British Author Challenge 2022 planning thread

Hi all! The new year will be upon us before we know it, bringing with it another round of the BAC. I have a full slate of authors and themes sketched out, but I'd love suggestions and would be more than happy to make adjustments to my tentative plan.

I'll post the list here as the selections are finalized.

January: Children's Classics https://www.librarything.com/topic/336553#7664096
February: Mary Renault & Timothy Mo https://www.librarything.com/topic/336553#7663685
March: The Interwar Period (11 November 1918-1 September 1939) https://www.librarything.com/topic/336553#7663606
April: Kamila Shamsie & Clive Barker https://www.librarything.com/topic/336553#7662796
May: Comic Books/Graphic Novels & Audiobooks https://www.librarything.com/topic/336553#7662710
June: Jackie Kay & E. F. Benson https://www.librarything.com/topic/336553#7662687
July: The Georgian Era (1714-1837) https://www.librarything.com/topic/336553#7662514
August: Espionage https://www.librarything.com/topic/336553#7661954
September: Retellings, Continuations, and Non-Series Prequels & Sequels https://www.librarything.com/topic/336553#7660939
October: Aminatta Forna & Lawrence Durrell https://www.librarything.com/topic/336553#7660782
November: Arthurian Legend https://www.librarything.com/topic/336553#7658746
December: Books about books https://www.librarything.com/topic/336553#7657113
Wildcard I: Read the movies https://www.librarything.com/topic/336553#7656090
Wildcard II: Rereads https://www.librarything.com/topic/336553#7656091

Here's the list of past authors and themes. I'd like to avoid repeating authors, but are there any themes you'd like to revisit?

BAC 2015

January: Penelope Lively & Kazuo Ishiguro
February: Sarah Waters & Evelyn Waugh
March: Daphne du Maurier & China Miéville
April: Angela Carter & W. Somerset Maugham
May: Margaret Drabble & Martin Amis
June: Beryl Bainbridge & Anthony Burgess
July: Virginia Woolf & B.S. Johnson
August: Iris Murdoch & Graham Greene
September: Andrea Levy & Salman Rushdie
October: Helen Dunmore & David Mitchell
November: Muriel Spark & William Boyd
December: Hilary Mantel & P.G. Wodehouse
Wildcard: Bernice Rubens & Aldous Huxley

BAC 2016

January: Susan Hill & Barry Unsworth
February: Agatha Christie & William Dalrymple
March: Ali Smith & Thomas Hardy
April: George Eliot & Hanif Kureishi
May: Jane Gardam & Robert Goddard
June: Antonia Fraser & Joseph Conrad
July: Bernice Rubens & H.G. Wells
August: Diana Wynne-Jones & Ian McEwan
September: Doris Lessing & Laurie Lee
October: Kate Atkinson & William Golding
November: Rebecca West & Len Deighton
December: West Yorkshire writers
Wildcard: Rumer Godden and George Orwell

BAC 2017

January: Elizabeth Bowen & Brian Moore
February: Mary Stewart & Terry Pratchett
March: The Swinging Sixties
April: A. S. Byatt & Bruce Chatwin
May: Before Queen Victoria
June: Georgette Heyer & Simon Schama
July: D. E. Stevenson & Robert Louis Stevenson
August: Winifred Holtby & Robert Graves
September: The New Millennium
October: Jo Walton & Roald Dahl
November: The Poets Laureate
December: Elizabeth Gaskell & Neil Gaiman

BAC 2018

January: Debut Novels
February: The 1970s
March: Classic Thrillers
April: Folklore, Fables, and Legends
May: Queens of Crime
June: Travel Writing
July: The Angry Young Men
August: British Science Fiction
September: Historical Fiction
October: Comedic Novels
November: World War One
December: British Series
Wildcard: The Romantics

2019 British Isles Challenge

January: The Natural World
February: Pat Barker & Peter F. Hamilton
March: The Murderous Scots (Scottish Crime Novels)
April: Rosamond Lehmann and John Boyne
May: The Edwardian Era (1901-1913)
June: Nicola Barker & Wilkie Collins
July: Young Adult Fantasy Series
August: Anita Brookner & Jim Crace
September: Biography and Memoir
October: Rose Tremain & Louis de Bernières
November: The Jewish Contribution
December: Zadie Smith & Michael Morpurgo
Wildcard: Penelope Lively & Kazuo Ishiguro

2020 BAC

January: Jeanette Winterson & Graham Swift
February: The 1990s
March: Jane Austen & Walter Scott
April: Bernardine Evaristo & Caryl Phillips
May: Michael Moorcock, J. G. Ballard, & Brian Aldiss
June: Penelope Fitzgerald & Patrick Gale
July: Elly Griffiths & Winston Graham
August: The Brontë Sisters: Charlotte Brontë, Anne Brontë, & Emily Brontë
September: World War Two
October: Joanne Harris & George Orwell
November: Fay Weldon & John le Carré
December: The 2010s
Wildcard: Playwrights

2021 BAC

January: Children's Classics
February: LGBT+ History Month
March: Vaseem Khan & Eleanor Hibbert
April: Love is in the Air
May: V. S. Naipaul & Na'ima B. Robert
June: The Victorian Era (1837-1901)
July: Don't judge a book by its movie
August: Bernard Cornwell & Helen Oyeyemi
September: She Blinded Me with Science
October: Narrative Poetry
November: Tade Thompson & Elizabeth Taylor
December: Awards & Honors
Wildcard: Books off your shelves

Themes:
--I could do Book & Movie and Victorian Era every month, but that's me.
--Re-read month? Re-read a favorite or a book you read years ago & want to give a second try
--We did "before Queen Victoria"--maybe narrowing that down a bit? Georgian/Regency or 18th century?

