Elkiedee Reads, Reviews and Rants in 2026

I'm Luci. I live in London, England, with my partner and two teenagers, though Danny is now a university student in Manchester (200 miles northwest from here) so only lives here part time.

I joined LT and this group towards the end of 2009 and started cataloguing my books, though there are still many I've never got round to entering, and after the first few years I haven't kept up with my acquisitions very well either. I first started a thread in 2010 - for the first few years I posted a lot and I finished a lot of books. There have also been some years when I never got round to starting my own thread rather than reading and posting some comments on others, and my numbers of books read have varied, from less than 50 in 2009 and 2020 to over 300 in 2010. In 2025 I finished reading 228 books - that will include some books I started in 2024, but not books I hadn't finished by midnight on 31 December, which will count in my 2026 reads (assuming of course that I finish them).

I don't really distinguish TBR and books I've read very clearly. If I last read a book at 8 or 15, I might remember enjoying it then but my experience is going to be quite different at 56 (my current age), and I've realised recently that I can forget even books I enjoyed and reviewed in 10 years or so, probably sooner.

My main reading aim for this year, again, is to review more of the books I read and do it sooner, especially ones from Netgalley. I wrote 32 reviews last year (though that does include some books I read in 2024!), and am still hoping to write something about some of the books I read in 2025. I'm not going to stop buying, borrowing or requesting from Netgalley more books than I'm realistically likely to read.... I have far too many books out of the library already but that probably won't change.

READING AS OF 1 JANUARY 2026, 1.30 PM

FINISHED IN JANUARY

Chloe Michelle Howarth, Heap Earth Upon It - finished 01.01.26
Doris Lessing, The Grass is Singing - finished 02.01.26
Nicholas Royle, White Spines: Confessions of a Book Collector - finished 04.01.26
Lauren Connolly, Love in Plane Sight - finished 11.01.26
Richard Osman, The Impossible Fortune - finished 11.01.26
Joanna Miller, The Eights - finished 13.01.26
Vaseem Khan (editor), Murder in Harrogate: Stories inspired by the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival - finished 14.01.26
Jenny Erpenbeck, Things That Disappear: Reflections and Memories - finished 15.01.26
Catherine Storr, Marianne Dreams - finished 17.01.26
Amanda Craig, High and Low - finished 17.01.26

CURRENTLY READING

Angela Flournoy, The Wilderness - started 17.01.26

Francesca Kay, The Book of Days - started 01.12.25
Carson McCullers, The Member of the Wedding - started 02.12.25
Lucy Steeds, The Artist - started 01.12.25
Catherine Alliott, My Husband Next Door - started 02.12.25
Esther Freud, Peerless Flats - started 04.12.25
Jacqueline Wilson, Picture Imperfect - started 04.12.25
Danzy Senna, Colored Television - started 06.12.25
Claudia Pineiro, Elena Knows - started 07.12.25
Ledia Zhoga, Misinterpretation - started 16.12.25
Claire Mulley, The Women Who Flew For Hitler: The True Story of Hitler's Valkyries - started 05.01.26
Yvonne Bailey-Smith, The Day I Fell Off My Island - started 05.01.26
Margo Jefferson, Constructing a Nervous System: A Memoir - started 05.01.26
Mike Gayle, The One That Got Away - short story - started 05.12.25
Lore Segal, Other People's Houses - started 06.01.26
Emylia Hall, The Sea Between Us - started 06.01.26
Viv Albertine - Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys - started 07.01.26
Alice Ozma, The Reading Promise: 3,218 Nights of Reading With My Father - started 07.01.26
Rachel Parris, Introducing Mrs Collins - started 09.01.26

NEXT UP:

Jenny Colgan, Studies
Val McDermid, 1979
Mary Costello, Barcelona
Robin Stevens, Death Sets Sail

56 pages finished in January
56 pages finished in 2026

228 books finished in 2025
1 book finished in January
1 book finished in 2026

32 reviews in 2025
*reviews in 2026

PAGES READ IN JANUARY 2026

01.01.26: 141
02.01.26: 261
03.01.26: 202
04.01.26: 176
05.01.26: 091
06.01.26: 157
07.01.26: 089
08.01.26: 046
09.01.26: 065
10.01.26: 106
11.01.26: 207
12.01.26: 156
13.01.26: 155
14.01.26: 139
15.01.26: 171
16.01.26: 121
17.01.26: 094
18.01.26: 311
19.01.26: 137
20.01.26: 149
21.01.26: 073
22.01.26: 130
23.01.26: 110
24.01.26: 093
25.01.26: 067
26.01.26: 070
27.01.26: 064
28.01.26: 067
29.01.26: 056
30.01.25: 120
31.01.25: 072

January: 3849 pages (average 124.16 pages/day), 14 books, 1 review
2026: 3849 pages (average 124.16 pages/day), 14 books, 1 review

READING 2026, PART 1: >4 elkiedee:
Current reading: >2 elkiedee: >16 elkiedee:

FEBRUARY 2026: >27 elkiedee:

READING 2026, PART 1

01. 01.01.26 Chloe Michelle Howarth, Heap Earth Upon It 4.1 (E) N, LHB, K
02. 02.01.26 Doris Lessing, The Grass is Singing 3.5 (J) K
03. 04.01.26 Nicholas Royle, White Spines: Confessions of a Book Collector 4.5 (Q) LPB
04. 11.01.26 Lauren Connolly, Love in Plane Sight 4.0 * N
05. 11.01.26 Richard Osman, The Impossible Fortune 4.2 (G) LHB
06. 13.01.26 Joanna Miller, The Eights 4.3 (D) K
07. 14.01.26 Vaseem Khan (Editor), Murder in Harrogate: Stories inspired by the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival 4.1 (N) K
08. 15.01.26 Jenny Erpenbeck, Things That Disappear: Reflections and Memories 3.5 (O) LPB
09. 17.01.26 Catherine Storr, Marianne Dreams 4.2 (H) K
10. 17.01.26 Amanda Craig, High and Low 3.6 * N
11. 18.01.26 Francesca Kay, The Book of Days 4.0 (F) LHB
12. 20.01.26 Carson McCullers, The Member of the Wedding 4.0 (J) LPB
13. 30.01.26 Angela Flournoy, The Wilderness 4.2 * N
14. 31.01.26 Lucy Steeds, The Artist 4.2 (F) K
15. 03.02.26 Claudia Pineiro, Elena Knows 3.8 (W) LPB

PART 2 >33 elkiedee:

New Year greetings from Kuala Lumpur. My project is at least physically completed and an addition to the city scape.

Look forward to keeping up with you in 2026, Luci

I like to have a number of books on the go. I use a category system for choosing next reads - the categories are of several kinds (source/format of book, genre, award contenders, review copies). I will pick a book from each category to add to my pile of current reads and books that I plan to start very soon (according to their category). When I finish a book I choose another book of that category, and for one category I may choose and start the next book before I finish one - this will be a book at or near the top of the pile. I also move library books up the pile and reprioritise some library books I know I won't be able to renew.

I'm including the category here for my own reference because for the last 3 or 4 years I've had it on scraps of paper and I often get confused.

A. Library print book
B. Library ebook
C. Own print book
D. Own Kindle book

E. Review book
F. Award winner/contender - winners and books listed for awards
G. Series book
H. Children's/YA book
I. Reread
J. Reissue/Classic series reprint

K. Library book group read
L. Librarything (potential) shared read

M. Individual short work - Short story/essay
N. Short story collection - I alternate between collections by an individual author and anthologies (various authors)

O. Memoir
P. Non fiction - biographies and other non fiction, for example, history - this is for all the books I want to read but sometimes seem a bit daunting - books with a lot of detailed endnotes - I try to alternate biographies of individuals with history, biographical books about groups of people and other sorts of non fiction
Q. Books about books

R. Wildcard (an additional book in any category - this will normally be a library book, often fiction but I think that I first used it for a non fiction book that I needed to give higher priority)

Welcome back, Luci!

Happy New Year, Luci. Your intro sounds a lot like my story, including membership dates. I'll endeavor to keep up with you this year!

Happy New Year, Luci!

Happy New Year, Luci! I also categorize my books and keep that information on scraps of paper. Thanks for the reminder that I should note that here instead!

>6 elkiedee: You always have a number of books on the go as I recall, Luci. I find that I can handle two or maybe three at a time but more than that seems to lead to a brain freeze!

