otterley's challenge

I am awestruck (and slightly intimidated) by how imaginative and organised everyone on this list is. My aim is to be marginally less random in what I read in 2010, but the thought of mapping out a whole year's reading in advance makes me feel doomed to failure before I start. So I am starting very gently with the Guardian's list of '1000 novels everyone must read' - much as I hate those sorts of lists, I have to admit that there are a lot of books there that (a) look interesting and (b) I haven't read yet. And if I use their categories it leaves me just enough space to have some more random categories or cheats to allow me to go on choosing books completely serendipitously !

Category 1 - Crime

Book 1 - last seen wearing by colin dexter
Book 2 - the neon rain by james lee burke
Book 3 - devil in a blue dress by walter mosley
Book 4 - the secret agent by joseph conrad
Book 5 - red harvest by dashiell hammett
Book 6 - the tin roof blow down by james lee burke*
Book 7 - the long good-bye by raymond chandler*
Book 8 - greenmantle by john buchan
Book 9 - the remorseful day by colin dexter
Book 10 - dissolution by c j sansom

and my top five off the list altogether

in no particular order

lady audley's secret by m e braddon
murder must advertise by dorothy l sayers
the daughter of time by josephine tey
a taste for death by p d james
bones and silence by reginald hill

I would have preferred gaudy night, but that's not on the list. And an honourable mention to the tin roof blowdown - near miss

Category 2 - Family and Self

Book 1 - the professor's house by willa cather*
Book 2 - the gathering by anne enright
Book 3 - the black prince by iris murdoch
Book 4 - the history of mr polly by h g wells
Book 5 - any human heart by william boyd
Book 6 - the outsider by albert camus
Book 7 - a thousand acres by jane smiley*
Book 8 - the chateau by william maxwell
Book 9 - the blackwater lightship by colm toibin
Book 10 - i'll go to bed at noon by gerard woodward

I think the top five is pretty impossible for this category - proust v ballet shoes anyone? Today's go is..

cat's eye by margaret atwood
wise children by angela carter
invitation to the waltz by rosamond lehman
the golden notebook by doris lessing
remembrance of things past by marcel proust

Honorary mentions to the daisy chain, to the lighthouse and a thousand acres

Category 3 - Love

Hmmmm

Book 1 - the parasites by daphne du maurier*
Book 2 - cheri by colette
Book 3 - revolutionary road by richard yates*
Book 4 - the well of loneliness by radclyffe hall
Book 5 - rebecca by daphne du maurier
Book 6 - love for lydia by h. e. bates
Book 7 - strait is the gate by andre gide
Book 8 - breathing lessons by tylerann::anne tyler*
Book 9 - giovanni's room by james baldwin*
Book 10 - le grand meaulnes by alain-fournier

and the top five

gilead by marilynne robinson
i capture the castle by dodie smith
the wings of the dove by henry james
mansfield park by jane austen
possession by a s byatt

runners up - clarissa, the pursuit of love, the good soldier

Category 4 - Sci fi and fantasy

One of the more challenging ones for me...

Book 1 - millennium people by j g ballard
Book 2 - the children of men by jamesbaronesspd::p d james
Book 3 - the day of the triffids by john wyndham*
Book 4 - uncle silas by sheridan le fanu
Book 5 - ingenious pain by andrew miller
Book 6 - beyond black by hilary mantel*
Book 7 - the midwich cuckoos by john wyndham
Book 8 - the strange case of dr jekyll and mr hyde by robert louis stephenson
Book 9 - a connecticut yankee at king arthur's court by mark twain
Book 10 - the man who was thursday by g k chesterton

And my top 5

the blind assassin by margaret atwood
the magus by john fowles
nights at the circus by angela carter
melmoth the wanderer by charles maturin
the sword in the stone by t h white

Hon mentions to orlando and the chronicles of narnia

Category 5 - State of the nation

Book 1 - the book of daniel by e.l. doctorow
Book 2 - the grass is singing by doris lessing
Book 3 - the group by mary mccarthy
Book 4 - a kestrel for a knave by barry hines
Book 5 - go tell it on the mountain by james baldwin*
Book 6 - july's people by nadine gordimer
Book 7 - the plague by albert camus
Book 8 - independence day by richard ford*
Book 9 - last september by elizabeth bowen
Book 10 - a kind of loving by stan barstow

And my favourites from the category (a real heavyweight battle)

underworld by don delillo
middlemarch by george eliot
the mayor of casterbridge by thomas hardy
vanity fair by william thackeray
the virgin in the garden by a s byatt

runners up bleak house, midnight's children and, from this year, go tell it on the mountain

Category 6 - War and travel

Book 1 - the african queen by c s forester
Book 2 - the sheltering sky by paul bowles
Book 3 - master and commander by patrick o'brian
Book 4 - the cruel sea by nicholas monsarrat
Book 5 - day by a l kennedy*
Book 6 - sophie's choice by william styron
Book 7 - the ship by c s forester
Book 8 - huckleberry finn by mark twain*
Book 9 - count belisarius by robert graves
Book 10 - from here to eternity by james jones

and the top 5

war and peace by leo tolstoy
parade's end by ford madox ford
the siege of krishnapur by j g farrell
nostromo by josepth conrad
men at arms by evelyn waugh

nearest miss - justine by lawrence durrell

a bit of a boys' category really

Category 7 - Comedy

Book 1 - lake wobegon days by garrison keillor
Book 2 - moo by jane smiley
Book 3 - the diary of a provincial lady by e m delafield
Book 4 - the history of the world in 101/2 chapters by julian barnes*
Book 5 - the curious incident of the dog in the night time by mark haddon
Book 6 - the uncommon reader by alan bennett
Book 7 - whisky galore by compton mackenzie
Book 8 - the horse's mouth by joyce cary
Book 9 - travels with my aunt by graham greene*
Book 10 - bright lights big city by jay mcinerney

and the favourites

scoop by evelyn waugh
barchester towers by anthony trollope
solomon gursky was here by mordecai richler
the code of the woosters by p g wodehouse
the towers of trebizond by rose macaulay

runners up a dance to the music of time cold comfort farm and changing places

and now for the three bonus categories

Category 8 - books on the unread pile

a bit scary given how long some of them have been lurking there...

Book 1 divisadero by michael ondaatje
Book 2 home by marilynne robinson
Book 3 the crowded bed by mary cavanagh
Book 4 nature and art bu elizabeth inchbald
Book 5 peyton place by grace metalious
Book 6 a shabby genteel story by william makepeace thackeray
Book 7 philip by william makepeace thackeray
Book 8 stamboul train by graham greene
Book 9 strong hollow by linda little
Book 10 the lifted veil by george eliot

Category 9 - retreads

...or more specifically books I haven't read since I left university (and will now have a very different perspective on!)

Book 1 - excellent women by barbara pym
Book 2 - a handful of dust by evelyn waugh
Book 3 - george passant by c p snow
Book 4 - the catcher in the rye by j d salinger
Book 5 - the middle age of mrs eliot by angus wilson
Book 6 - at lady molly's by antony powell
Book 7 - a wedding of cousins by emma tennant
Book 8 - close quarters by goldingwilliam::william golding
Book 9 - the heat of the day by bowenelizabeth::elizabeth bowen
Book 10 - a month in the country by j l carr

Category 10 - books of general randomness

does exactly what it says on the tin

Book 1 - Hangman's Holiday by Dorothy L Sayers
Book 2 - The Wilding by Maria McCann
Book 3 - Berry and Co by Dornford Yates
Book 4 - this bleeding city by alex preston
Book 5 - dawkins' god genes memes and the meaning of life by alister mcgrath
Book 6 - the woman who shot mussolini by frances stonor saunders
Book 7 - past imperfect by julian fellowes
Book 8 - travels with herodotus by ryszard kapuscinski
Book 9 - midnight fugue by reginald hill
Book 10 - the reserve by russell banks
Book 11 - angel with two faces by nicola upson
Book 12 - what to do when someone dies by nicci french
Book 13 - sprig muslin by georgette heyer
Book 14 - is there a god? by richard swinburne
Book 15 - altermodern by nicolas bourriaud
Book 16 - deep waters by kate charles
Book 17 - on travel by bycharlesdickens::charles dickens
Book 18 - slaughter in the cotswolds by rebecca tope
Book 19 - ghost walk by marianne macdonald
Book 20 - frederica by georgette heyer
Book 21 - why study the past by rowan williams
Book 22 morte d'arthur the legend of king arthur and his knights of the round table by sir thomas malory adopted for the stage by mike poulton
Book 23 - o gentle death by janet neel
Book 24 - jane fairfax by joan aiken
Book 25 - the lacuna by barbara kingsolver
Book 26 - whatever you love by louise doughty
Book 27 - the last dickens by matthew pearl
Book 28 - the pantomime life of joseph grimaldi by andrew mcconell stott
Book 29 - u is for undertow by sue grafton
Book 30- - the glass room by simon mawer
Book 31 - wigs on the green by nancy mitford
Book 32 - the city and the city by china mieville
Book 33 - was jesus god? by richard swinburne
Book 34 - the way through the mountains by elizabeth ironside
Book 35 - shadow of death by alison joseph
Book 36 - that paris year by joanna biggar
Book 37 - trading up by candace bushnell
Book 38 - alexandria by lindsay davis
Book 39 - coroner's pidgin by margery allingham
Book 40 - two for sorrow by nicola upson
Book 41 - quilts 1700-2010 by sue pritchard
Book 42 - the last to leave by curzonclare::clare curzon
Book 43 - swimming to ithaca by simon mawer
Book 44 - buried for pleasure by edmund crispin
Book 45 - sovereign by c j sansom
Book 46 - complicit by nicci french

Category 8 - book 1

divisadero by michael ondaatje

Only lurking around for six months or so, but they all count..

