pamelad reads at least 100

I used to read well over 100 books per year, but then I bought a TV (hadn't had one for more than 25 years) and have spent far too much time watching rubbish. I need a push, so here I am.

So far this year I've read 10.

January
1. The May Beetles Baba Schwartz
2. Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives ed Sarah Weinman
3. The Good Life Elsewhere Vladimir Lorchenov
4. Sinners and Shrouds Jonathan Latimer
5. The Fifth Grave Jonathan Latimer
6. Laidlaw William McIlvanney
7. China Dolls Lisa See

February
8. The Ways of White Folks Langston Hughes
9. Swann's Way Marcel Proust
10. Rules of Civility Amor Towles
11. In Farleigh Field by Rhys Bowen
12. Mischief by Charlotte Armstrong
13. Wild Wives by Charles Willeford
14. The Boy Who Loved Apples by Amanda Webster
15. Marcel Proust: a life by Edmund White
16. Rainbow's End by Ellis Peters
17. Listen, Liberal by Thomas Frank
18. Cakes and Ale by Somerset Maugham
19. Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl

March

20. Before Lunch by Angela Thirkell
21. An Armenian Sketchbook by Vasily Grossman
22. Quicksand by Nella Larsen
23. You're Saying it Wrong by Ross Petras and Katherine Petras
24. Sanditon and A Memoir of Jane Austen by Jane Austen and James Edward Austen-Leigh
25. Ashenden by W.Somerset Maugham

April

26. Lion: A Long Way Home by Saroo Brierley
27. In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower by Marcel Proust
28. Slow Horses by Mick Herron
29. The Natural Way of Things by Charlotte Wood
30. Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov
31. On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder
32. When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
33. Dead Lions by Mick Herron
34. The Third Betrayal by Michael Hartland
35. Learn Italian the Natural Way, Part 1 by Paul Noble
36. The Bath Mysteries by E. R. Punshon

May

37. Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil by Melina Marchetta
38. How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain de Botton
39. Agatha Raisin and the Christmas Crumble by M. C. Beaton
40. Miss Brill by Katherine Mansfield
41. Real Tigers by Mick Herron
42. Spook Street by Mick Herron
43. The Confidential Agent by Graham Greene
44. Thousand Cranes by Yasunari Kawabata
45. Wild Stawberries by Angela Thirkell
46. An Officer and a Spy by Robert Harris
47. Learn Italian the Natural Way, Part 2 by Paul Noble
48. Kokoro by Natsume Soseki
49. Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose
50. Naomi by Juníchiro Tanizaki

June

51. The Key by Junichiro Tanizaki
52. The Brandons by Angela Thirkell
53. The Guermantes Way by Marcel Proust
54. In Pursuit of the English by Doris Lessing
55. The Marquise of O by Heinrich von Kleist
56. Learn Italian the Natural Way, Part 3 by Paul Noble
57. Moonglow by Michael Chabon

July

58. Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson
59. Paradise City by Elizabeth Day
60. Fidelity by Susan Glaspell
61. Sodom and Gomorrah by Marcel Proust
62. The Forensic Records Society by Magnus Mills
63. Andorra by Max Frisch
64. Two-way Cut by Garry Disher
65. Up at the Villa by Somerset Maugham
66. Great Granny Webster by Caroline Blackwood
67. Utopia for Realists by Rutger Bregman
68. A Married Man by Piers Paul Reid

August

69. Picture Miss Seeton by Heron Carvic
70. Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit
71. Reuben Sachs by Amy Levy
72. August Folly by Angela Thirkell
73. A Cruel Bird Came to the Nest and Looked in by Magnus Mills
74. Drown by Junot Diaz
75. Kingdom Lost by Patricia Wentworth
76. Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov
77. The Dry by Jane Harper
78. The Prisoner by Marcel Proust