Authors
--We haven't done Shakespeare or Dickens
--Maggie O'Farrell (b. N. Ireland, lived in Wales & Scotland)

>3 kac522: I actually have the Georgian Era penciled in.

Starred!

One of my favorite British authors is Joyce Stranger...hint, hint.

A few to possibly ponder

Peter Ackroyd
Naomi Alderman
Melvyn Bragg
Jo Baker
Sylvia Townsend Warner
Irvine Welsh
Barbara Erskine
Sarah Dunant
Jackie Kay
Philip Hensher
Nadeem Aslam
Jon McGregor
Sarah Hall
Sarah Moss
Aminatta Forna
Mike Gayle
Sam Selvon
Tahmima Anam

>5 fuzzi: I make no promises, but I am taking notes.

>6 PaulCranswick: At least one name on your list will be a selection.

>3 kac522: I like reread month. I'm a rereader, but it will give me an excuse to reread something I haven't read in a while (like I need excuses!).

Will be back after a cogitate...

>6 PaulCranswick: I would second Peter Ackroyd and Sylvia Townsend Warner

Some other authors:
E M Delafield
R F Delderfield
John Galsworthy
Mollie Panter-Downes
Barbara Pym
Anthony Trollope

Other themes/genres:
Memoirs
Drama--"Playwrights" was a wildcard; could be a month's theme on its own.
Short stories
Historians

I also like a "BAC books off your shelves" or a general "BAC wildcard", where we can record British authors we've read that don't fit into any of the other month's categories.

>8 Caroline_McElwee: I have been toying with the idea of a reread month.

>9 kac522: Noted, but Trollope is unlikely to appear as I'm not quite ready to tackle him again!

>9 kac522: RF DELDERFIELD is a great pick.

>10 kac522: yes!

>13 PaulCranswick: I agree. My mom was a big fan of his books, and I've read a few myself, though not recently.

Looks like there's support for older authors over new, and for a re-read theme. Any more suggestions?

>16 amanda4242: Barbara Comyns
JB Priestley
Howard Spring
Arnold Bennett
D.H. Lawrence
Dodie Smith
Monica Dickens
Henry Green

Would all be decent picks from a slightly bygone age.

>17 PaulCranswick: Several people, myself included, enjoyed reading Dodie Smith for the children's classic theme.

I have Lawrence on the short list, but I've always had the impression that he was one of those authors people either love or loathe.

One more modern one I've been meaning to try:

Diane Setterfield

>19 kac522: Setterfield has been on my radar for a while, too, but I hesitate to have her as a featured author since her bibliography consists of three books and one very short story. The Thirteenth Tale was adapted as a TV movie, so we could sneak her in if we have another book & movie month.

Obviously I can't feature every suggested author next year, but I've come up with a theme that includes a number of the suggestions above.

I'll start announcing selections next week.

bump

bump

*Crossing arms and tapping feet* :D

I don't have any opinion on separate authors since I'm unlikely to fit specific authors into my planned reading (and only two of the names suggested so far are ones that are on my "soon to be TBR" list). Except Shakespeare and Dickens - I'll definitely have time and space for those.
But pretty much all themes that have been suggested so far sound good to me.

Adventure authors?

Alistair MacLean

Hammond Innes

Helen MacInnes

Eric Ambler

>24 PaulCranswick: *raises eyebrow* I'm sure you've heard patience is a virtue. ;)

>25 PawsforThought: I have plenty of themes slotted in as I've noticed they generally have higher participation than featured authors.

>26 fuzzi: I was trying to remember why all of those authors sounded so familiar and then it dawned on me that they were all suggestions for 2018's thriller theme. Surprisingly, I didn't read any of them that year.

Wildcard I: Read the movies


Treasure Island {1990 TV movie}

We had some fun chats with this year's book & movie theme, so I thought we could revisit it as a wildcard. Rules are the same: read something, watch the movie or TV show, and compare. Also, feel free to include plays, both reading them and seeing live performances.

Suggestions
To Sir, with Love by E. R. Braithwaite
The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
The Madness of George III by Alan Bennett--->The Madness of King George {1994 film}
The Silver Pigs by Lindsay Davis--->Age of Treason
Roth Trilogy by Andrew Taylor--->Fallen Angel (2007 mini-series)
Where Eagles Dare by Alistair MacLean
The Once and Future King by T. H. White--->The Sword in the Stone {1963 animated film} & Camelot {1967 film}
All of William Shakespeare’s plays (There’s a new Macbeth with Denzel Washington coming soon.)
The Wreck of the Mary Deare by Hammond Innes
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
The Venetian Affair by Helen MacInnes
Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh--->Bright Young Things {2003 film}
Sharpe's Adventures by Bernard Cornwell
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson
The Forbidden Territory by Dennis Wheatley
Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh
Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem by Peter Ackroyd--->The Limehouse Golem
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
Sandman series by Neil Gaiman (The Netflix series is supposed to be out this year.)
Regeneration by Pat Barker (The movie is sometimes called Behind the Lines.)
I, Claudius by Robert Graves
The Woman in Black by Susan Hill
White Teeth by Zadie Smith
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
Journey into Fear by Eric Ambler
Lost Empires by J. B. Priestly
Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne-Jones
The Quiet American by Graham Greene
Theatre by Somerset Maugham--->Being Julia {2004 film}
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Maurice by E. M. Forster
Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence
Follyfoot series by Monica Dickens
The Mystic Masseur by V. S. Naipaul
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard
Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson
Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi
Chocolat by Joanne Harris
Noughts & Crosses series by Malorie Blackman
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Edward II by Christopher Marlowe
The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
Loving by Henry Green
Doctor Thorne by Anthony Trollope
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte
Good Omens by Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Small Island by Andrea Levy

Wildcard II: Rereads



This was going to be the December theme right up until this morning. As I was brushing my teeth I kept thinking how much better this would be as a wildcard so we could discuss our rereads throughout the year, and then I realized there was no reason that we couldn't have two wildcards in a year.

