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Aug 19, 20231 min read
1087. Jane Austen - Northanger Abbey
Haven’t read this since I was at school, but P now has the collected works. Austen does write perfect prose, which is a joy to read. I...
Jun 17, 20231 min read
1074. Zadie Smith - White Teeth
I have read this before, and it is good, but long and quite difficult. The story of two families, one an Englishman married to a...
Jun 9, 20231 min read
1073. John Le Carré - Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
This was a brilliant TV drama twenty plus years ago, but I think the book has dated. Heavily imbued in the English class system as it was...
Apr 29, 20231 min read
1061. Darren Mcgarvey - Poverty Safari
This didn’t work for me. Described as "understanding the anger of Britain’s underclass", it really wasn’t about this at all. McGarvey...
Dec 24, 20221 min read
1038. Charles Dickens - A Christmas Carol
Never read this before, and probably won’t again. A short morality tale, featuring Ebenezer Scrooge who is visited first by the ghost of...
Nov 5, 20221 min read
1027. Anne Brontë - Agnes Grey
The first of, I think, the only two novels she published before her very early death. A simple story about a 19th century ‘middle class’...
Jun 14, 20221 min read
989. Charles Dickens - Martin Chuzzlewit
I always try to take a Dickens or big 19th C novel on holiday. If Galbraith can be prolix and needs editing, what do you say about...
May 2, 20221 min read
971. LJ Ross - High Force
I can’t pretend to have enjoyed this, although the high octane plot kept me reading, despite misgivings. A police procedural (poorly...
Mar 4, 20221 min read
952. Hallie Rubenhold - The Five
The first book group book. About the five victims of Jack the Ripper. Not the sort of thing I would normally read. Written by a feminist...
Jan 9, 20221 min read
932. Martin Edwards - Mortmain Hall
Never heard of this guy, or read anything of his before. 1930’s upper class decadence and sexual depravity meets 1930’s intellectualised...
Dec 17, 20211 min read
923. Lucy Worsley - Jane Austen At Home
This is really good – I expected a rather frothy and lightweight book from a woman who likes to prance around in period costume in her TV...
Aug 11, 20211 min read
883. Nick Hornby - Just Like You
Quite enjoyed this. A romance between a 40 year old white woman, divorced with two kids, and a 20+ old black man, who works in the local...
Jul 30, 20211 min read
880. Abi Dare - The Girl With The Louding Voice
This is very good. Set in Nigeria, Adunni, a village girl is sold at 14 into marriage, as the third wife of a wealthy villager, to pay...
Apr 2, 20211 min read
854. Anne Glenconner - Lady In Waiting
Quite a strange, but interesting, book. Anne Glenconner is a typical upper class English girl, born into the aristocracy, marries another...
Dec 26, 20201 min read
838. Mara Timon - City Of Spies
I enjoyed this, despite being irritated at times. Quite a big canvass for a debut novel. Set mainly in Lisbon in the middle of the 2nd...
Dec 19, 20201 min read
835. Emile Zola - The Mysteries Of Marseilles
No. 3 in my unnavigable Complete works. If I was writing a critical summary of Zola’s novels, I would say that this is a much longer...
Oct 22, 20201 min read
821. Charles Dickens - Oliver Twist
Thought I would try another Dickens after 819 and not really enjoying the 21st century 820. Quite enjoyed this, but Dickens' characters...
Apr 1, 20201 min read
761. Elizabeth Gaskell - Mary Barton
We bought this in Lymington in September 1978 and if I have read it before, it won’t have been since shortly after then. Gaskell is a...
Sep 6, 20191 min read
711. Sebastian Faulks - Paris Echo
Brilliant. As the blurb/a reviewer says, partly a hymn to Paris, but also via the alternating and very different narrators, an...
Sep 5, 20191 min read
710. David Nichols - Sweet Sorrow
Quite good. I had heard bits on the Radio 4 book of the week slot a month or so ago. A young, class-crossed love story set against the...