September

79. The Case of the Famished Parson by George Bellairs
80. Some of Us Had Been Threatening Our Friend Colby by Donald Barthelme
81. The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan by Honore de Balzac
82. The Clue by Carolyn Wells
83. The Strange Crime in Bermuda by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
84. The Girl Who Had to Die by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
85. The Red Bishop by Howard Mason
86. Kill Joy by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
87. Penmarric by Susan Howatch
88. Little Boy Lost by Marghanita Laski
89. Good Evening, Mrs Craven by Mollie Panter-Downes
90. I am Watching You by Teresa Driscoll
91. Down Cemetery Road by Mick Herron
92. The Rector by Mrs Margaret Oliphant

October

93. The Doctor's Family by Mrs Margaret Oliphant
94. The Perpetual Curate by Mrs Margaret Oliphant
95. Nine Lives by Bernice Rubens
96. Salem Chapel by Mrs Margaret Oliphant
97. Theft: A Love Story by Peter Carey
98. Nobody Walks by Mick Herron
99. Bramton Wick by Elizabeth Fair
100. The Mingham Air Elizabeth Fair
101. Force of Nature by Jane Harper

November

102. The Late Mrs. Prioleau by Monica Tindall
103. The Fugitive by Marcel Proust
104. Under the Cold Bright Lights by Garry Disher
105. Begin Again by Ursula Orange
106. Reconstruction by Mick Herron
107. Journeying Wave by Richmal Crompton

December

108. Finding Time Again by Marcel Proust
109. A Decent Interval by Simon Brett
110. Tom Tiddler's Ground by Ursula Orange
111. A Winter Away by Elizabeth Fair
112. Landscape in sunlight by Elizabeth Fair
113. The Murder on the Enriqueta by Molly Thynne
114. The Blue Castle by Lucy Maud Montgomery
115. A Chelsea Concerto by Frances Faviell
116. The Museum of Modern Love by Heather Rose
117. Hole in One by Catherine Aird
118. Just Like Heaven by Julia Quinn
119. A Gentleman Never Tells by Eloise James
120. Somebody at the Door by Raymond Postgate
121. Henrietta (The Daring Debutantes) by Marion Chesney

Welcome and happy reading!

Welcome to the group. Looks like you've made a good start.

>6 jfetting:, >7 ronincats: Thank you!

Welcome Pam, agreed there is little decent tv in Australia, reading is the best option !

Good luck with your challenge (and good luck avoiding the TV).

>9 bryanoz: I manage to find some good things on Netflix, but what is screened on free-to-air is 99% rubbish. :)

I agree with the TV comments- I don't subscribe to Netflix or HBO so have to rely in PBS for good programmes and...I have been watching Home TV- renovations!

>11 torontoc: I understand! I'm also fascinated by relocation shows - families searching for houses with big refrigerators in Cambodia, yards for their pets in central Florence.

>9 bryanoz:, >10 wookiebender: After 25 years without a TV I had a big boxed set binge, but I think I've covered the highlights now. Mad Men. The Good Wife. Back to reading.

In Farleigh Field by Rhys Bowen

In Farleigh Field is a piece of froth with everything you could want in a ripping WWII spy story: country houses, titled families, debutantes, inquisitive children looking for a criminal, MI5, Bletchley code breakers, assassination plots, gentlemen and cads, and of course, romance. A cosy wartime spy story. What a genre bender!

I took the bait!
But I have to wait!

In Farleigh Field is on order at my library. I've read others by Bowen.

Mischief by Charlotte Armstrong

A couple from out of town comes to the city to attend a dinner that is important for the husband's career. When their baby sitter falls through, they employ a young women recommended by the elevator man to mind their nine-year-old daughter. This is a huge mistake. Tension builds as we learn more about the baby sitter and well-meaning people try to help the little girl. An encounter with a disillusioned young man precipitates a crisis. Can't tell you any more!

This was loitering on the Kindle. It was first published in the fifties.

>14 nrmay: It was in the "Coming out next month" bargain page for the Kindle. I hope you enjoy it!

Wild Wives by Charles Willeford

This one has been sitting around on the Kindle for a few years. It turned out to be short, sordid, and violent. Authentic 1950's pulp.