It is always rather embarrassing not quite to 'get' what it is about a book that is so well reviewed, particularly when that experience leaves you feeling a bit intellectually inadequate. I found this book (a subtle grouping of interconnected novellas above love and lust, place and time) difficult to engage with. In particular, the scenes set in France felt very cliched to me - do we really need yet more exquisite writing about the simple pleasures of the French countryside? Having just driven through some of it, I feel the book failed to engage with, for example, the large numbers of le Macdonalds and out of town superstore sheds that exist alongside the charming stone buildings and local cheeses in most of rural France! Though perhaps the fantasy element of it was intentional, aimed at juxtaposing an idealistic vision of France with the more rough hewn depiction of America. The American scenes and characters felt more vital - the world of gambling and organised crime, alongside the hard work of country life and a set of more or less inarticulate relationships. So while I admired the craft of construction and wordplay in the book, it never took life for me.

Crime Book 1 - last seen wearing by colin dexter

I remain firmly convinced that Dexter would have lapsed into obscurity without the far superior TV adaptations. The Morse of this book is a disagreeable, slightly pervy middle aged man with a crossword obsession - much less appealing to the predominately female fan base of the detective genre than John Thaw's tortured romantic. Positives about the book are its depiction of a rather broader and more realistic Oxford (comprehensives and rubbish dumps didn't feature in the TV adaptation of this one!) and its deft plotting, largely translated without change to the screen

Love -Book 1 - the parasites by daphne du maurier

A very unexpected book. Having read a couple of du Mauriers I was expecting brooding melodrama, and instead got a tricky comedy of manners with a bitter edge. The sibling parasites are drawn to fascinate rather than to emotionally engage, and so they do - together with period detail that glitters and glamours, but again with a seedy edge of neglect and regret.

Category 10 - books of general randomness

Book 1 - Hangman's Holiday by Dorothy L Sayers

Short stories, some featuring Peter Wimsey, others featuring salesman extraordinaire Montague Egg. Mr Egg was new to me in this book and, I thought, rather engaging despite the slightly heavy handed humour around him (the references to the rhyming salesman's guide, in particular). As ever with Sayers, there is a strong emphasis on technical trickery and on detail both outlandish and domestic. More for completists than a classic.

Book 2 - The Wilding by Maria McCann

An Early Reviewer book...

The Wilding, a metaphor that runs through the book, refers both to a wild apple tree that may or may not bear good fruit, and to the wild, rough living Tamar Seaton, who may or may not be redeemed from a life of brutal poverty and corruption.
Protagonist Jonathan Dymond transforms many kinds of apples through his press into different ciders with great expertise, but is ill equipped to deal with women with such skill. His journey through the novel, in pursuit of his family's secrets, leaves him floundering (at one place literally, in a cider barrel), and questionably wiser at the end.

McCann sets herself a challenge with a first person flawed, and rather naive, narrator, through whom the secrets are revealed. She handles this well technically for the most part (though the story's need for a cave dwelling beggar woman to turn author of many pages of articulate prose is far fetched), but it is difficult to feel much sympathy with Dymond who comes across as cosseted, sulky and pettish, to the detriment of the book.

The book is lightly set in the 17th century - there are some period references to the practice of cider making and other parts of rural life, but the language and morality is almost entirely modern. This makes the book both accessible and readable, and McCann drives the plot forward effectively, making it a good bedtime read - but not a book to leave too much savour in the mouth.

Books on the shelf - number 2

home by marilynne robinson

Another extraordinary and beautiful book. I found it less unbearably affecting than Gilead, perhaps because death - while a presence throughout - is not so immanent as it appears in the former book and the tone feels more diffuse and less intense. To find books that deal so openly, precisely and wisely with religion, spirituality and the deepest realities of human nature is rare and wonderful.

Rereads -
Book 1 - excellent women by barbara pym

Barbara Pym's books cut too close to the knuckle to be 'cosy' - for every comic set piece there is an undertone of, perhaps not desperation, but certainly the fear of 'making do' and of isolation, and the different compromises that so many women end up making for fear of something worse. While these are period pieces (the bedsit, the post war deprivations), the emotions they deal with are not.

I absolutely love Michael Ondaatje, but I agree with you on Divisadero. It is definitely his weakest novel. If you want to try him again, In the Skin of a Lion, The English Patient, and Anil's Ghost are all amazing.

Thanks Cait - I might try to return to them - I read the English Patient and In the skin of a Lion when I was in my early 20s and didn't get a huge amount out of them - but absolutely loved the film of the English Patient (which may be heretical...!)

Category 9 - Book 2

This is at the moment being very strongly influenced by books I got for Christmas (will refocus on the Guardian categories soon!)

a handful of dust by evelyn waugh

Darkly cynical, Waugh portrays a world where appearance (chromium plated walls and flashy London flats, appearing at the 'right party' with the 'right person') rules, where tragedy strikes suddenly, knocking the world out of kilter in very unexpected ways, and where nothing in the end is real or valuable. Waugh's world of high society is remarkably contemporary - the Peaches Geldofs and Henry Conways of today's London society would be at home with Mr Beaver and Mrs Beaver's work at Hetton would feature in the Sunday supplements. Waugh tells us that the world of chivalry and tradition is equally arbitrary, a mirage in the jungle, and provides no alternative in a remarkably unsettling and uncomfortable novel. Which is, of course, also very funny.

Family and self - book 1

the professor's house by willa cather

A fascinating and elusive book. Cather writes with such care, in her physical descriptions - from fashionable decor to the wide open spaces of the American west - in the structure of the book and her characterisation - depicting a wide range of characters with such care, from the title character to the minor walk on one page parts. She puts together apparently widely divergent stories, bringing into them recurrent themes of identity, industry and work, domestic living and family, comradeship and collegiality, control and structure. At the same time, the book never feels artificially programmatic, but works on both an intellectual and emotional level.

Hi otterley, very nice reviews. I have never read any Pym or Waugh but you make them sound so enticing!

Crime - Book 2

the neon rain by james lee burke

First book in a series, and the first James Lee Burke I've read. Not my normal cup of tea, but the book sucked me in - it's very cinematic in its descriptions of place - New Orleans and the bayous, swamps and lush country - and in the hard boiled (but not gruesome) violence and macho posturing. THere's enough suspense, cynicism, world weariness and energy to keep the reader engrossed...

Thank you - definitely recommended (but possibly in small(ish) doses)!

Re Message 13 - I so agree with you about the Dexter novels - he must thank his lucky stars that the TV portrayal of Morse is so compelling. Usually, the opposite is true and a good book loses a lot in translation to a TV series. It makes me quite glad that some of my favourites (Peter Robinson's Inspector Banks, Mark Billingham's Tom Thorne and Lindsey Davis's Marcus Didius Falco for instance) have escaped death by mini series.

Some really interesting books on here I haven't heard of. I'm reading another Barbara Pym book this year, as well as a different Evelyn Waugh. Your two picks will have to go on the TBR list.

Books of general randomness - 3

Berry and Co by Dornford Yates

(Still reading my holiday gifts - a lot of books this year - and snowbound - in Oxford! Will be getting to the library this weekend and getting back to more discipline!)

With an utterly distinctive style, Dornford Yates mixes chivalry, 'banter' and lyrical description in what can be an unsettling mix but fits these short stories of that short period between the wars. Affluent and idle, Berry and Co while away their time solving mysteries and getting in and out of scrapes. Perhaps the star of the show is Nobby - the crime solving and endearing dog who takes centre stage quite often enough - Yates is much more besotted with the hound than any of his elegant ladies...

Re message 25 - Some more of my favourites there - I have a very strong mental picture in particular of Inspector Banks, Annie, WInsome and all the other characters, and perhaps even more the landscape. I'm amazed they've not been filmed, but as you say quite glad they haven't!

Retreads - 3

CP Snow kicks off the Strangers and Brothers sequence with a book that sees his self effacing lead character, Lewis Eliot, take very much a back seat. Through George Passant and his circle of aspiring and restless young people in a provincial English town between the wars, Snow constructs a story about the conflict between high aspirations and low compromises; sensuality and religious morality; the grubby compromises that life, love and the need for money inflict on many of the most idealistic and charismatic of individuals. Snow's writing is, as ever, low key, but he writes about politics and people negotiating their way through complex social and family lives in a uniquely subtle, compromised and real way.

Books of general randomness - 4

this bleeding city by alex preston

My excuse for this one is that it's an early reviewers book. I am honestly reading a book off the Guardian list as well!

'I have been here before' , I thought, as I opened the book to find yet another tale of a poor, naive, yet handsome and unaccountably intriguing and attractive young man taken up by some bright young things with bad habits and lured astray, away from the paths of middle class virtue instilled into him by his parents in a dull, yet worthy, seaside town. So far, so predictable, but the book grew on me.
Preston has lucked in with a (presumably at least partly) autobiographical look at the world of hedge funds and the city in a time that goes from boom to bust - and he writes about that world very accessibly and intelligibly. It left me at least with a feeling of more insight into the cocaine highs and the 2am in the office lows; the gravy train of greed and the downward slope to commitment. His central character is mostly unlikeable - who could love a confused, screwed up dilettante who manages to screw up everything and everyone around him - but drawn sharply and convincingly, as are most of the male characters (the women are in general terrible cliches - termagents, earth mothers, femmes fatales). And the plot is - thankfully - not as straightforward or predictable as the modern morality play ambience would suggest.
He captures the grubby pleasures of binges in the city and the come down in the English countryside well - with intense, but mostly unpretentious visual language and imagery. The main weakness is the dialogue, which is absolutely dreadful - great slabs of undifferentiated prose, which would be absolutely impossible to speak. And the French leading lady even says 'Bof' - more than once! As a first novel, I think this actually has charm and talent, despite the flaws - I shall be interested to see what he does off home turf....

