Mountaineering Mt TBR with Peace2 in 2020

Happy New Year to all and welcome to my 2020 thread!

To anyone who stops by, welcome, help yourself to refreshments and feel free to browse the bookshelves and offer suggestions of what to read next (or what to skip because it isn't worth my time!). I did a cocktail making masterclass for my birthday last June, so drop by and I'm up for making a small selection of cocktails (Gin Brambles, Pornstar Martinis are particularly favourites, but I'm open to suggestions and willing to learn a few new ones).

My hopes for the year ahead are that I continue to read and enjoy the majority of my reading either because it's fun or diverting or because it's interesting or is helping me learn more about something. I'm hoping to be a bit more active in the pub this year having fallen out of the habit with trying to balance my reading and my studies.

I'm planning on continuing the battle to reduce the size of Mt TBR - I managed a reduction of 57 in 2017 and 60 in 2018 and 130 last year. Although I have a list of books to be read before the end of 2020, this is a vague tentative list, and my goal to reduce the pile of waiting books is more important than which books I actually read.

Although I am trying to reduce the number of books on the TBR pile, it still doesn't mean the books will leave the house once read, just that they are no longer unread. Retention of books once read will depend upon whether I still want them once I've read them - generally speaking, if it's mine and I loved it, I'll keep it, if it was mine and I think I might want to read it again or loan it to someone, I keep it, if it's part of a set, others of which I want to keep, then I will probably keep it (not definitely). Books I don't think I'll want to read again (or know I won't if they weren't to my taste) are generally passed on to charities or community groups/schools as relevant unless I think the world needs protecting from something awful, in which case it goes in the recycling! I aim to track the number of books read this year (the tracker will look like I'm aiming for a 100 but this is just a number to show progress) and to read at least 18,000 pages that are already on my shelves as of January 1st - so excluding library books and books purchased this year which will be included in the tally of books read.

With regard to the books that I intend to read, I would like to keep a rough balance between female/male authors and I would like to read a number of non-fiction to my fiction (approximately 1/4 to 3/4). Last year I didn't do too badly on keeping the authors balanced, but my non-fiction reading appeared to slip, dropping to 14%. This may have been because of the studying - I read a lot of articles and spent time essay writing in the first 8 and a bit months of the year and so I wanted to 'relax' more with the rest of my reading. I'm not going to stress too much about this in the coming year but just try to remain aware of it.

And so I wish you all a year of good reading whatever that may mean to you and happiness. Best wishes to all for 2020!

Whoops! Forgot to add the trackers...







And to mark my second attempt at walking to Mordor (trying to do it in less time)

Happy New Year and happy reading!

January Book #1 The Accidental Sorcerer by K.E. Mills

Before I give any false impressions - I haven't read the whole of this 500+ page book today! I started it last week. This is the first in a series that has been lurking on my TBR pile since 2014 along with the next two in the series and part of the Kingmaker, Kingbreaker and Godspeaker series by Karen Miller who is the same author. It took a little bit of getting into initially but as it progressed I found myself being pulled in more and more.

Gerald Dunwoody is a Third Grade Wizard working in Compliance. On a field trip to follow up on some missing paperwork at the premier staff factory, he finds himself caught up in a potential disaster. The buck is passed along with the blame and before he knows what's happening Gerald is out of work with no prospects. When a potential job opportunity as a Royal Court Wizard in a different country presents itself, he can't really turn the opportunity down because surely nothing else can go wrong...

It's a good balance of plot and snarky humour with a darker undercurrent coming through as the book continues. I shall try the next in the series in due course.

>2 Narilka: Can I offer you a cocktail? Or would you prefer some Malva Pudding with custard/ice cream? (I experimented with dessert as I was entertaining for lunch today - it wasn't bad for a first attempt and part of the problem was the slightly vague recipe I was using) For those not familiar with it, Malva Pudding is a South African dish, akin to an English Sticky toffee pudding but a little lighter. I tried it last year at a restaurant where the chef is South African and loved it and thought I'd give it a try myself - some tips from a South African friend at work helped too.

>4 Peace2: Both? Sounds delicious :)

Malva pudding sounds delightful, but I'm in the mood for a cocktail. May I have a Pilot Boat while I'm daydreaming of a beach vacation?

Good luck on the TBR reduction project!

>5 Narilka: Most definitely both.

>6 libraryperilous: What's in a Pilot Boat? I definitely need to broaden my repertoire! I've not even heard of that one!

>7 Peace2: It's very tropical!

Edited: markup error

Happy new year! Malva pudding sounds wonderful; anything that even remotely resembles STP is good to me!

I hope 2020 brings you good things in books and in life.

>4 Peace2: Ah yes. That and Milk Tart are and always have been the pillars supporting innumerable Dutch Reformed church bazaars (and community feuds, about whose is best). Here is a(nother) recipe for Malva Pudding, also famous for being one of two desserts without which no South African restaurant menu is complete. (The other is ice cream and hot chocolate sauce, in case you're wondering.)

>9 Sakerfalcon: Welcome and thank you

>10 hfglen: I've bookmarked the Malva pudding recipe - will give that a go next time although I may have to try the Milk Tart beforehand just for variety - what was that I threatened about healthy eating.... course if it's homemade that makes it healthy right?

January Book #2 I am what I am by John Barrowman with Carole Barrowman

This is a follow up to his earlier autobiography Anything Goes. Lots of anecdotal tales of his life - mostly highlights but things that went wrong too and that he had to deal with the outcome of decisions made. Tales of family, career and friends. Plenty of humour, but does have what appears to be his 'voice' - risque jokes, outspoken thoughts (justifiably not intended as a negative comment on my part - he says he stands up for what he believes in and openly retells times when he has done so).

Unlike the earlier book, this is not a chronological work - it gathers stories by theme. The book is now about ten years old, so I'm sure he could fill at least another volume with his work and life experiences since.

My Thingaversary is approaching in 9 days time (6 years - where did the time go? Where was I before that?). I have placed orders at Amazon for books and now just have to hope that the postmen can get them here in time... or most of them anyway. Four of them should be here all being well, but 3 are pre-orders... not sure if they count for Thingaversaries? Can an enforcer advise me? I may have to look for something in the ebook area if I need to.

Happy reading, >1 Peace2:!

>14 clamairy: Thank you, I wish you the same.

January Book #3 Invisible Murder by Lena Kaaberbol and Agnete Friis

Borrowed from the library - I found out after I had started it (when I came here to add it to my lists) that this is actually the second in a series, but I would say that it didn't seem to matter - I followed the story just fine without any knowledge of the earlier book (although why the library doesn't list it to be part of a series in its audio collection or ever stock the first in the series still eludes me but this is a complaint I've made before and not pertinent to the book itself).

This was a Danish novel, translated into English. There are several different plot lines that gradually converge - a Danish Red Cross nurse who off the record helps hidden refugees, a police detective gearing up to an upcoming international summit and the threats to the safety of Danish residents and political visitors, a young Hungarian university student with Roma heritage and an old man who is worried about what will happen to his wife after his death.

When the detective is alerted to potential terrorism related correspondence on the internet, his hunt begins for the people involved in the transaction and trying to find out what precisely is being traded and to what end. The nurse, Nina, is asked by a friend to look in on a group of Hungarian Roma refugees who are in hiding and many of them are sick, she finds her own life at greater risk than she had imagined.

It was an intricate plot and it took a while for the paths began to converge. The characters, in particular Nina, are not necessarily ones to whom I warmed, but it didn't stop the story being interesting.

Overall, I found it interesting and was pleased to have tried a new author(s)' work.

I am planning on re-reading a bunch of graphic novel/comic book collections prior to passing them on to a friend - I'm not going to review them again (unless I have something particularly worth saying about them), but will rather just pop a list of the titles read in a given month into the thread - most of them will have been read since 2014 (if not all) and so I will try to list the original completion date for my later reference if I want to know what I really thought.

I've completed two so far and don't have anything further to add to my previous comments. More to follow.

January Book #5 The Dribblesome Teapots and other incredible stories by Norman Hunter

Described as 'ten amusing, original and ingenious modern fairy tales' is slightly amusing in itself - this copy was published in 1981 but the stories were first published in 1938 (so even in 1981 they weren't that 'modern'!). These are children's stories. In the first story, the King and Queen of Sypso-Sweetleigh are settling down to afternoon tea but as the tea is poured the teapot dribbles. Before the King can stop her, the Queen has sent out a proclamation offering half the kingdom for a teapot that doesn't dribble. How does he solve the problem? With a little help from the Court Magician, the problem is solved and the kingdom remains intact... and the Queen gets tea from a non-dribbling teapot too.

This is the kind of story that runs throughout the book - clothes that don't fit, dragons taking over kingdoms (or at least trying to). It's a fun collection.

January Book #6 National Geographic April 2009

So I found a small pile of National Geographic magazines tucked away in a corner of a bookshelf - bought because the covers would have caught my eye, but if this one is any indication I never actually got around to reading them.

In this one, pertinent given the current events, one of the major articles is climate change and drought conditions in Australia. Another major article was about Hatshepsut, 'The She-King of Egypt', discussing the hunt for her mummy, why it was that her successor removed her cartouche not immediately after he replaced her but almost twenty years after he had been in power.

I love reading the National Geographic magazines (although I rarely treat myself because as these are evidence of I put them on one side to read and then it apparently takes 11 years for me to actually get around to the actual reading! That is an exception - the others in the pile aren't quite so old by a little). I love the insight they give, the photography used is always stunning but they also almost invariably leave me wanting to go and research more about one or more articles in there.

January Book #8 Moments Like These by Jenny Bravo

A teen romance (although I hadn't realised that when I acquired it) also apparently a prequel to another book that I hadn't read. The story centres around a teenage boy who is dating a girl and has a different girl as his best friend. The story outlines a little of his struggle to deal with the feelings that each girl draws from him (girlfriend not much positive, girl friend everything positive) and his struggle to be a 'good guy' in religious terms (he's part of a Church youth group).

This book was only finished because it was less than 150 pages long and was the only thing I had with me at the time so I'd made it most of the way through before I could have swapped to something else. It may be my age (not a teenager), the fact that I'm not a massive romance fan at the best of times but this book was really not my thing. I also had another book on the phone by the same author, part of the same series, I've deleted it rather than torturing myself with it.

2020 DNF #1 My Name is Nobody by Matthew Richardson

A spy thriller - apparently - not sure why exactly but it just wasn't working for me, so I have abandoned it.

>2 Narilka: I really enjoyed Karen Miller's work. Godspeaker is great (apart from the last in the trilogy which lets it down somewhat,) but a very different series to Kingmaker. I've not read her more YA output as Mills. (godspeaker really isn't YA).

January Book #11 Ranger's Apprentice: The Lost Stories by John Flanagan

A collection of short stories that fit at various points during the Ranger's Apprentice series. Not all of the stories focus on Will - Gilan and Jenny have a story, there is a backstory for Halt and Crowley, one about Will and Tug, another about several in which Will and Alyss feature. It finishes with a teaser fragment for Brotherband: The Outcasts (along with an extract from that title).

Interesting series aimed at older children/young teens - this was a set of easily read vignettes but nothing as meaty as the majority of titles in the series. As with the other books, it does say that each book is standalone and they can be read in any order - I would still recommend sticking with the publishing order - the stories definitely make more sense and the development of the characters also works better in order. I have one final title to read as part of this original set (as well as a copy of The Outcasts).

January Book #14 National Geographic Magazine - September 2010

I'm still working my way down the pile that I found the other day. This one had an interesting article about familial relationships in the dynasty leading up to Tutankhamun and how they were able to use more modern DNA technologies to establish just how interrelated the family was. The next article tied in with this discussing the issue of incest within 'royal' dynasties in various locations around the world (South American, Hawaiian, Egyptian to name just a few) and how while European dynasties didn't allow marriage between immediate family, many did marry cousins. It highlighted the way in which this can lead to recessive harmful genes becoming more dominant. Modern scans showed that Tutankhamun had a club foot and a partial cleft palate which could have been caused by genetic weaknesses directly resulting from immediate family.