No restrictions on this one other than you have to have read the book before.

Ooh, nice! I can have a lot of fun with these categories.

And I was actually planning on reading Vile Bodies next month, but I might just hold off a little bit and read it at the start of 2022 instead (knowing myself it’s highly likely I won’t finish it until 2022 even if I start now).

>30 PawsforThought: I may join you for Vile Bodies; a recent reread of Brideshead has left me itching for more Waugh.

>28 amanda4242: That opens up a wealth of options, Amanda as your own list testifies.

>29 amanda4242: I was planning to look at some re-reads (maybe one per month) next year and I had a few in mind:

I, Claudius
Fame is the Spur
This Sporting Life
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner
To Serve Them All My Days

all would fit.

>28 amanda4242: & >29 amanda4242: I can see the wildcards alone will keep me busy, and I already anticipate combining them as "a re-read & the movie."

>32 PaulCranswick: I still haven't gotten around to reading I, Claudius despite owning it for years and loving the mini-series.

>25 PawsforThought: In the 2022 Category Challenge there's a planning thread for a year-long Shakespeare challenge:
https://www.librarything.com/topic/336550

>33 kac522: I expect to be very busy with them, too!

>35 kac522: I'm not sure if I can take quite that much of the Bard.

>37 amanda4242: LOL. Actually, I get my fill watching Shakespeare & Hathaway--they manage to throw in a few lines every episode. As to the CAT, I may participate here and there.

>28 amanda4242: >29 amanda4242: oh, I like, like, LIKE these wildcards!!!!

>31 amanda4242: Oh, good, I wouldn’t mind company. I got my copy from the library today and it turned out to be a compilation so I might end up reading even more Waugh.

>35 kac522: Thanks for letting me know. I doubt I’ll be able to stick to the monthly reads - I can’t do it here either!

>39 fuzzi: I had a feeling they'd be popular.

>40 PawsforThought: Pulling my copy off the shelf now.

December: Books about books



You know you're a book lover when even reading about books is fun. Any sort of book about books can qualify: novels about novels, histories of printing, instruction manuals on bookbinding, academic texts on the importance of coffee houses in 18th century literature can all count.

Suggestions

Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde
Possession by A. S. Byatt
Miss Buncle’s Book by D. E. Stevenson
The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett
The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
The Journal of Dora Damage by Belinda Starling
The Lambs of London by Peter Ackroyd
The Liar's Dictionary by Eley Williams
The Battle of the Books by Jonathan Swift
Howards End is on the Landing by Susan Hill
The Book of Lost Books: An Incomplete History of All the Great Books You'll Never Read by Stuart Kelly
What Makes This Book So Great by Jo Walton
Aspects of the Novel by E. M. Forster
Built of Books: How Reading Defined the Life of Oscar Wilde by Thomas Wright
Ten Years in the Tub by Nick Hornby
99 Novels by Anthony Burgess
God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible by Adam Nicolson
In the Beginning: The Story of the King James Bible and How It Changed a Nation, a Language, and a Culture by Alister McGrath
Books That Changed The World: The 50 Most Influential Books in Human History by Andrew Taylor
The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester
The World Between Two Covers: Reading the Globe by Ann Morgan
Index, A History of the: A Bookish Adventure From Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age by Dennis Duncan

And be sure to check out the "books about books" tag page. https://www.librarything.com/tag/books+about+books

That is splendid, Amanda and I have some of those already.

>43 PaulCranswick: It's another one where there are a lot of great titles from which to choose.

>42 amanda4242: I can highly recommend Miss Buncle's Book and God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible.

>45 fuzzi: Miss Buncle is delightful!

84 Charing Cross Road ought to work as a book for December, shouldn't it? I've already read it and am not planning a re-read, but it was the first thing that popped into my head when I saw the theme.

>47 PawsforThought: I think Helene Hanff is American unfortunately, Paws.

>48 PaulCranswick: Ah, yeah, you're right.

>47 PawsforThought: If Hanff was British it would have been an excellent choice!

November: Arthurian Legend


Monty Python and the Holy Grail {film} (1975)

We did Folklore, Fables, and Legends in 2018, but November's theme narrows that down to just Arthurian legend. The earliest mentions of King Arthur date back over a thousand years, and he and his knights have appeared regularly in literature ever since. Read anything from Nennius's Historia Brittonum to the latest issue of Kieron Gillen's Once and Future, as long as it features some aspect of Arthurian legend.

