionists were also talking non-stop, the buzzer for the front door was like a foghorn and I had to wait through all this for half an hour. I'm surprised I managed anything more than a picture book, really!

Just had to check the touchstone to make sure I was reading right... I completely missed your post re Cecilia - good to know it's relatively easy going! On to next years list it goes (I've stayed away from anything with a single girls name in it this year after Clarissa!).

88: Bekka, it is much easier going, you'll be pleased to know! I must press on with it, though, before I forget who all the people are. I'll try and read a bit tonight. I have no library books at the moment - it's quite strange not to have a little pile next to the sofa to look at.

Hum.... Clarissa versus Cecilia. I was toying with the idea of attempting Clarissa next year but maybe Cecilia is the way to go. I am just so undecided!

#90: Lori, I'd pick Cecilia! Clarissa was ridiculously long and pretty dull, although I know it's heresy to say so. Cecilia is flying by, and there are some excellent characters in it, including the fop bored with *everything*, because he thinks that's the fashionable thing to be.

I went to the library at lunchtime to pick up a reserve, which is the first Margery Allingham crime novel (a horrible ancient large-print copy) and saw the new Alison Weir biography of Elizabeth of York on the shelf, so I got that too. It's brand new, and the cover is gorgeous. I know that's not supposed to count...but it does. I don't think the crime novel will take long to read but I might have to put The Courtiers on hold for a while.

You have sold me on Cecilia, Susan!

#92: Yay Lori! I'm surprised at what a modern feel it has to it, flowery language notwithstanding.

November wrap-up

Books read: 12 (not bad)

Fiction: 7
Non-fiction: 5 (excellent)

ROOT tomes: 0

Books acquired: Three or four, I think. Imagine my delight to get an email from Harlequin last week announcing that the new Shannon Stacey book was out! I didn't have a clue. I bought it immediately.

I'm currently reading The Crime at Black Dudley (which is confusing and dull by turns), Elizabeth of York (which is excellent although it really should include a family tree), Cecilia and The Courtiers, which is also excellent. I wish I could spend more time on it, but the library books always take priority. Reading the book section in the Sunday Times yesterday I went on a little reserving spree, which could turn out disastrously. I am relying on not getting anything for a week or so, and then benefiting from the extended loans over Christmas.

I heard Fairytale of New York this morning for the first time this year. I suppose it had to happen.

#93 I heard Fairytale of New York this morning for the first time this year. LOL - I have to admit that I've always really liked A Fairytale of New York.

#94: I don't dislike it as a song - I just hate the way it signals the start of a month of Christmas overkill. The Santa's Grotto in the mall downstairs has appeared over the weekend, joining the Christmas trees which have been up for a couple of weeks, complete with their little notices warning people that the trees (or more accurately the decorations) are protected by CCTV...and everyone rushing around buying the wrong things for people who will just bin them. Yes, the Grinch spirit is alive and well in east London!

I've never heard of "fairy Tale of New York". Must look it up...

Hi Susan!

Hi Katie! The song is on Youtube, which is blocked at the office lest we have fun, so here is the Wikipedia entry. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairytale_of_New_York

It will offend people who object to bad language, but it's set in a "drunk tank" in a police station. Like the Pret a Manger Christmas sandwich, it's a sure sign that Christmas is approaching.

Hello Grinch >:-)
I saw my first Christmas lights 2 weeks ago. And the office now has a couple of christmas trees and tinsel on certain desks. For me Christmas starts when I decorate on 23rd December, but I will admit to loving the whole Christmas thing. And it wouldn't be Christmas without a drunken rendition of Fairy tale of New York.

#98: Hello Christmas cheer :-) Twenty-two sleeps till Santa, according to the radio this morning. More importantly, fourteen more working days in the office. Yay! I have 12 days off, which will be lovely. Already I have about five thousand pages of reading planned (and I'm not sure that's an exaggeration).



158. The Crime at Black Dudley by Margery Allingham

Where I got it: Library
Why I read it: I'm trying some novels from the "Golden Age" of detective fiction

This one didn't grab me at all, unfortunately. It might have been partly due to the disgusting old large-print copy I had, which meant that I didn't even want to pick it up, but I thought there were far too many characters and the plot was so confusing that even by the end of it I still couldn't understand the story, or who'd done it, or why, and neither did I care. So no more Margery Allingham for me.

On Sunday I discovered that one of the books I was about to reserve was actually on the shelf at the library over the road, so I went over yesterday to try and find it. Eventually I tracked it down on a returned books trolley (well, I suppose that's a shelf, of sorts) and now I have Family Secrets: Living with Shame from the Victorians to the Present Day.

#72 Glad to hear you enjoyed Ngaio Marsh and the BL exhibition as those are both things I want to read/see next year. I have the new Bridget Jones book out from the library and I'm not feeling optimistic about it after your review.

And also glad you're enjoying Cecilia because I've been wanting to try something by Fanny Burney for a long time (I think she was Jane Austen's favourite author), although I am one of those weird people who liked Clarissa so perhaps that means I won't like Cecilia?

#93 We had our work Christmas party on Friday and Fairytale of New York featured quite heavily!

#99 The Crime at Black Dudley is a strange book and I think it's fair to see Allingham was a long way off hitting her stride with that one. The Campion books do improve a lot but they're often quite quirky and I can understand not wanting to continue! If you did feel like trying another one perhaps try The Tiger in the Smoke or Traitor's Purse although neither of those are traditional detective stories either - more thrillers.

I only gave 3 stars to The Crime at Black Dudley when I read it. I had a hard time following it. Campion is not my favorite detective. I don't dislike him, but I am perfectly okay with not having read all the books in the series. I'll get to some others as the mood strikes.

I guess I am in the minority cause I really liked The Crime At Black Dudley and have decided to follow through and read as many of the Campion series as I can track down. I like his quirkiness.

I thought it was an interesting story, but I certainly think that books 2 & 3 in the series, which I've also read, were an improvement. Campion becomes more of a leading player, whereas in the first book he's sort of on the margins and so we don't know him very much. I also gave it 3 stars, but have proceeded along the book shelf (my husband owns a number of them)

As I said, I didn't dislike him (Campion), but the series are not "must-reads."

I also did not read a single ROOT in November, so I still have 5 to go to reach my goal. Oops.

Once Thanksgiving is over, everyone has my permission to go full bore with the Christmas spirit! I have never heard of Fairytale of New York. *heads off to YouTube pronto*

#100: Heather, the Georgians exhibition is really good, so I hope you enjoy it. I think it is possible to like both Clarissa and Cecilia, although they are very different. Let me know what you think! I think I'll pass on Margery Allingham given the vast number of other things I want to get to, but I know that every author has their good books and the ones that people aren't so keen on.

#101, 104: Lori, I see I'm way behind the crime fans here! I'd barely even heard of Margery Allingham until recently.

#102: Judy, isn't it lovely to find a series like that, with so many great reads waiting for you?! The quirkiness was overdone for me, but I do like folowing the progress of a character through multiple books.

#103: Helen, I did like the hunting scene, when all the locals ganged up on the baddie after he shot the dog.

#105: Roni, I hope you found it and weren't too offended! I have six ROOTs still to go, so I'm going to miss my target.