Another article was about Madagascar and how political situations lead to laws that had been passed to protect the environment being rescinded and how logging resumed, damaging mining. While it looked at people who profited from the situation (how and why), it also highlighted the work of a man who had been trying to convince people to work for the environment, making their lives more profitable by helping e.g. a lemur hunter who he convinced to make more money by taking tourists into see lemurs in the while, people who had been logging who he convinced instead to harvest leaves and smaller plants that grew in abundance and had medicinal properties.

Also an article about Fraser Island in Australia. Just love the photographs in these magazines too. Stunning (I know I said that last time too!)

Today is my Thingaversary - I have been here six years... where does the time go? There was going to be cake and wine and cheese (and books) but unfortunately I am laid up sick on the couch feeling sorry for myself and rueing the fact that Amazon has failed to deliver the books I had ordered to celebrate, so instead I am checking out the Ibook store for what's on offer... Let's just say I have now met (and surpassed) my duty as a good Thingaversary celebrant and some of the surpassing can be blamed on @catzteach as she should scored a hit with a book bullet and as it was on offer I added that to the day's purchases.

Happy Thingaversary!

>25 Peace2: happy thingaversary!

>26 Narilka: >27 NorthernStar: Thank you

Happy Thingaversary! What did you get?

>29 -pilgrim-: From @catzteach's book bullet Year One by Nora Roberts
Because it was free today You Me Everything by Catherine Isaac

Also on offer Brandon Sanderson's Mitosis and First Born, Recursion by Blake Crouch (I have his debut on the shelf and had heard good things, although I haven't had chance to read it yet so seemed a good time to pick it up at a bargain price), Silence: The Power of Quiet in a World Full of Noise by Thich Nhat Hanh and My Not so Perfect Life by Sophie Kinsella and finally A Cold Dark Place and Cold Malice both by Toni Anderson.

As they were all bargain prices (the most expensive was Year One at £2.99 - most of the others were 99p, 49p or free), I have surpassed my 6+1 quota which I hope will keep the enforcers happy :D Hopefully at least some of those will be good ones!

>25 Peace2: Aw, sorry you are sick, but it looks like you have some good reading in store.

>31 MrsLee: I've decided that the good thing about having my Thingaversary this early in the year is I now know where I stand to try and reduce the size of the TBR pile over the rest of the year and still be in with a chance of making some headway!

January Book #17 Lover by Anna Raverat

A friend gave me this book, the author's second, a while back and I had been reluctantly moving it around my shelf feeling a little obliged to give it a go. I'd tried the author's debut book and finished it in 2016 but hadn't enjoyed it. This one is much more readable for me. The book is told by a woman who happens across some emails from her husband to another woman, seeming to imply that if he isn't actually having an affair then he is building towards it. As she finds her relationship challenged, she loses her trust in her husband and begins to investigate more of his actions. What follows in the book is her story as her marriage falls apart and she rebuilds her life, deciding what aspects she wants to keep and what she wants to change. It also charts the rise and fall of her workplace and her role within it.

There are some humorous moments amidst the struggle. It was a readable book, easy enough to come back to when I had to put it down and the chapters were mostly fairly short which made it good for stopping and starting.

January Book #18 Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth and Faith in the New China by Evan Osnos

Written (and read) by an American journalist (I think he wrote for The New Yorker?) who had lived and worked in Beijing over periods of many years, this book is an insight into modern China. My comments are under a spoiler cut for mention of politics (for the most part I outline what's covered in the book and the kinds of topics that are covered - my expressed opinion is about the listenability/readability of the book and its evidence) He looks at the political situation there and how that dictates the lives of the population, how the Party has changed its goals over time and some of its strategies. He discusses elements of how the political system allowed for corruption and disaster to fester, to grow and to be covered up, along with groups and individuals who have tried to stand up against that or influence change. He also highlights some of the strengths and the progress that has been made to improve standards of living etc.

Overall, I liked this book, it was interesting for the perspectives it gave, for the outsider looking in, informed by insiders - while he does reflect on positive progress made in bringing China forward successfully, many of the stories relate to those who fall on the anti-government side - those who want less censorship, better conditions/opportunities and more freedom of choice and so on. It is not an entirely unbiased/balanced account but touches on some real people's lives and experiences.

January Book #19 Torchwood: Smashed by James Goss

Awful - truly awful! I'm really disappointed in this one. There have been a few now where I haven't enjoyed them very much, but they are interspersed with some real gems. I honestly can't really think of anything that redeems itself about this one.

Gwen heads to Glynteg, a rundown village in Wales to investigate claims of unusual illness following the arrival of a frakking company.

The story is poor and barely coherent, Gwen spends most of it drunk and shouty which only adds to the lack of coherency. I'm tempted to ruin my collection by passing this one straight on as I've no intention of listening to it again.

After some thought - the redeeming feature - it's only about an hour's worth of listening so I didn't have to waste too much time on it!

Happy Thingaversary! :o)

Happy Thingaversary! I hope you are feeling better now. Very well done for surpassing your obligations even while under the weather!

Happy belated Thingaversary! I hope you're feeling better and that the book haul lives up to its promise.

>25 Peace2: Belated HAPPY THINGAVERSARY!

Thank you all for the Thingaversary wishes - I'm looking forward to the opportunity to try some of the books I 'brought' home, but as most of them were ebooks, I'm currently having to prioritise the physical books already owned - planned work around the house in the not too distant future means that I am needing to tackle as many actual books as possible with a view to passing them to new owners for further appreciation.

January Book #21 Perfect Opposite by Zoya Tessi

A rich young woman, Sasha, daughter of a crime leader, is studying at university when a father insists on her having a bodyguard, Alex. She tries to pass him off to her friends as her cousin, while also constantly trying to make him angry and give him the slip, despite the fact her life is apparently under direct threat.

I found Sasha intensely annoying - throwing temper tantrums, the way she speaks and acts towards Alex as just a couple of examples- as the story progresses more background is given to both her need for protection and some of her strange behaviours (freaking out in storms) - but for the most part that only served to make her behaviour more annoying - there was a very definite need for the protection which she was very aware of, so why did she keep trying to give him the slip?

The book classes broadly as romance - rich girl falling for guy with a bad boy image - on a personal level, I probably should have gone with the impression I had fairly on in the book that it wasn't for me and given up then.

January Book #22 Conversation:66 Easy Conversation Topics You Can Use to Talk To Anyone by Stuart Killan

Not as useful as the title suggests (or not if you don't want people you're meeting for the first time to look at you strangely). The topics are grouped into two chapters - 'Ice Breakers' and 'Funny and Weird Conversation Starters'. Each suggested question then gives you a hint as to what an acceptable answer is (e.g. 'What is your favourite food?' follows up with 'There is no wrong answer to this question.' - Good to know I suppose - although on second thought - "Humans" might be considered a wrong answer...). The first few suggestions in the ice breaker chapter are fairly sensible and reasonable - who are you? Where do you come from? What's your job? What do you do after work? Then it moves into things like 'What's your favourite book/TV series/ movie/city /country/
restaurant/drink?' before it begins to go a little weirder - now to be fair, I can imagine scenarios where I was with friends and we asked some of the questions for a laugh, but when I tried to picture myself at the work's Christmas meal (where I was sat between someone I'd never met and someone I didn't know well), all I could envisage was them looking at me as if there was something more seriously the matter with my social conversation skills than I'm already aware of (I can be very shy with people I don't know and I can struggle to know what to talk about with unfamiliar people - part of the reason I thought this might be a good book to look at). "Which animal do you want to be and why?" and "What is your preferred mode of communication?" were just two of the odd ones in this section. When the next section gets going with the 'Funny and Weird Conversation Starters' there are no boundaries - and I really can't see myself at the next work dinner using any of these to help the conversation - 'What would your name be if you went into Witness Protection?' 'Which of the Seven Dwarves do you relate to most?'or 'How long would you last in a Zombie Apocalypse and why/how?' but maybe other people move in circles where these are the kinds of conversations you have with people you don't know...

January Book #23 National Geographic April 2011: The genius of the Inca

Another fascinating Nat Geo magazine - this one with articles about the Inca (obviously), the Crimea and how people living there have mixed feelings about whether their heritage should be Ukrainian, Russian or other, reflecting their own personal histories and the changing nature of the society and the political situations, an article about an active volcano which is being monitored for potential danger to the surrounding area, the scientists studying it, how the lava pool feeding it spreads under the neighbouring city, so no one is safe and also a feature on the High Line Park in New York (something I wish I had had chance to visit when I was there).

I do love the variety in the articles and also how they touch on so many different perspectives - it may be doesn't go as in depth as I might want as a reader, but it certainly whets my appetite so I know what else I would like to know more about and so that I get an idea of the multiple perspectives surrounding an important topic.

January Book #26 The Diamond of Drury Lane by Julia Golding

This is a children's/young adult book, the first in a series. Cat Royal is an orphan abandoned in the doorway of the Theatre Royal Drury Lane in 18th Century London. Taken in by the owner of the theatre and raised by the people who work there, she acts as an errand girl among other things. Overhearing a conversation about a diamond being hidden in the theatre she finds herself caught up in ever increasing numbers of mysteries and problems as she tries to find out where the diamond is whilst also realising that another employee is hiding from the law. How can she draw attention away from the theatre and those seeking the diamond in order to protect her friend from being found. Trouble mounts and she finds herself embroiled in more difficulties with lives at risk.

I didn't love it, but it was readable and kept a reasonable pace, the characters were interesting and varied - ranging from the Covent Garden butcher and a bully from the market, through to the stage hands and stage performers to the rich and powerful who are interested in the theatre performances. At this point, I have no intention of reading further but it's an alright book for mature children/early teens.

>41 Peace2: LOL, maybe those odd questions are something to ask after everyone has had a couple of cocktails. Sounds more like a game to be played with family and friends. I'll stick with the weather, thank you. :)

January Book #29 The Heart Keeper by Alex Dahl

The story follows two mothers. The first is dealing with the loss of her young daughter and the other with a daughter who received a heart transplant and so their life is just beginning. I had mixed feelings throughout the book - at times feeling for the plight of both mothers and their families and at others just finding the writing tedious and not heading anywhere any time soon, even when I could see where it was heading.

This was an audio book borrowed from the library and the book was described as a thriller. I wouldn't describe it as such, although there is an element of trying to work out what's going on, what people's motives are and waiting for a resolution.

Understandably, the family whose daughter has died are struggling with grief and also with blame over the manner of her death, but some of the events are odd even within those parameters. The situation for the single mother is also slightly strange (although this might be just for me as unfamiliar with living in Norway) - she and her daughter live in a basement of a family in a more affluent area than they are accustomed for access to the hospital, but the owner of the house is spying on and constantly complaining about them living there.

The book touches on the subject of what is carried forward from the donor to the recipient of an organ by way of cell memory, soul and this is at the centre of the situation in the book.

I found the ending of the book quite abrupt with a final act by the grieving mother, followed by an epilogue from her perspective, but never returning to the mother of the surviving child.

I spend ages catching up on the threads and by the time I've done that, I've run out of time to maintain my own :D Clearly I need to learn to read faster! *grin*

January Book #30 Sanctus by Simon Toyne

This was a reread from about 8 years ago and was one of my early serious forays into audio books. As that was before I came to LT, I will add a comment here. Read by Jonathan Keeble, the story is a little like a Da Vinci Code - a religious organisation holding a secret from the rest of the world, someone outside the organisation gets a hint of something and so they begin to investigate it and chaos breaks out with violence, murder and subterfuge, and even more secrets than you can shake a stick at!

I remember enjoying this more than DVC back in the day, although I find it even more unlikely - there is a very definite need for suspension of belief or not questioning facts too closely conjoined twins of different sexes would be the first of these - I've googled this back when I first read the book and again this time and the internet is still divided on whether this is an actual possibility - my pre-O'Level biology back in the day would say it definitely wasn't possible, but there are a lot of medical possibilities around gender that would be recognised today, that wouldn't have been widely known and definitely not taught in secondary school back then. Although I found an article which stated there was at least one pair born in recent times, the proof that they were of different genders seemed less proof and more supposition. Whether or not the situation is possible, it is certainly very unusual and would take a highly unlikely set of criteria all to be met.. The example under the cut is the first but not the only example of the need for suspension of belief.