Sad to see that David Roberts, author of a historical crime series I really loved, died last month (18 December) at the age of 81.

Here's something from Martin Edwards' blog on David Roberts.

https://doyouwriteunderyourownname.blogspot.com/2026/01/i-was-saddened-to-learn-...

Claudette Colvin, a black teenage girl in Montgomery, Alabama was arrested on 2 March 1955 for refusing to give up her seat for a white person. 9 months later Rosa Parks' arrest for a similar action was the beginning of the Montgomery bus boycott. Colvin was one of the 4 plaintiffs in a court case started in 1956 which led to segregation on buses being ruled unconstitutional.

Claudette Colvin has died aged 86.

Here's an article by Gary Younge telling her story. (The Guardian, December 2000)

https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2000/dec/16/weekend7.weekend12

>13 elkiedee: She was a reasonably well known person in the Civil Rights Movement. As this article states she would have become much better known had she not become pregnant, which I blame entirely on the man who did that to her. Thanks for sharing this article, Luci.

>13 elkiedee: and >14 kidzdoc:

Another article by Gary Younge on Claudette Colvin, who died this month, published in the Guardian today - I think - we stopped getting the print newspaper every day a few years ago for various reasons:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jan/17/claudette-colvin-collectiv...

READING AS OF 18 JANUARY 2026, 1.30 PM

FINISHED IN JANUARY

Chloe Michelle Howarth, Heap Earth Upon It - finished 01.01.26
Doris Lessing, The Grass is Singing - finished 02.01.26
Nicholas Royle, White Spines: Confessions of a Book Collector - finished 04.01.26
Lauren Connolly, Love in Plane Sight - finished 11.01.26
Richard Osman, The Impossible Fortune - finished 11.01.26
Joanna Miller, The Eights - finished 13.01.26
Vaseem Khan (editor), Murder in Harrogate: Stories inspired by the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival - finished 14.01.26
Jenny Erpenbeck, Things That Disappear: Reflections and Memories - finished 15.01.26
Catherine Storr, Marianne Dreams - finished 17.01.26
Amanda Craig, High and Low - finished 17.01.26
Francesca Kay, The Book of Days - finished 18.01.26
Carson McCullers, The Member of the Wedding - finished 20.01.26
Angela Flournoy, The Wilderness - finished 30.01.26
Lucy Steeds, The Artist - finished 31.01.26
Claudia Pineiro, Elena Knows - finished 03.02.26

CURRENTLY READING

Leonie Mack, An Italian Wedding Adventure - started 30.01.26

Catherine Alliott, My Husband Next Door - started 02.12.25
Esther Freud, Peerless Flats - started 04.12.25
Danzy Senna, Colored Television - started 06.12.25
Ledia Zhoga, Misinterpretation - started 16.12.25
Claire Mulley, The Women Who Flew For Hitler: The True Story of Hitler's Valkyries - started 05.01.26
Yvonne Bailey-Smith, The Day I Fell Off My Island - started 05.01.26
Margo Jefferson, Constructing a Nervous System: A Memoir - started 05.01.26
Jacqueline Wilson, Picture Imperfect - started 04.12.25
Mike Gayle, The One That Got Away - short story - started 05.12.25
Emylia Hall, The Sea Between Us - started 06.01.26
Lore Segal, Other People's Houses - started 06.01.26
Viv Albertine - Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys - started 07.01.26
Rachel Parris, Introducing Mrs Collins - started 09.01.26
Jenny Colgan, Studies - started 24.01.26
Alice Ozma, The Reading Promise: 3,218 Nights of Reading With My Father - started 07.01.26
Mary Costello, Barcelona - started 24.01.26
Val McDermid, 1979 - started 25.01.26
Robin Stevens, Death Sets Sail - started 25.01.26
Saraid de Silva, Amma - started 26.01.26
Sam Selvon, Moses Ascending - started 26.01.26
Aroa Moreno Durán, The Communist's Daughter - started 26.01.26
Ian McEwan, Solar - started 27.01.26

2580 pages finished in January
2580 pages finished in 2026

10 books finished in January
10 books finished in 2026

1 review in January
1 review in 2026

>16 elkiedee: LOL I had to shake myself a little to properly read your dates. We in the U.S. are so illogical. A dozen so far! Impressive. I've only read the Lessing. And I thought I'd read the fourth Osman, but it's not listed on my thread or in my catalog. Maybe I saw the TV adaptation?

>17 ffortsa: Yes, we normally put dates in as day/month/year in the UK not month/day/year as in the US. I've finished 11 books, and will probably finish another one quite soon, but I started most of them last year - I'd read all but 24 pages of one at midnight on New Year's Eve so that was my first recorded book for 2026 - but I think I did something similar last year. And a couple were very short as well.

The Impossible Fortune is #5 in the Thursday Murder Club series, published in 2025. I joined a long queue at the library but there are quite a lot of copies. #4 was The Last Devil to Die (2023) and he published the first book in a new series in between. I don't know how many of the books have been adapted so far, I thought it was just #1, but I suspect the 4th or 5th books haven't yet.

>17 ffortsa: I don't want to stir up a hornet's nest, especially as it is still your birthday over there, Judy, but I do agree that there is a absence of logic in MM/DD/YY to record dates. I think it is the US being contrarian!

Hi Luci!

>19 PaulCranswick: No hornets to stir, Paul. I think it's all part of the refusal to convert to the metric system, which I must admit would be a struggle to get used to for me. It's the recognition factor as much as anything else. A pound of coffee feels a certain way to us old fogies. If kids were taught both systems early on, the change would happen.

2025 #224
Arundhati Roy, Mother Mary Comes to Me
Read 28.11.25 to 26.12.25, reviewed 23.01.26
Rating: 4.7
Borrowed from Islington Libraries, library hardback

This is the first review I've written this year, but it's of one of the last books I finished reading in 2025 (#224 of 228 books). I've decided to post it on my 2025 thread for accuracy, but also here in the hope that people will read it.

>21 elkiedee: Great review, Luci. This book initially sounded interesting to me, but it's definitely on my radar screen now.

Paul Robeson died 50 years ago today on 23 January 1976. Here's footage of him singing the song Joe Hill (about a Swedish-American trade union leader) to Scottish miners at a special concert in Edinburgh, in the 1940s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0bezsMVU7c

>21 elkiedee: I have seen several good reviews of that one. I need to get it read!

>23 elkiedee: Thank you for that link. I will check out the video.

Have a wonderful weekend, Luci!

>23 elkiedee: Thanks for posting this video, Luci. I remember reading about this famous concert in the biography Paul Robeson: A Watched Man by Jordan Goodman, but I had forgotten that it took place in Edinburgh's Usher Hall, a venue that I recognized immediately, as Fliss and I attended a concert during the Edinburgh International Festival several years ago. We both received our bachelor's degrees from Rutgers, although 70 years apart.

Bruce Springsteen's live debut of his new song Streets of Minneapolis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BIsTgn-jb4

January 2026: 3849 pages, 14 books, 1 review >4 elkiedee: elkiedee:

PAGES READ IN FEBRUARY 2026

01. 147
02. 166
03. 195
04. 082
05. 208
06. 140
07. 091
08. 201
09. 090
10. 082
11. 078
12. 069
13. 131
14. 322
15. 199
16. 118
17. 088
18. 146
19. 089
20. 129
21. 123
22. 108
23. 138
24. 080
25. 124
26. 159
27. 162
28. 123

February: 3,552 pages (av: 126.85 pages/day), 13 books, 2 reviews
2026: 7,401 pages (av: 125.44 pages/day), 27 books, 3 reviews

READING 2026
PART 1: >4 elkiedee:
PART 2: >33 elkiedee:

Current reading: >28 elkiedee:

March 2026: >39 elkiedee:

READING AS OF 3 FEBRUARY 2026, 1.30 PM

FINISHED IN JANUARY

Chloe Michelle Howarth, Heap Earth Upon It - finished 01.01.26
Doris Lessing, The Grass is Singing - finished 02.01.26
Nicholas Royle, White Spines: Confessions of a Book Collector - finished 04.01.26
Lauren Connolly, Love in Plane Sight - finished 11.01.26
Richard Osman, The Impossible Fortune - finished 11.01.26
Joanna Miller, The Eights - finished 13.01.26
Vaseem Khan (editor), Murder in Harrogate: Stories inspired by the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival - finished 14.01.26
Jenny Erpenbeck, Things That Disappear: Reflections and Memories - finished 15.01.26
Catherine Storr, Marianne Dreams - finished 17.01.26
Amanda Craig, High and Low - finished 17.01.26
Francesca Kay, The Book of Days - finished 18.01.26
Carson McCullers, The Member of the Wedding - finished 20.01.26
Angela Flournoy, The Wilderness - finished 30.01.26
Lucy Steeds, The Artist - finished 31.01.26

