50 Books Challenge 2023 Part Ten

It was The Blair Years - Alistair Campbell - I’ve been refunded £7.99 and paid £5.99 to buy it again. My Kindle does have form for doing odd things when I close it - most notably changing the font size to giant or microscopic.

That gives me chills @BestIsWest! What was the book? Did you pay £2 originally?

27 If Only They Could Talk - James Herriot
The first of the reminiscences of 1930s Yorkshire veterinary life, in which the young, newly-qualified vet secures a position with the eccentric Seigfried with a side-order of the irresponsible younger brother thrown in for comic effect.

I was looking for wrapping paper in my big upstairs cupboards and found my old James Herriot books stashed away in there, along with a complete set of Famous Fives and St Clares. I have run out of new books to read, and it's over a week til Christmas, I think James can keep me entertained til then (not sure I'm ready for Enid)

Lovely writing, cosy nostalgic reading for me, undemanding and entertaining. Perfect for right now.

@noodlezoodle John Guy has a brilliant Mary Queen of Scots autobiography. It was originally called My Heart is My Own but I believe has been re-published as just Mary Queen of Scots after the film with Saoirse Ronan and Margot Robbie was based on it

The Rich are Different and the sequel Sins of the Father by Susan Howatch These were not as good as her other family sagas Cashelmara, Penmarric and The Wheel of Fortune. based on The Plantagenets but with the action moved to the 18th and 19th century.

The Rich are Different storyline trajectory is very loosely based on Julius Caesar and Cleopatra. With Julius becoming a hugely wealthy Wall Street Investment Banker in the 1920's, Mark Anthony as his handsome bullish protege and Cleopatra as a hard up toff from the Norfolk Broads with a beloved ancient pile that she wants to keep at any cost. This had a similar tone to Howatch's other family sagas with POV chapters, but the story didn't hold together quite as well as her other sagas and was overlong so in some places the story sagged and dragged but it was enjoyable overall.

The Sins of the Father continues the story of Octavian/Gaius Augustus ( Caesar's nephew and successor) which started in the previous book. This book dragged on endlessly and had a really different tone with lots of personal navel gazing from the main players in their POV chapters. I think this was the last family saga book Howatch wrote and perhaps she was bored and had enough of it all too.

The Birds and Other Stories by Daphne Du Maurier- I hadn't re read these for many, many years and had forgotten what a skilled short story writer Du Maurier was. The Birds is much better than the film, much creepier and I loved the Apple Tree story about a widower who imagines his dead wife has come to embody an ugly, withered tree in his garden. There were 5 other stories too which all had their merits. Really enjoyable.

Good that you got the book cheaper. I've accidentally deleted a book that was part of a series and had to repurchase it. That is weird though.

Bizarre happening with my Kindle. Halfway through a book, I closed the Kindle then opened it 5 mins later and the book had disappeared. No sign of it on my Amazon account. Thought I’d dreamt it. Then this morning I got a Returned for Refund email.

I’ve bought it again at £2 less. Weird.

Great review of Olive @Mothership4two
I must read it again. * *

Very good @RazorstormUnicorn thank you!

For Elizabeth Strout fans I just found Abide With Me on kindle for 99p. A quick Google seems to suggest it's stand alone which is good.

I somehow managed to pick up I think number 3 of the 4 Lucy Barton books so am hoping the others get reduced or at some point in 2024 I will put my hand in my pocket!

48 The Binding by Bridget Collins

Tricky to discuss the plot without spoilers. Set sometime in the past and mainly about Emmett Farmer a young peasant who is apprenticed to a binder. I liked the concept where memories could be removed and stored in a book or bound – quite a sci-fi idea. However, initially the book dragged, mainly full of either ambiguous if not downright unpleasant characters and much seediness and unpleasantness ensues. It is actually a romance. I know many people love this book, but for all its interesting ideas, I found the plot a bit of a mess.

49 Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

Basically, a collection of short stories set in a small American town linked by the character of Olive Kitteridge who is a complex character prickly, blunt, difficult, truthful, sensible and deep down quite kind. Difficult and very human subject matter is handled delicately by the author in this seemingly quiet and gentle backwater where the realities of life pop up from time to time and slap you around the face.

Thanks Fortuna and Maud I’ll look at those.

@CheeseplantJungle I loved NW by Zadie Smith - really evocative of London in a heatwave, and loved the interlocking storylines.

I'm not a massive fan of Zadie Smith's fiction, but I enjoyed Intimations which is a series of essays she wrote during lockdown.

Wishing everyone who is under the weather a swift recovery, and so very sorry to hear about flooding, my heart goes out to you.

I’m tasked with reading any book by Zadie Smith for our book group. I’ve only ever read White Teeth of hers, which I loved, many years ago. Should I reread that or read something else? Open to fiction or non-.

Sorry to hear about illnesses and misfortunes, may things get better for you soon.