What is the book called?

Oops sorry - it's This Bleeding City by Alex Preston. There are three reviews of it up now...

War and travel book one

the african queen by c s forester

An epic journey through Africa, ostensibly driven by the patriotic desire to torpedo the German boat that stands in the way of the British war effort in Africa, but actually driven by two strong personalities. In Rose Forester creates a ferociously competent and driven female lead character, who is also both sensual and maternal to the cockeny Charly Allnut, who finally finds a purpose after a life of knocking about the empire. Forester drives the plot forward with the boat and this odd couple romance has an unusual savour and relish.

War and travel book 2

the sheltering sky by paul bowles

Rich and purposeless American drifters, Kit and Port Moresby and their occasional companion Tunner are strangely faceless protagonists in a book that erodes their lives with the Sahara desert they idly wander into. Bowles juxtaposes the civilisation they bring with them (lipsticks, dancing shoes, gowns, money that eventually becomes useless) with the unchanging and impenetrable world of the Sahara. Disengaged French colonial officials, and the appalling English mother and son they meet on the way, seem to cope by skating on the top of this dangerous world, untouched by it. The tropes of Port's stolen passport , Kit's increasingly useless valise and Tunner's telegrams tell the stories of identity, loss and crossed wires.

I found Kit and Port strangely faceless and impenetrable - and found Kit's near ending in sexual thrall to a Bedouin difficult to stomach in many ways - but the book was in the main compelling.

Sci Fi and Fantasy - Book 1

This is probably the category I was looking forward to least (and the one of which I'd read least, which is a mixed blessing) - so I was actually pleasantly surprised by my first dip into the waters -

millennium people by j g ballard

I thought this was provocative and compelling; a book that engages humorously and challengingly with modern anomie and our current post Marxist, post Thatcher state of apathy. So few writers today really try to engage with the social world in which we live, that Ballard's fantastical take on it seems all the more refreshing and unsettling.

Love - Book 2

cheri by colette

A very rich piece of patisserie, which might describe the novel and both of its main characters, ageing courtesan Lea and her lover Cheri. Colette is merciless in her description of ageing and delusion, in a world of sensuality and appearance.

#36 Millennium People sounds interesting, especially as I seem to read very little fiction concetrating on modern issues.

Yes, it was intriguing - revolution amongst the middle classes in Chelsea village - what happens when the doctors, teachers and curators go on strike and build the barricades!

Comedy - Book 1

lake wobegon days by garrison keillor

Perhaps you need to be a fan of the radio show to really 'get' this - it is long, and rambles (intentionally, as Keillor is obviously a very technically accomplished writer), and maybe you just have to give it a bit more time and love than I did....Comedy is probably the most subjective style of writing there is and this just wasn't personally my thing..

Family and self - Book 2

the gathering by anne enright

Clearly a very polarising book. Much to admire and to appreciate in the writing and the complex web of construction, but the emotional centre (the traumatising events that led to the suicide of Liam Hegarty) feels too much of a cliche to hold the fragments and dreams of story together. Enright deals deftly, originally and humorously with Irish story telling norms in some places (the priest sibling losing his faith, the Celtic tiger bourgeois, the alcoholic sister, the country farmer uncle) and I would have preferred more of that to the gloom that more predictably suffuses the story...

Took a while to get into this and ended up with various displacement rereads and the Winter Olympics - can't resist those biathletes...

State of the Nation - book 1

the book of daniel by e.l. doctorow

I struggled at the start to engage with this book, but was glad to have persevered by about half way through and then compelled to the end. The eponymous Daniel starts off as a fiercely dislikeable, rebellious young man, angry and taking out his anger on those around him - the teenage wife he sexually humiliates, the baby whose life he risks and the adoptive parents he goads and taunts. Stylistically Doctorow veers between first and third person, individual stories and geopolitics, present and past, creating further dislocation and dissonance. But as the book focuses more on the betrayal of Daniel's Isaacson parents, naively strong individuals caught up in events beyond their control, and the devastating effects such loss has on the children they leave behind, it is emotionally wrenching, fierce and sad. The end gives an unexpected, and uneasy closure; the future will not be untroubled, but is at least possible.

War and Travel - book 3

master and commander by patrick o'brian

I enjoyed this book much more than I thought I would. I gave myself permission not to worry too much about the technical detail and language, and enjoyed the characterisation, well paced plotting and salty depictions of naval life. Like Georgette Heyer, O'Brian is obviously in love with his period and its language, which is enjoyable if sometimes a little bewildering to landlubbers...

Book 5 - Books of general randomness

A category which is going to go way about ten books..

dawkins' god genes memes and the meaning of life by alister mcgrath

A very articulate and well argued riposte to Dawkins' science, from a scientist and theologian (yes, the same person).

Books of general randomness - book 6

another early reviewer book...

the woman who shot mussolini by frances stonor saunders

This book tells the story of a forgotten episode in history - a middle aged Irishwoman, apparently on something of a whim, though with real intent, shoots Mussolini in the nose - one of a series of failed assassination attempts on Il Duce in the 1920s. Their paths diverge wildly and Saunders follows them before and afterwards to sad and anticlimactic ends.

Shortly after finishing this I read a review of this in the Guardian - http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/... - by Lucy Hughes Hallett, whose Cleopatra I very much enjoyed. Hughes-Hallett finds much to enjoy and admire in this book; unfortunately my views were more or less diametrically opposite. Violet's early life seems to be described more in the words of Virginia Woolf than in hers (a woman different in practically every way to Violet other than in suicidal impulses); when Saunders describes the 'hospital' into which Violet is placed at the end of her life (in the 1940s and 1950s), she quotes from a social event there in 1862; when talking about Violet's genuine mental instability she compares it to the assaults on women's bodies in the Victorian age under the guise of curing insanity and hysteria. I found these constant comparisons dislocating and distracting, rather than broadening. Equally, I found the ever present thesis that Violet should have been treated differently wearing and, again, insensitive to the time and context in which the events of the book took place. Saunders writes here as an advocate, rather than a biographer - which may well polarise her readership.

I found the treatment of Mussolini much more to my taste - it is impressionistic and anecdotal, told in vignette - but also a more grounded and rounded portrait of a man who was all show and essentially without substance, though substantial enough in the deadly consequences of his strange imagination.

Familyl and self - book 3

the black prince by iris murdoch

A fascinating and elusive book; Murdoch's rich style, dazzling vocal gymnastics and ability to mix comedy, philosophy and emotion in a bewildering - yet strangely compelling and readable - whole, is unique. The Black Prince is a book to be admired rather than liked, it is uncomfortable, erudite and plays outrageous tricks on the reader. Murdoch is a knowing puppet master, playing both her characters and readers with great skill and legerdemain.

Comedy - book 2

moo by jane smiley

Enjoyable, cleverly plotted and structured. I think the satire is a bit too gentle and loving for my tastes - while there are plenty of digs at everyone from left to right, rich to poor, and plenty of sharp observational comedy, in the end I prefer a bit more metaphorical blood on the carpet .

Family and self - book 4

A writer I'd completely missed somehow before, but one I'd like to come back to some time...

the history of mr polly by h g wells

Mr Polly comes from a beautifully delineated and described Edwardian world, of bicycling, picnics, tea shops and front parlours, plate glass windows, small retailers and half day closing. But his struggle - of a man who yearns inarticulately (or over articulately in Mr Polly's case) for something better and beyond a life of struggling, indigestion and unhappiness - is much more universal. Wells tells us that it is possible to change our lot, even if it requires slaying dragons, and even if it's not what we intended at the time. Mr Polly's travails may be funny and bathetic, and his triumph resolutely small scale, but Wells creates an unlikely hero and everyman in the Potwell Inn's potboy.

Retreads - book 4

the catcher in the rye by j d salinger

I fell in love with this book at 15 or 16 (I think I read it about ten times in a row) and decided to come back to it for the first time since then after Salinger's death this year. Sometimes when you come back to books after a long time away, you love them in a different way - this was more like a first boyfriend - you can absolutely remember that you found them wonderful, but don't quite get it anymore.

Crime - book 3

devil in a blue dress by walter mosley

Easy Rawlins, looking to become a respectable property owner, gets sucked into the underbelly of Los Angeles - a world of corruption and of people doing what they have to do to get by in a routinely segregated society. Clever, dense plotting and a vivid sense of place and time. Without having seen the movie adaptation, this was a very cinematic book, vivid with smell, touch and the soundtrack of the blues.

I'd never heard of that book by Wells. It sounds quite different from the science fiction he is generally known for.

@50 ooh I have that on my wishlist, can't wait to get hold it now!

I have it set for sometime later in the year for my Book Watch category. Really looking forward to it now. Thanks for your comments otterley.

@51 - as far as I know (mostly from reading the introduction...) he wrote a few other contemporary, 'light' social commentary type books, including Kipps and Ann Veronica. Am definitely tempted to read these, as well as having a stab at the sci fi, which is much less my usual thing...

Love Book 3 - revolutionary road by richard yates

It was interesting to read this after the history of mr polly. Both deal with central characters with inarticulated longings and aspirations for something better than they have. Mr Polly could have ended in tragedy and suicide, but Wells chose life and offered him happiness in a small, but contented and in a way heroic life. Yates takes the opposite approach

Yates writes compellingly about ordinary lives made tragic through the inability to fill the emptiness inside. Frank and April Wheeler never quite get it right as a suburban couple, and fall far short in their inarticulate and unfocused strivings for something better. Casual sex, home improvements, amateur theatricals, family planning, the lure of Paris, the birth of computers and PR, always go wrong, as if Frank and April together act as a distorting mirror to reality. Yates' writing is simple and accessible and he holds the readers' interest compellingly in what could be seen as a banal narrative, with few characters and less action.