FINISHED IN FEBRUARY

Claudia Pineiro, Elena Knows - finished 03.02.26
Catherine Alliott, My Husband Next Door - finished 08.02.26
Leonie Mack, An Italian Wedding Adventure - finished 09.02.26

CURRENTLY READING

Catherine Walsh, How To Write a Love Story - started 09.02.26

Danzy Senna, Colored Television - started 06.12.25
Ledia Zhoga, Misinterpretation - started 16.12.25
Claire Mulley, The Women Who Flew For Hitler: The True Story of Hitler's Valkyries - started 05.01.26
Yvonne Bailey-Smith, The Day I Fell Off My Island - started 05.01.26
Margo Jefferson, Constructing a Nervous System: A Memoir - started 05.01.26
Esther Freud, Peerless Flats - started 04.12.25
Jacqueline Wilson, Picture Imperfect - started 04.12.25
Emylia Hall, The Sea Between Us - started 06.01.26
Mike Gayle, The One That Got Away - short story - started 05.12.25
Lore Segal, Other People's Houses - started 06.01.26
Rachel Parris, Introducing Mrs Collins - started 09.01.26
Jenny Colgan, Studies - started 24.01.26
Viv Albertine - Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys - started 07.01.26
Mary Costello, Barcelona - started 24.01.26
Alice Ozma, The Reading Promise: 3,218 Nights of Reading With My Father - started 07.01.26
Val McDermid, 1979 - started 25.01.26
Saraid de Silva, Amma - started 26.01.26
Sam Selvon, Moses Ascending - started 26.01.26
Aroa Moreno Durán, The Communist's Daughter - started 26.01.26
Ian McEwan, Solar - started 27.01.26
Robin Stevens, Death Sets Sail - started 25.01.26
Elena Ferrante, In the Margins: On the Pleasures of Reading and Writing - started 06.02.26

NEXT UP:

Alison Espach, The Wedding People

3849 pages finished in January
400 pages finished in February
4249 pages finished in 2026

14 books finished in January
1 book finished in February
15 books finished in 2026

1 review in January
1 review in 2026

>21 elkiedee: I've added this one to the wishlist.

I wondered if having a Mancunian student in the family means you can get in some visits to the largest Waterstones in the North? Or the John Rylands library?

One of my sisters and I also both studied at Manchester - I would have loved to stay but life didn't work out that way. My sister qualified as a doctor and still lives in the area, (actually in Stockport) - her kids go to school very near where my son is now living.
I've just learned that I could get a free university library card for the main university library now. I could have got one free when I graduated, but then the costs went up and previously I think it was £50 or £60 - perhaps I could have made the most of it if I lived locally. I am planning to try and get a card when I next visit. The main student library near the other university buildings isn't called the John Rylands now (it was in the 1980s and 90s), just the one on Deansgate. I think it's probably not practical to take up the option to borrow books there but I'm hoping for access to online resources, for example, perhaps, some academic and literary journals.

Normally I prefer looking in charity shops to Waterstones - I like the element of surprise. When I used to go to the US, often for crime fiction conventions, I loved buying books in the specialist crime fiction shops, and we had two in London as well, but the ones in London and many in the US are long gone. Some of the other specialist and large independent bookshops were great as well. Waterstones has often not been great at having what I wanted.

I've also seen something about an event called Stockport Noir, which I need to look into. Waterstones put on Dead on Deansgate for 2 or 3 years - more than 20 years later, I think I still have books I haven't got round to reading yet that I bought after seeing the authors there.

I'm hoping to get to a bookshop event tonight - combining it with a necessary trip to Kentish Town Library. The Owl Bookshop in Kentish Town is a large bookshop, it was indie but it's now been taken into the Daunt Books fold, but they've not changed it to be exactly like the named Daunt branches. They have quite regular book events, often pairing up a couple of authors and books - last year I made it to see one for Stealing Dad by Sofka Zinovieff (read on Netgalley, still should try to write a review, one of my favourite books read last year) and Finding Belle by Reeta Chakrabarti, a modern take on Jane Eyre, but centred on different characters.

ETA: I didn't make it out to the Owl Bookshop - last time I was able to buy a ticket half an hour earlier. This time I was dithering a bit about going out this afternoon and decided to check the website, and found the event was sold out. While I still could have got to the library at least, I decided I can go another day... luckily Camden Libraries don't charge fines any more, and I'm not expecting any reservations to come through for at least a few more weeks.

>30 elkiedee: Yes, I meant the gothic John Rylands: I've been a few times to some lovely book related exhibits and a tour. Not sure what they have on at the moment, but I must have a look.

I have heard good things about Stockport from someone on Litsy - also tempted by the Harrogate and Norwich ones.

I've made it to a couple of events as part of the Manchester lit festival too over the years. George Saunders was wonderful. But as you say, plenty of books on the shelves to be reading from previous book festivals!

>30 elkiedee: I've just learned that I could get a free university library card for the main university library now.

Wow, that would be excellent. I am pleased to have my regular contracts with my university, just for the access to all the books and other library goodies!

READING 2026, PART 2

PART 1 >4 elkiedee:

16. 08.02.26 Catherine Alliott, My Husband Next Door 4.0 (L) K
17. 09.02.26 Leonie Mack, An Italian Wedding Adventure 4.0 * N
18. 13.02.26 Danzy Senna, Colored Television 4.0 (A) LHB
19. 13.02.26 Ledia Xhoga, Misinterpretation 4.1 (F) LPB
20. 16.02.26 Elena Ferrante, In the Margins: On the Pleasures of Reading and Writing
21. 16.02.26 Esther Freud, Peerless Flats - finished 16.02.26
22. 18.02.26 Margo Jefferson, Constructing a Nervous System: A Memoir 3.9 LHB
23. 21.02.26 Claire Mulley, The Women Who Flew For Hitler: The True Story of Hitler's Valkyries 4.0 LPB
24. 25.02.26 Yvonne Bailey-Smith, The Day I Fell Off My Island 4.2
25. 26.02.26 Natalia Ginzburg, Valentino 3.7 - review >43 elkiedee:
26. 26.02.26 Mike Gayle, The One That Got Away - short story 3.7
27. 27.02.26 Catherine Walsh, How to Write a Love Story 4.0
28. 06.03.26 Beth O'Leary, The Name Game 4.0
29. 06.03.26 Emylia Hall, The Sea Between Us 4.2
30. 09.03.26 Jacqueline Wilson, Picture Imperfect 3.7

PART 3 >43 elkiedee:

Someone shared this beautiful poem by Jackie Kay about living with the loss of a loved one on Facebook recently, and I discovered that there is a video of the poet reading it on Youtube.

She says she wrote it about Julia Darling, a poet and novelist who died in 2005.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bn173ekE7iA

You might forget the exact sound of her voice
or how her face looked when sleeping.
You might forget the sound of her quiet weeping
curled into the shape of a half moon,

when smaller than her self, she seemed already to be leaving
before she left, when the blossom was on the trees
and the sun was out, and all seemed good in the world.
I held her hand and sang a song from when I was a girl -

Heel y'ho boys, let her go boys -
and when I stopped singing she had slipped away,
already a slip of a girl again, skipping off,
her heart light, her face almost smiling.

And what I didn't know or couldn't say then
was that she hadn't really gone.
The dead don't go till you do, loved ones.
The dead are still here holding our hands.

>34 elkiedee: Wow. That is a powerful poem. Thanks for sharing it, Luci.