I will be continuing with the series eventually as I have the rest on audio as well - and I do enjoy listening to Jonathan Keeble's voice.

I've had a few DNFs this month and so in no particular order -

Psycho: The Autobiography by Stuart Pearce

Stuart Pearce was an English footballer - captain of both the English team and for many years Nottingham Forest. The book is about 20 years old now and has been on my shelf since 2013 at least. Back in the day, if I was going to cheer a footballer on it was Stuart Pearce, but let's be honest here and say that while I nominally call myself a Forest fan this is mostly a hereditary condition and the reality is I have almost no interest in football (soccer) at all. I started reading this and there were a few interesting anecdotes - I like the fact that he trained as an electrician and even while playing for England and Forest continued to work as an electrician because it was a secure wage and a job he could fall back on if the football didn't work out or if he got an injury and had his footballing career cut short. It's hard to imagine some of the footballers since considering anything like that!

So why did I give up? Mainly because the bulk of the book, understandably, is about football and football performance in individual significant games, competitions etc, the rivalries between teams etc - exactly what it should be about in many ways - but as mentioned before - my interest in the actual football is minimal. I've got too many books to read to continue.

The Mesmerist by Barbara Ewing

I only got a few chapters into this one before abandoning it and giving away its sequel. I can't really comment on the story as it hadn't really got going, but the author's style of writing just really wasn't working for me and I didn't want to continue.

The Ninth Life of Louis Drax by Liz Jensen

This was an audio loan from the library and a combination of narrators' voices annoying me and the situation not gaining my interest I gave up after about 2 1/2 hours.

Ice Cold Heart by P J Tracy

Another audio loan from the library, and the style was just irritating me (maybe it's my mood at the moment? I guess the good thing is if I change my mind I can always borrow the library ones again!)

Stallo by Stefan Spjut

Another library audio loan - I gave this about 4 1/2 hours before I gave up - and that was a second go, because I stopped after about an hour and a half and left it a couple of days because I just couldn't get into it, then backtracked a couple of chapters and tried again, before deciding it just isn't hitting the mark at the moment.

Re-reads this month - no comments about them (just a record for my own purposes) as I've previously discussed them in a bygone thread.
1. Avengers: Hawkeye: Earth's Mightiest Marksman by Chuck Dixon
2. Hawkeye vs Deadpool by Gerry Duggan
3. Hawkeye: My Life as a Weapon by Matt Fraction
4. Hawkeye: Little Hits by Matt Fraction
5. Hawkeye: LA Woman by Matt Fraction
6. Hawkeye: Rio Bravo by Matt Fraction
7. Hawkeye: All New Hawkeye by Jeff Lemire
8. Hawkeye: Hawkeyes by Jeff Lemire
9. Captain America Volume 1 by Dan Jurgens
10. Captain America Volume 2 by Dan Jurgens
11. Captain America Volume 3 by Dan Jurgens
12. Captain America: Winter Soldier Ultimate Collection by Ed Brubaker
13. Captain America: Red Menace Ultimate Collection by Ed Brubaker

January Round Up

Total Number of Books Read : 31
Books Retained After Reading : 3

Books on Shelf Prior to 1st Jan 2020 : 29
Books on Shelf Prior to 1st Jan 2019 : 24

Books Abandoned : 8 (+1 other given away which follows on from one I’ve abandoned)
Series Finished as far as I intend reading or Completed : 5

Non-Fiction Reads : 6
Fiction Reads : 25

Male Authors (first time to read that author this year): 8 (57.1% of total first time authors for the year)
Female Authors (first time to read that author this year): 6 (42.9% of total first time authors for the year)

Books by Male Authors :8 (25.8% of all books read)
Books by Female Authors : 6 (19.4% of all books read)
Books by Collaboration : 17 (54.8% of all books read)

Books acquired : 14 (my Thingaversary accounted for a lot of these!)

Goal to read 18000 pages from Mt. TBR by the end of the year : 6,451 pages read this month

Mount TBR is now 705 books high.

End of January update on Walking to Mordor (new journey started on 14/11/19): 208.13 miles so far.

As last month, I'll just list the books that are re-reads at the end of the month, as I don't really have anything to add. I will also do the same with the National Geographics because again saying that they're interesting and have great photos, that the articles are thought provoking is a given.

February Book #4 The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

Enjoyed this one although the portrayal of D'Artagnan and his friends was different to what I imagined - clearly my impression has been 'tainted' by film/tv versions that I've seen over the years. Went looking for the next in the series (hence, in part, my questions in the other thread about Audible).

It was well-read. Although I enjoyed it, there were times that I found the plot a bit meandering and slightly confusing but despite that it still comes across as a bit of an adventure with the characters trekking around unravelling plots and schemes and making their own.

February Book #6 Torchwood: God Among Us 1

Four stories in a set, that will add with another 2 volumes, create an overarching story. Written by multiple authors, the individual stories are of differing quality as I've seen before in some of the other Torchwood sets. This particular set was a reasonably good one. I gave it 3 and a half stars.

February Book #7 Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

I read this back in my school/college days, so it was interesting to read it again with more maturity and without the 'what you are supposed to see in the story'. There was a motive - I'd picked 'Wide Sargasso Sea' off the shelf and seen that it was written influenced by this, so I figured I should start here (not that I've got to back to WSS yet - it went back on the shelf!).

I think I liked this more than I did when I was younger, although I still have my reservations (I'm not really sure that any of Jane's relationships with men are 'healthy' but is that just a modern day outlook influencing me and to be fair she does make a stand for herself refusing to stick around when the truth of Rochester's first marriage is revealed and she doesn't give in to St John's persuasions, which for the period probably makes her quite radical with no better options available).

I re-read Wuthering Heights a couple of years ago which I loved in my teens, but was struck by how awfully most of the characters treated each other and liked it an awful lot less now - clearly maturity has had the opposite effect on this one.

February Book #9 To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Another re-read - this one because I've got Go Set a Watchman on the shelf and thought I should revisit this to be ready for it.

In some respects, there is quite a slow build to this one, although the pace picks up as it progresses. It's an interesting book and it was good to come back to it in preparation for reading the next one in due course.

February Book #11 Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

An audible acquisition read by Kenneth Branagh. I struggled with this. It's a man retelling the journey of someone else travelling the Congo. To be fair there is some amazing descriptions of the landscapes in which the story takes place so that you get a real feel for how it effects the events and the isolation from what they know for the travellers. It also shows the manipulative behaviour of the Westerners in relation to the native inhabitants of the land they travel through.

Overall it wasn't for me, but fortunately it wasn't too long.

February Book #13 The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

A very very slow start to this one, so much so that I almost gave up. Once it moved on to actually telling Hester's story I began to feel my interest rise. It's still quite slow with not an awful lot happening - after Hester's standing in front of the village and receiving the sentencing, there are only small moments of action (that seems almost like the wrong word). What comes through is the resilience that Hester shows, the strength that grows and leads to her becoming less a shamed woman and more a figure of quiet dignity. Interesting that the two men involved in her fall both lose their honour and dignity by keeping their part in the situation secret, the one by his treatment of others and his growing obsessions, the other by his internalising of his shame and guilt.

February Book #19 Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke

So this has been on my shelf for more years than I care to think about and now with the new Audible membership this was the first book I chose (first to start, not the first to finish, hence the HoD comment earlier in the thread). Simon Prebble reads it brilliantly. I liked the humour, I liked the alternative history feel which gelled well, however, I did feel that the book could have been edited and lost a good chunk without it being to the detriment of the story.

You get around a bit reading-wise, don't you? I approve.

>53 Peace2: I read Heart of Darkness many years ago and now I know a lot more about the history of the Congo than I did then. Not sure, in the light of that knowledge, that I'd want to read the book again.

>54 Peace2: You might actually have got me interested in The Scarlet Letter. Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is one of the far-too-numerous books that I've read the first few pages of. I've never officially abandoned it though.

February Book #23 Hanns and Rudolf: The German Jew and the Hunt for the Kommandant of Auschwitz by Thomas Harding

The book tells the history of the lives of Hanns Alexander, a German Jew and the author's relative, and Rudolf Höβ, a German who grew up to become the Kommandant of Auschwitz. The author tells of their early lives, their experiences as children leading to Hanns having to leave Germany and move to England as a refugee where he joined the army and eventually returned to mainland Europe to fight against the Nazis and then after the war working officially to find the men who should be tried for war crimes for the events they were involved in. Rudolf grew up, became involved in political movements and was patriotic. He is shown to have cared deeply for his family, but that didn't stop him designing ways in which the death camps could become more efficient and easier to run. Only the last third (approximately) of the book deals with the actual hunting of war criminals.

It's an interesting read, giving the reader chance to consider what leads an individual to follow the path before them. It is remarkably balanced and doesn't set out to say in Höβ's case to say 'this is why RH did what he did' - it is left to the reader to decide which of the earlier events influenced his path and to determine whether the journey was inevitable.

February Book #25 The Hundred Year Old Man who Climbed out of the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson

Initially I found the book amusing as Allan escapes from the old people's home and set off on his journey, leaving chaos behind him. By the halfway mark, the contrived nature of the events began to wear thin and by the end I was relieved to have finished. There were still things that were amusing but it had just become too manipulated.

>54 Peace2:, >55 haydninvienna: The History of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norell has been sitting on my bookshelf likewise for over a decade. I saw the excellent BBC dramatisation, which I thoroughly enjoyed, but did not impel me to hurry back to reading the tome.

>55 haydninvienna: Variety is the spice of life - isn't that the saying? *grin* I like to challenge myself a bit with my reading by trying some of the classics and non-fiction but I also want to make sure I'm enjoying myself by having some things to relax with - I'm also on a bit of a mission to reduce the TBR pile and to have books on my shelf that I love rather than ones that I don't know why they're there. I've still got a long way to go...

I'd be interested to see what you think of The Scarlet Letter if you do try it.

>57 -pilgrim-: I hadn't realised there had been a dramatisation of Jonathan Strange. I'm slightly curious although I don't think I'd want to watch it right now.

>54 Peace2: I found your post very interesting.

I have The Scarlet Letter and will get to it some time soon. I bought it after a visit to Salem in 2016. I also have The House of the Seven Gables awaiting attention.

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is a book I read when it was published. I enjoyed it and found the footnotes interesting. How did the audio version deal with footnotes or did it ignore them?

Fortunately for me Susanna Clarke was a guest at P-Con III shortly after I had read the book and I got the job of collecting Susanna and her partner, Colin Greenland, from the airport. Yes, I got my copy signed. :-)

She did a reading at the convention. You might describe it as a short story that was sixteen pages long. Susanna gave the macro story of the story; apparently it was due to be a footnote in Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell but was not ready in time for the publisher. I thought it typical of the novel that one of its footnotes would be sixteen typewritten pages long. Yes, the footnotes are part of my memory of the book.

By the way, the footnote was quite a good short story in itself.

>59 pgmcc: The audio included all of the footnotes - thankfully, as I enjoyed lots of the info in them.

I shall await your response to The House of Seven Gables before trying to find a copy. (I think the TBR pile is big enough at the moment) :)

>58 Peace2: The dramatised version is currently available on Amazon Prime.

>59 pgmcc: You are tempting me back to my paper copy...

>61 -pilgrim-: Bwahahahahahaha!

Peter: was the short story one the was included in The Ladies of Grace Adieu, which I have read, and liked a lot?

>63 haydninvienna: I have not looked at that collection.

I see that Susanna has a new book out this June; "Piranesi".

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Piranesi-Susanna-Clarke/dp/1526622424/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1...

February book #25 The Key by Simon Toyne

Another re-read, this is the sequel to Sanctus read last month. The situation in the Citadel continues to deteriorate, both the ‘hero’ and the ‘heroine’ continue to find their lives at risk and Arkadian the policeman is trying to figure out what’s going on before things get any worse. Oh, and the Vatican are involved now too and there’s something strange happening in the desert! Oh the complications! Jonathan Keeble is a great narrator though.