Finally, it seemed to me that Yates kept his female characters, including April, at arm's length. We rarely, if ever, take their internal perspective; and when we get a lot of detail about Frank's work, we get little or no description of the life April must have been leading at home day to day. She remains strangely opaque, a strong physical presence, but - perhaps until the end - essentially mysterious.

State of the nation book 2

the grass is singing by doris lessing

A book I would probably have got round to some time - I am a huge admirer of Lessing's work and was absolutely delighted when she entirely deservedly won the Nobel Prize. I have always been rather embarrassed at having had the amazing opportunity to have dinner with her before I'd managed to read any of her books - but she was perfectly charming despite this...

It is hard to accept that this is a first novel - there's nothing immature, or needing development here. Rather Lessing's unique voice springs from the pages with all its characteristic qualities. Descriptively she paints an evocative picture of Africa, without sentimentality in her descriptions of how the land is despoiled by its white farmers, worked by its black labourers, and precariously tenanted by humanity (as Mary imagines the insects and the sun and the earth inexorably swallowing up her and Dick's poor farm house). The sun beats down and the rains come or pass over; the crops grow or fail, and humans thrive, fail and go mad living their little lives under the huge sky, both beautiful and terrifying.
As a white African, and a woman, Lessing's work is often seen through the prism of sex and race, and through Mary in particular Lessing examines the terror of the 'other' , power relations through the sjambok and through psychological, unspoken warfare; and the narrowness of the choices available to a single woman in a small country where everyone knows everyone. Social class and commerce also play a key part in the novel; Mary and Dick play the game particularly badly, negotiating their poor hand into disaster, paying the price for no particular sin in poverty, madness and death.
A disturbing, but energising read.

Love book 3

the well of loneliness by radclyffe hall

There is not much to say about the Well of Loneliness that hasn't been said already - had it not been subject to a notorious court case and banned because of its shocking subject matter, and had it not offered a fascinating window into a marginalised and criminalised lifestyle, it would have been forgotten. Hall's prose is overwrought and her story completely without humour or perspective. Her heroine is fabulously wealthy, charismatic and talented; her depictions of the countryside lush to the point of parody (Stella Gibbons perhaps?) - and the air of tragedy around her lesbianism feels excessive even in a less tolerant society than today's (wealth and social status have always protected 'eccentricity' in the upper classes). The scenes when Stephen served in the war and the depictions of the gay demi-monde in Paris were genuinely interesting and described with an economy and vividness absent from the nostalgic glow or breast beating that comprises the vast majority of the novel.

9th random book

midnight fugue by reginald hill

A good read for the journey home from holiday

Hill can't resist playing games with structure and narrative, here compressing multiple narratives into a single day, playing with musical metaphors and throughout creating a compelling detective narrative, mixed with the affectionate and convincing depiction of old favourite characters and the introduction of sharply drawn new ones. The balance between traditional and innovative works better here than in some of Hill's more recent novels, and there was a real feeling of warmth mixed with the unflinching depiction of real and contemporary sin.

10th random book (though it was tempting to count it as one that had been lying around, I did buy it this year...)

the reserve by russell banks

Banks gives us period detail, romance, beautiful scenery, tragedy, social commentary and the shadow of war; the images of air, water and earth pervade the novel with the brittleness of the people who walk through it for a brief time. Yet it never really comes together, or comes alive; the characters are over described and inert and the narrative too programmatic. Disappointing.

Comedy, book 3

diary of a provincial lady by e m delafield

Enjoyable and fascinating window into another world - and at the same time very reminiscent of a lot of modern newspaper columns, from Bridget Jones onwards, both stylistically and in content..

Sci fi and fantasy book 2 (at last!)

the children of men by p d james

Anyone coming to the book after seeing the film must have had a rather baffling and disjointed experience - a narrative that is almost exactly the same, but a tone that is entirely different. James writes in the same style and with the same mannerisms as she uses for her crime novels, but writes about very familiar surroundings and people distorted by an inexplicable event - the end of fertility. She writes compassionately and eloquently about a world where dystopia is - perhaps - benignly managed, dealing with the big issues of religion, politics, power and morality through what is essentially a fable. Unsettling.

Family and self book 5 (at last, half way through one of my 'real' categories!

any human heart by william boyd

A very readable and accessible book; Boyd is foot perfect as he creates a single narrative voice to carry over 70 very eventful years. His not entirely sympathetic protagonist may waltz through Europe and America with Picasso and the Rolling Stones, but his mortality and bereavements are universal. Boyd is, ultimately, kind to Logan Mountstewart - perhaps because we all need some kindness in our lives, particularly at the end..

Random book 11 (I knew this would happen...)

angel with two faces by nicola upson

A bit too reliant on characters being willing to share their innermost secrets with people they'd known for five minutes. As with her last novel, Upson deploys the misery narratives of modern detective drama in this period novel, which creates some jarring. The plotting is a definite improvement - perhaps rather too much of it, but all the pieces knit together well and deftly. There is also a real sense of place and the beauty and strangeness of Cornwall is portrayed very evocatively. I am still baffled, however, as to the use of Josephine Tey. She is really rather a cipher in the book, and it's difficult to understand why using a 'real' character was necessary - an imaginary character in the same setting might have flown much more freely...

Love book 5 - another category half way there

rebecca by daphne du maurier

Odd to read a book for the first time, when I know the film so well. For any lovers of the Hitchcock version, I remain convinced that it's a note perfect adaptation; this gave it more hinterland. When I first read about Manderley (rather than seeing it through a lens) it reminded me of the wild house Mr Rochester ends up in, when half blinded and saved by Jane Eyre. I think Du Maurier wants us to see these parallels; a mousy wife who is not what she might seem; a first wife whose presence is strong whether alive, mad or dead; a husband with a secret; even the dog. A bold endeavour, but Rebecca - for all it's seen as a genre book - does not suffer from the comparison.

War and travel book 4

the cruel sea by nicholas monsarrat

A book that should be read, showing the extremes of suffering and endurance experienced by those at the less glamorous end of World War II. I finished it with an enormous amount of respect, gratitude and admiration for the men of the convoys, moved by the pain and death described so compellingly and directly.

Random book 12

(I know they don't count, but I keep reading them so I may as well add them

what to do when someone dies by nicci french

For those who like Nicci French books, this delivers as expected - feisty female hero, lots of descriptions of food, misunderstandings with apparently unsympathetic police, more descriptions of clothes and houses and loyal friends, psychotherapy and a situation that the heroine needs to resolve (to the incomprehension of everyone else) with a nice twist at the end. A good read - though I always end up reading these books and feeling a bit inadequate in comparison to the heroine, no matter how complicated or tragic her life might be. Nicci French does good Sunday magazine lifestyle, mixed with suspense.

Sci fi and fantasy book 3

Still going...

the day of the triffids by john wyndham

This has some similarities with PD James' Children of Men in that it doesn't aim for what we tend to think of as the classic dystopian vision of a world hit by inexplicable disaster, but presents a 'what if' scenario where very normal people are caught up in extraordinary events. Wyndham's characters are banal and that enables him to play with themes on the environment, cold war terror, technology and the vulnerability of human civilisation. The beauty of the novel is its simplicity - mix an alien life form with something as apparently simple as blindness, show our utter dependence on something as random and vulnerable as sight, and you have a fascinating and thought provoking classic.

Crime - book 4

the secret agent by joseph conrad

Contrary to a lot of other reviewers, I found this one very hard to read. Hence the numbers of random books read at the same time...
I remember loving nostromo when I first read it (less so the second), but otherwise I don't find Conrad a writer that I love or find easy to read - though I do admire him...

A lot of reviews of the Secret Agent will tell you what it means - that's it's uncannily prescient about the post 9/11 world, or that it prefigures the fall into madness of Europe in 1914, or that it tells you what terror is all about. But it's much slipperier than that. For me, it read as if Conrad puts a murky corner of a dark and depressing London under a microscope that show us much and explains nothing. Characters pulse into over coloured life, move in unexpected directions and scuttle or fade off - and when the microscope moves on, so will the dance of the microbes, in strange ways that might, surprisingly, prove significant once in a while, but are more often purely inwardly important. Profoundly trivial, frighteningly mediocre, the Secret Agent is about ordinariness in caricature...

Crime - book 5

Another category half way there. This has been an interesting category - I read a lot of detective fiction, so what's left unread on the list is not what I'd call my cup of tea...

red harvest by dashiell hammett

Like a game of chess, with live ammunition, broads with laddered stockings and messy hair, bootleggers with phony printing sets, keystone cops with empty pockets and the upstanding young hero gets shot off stage before the game begins. Last man standing's a loser...

Family and self book 6

the outsider by albert camus

First Camus I've read since being forced to study Les Justes at school. Any book loses its charm after being read very slowly for almost an entire year, so a lot of aversion therapy to get over...

An excellent translation of a very sharp, vivid and unsettling book.

Retreads book 5

the middle age of mrs eliot by angus wilson

And I have absolutely no recollection of ever reading this...