Listen, Liberal by Thomas Frank

In the last few months, in an attempt to understand how the people of the US elected Donald Trump as president, I've read Hillbilly Elegy, which was more of an "I pulled myself up by my own bootstraps" memoir rather than a sociological study, Strangers in Their Own Land, which was much more informative and described the perspectives of a group of Southern Tea Party supporters whom the author came to know well, and now Listen Liberal, which describes how the Democratic party betrayed its core constituency of working people, but still expected them to vote Democratic.

I was stunned to read that Bill Clinton dismantled the welfare safety net, brought in the three strikes rule, introduced legislation that enabled companies to move their industries to countries like Mexico, and deregulated banking. He broke the link between the Democratic Party and Roosevelt's New Deal. The Democrats are no longer concerned with wages and working conditions and the well-being of working people.

Frank's premise is that the Democratic Party has deliberately aligned itself with the interests of rich, successful, well-educated liberals at the expense of lower-paid, less educated workers. He provides plenty of evidence, and it's shocking. Even so, Democrats assumed that struggling middle class workers would vote for their party because they had no alternative. The book was published before the presidential election, so it predicts a future where the Democrats lose the votes of the workers they failed to represent, and that's what happened.

Frank isn't presenting a balanced argument here. He's an enraged Democrat who believes that the party has lost its way. That's fine with me. I'm on his side.

>17 pamelad: I read Listen, Liberal last summer and acknowledged the truth of what he was describing while saying, surely it won't get that bad. Then reality hit in November. Frank doesn't have to be balanced. He already wrote the book lambasting the Republicans, What's the Matter With Kansas?.

Listen, Liberal sounds well worth a read.

Cakes and Ale by Somerset Maugham

Apparently this is a roman a clef. It's the story of Edward Driffield, a working-class writer based on Thomas Hardy, who became the grand old man of British literature. According to the narrator, Ashenden, who is standing in for Maugham, Driffield was a dull, second-rate writer honoured more for his extreme age than his literary ability. Alroy Kear, a successful writer and critic, and friend of Ashenden, is planning to write a biography of Driffield and has asked Ashenden for has recollections. Driffield and his wife Rosie had befriended Ashenden when he was a lonely adolescent, and Ashenden remembers them fondly, particularly Rosie.

This is shaping up to be a very dull review, so I'll just mention some of the main threads: the appalling snobbery of the times, and the relations between the classes; Rosie, the free spirit who was judged harshly by the literary establishment; back-biting and politics in the literary world; how to judge a good book and what makes a good writer.

Read Nicholas Shakespeare's introduction after you read the book.

I quite enjoyed Cakes and Ale, but thought parts of it it too waspish and petty.

It's on the Guardian 1000 list.

>19 wookiebender: Of the three books I've read so far about life in today's USA, it's been the most informative about possible reasons for Trump's election.

I'm planning on reading White Trash soon. It's subtitled "the 400-year untold history of class in America". I don't understand how it could ever be acceptable to call people "white trash", or even "losers", so it should be an interesting read.

>18 ronincats: I hope some influential Democrats read it.

>22 pamelad: I know. I had fantasies of sending it to all my congresswomen!

It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis

I started this book about a populist politician who imposes a dictatorship on the USA because I'd read that it was eerily prescient of the recent rise of another populist politician. 20% of the way through on the Kindle, I've given up. It's verbose, didactic and obvious, and reads as though it's written by an incensed undergraduate. I can't plough through any more.

Years ago, when I was young and knew everything, I read and enjoyed Babbitt and Main Street. I wonder whether I'd like them now. I hope they justify Lewis's Nobel Prize, because this book certainly doesn't.

An Armenian Sketchbook by Vasily Grossman

After the authorities arrested all the copies they could find of Life and Fate, they offered Grossman the consolation prize of a trip to Armenia to translate an Armenian novel. This delightful book is another product of Grossman's stay.