February book #27 Nothing is true, everything is possible : Adventures in Modern Russia by Peter Pomerantsev

The author’s parents had emigrated from Russia and he returned there for work purposes. In the book he recounts experiences with people he met during his time there working in television. From women attending classes on how to ‘get’ a rich man, women acting as mistresses and prostitutes (although they wouldn’t all see their role in those terms) to men who are gangsters or oligarchs, he covers a range of topics. He discusses the state control over the media. All in all it’s quite a dismal picture, but also one that would bear further reading to ascertain how much of it is accurate. I have at least one other ‘Russian’ title on my TBR pile and I know I’ve seen others of interest on Amazon so I will read further on the subject eventually. It’s quite a fast paced book and in some respects a bit disjointed, almost more like a series of essays than something which flows and elaborates on a thread.

And then for something completely different...
February book #30 Then there were nun by Dakota Cassidy

Trixie Lavender is a former nun, just moving to Cobblers Cove where she hopes to set up a tattoo parlour with her best friend Coop, who just happens to be a demon escaped from Hell who wants to do and be good and learn about humans. Unfortunately they’ve no sooner found a place to rent than their landlord is murdered on the premises overnight. While no one is going to miss the thoroughly unpleasant man, the police still need to investigate and find the murderer and in the meantime they can’t open the tattoo parlour and so instead set out to try and find the truth themselves.

A quirky ‘detective’ story, easy enough to read, a little off beat with the supernatural side of things. I’m not in any great rush to read on in the series but if I ended up with another, I would continue.

>66 Peace2: Peter Pomerantsev has political links that would be inappropriate to discuss further in this group; his standpoint is not neutral - although I find his writing interesting, and much concurs with what I observed in that period.

From that point of view, it is worth emphasising that his parents did not emigrate "from Russia" but from the Ukraine - Ukraine being of course part of the USSR at that time. The history of that region is relevant; particularly in terms of experiences under totalitarianism.

>67 -pilgrim-: Thank you for both the information and the correction. I appreciate it - Thanks to your comment I’ve found a little more background info (although I’m sure with a little more time I could find some more about him.)

>68 Peace2: I am glad that you found it interesting. I did not intend any snottiness in the correction, but that aspect of his background appears to me to, understandably, shape his perspective.

>69 -pilgrim-: Your correction was appreciated (not taken as snottiness at all) - and as you say, it does impact on the perspective. :)

> 51 Interesting take on Jane. I think I forgive a lot of things out of fondness for this book from my youth.

>54 Peace2: I too have Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell languishing on Mount Toobey. I'm glad to hear you liked it. I bought it in trade paperback form pretty soon after release and never managed to dive into it. I have since bought the Kindle version as well. One of these days!

February Book #37 Mort by Terry Pratchett

So what happens when Death takes on an apprentice? That can't possibly be a recipe for disaster, can it?

Overall, it's amusing, and a good read, but it's not one of my favourites.

At this point, I'm pretty sure my counting is messed up...

February Books #31 and #35 Torchwood: God Among Us 2 and Torchwood: God Among Us 3

Each set contains 4 stories that are episodes that build to the whole with the set of three having a final resolution - the world is falling apart, who can you trust? Captain Jack or Yvonne Hartman. What secrets are they each hiding? These audio dramatisations were good, great stories, sometimes dealing with very dark subjects matters (including homelessness, drug use, monitoring of the public, prostitution), sometimes far more lighthearted. The stories are written by a variety of writers - some of them who have written previously, some of whom are actors who perform roles within some of the stories. Overall I've enjoyed this series.

Other reads in February..

1. National Geographic May 2010
2. National Geographic November 2010
3. National Geographic June 2011
4. National Geographic July 2012

Re-reads in February

1. The Death of Captain America: The complete collection by Ed Brubaker
2. Captain America and Bucky: The Life Story of Bucky Barnes by Ed Brubaker
3. Captain America and Bucky: Old wounds by James Asmus
4. Captain America: Reborn by Ed Brubaker
5. Captain America: No Escape by Ed Brubaker
6. Captain America: Prisoner of War by Ed Brubaker
7. Captain America vol 1 by Ed Brubaker
8. Captain America vol 2 by Ed Brubaker
9. Captain America vol 3 by Ed Brubaker
10. Iron Man: Extremis by Warren Ellis
11. Captain America vol 4 by Ed Brubaker
12. Civil War by Mark Millar
13. Occupy Avengers : Taking Back Justice by David F Walker
14. Occupy Avengers : In Plain Sight by David F Walker
15. Fantastic Four: The New Fantastic Four byDwayne McDuffie
16. Captain America: Castaway in Dimension Z vol 1 by Rick Remender
17. Captain America: Castaway in Dimension Z vol 2 by Rick Remender

February Round Up

Total Number of Books Read : 37
Books Retained After Reading : 8

Books on Shelf Prior to 1st Jan 2020 : 32
Books on Shelf Prior to 1st Jan 2019 : 30

Books Abandoned : 2 (+5 other given away which follows on from one I’ve abandoned)
Series Finished as far as I intend reading or Completed : 6

Non-Fiction Reads : 6
Fiction Reads : 31

Male Authors (first time to read that author this year): 6 (58.3% of total first time authors for the year)
Female Authors (first time to read that author this year): 4 (41.7% of total first time authors for the year)

Books by Male Authors :7 (22.1% of all books read)
Books by Female Authors : 4 (14.7% of all books read)
Books by Collaboration : 26 (63.2% of all books read)

Books acquired : 37 (most of these were Audible books so at least they’re not taking up physical space in the house!)

Goal to read 18000 pages from Mt. TBR by the end of the year : 8,272 pages read this month (total so far this year: 14,723 pages leaving me 3,277 to read before the end of the year)

Mount TBR is now 712 books high (8 books taller than last month)

End of February update on Walking to Mordor (new journey started on 14/11/19): 271.33 miles so far.

>72 Peace2: That pretty much describes my reaction to Mort too. I enjoyed, but it is not a Pratchett favourite.

March Book #2 Cyrano de Bergerac: in a free adaptation by Martin Crimp

This was a script to the recent play performed at The Playhouse Theatre in London, starring James McAvoy in the role of Cyrano. I actually bought this during the interval of seeing the play performed (not something I normally look to doing during a performance). It was an interesting production but I was afraid that I was missing some of the dialogue (think of watching Shakespeare performed - you follow what's happening, you get the majority of the dialogue but it's also easy to miss a gem or two along the way) The production was a mix of the essence of the original but with reference to more modern ideas (gender fluidity is one that springs to mind as I write this). I'll be honest and say I'm not familiar with the original in French or English, but I think this was an interesting adaptation and I enjoyed both reading and seeing it performed - and James McAvoy was brilliant.

March Book #4 Men, Money and Chocolate by Menna van Praag

Maya is unhappy with her life, she runs the cafe as her mum asked on her deathbed. She gave up on her College education, her dream of writing and now consoles herself by eating too many cakes and too much chocolate. One day an old lady comes into the cafe and tells her that she should rethink her life. A trip to a psychic and encouragement from her cousin, she begins to change her life.

I was disappointed in this book, the basic message rather ended up as if you don't like your life as it is, give up on everything, quit your job and your dream will come true. Considering that Maya was in financial difficulty with the cafe at the beginning of the story, she manages to close up for a month to try writing a book and then further down the line, she suddenly packs up and moves to another country to try and sell the book she's written.

I've read a couple of books by Menna van Praag before and enjoyed them but this one didn't work for me at all.

March Book #6 The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

Margaret Lea has written a couple of biographies of long dead people, when out of the blue she receives a request from Vida Winter to visit her in order to write her biography. What follows is a story that flits between the present as she talks with Miss Winter and the past as her history was lived. As the historical story is told, pieces fall into place and as reader I found myself making assumptions of what was going to be revealed, only for more layers to unfold and the story to move in a new direction.

Definitely worth a read, one that will stick with me for a while as I think back and appreciate the interwoven layers of the story and the constant need as reader to think and pay attention and build on what I'd learnt so far and what was still being revealed.

March Book #7 Carbonel by Barbara Sleigh

Technically this was a re-read from when I was about 7 or 8, but my memory has definitely dimmed of the book in the interim. In fact the only thing I remembered was that Carbonel was a black witch's cat.

This is a children's book in which Rosemary meets an old woman in the market and buys a cat and a broom from her. The cat is Carbonel. Carbonel reveals that he was stolen as a kitten and he should actually be the King of the Cats, but he has been enslaved and only Rosemary can set him free. So over the course of the book, Rosemary and her friend John have to find and retrieve the witch's hat, cauldron and spell book in order to undo the binding spell.
It has dated somewhat (this copy was a fiftieth anniversary edition and has been on my shelf since 2014) and the original was written in 1955 (so it would have been about 20 years old when I read it), so while I have some fondness for it as a memory of happy childhood reading, I can't imagine it having quite the same appeal to children today.

I love Cyrano de Bergerac! I used to reread regularly until my copy (an English translation) got lost in a move.

And I was browsing the Web, trying to work out who translated the version that I had read, when I came across a free eBook of it in French. So I am happy. Thank you for the reminder!

>76 Peace2: and >78 -pilgrim-:

I too loved the play in English translation (Anthony Burgess?) and thought I might be able to find it in my catalog; but it's missing. Harumph! You've got to read how he proposes to reach the moon!

>79 2wonderY: Did you ever see the Gerard Depardieu film (NOT the Steve Martin travesty)?

I have not. I may have to track it down.

IIRC, it is a pretty "straight" rendition of the play. In French of course, but subtitles are available. And Depardieu has exactly the right mix of bravado and tenderness and vulnerability for the part.

Ah, I have been braver since.
That line gets me every time.

>78 -pilgrim-: and >79 2wonderY: I haven't read the Anthony Burgess translation nor seen the Gerard Depardieu film (although something makes me think I may have seen at least part of it but I can't think when/where), having read and seen this version by Martin Crimp though I would be interested in them both.

Researching tells me it's not the Burgess translation I have. My copy is much older than the 70s. Must be Brian Hooker.

>83 Peace2:, >84 2wonderY: I haven't been able to work out which version I had, but my copy was from the seventies, or early eighties

Does anyone know how to get a book that is already listed on the site added to one's own collection? I've not phrased that very well, but what I'm thinking of is some National Geographic Magazines that I've been reading. I've tried entering them by name and entering all the details manually and by copying the details from copies that already exist on the site but each time I either can't get the details to be recognised at all (normally when I copy the details from the existing copies) and when I choose it by name or enter it manually it won't match it with the existing copies and doesn't offer them as editions with which I can combine it.

Bizarrely when I then enter the details into a list (e.g. Books read in 2020) then I get the copy that other people own and not the copy I have entered into my collections. I'm confused (not that that is unusual these days!)

March Book #8 1666: Plague, War and Hellfire by Rebecca Rideal

A historical visit to the year 1666 in London - a year when there was war against the Dutch, plague ravaged the country and swathes of London were engulfed in fire. The book builds a picture for the reader of contemporary life using a mix of eyewitness accounts from well known people like Samuel Pepys but also traders and other 'every day' people, along with some rather 'dirty' poems (if I remember correctly they were by the Duke of Rochester). It drew me in with the writing of what it was like to be there, on the ground at the time of the events - it is not an analysis of the how and why behind events. The book is quite pacy, I listened to an audio copy from Audible which was well read. With the exception of the parts of book that dealt with the war and the preparations for war, I knew a lot of what was covered (although not necessarily from the perspective given). Interesting to see that even so long ago 'fake news' and 'misinformation' were already part of life - rumours spreading that the Dutch (and other foreigners living in the area) were to blame for the plague and later blamed for the commencement and spread of the Fire, and that in the absence of a way to treat or deal with the Plague 'cures' and 'methods for avoiding contracting it' were spreading wildly - some of the avoiding it ideas were, with hindsight, understandable and probably to a degree at least slightly helpful (social isolation ringing any bells with anyone lately?) while others probably made matters worse - a reflection of medical knowledge at the time. It was also interesting to see how even when there were strategies for slowing the spread of fire (pulling down buildings to create breaks), that no one wanted to have responsibility for making the decision, until the King stepped in (apparently it was not within his responsibility until he declared some kind of suspension of political roles and took over - risky in the light of the Civil War about 20 years previously).

It brought home how many times I've learnt a bit of history but without context of other events occurring at/before/after and how they influence those events. So often I've only learned a snippet and I wonder how often learning about a little bit more about some other event would change my perspective or at least my understanding.