READING AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2026, 11 AM

FINISHED IN FEBRUARY

Claudia Pineiro, Elena Knows - finished 03.02.26
Catherine Alliott, My Husband Next Door - finished 08.02.26
Leonie Mack, An Italian Wedding Adventure - finished 09.02.26
Danzy Senna, Colored Television - finished 13.02.26
Ledia Zhoga, Misinterpretation - finished 13.02.26
Elena Ferrante, In the Margins: On the Pleasures of Reading and Writing - finished 16.02.26
Esther Freud, Peerless Flats - finished 16.02.26
Margo Jefferson, Constructing a Nervous System: A Memoir - finished 18.02.26
Claire Mulley, The Women Who Flew For Hitler: The True Story of Hitler's Valkyries - finished 21.02.26
Yvonne Bailey-Smith, The Day I Fell Off My Island - finished 25.02.26
Natalia Ginzburg, Valentino - finished 26.02.26
Mike Gayle, The One That Got Away - short story - finished 26.02.26
Catherine Walsh, How To Write a Love Story - finished 27.02.26

CURRENTLY READING

Beth O'Leary, The Name Game - started 27.02.26

Emylia Hall, The Sea Between Us - started 06.01.26
Jacqueline Wilson, Picture Imperfect - started 04.12.25
Rachel Parris, Introducing Mrs Collins - started 09.01.26
Jenny Colgan, Studies - started 24.01.26
Lore Segal, Other People's Houses - started 06.01.26
Mary Costello, Barcelona - started 24.01.26
Viv Albertine - Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys - started 07.01.26
Alice Ozma, The Reading Promise: 3,218 Nights of Reading With My Father - started 07.01.26
Saraid de Silva, Amma - started 26.01.26
Sam Selvon, Moses Ascending - started 26.01.26
Aroa Moreno Durán, The Communist's Daughter - started 26.01.26
Ian McEwan, Solar - started 27.01.26
Val McDermid, 1979 - started 25.01.26
Robin Stevens, Death Sets Sail - started 25.01.26
Alison Espach, The Wedding People - started 21.02.26
Susanna Hoffs, This Bird Has Flown - started 22.02.26
Edna O'Brien, The Lonely Girl - started 22.02.26
Elly Griffiths, The Killing Time - started 18.02.26
Lottie Moggach, Mrs Pearcey - started 20.02.26
Mary Portas, I Shop, Therefore I Am: The '90s, Harvey Nicks – and Me - started 23.02.26
Cathy Curtis, Fearless: A Biography of Edna O'Brien - started 24.02.26
Jess Walter, So Far Gone - started 25.02.26
Mhairi McFarlane, After Hello - short story - started 26.02.26
W Somerset Maugham, The Razor's Edge - started 26.02.26

3849 pages finished in January
1624 pages finished in February
5473 pages finished in 2026

14 books finished in January
5 books finished in February
19 books finished in 2026

1 review in January
1 review in 2026

Yes, I read the book last year, but am posting it here too because I've only just written this

2025 #197
Susan Choi, Flashlight
Read 09.10.25 to 30.10.25, reviewed 14.02.26
Rating: 4.4
Borrowed from Islington Libraries, library hardback

For my 3rd review of the year, something I read in January 2026

2026 #008
Jenny Erpenbeck, Things That Disappear: Reflections and Memories 3.5
Read 12.01.26 to 15.01.26, reviewed 17.02.26
Rating: 3.7
Borrowed from Islington Libraries, paperback

January: 3,849 pages (av 124.16 pages/day), 14 books, 1 review >4 elkiedee:
February: 3,552 pages (av: 126.85 pages/day), 13 books, 2 reviews >27 elkiedee:

PAGES READ IN MARCH 2026

At beginning of March 2026: 7,401 pages (av: 125.44 pages/day), 27 books, 3 reviews

01. 115
02. 141
03. 165
04. 102
05. 261
06. 145
07. 044
08. 154
09. 134
10. 280
11. 224
12. 246
13. 154
14. 132
15. 102
16. 147
17. 094
18. 111
19. 053
20. 122
21. 108
22. 209
23. 096
24. 061
25. 153
26. 110
27. 186
28. 147
29. 171
30. 215
31. 180

March: 4,552 pages (av: 146.83 pages/day), 15 books, 4 reviews
2026: 11,853 pages (av: 131.7 pages/day), 42 books, 7 reviews

READING 2026
PART 1: >4 elkiedee:
PART 2: >33 elkiedee:

Current reading: >28 elkiedee:

READING AS OF 13 MARCH 2026, 12.30 AM

Wrongly overwritten so this is not quite right!

FINISHED IN FEBRUARY

Claudia Pineiro, Elena Knows - finished 03.02.26
Catherine Alliott, My Husband Next Door - finished 08.02.26
Leonie Mack, An Italian Wedding Adventure - finished 09.02.26
Danzy Senna, Colored Television - finished 13.02.26
Ledia Zhoga, Misinterpretation - finished 13.02.26
Elena Ferrante, In the Margins: On the Pleasures of Reading and Writing - finished 16.02.26
Esther Freud, Peerless Flats - finished 16.02.26
Margo Jefferson, Constructing a Nervous System: A Memoir - finished 18.02.26
Claire Mulley, The Women Who Flew For Hitler: The True Story of Hitler's Valkyries - finished 21.02.26
Yvonne Bailey-Smith, The Day I Fell Off My Island - finished 25.02.26
Natalia Ginzburg, Valentino - finished 26.02.26
Mike Gayle, The One That Got Away - short story - finished 26.02.26
Catherine Walsh, How To Write a Love Story - finished 27.02.26

FINISHED IN MARCH

Beth O'Leary, The Name Game - finished 06.03.26
Emylia Hall, The Sea Between Us - finished 06.03.26
Jacqueline Wilson, Picture Imperfect - finished 09.03.26
Rachel Parris, Introducing Mrs Collins - finished 12.03.26
Lottie Moggach, Mrs Pearcey - finished 14.03.26
Jenny Colgan, Studies - finished 15.03.26
Cathy Curtis, Fearless: A Biography of Edna O'Brien - finished 15.03.26
Anthony Quinn, The Millionaire Waltz - finished 18.03.26
Lore Segal, Other People's Houses - finished 20.03.26
Mary Costello, Barcelona - finished 21.03.26
Viv Albertine - Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys - finished 25.03.26
Alice Ozma, The Reading Promise: 3,218 Nights of Reading With My Father -
Saraid de Silva, Amma - finished 28.03.26
Aroa Moreno Durán, The Communist's Daughter - finished 30.03.26
Sam Selvon, Moses Ascending - finished 31.03.26

FINISHED IN APRIL

CURRENTLY READING

Kiran Millwood Hargrave, Almost Life - started 18.03.26

Ian McEwan, Solar - started 27.01.26
Val McDermid, 1979 - started 25.01.26
Robin Stevens, Death Sets Sail - started 25.01.26
Susanna Hoffs, This Bird Has Flown - started 22.02.26
Alison Espach, The Wedding People - started 21.02.26
Elly Griffiths, The Killing Time - started 18.02.26
Mary Portas, I Shop, Therefore I Am: The '90s, Harvey Nicks – and Me - started 23.02.26
Jess Walter, So Far Gone - started 25.02.26
Edna O'Brien, The Lonely Girl - started 22.02.26
W Somerset Maugham, The Razor's Edge - started 26.02.26
Miriam Toews, A Truce That Is Not Peace - started 02.03.26
Mhairi McFarlane, After Hello - short story - started 26.02.26
David Caute, Red List: MI5 and British Intellectuals in the Twentieth Century
Hannah Richell, The Peacock Summer - started 31.03.26

NEXT UP:

Anne Enright, Attention: Writing on Life, Art, and the World
Jennie Godfrey, The Barbecue at No 9
David Downing, Union Station
Claire Luchette, Agatha of Little Neon
Joyce Carol Oates, The Best American Mystery Stories 2005
Francine Prose, Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them
Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth
Jennifer Croft, Homesick
Irmgard Keun, The Man With the Kind Heart
Elizabeth von Arnim, Vera

4,552 pages finished in March
11,953 pages finished in 2026

15 books finished in March
42 books finished in 2026

4 reviews in March
7 review in 2026

The Women's Prize longlist is announced

Gloria Don’t Speak by Lucy Apps (Weatherglass Books)
Paradiso 17 by Hannah Lillith Assadi (4th Estate, HarperCollins Publishers UK)
Moderation by Elaine Castillo (Atlantic Books) - read, library/Kindle
Flashlight by Susan Choi (Jonathan Cape, Vintage, Penguin Random House UK) - read, reviewed, library
Dominion by Addie E. Citchens (Europa Editions UK)
The Benefactors by Wendy Erskine (Sceptre, Hodder & Stoughton, Hachette UK) - read, reviewed, library/Kindle
The Correspondent by Virginia Evans (Michael Joseph, Penguin Random House UK) - Kindle TBR
The Mercy Step by Marcia Hutchinson (Cassava Republic Press)
The Others by Sheena Kalayil (Fly on the Wall Press)
Kingfisher by Rozie Kelly (Saraband)
Heart the Lover by Lily King (Canongate) - read, library
Audition by Katie Kitamura (Fern Press, Vintage, Penguin Random House UK) - TBR, Kindle
A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar (Scribner, Simon & Schuster UK) - TBR, Kindle
Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy (Canongate) - TBR, Kindle
The Best of Everything by Kit de Waal (Tinder Press, Headline Publishing Group, Hachette UK) - read, reviewed, library/Kindle
A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing by Alice Evelyn Yang (Dead Ink)