You're Saying It Wrong by Ross Petras and Katherine Petras

This is a guide to the correct pronunciation of 150 commonly mispronounced words and phrases. I'm glad that I've never been tempted to use synecdoche in conversation because sin-NECK-duk-kee is nothing like the way I would have pronounced it. SYnecdosh? An entertaining and useful little book, but if you're speaking a non-US variety of English you need to take care. Ahm-bray for ombre and kyebahsh for kibosh had me puzzled until I remembered the missing American vowel sound: the short, rounded o as in dog, cot, got, off. According to Michael Swan in his book Practical English Usage, Americans pronounce this o like the a in father or the au in caught.

So do cot and caught sound the same in US pronunciation?

Is the title being deliberately colloquial to catch our attentioan, or have adverbs in the US gone the way of the short round o?

Anyway, I enjoyed the book.

I'm reading In Search of Lost Time and am a bit bogged down, so I'm falling behind. Recently read Ashenden by Somerset Maugham and Lion: A Long Way Home by Saroo Brierley. I've seen the film, Lion. The first half was really interesting, with the lost five year-old Saroo trying to survive on the streets of Calcutta. The second half dragged a bit as Saroo searched for his home on Google Maps, but picked up when he made it back to India. The film-makers gave him and American girlfriend, Rooney Mara. Ho hum. To attract an international audience, I surmise. I preferred the book to the film, because I was interested in what Saroo was thinking and feeling.

Ashenden is a spy story, based on Somerset Maugham's experiences in France and Switzerland during WWI. I've read a few books by Somerset Maugham lately, and they seem to be lightly fictionalised versions of his life.

Finished In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, volume 2 of In Search of Lost Time. I'm reading the new translations, coordinated by Christopher Prendergast. This one was by James Grieve, and I can recommend it. Having a rest before I start volume 3, and looking forward to some less demanding reading. I fancy some short sentences.

I'm reading Slow Horses, which has begun well.

Mick Herron's Slow Horses.

The slow horses are spies who have made mistakes, been removed from the field, and banished to the decrepit building, Slough House, where they perform tedious tasks and loathe one another. Their boss, Jason Lamb, despite his once fearsome reputation as a field agent, seems to have settled into lethargy and contempt. It's a dismal place. All the slow horses want to make their way back to spy central in Regent's Park, home of MI5, but they haven't a chance, until they become involved in the urgent attempt to rescue a young man who has been kidnapped by right-wing British extremists who thereten to behead him on the internet.

This is the first Mick Herron book I've read. I enjoyed it, and am pleased that there are a few more in the series.

A faster read than In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower !

The Natural Way of Things by Charlotte Wood

Eight young women are imprisoned on a remote property in the Australian bush. There is no escape other than death on the electric fence and the warders are just as trapped as the women. All the women committed the same "crime": they were abused by powerful men and condemned by the press. They include a potential Olympic swimmer who was molested by her coach, a woman who was pack-raped by a group of football players, a young woman in love with a popular, married politician, and a naive passenger on a cruise ship who was drugged and raped at an on-board party. I recognise some of these stories from the Australian press. Diane Brimble died after being drugged on a cruise ship, and too many people blamed her for putting herself in a vulnerable position. Then there was the sixteen-year-old girl who destroyed the marriage and career of a respected, middle-aged football coach. Yes, it was her fault. But the most blatant, recent example of misogyny in Australia was the treatment of our first female prime minister, Julia Gillard. Every woman I know was horrified by the contempt with which she was treated by conservative male politicians and members of the press.

So this is an angry book. It starts brilliantly and, even though the ending doesn't fulfill the promise of the beginning, is well-worth reading.

Won the Stella Prize.

On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder. Snyder sees in Trump's campaign and presidency the warning signs of totalitarianism that preceded the overthrow of democracy in thirties Germany, forties Chechoslovakia, Russia's expansion into Eastern Europe. It's a short book, a sort of handbook of resistance.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/mar/20/on-tyranny-twenty-lessons-from-twe...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/book-party/wp/2017/02/24/20-ways-to-recogniz...