I was tubing around this morning and finished book 159 while I was out:



159: Courtiers: The Secret History of the Georgian Court by Lucy Worsley

Where I got it: Kindle
Why I read it: It goes well with the Georgians exhibition on at the moment and it's non-fiction and a ROOT tome so it gives those tickers a boost.

Although the subtitle refers to the "Georgian court" this really only looks at the first two Georges, and specifically through the eyes of a number of courtiers playing various roles in the royal household (or households, as both George II and his eldest son fell out with their respective fathers when they were Princes of Wales, and people had to choose which side to support). There was lots of interesting history and palace life and etiquette woven into the story, and lots of quotes from writers of the day, including John Hervey whose memoirs are supposed to be the best of the time, and which I now want to get. I enjoyed it hugely, and would recommend it to anyone interested in royal history.

160. Cecilia by Frances Burney

Where I got it: Project Gutenberg
Why I read it: It was mentioned in the exhibition on the Georgians that I went to at the British Library a couple of weeks ago

This was a bit of a random choice, which had figured nowhere in my reading plans until about three weeks ago, but isn't that so often the way?

Cecilia Beverley is very rich, and lovely and kind. But instead of bringing her happiness, the money seems to make her a target for every ne-er-do-well she comes across, and some who seek her out. The main problem with her fortune is that she only gets a valuable annuity from her uncle if she remains single, or if she marries and her husband takes her name. Cue a massive crush on Mortimer Delvile, the son of a family which, above everything else, values its ancestry...and name.

This book, which I think is about 900 pages in hard copy, teems with all sorts of interesting characters, and some of the funniest are the very trendy "in" crowd that attends all the parties and balls. There are the "supercilious", a group of girls who only speak to one another and no-one else. There are the "volubles" who are completely the opposite. And then there is the "insensiblist" Mr Meadows, who thinks that being very very bored is the thing to be, and really couldn't care less about anything. My favourite is Lady Honoria Pemberton, who wouldn't be out of place in a modern novel with her outrageously un-PC behaviour and droll comments on the other characters. But the villainous Mr Monckton also ranks highly, with his nefarious plans to marry Cecilia himself...just as soon as his inconvenient elderly wife does the decent thing and dies.

I enjoyed this a lot, although it is very long, and the language is typical of the time, with some very long sentences. Critics seem to think that Evelina is better, so I'll try and get to that one at some point.

Goodness, I've just checked my library reservations list and I have 2,142 pages in transit - five books in total. Yikes! They're all non-fiction, too. At least now I will benefit from the extended loan period over Christmas (and lots of days in which to read as I won't be in the office). Meanwhile, Elizabeth of York continues to be an excellent read.

TWELVE days off??? Wow. I've got Christmas itself off. And New Year's day, of course. Those are the official days. Then I've got 4 days of vacation next week and another vacation day that I couldn't take next week so am taking it on the 26th. Is this a British thing or a Susan thing?

Charlotte, it's partly a British thing (26 Dec is also a public holiday here) and partly a "me" thing - I have a ton of leave left to use up (I get 25 days per year and our leave year ends at the end of April) and increasingly the UK shuts down between Christmas and the New Year, so it's a good time to take it as clients are less likely to need things done. The three public holidays mean that I only need to take five days of leave and I get 12 days in a row.

You've sold me on Cecilia with that great review! I'm a fan of Anthony Trollope and Cecilia sounds like it might be a similar type of book.

Your Christmas vacation sounds great!

#107 Sounds a lot more fun than Evelina to me! Will sincerely try and get to it in 2014 :)

Oh - I see.

Really it would probably be better if we shut down here in the US as most everybody is pretty useless during Christmas week - mostly due to exhaustion (caused by buying into all the Christmas madness). I'd like to be able to just withdraw into my own little cocoon for the duration, motivated by a serious desire to just get past the holiday and not think about it or any of the stuff that isn't the same anymore.

Looking forward to January 2nd - and a brand new shiny LT thread. Come on 2014!

Susan, thoroughly enjoyed your review of Cecilia. 900 pages, yikes! Gosh, I read Evelina in university but hardly remember it at all. Hmm, a 2014 reread?

#111: Heidi, I'm so glad you liked the review! Cecilia has many of the things that I also like in Trollope - a large cast of characters, numerous sub-plots and so on, although the writing style is more old-fashioned. There is apparently one famous sentence with sixteen commas in it, and it's certainly not the place to look for minimalist prose!

#112: Bekka, I'm sure you'll enjoy it. Was Evelina not fun? I know it's the more famous of the two.

#113: Charlotte, pull up a chair and wait out Christmas with me :-) We have coffee with no gingerbread flavouring and biscuits (cookies) that don't come in a huge overpriced box.

#114: Thanks Nancy! It was a faster read than I thought it would be, so I'm sure you could fit it in somewhere in 2014. Goodness it feels odd typing that, and yet I've been accepting meeting requests for next year for a while now so I should be used to it.



161. Elizabeth of York by Alison Weir

Where I got it: Library (a brand new hardback - resistance was futile)
Why I read it: Honestly, I liked the cover

The cover wasn't the only reason I picked up this book, but it is so lovely that it made me want to keep picking it up and continuing with it. It's a biography of Elizabeth of York, who married Henry VII, thereby uniting the Yorks and the Lancasters and bringing an end to their feuding. She was the mother of Henry VIII and so the grandmother of Elizabeth I. And Elizabeth II is a sixteenth-generation descendent, through Elizabeth of York's daughter Margaret, who married the king of Scotland.

My knowledge of the Tudors from Henry VIII onwards is good, but I knew nothing about Elizabeth of York and Henry VII other than the fact that their marriage started the Tudor period. This book looks at Elizabeth's own family. She was the daugher of Edward IV and Elizabeth Wydeville (written as Woodville in some texts). She was the sister of the "Princes in the Tower" allegedly killed by her uncle, Richard III. And a lot of English people thought she had more right to the throne than Henry VII, but a woman hadn't ruled in her own right at that time, so she only became a Queen by marriage.

The books starts with her father's family, and it would have benefited greatly from a family tree at the front, as the various family relationships were quite hard to follow, with people sometimes described by name and sometimes by title. But that's my only quibble about the book, which is otherwise incredibly detailed and totally fascinating. Once Edward IV has his family, and particularly once Elizabeth marries Henry VII, it becomes easier to follow, and pretty un-put-downable, tracing the births (and sometimes deaths) of her children and her daily life at court and on tours around the country and religious pilgrimages. There is a lot about her household and how it ran, and a year of her "privy purse" accounts survives, showing the minutiae of her spending.

Elizabeth was just 37 when she died, probably of an infection following the birth of her final child. But what an amazing life she had, and what a dynasty she started.

I would recommend this for anyone interested in British royal history, or just history generally, and the beautiful hardback edition would make a lovely Christmas present.

Susan I'm delurking to say hello.

I think Elizabeth of York is already on my radar, but I'll make sure!

Hi Susan, Elizabeth of York does indeed sound very interesting, I am definitely adding this to my wishlist.

#116: Hi Roberta! I must delurk on your thread too :-)

#117: Lori, it's worth checking. There are a lot of royal biographies out there!

#118: Judy, I hope you like it.