Wikipedia bibliography of King Arthur: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibliography_of_King_Arthur
The Once and Future King by T. H. White
Le Morte d'Arthur by Thomas Malory
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Porius by John Cowper Powys
The Arthurian Merlin Saga by Mary Stewart
The History of the Kings of Britain by Geoffrey of Monmouth
Idylls of the King by Alfred Tennyson
The Mabinogion
Camulod Chronicles series by Jack Whyte
The Warlord Chronicles series by Bernard Cornwell
King Arthur Trilogy by Rosemary Sutcliff
The Alliterative Morte Arthur
Once & Future comic series by Kieron Gillen
The Fall of Arthur by J. R. R. Tolkien
Merlin by Robert Nye
The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Table of Less Valued Knights by Marie Phillips
The Merlin Codex series by Robert Holdstock
The Pendragon by Catherine Christian
Tristan and Iseult by Rosemary Sutcliff
The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser
Pendragon's Banner series by Helen Hollick
Guenevere series by Rosalind Miles
The Arthurian Tales series by Giles Kristian
Arthur trilogy by Kevin Crossley-Holland
Malory's Knights of Albion series
Sir Gawain series by Selina Hastings
Ywain and Gawain
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Book)
The Dark is Rising Sequence by Susan Cooper
The Stolen Lake by Joan Aiken

>51 amanda4242: TH White for me I expect, Amanda.

I have Stewart's The Crystal Cave on my shelf, which I've been meaning to read for years.

>52 PaulCranswick: The Sword in the Stone is a favorite of mine.

>53 kac522: It's not a faced-paced book, but I found it very satisfying.

Oooh, interesting. Not sure exactly what I’ll end up reading for this but probably The Once and Future King and/or The Faerie Queene - both have been on my TBR for an absolute age.

>55 PawsforThought: I've also had The Faerie Queene sitting on my shelf forever. I think it's mostly the prospect of having to lift the damned thing that keeps me from reading it!

>56 amanda4242: I won’t have to to any lifting since I’ll be reading it electronically if I do manage to get to it.
But it’s a good example of how physically demanding reading can sometimes be.

>57 PawsforThought: But it’s a good example of how physically demanding reading can sometimes be.

True that. Even moving it to a different shelf gives me a workout!

October: Aminatta Forna and Lawrence Durrell



Aminatta Forna was born in Scotland in 1964, the daughter of a Sierra Leonean father and Scottish mother. The family moved to Sierra Leone when she was six months old. Her father was imprisoned in 1970 and hanged on charges of treason in 1975; Forna's first book, The Devil That Danced on the Water, was born of her investigation into her father's death.

Forna studied law at University College London and worked for the BBC in both radio and television. She has been nominated for a number of literary awards, and has won both the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the Windham–Campbell Literature Prize.

Works
The Memory of Love
The Hired Man
Ancestor Stones
Happiness
The Devil That Danced On the Water: A Daughter's Memoir
Mother of All Myths
The Window Seat: Notes from a Life in Motion
The Angel of Mexico City

---

Lawrence Durrell was born in India in 1912. He published his first book in 1935; the same year he moved with his mother and siblings to Corfu, a story which will be familiar to those who read his brother Gerald's book, My Family and Other Animals.

Durrell worked for the British Foreign Service and continued to write, eventually becoming a bestselling author and winning several literary prizes. He died in 1990.

Selected works
Alexandria Quartet
The Avignon Quintet
Antrobus series
The Revolt of Aphrodite series
Blue Thirst: Tales of Life Abroad
The Black Book
White Eagles Over Serbia
The Dark Labyrinth

Whoa....I think I've found my home 😮

September: Retellings, Continuations, and Non-Series Prequels & Sequels



Have you ever finished a book and just wanted more? And then discovered the author died without writing a sequel? This month is dedicated to reading works inspired by the stories of other authors, whether it's a radical retelling of a classic novel or one of the countless Sherlock Holmes continuations.

Suggestions
Sherlock Holmes and the Hentzau Affair by David Stuart Davies
Sherlock Holmes Murders series by Barry Day
Young Sherlock Holmes series by Andrew Lane
Anthony Horowitz's Sherlock Holmes series
Anno Dracula by Kim Newman
Dorian by Will Self
Dorian: A Sequel to the Picture of Dorian Grey by Jeremy Reed
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard
Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett
The Gap of Time by Jeanette Winterson
Shylock is my name by Howard Jacobson
Dunbar by Edward St. Aubyn
Quichotte by Salman Rushdie
The Flashman Papers by George MacDonald Fraser
Peter Pan in Scarlet by Geraldine McCaughrean
Rebecca's Tale by Sally Beauman
On Beauty by Zadie Smith
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
Jeeves and the King of Clubs by Ben Schott
James Bond Warren Ellis Collection by Warren Ellis
Trigger Mortis by Anthony Horowitz
Solo by William Boyd
Death Comes to Pemberley by P. D. James
Longbourn by Jo Baker
Jane Austen series by Joan Aiken
The Private Diary of Mr. Darcy by Maya Slater
The Other Bennet Sister by Janice Hadlow
Havisham by Ronald Frame
The Lost Child by Caryl Phillips
Return to Wuthering Heights by Anna L'Estrange
The Henchmen of Zenda by KJ Charles
Return to Treasure Island series by Andrew Motion
John Silver series by John Drake
New Hercule Poirot Mysteries by Sophie Hannah

>60 brenzi: Welcome!

>59 amanda4242: I didn't realise that about Aminatta Forna's biography. To lose a parent is always traumatic but in such circumstances it is almost unimaginable.

Lawrence Durrell is a favourite and I can give a shout out for his novel Justine which is a simply beautiful piece of writing.

>61 amanda4242: What a great idea!

>61 amanda4242: Another one for your list: this year I read and enjoyed The Other Bennet Sister by Janice Hadlow, which focuses on Mary Bennet.

>65 kac522: Added. Thanks!

>61 amanda4242: I've been wanting to reread Zadie Smith's On Beauty for a while, maybe this is the excuse.

>67 Caroline_McElwee: I'm curious about that one because I enjoyed Howards End, but have been reluctant to pick it up because I didn't like the two Smith books I've read.

