Here goes - reviews part 1:
36. Noble Savages by Sarah Watling
I've been desperate to read this ever since I read this review of it last year. The four Olivier sisters - Margery, Daphne, Brynhild and Noel - grew up in a Fabian- and suffragette-supporting, Bohemian family, and had a fairly untamed Edwardian childhood and early adulthood, full of tree climbing, and wild horse-riding adventures in Jamaica while their father Sydney was the Governor there, and nude bathing with Rupert Brooke, and mixed-sex camping excursions where they tried to be self-sufficient for weeks on end. Noel went to the progressive co-educational Bedales school, where she learned exciting things like fencing and astronomy and got to hang out with members of the Hungarian nobility. Because of this background, they were educated more than most women of the time, and went on to lead interesting and varied lives in their own right – Bryn as a jewellery designer and later farmer, Daphne as a pioneering educationalist who founded the first Steiner school in the UK, and Noel as a respected paediatrician. Only Margery failed to fulfil her brilliant early potential, struggling throughout her life with severe mental illness, including several episodes of psychosis and erotomania for which she was institutionalised.
The four sisters moved in a fascinating milieu, surrounded throughout their childhood by socialist writers and economists, and then becoming part of the Neo-pagan group that coalesced around Rupert Brooke and other bright young things from Cambridge, and which included Lytton and James Strachey, John Maynard Keynes and the Stephens sisters. (Incidentally, many of them don’t come out of this particularly well: Virginia Woolf comes across as a complete bitch, and Rupert Brooke as a selfish shit). I could say so much more about this background, which I found fascinating, but I’ll spare you all! Sarah Watling covers it all in a lot of detail – some might think a little too much detail, although I personally enjoyed all the diversions about progressive schooling systems and suffragette politics and the training of women in medical schools – and it really helps to set these women and their lives in a wider context. The structure of the book is a bit fragmented: because Watling is trying to tell 4 stories in parallel, there’s a certain amount of weaving back and forth in the timeline, and also some large jumps where the historical record is a bit patchy at times. I had to concentrate hard to keep all the stories and characters and locations straight in my mind, but the journey was well worth the trouble.
37. Coffin, Scarcely Used by Colin Watson
Gently humorous but otherwise unremarkable post-war police mystery. I borrowed it through Prime Reading, and I think someone else has already reviewed it above. There was plenty of local colour in the setting, including a supposedly-scandalous solution to the mystery that was actually flagged up for the reader several chapters before the police unravelled it. I’m sounding a bit lukewarm about this because I read it several weeks ago and can’t remember much detail, but I enjoyed it at the time and will probably read others in the series.
38. The Time Machine by H. G. Wells
Classic sci-fi from 1895, about an unnamed Time Traveller who creates a machine for taking him forward (and back) in time. This is recognisably of its age in many ways (the Time Traveller sits astride his time machine on a bicycle saddle, which must have seemed quite cutting-edge at the time 
), but other aspects of it are gob-smacking. Not content with going a measly few thousand years into the future, the Time Traveller goes forward to the year 802,701, where he discovers that humans have not only evolved unrecognisably, but have also split into two distinct types of creature. Intriguingly, this is tied into a political (socialist) framework: changes in society, and in technological capabilities, have led the human race to progress/regress (depending on your point of view) to their unsatisfactory current state. There are a few anxious moments when it looks as if the Time Traveller will be unable to return to Victorian London – and a mind-blowing episode where he proceeds further into the future to witness the near-death of the galaxy – but he makes it back unscathed and is able to recount it all in this book. This was a thought-provoking and surprisingly modern read.