This book comes from the middle of Angus Wilson's career, when he was relatively prolific and - as Mrs Eliot - verging on middle age. As befits a titular character, Meg Eliot is at the centre of the book which takes a triptych form - the mise en scene, when she is queen bee of her circle; the crisis, when, bereaved, she alienates herself to the point of breakdown and the resolution, when she finds a different place for herself in the world. As the book moves to a conclusion her (also bereaved) brother becomes the heart of the novel, as she finally decides to step out of the picture into silence. She is a curiously elusive character for someone so relentlessly introspective, as indeed is her brother. They both seem fey, unfixed, curiously judgmental, trapped in a sort of limbo - and somehow aware that they are trapped. I found this a very difficult book to like. The characters are resolutely unsympathetic and difficult to believe (though we are aware that we are watching from Meg's very skewed perspective, which may not be skewed in the way she thinks it is) and the book is very long and descriptive, endlessly analysing with very little action. It seems so embedded in the social mores and nuances of its day that it feels dry and desiccated; terrible things happen, emotions are stretched to their limits, but the only point where I felt moved was when Meg broke down completely. Wilson somehow manages to deaden the novel - at least partly to mirror the near death and rebirth of his heroine - but from fifty years away his dead hand, weighed down further by the manners, mores and material possessions of the 1950s feels a heavy burden for the reader to bear.

Comedy book 4

a history of the world in 101/2 chapters by julian barnes

A clever and deceptively easy read. Barnes plays with different voices and kinds of narrative; interlocking phrases and themes, creating echoes and resonances throughout history - the peripheral and the marginal taking the centre from the start. History goes on while we are doing other things. Barnes uses comedy and bathos alongside a meditation on love; shows us the ability of humans to sail on while terrible things occur , taking us from the deluge to heaven along some quirky and unexpected paths

Random book 17

Another early reviewer book. What's a girl to do?
on travel by charles dickens

On travel gives the reader a burst of Dickens, travelling round the world in reality or vicariously. Being Dickens, he experiences a cross channel boat trip or a trip to America as if it was a voyage into unchartered territory - terrible, comic and common place at the same time. The energy and momentum comes hurtling off the page at the reader. The carefully chosen vignettes here give us armchair bound travellers in time a glimpse into a very unreliable narrator's version of the Victorian world, where steam travel was shrinking the world at an unimaginable pace.

This Hesperus volume is beautifully designed and handsomely put together - a treat that made me want to return to Dickens' novels, nourished by seeing how his imagination turned reality into both fantasy and rich material to be mined for his fictional worlds.

Comedy book 5

hurrah - another one half way there

the curious incident of the dog in the night time by mark haddon

I did this the wrong way round - reading his second book first. That was a book club book greeted with general derision - relentlessly banal, sub nick hornby. And of course this book has been raved about so much that it was almost a disincentive ever to get round to reading it - it would have to be a let down. So the suburban setting of this book brought back a horrible feeling of deja vu. I did find it moving and technically very well done....

Family and self book 7

a thousand acres by jane smiley

I thought this was head and shoulders above the other two books of hers I've read, which were enjoyable and well written, but this is truly powerful stuff. Perhaps responding to Shakespeare makes you raise your game??

This book is so firmly and evocatively placed in the struggles of a farming community; the thousand acre farm and the demands it requires of those who live on it (the ceaseless cooking and cleaning and ploughing and scrubbing and buying and selling, all to compelling rhythms of nature and man) is juxtaposed to the tragedy of King Lear. Smiley's retelling of the story could be described as a feminist take on the tragedy, but it is a deep and complex response to a deep and complex play. Smiley digs deep into her characters, but leaves them ultimately mysterious and unknowable. She keeps the essential elements of the plot - the three sisters, the division of the land, the storm, the father/daughter relationships - so that we know what will happen, but see it from another place, with our sympathies twisted from where we might expect them to be and then twisted back again. Half way through I needed to come up for air; the poisoned well and the relentless progress of the plot seemed altogether too much to read at one time - but it is a compelling read and a beautifully written book.

State of the nation book 3 (only 3??)

the group by mary mccarthy

An enjoyable read (I devoured it almost at one sitting, on a quiet Sunday) that has a cinematic (or possibly televisual?) quality. Its sexual frankness, multi stranded narrative and hard headed clarity about the reality of the women's lives it focuses on, made it an influential precursor of a range of 'women's novels' of varying quality levels. It is an excellent reminder that our mothers, grandmothers and great grandmothers fell in love, had sex and tried to work out what sort of people they were through, often harsh, trial and error in a world less forgiving to educated women than is our own...

Random book 19

One I'd been saving up for a rainy day and ended up reading on a sunny one

ghost walk by marianne macdonald

I really enjoy this series of mysteries - the plotting is interesting and none too predictable; the characterisation is engaging and believable and it gives an insight into the world of antiquarian bookselling that is intriguing for an amateur bibliophile.. This book, dealing with murder in the present and dirty dealing in the middle east after the war is very readable and enjoyable.

Unread books 3

Up to 50 - hurrah!
One I bought for a book club I ended up not going to. Oh well...

the crowded bed by mary cavanagh

I really wanted to like this book, but...
On the positive side, it's very readable and accessible; the plot zips along and the dual timescale is well managed. Characters are clearly defined and distinctive and the beginning and end neatly tie up all of the ends of the plot.
On the negative side
While the characters are clearly defined, they are simplistic and unnuanced. There are the impossibly good and the implausibly evil, mixed up with a stock Jewish family and simple rustics (with accents to match). And Joe, the hero, is a Barbara Trapido character without the wit and bravura.
A lot of the dialogue is lifeless and clunking and impossible to read out with a straight face.
The plot is pretty predictable and the surprises are heavily signposted.

It's really difficult to write domestic middle class drama, because it's been done so often, and so well. This one slips down easily enough, but doesn't leave much of a taste...

>77 otterley: I really like that series, too, for the same reasons. I don't see them very often here, so I grab them whenever I find them.

I've ended up having to buy them on the internet! I think they get squeezed a bit between the overly gory and the very cosy detective stories...

Sci fi and fantasy book 4

For next week's book club (the one I do go to...)

uncle silas bu sheridan le fanu

If you like Victorian gothic novels, you'll like this. Despite Le Fanu's own attempts to compare his book with the much more respectable Walter Scott, this is a lot more fun. Comparisons to Ann Radcliffe made throughout are much more appropriate. Le Fanu mixes the normal tropes of the genre - the vulnerable yet plucky heroine, evil and ugly Frenchwoman and wicked uncle in a horribly gothic house, tales of ghosts, imprisonment, suicide and murder - with romance, comedy and religious satire. Le Fanu never really lets us believe that all will end ill, but he has fun in taking us the long and winding ghost train path to the ending...

War and travel book 5 (hurrah)

day by a l kennedy (and the first war book by a woman)

I seem to find a lot of the more rewarding books in here difficult to start, but worth persevering with. Perhaps I should try more at the first few pages...

A slow beginning to an intriguing book. Day is a story about love, redemption, the terrible things that people do to each other, the power of cheap music and the strength of friendship, coming through war into a hard won peace. This is not a straightforward read, but the elliptical path it takes is one worth following as Alfie finds himself in war, loses himself in prison and eventually reconciles himself to what is left in life for him - a long way from his home and his best hopes, but sometimes making do is the best way to mend a broken spirit...

Crime book 6

the tin roof blow down by james lee burke

Burke's writing in this one is much stronger than in the neon rain

A powerful and angry book. This brings home the horror of Katrina and its human and environmental consequences to those who, like me, watched from a television in another country. Burke cleverly weaves this story with a compelling crime narrative, dealing with the mafia, drug-related crime, smuggling, psychopaths and the struggles individuals have to survive and find redemption in a fractured world. Burke leaves loose ends and questions, but mostly leaves us feeling shocked and shamed for the dreadful and avoidable fate suffered by so many in a natural disaster exacerbated by human inaction and partly redeemed by individuals doing they best they can...

Unread pile book 4

nature and art by elizabeth inchbald

An interesting read - much more simplistic and moralising than most of her contemporaries, but she still has a gift for highly wrought emotion and a plot that moves at times like a steam train

This is a didactic morality tale about the pitfalls of wealth, the superiority of 'natural' manners and mores to those of high society - and why it's better to be poor and honest than rich and corrupt. Inchbald juxtaposes two brothers and delineates their fates, and the fates of their sons in deliberate counterpoint and contrast. The book provides insights into the corruption of its society and, as so often, the worst sufferer is a fallen woman, rejected by her seducer. But, as this is a morality tale, the good end well, and the bad - as a rule - don't...

Family and self book 8

the chateau by william maxwell

Completely new to me, which is one of the joys of this challenge...

The Chateau is, at first glance, somewhere in between Henry James' tales of American innocents abroad in wicked old Europe, and Nancy Mitford's comic tales of the duplicitous, but irresistable post war French aristocratic classes. Maxwell keeps his story of a young American couple, adrift in a Europe that veers from romantic to baffling, welcoming to resistant, fresh and light. The story focuses on the impossibility of communication between different cultures and languages, an America flexing its modern muscles partly in love and partly in hate with the 'old world'. Conversations and gestures, near misses and hits, ordering in restaurants and finding a bed in a hotel, French plumbing and French history, all slyly show a cultural gap that sometimes gapes as wide as the Atlantic, sometimes narrows to a kiss on the cheek. This is a wise and clever novel.

War and travel book 6

sophie's choice by william styron

This is the third book I've read in about a year that follows the innocent abroad being educated by coming into contact with sophisticated older people who - for some reason not apparently obvious to the reader - take a shine to the callow youth. It gets repeated because it works - it allows a naive first person voice that grows with the book into worldly wise retrospection (how could I have been so naive?), allows the writer to draw fascinating and sophisticated characters and to discover their cracks and flaws (it was only later that I realised...) and it speaks to all of us who learn through experience throughout our lives. So does Sophie's Choice work? Styron is a very sophisticated writer. His lead character is semi-autobiographical and the whole book is an experiment in narrative and the slow reveal, while being 'about' the biggest topics in the world - suffering, faith, love, loss, evil, mental illness, sex - seen through the prism of Auschwitz. He leavens this with comedy and plays with genre - is he channelling Philip Roth's Jewish sexual drive or southern tales of corruption? - which makes the deadpan descriptions of much of the Auschwitz scenes much more powerful. His writing is furious, rich and teeming with life, even as he writes about death. The great romance at the centre of the book is both degraded through guilt, humiliation and delusion and juxtaposed with the narrator's fruitless and egotistical attempts to lose his virginity. Sophie's choice looks into the heart of evil, but does so from the messy and vital guts of ongoing life.