August: Espionage


Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997)

Since Britain gave us the world's most famous spy*, it's only appropriate we have a month dedicated to espionage.

^{*I would think being a famous spy would make you a failure as a spy, but what do I know?}

Suggestions
Assignment in Brittany by Helen MacInnes
Reilly: Ace of Spies by Robin Bruce Lockhart
Ice Station Zebra by Alistair MacLean
Spymistress by William Stevenson
The Odessa File by Frederick Forsyth
Codebreakers: The Inside Story of Bletchley Park edited by F. H. Hinsley & Alan Stripp
An Officer and a Spy by Robert Harris
The Ipcress File by Len Deighton
Sir Francis Walsingham: A Courtier in an Age of Terror by Derek Wilson
Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene
Ashenden, or, The British Agent by W. Somerset Maugham
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John le Carré
From Russia with Love by Ian Fleming
The Liar by Stephen Fry
Charlotte Gray by Sebastian Faulks
Greenmantle by John Buchan
Anthony Blunt: His Lives by Miranda Carter
Passenger to Frankfurt by Agatha Christie
Elizabeth’s Spymaster by Robert Hutchinson
Kim by Rudyard Kipling
The Launching of Roger Brook by Dennis Wheatley
The Vesuvius Club by Mark Gatiss
A Life in Secrets: Vera Atkins and the Missing Agents of WWII by Sarah Helm
The Key to Rebecca by Ken Follett
My Silent War: The Autobiography of a Spy by Kim Philby
Modesty Blaise by Peter O'Donnell
The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia by Peter Hopkirk

>69 amanda4242: I have loads of options for that one!

Reportedly The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers is the classic of espionage literature. But I guess he is an English born Irish author.

>69 amanda4242: Ooh, I wasn’t expecting that! I’ll have to think about what I want to read for that since several on the suggestion list are ones I’ve read already. Maybe Kipling or Faulks, or maybe another le Carré.

>70 PaulCranswick: I imagine it's one of those themes where most people already have the books in their collection or can easily get their hands on them.

>71 Kristelh: He was born in England and Ireland was still part of the UK while he lived, so he could count if you want him to.

>72 PawsforThought: Spy stories were very much at the front of my mind as I saw No Time to Die shortly before I started putting together a list of possible themes.

July: The Georgian Era (1714-1837)


George I-IV & William IV

The Georgian Era began in 1714 when British Queen Anne died without children, leaving the kingdom to her closest relative,* George, the Elector of Hanover. The rule of the Hanoverian kings lasted until the death of William IV in 1837, leaving the British crown to William's niece, Victoria.

The era saw a great many wars: the French and Indian War, the American Revolutionary War, the last Jacobite uprising, and the Napoleonic Wars are some of the conflicts Britain was involved in at the time. The Georgian Era also saw the abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire, and eventually the abolition of slavery throughout most of the empire.

Britain's empire expanded greatly during the Georgian Era despite the loss of the American colonies. The treaty ending the French and Indian war gave Britain much of France's North American possessions; Australia and New Zealand became British colonies; and the Act of Union 1800 united Great Britain and Ireland into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

The Georgian Era also produced some of Britain's most celebrated writers: Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, Samuel Johnson, Ann Radcliff, Sir Walter Scott, and Jane Austen all lived and wrote during the period.

*I should say her closest Protestant relative. Anne had about five dozen closer relatives, but they were all Catholic.

Suggestions
The Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope
The Adventures of Roderick Random by Tobias Smollett
A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe
Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith
Pamela: or, Virtue Rewarded by Samuel Richardson
Rasselas by Samuel Johnson
The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. byJames Boswell
Rob Roy by Walter Scott
Evelina by Fanny Burney
Persuasion by Jane Austen
A Sicilian Romance by Ann Radcliffe
Belinda by Maria Edgeworth
The Adventures of David Simple by Sarah Fielding
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne
Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
The Female Quixote by Charlotte Lennox
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Fanny Hill: Or, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure by John Cleland
Don Juan by Lord Byron
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The Beggar's Opera by John Gay
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
Reflections on the Revolution in France by Edmund Burke

>74 amanda4242: So much fun to choose from! I’ll most likely tick of another Jane Austen and The Female Quixote sounds like a lot of fun, but I should probably read Don Quixote first.

And A Journal of the Plague Year feels very apt right now…

>75 PawsforThought: Having read Don Quixote, I feel comfortable recommending reading the Wikipedia page instead.

A Journal of the Plague Year, The Decameron, and The Stand have all been running through my mind for awhile.

>74 amanda4242: I have plenty of stuff on the shelves for the Georgian era too. Well done in picking that theme, Amanda!

>77 PaulCranswick: Thanks! The theme may have been born of my desire to read more Scott, Smollett, and Austen.

>76 amanda4242: I want to read it! I started reading it a few years ago and loved it, but didn’t make it very far because life happened and then I never picked it up again for reasons I’m not sure about.

>79 PawsforThought: We shall just have to agree to disagree about the Don, then. :)

>74 amanda4242: Have loads of these authors' books on my shelves, so looking forward to this month.

>81 kac522: The era did produce a lot of writers that are still popular today--Jane Austen is apparently the eleventh most popular author on LT!

June: Jackie Kay & E. F. Benson



Jackie Kay was born in Edinburgh in 1961 to a Scottish mother and Nigerian father. She was adopted as a baby by a white Scottish couple, John and Helen Kay, who had previously adopted one of Jackie's brothers.

As a teenager, Kay briefly worked as a cleaner for David Cornwell, who is better known by his pen name John le Carré.