>86 Peace2: I have hit that problem myself and found it frustrating.

Sometimes I find"Recalculate title/author", which seems to force LT to update is database, rather than wait for it to happen automatically, helps.

And sometimes it doesn't. I hope there is a better answer out there.

>88 -pilgrim-: thank you for the suggestion. It’s a bit frustrating, so anything extra to try is appreciated.

>82 -pilgrim-: He really is perfect in the role. I loved that play so much as a teenager. Time for a reread!

>78 -pilgrim-:, >90 libraryperilous: And I must brush up my French!

>87 Peace2: I saw that book in the shops and ignored it. You are tempting me back to give it a try. I had the events of the Plague and the Fire drilled into me at school (and I have read some of Pepys' diaries). But the idea of putting all this into context does sound appealing.

I've recently acquired a catch up TV option and have found 'Treasures of the British Library' - what a fascinating programme - I've just watched two episodes - the first with Benjamin Zephaniah who explored some maps, money, rebels and Percy Bysshe Shelley among other things and I'm most of the way through an episode with a female trumpet player, Alison Balsom, who explored seafaring maps, Thomas Hardy and food/cookery books. Each person has six things that they look at with the curators - I can see me spending some more time on this series. Looks like for some strange reason I had started part way through the series, but I do intend trying to watch the earlier ones, and the second series.

March Book #9 Torchwood: Expectant by Xanna Eve Chown

In the first episode of Torchwood, Captain Jack makes an offhand remark about never intending getting pregnant again and this picks up on that single comment and Jack has agreed to carry the heir to the throne of an alien race, complete with mood swings, cravings while still trying to chase Weevils, accompanied by the alien 'midwife' who disapproves of activities that might endanger the baby. With fleeting appearances by Ianto into the bargain, it's amusing. It won't be one of my favourites but it's definitely far better than Torchwood: Smashed!

March Book #14 David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

It's a long time since I read Great Expectations and Bleak House for my College Studies and I remember at the time not particularly enjoying GE which most of my classmates did enjoy, but finding BH far more interesting (which most of them hated - pretty sure it being so much longer than the former didn't help its case). More recently I have read A Tale of Two cities so going into David Copperfield I really wasn't sure what my reaction was going to be.

Initially I found it interesting, a wide variety of characters, interesting details but after a while I felt like it was beginning to drag and that another misfortune was being thrown into the mix just to add a few more chapters. So while Dickens definitely builds a world and populates it with very vivid characters, I did feel that my enthusiasm was flagging by about three-quarters of the way through the book.

>86 Peace2: When I entered my Cricket magazines, I had to enter them manually, then combine editions. I got a nice combiner badge for it. lol I wanted to enter them manually anyway because then the details would be how I wanted them.

>95 MrsLee: I've tried entering manually but don't get an option to match with either anything at all or the right editions (bizarrely it sometimes comes up with a completely different month/year edition or it comes up with the National Geographic Kids magazine.) I've had to enter things manually before and never had quite so many problems as I'm having with these magazines.

>95 MrsLee: That caused a double-take! I had such difficulty with the idea of you following the (very much Empah-based) sport of that name that I had to look the link up. Ah, I discovered, the insect, not willow-and-leather!

>97 hfglen: My turn for a double-take. Our dog is called Willow and when I read, "willow-and-leather", an image popped into my head of our dog dressed in biker gear.

>97 hfglen: Ha! I thought about that confusion when I posted that. Your cricket completely befuddle me, and yet the terms used in it are so charming. Sticky wicket. Who couldn't love that phrase? Not sure that is a proper cricket term?

>97 hfglen: >98 pgmcc: >99 MrsLee: My thoughts too had gone to sport but I didn't think it was appropriate for the situation, so I had headed in more entomological directions before following @MrsLee's link to see I was wrong again.

Cricket (the sport) is full of weird terms (almost as much as the entomological kind I sometimes feel). I watch my nephew play and understand the general gist of what's happening (runs, overs, etc) but I'm sure half the terms are just to keep out the uninitiated! Silly mid off, anyone? Googly?

>99 MrsLee: Since no-one else has bitten on this: "sticky wicket" is cricketing-speak for a heavy, clayey. muddy wicket. Rare now at least in first-class cricket because most pitches are covered during rain, and are built as a layer of soil and turf over a quick-draining base. And always unknown in South Africa where pitches were generally a layer of coconut matting, which had its own quirks. The point of the words is that because the bounce of the ball becomes unpredictable it's hard to bat on a sticky wicket. (Remember that in cricket, unlike baseball, the ball generally comes off the pitch to the bat rather than full-pitch through the air.)

>100 Peace2: And silly mid-off and -on are equally well named. "Off" and "On" being the sides of the field as seen by the batsman (and so they depend on whether he's right- or left-handed, for starters. "Mid" is (obviously) halfway along the wicket. And the "silly" position is aptly named, being dangerously close in to said wicket -- just the best place on the field for being hit by a fast-moving ball and suffering Grievous Bodily Harm. So if the captain makes you field there, he evidently really doesn't like you.

>101 haydninvienna: I wouldn't bet on your comment about South African wickets. Kingsmead, Durban, is slightly below sea level and close enough to the bay to be tidal, at least in the outfield.

>100 Peace2: >102 hfglen: Cricket-speak really is a fascinating world, isn't it? "Leg-break". "Googly". "Square leg". "Square leg" is the name of a fielding position and even though it's on the "on" it's always called "square leg". ("Leg side"—same as '"the on" as Hugh said) is the side of the pitch behind the batter when s/he is at strike. Nearly always called "the on" in England but "leg side" in Australia.) "Gully". "Slips". "Bowl a maiden over". Whoops, better get back to work.

It's a sad indication of where my brain is at these days when I managed to lose my own thread having apparently clicked on Ignore! Fixed it now so hopefully later I'll get chance to update some of my reading.

>104 Peace2: It can happen to us all. I have lost threads that way, but never my own.

:-)

>105 pgmcc: Somehow I feel it just makes it worse when it’s one own and the fact that it’s taken me a couple of days to figure out it had gone and it wasn’t just that everyone else was posting so much that it had disappeared onto the next page!

>100 Peace2: Indeed, the lingo was designed to keep the masses from soiling the sport with their interest.

I became interested in the sport when I lived in London. It's similar enough to my favorite sport, baseball. I could read articles about a match and get maybe 25% of what was going on from context clues. The other 75%: Forget it, you needed context clues to understand the context clues.

>107 libraryperilous: It wasn't just a sport for the gentry. There used to be an annual match in London, played at Lord's, called the Gentlemen vs Players (that is, amateurs against professionals). The "players" were anybody who was paid to play. Often they would be coaches, but there were paid players in the major county clubs as well. My great-grandfather and at least 2 of his brothers were "players" for Surrey in the late 19th century. Great-grandad was a plumber by trade, so certainly not of the gentry. Great-grandad and his elder brother Tom went to Australia in the first unofficial Test series in 1873-4, but as "professionals" they travelled steerage while W G Grace and the other "amateurs" went first class.

ETA from Wikipedia:

The fixture struggled to gain public interest during the mid-19th century, as the Players often easily defeated the Gentlemen. Various efforts to improve competitiveness were tried, including different-sized wickets for each team and a system of 'given men', in which the Players would loan one or more of their best players to the Gentlemen. These were generally unsuccessful, with the Players continuing to win most matches. The fixtures became more competitive and gained prestige in the late 1800s, coinciding with the career of W. G. Grace, who played for the Gentlemen with great success. During the period 1860-1914, the fixture was seen as one of the highlights of the cricket season.

>108 haydninvienna: I didn't say the gatekeeping was successful. :)

March Book #17 The Power by Naomi Alderman

What would happen if women suddenly gained a power that could be used to hurt men? How would they use it?

The story follows four different characters, three women and a man. Each of them remembers the time before the power came but each of them also follows a path through the story that shows how roles and events change as time passes and the power becomes more widespread. In some of the comments I had seen before reading it, the book is described as being a feminist novel and a show of female strength. Speaking personally, I found the story interesting and intriguing, but I am not entirely sure that it is really a feminist story. I think it is almost more of a role reversal with women taking on the worst of potential male attributes and seeking revenge, rather than a show of something better. We have all seen stories in the news of women who have been treated badly by men in power or who have been abused or trafficked, but is that how women would behave if roles were reversed? Overall I would like to think that we could all learn from the mistakes and evils of the past and present, rather than just revisit them from a different perspective.

March Book #18 The Beekeeper of Aleppo by Christy Lefteri

The story of a husband and wife who are Syrian refugees seeking asylum in Britain. The husband retells the story of their flight from Syria and of what their life had been like in Syria before, he was a beekeeper and his wife an artist, and the lead up to them leaving. It's a moving story, showing the horrors and the lingering effects upon the people of this kind of war but also of the torments of their journey and the constant need to try to convince bureaucracy in the countries they travel through of their need for help and for asylum. The author has worked with refugees in Greece and so writes with knowledge of the kind of journeys that people have experienced, of their histories and their hopes for the future.

March Book #23 A Room with A View by EM Forster

It was probably a bit of a bad choice really, I read A Passage to India when I was at school and hadn't enjoyed it, re-read it not all that long ago and still didn't like it, so this was a bit of a risk. I was listening to an audio version of this book and just found myself wanting it be over. Wrong time, wrong book? Maybe, but I can't see me giving it another go at another time.

March Book #24 Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

Another audio. The story of a young woman, Bathsheba, who meets a farmer, Gabriel, who declares his love (rather quickly) but she rebuffs his advances. They later meet when he has lost his farm and she has inherited and is mistress of her late uncle's farm. Events transpire to intertwine their lives, with Gabriel watching over events, unable to change their course. Bathsheba seems to flit between being capable and independent and getting herself into romantic difficulties. Lots of descriptive picture building of both location and events. Sad in parts, but overall readable and a slightly inevitable ending. Well read by Nathaniel Parker (I always like a bit of Inspector Lynley reading to me!)

March Book #25 A Faint Cold Fear by Karin Slaughter

Book three in the Sara Linton stories. Although I've read some others in the series, they have been later after her path crosses with Will Trent, so this is interesting to see early Sara. Sara is a pediatric doctor, and the local coroner. The story begins with Sara being called by the local police chief (and her ex-husband with whom she is considering a fresh start) to the scene of a potential suicide. With her in the car is her sister. While Sara attends the scene of death, her sister takes a walk in the woods nearby and is attacked. All of a sudden the potential suicide takes on a twist. Over the coming chapters, dead bodies pile up, the investigations twist and turn as they attempt to work out whether they are all related and if so to what end. There are some very graphic and unpleasant scenes within this and overall, I have read others by the same author that I have preferred for their investigative course. Many of the central characters are shown as flawed and not just the ones who end up being the criminals at the end.

Has anyone read Three Women by Lisa Taddeo? I'm struggling to get into it (I'm 9 chapters in so far) and don't know whether to stick with it or not. I'm not sure whether this is my mood or the book just not being for me. LT seems to think I won't enjoy it, but then again it doesn't always get that right. I've already had a couple of abandons so far this month, I don't really want any more (although it does help with the TBR pile)

>110 Peace2: I had some similar reactions to The Power, I think. I agree that it was more of a role reversal than anything, and I very much agreed with your question in your spoiler tags. I could buy into it happening in areas where women were currently being horribly subjugated. With large numbers of angry and vengeful women in one place, I could see things getting out of control in those areas. But I found it more difficult to buy into in countries where the treatment of women has improved. I would expect most women to be more rational about not wanting to repeat the mistakes of previous generations.

>113 YouKneeK: Very good point - I hadn't really thought of that aspect generating different responses, but that does indeed seem plausible as a potential.

March Book #26 The Call of the Wild and The Cruise of the Dazzler by Jack London

Two books in one - American classics, I guess, these have been on my shelf since I was in my mid-late teens without every being read - they came with a copy of Little Women which I had read numerous times. The Call of the Wild is the story of a dog stolen from his home and taken to work as a sled dog in Alaska. The dog tells the story of his experiences - many violent and brutal. It's an interesting perspective reading from the dog's point of view.