I'm currently reading Family Secrets: Living with Shame from the Victorians to the Present, which I see is called something else in the US, and Mary Boleyn: 'The Great and Infamous Whore' which wins subtitle of the year, although amusingly I see it is Mary Boleyn: The Mistress of Kings in the US. Maybe whores don't work so well for book titles over there.

Family Secrets is an odd book, and I am reserving judgment until I've finished it, but I'm surprised at some of the language the (American) author uses. "Half-caste" features frequently, and not just in the context of it being quotes from the olden days. That term is not used in polite society in the UK these days at all (and the book is about the UK). "Mixed race" is the term that most people would use. The author didn't even go as far as "bi-racial", which I think is common in the US (but not used here).

There is also "concubine" for Indian girlfriends but "mistress" for white ones, and "bastard" for children born outside marriage - again, not quoting from people in Victorian times, where it would be understandable, because I know that's how people spoke, but as if the author is using the term herself. The chapter on mentally handicapped children hidden away from society was similarly harrowing, with "idiot" used frequently. Again, I know that's what the old term was, but it jars when the author uses it for her modern commentary. That chapter was nevertheless interesting, because apparently in Victorian times families were more accepting of their "backward" children, (again, that's a quote) and incorporated them into family life, whereas by about the 1920s there was a theory that "idiocy" might be hereditary, so having an "idiot" child was a bad reflection on the family, and could hinder the marriage prospects of the other children. That was why a lot more children were sent away into residential care and written out of the history of their family.

Hmmm. I can appreciate your problem with all of those terms that are really unacceptable in modern times. If the author were writing Historical Fiction, I would be perfectly ok with them, but in a non-fiction book that is not even quoting someone directly - not so much. I wonder why the publisher chose to soft-peddle Mary Boleyn's 'job description' in the US book title when the book itself is filled to the brim with offensive words and terms.

Have been reading a good bit, here and there, about the Elizabeth of York book. Might just want to take a peek at that one even though the Tudors are not my favorites.

#120: Charlotte, I looked up a couple of reviews from the UK papers and the reviewers don't mention it, so maybe I am supposed to be reading it as if I were a person in historical times. I bet there are certain words the author wouldn't dare use now, however, even on that basis, in which case why use any of them?

Mary Boleyn was my favourite character in Wolf Hall, which I know is no reason to read a biography of the actual person, but I thought Hilary Mantel did a very good job of making her into her own person rather than just "a mistress", so I was interested to read more. But I must get on, as five more books are in transit towards the library. I hope they don't arrive all at once!

But I must get on, as five more books are in transit towards the library. I hope they don't arrive all at once! Of course they will all arrive at once. It's a conspiracy! ;-)

#122: Roberta, I think it might be :-) Somewhere I imagine a computer programme which holds books until a certain number of pages is amassed, and then releases them all at once, giggling. But nothing has arrived so far, and I should finish Family Secrets tonight. I hope I don't finish work for Christmas with no library books and have *nothing to read* apart from the 400 books on my Kindle. I would have to keep it permanently plugged in and charging!

#124 nothing to read

*snorts* I wonder if any of us on this site would ever experience that state? LOL

#124: Heidi, the crisis has passed! Two books are waiting for collection so I'll pick them up at lunchtime.

Meanwhile I've finished one of my current ones:



162. Family Secrets: Living with Shame from the Victorians to the Present Day by Deborah Cohen

Where I got it: Library
Why I read it: It was on the list of "books of the year" in one of the papers

I was underwhelmed by this, although it had an interesting premise - the difference between secrecy and privacy and how, as privacy has become increasingly possible and desirable with nuclear families living in larger houses, with no neighbours listening to their business on the other side of a thin wall, secrecy has become increasingly unacceptable, and people now talk about family situations that they would once have hushed up.

The author looked at the mixed-race children of the Raj, "illegitimate" children, adoption, adultery and gay relatives, among other things, and while there were lots of interesting points made (particularly about the legal situation in respect of adoption and divorce) the language annoyed me and it all got a bit psycho-babbly towards the end.

#125: The psycho-babble in and of itself in that book would turn me off. Thanks for the warning - I think I can safely avoid that one.

I hope your next read is a better one, Susan!

#126: Glad I could save you the time, Stasia :-) My next read is already better.

I picked up two new reserves at lunchtime - Fat Chance: The Bitter Truth About Sugar and Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil which is recommended reading for a Coursera course starting in January.

I have to lecture shortly, for which I will be changing into an expensive jacket. Last time I wore the jacket (for the first time) no-one commented on it. After the meeting I changed into a cardigan and someone immediately said "I love your sweater! It's such a great colour!". I left the jacket in the office and this morning wore the cardigan again. A different person said "That's a great cardigan. What a nice colour!" Someone else told me I looked really well. And the cardi...cost £20 from Uniqlo. Grrrr....

LOL - always the way isn't it! I know for a fact that I look smarter in a pencil skirt and plain black t but work have a jacket policy for client meetings. I just look ridiculous (am NOT the shape for a jacket!).

Bekka, yes, it is always the way! We have a "business casual" dress code with mandatory suits/ties for client meetings but most of the time people lean more towards the "casual" than the "business". Most people keep a respectable outfit in the office in case a meeting is sprung on them.

Two more reserves to pick up today, including the huge Global Crisis, about "climate change and catastrophe in the 17th century" (gulp) so I'd better get cracking.

I have been MIA for a number of days and just now getting caught up with your thread, Susan. For Allingham's Campion series I prefer the TV adaptations to the books.... Lugg was cast perfectly, IMO! ;-)

Great review of Cecilia. I downloaded both Cecilia and Evelina after you sold me on the the "C" book. I just might start with Evelina next year. Good timing that you have a stack of reading material coming your way from the library as you get ready for your days off from work..... reading and relaxing are my kind of holiday activities!

#130: Lori, the stack of reading is a little bit terrifying. As I made my way over to the reserve collection shelf last night I saw a huge hardback in about the right place for my name, and wondered what on earth I'd done. But that wasn't it - my book was twice the size! Seven hundred pages of tiny printing and two hundred pages of notes. I read and read last night and I was still on the Roman numerals of the introduction :-) It's very interesting, though. I think I'm going to have to aim for 50 pages per day and it will take a fortnight. (Checks mental calculation - yes, a fortnight!)

I'm also tempted by Evelina but I'm having a little break in the modern world. As well as all the library non-fiction, my current Kindle classic (or at least freebie) is Arnold Bennett's The Old Wives' Tale, which was the inspiration for Marriage Material further up the thread. It's fun to see the parallels but also the differences. And I love the writing style.

#127: Glad to hear that your next read is indeed better than the previous one. I hope the trend continues.

#132: Stasia, it's looking good for the next few books. I just picked up another reserve (many more pages of tiny printing) and couldn't help getting the new Laurie Graham novel The Liar's Daughter (hmmm, no touchstone). It's like all of my self-control has flown out of the window.

#106 Excellent. I'll line up Courtiers to read as well.

#119 & 125 Hmm, I had that on my library list but I feel less sure about it now that you've mentioned the language it uses.

#134: Hi Heather! Definitely get to Courtiers sooner rather than later.