... I would have sworn that book was about the difficulty and consequences abortion choices. Clearly I was mistaken. I don't even know how I could have gotten it so screwed up. So, with your review, I will now add this one into the TBR pile. Thanks for putting me straight!

It's definitely worth reading. Tough moral choices, but nothing to do with abortion!

Love book 6

love for lydia by h e bates

probably about the first one where I've really wondered why it's on the list. A fun read - and perhaps typical of its period - but not too much more than that. i can think of a lot better that didn't make it!

An affectionate portrait of small town English life between the wars, growing up and falling in love. Lydia, the princess of the town, grows from childhood to womanhood through love and tragedy, while the narrator takes a quieter path. Social life and the gradations of social class are depicted lightly but vividly. For me the book stayed at the surface, the tragedies failed to move me as much as they should and the romance again seemed at one step removed. Some of this is probably due to the intentionally rather callow narrator, but I think not all of it...

State of the nation - book 5

a kestrel for a knave by barry hines

This is a simple story - a boy, his kestrel and his environment in a northern mining town surrounded by countryside. Hines tells it with an almost obsessive eye for detail - the tics of a hyperactive young boy, scuffing his feet along a path; the 'how to' guide to falconry, the scruffy, hard worn mining town teetering on the edge of respectability. The story is about the love of a boy for his kestrel, but it's also about chances and possibilities , glimpsed by Mr Farthing, the school teacher who spots something wonderful in Billy's story about falconry, or even the chance Billy's brother Jud has of £10 to take him away from the mine for a whole week. Chances are hard won, easy to miss and all too often gone forever.

Family and self - book 9

I'm not great at reading disease novels, or watching disease films. But on balance I'm glad to have stuck with this one

the blackwater lightship by colm toibin

The Blackwater Lightship is long gone, the house at Cush is falling into the sea and Declan is dying of AIDS. Three women and three gay men come together in a lonely house by the sea, the husbands and the fathers being dead or absent. At times the Blackwater Lightship is bleak and depressing, but it starts with communal music making and ends with tentative moves towards communication and reconciliation. Declan will die, off camera, but the lives he leaves behind will continue on their separate trajectories, linked by common experience and possibility. Toibin writes very subtly and ambiguously, never allowing his reader to jump to easy solutions; juxtaposing story telling with ruthless descriptions of the physical decay of the terminal AIDS patient. A memorable read.

Love - book 7

And six out of the seven now have a connection with France. Coincidence??

strait is the gate by andre gide

This is said to be - at least in part - autobiographical. Gide focuses on the love of Jerome for his cousin Alissa, ending in disappointment for him and death for her - following a journey into faith which may or may not have been quixotic and futile. Gide weaves many vignettes of love and family relations around this central story - the adulterous mother, the woman who settles for a safe marriage and family, the humiliation of the over confident lover and creates eternal and evanescent triangles of love.

War and travel - book 6

Less brutal than the Cruel Sea, perhaps because it was written and published during the war. I am learning a lot more about boats...

the ship by c s forester

A compelling narrative of one engagement at war, in one ship, where one shell turns the destiny of the war. Forester (as Monserrat in the Cruel Sea) writes about the terrible human cost and extraordinary (or very ordinary) heroism of keeping the supply lines open against heavy odds. The book depicts the machinery (human and mechanical) of war in loving, but dispassionate detail, allowing us to know the individual characters in passing as they perish or survive. It ends with a real sense of hope and optimism for the war and the future...

Random book 25

Another one from the book club

the lacuna by barbara kingsolver

Really didn't enjoy this novel. For me the basic flaw was the central character. The boy and adolescent Harrison Shepherd is unlike any boy I've ever come across. And his writing is deeply implausible (who really diarises all of the most significant things going on in the world? Most of the time we are doing something else...) - not to mention the detailed remembrances of individual conversations and the letters that always seem to tell us something about significant events, never about the ordinary. Kingsolver deliberately makes the first person narrator slippery, ambiguous and unreliable - an observer rather than an actor. I feel that first person narrations work best when they are obsessively inward and very personal (Jane Eyre, Brideshead Revisited) - this uses the first person narrator as an observer of major events and larger than life characters. This subject matter would surely have worked better with a different narrative style allowing multiple points of view and different intepretations of a complex environment.

The characters in the novel come across as cliches - Trotsky good and selfless, Frida Kahlo lives for her art and free love and passionately overcomes her disability; Diego Rivera looks like a frog - with no real spice, complexity or life to them. The same goes for events and even countries - McCarthyism is evil, the Mexicans fiery and passionate, the Jewish lawyer smart. Kingsolver never steers away from an obvious cliche when there's one to hand. The imagery and symbolism is laid on with a trowel - notably that of the lacuna - and there is very little subtlety anywhere. And it's so long - repetitive, clunky, unsubtle and - actually - very simplistic in its narrative structure, moving from beginning to end in a circle. I am finding it difficult to understand how this has been so acclaimed and garlanded with prizes - the Emperor's new clothes perhaps?

@94 Now don't hold back, tell us what you really think :-)

I'll do my best!

Crime - book 7

the long good-bye by raymond chandler

It makes me wonder who taught Chandler and Wodehouse when they were at school together! The Long Good-Bye hides a romantic heart beneath its hard boiled demeanour; the writing and characterisation is taut and vivid and the plotting clever. The story knits together cleverly, mixing reflection with action and it leaves a taste like a gimlet - Rose's lime juice only....

Sci fi and fantasy book 5 (at last - hurrah!)

ingenious pain by andrew miller

Miller's first novel, offers the life of James Dyer, a man born without the ability to feel pain, who dies having recovered the sense of pain and pleasure and relived the sufferings of his earlier life. Miller inhabits the eighteenth century easily, never striking an uneasy note with his descriptions of the time, places and people - which roots the fantastical tale at its heart in a very earthy reality. The descriptions and characterisation are detailed, physical and rooted - down to the passing servant or letter writing sailor. The structure of different narrative voices and the cycle of Dyer's life are rich and varied, preserving the uncanny mystery at the heart of the novel, just as the skunk is preserved in tobacco leaves. Miller obliquely tells us about love, pain and loss through the narrative, death and rebirth, freakishness and normality - leaving the reader room to think and to imagine. A compelling first book.

Comedy book 6

the uncommon reader by alan bennett

Charming, with a serious message about the value of reading

Crime - book 8

greenmantle by john buchan

A great read - highly cinematic and visual and the plot roars along nicely. Also a fascinating sight into geopolitics and the prevailing cultures of a century ago. Hannay's stiff upper lipped Brit and his motley bunch of fellow spies are more scared of a woman's wiles than of the trenches, but surprisingly (perhaps) understanding of Turkish and Islamic culture; the evil Germans are mixed with thoroughly decent fellows and overall the messages were more subtle than I would perhaps have expected. Buchan clearly believes that the British are best, but in a more nuanced world than one might anticipate from an arch imperialist.

Random book 26

whatever you love by louise doughty

Another early review...

Laura's nine year old daughter dies. As the book spirals through her grief, we learn about her tumultuous romance with David, the father of her children; his relationship with his second wife Chloe and new baby; the relationships between parents and children and competitive mothers in a very ordinary English town and the impact of immigration in modern day England. All these currents swirl together in a dangerous whirlpool as Laura vows revenge - Chloe's post natal depression, Laura's post traumatic breakdown, David's guilt and uncertainty and the community's distrust of different immigrant communities from the more established Asian corner shop owners to the Eastern European sweat shop labourers.
Laura is a physiotherapist; someone who touches people to make them well again - but she can't heal herself from the raw pain of bereavement and the unnatural grief (in our modern Western world) for a child who dies young and untouched.
Louise Doughty writes a gripping narrative, shifting time frames and creating a real sense of forward momentum. I was reminded of the feisty and troubled heroines of Nikki French's novels, who grab hold of reality even though it shifts beneath them. But as the novel progresses there is a real sense of ambiguity - are the anonymous letters Laura receives real? Does she imagine revenge, or bring it about? How reliable a narrator is this woman who has been sectioned and is living on a knife edge? The end may be a satisfying conclusion, or something rather more shifting and uncertain.

Love - book 8

breathing lessons by anne tyler

A day in the life of Maggie, a very ordinary woman, and her very ordinary life, family and friends. Tyler digs deceptively deep into the realities of life, its deceptions and compromises, its joys and its continuity through family, friends and sometimes just plain old perseverence. As with Maggie, the book is wiser than perhaps it seems at face value.

Family and self - book 10

Second category finished - stars by my top 2 (in this case!) - decided a full ordering would be much too hard...

i'll go to bed at noon by gerard woodward
Terrifying and unsettling. The resilience of family life in the face of generations of alcoholism, set against its tragic consequences. Woodward has a poet's eye for the minutiae of 70s life, spread across a decade of social change and ending on the cusp of the Thatcher era, where everything will change. The book is funny, but it's often a joke gone sour, stuck in arrested development. I found it savagely enlightening - and, appropriately, addictively readable.