I have read 5, reviewed 3, have 3 TBR. 2 were shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

2026 #25
Natalia Ginzburg, Valentino published 1957
Translation Avril Bardoni 1987, Introduction Alexander Chee 2023
Read 18.02.26 to 26.02.26, reviewed 09.03.26
Rating: 3.7
Borrowed from Islington Libraries, paperback

READING 2026, PART 3

PART 1 >4 elkiedee:
PART 2 >33 elkiedee:

31. 12.03.26 Rachel Parris, Introducing Mrs Collins 4.1
32. 14.03.26 Lottie Moggach, Mrs Pearcey 4.2
33. 15.03.26 Jenny Colgan, Studies 4.0
34. 15.03.26 Cathy Curtis, Fearless: A Biography of Edna O'Brien - 3.7
35. 18.03.26 Anthony Quinn, The Millionaire Waltz 4.1
36. 20.03.26 Lore Segal, Other People's Houses 4.3
37. 21.03.26 Mary Costello, Barcelona 4.0
38. 25.03.26 Viv Albertine, Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys 4.2
39. 26.03.26 Alice Ozma, The Reading Promise: 3,218 Nights of Reading With My Father 3.8
40. 28.03.26 Saraid de Silva, Amma 4.0
41. 30.03.26 Aroa Moreno Durán, The Communist's Daughter 4.0
42. 31.03.26 Sam Selvon, Moses Ascending 3.5
43. 04.04.26 Ian McEwan, Solar 3.0
44. 07.04.26 Kiran Millwood Hargrave, Almost Life 4.5
45. 09.04.26 Elly Griffiths, The Killing Time 4.2

2025 #169
Thornton Wilder, Our Town and Other Plays
Read 20.08.25 to 06.09.25, reviewed 13.03.26
Rating: 3.7
Borrowed from Islington Libraries, library paperback

2026 #032
Lottie Moggach, Mrs Pearcey
Read 20.02.26 to 14.03.26, reviewed 18.03.26
Rating: 4.2
Borrowed from Camden Libraries, hardback

Sad news that broadcaster Jenni Murray has died today, aged 75. She was a presenter on Radio 4 Woman's Hour for many years, from 1987 to 2020, so most of my adult life.

Oh that's sad news - one of those voices that everyone knows.

2026 #034
Cathy Curtis, Fearless: A Biography of Edna O'Brien
Read 24.02.26 to 15.03.26, reviewed 23.03.26
Rating: 3.7
Borrowed from Islington Libraries, paperback

Book banning hits a school library in Salford, near Manchester

This is disturbing on lots of levels, particularly that a large organisation including over 100 schools deems books unsuitable

- because they're not for children - children from 14 up who are still reading may well be moving on from children's and YA fiction and should be
- because they have stuff about sexism, racism and misogyny - criticising not advocating it - the banned list includes quite a few books by black women writers about racism and sexism (including Zadie Smith and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Bernardine Evaristo and Michelle Obama, women writers about misogyny, LGBTQ writers etc.
- because they have books about sexuality and trans issues - if young people want to know about this, wouldn't it be better that they have access to well chosen reading and not just the wilds of social media driven by financial considerations, like all those websites run by people making a profit out of spreading hatred?
- the list also includes a lot of graphic novels

https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2026/03/school-book-banning-escalates-in-the-u...

https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2026/03/greater-manchester-school-library-cens...

And a link from an article by the Association of School Librarians

https://schoolsweek.co.uk/growing-concerns-over-censorship-show-the-need-to-supp...

It's awful, isn't it? I hate the thought of the library no longer being safe because of the offenderati policing it.

January: 3,849 pages (av 124.16 pages/day), 14 books, 1 review >4 elkiedee:
February: 3,552 pages (av: 126.85 pages/day), 13 books, 2 reviews >27 elkiedee:
March: 4,552 pages (av: 146.83 pages per day), 15 books, 4 reviews

PAGES READ IN APRIL 2026

At beginning of April 2026: 11,853 pages (av: 131.7 pages/day), 42 books, 7 reviews

01. 130
02. 122
03. 152
04. 122
05. 149
06. 141
07. 103
08. 098
09. 111
10. 110
11. 084
12. 185
13. 151
14. 191
15. 071
16. 146
17. 117
18. 151
19. 140
20. 150
21. 265
22. 155
23. 177
24. 110
25. 096
26. 196
27. 160
28. 171
29. 113
30. 222

April: 4,289 pages (av: 142 pages/day), 10 books, 1 review
2026: 16,142 pages (av: 134 pages/day), 52 books, 8 reviews

READING 2026
PART 1: >4 elkiedee:
PART 2: >33 elkiedee:
PART 3 >43 elkiedee:
PART 4: >54 elkiedee:

Current reading: >59 elkiedee:

READING AS OF 1 APRIL 2026, 12.30 AM

FINISHED IN MARCH

Beth O'Leary, The Name Game - finished 06.03.26
Emylia Hall, The Sea Between Us - finished 06.03.26
Jacqueline Wilson, Picture Imperfect - finished 09.03.26
Rachel Parris, Introducing Mrs Collins - finished 12.03.26
Lottie Moggach, Mrs Pearcey - finished 14.03.26
Jenny Colgan, Studies - finished 15.03.26
Cathy Curtis, Fearless: A Biography of Edna O'Brien - finished 15.03.26
Anthony Quinn, The Millionaire Waltz - finished 18.03.26
Lore Segal, Other People's Houses - finished 20.03.26
Mary Costello, Barcelona - finished 21.03.26
Viv Albertine - Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys - finished 25.03.26
Alice Ozma, The Reading Promise: 3,218 Nights of Reading With My Father -
Saraid de Silva, Amma - finished 28.03.26
Aroa Moreno Durán, The Communist's Daughter - finished 30.03.26
Sam Selvon, Moses Ascending - finished 31.03.26

FINISHED IN APRIL

Ian McEwan, Solar - finished 04.04.26
Kiran Millwood Hargrave, Almost Life - finished 07.04.26
Elly Griffiths, The Killing Time - finished 09.04.26
Anne Enright, Attention: Writing on Life, Art, and the World - finished 14.04.26
Sue Moorcroft, Secrets of the Italian Guesthouse - finished 15.04.26
Val McDermid, 1979 - finished 15.04.26
Robin Stevens, Death Sets Sail - finished 17.04.26
Susanna Hoffs, This Bird Has Flown - finished 22.04.26
Jess Walter, So Far Gone - finished 25.04.26
Jess Bickers, The Night Bus - finished 27.04.26

CURRENTLY READING

Louise Jensen Duffy, Winifred Peters is Not Sorry for Her Loss - started 27.04.26

Alison Espach, The Wedding People - started 21.02.26
Mary Portas, I Shop, Therefore I Am: The '90s, Harvey Nicks – and Me - started 23.02.26
Edna O'Brien, The Lonely Girl - started 22.02.26
W Somerset Maugham, The Razor's Edge - started 26.02.26
Miriam Toews, A Truce That Is Not Peace - started 02.03.26
Mhairi McFarlane, After Hello - short story - started 26.02.26
David Caute, Red List: MI5 and British Intellectuals in the Twentieth Century
Hannah Richell, The Peacock Summer - started 31.03.26
Jennie Godfrey, The Barbecue at No 9 - started 01.04.26
David Downing, Union Station - started 01.04.26
Claire Luchette, Agatha of Little Neon - started 02.04.26
Joyce Carol Oates (editor), The Best American Mystery Stories 2005 - started 02.04.26
Francine Prose, Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them - started 03.04.26
Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth - started 03.04.26
Jennifer Croft, Homesick - started 03.04.26
Irmgard Keun, The Man With the Kind Heart - started 04.04.26
Elizabeth von Arnim, Vera - started 04.04.26
Jenny Erpenbeck, Not a Novel: A Memoir in Pieces - started 04.04.26
Rachel Holmes, Sylvia Pankhurst: Natural Born Rebel - started 04.04.26
Lois Shearing, Pink-Pilled: Women and the Far Right - started 10.04.26
Addie E Citchens, Dominion - started 25.04.26