Kay studied English at the University of Sterling and published her first book of poetry in 1991. She has since published multiple poetry collections, novels, plays, and a biography of blues singer Bessie Smith. Her work has garnered a number of awards, and she was the Scots Makar from 2016 to 2021.

Selected works
Trumpet
Red Dust Road
Wish I Was Here
Adoption Papers
Why Don't You Stop Talking: Stories
Bessie Smith
Darling: New and Selected Poems
The Frog Who Dreamed She Was an Opera Singer
Bantam

---

E. F. Benson was born in Berkshire in 1867. He attended King's College, Cambridge and published his first book, Sketches from Marlborough*, in 1888.

Benson was a very prolific writer, producing dozens of novels, short stories, and non-fiction books, in addition to several plays. He is perhaps best remembered as the author of the Mapp and Lucia series of novels.

In addition to being a writer, Benson was also an athlete, and represented in England in figure skating.

Benson died of throat cancer in 1940 and is buried in Rye, East Sussex.

*Fun fact: @PaulCranswick is the only person who has cataloged this book on LT.

Selected works
Mapp and Lucia series
Dodo series
David Blaize series
Mrs. Ames
The Freaks of Mayfair
An Autumn Sowing
Paying Guests
The Collected Ghost Stories of E.F. Benson
Fine Feathers And Other Stories
Crescent and Iron Cross
The life of Alcibiades
As We Were
Our Family Affairs

>83 amanda4242: Oh good maybe I can finally finish up Mapp and Lucia. I stalled after the third or fourth book.

>83 amanda4242: Jackie Kay is an interesting person and a very good choice, Amanda.
Another fact about her is that she had a 15 year relationship with previous Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy and also had children with poets Fred D'Aguiar and Peter Benson.

Interesting about me being the only person with Benson's debut work. I read a lot of his books when I was young and that was one I took from the school library in Yorkshire. I don't have it on the shelves nowadays. Mrs Ames is definitely on them though.

May: Comic Books/Graphic Novels & Audiobooks


Death of the Endless from The Sandman & the Librivox app logo

Before there were books there were stories. For thousands of years storytellers entertained pre-literate societies with recitations and artists created countless works depicting famous tales. For this month's theme, look at how art can be used to tell the story in a comic and how a narrator's voice can contribute to a tale.

Comics suggestions
The Sandman by Neil Gaiman
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen by Alan Moore
Lucifer {2000-2006} by Mike Carey
Hellblazer {1988-2013} (Original Sins or Dangerous Habits are good places to start the series.)
Metaphrog
Kate Charlesworth
Isabel Greenberg
Simon Spurrier
Couch Fiction: A Graphic Tale of Psychotherapy by Philippa Perry
Billy, Me & You: A Memoir of Grief and Recovery by Nicola Streeten
Mauretania by Chris Reynolds
Heartstopper by Alice Oseman
The Tale of Brin and Bent and Minno Marylebone by Ravi Thornton

Audio suggestions
There are obviously zillions of books available on audio, so I'm just listing a few I've enjoyed. Also, be sure to check out LibriVox for free public domain audiobooks.

Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III by Cressida Cowell, read by David Tennant
Harry Potter by J. K. Rowling, read by Stephen Fry (Really anything read by Fry.)
The Chronicles of St. Mary’s by Jodi Taylor, read by Zara Ramm
The works of Neil Gaiman, read by the author
James Bond series by Ian Fleming, read by various narrators (Some recent narrators of the series include Tom Hiddleston, Toby Stephens, David Tennant, and Bill Nighy.)
Discworld by Terry Pratchett, read by Stephen Briggs
High-Rise by J. G. Ballard, read by Tom Hiddleston
Rivers of London series by Ben Aaronovitch, read by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith
The Witches by Roald Dahl, read by Miranda Richardson
Longbourn by Jo Baker, read by Emma Fielding

>86 amanda4242: Note for audiobooks: almost anything narrated by the wonderful Juliet Stevenson.

>86 amanda4242: Yikes that is a tough one for me although I do have a graphic book on the Peterloo massacre in Manchester in 1819 which I received as part of the Christmas Swap last year.

>87 brenzi: Amen! I'm in the middle of listening to Stevenson read Pride and Prejudice which came out in May, and she brilliantly brings out every Austen funny line (more than I remember!).

>87 brenzi: & >89 kac522: I haven't tried Stevenson yet, but I can get several of her readings from the library.

>88 PaulCranswick: Can't make thing too easy for you. ;)

I wanted to do a comics theme because: one, I like comics; and two, the "British Invasion" of the 1980s and 90s reinvigorated the American comic books industry.

The medium is probably best known for superhero books, but it's actually as diverse as any other type of writing. Dig around a bit and you'll find there's something to fit every taste.

April: Kamila Shamsie & Clive Barker



Kamila Shamsie was born in 1973 in Karachi, Pakistan, where she grew up. She attended university in the United States, earning an MFA from Amherst.

Shamsie's first novel, In the City by the Sea, was published in 1998 and was nominated for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. She moved to London in 2007 and has dual nationality in the UK and Pakistan.

And for those participating in the Asia Reading Challenge, she counts for May.

In the City by the Sea
Salt and Saffron
Kartography
Broken Verses
Offence: the Muslim case
Burnt Shadows
A God in Every Stone
Home Fire
Duckling: A Fairy Tale Revolution

---

Clive Barker was born in Liverpool in 1952. He studied English and philosophy at the University of Liverpool. He became interested in theatre at a young age, and co-founded the Dog Company theatrical troupe in 1978. His theatrical involvement waned as he began to focus more on writing.