I've been out of action over the weekend due to a headache which I fear was yoga-induced (and just when I thought the yoga and pilates were doing me some good) but I did manage to get a bit of reading done. I was reading my library books in a 50-page rotation (an old stitching trick for when you feel a bit overwhelmed by everything) but yesterday I kept going with book 163 until I finished it:



163. Fat Chance: The Bitter Truth About Sugar by Robert Lustig

Where I got it: Library
Why I read it: I saw a review in one of the papers a while ago, and now it's one of the books of the year in the Christmas round-up

The most startling thing I learned from this book is that fruit juice has more sugar in it than "full-fat" soft drinks. Who would have thought?! If I'd known this, I would have assumed that the sugar in fruit juice was somehow "better" than the refined sugar or High Fructose Corn Syrup added to soft drinks, but no.

Unlike Salt, Sugar, Fat, which is the other book on this subject I've read this year, Fat Chance focuses more on the science of sugar and the obesity problems now being experienced even by people in developing countries who eat "Western" food. Traditionally it has been thought that it's eating too much fat that is responsible for obesity, but Robert Lustig argues that it's really sugar, pointing out that trials on people eating fat have failed to control for the influence of sugar. He suggests some ways that people can change their own habits (no more soft drinks or juice - milk or water only, and a big increase in fibre, which is removed from processed foods) but argues that the issue also requires legislation, because the food processors are adding sugar to just about everything they can find, even when we used to eat those same foods without it. Two examples he gives are ketchup and yoghurt, and I am old enough to remember when natural yoghurt had quite a sour taste compared to the non-stop sugary flavours that it has today. (There was no discussion of the rumour that McDonald's cheeseburgers only include the slice of pickle because otherwise they would be so sweet that they would count as a cake, but I'd love to know whether that's true).

He points out that we've accepted legislation in all sorts of other areas to preserve health - e.g. a minimum age for alcohol and tobacco purchases, smoking bans (and in Europe tobacco advertising and sponsorship bans, although I'm not sure whether that is also true in the US), seat belt laws (and in the UK we have a ban on using hand-held mobile phones while driving), drink-drive laws and so on. He suggests that consumers start to demand changes to the way in which food processors make their products because it is, in some cases, and particularly where fresh food isn't readily available (i.e. poor areas) almost literally impossible to buy things that aren't full of sugar.

I can see why this is recommended as a book of the year and I would certainly recommend it to anyone interested in what they or their families eat.

Fat Chance sounds fascinating! I am one of those consumers that thinks natural sugars are better for the body than refined sugars but I didn't think about the sugar levels before. Processed foods are tough..... it is so easy for the manufacturers to put in unnecessary ingredients into their products. I started paying close attention to package labels when grocery shopping a few years ago and was horrified at what I discovered. Even something as basic as canned crushed tomatoes has extras that don't make a lot of sense. Sadly, to make things like pasta sauce totally from scratch takes time and is more expensive once the ingredients are purchased individually, making it hard for people on a budget or with very busy schedules to cook from scratch all the time. Being an informed dinner in a restaurant is even more difficult.

Sorry to see that you have been battling a headache, Susan. I hope it is now gone.

#136: Lori, you are so right about the unnecessary ingredients. Last week I bought myself a Kenwood mixer for Christmas, and decided to try it out using a recipe that I used to make at home in NZ. It's for biscuits (cookies) and one of the ingredients is a couple of ounces of cornflakes. My mother and I discovered that it worked better with bran flakes - not the little itty-bitty ones, but the cornflake-shaped bran flakes that Kellog's makes. On Saturday I bought some - just the plain ones, not the ones with added flavouring or anything - just plain. http://www.tesco.com/groceries/Product/Details/?id=254852587

I made the biscuits and they turned out really well, but, when I snuck one off the cooling rack I thought it tasted sweeter than I remembered. It was sweet enough that I didn't bother icing the rest of them. This morning I looked on the back of the packet of bran flakes, and discovered "sugar" and "honey" listed as *separate ingredients*. There was nothing on the front of the box to say they were sweetened - I deliberately *didn't* buy the ones with sugary flavourings, but it seems that even the "plain" ones are still full of sugar.

Last night I finished two more of the giant stack of library books:



164. Mary Boleyn: 'The Great and Infamous Whore' by Alison Weir (ha, even the tombstone defaults to the whore-less US title :-) )

Where I got it: Library
Why I read it: I was looking for something else by Alison Weir after the excellent Elizabeth of York and this was on the shelf over the road.

This was both a biography of Mary Boleyn and a historiography of all the things that have been written about her over the years. Its main problem is that we just don't know very much about Mary Boleyn and, while the author did manage to shred a few of the myths about her by proving that they couldn't be true, she wasn't able to say a great deal about what actually did happen. That made it a less satisfying read than Elizabeth of York and it's probably one for the true Tudor fan rather than the curious observer who perhaps watched "The Other Boleyn Girl" :-)

165. Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil by Paul Bloom

Where I got it: Library
Why I read it: It's the recommended reading for a Coursera course starting in January

This is not a book I would have picked up if it hadn't been for the course, but it was interesting nonetheless and I'm looking forward to the course. The author details some of the studies done with babies on notions of "good" and "evil" (or really "nice" and "nasty" in baby-world) and it was fun to read about how exactly you can tell what a baby is thinking and measure its reactions. (A lot of it has to do with how long babies look at things).

There was a discussion of some of the (apparently) classic problems of morality, including the one where a man parks his very expensive car and goes for a walk, only to see a train careering down a track about to run over and kill a child. He can flip a switch to change the direction of the train and save the child, but it will crash into his car instead. Does he flip the switch or not? Flipping the switch to save the child is considered the "right" thing to do, but then (the argument goes) how is it that we in rich countries can have any nice things when there are children dying all over the world? By choosing material possessions over charitable giving, we are choosing not to flip the switch, which makes us bad. How can we live with ourselves? And so on. (Fortunately the babies weren't tested on that sort of problem).

This is a short and entertaining read.

This was non-fiction book 50 - woo-hoo! I am close-ish to my goal of one-third non-fiction to two-thirds fiction, but I won't quite make it. Never mind - 50 non-fiction books is more than I've managed before.

Just checking in - I'll pass on the Fat Chance... I obsess enough as it is. And I LOVE LOVE LOVE cereal. I would totally live on it if I could.

Hope you are enjoying christmassy London? Some colleagues went over for a big shindig with a load of clients and went to the Christmas Park/German market thingy (I forget where) and said it was incredible.

Bekka, I would also live on cereal (and often do), But now it's my home-made one, out of which I have disappeared most of the sugar.

Christmassy London is passing me by, as this is, after all, the Bah Humbug corner.



I have spent all day trying to get a document finalised, only to discover (having copied over one my secretary produced a couple of weeks ago) that it is a vastly out of date style which sends the system into a conniption, and is basically hopeless. So that's always good to hear right up against a deadline. Naturally she is now away sick, with one of the mysterious illnesses never suffered by people who actually need to show up every day, so I might just have to send it out all wrong, with no footer. Oooooh.

Eeep - that sound familiar. The wonders of trying to work in compatibility mode :( Hope it sorts out. My new (ish) trainee appears to have a similar illness :/

#141: I threw myself on the mercy of the central document team, who sorted it out thank goodness. The end of tomorrow can't come fast enough (provided it's all signed by then).