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

This is a memoir, written in the last year of Paul Kalinithi's life. A promising neuro-surgeon, Kalanithi discovered that he had cancer. Initially, hoping for another ten years, and with the support of his oncologist, he returned to work, but the return of cancer made it impossible for him to continue in such a gruelling, physically demanding profession. With less than a year to live he turned to writing. Kalanthi died before the book was finished, and his wife Lucy has written an epilogue.

I read this because a friend is very ill. Kalanithi mentions that many people with a terminal illness want to stay close to their families, and make them their first priority, but he was a success-driven man, needing recognition for worldly achievements. When he found that he had perhaps a year to live, he looked for a job that would occupy that time and decided on writing. In her epilogue, Lucy suggests that he presented only his achievement-driven side, and that in life he was warm, funny and kind. Those qualities do not come across in the book.

Kalanithi was very fortunate in his oncologist, who saw maintaining her patients' integrity as an essential part of her work. She encouraged Kalanithi to return to neuro-surgery for as long as he could, when he was thinking of withdrawing into his illness, because she identified that his work was hugely important to him. I hope that my friend is as lucky and that her oncologist sees who she is.

The Third Betrayal by Michael Hartland

I can't remember where this came from. Perhaps it was a Kindle Daily Deal.

It's a good story, with lots of plot twists, that's based on the infiltration of MI5 during the thirties. Was there an undiscovered mole right at the top? The main character, Sonia, is based on a real person, Ruth Kuczynski, a Communist spy who was the handler for Klaus Fuchs. Even so, it took me a while to get into it because the writing is so bad. I get distracted by clunky sentences and rewrite them in my head. There are too many long, slim, tanned female legs, and what I see as ageing male author wish fulfillment: the suave, sixtyish investigator, Nairn, is madly attractive to more than one much younger woman.

The Bath Mysteries by E. R. Punshon

This is the seventh of Punshon's Bobby Owen series. Bobby is from an impoverished, aristocratic, English family. He is an Oxford graduate, forced by the Great Depression to work for a living, and has become an unusually well-educated policeman. He started the series as a constable, and by this book, the seventh, he has become a sergeant. Bobby's family has just discovered that a cousin has been dead for two years, the apparent result of drowning in the bath, and Bobby has been asked to investigate. Bobby uncovers a string of bath drownings. All of the victims have, like Bobby's cousin, become estranged from their friends and families, and been insured for 20,000 pounds.

Punshon shows great sympathy for the unemployed men camping on the Thames embankment, slowly starving, prey to the mysterious man who recruits them, insures them and kills them. He also shows sympathy for the main female character, a former street-walker, but sees her decline as due not to unemployment and poverty, but to contraception! She had imagined that she could live her life as men did theirs, but found only emptiness. Next thing she knew, she was on the streets. I was intrigued.

In summary: a good read, well-plotted, a snapshot of the 1930's.

Good on you for making your way through In Search of Lost Time! I think I read a few pages once. :) I am rather daunted by large books.

And I liked your review of The Natural Way of Things, glad you thought it was good too.

Much too slack about reviewing books, and will do better. In the meantime, here is a list of the best books I've read in the first half of the year.

The Ways of White Folks by Langston Hughes Short stories from the 1930's.

In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust. I've read the first three volumes and am half-way through the fourth. Enjoying it more and more as I get further in. I didn't expect it to be so funny.

Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov

Man's Search for meaning by Viktor Frankl

Listen Liberal by Thomas Frank

Moonglow by Micheal Chabon

Naomi by Junichiro Tanizaki

Utopia for Realists by Rutger Bregman

Bregman advocates sharing the world's wealth. He thinks there's plenty to go around. Take the money away from the financial people who achieve nothing for the greater good, and redistribute it to the people doing worthwhile jobs. Open the borders so that there is free movement of labour. Pay everyone a basic income so that noone lives in dire poverty. Reduce working hours and share the work around.

These ideas are well worth thinking about.

I didn't much like the book, though. The ideas don't connect logically, there is too much hard-sell and the author intrudes too much. The book has been translated from the original Dutch into American English.