65. Heroes - Stephen Fry

Well this was a bit of a disappointment TBH. And while not in Gallows Pole stinker territory, it's one of the least enjoyable books I've read this year which is a shame. No one particular reason why, just lots of little niggles that added up.

• I enjoy a Greek myth but this draaaagged in places.

• There seemed to be a lot of family history, and fair enough it needs some explanation, especially with the gods' lineage and the rulers of the various city states and territories, but boy was it dull.

• Short of women, except as wives, mothers, daughters or goddesses (Atalanta being the exception). Now that there are several feminist retellings of myths this felt old fashioned and missing something.

• Why give everyone modern speech patterns? It jarred.

• Copious footnotes, some interesting, but others referencing the first book, Mythos, which I haven't read.

I read Troy last year and found it much the same, why I bothered with this I don't know. Hey ho.

67 Diamond Street: The Hidden World Of Hatton Garden - Rachel Lichtenstein

I’ll have to start keeping a note when people recommend books on this thread. Thanks to whoever said this one - an enjoyable and interesting investigation into the history and psychogeography of Hatton Garden, with a particular interest to me as I worked in Clerkenwell for years and still visit regularly.

Thanks for the good wishes. Sorry to hear about other illnesses and dripping kitchens.

Not reading much as my headache can't cope with more than three sentences at a time.

Thanks all - we’re getting there (and are going to reward ourselves with a takeaway this evening as the kitchen is full of dripping objects).

@FuzzyCaoraDhubh I hadn’t heard of Romain Gary - will look him up (and maybe even get round to reading something by him!)

Agatha Christie is a good challenging read @magimedi I wouldn't say it's easy.
I read a few pages of Romain Gary's autobiography 'La Promesse de l'Aube' and it seems straightforward. However, I could be kidding myself! I found Annie Ernaux 'Les Années' difficult and ended up reading the translation alongside it. Reading in French will definitely bring your fluency up. Very good and worthwhile.

@magimedi I was listening to Donna Leon (author of the Brunetti novels) on Radio 4's 'This Cultural Life', and she said she learned Italian from reading really mass-market crime novels, as many as possible. It did the job for her - she’s completely fluent now and indeed lived in Venice for years - so I wouldn’t be remotely concerned about the calibre of your French reading!

@FuzzyCaoraDhubh & @ cassandre

The level I am reading at in French is well below Prix Goncourt!! Agatha Christie in translation, chick lit & some crime. It will be another year or so (at present rate) before I'm up to that level. I am just determined to get as fluent as I can as fast as I can. As I am old (ish) and retired I need to get as much Frenchlanguage exposure as I can.

64. Killing Floor by Lee Child The first in the Jack Reacher series. Reacher, recently out the army, is passing through Margrave, a small town in Georgia where he inadvertently gets caught up in a homicide investigation

This was a re-read, I read the first two books of this series many years ago and then never went any further. I've decided to see if I want to get into them again now. I'm not convinced I do to be honest. Reacher is superhuman in his abilities which borders on the frankly silly and the subject matter is quite dark with some pretty graphic violence. I've started the second one and will decide after that whether to go any further. Maybe I'll need to alternate them with something fluffier to counteract the graphic violence

@magimedi @cassandre @DuPainDuVinDuFromage Have any of you read anything by Romain Gary? I was listening to a discussion on a programme on Radio France yesterday. He won the Prix Goncourt twice under two different names, bending les règles du jeu quite a bit! It only became apparent that it was the same guy years later. He seems to have been a very interesting character and lived a full life. I thought I would look him up in the new year. I haven't read very much in French this year, only five books in total. Disappointed zut.

Best of luck with the clean-up DuPain.
What a dose.

Gosh, sorry to everyone who is poorly, flooded or otherwise incapacitated!

I've managed a few more and am wondering if I might actually make 50 after all, given that I have quite a few that I'm halfway through.

39. Air Babylon, by Imogen Edwards-Jones. Quite why I decide to read this on a plane I don't know! Inside look at the airline industry, following the general 'Babylon' format. Quick, fun read.

40. The Diana Chronicles, by Tina Brown. What a slog! It has taken me over a year to actually finish this and I'm not sure it was worth the effort. I think I started it when Diana popped up in The Crown and I was curious about her, having never been very interested in her (or indeed any of the royals) when she was alive. The first couple of chapters are incredibly boring and then it becomes incredibly gossipy and seamy. One thing I hadn't realised was the pettiness - Diana was forever announcing things or wearing showstopping dresses on dates that were important to Charles. Brown's writing is often very convoluted and this is far harder to get through than Prince Harry's Spare, where, regardless of what you think of the content, the ghost did a very nice job.

41. Rizzio, by Denise Mina. I'm probably the last to read this, but it was absolutely wonderful. Now I want to learn more about Mary - any recommendations for either a really good historical novel, or a very engaging non-fiction book?