The Cruise of the Dazzler is the story of a young boy not doing well in school who against his father's advice, decides to run away to sea. Things do not go as he planned and he learns some lessons but he also grows in how he sees the advice he's given. This is not a long story (nor a long trip to sea - it doesn't take him long to find out things are not going how he planned).

Glad I read them, interesting, but they're not going to join the ranks of favourites.

March Book #27 The Forging of Dawn by Jacob Peppers

A prequel to a series. A husband and wife are living a fairly quiet life having retired from being soldiers against the Dark. Now with a young son, they want to keep him safe and stay away from the evil. When evil comes knocking at their door, they begin to realise just how much danger they are in. Their son, almost a side character in this story, reveals something unexpected.

This is obviously the set up to something bigger, with more characters being revealed right up to the dramatic ending - looks like it could be an interesting fantasy series - from what I can see on Audible, the first two in the main series are already available (although only the first is listed here on LT). The central character(s) will change in the subsequent books. I am curious to continue but have a few more books I need to get through before I can really envisage starting.

March Book #29 Am I Normal Yet? by Holly Bourne

A story told by a teenage girl, just starting college and trying to fit in and 'be normal'. The central character, Evie, is not just an average teenager, she suffers from severe OCD and general anxiety. She has previously spent time in hospital as her condition deteriorated and she received treatment and help, but now she's recovering.

Evie tells the story, the reader sees the steps she takes to try and control the things around her, her perceptions of what is normal and what she needs to do to be normal. Through her eyes, we see the effect on her family and the lengths she goes to to hide the truth from her 'new friends' (some of them are not new, but have been at different schools for a number of years so don't know what happened in the interim).

Alongside this aspect of her story, two of Evie's new friends are trying to be feminists and she joins with them, but in their teens they struggle with what that really means for them. They consider the Bechdel Test for films and try to have conversations that don't involve boys and relationships with boys - but they're teenage girls and at least two of them are very interested in having friendships and more with boys. Does that mean they can't be feminists? They ponder those questions and others.

It was an interesting look at both the challenge of being a teen, the challenge of being a teen dealing with mental health, the struggle to find who you are and who you want to be. This is the start of a series, but I believe the subsequent books focus on different characters in the main group of three girls with Evie becoming a side character. I think I have the next book in the series as an ebook. While I found this interesting, I'm not in a rush to read the next one but expect I will get to it at some point.

March Book #31 A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

This was a long past book bullet @MrsLee I think and at least one other. An interesting story, following the life of a Russian aristocrat who takes a suite in the Hotel Metropol and then is unexpectedly put under house arrest. He finds himself moved from the suite to a former servant's quarters and so his life continues. The story follows the events in his life as he continues to live a full and interesting life within the limitations set upon him. Really enjoyed this. Great book.

>116 Peace2: I really enjoyed A Gentleman in Moscow. To ensure I did not finish it too quickly I found myself reading more slowly than I would normally.

A Russian friend of mine read it; her reaction did not spoil my enjoyment of the book. She simply said, "In reality he would just have been shot."

:-)

>117 pgmcc: That proves fiction is often better than reality! :) I can see this being revisited at some point down the line.

March Book #32 Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

A short book and re-read from when I was younger. I remember loving this book when I was younger, this time I listened to it on Audible Stories (the current free to stream service while schools are closed from their literary classics section). I have to say that I liked the audio a lot less as I wasn't keen on the narrator's performance.

Ethan Frome is a hardworking farmer with a wife, Zeena, who only makes his life harder. They are joined in their life by Mattie, Zeena's young cousin. This is different to the other Edith Wharton novels that I've come across when tend more to 'society pieces' where she writes about life in contemporary society circles in New York. By comparison, this is set in a small New England village, away from society and glamour. It is a story of struggle, of human relationships, of hidden passion.

Next time I come to this, I'll revert to the text form, and not an audio.

March Book #33 Schindler's List by Thomas Keneally

The history of Oskar Schindler, a German factory owner who used his position to save Jews from death at Auschwitz. This was an interesting read, but also a heartbreaking one. The author does a good job of bringing together different aspects of the history and creating a picture to represent the whole. He uses eye witness accounts of survivors along with Schindler's own records to recount the events of this period of history. To the outward eye, Oskar was living a good life, socialising with German kommandants, eating and drinking well off the profits of his factory. The truth was somewhat bigger. In reality, he was attempting to bring as many Jews as he could away from the Auschwitz camps to live and work in a smaller barracks beside his factory where they were safer and better treated, the socialising cost him money in bribes to allow him the freedom to create a safer haven - life was still under threat but health treatment and food were better in the day to day, although the threat still lay over his workers and himself and his family.

Schindler had his flaws - a drinker, a womaniser among other things, but he did save many and he did make a difference (ensuring for instance that weaponry issued from his factories was always faulty while blaming it on the suppliers of the machinery - as opposed to the truth which was that he had had the machinery adjusted to be just slightly out of measure so that nothing produced was useable).

Sad, heartbreaking and heartwarming - that there were good people amidst those carrying out the horrors visited upon the Jewish population - and definitely worth a read from a historic point of view.

>116 Peace2:, >117 pgmcc:
Peter's friend has nailed my problem with the book on the head. I have never been able to bring myself to read it because the premise had always seemed to me intrinsically ridiculous.

I have this pesky instinct that demands basic realism in my historical fiction.

>120 -pilgrim-: I am reading Shadowplay by Joseph O'Connor at the moment. It is about Bram Stoker and his life as the General Manager of The Lyceum Theatre in London. It plays with his relationships and hints at where he got ideas for Dracula and other stories. It also weaves The Jack The Ripper murders into the tale.

I am having @-pilgrim-'s problem with this story. I know too much about Stoker and the evidence of where and when he found details that he used in Dracula to enjoy this rubbish from O'Connor.

My big concern is that people will read his fiction and think it is biographical. This is disturbing my ability to be strictly objective in my assessment of the book. It reads well enough, but I get tired when he repeated uses the same technique in his writing.

>120 -pilgrim-: I understand your reluctance and in many circumstances would agree with you, but the Count was such an interesting character to spend time with that I'm glad he was not shot in advance of the novel no matter how unlikely the reality. :D

March Book #34 Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps that Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics by Tim Marshall

I listened to an audio of this. What a fascinating book. Tim Marshall takes a look at ten regions around the world in turn, looking at some of those lines drawn on maps, why they are where they are and what the political implication of that is. In some places, the lines that demarcate the end of one country and the beginning of another follow, for instance, a mountain range or a river, a natural limit to one territory - conquering what lay beyond was more difficult than ending the territory at a natural boundary - the Himalayan Mountain Range accounts for the many years of peace between India and China (not without any conflict but relatively quiet), the struggle to invade a neighbour is only made harder by the need to transfer troops and supplies across such a challenging terrain.

By contrast, the lines on the map of Africa and the Middle East are far straighter in some cases because they were put there by people with a motive. In Africa, these lines were often drawn by settling invaders, splitting territories into areas that were convenient to them often because of their interest in the natural resources they could lay claim to, but paying no attention to prior inhabitants of the area, giving no weight to tribal or religious beliefs of the people already living there. How many areas of the world can conflicts be at least partially be laid at the door of the map creators?

He also looks at the development of a country or region by its geography. As an example, he considers the flow of the Niger River, an impressively long river, but much of it isn't navigable by boats of any substantial size, therefore many of the areas along its course were unable to use it for trade which led to them remaining isolated for longer and impacted upon the area's growth and development.

The book covers a lot of ground in a relatively short framework. It is an overview of some of the things we can learn by looking at maps and apply to what we see around us, giving us an insight into conflicts and development and history. It is not an in depth study of any particular area or type of information, but it gives a good insight to the whole concept as a starting point.

March Book #36 The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander

Taran, the Assistant Pig Keeper finds himself swept along on a quest, growing as he travels and learns of dangers he never imagined and learning to appreciate those who become his companions as he is guided by those older and wiser than he.

A fun children's book, published in the 1960s and the start of a series. I don't remember reading this as a child, but it's possible that I did (I used to borrow quite a lot from the library).

March Book #36 (My counting is out at some point again!) Three Women by Lisa Taddeo

This is a non-fiction book telling the story of three different women. I struggled through to the end, almost giving up several times. The author apparently spent thousands of hours over the course of eight years with the three women, getting to know them and their stories. It's about how these women perceive themselves and how they are perceived by others. It's about their experiences, their lives, not glamour and ease but the steady thrum of it against the background of its hardship and suffering. The books flits from one person to the next in a constant cycle through the events they each experienced, the author claims that the story is being told in their own words, yet it didn't feel that way - for all their differences the women in many respects spoke similarly - in terms of the smell and taste of things in their lives in a way I can't say I've ever heard anyone speak so it seems strange that all three women would do that. All three women for varying reasons lack self worth, have an at best dubious accounting of the value and place of sex in their lives. The book felt intrusive and exploitative rather than giving the reader an appreciation of the women's experience. The book is not about women who are able (for varying reasons) to make their own positive life choices but are trapped by their view of what life and relationships are and should be.

Speaking personally, I didn't enjoy the book, I didn't feel educated by the book, I felt more that I had been party to the author continuing to exploit women who were trapped by previous experiences, mentally unhealthy situations and personally unhealthy expectations of what 'love', 'relationships' and 'sex' should be like, for the sake of the author's publishing contract.

March Book #37 The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley

This was a Santathing book back in December 2018. It's a slightly steampunk, alternative history of probably the late 1800s with a minor foreign office communications worker (Thaniel), a watchmaker who can build more complicated and elaborate clockwork than anyone else (Mr Mori) and seems to also be able to tell some of the future and a young woman who is trying against the odds to be accepted as a scientist and not have to submit to her parents' wish that she marry (Grace). I have mixed feelings about this one. I enjoyed parts of it, got confused in others. I liked the characters but found some of the things happening in the story leaving me adrift. I have kept it and think perhaps I need to try it again in the future when my mind is quieter and I can focus and appreciate it more.

Other March reads

1. Captain America, Vol 3: Loose Nuke
2. Captain America, Vol 4: The Iron Nail
3. Captain America, Vol 5: The Tomorrow Soldier
4. Bucky Barnes: The Winter Soldier Vol 1, The Man on the Wall
5. Bucky Barnes: The Winter Soldier Vol 2
6. Winter Soldier: The Complete Collection
7. Winter Soldier, Vol 4: The Electric Ghost
8. Tales of Suspense featuring Hawkeye and The Winter Soldier
9. The Ultimates, Vol 1: Super-Human
10. The Ultimates, Vol 2: Homeland Security
11. All new Captain America, Vol 1: Hydra Ascendant
12. National Geographic Magazine : April 2013
13. National Geographic Magazine: August 2013
14. National Geographic Magazine: August 2014

Books Tried and Abandoned in March

1. The Girl Who Wasn't There by Ferdinand von Schirach
2. The Colour of a Dog Running Away by Richard Gwyn
3. The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break by Steven Sherrill
4. On the Road by Jack Kerouac (was listening to an audio and the narrator's voice was liking nails on a blackboard, although I'm not really sure it was my thing anyway)
5. Surprised By Joy by CS Lewis

and so concludes my reading for March.

March Round Up

Total Number of Books Read : 37
Books Retained After Reading : 4 (number increases to 15 if you include the books that weren’t physical and so I still have access to them via an account although they are not on any of my gad*gets at present)

Books on Shelf Prior to 1st Jan 2020 : 24
Books on Shelf Prior to 1st Jan 2019 : 23

Books Abandoned : 5
Series Finished as far as I intend reading or Completed : 5

Non-Fiction Reads : 8
Fiction Reads : 29

Male Authors (first time to read that author this year): 10 (52.2% of total first time authors for the year)
Female Authors (first time to read that author this year): 12 (47.8% of total first time authors for the year)

Books by Male Authors : 10 (23.8% of all books read)
Books by Female Authors : 12 (21% of all books read)
Books by Collaboration : 15 (55.2% of all books read)

Books acquired : 20 (all except 1 were from Audible and so are not taking up physical space)

Goal to read 18000 pages from Mt. TBR by the end of the year : 5,664 pages read this month (total so far this year: 20,387 pages therefore I have passed target by 2,387 pages so far)

Mount TBR is now 702 books high (10 books shorter than last month)

>116 Peace2: Thank you for the credit, I'll take a half notch on this one because I believe I was one of the later members to have read it, influenced by many other glowing remarks from people in the pub. So glad you enjoyed it!