Delighted to see Mans Search for Meaning on the list... and I've been meaning to read Pnin forever.

Re.: It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis

I am having the same feelings as I try to wade through reading H. G. Wells.

Oh no, I like H.G. Wells! I'm always surprised at the freshness of his books. My Dad lent me his copy of It Can't Happen Here, and I'll start it one day, but I'm in no hurry.

>38 jfetting: Thank you for recommending Man's Search for Meaning. I will probably read it again.

>39 dwhodges01: Tono-Bungay is on my to-read list. Which one are you struggling through?

>40 wookiebender: Absolutely no need to hurry.

Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit

This is a collection of essays about feminism. Solnit takes the long view and is hopeful. I'm glad I read it.

Some of Us Had Been Threatening Our Friend Colby by Donald Barthelme

A collection of short stories, all of them thought-provoking, particularly the titular one. Colby has gone too far, so his friends decide that he must be executed. Reminded me a little of Shirley Jackson, with a little bit of Marcus Mills and a pinch of George Saunders, though Barthelme predates the latter two.

Very pleased to have come across Donald Barthelme and will read more.

>41 pamelad: The H. G. Wells book I abandoned is The Shape of Things to Come. I am continuing down my very long list of Wells' titles.

Back from Italy. Long plane trip - read a few books!

The Girl Who Had to Die by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
The Red Bishop by Howard Mason
Kill Joy by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
Penmarric by Susan Howatch
Little Boy Lost by Marghanita Laski
Good Evening, Mrs Craven by Mollie Panter-Downes
I am Watching You by Teresa Driscoll
Down Cemetery Road by Mick Herron
The Rector by Mrs Margaret Oliphant
The Doctor's Family by Mrs Margaret Oliphant
The Perpetual Curate by Mrs Margaret Oliphant
Nine Lives by Bernice Rubens
Salem Chapel by Mrs Margaret Oliphant
Theft: A Love Story by Peter Carey

The books I liked best were:

Good Evening, Mrs Craven - short stories written and set in London during WWII.

Little Boy Lost by Maghanita Laski - an Englishman searching for his lost son in the aftermath of WWII. Is the boy he finds in the French orphanage really his son?

Penmarric - a romance and family saga, just the type of thing I like to read on holiday. Not as good as Cashelmara, but a good read all the same.

Down Cemetery Road- discovered Mick Herron this year and read the whole Slow Horses series. This is the first in the Zoe Boehm series - she's a private detective.

The Perpetual Curate and Salem Chapel by Mrs Margaret Oliphant. These belong to the Carlingford series. Like Trollop's Barchester Towers series, they focus on the church, both Anglican and Chapel. Gently humorous. Comforting, because people get the ends they deserve. No good people were permanently hurt in the creation of this series!

The other memorable read was Theft: A Love Story, which I disliked because I had no interest in the characters, but made an impression. Peter Carey always does.

Nobody Walks by Mick Herron

I didn't enjoy this. Dark, bleak and nasty. None of the humour of the Slow Horses series.

Just finished 100 with two easy reads by Elizabeth Fair, a gently humorous British writer from the fifties: Bramton Wick and The Mingham Air. I was looking for something light, with a happy ending, and found it.

Now reading Jane Harper's follow-up to The Dry - Force of Nature

Glad to know about Force of Nature. I just put in a request for it at the library. I liked The Dry - very atmospheric; great sense of place!

Like The Dry, Force of Nature has a good sense of place. The characters in The Dry did not ring true to me - they seemed to be put through their paces for the sake of the plot - and Force of Nature has the same problem.

Aaron Falk, the policeman from The Dry, is investigating a company suspected of money laundering. His contact in the company, an obnoxious woman, goes missing during a team-building exercise in the bush. Is she dead and, if so, is it an accident or murder? If she has been murdered, is the motive connected with the company, or is it personal?

Force of Nature is a gripping read, despite its shortcomings.

Just finished Finding Time Again, the seventh and last volume of Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time. 29 days to spare!

I got bogged down in places but, overall, it was well worth the effort.