Random book 27

the last dickens by matthew pearl

We are all intrigued by the mystery of the mystery of Edwin Drood - Dickens' last, uncompleted novel. Pearl weaves a story in America, the piratical frontier of the literary world in Victorian times, and in Dickens' England, giving us a tantalising glimpse into what the ending might have been. This novel does not grip as fearfully as the Dante Club, but moves along enjoyably enough with a touch of intrigue and romance, loopholes, twists and turns to keep the reader amused and edified. I must admit, however, to preferring the Dr Who solution of the blue elementals....

@104, I have all 3 of his books on my tbr shelves but so far they've not graduated to the next in line as yet. I really should get to them one of these days.

I had to laugh alittle reading your thread. At this late date I am finding that I am moving stuff around so I still get alot of flexablity on my listing and still all my reads can be put towards my categories. I am running behind so I will have to pick up my pace, I am at book number 53 I believe. But oh well I am having fun.

I underestimated my tendency to get distracted! But then this whole project has been about trying to be a bit more disciplined. I might get to 100 'proper' books in the end, but I am just going a bit more with the flow now...

Retread number 6

I am very slowly re reading A Dance to the Music of Time, at the rate of about one book every six to eight months. That seems to be about the right pace...

at lady molly's by anthony powell

The fourth book in a Dance to the Music of Time. Jenkins gets engaged, Widmerpool gets disengaged, much manoeuvring takes place. This book brings into focus the Tollands and Sleafords, rambling families living rambling lives, while other characters come drifting in and out of view from previous close ups. At Lady Molly's ends with a wonderful juxtaposition of the Jungian analysis of 80 year old General Conyers, equerry and unexpected polymath, with the unsinkability of the 'intuitive extravert' Widmerpool. A stately comedy.

To be read - book 5

peyton place by grace metalious

A scandalous bestseller that still shifts copies today, Metalious knows how to hook an audience in with a lively narrative and the breathless lure of scandal and what is known, but not spoken of, in respectable small town life. The characterisation is millimetre thin, with no stereotype unplayed out, but the book has the same fascination as the Jeremy Kyle show, as we get to look at aspects of life that 'respectable' books don't show, but that exist in reality for more people than the moral majority might like to think...

Retread number 7

Inspired by a Dance to the Music of Time
Not sure age adds much to this one

a wedding of cousins by emma tennant

This is an odd read - the second in a series of what was going to be a roman fleuve, but ended up being a dead end, with lots of hints and loose ends. Tennant almost scarily channels Antony Powell, but without his dark humour and the structural integrity that underlies a Dance to the Music of Time. It's a shame, because a feminised epic would have been an interesting project.

Love book 9

And yet another one set in France. Does love exist anywhere else??

giovanni's room by james baldwin

Baldwin writes wonderfully about the early stirrings of love and desire - the moment of being on the cusp of fulfilment or shattering loss. Like many fictional depictions of homosexuality when it was illegal or taboo, he presents the gay milieu as something that contains sadness and squalor, that repulses as much as it attracts. Perhaps this is how it felt, particularly to someone like the lead character, struggling with conflicting desires and loves. Baldwin writes about what we cannot control in the end, our desires and innermost natures, and shows why we must learn to live with them, however uncomfortable that might be.

Retreads book 8

close quarters by william golding

And so this is one of a number of (a) stray series parts and (b) books set at sea. (all those lost categories I could have chosen) Probably the best, so far...

This, the second book in Golding's late sea trilogy, is a wise, warm and witty book. Edmund Talbot, his bumptious and naive narrator, is the very fallible heart of the novel, increasingly coming to terms with his imperfections, but still self consciously on his dignity in the most unprepossessing of circumstances. A cast of sharply drawn characters surrounds him, portrayed through Talbot's distorting self regard, but also showing themselves in variegated colours - through Golding's clever and sympathetic pen. And of course the sea and the boat exist as a microcosm, a real fragile world of mystery, threat and transformation.

to be read - 6 and 7

a shabby genteel story and philip by w m thackeray

I bought these two in a very small 1906 edition with very thin paper indeed in a second hand bookshop. Bookmarks almost to Thackeray's career, moving from liveliness to a sense of fatigue, but always worth reading to a Thackeray devotee.

This edition contains a novella - A Shabby Genteel Story - and a novel - Philip. Twenty years divide the two, with Philip being Thackeray's last completed novel, and the Shabby Genteel Story being one of his first ventures into publication. A Shabby Genteel Story is sharp and cynical, Philip much more discursive, with a happy ending produced almost literally by a deus ex machina. Thackeray's villains and flawed characters pulse with life (how much I looked forward to the disingenuous letters from New York from the disgraced, but ever buoyant, Dr Firmin); his plots move in circles on an increasingly narrow path; his diversions and extravagances amuse and portray Victorian life vividly in technicolour. His virtuous leading ladies and manly heroes do not fare so well in retrospect, appearing insipid and cloth headed respectively. While Philip and his little wife Charlotte, and his Little Sister, have both light and shade in their characters, the shade is unsubtle, and the characters fail to live and breathe. But there are enough riches elsewhere to make this an irritation, rather than anything worse...

Random book 28

another early reviewer book, and the best to date..

the pantomime life of joseph grimaldi by andrew mcconnell stott

This book made me want to be a time traveller, to be able to go back in time and see the extravagant feats of pantomimic daring of the early 19th century. We think we know about our Christmas pantomimes and the clowns that appear in Enid Blyton novels and (increasingly infrequently) at the circus, but this book shines a powerful light on their extraordinary history, through the life of the still famous and celebrated Grimaldi.

The pantomime brought us celebrity and spectacle, a bright and garish era of extravagant physical feats, extraordinary spectacle (stages flooded with water, amazing transformations), audience involvement (crushed to death, talking back and even going on strike), wily management, threats of bankruptcy and disaster followed by amazing triumph. Simon Cowell would have been very much at home, Health and Safety inspectors aghast. Stott draws on contemporary sources to provide detailed depictions of actual productions, putting us in the position of the intrigued and thrilled audience member.

Grimaldi's life is almost as dramatic as his surroundings - beatings from a cruel father, early and doomed love, extravagant success and then an ending accompanied by pain and misery. Stott portrays him as the archetypal clown, crying inside the exterior that brings laughter and pleasure to millions.

Much of the book is set around three theatres that still exist today - Covent Garden, Drury Lane and Sadlers Wells. The next time that I go to any of these places, I shall be listening for the ghosts of Grimaldi and his audiences, so vividly brought back to life in this book.

War and travel book 8

huckleberry finn by mark twain

What can a grown up reader say about finding this book for the first time at over 40? That it's vivid, picturesque, fun, thought provoking, wild, savage and brutal, and a song of praise to the warmth and strength of the human spirit. And that it's never to late to discover new pleasures...

War and travel book 9

count belisarius by robert graves

I've always been fascinated by the Byzantine empire, and this book gives an insight into one of its most lively times and some of its biggest characters - in Justinian and Theodora, perhaps those most familiar to a modern audience through the mosaics at Ravenna, Justinian's legal reforms and the scurrilous stories of Procopious. Graves writes this as an autobiography by the eunuch to the wife of Belisarius, undeniably one of the great military geniuses of all time. The first person narrator is not particularly vividly depicted, and for most of the time this simply reads as a straight historical narrative, moving forwards magisterially through Belisarius' life, full of incident and episode, at times painful, at times triumphant. It's interesting to move to other histories of the time, for example John Julius Norwich, to see that Graves makes some very deliberate choices of emphasis and nuance in how we see the impeccable Belisarius and the wily Justinian, where perhaps there is room for more ambiguity. I must confess to preferring Mary Renault as a historical novelist; more lively, more vivid, much more personal - but this is a fascinating and engaging read nonetheless

love book 10

le grand meaulnes by alain-fournier

yet another french book in the love category..

A book of romantic extravagance, probably best read when young and in love...

Random book 30(!)

the glass room by simon mawer

A holiday read...

The Landauer House, with its central glass room, is at the heart of the novel. A masterpiece of modernist architecture, it survives war and bombs, remaining impervious to use as a house, as a Nazi eugenics centre and as a dance studio, finishing as a historical monument. Perhaps because this artefact of glass, wood, onyx and marble is the centre of the novel, the human story around it seems to take second place. Although it involves both intimate dramas of love, sex and betrayal, and the geopolitics of war and communism, the emotions never quite have the resonance that they might and the story feels as pristine and designed as the house it inhabits.

Random book 31

(in my defence, I have wanted to read this for about 25 years...)

wigs on the green by nancy mitford

An intriguing issue. The foreword, from Charlotte Mosley, describes the troubled gestation and subsequent shelving of Wigs on the Green, Nancy Mitford's satire on fascism. Understanding how the book reflects Mitford's attempts to remain on good terms with her fascist sisters, while ridiculing their beliefs in the manner of her earlier comic jeux d'esprit, helps to explain its strange unevenness of tone. Any book which mixes Hitler with humour is, of course, bound to be read with unease. There is some wonderful Mitford wit here, and dialogue reminiscent of Waugh, with the impecunious and irrepressible Jasper Aspect, an asylum for peers of the realm exactly like the House of Lords and Anne-Marie Lace, the affected local beauty straight out of EF Benson's Riseholme. But these are all overlaid with affectionate jokes about fascism, which are difficult to stomach and the family in jokes fail to make them more palatable. In a way this oddity is a transition between the sparkling heartless early books, and the post-war maturer romance of the Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate. It is most like Pigeon Pie, set in World War 2, which also doesn't quite work. Waugh moved from heartless comedy to a more serious trajectory of romance and tragedy through the war, Mitford, a lesser talent, didn't quite get it. She is a writer of peace and affluence - and very much loved for that, not least by me.

rereads book 9

the heat of the day by elizabeth bowen

The Heat of the Day is an often infuriating, but intriguing book. Set in the war, and hedged round by betrayals and ambiguities, it tells of many things in ellipsis - betrayal, inheritance, madness, obsession, infidelity, to name a few. The world of the central character, Stella, is shifting and temporary (she inhabits a series of rented apartments in the better part of town); she works among secrets. Her lover, Robert, reacts to a monstrous and consuming family by wishing destruction on his world, while her son slowly gets to grips with the unexpected legacy of a house and an estate, a new and apparently solid life to start after the war. Other characters surround them, reacting differently to a world where people disappear, where the normal rules don't apply any more and morality is negotiated, rather than absolute. This is, like its subject, an unsettling book. Bowen's prose is not easy, often minutely descriptive, circular and repetitive; her narrative moves in tiny steps and giant leaps, apparently at random. Not easy, but rewarding.