Barker's first collections of short stories, Books of Blood, earned him a well-deserved reputation as a horror writer, but many of his works would be better classified as fantasies. He has written a number of novels for adults, a young adult fantasy series, over a dozen plays*, and a children's novel. In addition to being a writer, Barker is also a filmmaker and visual artist.

*For anyone interested in his plays, the collections Incarnations and Forms of Heaven can usually be found most places used at reasonable prices, but I recommend going to the Clive Barker Archive for his other plays: even including the international shipping charges, I was able to buy two plays from them for significantly less than the Amazon listing for just one of them.

Selected works
Books of Abarat series
The Thief of Always
Next Testament comic
Books of Blood series
The Hellbound Heart
The Damnation Game
Cabal
The Great and Secret Show
Weaveworld
Imajica
Sacrament
History of the Devil
Hunters in the Snow
The Painter, the Creature and the Father of Lies
Tonight, Again

>91 amanda4242: I have been looking for a reason to read Weaveworld and I will definitely be reading something by Shamsie next year.

>92 PaulCranswick: I had a look at your library and was surprised to see how many of Barker's books you own.

>93 amanda4242: But it doesn't reveal how few of them I have actually read. I worked with a chap called Dudley Allen in Singapore in the Nineties and Barker was his favourite author.

March: The Interwar Period (11 November 1918-1 September 1939)



The period between the end of World War One and the start of World War Two was a time of great change around the world: ancient empires collapsed* and new nations were born; Ireland was partitioned; communism and fascism rose; the Twenties roared and the Thirties were depressed.

Since 1918 was almost over when WWI ended and 1939 was 2/3 done by the time WWII started, I'm going to say anything published from 1919 through 1939 can count for this theme.

*Although the British Empire still spanned the globe.

Suggestions
Miss Mole by E. H. Young
Diary of a Provincial Lady by E. M. Delafield
The Mask of Dimitrios by Eric Ambler
Mrs. Tim of the Regiment by D. E. Stevenson
Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence
Wigs on the Green by Nancy Mitford
The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston by Siegfried Sassoon
Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh
All Passion Spent by Vita Sackville-West
The Nutmeg Tree by Margery Sharp
The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim
Living by Henry Green
The Painted Veil by Somerset Maugham
Brighton Rock by Graham Greene
Shabby Tiger by Howard Spring
Imperial Palace by Arnold Bennett
The King of Elfland's Daughter by Lord Dunsany
Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier
A Passage to India by E. M. Forster
The African Queen by C. S. Forester
South Riding by Winifred Holtby
Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson
My Husband Simon by Mollie Panter-Downes
Daughters and Sons by Ivy Compton-Burnett
The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien
Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers
Regency Buck by Georgette Heyer
I, Claudius by Robert Graves
Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall
Out of the Silent Planet by C. S. Lewis
Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees
Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell
Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood

>95 amanda4242: So many good choices to pick from! And so many classics! The inbetween time was a rich time, publication-wise.
I don’t know if I’ll be able to hold off on reading Vile Bodies until March - I have it from the library now. But there are so many others! I just recently put South Riding on my TBR - came across in some article online. New acquaintance for me.

>96 PawsforThought: It's one of my favorite periods of British literature, so I'm going to have a lot of enjoyable reading to look forward to!

To add even more choices, the Furrowed Middlebrow blog has a massive list of British and Irish women fiction writers; it covers 1910-1960, but dates are included. Dean Street Press is republishing some of the books listed under their Furrowed Middlebrow imprint, and they're sometimes featured as the DSP free kindle book of the week.

>95 amanda4242: A favourite period of mine too.

>98 PaulCranswick: And I'm sure it's well represented on your shelves.

>95 amanda4242: This is an amazing list. Amazing because I either have many of the books on the list or I've already read them. Love this.

>100 brenzi: Me, too!

>97 amanda4242: Another author to add: E. H. Young; I've been slowly making my way through her books; most of them are set in or around Bristol, where she lived for some years. Virago (https://www.librarything.com/publisherseries/Virago+Modern+Classics) have published most of her major works, although I don't believe they are currently in print.

Also the British Library have published lots of lesser known authors from the interwar years: https://www.librarything.com/publisherseries/British+Library+Crime+Classics and
https://www.bl.uk/publishing

>100 brenzi: I do enjoy the hunt for obscure titles, but there is a lot to be said for being able to pull the book you want to read off of your shelves.

>101 kac522: Added! I hope as more of the works of the era enter the public domain we'll see them become available on Project Gutenberg or as reasonably priced reprints.

February: Mary Renault & Timothy Mo



Mary Renault was born Eileen Mary Challans in 1905. She read English at St Hugh's College, Oxford, receiving her undergraduate degree in 1928. She began training as a nurse in 1933, at which time she met fellow nurse Julie Mullard, who would became Renault's lifelong romantic partner.

She publisher her first novel, Purposes of Love, in 1939; it and her next five books all had contemporary settings. In 1956 The Last of the Wine was published, the first of her eight historical novels set in ancient Greece.

Renault died of lung cancer in Cape Town, South Africa in 1983.

Works
Purposes of Love
Kind Are Her Answers
The Friendly Young Ladies
Return to Night
North Face
The Charioteer
The Last of the Wine
Theseus Myth series
Alexander Trilogy
The Mask of Apollo
The Praise Singer
The Lion in the Gateway: The Heroic Battles of the Greeks and Persians at Marathon, Salamis, and Thermopylae
The Nature of Alexander

---

Timothy Mo was born in Hong Kong in 1950, the son of a British mother and a Hong Kong father. He attended St John's College, Oxford, and worked as a journalist before becoming a novelist.