The Museum of Modern Love by Heather Rose

This one is for the next book club meeting, in January. We're having a day at the beach.

As it says on the cover, this is "a novel inspired by Marina Abramovic". It won the 2017 Stella Prize, which was awarded to the best work of literature published in 2016, written by an Australian woman, .

Marina Abramovic is a Serbian performance artist. In 2010, at the MOMA, she performed The Artist is Present, where 6 days a week she sat at a table and gazed into the eyes of the person opposite. Towards the end of the seventy-five days of Abramovic's performance, people were queueing overnight for the privilege of sitting opposite Abramovic. The performance space was surrounded by a gallery, where people watched the sitters below. Some of the watchers in the gallery returned day after day to watch what had become for them a mystical, life-changing experience.

The central character, other than Abramovic, is Levin, a musician who writes film scores. His wife, a famous architect, is in a semi-coma. Before she became incapacitated she legally banned Levin from visiting her (sounds like BS!). Levin spends every day in the gallery, and this participation changes his life.

I would like to say some positive, or at least thoughtful, things about this book, even though I thought it was utter twaddle. My biggest problem is that Rose has inserted herself into the mind of Abramovic, who is a real person whose life is nothing like Rose's. The only thoughts Rose can put into Abramovic's mind are Rose's own; she imagines what she would think if she were Abramovic. So to me, this book is inauthentic. It has borrowed its significance from the life of Abramovic, and has none of its own. Levin, another artist, also strikes me as a fake, a straw man constructed to embody the self-absorption of the artist and to undergo the transformation essential to the plot.

Rose's writing did not appeal. In the following example, the omniscient narrator makes an appearance:

I have stood beside artists a very long time. I was there at the rape trial of Artemisia Gentileschi. I was there as she drove the painted blade through the neck of Holofernes. I stood beside her as she wrote "I shall show you what woman is capable of. You will find Caesar's courage in the soul of a woman." Imagine that, five hundred years ago!

The good thing about the book is that it introduced Abramovic and her art. I read about Abramovic's life and her work and really stopped to think about what she had done. She pushes her body to its limits, and some of her performances have put her life at risk. The extremes she goes to shocked me. I think it's presumptuous of Rose to interpret Abramovic, and that the connections Rose makes between Abramovic's performances and her Serbian upbringing are banal.

I don't think this is a good book, but I do think it's worth the read.

Just Like Heaven by Julia Quinn

As a Georgette Heyer fan I was disappointed in this Regency romance. Minimal historical detail, characters speaking contemporary American English, the virgin heroine and the hero have a quickie at a soiree, as if! people hugging one another all over the place and telling each other how much they love them (not very Regency!). In short, contemporary America transplanted holus bolus to Regency England.

A Gentleman Never Tells by Eloisa James

Another failure in my search for a Georgette Heyer replacement. All that lust seems quite inappropriate in Regency England.

Somebody at the Door by Raymond Postgate

Henry Grayling catches the train home, during the blackout, from his job in London to his house in the suburbs, but does not survive the night. The money he was carrying is missing. It seems likely that one the occupants of the train carriage is responsible, and most of them have a motive.

I enjoyed this crime novel because of the characterisation, and because it's a snapshot of life during WWII. It was published in 1943 and set two years earlier. The characters are working people, and the snobbery I've come to expect from British books of this era is missing. The author was a socialist, and his sympathies are with the men and women who have to earn a living, some of whom are victims of thoughtless, over-privileged people.

A Chelsea Concerto by Frances Faviell

This is another book about the blitz, non-fiction this time. The author was a portrait painter living in Chelsea, which was the home of many artists, and one of the most heavily bombed parts of London. She is a Red cross volunteer, working in a hospital and giving aid to victims at bomb sites. There are some graphic descriptions of human damage, written in a detached, matter-of-fact tone that underplays the gallantry and bravery of Faviell, her colleagues and her friends. It's not all bleak though, because Faviell and her friends take every opportunity to be happy.

I recommend Faviell's book highly because it's real, a good antidote to nostalgic stories about the blitz.