April Books #1 and #10 The Black Cauldron and The Castle of Llyr by Lloyd Alexander

Taran and the Companions continue their travels together, first in search of the Black Cauldron, used by Arawn to create his Cauldron-Born warriors and later with Eilonwy as the focus as her life and future become the focus.

Children's books in which the main characters not only overcome evil but also learn to behave honorably, loyally etc.

I think writing has changed a lot in the intervening years and I'm sure I've said similar things about John Christopher's writing, that they would jump over things and leave more to the reader to imply so the books have a tendency to be a bit shorter than a more modern equivalent might (I'm sure it isn't just that the font in these books is smaller and more tightly spaced although that is also true).

April Book #2 Rogue by Julie Kagawa

This is the second in the Talon series which I began last November. Ember is a dragon, she can shift between human and dragon form and she is on the run from Talon, an organisation that believes in the supremacy of dragons and which was training her. Cobalt/Riley is a rogue dragon, who lured Ember away from the organisation and so now they are on the run together. Garret was a member of St George, an organisation that hunts all dragons bringing up their followers to believe that dragons are evil and must all be killed. Having fallen for Ember in the first book, Garret now finds himself on the run with Ember and Cobalt hunted by both Talon and St George. Perfect set up for a 'love triangle' (yeuch!)

Although I had quite enjoyed the first book I found this one more tedious and so won't be continuing. One problem was that Ember was frustrating continually disobeying the instructions of the more experienced people around her and putting all of their lives in danger. Another was that this in a way just felt like a pattern of chase, fight, escape, chase, fight, escape with no real progress in the story and that it was going to continue in a similar vein into the next book.

The thing is when you look at reviews here on LT, they tail off as series progress (understandably as people who didn't enjoy the earlier ones don't read on) but they also get more enthusiastic because the people who stick with the series are more likely to be devotees of an author or series, so in some respects they become less balanced. Anyway, although the next three are available free at the moment on Audible Stories, I'm still not feeling inclined to continue.

April Book #3 The Reluctant Dragon by Kenneth Grahame

The story of a young boy who meets a timid dragon who lives quietly near their village. While his parents are happy for him to have a friendship, when the other villagers find out they call in St George. It is up to the boy to find a peaceful resolution.

A short children's story written over 100 years ago by the author of Wind in the Willows.

April Book #4 The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

Like The Moonstone this novel uses the perspective of multiple narrators, each telling part of the story as they experienced it. It is the story of a crime committed and ultimately unravelled. The story begins with a young man travelling to take up a new position as an art tutor and on the journey he meets the woman in white, a young women who had escaped from a local asylum. When he reaches his destination he discovers that the woman he helped bore a resemblance to one of his pupils.

Each character expounds on what they saw and what part they played in the story as it progressed and in the outcome. Greed, duplicity, lookalikes, marriage (and the implications of marriage on English inheritance law at the time), friendship and manipulation all build the story.

The book shows the shocking way in which women were represented at the time in terms of the legalities of them inheriting and also in the way in which their husbands could control their futures and their finances and the mistreatment this could lead to, and how a woman's 'will' was irrelevant - upon her death, it was up to her husband to decide what would happen to her estate, regardless of her wishes. It also touched on how easy it was to have a woman committed to a lunatic asylum at the time - 'being an embarrassment to a father or brother' was actually a recognised reason for it happening. It's quite an intricate novel, at times the pace is slow - I've thought this about a few novels of its type and I wonder if this is in part due to the way in which they were written to be published as part of a serialisation in a magazine rather than as a novel in its entirety in the first instance - payment by the volume perhaps?

Overall, I enjoyed it and am glad to spend some time with it, but I wonder if a modern editor given the same manuscript might have pruned it somewhat.

>129 Peace2: I enjoyed The Woman in White. I would agree it could do with some editing, but overall I was happy with it.

>129 Peace2:, 130
I seem to remember reading that 19th century novels were work to the page count. With less options for varying the size of the typeface, the binding process resulted in the length of the book in pages having to be a number of multiples of 4. Blank endpapers could only do so much, so novelists who could not fit one multiple were encouraged to pad their text in order to reach the next option.

>131 -pilgrim-: >130 pgmcc: David Copperfield was the other recent read that I had similar feelings of wanting to head for the pruning shears!

>132 Peace2: Dickens was being paid by the instalment, and it definitely showed! All those reminders of past episodes...

I think that sometimes those old, serialised novels are best read the way that they were written: in instalments.

>132 Peace2:
I have read and enjoyed about five books by Dickens in the past three years. The I read David Copperfield. I will not feel like reading another Dickens for a long time. I agree with you feelings about it needing a good edit.

>133 -pilgrim-: >134 pgmcc: My feelings exactly - that one is definitely more in need of an electric hedge trimmer or perhaps a chainsaw than the pruning snips that I use in the garden! I have Oliver Twist left to read in the 'nearish' future.

I think some of Wilkie Collins' works were serialised in the same publications with Dickens' work. I think the changing narration perspective possibly lends itself to that kind of production.

I too enjoyed The woman in white, although I agree that it is perhaps overlong. On the whole I prefer Collins to Dickens, but maybe that is just my liking for the Gothic coming though.

>136 Sakerfalcon: Collins has my vote too.

>136 Sakerfalcon: >137 -pilgrim-: At the moment Collins also would have my vote - however, I've only read 3 by Collins and 4 by Dickens (although from film and tv I am familiar with a further 2 of Dickens), so I guess I should reserve the right to change my opinion if I read further.

April Books #6, 7, 8, 14, 16 and 20 Bunburry - a Cosy Mystery Series by Helena Marchmont

Books 1 - 6 in the Bunburry series Murder at the Mousetrap, A Murderous Ride, A Taste of Murder, Death of a Ladies Man, Drop Dead, Gorgeous and Murder in High Places
This was a set of six mini murder mysteries that I happened across on Audible. The first draw was that they were read by Nathaniel Parker - I've listened to him read the Artemis Fowl series and more recently Far From the Madding Crowd. Just imagine Inspector Lynley reading you a story...

So on to the actual stories now, they are short stories, the longest was only about 3 1/2 hours to listen to. In the first book, Alfie has left his life in London and has arrived in the village of Bunburry where unexpectedly he has inherited a cottage from his late aunt. He's not been there long when he finds himself at the centre of village life, signed up to join the local acting group in directing and performing in the annual production of The Mousetrap following the death of the previous director/actor. Immersed into the village with the assistance of two of his aunt's friends, he finds himself part of the Bunburry triangle and investigating the unexpected death.

The other stories follow a similar vein with the Bunburry Triangle investigating an unexpected death in each. The stories are light, humorous, there is a little bit of repetition of certain facts that is probably emphasised even more by reading all six books so close together, but some of which are almost made light of in book 6 when a character only ever known at a distance makes an appearance in Bunburry and everyone knows the facts that were earlier repeated. There are a few cliched characters scattered through the stories, likeable and not in different cases.

In each story a little more of Alfie's back story is revealed and even by the end of book six it felt like the author could still be planning further books in the series.

I enjoyed them enough and despite being murder mysteries, they are a light read.

April Book #10 The Castle of Llyr by Lloyd Alexander

The third in the series following Taran's travels. This time Taran sets out as a companion to Eilonwy as she travels to stay with King and Queen of Dinas Rhydnant in order to learn how to be a Princess. Once there, Taran finds out that not only is she to stay and learn how to be 'more royal', but that the King and Queen plan to encourage her to marry their son, a young man who seems foolish to put it mildly.

When evil again raises its head, this time threatening the life of Eilonwy directly, the companions find themselves on a quest to rescue Eilonwy.

I was a bit disappointed in this one - Eilonwy at times becomes little more than baggage to be traded, and although the Companions find themselves in peril on their quest to save Eilonwy it is coincidental to the quest they are on and not overcoming the threatening evil. The climax of the fight between good and evil with Eilonwy at its core seems abrupt and is over almost as quickly as it has started with the end of the book following not long after.

April Book #11 Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

A complex classic, with much not as it seems. The story is told by a naive young woman who is working as a companion to a rather awful American woman (particularly as she is portrayed by Anna Massey in the audio version) in Monte Carlo. While there she meets Maxim de Winter, falls in love and ultimately falls in love, marries and moves with him to the infamous Manderley.

Manderley, a wonderful estate, that everyone it seems is in awe of. The narrator is soon out of her depth as not only is she thrown into a life far wealthier than one she has experienced before, but she finds herself held up in comparison with her new husband's late first wife, Rebecca, both in her own mind and in the eyes of Mrs Danvers, the housekeeper and the neighbours.

Piece by piece, the narrator slowly builds a picture of Rebecca and of how life used to be at Manderley, but Maxim is resolutely quiet, never enlightening her, never understanding her concerns.

The narrator matures as the book continues, makes some choices for herself, with her new found knowledge, learns to stand up for what she wants, but underlying it all is the questions of what is truth, right, justice. The gothic feel of the book gives a looming sense of imminent danger and unease. Overall an interesting read, drags a little in parts but very atmospheric overall.

April Book #12 The Android's Dream by John Scalzi

Wow, this was a weird read. Set in a future with aliens and interplanetary trade agreements, but it's a future that doesn't feel too distant or remote from our own. Harry Creek is charged with finding a sheep (The Android's Dream) in order to bring an end to an interplanetary conflict, but all is not as it seems and maybe he doesn't want to just hand over the sheep.

The book is a mix of humour, action, intrigue and political machinations. Definitely very strange. My first experience of reading John Scalzi although I've got another by him on the shelf to read at some point (I think it's part of a series) and I have heard good things about some of his other writing. I'm not sure whether this is reflective of his other works and whilst I quite enjoyed it, I'm not sure I would want to read lots like it.

>140 Peace2: I first discovered Rebecca while reading my way through my parents' book collection, in my teens. I am very glad that I didn't see the film before I read the book - it's a good film on its own terms, but it misses the lovely subtleties of the book.

I don't think Daphne du Maurier ever wrote anything as complex again. We read Jamaica Inn in class at school, and it came across as fairly standard historical fiction, albeit with a Gothic feel and some psychological depth.

>141 -pilgrim-: I'm sure I read My Cousin Rachel before but intend to do so again at some point and I also have a copy of Frenchman's Creek and Castle Dor (which was apparently started by someone else and completed by DDM). I should add Jamaica Inn to the list of books to look out for (when the pile is smaller...)

>142 Peace2:

(When the pile is smaller.)

Hahahahahahahha...
Good one!

Hahahahahahah...

>143 pgmcc:. I am an optimist! Or maybe a fantasist? something like that anyway.

>142 Peace2:

Setting the humorous comments aside...

My first reading experience of Daphne Du Maurier was when I was at secondary school and read Jamaica Inn. It was not a set text but a book I borrowed from the school library. I remember loving it and thinking I would read other books by Du Maurier. That was when I was about sixteen.

It was within the last ten years that I got around to fulfilling my plan to read more of her books. I even gave Jamaica Inn another read to see if I was suffering from bad recall. I was not; it was just as enjoyable in my 50s as it was in my teens. (I know, either it is a good book or I never grew up. Either is possible.)

In my Du Maurier reading I have included Rebecca, My Cousin Rachel, The Doll, The Scapegoat, and several other titles. She has not disappointed me yet. I hope she does not disappoint you.

I need to find my copy of Rebecca and reread it. I just read her long short story Don't look now in the Weird anthology and it reminded me just how good Du Maurier's writing is.

>143 pgmcc: Moving house shrank my book pile. A little. A very little. Then I started unpacking my parents' books that had been in the attic...

>141 -pilgrim-: Du Maurier is one of my favorite authors, but I agree that Rebecca is the top of her skill set. The only other one that I think comes close is The Scapegoat.

>148 Darth-Heather: The Scapegoat pulled me right in, not just because of the story, but also because it opens with the protagonist taking three days to travel on a journey that we do nowadays in seven hours, including meal stops. He had been holidaying/studying in the Loire Valley near Blois and was travelling to Cherbourg. Our holiday spot is near Blois and we take the same journey a few times a year. The story reminded me what it was like travelling before the days of motorways when you had to travel through every little town and village. Knowing the area and remembering the old days gave me an extra benefit when reading this book.