NEXT UP

Lydia Syson, Mr Peacock's Possessions
Cynthia Voigt, Dicey's Song
Patrick Gale, Love Lane

4,552 pages finished in March
11,953 pages finished in 2026

15 books finished in March
42 books finished in 2026

4 reviews in March
7 reviews in 2026

READING 2026, PART 3

PART 1 >4 elkiedee:
PART 2 >33 elkiedee:
PART 3 >43 elkiedee:

46. 14.04.26 Anne Enright, Attention: Writing on Life, Art, and the World 4.2
47. 15.04.26 Sue Moorcroft, Secrets of the Italian Guesthouse 4.0
48. 15.04.26 Val McDermid, 1979 4.2
49. 16.04.26 Robin Stevens, Death Sets Sail 4.1
50. 22.04.26 Susannah Hoffs, This Bird Has Flown 4.0
51. 25.04.26 Jess Walter, So Far Gone 4.2
52. 28.04.26 Tessa Bickers, The Night Bus 4.0
53. 04.05.26 Mary Portas, I Shop, Therefore I Am: The '90s, Harvey Nicks - And Me 3.9
54. 04.05.26 Lois Shearing, Pink-Pilled: Women and the Far Right 4.0
55. 04.05.26 Alison Espach, The Wedding People 4.2
56. 04.05.26 Jenny Erpenbeck, Not a Novel: A Memoir in Pieces 4.2
57. 04.05.26 Louise Jensen Duffy, Winifred Peters is Not Sorry for Her Loss 4.2
58. 05.05.26 Miriam Toews, A Truce That Is Not Peace 4.2
59. 05.05.26 Edna O'Brien, The Lonely Girl 4.2
60. 05.05.26 Mhairi McFarlane, After Hello 4.0

Another of my oldest online friends, that is someone I first "met" online, though I did then get to meet up with her several times in real life, has died.

Writer, academic, translator and crime fiction reviewer Yvonne M Klein on 25 March aged 92. She was the editor of Beyond the Home Front: Women's Autobiographical Writing of the Two World Wars. Her translations included The Woman of the Wolf and Other Stories by Renee Vivien.

I met Yvonne more than 20 years ago, online, through email discussion groups talking about crime and mystery fiction, and I met up with her at several crime and mystery conventions, and stayed with her for a few days in Westmount, Montreal. For some years she ran a crime fiction review site called Reviewing the Evidence, though sadly the website is no longer active or accessible online.

The Women's Prize shortlist is announced

https://womensprize.com/revealing-the-2026-womens-prize-for-fiction-shortlist/

Flashlight by Susan Choi (Jonathan Cape, Vintage, Penguin Random House UK)
Dominion by Addie E. Citchens (Europa Editions UK)
The Correspondent by Virginia Evans (Michael Joseph, Penguin Random House UK)
The Mercy Step by Marcia Hutchinson (Cassava Republic Press)
Kingfisher by Rozie Kelly (Saraband)
Heart the Lover by Lily King (Canongate)

I've read 5 books on the longlist, all of which I would have been happy to see make the shortlist though I didn't necessarily expect all of them. I would have quite liked to see The Benefactors on this list. I have a copy of The Correspondent.

>56 elkiedee: I am reading The Others, Luci, and thought it too probably deserved to make the cut.

READING AS OF 1 MAY 2026 1 AM

FINISHED IN APRIL

Ian McEwan, Solar - finished 04.04.26
Kiran Millwood Hargrave, Almost Life - finished 07.04.26
Elly Griffiths, The Killing Time - finished 09.04.26
Anne Enright, Attention: Writing on Life, Art, and the World - finished 14.04.26
Sue Moorcroft, Secrets of the Italian Guesthouse - finished 15.04.26
Val McDermid, 1979 - finished 15.04.26
Robin Stevens, Death Sets Sail - finished 17.04.26
Susanna Hoffs, This Bird Has Flown - finished 22.04.26
Jess Walter, So Far Gone - finished 25.04.26
Jess Bickers, The Night Bus - finished 27.04.26

FINISHED IN MAY

Mary Portas, I Shop, Therefore I Am: The '90s, Harvey Nicks – and Me - finished 04.05.26
Lois Shearing, Pink-Pilled: Women and the Far Right - finished 04.05.26
Alison Espach, The Wedding People - finished 04.05.26
Jenny Erpenbeck, Not a Novel: A Memoir in Pieces - finished 04.05.26
Louise Jensen Duffy, Winifred Peters is Not Sorry for Her Loss - finished 04.05.26
Edna O'Brien, The Lonely Girl - finished 05.05.26
Miriam Toews, A Truce That Is Not Peace - finished 05.05.26
Mhairi McFarlane, After Hello - short story - finished 05.05.26
W Somerset Maugham, The Razor's Edge - finished 11.05.26
Jennie Godfrey, The Barbecue at No 9 - finished 18.05.26

FINISHED IN JUNE

David Caute, Red List: MI5 and British Intellectuals in the Twentieth Century - finished 07.08.26
Rachel Holmes, Sylvia Pankhurst: Natural Born Rebel - finished 08.08.26

CURRENTLY READING

Eleanor Anstruther, Fallout - started 05.05.26

Hannah Richell, The Peacock Summer - started 31.03.26
David Downing, Union Station - started 01.04.26
Claire Luchette, Agatha of Little Neon - started 02.04.26
Joyce Carol Oates (editor), The Best American Mystery Stories 2005 - started 02.04.26
Francine Prose, Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them - started 03.04.26
Jennifer Croft, Homesick - started 03.04.26
Irmgard Keun, The Man With the Kind Heart - started 04.04.26
Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth - started 03.04.26
Addie E Citchens, Dominion - started 25.04.26
Patrick Gale, Love Lane - started
Elizabeth von Arnim, Vera - started 04.04.26
Lydia Syson, Mr Peacock's Possessions - started 13.05.26
Patrick Gale, Love Lane - started 26.04.26
Cynthia Voigt, Dicey's Song - started 14.05.26
M L Stedman, A Far-Flung Life - started 14.05.26
Adelle Stripe, Base Notes: The Scents of a Life - started 15.05.26
Buchi Emecheta, In the Ditch - started 15.05.26
Edna O'Brien, Girls in Their Married Bliss - started 17.05.26
Abraham Verghese, Abscond - story - started 18.05.26
Willy Vlautin, The Left and the Lucky - started 04.06.26
Lucy Caldwell, Devotions: Eight Stories - started 07.06.26
Gillian Tindall, The Fields Beneath - started 06.06.26

NEXT UP

Brit Bennett, The Mothers
Jan Carson, Few and Far Between

4,289 pages finished in April
16,142 pages finished in 2026

10 books finished in April
52 books finished in 2026

1 review in April
8 reviews in 2026

April: 4,289 pages (av: 142 pages/day), 10 books, 1 review
2026: 16,142 pages (av: 134 pages/day), 52 books, 8 reviews

January: 3,849 pages (av 124.16 pages/day), 14 books, 1 review >4 elkiedee:
February: 3,552 pages (av: 126.85 pages/day), 13 books, 2 reviews >27 elkiedee:
March: 4,552 pages (av: 146.83 pages per day), 15 books, 4 reviews
April: 4,289 pages (av: 142 pages/day), 10 books, 1 review

PAGES READ IN MAY 2026

At beginning of May 2026: 16,142 pages (av: 134.51 pages/day), 42 books, 7 reviews

01. 161
02. 132
03. 176
04. 292
05. 327
06. 153
07. 186
08. 088
09. 064
10. 120
11. 114
12. 117
13. 047
14. 124
15. 067
16. 050
17. 023
18. 031
19. 009
20. 030

May: 2,111 pages (av: 105.5 pages/day), 10 books, * review
2026: 18,324 pages (av: 137.12 pages/day), 62 books, 10 reviews

READING 2026
PART 1: >4 elkiedee:
PART 2: >33 elkiedee:
PART 3 >43 elkiedee:
PART 4: >54 elkiedee:

Current reading: >59 elkiedee:

READING 2026, PART 5

PART 1 >4 elkiedee:
PART 2 >33 elkiedee:
PART 3 >43 elkiedee:
PART 4 >54 elkiedee:

61. 11.05.26 W Somerset Maugham, The Razor's Edge 3.7
62. 12.05.26 Jennie Godfrey, The Barbecue at No 9 4.1
63. 07.08.26 David Caute, Red List: MI5 and British Intellectuals in the Twentieth Century
64. 08.08.26 Rachel Holmes, Sylvia Pankhurst: Natural Born Rebel

>58 PaulCranswick: I bought The Others as it sounds interesting and came up cheap on Kindle in the UK. Thanks for rec

>63 elkiedee: 19 May - page count geekery

I'm reading very little but I have messed up this tally totally - I've just lost 90 pages of my total. But I'm going to work on this figure anyway - I have slightly different figures on TheStorygraph because they're sometimes based on page counts which are not mine - eg my copy's last numbered page is 203 but I read the author bio and some reviewer blurbs inside and on the back cover so that's 205. LT, Goodreads, Storygraph may all have slightly different figures that are not calculated the same way, and occasionally online page counts might be ridiculously different. And in non fiction I do count endnotes and text on photographic plates because I "read" them but don't count the index still on numbered pages.