This morning I went to the library to pick up Gulp, by Mary Roach, and somehow also came away with three books about the Great Train Robbery. It's one of those Famous British Events that I know about vaguely, but there was an interesting section in the book about 1963 that I read recently, which gave some more details. The BBC is showing a very good two-part drama on it, and coincidentally Ronnie Biggs (one of the robbers, for overseas readers) died yesterday. I always thought (to the extent I thought about it at all) that he must have been the one in charge, but that person seems to have been someone I've never heard of at all. He didn't get the lasting fame he seemed to be seeking in last night's drama.

Meanwhile, I'm continuing with Global Crisis and last night read a chapter on China - the fall of the Ming Dynasty and the beginning of the Qing Dynasty. The book has excellent maps and charts, but I don't think they'd come out very well on an ereader, so this is one I'm recommending for hard copy only. I did wonder, as I was reading Elizabeth of York, whether the lack of a family tree in that book was a deliberate choice to make it more ereader friendly rather than an annoying omission.

166. The Old Wives' Tale by Arnold Bennett

Where I got it: Kindle
Why I read it: When I read a review of Marriage Material, further up the thread, it was described as a reworking of this book

I'd never heard of Arnold Bennett, or of this book, which may make me a literary heathen, but it seems that neither have a lot of other people, judging from what I've read since, where person after person expresses amazement that such a fabulous book is so little-known. I asked myself where Mr Bennett had been hiding all my life, and how many other novels he might have written that I could spend 2014 reading. Because I *loved* this. LOVED!

It's the story of the lives of two sisters living in one of the villages in the Potteries in England, which later joined together to become modern-day Stoke-on-Trent. It starts in the 1860s but continues into the early 1900s, and it's a masterpiece of wry observation and some very funny bits. In a way it reminds me of Anthony Trollope's writing style as there is direct interaction between the writer and the reader (there must be a name for that - Nancy, help!).

Many descriptions stuck with me, but I particularly liked this one:

"Constance dived into the recesses of the perambulator and extracted from its cocoon the centre of the universe, and scrutinized him with a quiet passion, and then rushed with him into the house, though not a drop of rain had yet fallen...{She} sat down on the horsehair sofa and hugged and kissed her prize before removing his bonnet."

I was interested, as I was reading it, to consider what Sathnam Sanghera had done differently in Marriage Material, as the differences were quite considerable. His story was told from a different point of view, alternating between the first and third person, and the ending was very different, but there were certainly similarities.

Arnold Bennett is my "find" of the year, and I've already downloaded another one of his books. I recommend this one to everyone because it is fabulous. And I loved it, in case I didn't mention that before :-)

In other news, I picked up another library reserve this morning. The madness has to stop!

#142: Thanks for the reminder about Gulp. I very much enjoy Mary Roach's books and I need to get to this one yet!

#143 Arnold Bennett is one of my favourites although it's a few years since I've read one. Anna of the Five Towns is just perfect.

#144: Stasia, I know her books are popular on LT but I didn't think I could handle Stiff so that's why I picked Gulp.

#145: Rhian, Anna of the Five Towns is the one I've downloaded (rather at random) so I'm glad to hear it's good!

I've just been down to the mall to buy my last Pret Christmas Lunch sandwich. The queue for Santa's Grotto is getting a bit fractious in parts, and some queuers were being extracted by one parent and walked around a bit while the other parent stayed in line. I hope it doesn't all end in tears.

Fortunately I got to the bank just before the giant queue for the cash machines started. I was next to one of the paying-in machines, into which a family seemed to be pouring a couple of supermarket shopping bags of coins, so someone is in for a good Christmas.

I've got A Man from the North and The Grand Babylon Hotel on my ereader but I haven't read either one of them yet. I'll have to see if I can get to at least one of them in 2014!

I've never heard of Arnold Bennett but you have me intrigued. Must check him out!

Finding a new author to love is the perfect ending to the year Susan. On to the wish list he goes.

ETA: Several of his books are free on Kindle including The Old Wive's Tale

Okay - you've got me with the Arnold Bennett book. I'll add it to my wish list for now but I'll download it soon.

Arnold Bennett is a 'new to me' author as well. the loved it pretty much sold me so on the future reading list The Old Wives' Tale goes. Glad to see you are managing to survive insane holiday shopping days we are now in. ;-)

Now off to investigate what a Pret Christmas Lunch sandwich is.........

That is an amazing sounding sandwich. I want one! I wonder how well one would ship overseas...

#147: Carrie, I'm sure you'll be glad if you do!

#148: Katie, I'm very sorry for adding to your TBR pile :-P

#149: Roberta, I was so pleased to find him!

#150: Lori, the carousel of my Kindle is so full of recent downloads (ahem) that I think you're wise to wishlist it at this stage.

#151 + 152: Lori and Charlotte, sadly there is no picture of the sandwich, but here's a link to the description of it:
http://www.pret.com/menu/sandwiches/PUK1783.shtm . They go on sale about a month before Christmas and I've had quite a few this year when the Soup of the Day isn't one of my favourites.

I went to the supermarket this morning and for a moment I didn't even think they were open as I couldn't see any customers inside. There were a very few, but I walked straight up to a till at the end, with no waiting at all. Most odd! I was home again by 9am and I've spent the rest of the day reading and cooking. Fat Chance said that a third of the sugar could be removed from any baking recipe with no change to the taste, so I've tried it with my gingerbread.



167. Romps, Tots and Boffins: The Strange Language of News by Robert Hutton

Where I got it: Kindle Daily Deal
Why I read it: I'd seen it mentioned favourably somewhere

This little book will amuse anyone who reads a lot of the British press, because it looks at all the weird words that newspapers (and particularly the tabloids) use to make the most of their limited headline space, and to try and spice up boring news. e.g. "acolytes" = supporters of someone with whom we disagree; "Arctic conditions" = snow; "bigwig" = a chief we don't like; "blanket" = what snow does to the countryside, and so on. I loved it, and found myself giggling on the bus, which I try not to do even though it does usually get me a seat to myself.

Book 168 is a Book I Cannot Name, because it's work-related, but it's another non-fiction finish, so that ticker is coming along nicely. The Christmas library books are a teetering tower (well, eight) so I really need to try and read one every day, which will give me time for a bit of Global Crisis every day too.

Hmm, Arnold Bennett is new to me, too, but that is a lovely review of The Old Wives' Tale, Susan. Sounds like one I would enjoy.

All caught up here, Susan, and I had a lovely time doing it! Your thread always makes me smile. Your observations on daily life are as entertaining as your turn of phrase. And I almost always learn something.

I have added The Old Wives Tale to my list. I have not read anything by Bennett, but thanks to your delightful review, I am very much looking forward to giving him a try. And Romps, Tots, and Boffins also sounds like one to investigate - don't you just love language?!

Now I'm off to check out that link to your sandwich description! Hoping that your weekend is full of fabulous!

Is this it?



It sounds like something I would love - yum!

#154: Nancy, I really think you would. I love the tree! It's the only festive cheer on the thread!

#155: Mamie, thank you for your lovely comments on my crabby thread :-) There is a US equivalent of Romps, Tots and Boffins, (not by the same author), which also sounds entertaining. One thing I have noticed that US headline-writers do which the British papers don't is use a comma instead of "and" - so for example, "Santa, Rudolph in sleigh drama" or "Santa brings books, toys to all". I suppose it saves "and", which takes up space, but it always looks quite exotic when I see it. And that is a picture of the sandwich!! I have had quite a few of those recently, but that's my turkey for the year.