Mo's novels have received several awards, including a James Tait Black Memorial Prize and an E. M. Forster Award, and he has been thrice shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

Works
The Monkey King
Sour Sweet
An Insular Possession
The Redundancy of Courage
Brownout on Breadfruit Boulevard
Renegade or Halo2
Pure

>103 amanda4242: I have plenty of unread books by Renault on the shelves here (well three, I think) and I am currently reading one of them!

Timothy Mo is a very good author. I loved Sour Sweet and The Redundancy of Courage. I have An Insular Possession on the shelves.

>104 PaulCranswick: I first heard of Mo when you suggested him as a possible BAC author years ago and thought it was high time to feature him. I can get Sour Sweet, The Monkey King, and An Insular Possession from the library so I'll be reading one of those.

>95 amanda4242: I just realised that so many of my Golden Age mystery novels were written in the interwar period so I will have almost unlimited reading choices for March. Spoilt for choice, indeed.

Possibles so far

January : ????
February : An Insular Possession by Timothy Mo & The Praise Singer by Mary Renault
March : Blindness by Henry Green (1926); South Riding by Winifred Holtby (1936)
April : A God in Every Stone by Kamila Shamsie; Weaveworld by Clive Barker
May : Peterloo : Witness to a Massacre by Polyp
June : Trumpet by Jackie Kay; Mrs Ames by EF Benson
July : Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne; Helen by Maria Edgeworth
August : Assignment in Brittany by Helen MacInnes; Potsdam Station by David Downing
September : Flashman and the Redskins by George Macdonald Fraser; Longbourn by Jo Baker
October : The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna; Bitter Lemons by Lawrence Durrell
November : The Once and Future King by TH White
December : What to Read Next by Stig Abell

>107 PaulCranswick: I really enjoyed South Riding and Weaveworld Paul. Years since I heard Timothy Mo's name.

>106 PawsforThought: I suspect it will be a month where we'll all have trouble narrowing down our choices.

>107 PaulCranswick: Flashman is always an excellent choice!

>108 Caroline_McElwee: I've owned Weaveworld for years but haven't read it. Next year will be the year!

edited to fix my atrocious typing

January: Children's Classics (before 1997)


Howl's Moving Castle {2004 film}

And we'll once again be starting the year off with children's classics. I'm still interpreting both "children's" and "classics" pretty loosely: anything often read in childhood can count, even if it wasn't written specifically for children, and anything published before 1997 can qualify for classic.

Suggestions
The Psammead Trilogy by E. Nesbit
The Magic Faraway Tree series by Enid Blyton
A Fall from the Sky by Ian Serrallier
Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Farmer
Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis
The Running Foxes by Joyce Stranger
The Weirdstone of Brisingamen by Alan Garner
The Chronicles of Chrestomanci by Diana Wynne Jones
Wolves Chronicles by Joan Aiken
Noughts and Crosses series by Malorie Blackman
Stig of the Dump by Clive King
Mistress Masham's Repose by T. H. White
Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo
The Incredible Journey by Sheila Burnford
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson
A Dog of Flanders by Ouida
The Wind on the Moon by Eric Linklater
The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4 by Sue Townsend
The Rescuers series by Margery Sharp
The Boggart by Susan Cooper
The Stronghold by Mollie Hunter
The Cry of the Wolf by Melvin Burgess
The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles by Julie Andrews
Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie
Redwall by Brian Jacques
Pomeroy's Postscript by Mary Fitt
Blood Feud by Rosemary Sutcliff
Doctor Dolittle series by Hugh Lofting
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Caroll
The Reluctant Dragon by Kenneth Grahame
The Story of Tracy Beaker by Jacqueline Wilson
The Borrowers series by Mary Norton
Captain Slaughterboard Drops Anchor by Mervyn Peake
The Load of Unicorn by Cynthia Harnett
James Herriot's Treasury for Children by James Herriot

>110 amanda4242: And that’s where I’ll be placing the rest of my reading! Oh, jeez, so many TBRs that can fit there.

>111 PawsforThought: Yep, it's another month where we'll have a lot from which to choose!

>112 amanda4242: Yes, so much to choose from. Perfect for me, that means I’ll definitely be able to join in most months and have the wildcards for the other times.

Thank you so much for organising this, thinking up the themes and making great suggestions for reads. 2022 looks to be a great reading year.

>113 PawsforThought: I actually have a lot of fun coming up with themes and falling down rabbit holes researching the suggestions. And several of the themes were born from looking at the author suggestions you guys made and seeing what they had in common.

>114 amanda4242: Good to hear you’re enjoying putting it all together.

And I’m really looking forward to next year (for several reasons, but the BAC is definitely one of them)!

>110 amanda4242: I did well with this theme this year so it has proven to be a good place to start.

>115 PawsforThought: I look forward to seeing what you read!

>116 PaulCranswick: I found it an excellent way to start the year.

>42 amanda4242: I had to hunt that image down! A 19th century Kindle, forsooth!

>48 PaulCranswick: But weren't the replies to Helene's letters written by Brits?

>118 quondame: Nifty, isn't it?

>119 quondame: Her correspondent was at Foyles bookstore in Charing Cross Road in London, yes Susan, but the books author was American not British.

>69 amanda4242: I've been meaning to read Kim for years, maybe this challenge will help me achieve it, finally!

>110 amanda4242: woo! You listed a Joyce Stranger book, The Running Foxes. It can be read by young people, I did at about age 10, but there are lots of deeper adult themes within that fly past a youngster's head. Highly, HIGHLY recommended!