But I will work as if these figures are accurate but I'm going to also start adding "reading journal" figures from TheStorygraph. I am taking no notice whatsoever of Goodreads because I have no way whatsoever of correcting details if someone has added a record of the same new hardback edition of a recent book with "cover coming soon" and a wildly wrong page count - I'm sure Goodreads uses lots of bulk imported data from Amazon and it's very US centric. Librarything is much better but I know I don't look at the LT page counts or add missing figures as I do with other things.

I've been trying to remember some of this for months - actually, I was 18 days late and I don't think my dad was in Ostend, Belgium, probably mostly in Leeds and London initially, then it was my mum who took me with her to Southampton where her sister lived, then to Japan where we joined demonstrations, against the Vietnam war, against the spread of the conflict to Cambodia, expressing anger about the Kent State/less well known Jackson State killings. Later we spent a year in France where I was in a creche sauvage. So yes, I was born a rather cynical rebel/idealist creature, and that hasn't really changed much.

And to think Stevie Smith only lived a few miles up the road from me, in Palmers Green I think, with her aunt. She went to an academic girls' school followed by secretarial college, worked as a secretary in publishing, and she was only 68 when she died. Hopefully I can round up all my Stevie Smith books - her work, a biography I'm sure is here, etc, and really do a little project. Yes, I still have books by Nancy Spain tbr (library and own copies), not all for either writer, but it would be very boring to just read books by or about one person at a time!

INFANT

It was a cynical babe
Lay in its mother's arms
Born two months too soon
After many alarms
Why is its mother sad
Weeping without a friend
Where is its father - say?
He tarries in Ostend.
It was a cynical babe. Reader before you condemn, pause,
It was a cynical babe. Not without cause.

Place holder

To be sorted out

03.06 22
04.06 15

June: 37

Very sad at the news of Marjane Satrapi's "morte de chagrin" - death from sorrow after her husband's death last year. This Iranian refugee in France has published far more work than I realised. I will try to share a personal thing I wrote today, later on.

>67 elkiedee:

"Oh, I heard it through the grapevine
Oh, I'm just about to lose my mind"

More sad news today, Kanya King (12.02.69 to 03.06.26) originally from Kilburn, north London, of Irish and Ghanaian descent, is best known as the founder of the Music of Black Origin awards. She had been diagnosed with bowel cancer, stage 4, at the end of 2024.

BBC Radio London interview with Robert Elms
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0nd3p4j#
This is an incredibly London interview.

I've found something about her recommending both Beyonce and Solange, so I've put on A Seat At the Table because the title seems to fit, hopefully now set to reappear later, along with my more usual listening.

>68 elkiedee: More news of losses to popular culture and politics

Anthony Head at 72. Best known for playing Giles in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I noticed that he was credited with a Diana Wynne Jones book, a collection of stories called Mixed Magics - and found mention of him narrating an unabridged audio, but that profile probably needs some work, as all his other audio work might not be listed correctly etc.

Michael Meadowcroft was a Liberal MP in Leeds West for a while, and decided not to follow other former Liberals to the Liberal Democrats. Though eventually he joined them in 2007. I don't know much more about him but will add detail and welcome comments etc! I hope he gets a better obituary etc than his Labour counterpart and our former family friend/neighbour Harold Best. Touchstones removed, but our Harold is not that obscure!!!! Meadowcroft's old seat is the one now held by Rachel Reeves, currently chancellor of the Exchequer.

Another death - news via Miriam Margoyles. I am stealing my own post here from Written on Stone: the Literary Cemetery at https://www.librarything.com/topic/384704#n9212254

Miriam Margoyles posts regular updates on FB on some of her many theatre friends etc who have died recently. She has shared that Sheila Mitchell has died aged almost 101.

From Miriam's information and Sheila Mitchell's Wikipedia, I have updated her LT page and added a third audio book.

Sheila Mitchell trained at London's Central School of Speech and Drama, acted on stage and in film. She married crime novelist H R F Keating, and they had 4 children. In 2020, her biography of her late husband was published. HRF Keating: A Life of Crime

She not only recorded a number of audio books, including Alive, Alive Oh!, The Pillars of the Earth and Testament of Youth; she was an Equity trade union representative for audio book readers, including her friend Miriam, see above. She was on Equity's Audio Committee as recently as 2022 (at 96/97!)

She was also a broadcaster, and I'm sure there is more to say!

https://www.sheilamitchell.com/audio-books/

>68 elkiedee: I am very saddened to hear from you about the passing of Michael Meadowcroft. Quite an austere chap at first sight but a thoroughly decent man. I got to know him ever so slightly when we shared the same commuter train - I was going to Derby from Wakefield and he was headed to London (presumably Parliamentary business). Spoke to him quite a bit and he was pretty radical for a Liberal. He staunchly oppposed the merger with the SDP.

Lovely guy.

>70 PaulCranswick: Thanks. I have a confession: someone (can't remember who?) has corrected my memory about MM. He apparently did join the Lib Dems quietly in 2007. I have heard that he was pleasant. I've encountered members of that party I despise and ones I have a soft spot for, but I could certainly say the same of the Labour Party, which I first joined over 30 years ago, though this has been interrupted at least twice, for reasons I think the Labour Party especially might do well to consider.

>71 elkiedee: I have myself been a member of the Labour Party on and off for the last 42 years and I am in another of my disillusioned times as a member. I think that the present administration has failed to deliver on much of its promises and has been derailed completely by some manifestly odd decisions - the way the OAP fuel allowances was handled, the way that welfare is not being restructured to suit its intended purpose, the way that the leadership has failed to have a coherent industrial regeneration project, the fiasco of Mandelson, the poor way that public order and freedom of expression has been dealt with - has left me mortified as well as deeply pessimistic about the future.

Where is the pivot that will put us on a new and better path? Is it Andy Burnham? I don't know but first he has to win the bi-election.

>72 PaulCranswick: Indeed. A Labour Party friend has recently lost her seat to the Greens, as has E's old schoolfriend the former Council leader and E's partner M. E's comment initially was that even her gambling addicted Turkish Cypriot dad wouldn't have put a bet on this working out well, and I couldn't argue. But we are again getting sucked into hope. Not for what Burnham is but for what he represents for those of us hanging on in there, and even for people who aren't in the party but don't see the Greens or Your Party as the answer either.

The Ethiopian and northerner poet Lemn Sissay has posted something great on Facebook about this. He was largely brought up in Makersfield and though this was at times a very unhappy experience, he is very clear that he is still proud to come from the area. I think I can infer that he hopes Andy Burnham all the best in this complicated route to the leadership. People have extolled even more questionable candidates enough times!

I've recently become co-chair of a group based on Friends of Libraries, but campaigning as Friends of Reading and Education borough wide. How could I resist? It's hard work and I'm already wondering who might take over from me at the next AGM in November - succession planning! And my 17 year old needs a lot of help as he is unhappy on his music course. If he wants to drop out for a while, Mike and I will have to support him and try and find ways of getting him away from the darkened bedroom he hangs out in more, but we are hoping he will take up the opportunity to start again in September and begin A levels.