Today I have stayed inside, feeling glad that I didn't have to go out. This morning was sunny but now it is dark. I always expect things to brighten up immediately after the solstice but they never do. I have, however, read another book:



169. The Great Train Robbery: Crime of the Century: The Definitive Account by Nick Russell-Pavier and Stewart Richards

Where I got it: Library
Why I read it: Mostly because of the very good two-part BBC drama about the robbery which screened this week, and because it was right there on the shelf...

Due to the TV drama and a bit in Andrew Cook's book 1963: That Was The Year That Was, I knew more about the Great Train Robbery than I did at the beginning of the year, but I still wanted the compete story, and this book is pretty complete. It starts with the robbery being committed, so leaves out all the planning, but that's part of the back-story discussed as the book progresses. There's also a whole lot of nerdy legal stuff, which I loved.

The trial of the robbers and their accomplices was, at the time (1964) the longest trial in British legal history - a whole eight weeks. That alone is remarkable when you compare how long something similar would take these days. The other notable features was the length of the sentences - the main robbers received 30 years each, which caused public outrage as sentences for rape and murder weren't even that long. But most of them served only about a third of their sentences before being released, and two escaped and were only recaptured later. The most famous, Ronnie Biggs, came back to the UK in 2001 from Brazil where he'd been living for most of his time on the run, and was taken back to prison, but released again in 2009 on the basis that he was weeks away from death. In the end he lasted until last week, so it was either a remarkable co-incidence or, as one TV reviewer suggested (in jest, I hope), the BBC has a remarkably active PR department...

I have two other books about the robbery, one from the point of view of the robbers and one promising to reveal "The Untold Story from the Closed Investigation Files". But first I think I'll read my chapter of Global Crisis and then start Gulp.

170. Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal by Mary Roach

Where I got it: Library
Why I read it: I'd seen it reviewed in the paper, and I know that this author's books are popular on LT too

This is a very droll look at the process of eating and digestion and then...well, you know. Packed with obscure facts and eccentric scientists, it's a really interesting description of not just what goes on, but also of historical attempts to find out how everything worked, and how humans differ from other kinds of creatures in the way they have evolved. There is also a chapter on whether someone could actually survive inside a whale.

We are having another Weather Event here in the UK, with high winds and flooding. I'm not flooded, being up high (and I think London has escaped the rain for the most part) but a seat cushion from someone's outdoor furniture appeared on my kitchen balcony mid-afternoon, so I hope the people upstairs have done a better job of securing the actual furniture itself.

Onto my next read, which I think will be Piers Paul Read's The Train Robbers but first I have to read my chapter of The Global Crisis, which tonight is about France.

Susan, just stopping by to wish you a very happy Christmas and New Year! I'm desperately hoping that our recycling bins don't blow away before they're collected in the morning. And hoping even more desperately that the refuse people turn up given what the weather is like at the moment: the recycling bin is full to overflowing as it is, it won't cope with Christmas empties as well!

Thanks Rhian! I hope the bins survived. We had high winds most of the night and at about 4.30 this morning there was a massive crashing noise, but selfishly I was only concerned about whether it was something coming through my roof window. Fortunately not. London is quite calm now, wind-wise, but the TV news is showing some terrible pictures of other parts of the country. So much flooding, and so many stupid people trying to drive through it. The rescue services must get really fed up.

I've been browsing through the 12 Days of Kindle Sale, while eating a homemade toasted fruit bun. They didn't turn out like the picture in the book but they taste fine :-) I've bought:

Litter: The Remains of Our Culture by Theodore Dalrymple, which doesn't seem to have a touchstone
1493: How Europe's Discovery of the Americas Revolutionized Trade, Ecology and Life on Earth by Charles C Mann
On Extinction: How We Became Estranged From Nature by Melanie Challenger
The Magus of Hay by Phil Rickman (book 12 in the Merrily Watkins series)
Candelight Christmas by Susan Wiggs, which is the brand new book in the Lakeshore Chronicles series

And yesterday, on my way home from Marks & Spencer, I popped into House of Books in Moorgate and found the hardback version of The Horror of Love: Nancy Mitford and Gaston Palewski in Paris and London for just £5. Woo-hoo!

Glad it wasn't you being blown away last night Susan. We've had fence 1 post go, take 2 panels with it and a second post is on the verge of toppling. but I'm not doing anything about them today.
Nice book haul and Happy Christmas to you.

Hi Susan,

Glad to hear that the winds have died down for you. Just like last time, I think in Belgium we are suffering from some of the same. It has been incredibly windy the last few days, and the day before yesterday it actually hailed for a little while. Today we had to brave it to get a few last-minute things for our pseudo-Christmas dinner and it was no fun at all. But now we're back at home and have no reason to go back out in it, so that's good.

Hope you have a lovely holiday!

#161: Helen, you're wise to wait till it's finished blowing and then fix everything at once. I hope you don't lose any more fence.

#162: Thanks Diana! Happy Christmas to you too.

#163: Ursula, I hope you stay warm and dry till it's over. I've only been out today to check the post and see if I could see what crashed down in the middle of the night, but fortunately it wasn't the five storeys of scaffolding from the building along the road...



171. The Train Robbers by Piers Paul Read

Where I got it: Library
Why I read it: This is the second of my Great Train Robbery books following the BBC dramas last week

Although this has been reissued for the 50th anniversary of the robbery, it was originally written in 1978, and purports to be the story of the heist as told to the author by some of the robbers themselves. But this does mean that it doesn't really question a lot of the information, apart from the story that the robbery was commissioned by a former Nazi "Mr Big", which the robbers' agent thought would make the book more attractive to the publisher. Nevertheless it is interesting, particularly because of the information that didn't make it into the trial, and it was a good read. Looking it up to add to my books I see there are many, many more on the same subject.

I'm doing pretty well with the library books, but there is no time to lose! I haven't read today's chapter of Global Crisis yet, and I have promised myself that if there's time after that I might read a Christmas romance :-)

Happy Christmas Susan! I hope the winds have died down. My neighbor is originally from Bristol and she left on Friday to spend the holidays with her brother's family. I think he lives in Swindon. Do you know how bad the winds were there? If mince pie is in your plans for tomorrow, enjoy an extra slice for me. It's not popular in this part of the country, and it's one of the foods I miss!

Thanks Carrie! Everywhere has had wind, although it might have lessened in the west of the country by now. Depending on how (and when) your neighbour got from Heathrow to Swindon there might have been train delays (nearly everything seems to be delayed due to flooding) but fingers crossed she reached her brother eventually. I might have mince pies, depending on the contents of a box from Marks & Spencer that my sister-in-law sent me. I haven't opened it yet, or even read the customs form on the back of another present from a friend. This is an almost unheard-of level of self-control :-)

I hope she got to Swindon OK. The last time she went to her brother's for Christmas a few years ago, she ended up in hospital with pneumonia while she was there. Something eventful always seems to happen when she visits.

Merry Christmas, Susan. Enjoy, enjoy, my LT friend.