39. Look Who's Back by Timur Vermes
German satire that asks: what if Hitler woke up in Berlin in 2011? What kind of world would he find? How would he adapt to it? And what would he do next? (Become an alternative comedian who blurs the boundaries between satire and genuine fascism is the answer – the joke being that Hitler is in deadly earnest, even while all the gormless TV execs around him are praising his edgy, “ironic” rants and devotion to method acting.) This didn’t quite work for me: many bits were genuinely funny, but the satire was a bit laboured (Hitler’s misunderstandings about the modern world, which he sees filtered through his knowledge of Germany in 1945, palled after a while), and his rants were overblown and pompous (which was the point, of course). I was reading it in translation, so I’m sure some of the resonances were lost – but there was a clear distinction between Hitler’s old-fashioned, pedantic speech and the slangy speech of the TV producers. On the other hand, it was fascinating to see a German writer address his country’s past history head-on and with sharp-edged humour. There are very many outraged reviews on Goodreads (mostly by Americans, who seem to be a more earnest breed than Europeans), appalled that anybody would think Hitler a laughing matter (not sure Spike Milligan got that memo). It’s true that a satire can be so accurate that it is nearly indistinguishable from the real thing (remember the outrage over Chris Morris?). The difference is really only a matter of degree – of making the satire so over the top that it’s plainly ridiculous. You’d have to be a complete numpty to think that Timur Vermes is giving a genuine platform to fascist speech – and a complete snowflake to think that exposure to Hitler’s ideas, especially in the context of an obvious satire, could count as hate speech.
40. Where Do Comedians Go When They Die? by Milton Jones
Heartfelt and presumably autobiographical novel about a stand-up comedian. Ostensibly, there’s a plot (about being imprisoned during a gig in China for inadvertently insulting someone), but this is just a framing device that allows the protagonist Jerome to reflect on his rise to fame, from the poorly paid and abusive club circuit to his first TV appearance and beyond. Jerome himself is a self-absorbed and not entirely likeable character, and his friends and family are rather two-dimensional, being mostly there to form punchlines to gags. However, I found the descriptions of what it’s like to be a working comedian absolutely fascinating. Similarly, the descriptions of the other comedians and their acts, as well as the analysis of how jokes work, was where the book came alive – it’s clear that this is where Milton Jones’ heart is. Interestingly, I didn’t “hear” it in Jones’ (very distinctive) voice as I read it – there’s no sense of the cuddly, zany, wild-haired figure who’s always on Mock The Week.
41. Mount! by Jilly Cooper
A welcome return to Rutshire after some disappointing forays into the worlds of fine art, opera, schools and jump racing. Rupert and Taggie Campbell-Black are still going strong, although the former is now pushing 60 (which makes Taggie about my age, if I have the age difference correct 
). All is not entirely well at Penscombe: Rupert’s father Eddie has dementia, a gorgeous live-in carer (who just happens to be a fabulously accomplished rider) threatens their marriage, and Taggie has a worrying medical scare. The shadow of Cooper’s own marriage (Leo Cooper had a humiliatingly public affair, and then developed Parkinson’s disease, so Jilly spent more than a decade as his carer). This book is a partial return to form (lots of horses and debauched parties, which is what Jilly does best), but some cringeworthy racial stereotypes about Chinese poachers and Zimbabwean black farmers make you realise that she’s now 83 years old. On the other hand, how many 83 year olds can come up with an epithet during a sex scene that literally leaves you open-mouthed with shock, fascinated disgust and then bubbling hilarity? (A very Jilly-ish mixture, that.)
42. Love, Nina by Nina Stibbe
I’m sure this has been read by almost everyone! The first half, in which Nina is a (pretty useless) live-in nanny to Mary Kay Wilmers’ children, and hobnobs with all sorts of North London literati, is charming and entertaining. I was particularly tickled by the vision of Alan Bennett earnestly advising his neighbours about bicycle repairs, and also by the saga of Jonathan Miller’s axe. The second half, in which Nina starts University, goes rather off the boil – and the sharp observations about her fellow students feel a bit more like punching down than when she’s writing about older, more famous people. I have bought a couple of her novels, though, as I found this a very easy and engaging read, and I’m hoping for more of the same.