Even the Tories realised the system was so hard to navigate that kids get an extra year to try at least one new start on education post 16 (other options are employment and training - those who don't choose one of these three are charmingly referred to as NEETs). But I have also spent a lot of time in the last few days dealing with long intrusive phone calls, and a visitor who asked me repeatedly if I'd read all of the books in front of my desk (and those are on shelves!) Then, what proportion I'd read. Aaarrrrrrrghhhhhh! Hopefully I'll get through this and find it funnier one day.

>73 elkiedee: I am possibly not close enough to it, Luci, but none of the new parties really convince me enough to consider going elsewhere to find somewhere to house my unusual collection of hopes, ideas and aspirations.

The Labour Party did so much good for so many people especially in that wonderful Attlee administration and has been home to a number of people who I have admired immensely. There are few if any of those characters left but we need some of their ilk to articulate the way forward for the UK again.

Good luck with your Friends of Libraries work, Luci.

>74 PaulCranswick: I can't disagree, and I am still in touch with so many people on FB, but every day i=I miss someone who has given up on the Labour Party, whether or not I they have joined anything else.

So thank you for your thoughts and best wishes. Please come back and visit more often. This month I seem to be ranting more than reading, never mind reviewing, but I have finally finished two very brilliant reads but ones that I seemed to be reading at a page or 2 or 3 for a bit.

See you later because I've left my Poundland reading glasses magnifiers. and Autogarble is attacking my writing.

>75 elkiedee: I will try to be more often a visitor, Luci x

Here's a song I love about looking back in the past. Amy Rigby is American, married to Wreckless Eric (English) - both late 60s now and have returned to live in Norfolk.

But this could be about many women's summers, more or less:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZmqHhMA7MA&list=RD6ZmqHhMA7MA&start_rad...

>74 PaulCranswick: >75 elkiedee: I am also a ex-member of the Labour Party, now a member of the Greens (although I did vote Labour in last election as the local Green candidate didn’t have a chance). I’m quite pleased with our new Labour MP, but very, very disappointed with the government as a whole.

And I'm quite disappointed with the current government and always disappointed with my MP, those are nothing new for me. More than one of the white papers (policy documents) being discussed on the radio feel quite "triggering" right now, and it's extraordinary how many mums I've talked to recently whose experiences had an overlap.

READING AS OF 8 JUNE 2026 11 PM

FINISHED IN MAY

Mary Portas, I Shop, Therefore I Am: The '90s, Harvey Nicks – and Me - finished 04.05.26
Lois Shearing, Pink-Pilled: Women and the Far Right - finished 04.05.26
Alison Espach, The Wedding People - finished 04.05.26
Jenny Erpenbeck, Not a Novel: A Memoir in Pieces - finished 04.05.26
Louise Jensen Duffy, Winifred Peters is Not Sorry for Her Loss - finished 04.05.26
Edna O'Brien, The Lonely Girl - finished 05.05.26
Miriam Toews, A Truce That Is Not Peace - finished 05.05.26
Mhairi McFarlane, After Hello - short story - finished 05.05.26
W Somerset Maugham, The Razor's Edge ** - finished 11.05.26
Jennie Godfrey, The Barbecue at No 9 - finished 18.05.26

FINISHED IN JUNE

David Caute, Red List: MI5 and British Intellectuals in the Twentieth Century - finished 07.08.26
Rachel Holmes, Sylvia Pankhurst: Natural Born Rebel - finished 08.08.26

CURRENTLY READING

Eleanor Anstruther, Fallout - started 05.05.26

Hannah Richell, The Peacock Summer - started 31.03.26
David Downing, Union Station - started 01.04.26
Claire Luchette, Agatha of Little Neon - started 02.04.26
Joyce Carol Oates (editor), The Best American Mystery Stories 2005 - started 02.04.26
Francine Prose, Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them - started 03.04.26
Jennifer Croft, Homesick - started 03.04.26
Irmgard Keun, The Man With the Kind Heart - started 04.04.26
Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth - started 03.04.26
Addie E Citchens, Dominion - started 25.04.26
Patrick Gale, Love Lane - started
Elizabeth von Arnim, Vera - started 04.04.26
Lydia Syson, Mr Peacock's Possessions - started 13.05.26
Patrick Gale, Love Lane - started 26.04.26
Cynthia Voigt, Dicey's Song - started 14.05.26
M L Stedman, A Far-Flung Life - started 14.05.26
Adelle Stripe, Base Notes: The Scents of a Life - started 15.05.26
Buchi Emecheta, In the Ditch ** - started 15.05.26
Edna O'Brien, Girls in Their Married Bliss - started 17.05.26
Abraham Verghese, Abscond - story - started 18.05.26
Willy Vlautin, The Left and the Lucky - started 04.06.26
Lucy Caldwell, Devotions: Eight Stories - started 07.06.26
Gillian Tindall, The Fields Beneath - started 06.06.26
Brit Bennett, The Mothers ** - started 09.06.26, reread - for 25 June
Jan Carson, Few and Far Between - started 10.06.26

NEXT UP

Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five ** - from 25 June for 23 July

* pages finished in May
* pages finished in June
* pages finished in 2026

10 books finished in May
2 books finished in June
12 books finished in June

* reviews in June
8 reviews in 2026

May: * pages (av: * pages/day), * books
June: * pages (av: * pages/day), * books, * reviews
2026: * pages (av: * pages/day), 64 books, 10 reviews

** = books for Reading Group at my local branch library

As you can see I'm not very good at reading them at the right time, but I love going to the group. Also, many are rereads - some of books I read as a student, others of books I read much more recently.

I suggested In the Ditch by Buchi Emecheta, about a young Nigerian woman in North London, living with her 5 kids in social housing, and sharing with her neighbours ideas about how to deal with the authorities. Everyone loved it, even and perhaps especially the experienced social worker. And I've just remembered, this and another linked novel were among Caroline's favourites in recent years.

If I haven't read a book I like exploring something maybe a bit different from what I would choose on my own, if I have, I want to know what others think.

Stephanie Dowrick is a writer and publisher who ran the Women's Press publishing company in the late 1970s. This company had various incarnations including being linked to Quartet Press, run by a man called Naim Attallah - but he seemed happy to let TWP stay independent.

Now several decades on, Stephanie Dowrick is seeking to build a more accurate archive and database: see links here:

https://thewomenspress.com/writersmemories/

I've created an LT list because I thought it would make it easier for me to add my many WP books, only done a few so far.

https://www.librarything.com/list/47915/all/Books-published-by-The-Womens-Press

Another reflective day today.

My mum's 82nd birthday. Missing her for nearly 10 years already.

And news has broken. I'm not posting links because I'm not seeking them out - the BBC should be a good place to look without too many popups - and their announcement was reasonably well phrased.

My sister's best friend Annabel Rook was murdered by her ex partner in the early hours of 17 June last year. He sent their kids round to my sister's and tried to blow up the house (part of the argument) with him in it. He survived. Annabel died. He was found guilty of murder last month. Now he is sentenced to 23 years in prison.

I am upset. Our mother would have been incandescent.

For further explanation, google

Annabel Rook (Say Her Name)
Clifton George
Mama Suze (Annabel and her friend set up this charity together, it's still going)
There are of course several generations of family affected, Annabel's family and my sister's family too. Which is why this is rather oblique.

ETA: I was just steered to the BBC's coverage of this. My sister Sian is named and quoted in the trial several times - she apparently gave a two hour witness statement. Annabel's parents and sister and her friend Catherine Milne spoke. Annabel and Catherine set up Mama Suze together: that voluntary organisation's work continues.

I am going to set up a small regular donation in Annabel's memory - it won't be very big but hopefully others will do the same.

https://www.mamasuze.org/donate

>78 SandDune: I am of course aware that Rhian left for the Greens and whilst some components of their platform I appreciate I couldn't leave Labour for them and I think their current leader is charismatic but strange.

Reform and their splinter party by the ghastly Lowe will cut each others throats and Andy Burnham will just about get elected. The country needs a new direction and I hope that he will shortly provide it.

>82 elkiedee: That is an awful story, Luci.

>83 PaulCranswick: I hope you're right about the outcome of the Makersfield election, however cynical I am.

>82 elkiedee: Oh dear, that is a horrendous situation for the families. What a nightmare.

>85 LovingLit: It's terrible for everyone who's been anywhere near it. I'm so upset for my sister, but proud as well. Sian must have spent weeks on end preparing - she was a witness in the criminal court, and Annabel's father, also a witness, was a top criminal judge too. She was up as a witness for 2 hours yesterday morning, and got the most named quotes in the BBC story, which I thought when I did finally read it was perfectly pitched.