They need to do the 12 Days of Kindle Christmas sale after Christmas up to Twelfth Night so that those who get new devices can take advantage of it after the holidays.

Merry Christmas Susan!

Fingers crossed your weather is better than ours cos ours is miserable.

Merry, merry Christmas to you, Susan! I am among those who had never heard of Arnold Bennett before visiting your thread, and now I am definitely intrigued! My library has one copy of The Old Wives' Tale but not Anna of the Five Towns. He'll be going on my 2014 list, and I look forward to seeing which books of his you'll enjoy next year.

Best wishes to you!

Happy Christmas to you Susan!

Glad you are okay despite all that wind, Susan. Merry Christmas!

Hope you have a wonderful Christmas!!

Merry Christmas!

#167: Carrie, oh dear! I think things are a bit better today although I don't think trains run on Christmas Day (the tube doesn't) and lots of people still have no power.

#168: Thanks Nancy!

#169: Ours is up to 5 January, Lori. I hope you got the iPad!

#170: Bekka, the sun shone briefly earlier! And it's quite warm. I hope you're surviving the day and haven't disappeared under a pile of wrapping paper (intentionally or otherwise :-) ).

#171: Thanks Anne! I'm sure you'll love Arnold Bennett.

#172: Thanks Roberta!

#173: Merry Christmas, Roni!

#174: Thanks Chelle! All the best to you and Nate too.

#175: Thanks Jennifer! I hope you have a good day too.

Santa brought me a sore throat and some sneezes, which isn't *exactly* what I was hoping for, but at least I have nothing to do today, and I've been reading and watching TV. I think I'll survive :-) And I've finished my last Great Train Robbery book:



172: The Great Train Robbery: The Untold Story from the Closed Investigation Files by Andrew Cook

Where I got it: Library
Why I read it: It was right there on the shelf :-)

This is not the exciting expose that the cover copy promises, and it also requires a basic knowledge of what happened in the robbery and the people involved in order to get the most from it. In a strange co-incidence, though, the author refers, at the beginning of the book, to a documentary he made for Channel 4 some months ago about the robbery, and whether it was an inside job, and as I was glancing at the TV guide I saw that it's repeated tonight on the Yesterday channel, so I'll record it. One of the suspicious things about the robbery was that on the night it took place, all three of the high-security mail carriages were in for repairs, so the High-Value Packages were in an old-fashioned carriage with far fewer security features. The police and the Post Office wondered whether the robbers had been tipped off that this was the case, and/or that someone from the railways had disabled the newer carriages deliberately, but could never prove anything. However, it is generally thought that three or four of the gang evaded capture, so it can't be ruled out.

Merry Christmas, Susan!

Merry Christmas, Susan! Hope it was filled with fabulous!

#177: Thanks Katie! We haven't quite had Florida temperatures but it's been quite warm in London.

#178: Thanks Mamie!



173. Sleigh Bells in the Snow by Sarah Morgan

Where I got it: Kindle
Why I read it: Sarah Morgan is an auto-buy for me

This is her first full-length novel, in contrast to the typical 50,000-word novels she writes for the Modern and Medical lines for Harlequin Mills & Boon. Up to about 40% of the way through the book I wasn't convinced there was enough story for the number of words, if that makes sense, but it got better and I'll definitely read the next two in the series. This one was set in Vermont, which sounds very cold. But pretty :-)

Susan - That one has a nice cover.

I thought the same thing about the cover : ).

Hi Susan - Finding time to stop by with belated Christmas wishes and to wish you a

#180, 181: Lori and Nancy, I think it's a very "UK" cover. The US one is here:



I like the US one more, but I stuck to my rule of using the cover of the actual edition I read (unless it's a freebie in which case I always choose the Penguin Classic cover :-) )

#182: Thanks Lori! I've never seen a separate Happy Boxing Day picture but it's definitely appropriate for me :-)



174: Litter: The Remains of Our Culture by Theodore Dalrymple (also called Litter: How Other People's Rubbish Shapes Our Lives)

Where I got it: Kindle sale
Why I read it: It looked interesting. Also it was 99p

This is more of a long essay than a book (needless to say I'm going to count it as a book, as it's sold as one) and it's one of the rare books I've read in which I agree with every single thing the author says. Essentially it boils down to Young People Today are not taught basic manners or concern for others (although he does admit that's not true for everyone. But, as he says, it only takes a small percentage of people littering to turn the landscape into a big rubbish dump).

The book is as much philosophy as it is facts and figures about litter. Why have attitudes changed? Why do people drop litter right beside bins, where bins are provided? Is littering a symptom of some other social problem? He sums up the argument as follows:

"If men do bad things it is because something has perverted them from their original goodness; and since most men are partial to themselves, and easily blind themselves to their own voluntary faults, they locate their evil elsewhere than in their hearts. It is social and economic structures that are bad, not they themselves; for the, a society that is so perfect that they would have to make no effort to be good is not only possible but the only thing really worth aiming at.

In this kind of thinking about the human condition, abstractions become more real than the concrete reality by which one is surrounded. Exploitation, oppression and so forth are more vividly present in the mind than one's immediate physical and social environment.

It hardly matters in the face of such abstractions how one behaves oneself. This is because abstractions are so big and one's conduct is to small. Nothing that I do, beyond agitating in concert with others for a perfect world, makes any difference to the state of the world, given the vastness of the forces against me. Therefore, I can do what I like until such time as the structure of the world brings about perfection. Before that state of perfection, the exercise of virtue is meaningless; after it, automatic."

And this is *exactly* the attitude that so many people in the UK demonstrate today, not just about litter, but about everything. I read elsewhere that collecting litter in the UK costs £1 billion per year. One. BILLION. Pounds. The response of readers in a paper like The Guardian would be "Well, Starbucks/Google/Amazon should pay more tax" (this is the standard response to the failure of any group to take responsibility for their own actions instead of expecting the state to pick up the tab). In other words, corporations aren't behaving "fairly" so why should anyone else?

The author argues that other countries in the world are far less littered, and cites the US as an example. I don't know how true that is of the whole US but he was comparing a filthy student campus in the UK with a similar very clean one in the US, and that seemed to be the basis for his conclusion.

I remember being on a Central Line train late at night a few years ago, and a young couple was standing at the end of the carriage with a box of fried chicken which they ate in a way that reminded me of the dinner scene in the film version of Tom Jones - the one with Albert Finney. They were throwing chicken bones all over the floor as if it was quite normal, and those of us who weren't paralytically drunk (i.e. relatively few) were furtively looking on in disbelief. No-one dared to tell them to stop, because that's like saying "Stab Me Now" in London. Instead, we just picked our way over the mess when it was our turn to get off the train. Another day on the bus to work I watched a woman feeding her children sweets for breakfast, dropping the wrappers everywhere. At the end of "breakfast" she picked them all up, and I was about to admit to myself that I'd been wrong about the littering...when she opened the window of the bus and pushed the wrappers out into the morning. Even at Canary Wharf, where pretty much everyone who gets off the train is going to walk a maximum of a few hundred yards to their office, they leave the free morning newspapers all over the train and the station because they just can't be bothered taking them those few extra yards to put in their own rubbish bin or recycling.

It was a bit of a depressing read, but I'd definitely read more by this author, whose columns I have seen in one of our papers (The Daily Telegraph, I think).