I shall keep looking for further Du Maurier titles to add to the TBR pile (I'm sure they'll look very nice in the collection) until I get to them.

April Book #13 Angkor Wat: The History and Legacy of the World's Largest Hindu Temple

A too short introduction to Angkor Wat. I've always been fascinated by interesting architecture and historical significance and that's what tempted me to this book - particularly at a time when the chances of me being able to visit seem even more remote than under normal circumstances. Although this book covered a lot, it covered it briefly. In the end, I'm just left tempted to spend more time and learn more on the subject.

April Book #15 The Assassin's Blade by Sarah J Maas

This a prequel set of novellas for the Throne of Glass series, combined into a single volume. The stories show the development of the principal character Celeana, a young female assassin. There is a romantic element to these stories and some maturing of the principal character. It is the beginning of a YA series. I can't really put my finger on what the problem was, but I just wasn't as enthralled by the characters or the stories as I hoped I would be. I found myself flicking to see how much further I had to go.

It wasn't that the characters lacked form, nor that the plot of each short didn't make sense or hang together, because really they did. I just wasn't gripped.

With that in mind, I have decided to give away both this and the sequels that are part of the main series as they just aren't for me.

>148 Darth-Heather:, >149 pgmcc: That does sound interesting. Drat you both, I think you may have scored a(nother) hit...

>151 -pilgrim-: Do it, do it! Just adding my praise to the du Mauier fans here. She isn't always a win for me, but when she is, she is stellar. I highly recommend her short story, The Birds, if anyone has only seen the movie.

Well that has to be one of the most pointless conversations I've ever had - "Hello, I'm calling from the insurance company.... Your travel insurance is about to expire and I'd like to talk to you about renewal" Seriously? Did he actually expect me to say 'Oh yes, I must get right on that, I can't wait for my holiday in my own back garden! Definitely need to make sure my flights are covered and that I'm covered in case my luggage goes missing on the way or the hotel burns down the night before I get there." They weren't this proactive when my car insurance was due for renewal. *sigh*

>153 Peace2: Sales force must be desperate for business. They work on commission.

>154 2wonderY: You are probably right that it was something along those lines - although you would have thought they would have tried to convince me to buy a different insurance with them (e.g. health or house insurance, something I don't have with them) rather than trying to sell me travel during an indefinite lockdown. I did say that I would renew as and when the world was such that I was planning a trip off island, but for now...'

>155 Peace2: Those are different sales teams, with different trading about different product ranges. Why hand you to the (in-house) competition, when their own sales targets must be looking for enough as it is?

It must really suck to be in the travel insurance industry thought now. Practically zero new custom, and the prospect of some really huge payouts (depending on precise wording of policy terms).

April Book #18 The Wolf of the Plains by Conn Iggulden

The first in the Conqueror series, the author begins a fictionalised version of the life of the boy Temujin who grew up to become Genghis Khan. I've read a couple of biographies about Genghis Khan and although this is fiction, it certainly seems to stay close to things that are known about the true history. Temujin's father, Khan of his clan, was travelling alone when he was attacked. He dies of his injuries a short time later and the clan decides to put out Temujin and his family, leaving them behind as they move on, without food or weapons or anything to protect them from the weather on the plain.

All of this shapes the man Temujin grows up to be. He and his brothers learn fast how to make weapons and hunt under the threat of starvation. Bit by bit they improve their lot, taking on the threats of weather, winter, rivals and gradually securing first their own survival and then expanding their allies and bringing them under his control.

The book brings the plains to life, with the hardship he and his family faced, put out without weapons to hunt, learning the things they hadn't had chance to learn at that stage, the conflicts they face to survive.

I'm looking forward to Lords of the Bow the second in the series.

April Book #19 Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

My first thought on finishing the book was never get on a boat with a man named Robinson Crusoe! I found this tedious which was a shame because it should have been much more exciting or interesting. Also I have never come across the word 'viz' so often in all my previous reading and it really began to irritate. There were a number of points at which I almost gave up, because I just couldn't engage with the main character.

April Book #21 My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell

The first of the Corfu trilogy, Gerald Durrell retells his childhood from moving to Corfu with his mother and siblings and how he grew up there. The book is often humorous, building a world for the reader that is easy to imagine because the picture is painted so well. Looking at his childhood interests and fascinations with living creatures, it becomes no surprise that he grew to the man who worked so tirelessly to protect endangered species and bring the message to the world of the wonderful variety of life out in the world. A definite gem. I shall definitely be keeping my eyes open for more of his work in the future.

>157 Peace2: I read Lords of the Bow in 2018. Like you, I really enjoyed it whilst reading it. So I decided to read a little more about Mongol society and Genghis Khan. And then I found how much is actually recorded, and how much the author had altered the facts for his own purposes including rather crucial ones regarding the timescale involving his wife and the birth of his first son. And that really irritated me, so I never sought the sequel.

I felt the same way about Mongol - the 2007 film by Sergei Bodrov (a director I usually admire). Magnificent visually, hordes portrayed by hundreds of Mongolians - but the plot did violence to the history and the memory of the man.

>158 -pilgrim-: I have the rest of the set on the shelf to read and now I'm wondering whether I'll get through them all before getting annoyed. Well we'll have to wait and see. I'm not giving up yet.

I need to catch up on listing what I've read but I think they're just going to have to be quick comments rather than anything too detailed.

April Book #22 Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

I was sure that I'd read this book when I was younger, but I remembered very little of it. The world has become a utopia. Before birth, babies are grown in a factory where they are assigned to be alpha, beta, gamma or delta - their genes are tweaked. Once born they are programmed to be happy in their assigned role and not to aspire for anything outside the norm.

Is a life in which everything is assigned, pre-destined really a good one, where not only large scale conflict, but smaller conflict and disappointment is removed and if for any reason happiness is not guaranteed drugs are not just available but encouraged?

Consumerism is promoted - an interesting thought in today's age where we are reconsidering how we use the world's resources.

Given this was written in 1932, aspects of it are interesting, but it's not an easy read. I didn't enjoy it but some of the themes that occur are thought provoking so I stuck with it.

April Book #23 The Vagrant by Peter Newman

The Vagrant is the central character, travelling through a post-Apocalyptic world carrying a baby and a sword with a goat in tow. The Vagrant is mute, so while the story is his, he doesn't tell it, we never see his thoughts, his reasoning or his explanations. The world is full of desperate people trying to thieve from others, demons and enemies.

I found this bleak and depressing and while The Vagrant is on some kind of heroic quest, it was too much like hard work at the moment to try and work out what the quest was and what the origins and endpoints were.

This is the first in a series but I'm not inclined to continue.

April Book #24 It All Adds Up: The Story of People and Mathematics by Mickael Launay

An interesting look at the history of mathematics - from when people first began to look at geometry (the shapes that were needed for things that needed to achieve - flints that made effective tools, as opposed to the shapes that didn't work as well), to when, why and how people began to count (one example was rich men who sent shepherds to the hills with their sheep and needed to be sure of getting the right number of sheep back, so counters were put in jars and the jars were sealed and broken open on the return - before they worked out that mark making worked just as well). And on and on coming forward through history looking at Pythagoras and Fibonacci and the like. For a book about mathematics, it's a fairly light read with a mix of facts and amusing anecdotes.

April Book #25 After The Fire by Will Hill

This is a mature young adult book centring on Moonbeam who grew up in a fictional religious community called 'The Lord's Legion'. The author acknowledges that the book was influenced by events like those at David Koresh's Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, but that it is entirely fiction.

The book was quite compelling and I did find myself turning the pages to uncover more of the past. There were questions and small holes within the plot that were left unanswered or unsatisfactorily answered. There were also lots of aspects that weren't explored about motivation, belief and actions/inactions that might be asked about an organisation of this type.

April Book #26 Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

Really didn't enjoy this - I was very familiar with the story having been exposed to a number of children's versions and extracts and seen the film with Oliver Reed many years ago. I'm not going to try any more Dickens for a while - plenty of other things out there still to experience.

April Book #27 Witches of Lychford by Paul Cornell

This is a little gem that was on a number of threads a year or two ago, that I had been meaning to try (if I recollect correctly one of the threads was @pgmcc). I found myself sucked in and not wanting to stop until I reached the end. I shall be looking out for the sequels in due course.

April Book #31 The Five by Hallie Rubenhold

The author tells the story of the five victims of Jack the Ripper. Widely publicised as being prostitutes at the time, the author has researched each of the women's background, her life, where she lived and how she came to be in the area the night she fell victim to the Ripper.

This was both interesting and sad. The majority of the women were not and never had been prostitutes according to her research, they were however living in poverty, some of them had alcohol problems or were homeless.

The book does not offer any information on who Jack the Ripper really was. It does talk briefly about how the influence of the media at the time painted a picture of each of his victims that has stayed through history despite its inaccuracies.

April Book #33 The Lake House by Kate Morton

A police officer on suspension, takes a holiday with her grandfather in Cornwall. Out walking his dogs, she comes across an abandoned house and begins to investigate its history. The story then switches between the present telling the police officer's story and that of her current investigation and the past retelling the events that lead to the house being abandoned.

Intriguing and interesting until just before the end when the last few chapters became awful - a deliberately manufactured and forced twist that was cloying and false. Such a shame at the end of a promising book.

April Book #34 The Rithmatist by Brandon Sanderson

A young adult book by the author of the Mistborn series. Joel is a normal student at a school which also educates rithmatists, people who can perform chalk magic. They can draw lines in chalk as protection and also create creatures to attack other people.

I was really disappointed in this and didn't find the plot anywhere near as interesting as that in the Mistborn series so I shall head back and continue reading that instead.

April Book #36 Take Six Girls: The Lives of the Mitford Sisters by Laura Thompson

A couple of years ago I read Deborah Devonshire's (nee Mitford) biography, so I had at least a passing familiarity in a number of the events retold in this book. While the family, their lives and the times in which they lived make for interesting reading, overall this is quite a superficial brush over the top and doesn't look at events, allegiances (political, social or familial) in detail.

April Book 9 National Geographic July 2015
April Book 17 National Geographic November 2016
April Book 28 National Geographic January 2020
April Book 29 Torchwood: Almost Perfect by James Goss - a woman finds herself under alien influence and able to pick herself a boyfriend and make him almost perfect. Meantime Ianto wakes up to find he has become a woman. Jack has a realisation that he potentially knows who is behind it all. Bizarre, readable but not a favourite.
April Book 30 The Losers Book One by Andy Diggle - a re-read
April Book 32 National Geographic Traveller Food Issue 8
April Book 35 Torchwood: Fortitude by James Goss - an audio dramatisation with Queen Victoria heading to one of the sea forts of the south coast of England. An okay listen.
April Book 37 Torchwood: The Sins of Captain John by David Llewellyn - an audio dramatisation starring Captain John Hart (as played in the show and in the book by James Marsters). Fun and risque, very Captain John.

April Round Up

Total Number of Books Read : 37
Books Retained After Reading : 3 (number increases to 18 if you include the books that weren’t physical and so I still have access to them via an account although they are not on any of my gadgets at present)

Books on Shelf Prior to 1st Jan 2020 : 18
Books on Shelf Prior to 1st Jan 2019 : 16

Books Abandoned : 6
Series Finished as far as I intend reading or Completed : 7

Non-Fiction Reads : 8
Fiction Reads : 29

Male Authors (first time to read that author this year): 12 (54.5% of total first time authors for the year)
Female Authors (first time to read that author this year): 8 (45.5% of total first time authors for the year)

Books by Male Authors : 18 (30.3% of all books read)
Books by Female Authors : 13 (24.6% of all books read)
Books by Collaboration : 6 (45.1% of all books read)

Books acquired : 15 (all except 2 were from Audible and so are not taking up physical space)

Goal to read 36000 pages from Mt. TBR by the end of the year : 6,394 pages read this month (total so far this year: 26,781 pages – original target was 18,000 but I doubled it as I had passed that part way through last month)

Mount TBR is now 674 books high (now 29 books shorter than last year)

I have given up on my repeat of the Walking to Mordor challenge as options are limited for leaving the house and health reasons are hindering other options.