Crime book 9

the remorseful day by colin dexter

I still find it difficult to like the Morse novels (where the essentially romantic Morse of the TV veers towards the leery and prurient - not to mention patronising), but this is better than the earlier ones and the detective story itself is intricate and well designed..

Sci fi and fantasy book 6

...at last another one...

beyond black by hilary mantel

This is a book that hits you around the head, drags you up and down the country, deposits you in farflung corners of the south east rarely visited by more sensitive novelists and delves down deep into the uncomfortable, the subversive, the completely insane and the desperate. As a novel it's brilliantly controlled, highly ambiguous, funny, heartbreakingly sad and honest about the sadness and suffering in ordinary lives. The density and fluidity of the prose makes it both highly readable and continually surprising and unsettling. Is Alison 'really' psychic? Who are the men in her head and her body? Where does reality end? Mantel makes all of these questions both vitally important and, ultimately, unanswerable

State of the nation book 5

..the last category to get half way there, not sure why, as they've pretty much all been great reads...

go tell it on the mountain by james baldwin

Baldwin writes like an angel - sometimes vengeful, sometimes loving, always powerful. A fascinating insight into a very real community - set around a black church in a New York when slavery was still a close presence - but a book resonant of universal realities of power, love, lust, oppression and spirituality.

Sci fi and fantasy book 7

on the homeward stretch

the midwich cuckoos by john wyndham

A classic 'what if' story, with Wyndham's acute observation, tight plotting and humour illuminating a 1950s environment. Alien invasion (not necessarily from outer space), fertility issues and the role of women are the recurrent themes in a story of alien invasion through the back door of the womb. It would be a fascinating story to reimagine in our days of artificial insemination, legal abortion and debates about euthanasia; thought provoking as a historical piece of future gazing.

Random book 32 -

It was a book club book, what can I do?

the city and the city by china mieville

I think Mieville falls in love with his big idea (and why not - it's good...) and elaborates it to almost gothic excess. Every page is spilling with new and side ideas building on the concept of the dual city - which means that the narrative and characterisation pale in comparison. Interesting and intriguing, but perhaps could have been edited a bit more fiercely?

Crime book 10

Another category bites the dust

dissolution by c j sansom

Interesting and atmospheric, deft plotting and characterisation. What more could you want?

Comedy book 7

whisky galore by compton mackenzie

The omnibus includes whisky galore, the original for the celebrated film. It's a charming and affectionate portrait of a community in the Scottish islands during WW2, when a drought of whisky is taking its toll on the inhabitants - when a boat loaded to the gunwales with whisky founders on the rocks just outside the island. Mackenzie depicts a community with a true spirit of love and independence, doing its bit for the war on its own terms. Very enjoyable.

Sci fi and fantasy book 8

the strange case of dr jekyll and mr hyde by robert louis stephenson

A slim and elusive narrative, on which following generations have built their own psychodramas. The idea of duality, of the personality as a construct of differences, has a grip on our modern psyches and is made concrete in Jekyll and Hyde. Stevenson turns our internal dramas outside, giving them a Victorian packing of pea souper fogs, hansom cabs and mysterious smoking potions.

State of the nation book 6!

july's people by nadine gordimer

A celebrated white liberal during the apartheid years, Gordimer imagines how people like her might deal with a violent black seizure of power. Flight and dependency ensues, and a story laced with irony and ambiguity. The survival of the Smales is due to the decency that leads to their black servant risking collaborator status by saving them; but Gordimer shows how the best meaning of liberals are freighted down by the common history of the oppressive society in which they live, and the assumption on which they cannot but build their lives. Hope lies in the children, the three white children effortlessly integrated into the world of the black children of the village, able unknowingly to be part of a new society.

Unread pile book 8

stamboul train by graham greene

Greene writes beautifully, structures artfully and delineates a landscape of people and place beautifully. It is difficult, however, to love the lazy cliches of the butch dyke and slightly sleazy Jew - of its time, but Greene knows better...

Random book 36

that paris year by joanna biggar

I found this one really hard to get into (early reviewer) and compensated by some easy re-reads that aren't going on this list!

The early 1960s - and five Californian girls go to Paris for a year to grow up, fall in and out of love, study at the Sorbonne and learn about Life...
That sounds a lot as if it should be fun, but at least for me it wasn't as enjoyable as I would have liked. Firstly the structure - the book is written as a first person narrative, reminiscing about the past from a rather uncertain present. The tone, however, never quite settles between the fallible and partial first person narrative and the omniscient third person. It nestles as intimately in Evelyn or Gracie's brain as in JJ, the narrator's consciousness. Secondly characterisation - I found it difficult to distinguish between the four beautiful young women at the centre of the book, while the one plainer girl is a sad and sexless caricature. And the men are very shadowy presences, drawn without nuance, so that I was very confused between the Guys and Ivans, the Toms and Samuels, the French snobs, roues and cads filling out the scene. This made it difficult for me to emotionally engage with the book. Having said that, the writing is skilful and much of the description vivid and clear; the outer world depicted more clearly than the inner.
So I wish there had been more romance, more fun and more real sensuality (two deflowerings in the open air aside...); less earnestness, intellectualism and tremulous introspection. Perhaps next time...

Tbr pile - book 9

strong hollow by linda little

I've had this for years and been put off by the cover blurb. It's much better than that would suggest!

Set in Nova Scotia, this is a story of a man's self discovery. Jackson Bigney is both an outsider to his large, wayward family, and at the heart of it, resembling his parents physically and emotionally in ways that become apparent throughout the novel. Through many by ways, false hopes and new beginnings, this stubborn, often unlikeable man finds a new family and identity, while reaching a new understanding with his origins. Little holds on to a wide ranging cast, and crafts a genuinely touching romantic story (in the sense that goes beyond the romance of two people). The occasional clunky bit of writing in no way mars a story that grips, engages and satisfies.

Retreads book 10 - another one down!

a month in the country by j l carr

Two former soldiers find themselves in a Yorkshire village after the first world war, given quests in the will of an eccentric old lady. The two tasks turn out to be interlinked, and to be another tale of war and return from the mediaeval era. Carr slips in meditations on the nature of love and religion, community and the passage of time, as well as comedy, romance and pathos in a deceptively slim novel.

random book 37

have been having a bit of a break from serious reading, with lots of detective rereads

trading up by candace bushnell

Firstly, a real page turner. Secondly, a clever novel - the lead character is beautiful, damaged and dislikeable. Bushnell charts her trajectory through the Hamptons, Manhattan and LA, through all of the trappings of wealth and success that modern media culture tells us to want and aspire to, and shows that this Cinderella's slippers are made of plastic and her fairytale prince has feet of clay and a kingdom of dust.

State of the nation book 7

the plague by albert camus

Another fascinating book. Camus brilliantly portrays how life goes on when the plague strikes, how we accommodate ourselves to the insidious threat within , which offers opportunities for redemption, for death and destruction, or just for letting everyday life continue, bending slightly to the change in circumstances. Having watched some of the Chilean miners, it is difficult not to read this with an eye to the media event that such a plague would be today, magnifying our emotions so that they're suitable for primetime tv...

Sci fi and fantasy book 9

a connecticut yankee in king arthur's court by mark twain

Hard reading (another three detective re reads later...)

I love Arthurian stories (from Malory to TH White) and time travelling. But this book really didn't work for me. I found the switches from chunks of Malory to Yankee slang disconcerting (and neither easy to read). If 6th century Britain, with its feudal rules, is unpalatable - then so is the capitalist, utilitarian, materialistic 19th century outlook that Hank brings to Camelot. Both wreak havoc and destruction - but I'd rather have the world with some imagination and fantasy, rather than 'olde England' with its green landscapes taken over by match factories and tabloid journalis,m.

random book 38

the shame. But I did start this ages ago, left my copy in Germany and managed to swipe another one from the library!

alexandris by lindsay davis

Lindsey Davis takes Marcus Didius Falco, plus assorted family, in laws and hangers on, to the most glamorous city in the Roman empire, circa 70AD - Alexandria, home of the legendary library, the tomb of Alexander and the legacy of Cleopatra. Being Marcus Didius Falco, informer and family man, our hero is quickly enmeshed in drama, intrigue and shady goings on in and around the library. Davis is a practised hand at writing breezy crime novels against a meticulously researched and observed backdrop, and this is no exception - a fun way to pass an afternoon's reading.

random book 39

just because

coroner's pidgin by margery allingham

war and travel book 10

another one gone

from here to eternity by james jones

sci fi and fantasy book 10

and another one

the man who was thursday by g k chesterton

comedy book 9

travels with my aunt by graham greene

state of the nation book 8

independence day by richard ford

and comedy book 10

bright lights big city by jay mcinerney

state of the nation book 9

last september by elizabeth bowen

state of the nation book 10!

a kind of loving by stan barstow

100 down

tbr pile number 10

the lifted veil by george eliot