Theodore Dalrymple is one of my favorite essayists. He always makes me think. I've found that I can only read him in light doses. He has a knack for analyzing problems, but since he doesn't usually propose solutions, it can be disheartening to read too much at once.

#184: Carrie, yes, I can see that would happen :-)

I read an article in The Times today saying that the Inland Revenue people were puzzled by all the online tax returns that had been filed on Christmas Day. Then I heard a radio ad from a lady saying she felt very zen having done hers. So I did mine! Yay! It's always a giant hassle trying to get interest certificates out of the banks (only one has a link to click for a summary of all the interest they've paid you in a particular tax year, and they are, inevitably, the bank that also sends out a certificate replicating the information without being asked) but it's done. I feel quite zen now :-) (The deadline is 30 December if you want them to collect any tax (under £3000) owing through your tax code for next year, UK taxpayers)

In other news, I've read 150 pages of Global Crisis and I only have 210 left to go. I should be able to manage those by the end of the year, although tomorrow I will have to venture out for supplies.

175. The Liar's Daughter by Laurie Graham

Where I got it: Library
Why I read it: Some of this author's books have been my very favourites over the past few years

This is the story of Nan, whose mother assures her that her father was Lord Nelson. But can her mother, who is fond of a drink, be relied on? And what happens when Nan has to make her own way in the world? Told alternately by Nan and her daughter, Prudence, this purports to be the memoir of someone who was at the Battle of Trafalgar (albeit in utero) and the Battle of Sebastapol.

It's not up there with Gone With The Windsors or The Importance of Being Kennedy but it was still a good enough read. At one point Nan meets Horatia Ward, who was (in real life) Lord Nelson's daughter with Lady Hamilton, and the book was quite interesting on the topic of celebrity and how some people are so keen to find a connection to it while others flee from it.

This is the last of my Christmas library books apart from Global Crisis and there are still five days of my holiday left to go. Yikes!

Susan> I almost always prefer the British covers to the US ones!

I'm also a huge fan of the British covers and titles over the US ones. I read mainly mysteries and the US covers are usually garish.

#186: This is the last of my Christmas library books apart from Global Crisis and there are still five days of my holiday left to go. Yikes!

Is that a good "Yikes" or a bad "Yikes"?

#187: Lori, with the romances I tend to prefer the US covers as the UK ones all look quite similar. But with other things I often prefer the UK one. Elizabeth of York, for example, is much prettier in its UK cover, I think.

#188: Roberta, it's interesting to see the changes sometimes - I wonder why the publishers think UK and US audiences are so different?

#189: Stasia, it was a bad Yikes as when I looked at the pile of books last weekend I thought I would have enough for the break. However, last night I remembered I'd downloaded a library ebook so I don't have to grapple with my Kindle books yet.

It is a gorgeous morning in London today - blue skies, quite warm, and I feel even worse for the poor people who still have no power and/or are flooded out. It sounds like a shambles out there. The Prime Minister did a walkabout yesterday and people were complaining to him about the hopelessness of the response by the power companies and local authorities. I made a quick trip to the mall for groceries before the sales shoppers hit it, and now it falls to me to file a whole lot of papers. Sigh. I thought I would still be feeling a warm glow from having done my tax return, but it just demonstrated that there is a whole lot of stuff which isn't where it should be.

176. Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century by Geoffrey Parker

Where I got it: Library
Why I read it: I saw a good review of it

Yessssss!!! I have finally finished this behemoth of a book. At one point I thought it might be unlikely, but all my free time over Christmas allowed me to stick at it.

The author looks at a turbulent part of the 1600s, in which much of the Northern hemisphere experienced the "Little Ice Age", causing widespread crop failures, famine, death and insurrection. Plus a lot of wars. He examines the role of climate change in the troubles of the period, and it ends by looking at the inadequacies of preparations for climate change today (sidestepping the argument about how it is caused. As he points out, the people of the 17th century were responsible for none of the carbon emissions that are said today to cause it but the Little Ice Age still happened).

Most of the history I read is English, with a little bit of American, and European only to the extent that it affects the kings and queens of England/the UK. But this book looks also at China, and Japan, which I'd never read about before, and also the Middle East. It is hugely dense, factually, and quite an undertaking, but a very interesting read.

Regarding your book about litter - I was just watching news coverage about a shooting in Providence this morning and thinking that the neighborhood where it took place was awfully messy. Trash everywhere - in the streets, the gutters, the sidewalks and caught in the metal fences. We are pretty much led to believe here, that we are the messiest people in the world and it's Europeans who are the neat and tidy ones. I know that there is always a ton of stuff tossed onto my property during the course of a year. Just love the sound of glass bottles being merrily tossed out a speeding car and shattering into a gazillion pieces of a summer night. So restful.

Edited to correct an incorrectly worded sentence - it should have read that Americans are messy and Europeans are neat and tidy. Apparently I must proof everything I type.

*hijacking Susan's thread*

Anyone interested in Sleigh Bells in the Snow (reviewed above) - it is part of the Kindle Daily Deal in the US today - only $1.99.

*end hijacking*

#192: Ow, Charlotte, that must be dangerous. And a hassle for you to have to pick up. The author talked quite a bit about driving along motorways, which I don't do, but I've seen things on TV about the litter picking that has to go on because of stuff thrown from cars. People are awful.

#193: LOL, Katie, anyone is welcome to talk about romance on my thread at any time :-) I pre-ordered Sleigh Bells in the Snow and paid full price for it, but almost immediately it went down to £1 for Kindle and has stayed there, and even on the Mills & Boon site it was ridiculously cheap. As she's one of their best authors that surprised me. And annoyed me just a tiny bit...I prefer her M&B novels so far but it will be interesting to see what the next two books in the trilogy are like, as it must be quite a mindshift to go from 50,000 words to 100,000 words in terms of plotting, secondary characters and so on.

I snagged it in your honor :)

Hi Susan. Trying to catch up and finding that as usual you've been doing some very interesting reading AND some fine reporting of same. Hope you have a lovely new year,

#195: Katie, ha! Well, I hope you enjoy it. I could always recommend one with a Sheikh, Prince, or tycoon if you'd like to try a second one :-)

#196: Hi Reba! It's good to see you visiting again. Happy New Year to you too!



177. The Smile of a Ghost by Phil Rickman

Where I got it: Library ebook
Why I read it: I bought the latest one in the 12 Days of Kindle Sale, which reminded me I needed to continue with the series. And I ran out of hard copy library books. And I'm scared of all the stuff on my Kindle.

This instalment sees two suicides at historic Ludlow Castle, with one of them the nephew of recently-retired policeman Andy Mumford. A poison-pen letter writer is trying to suggest that Merrily is a victim of domestic violence, while the Deliverance Ministry is under threat from a career priest and a devious psychiatrist. Fortunately Merrily survives to star in book 8, which I plan to read soon.

I love the cover on that Rickman book. I'm not familiar with the series, but the tags scare me away since I have a low tolerance for Occult themes.

#198: Lori, in that case, this series is definitely not for you :-) He's also written a couple of historical mysteries featuring John Dee (Elizabeth I's astrologer) and those are more straightforward crime/mystery. But a bit gory, thinking back to the first one...