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Dec 1, 20221 min read
1033. Audrey Magee - The Undertaking
This is her first book, and very different from The Colony (no.1019). Set in 1940’s Germany, the central figures are a soldier on the...
Feb 17, 20211 min read
848. John Le Carré - Our Game
Published in 1995, so 25 years old. Made me wonder about the author’s sexuality. There are three main characters, Tim Cranmer the...
Dec 20, 20201 min read
836. John Le Carré - Agent Running In The Field
Probably his last published book, as he died last week. Le Carré is a writer (like Graham Greene) whose prose an English middle class...
Oct 13, 20201 min read
820. Charlotte Hobson - The Vanishing Futurist
I found this hard going; it was dramatised on Radio 4 but maybe their adaptation was better than the book. About an English governess who...
Sep 7, 20201 min read
812. Leo Tolstoy - Anna Karenina
Thought I should follow the first great 19th century novel about adultery with the 2nd, but it is long (850 pages). Completely different...
Mar 4, 20201 min read
752. Penelope Fitzgerald - The Beginning of Spring
Recommended on BBC’s A Good Read, and I had never read any of hers before. Good, but I struggled to understand the underlying theme. Set...
Dec 6, 20191 min read
734. Ken Follett - The Man From St. Petersburg
An Xmas present from Cristina next door, who is I think a fan and may even have met the guy. Very good, not the sort of book or writer I...
May 30, 20191 min read
687. Ivan Turgenev - Fathers And Sons
Although I think regarded as a classic of 19th century Russian literature, I thought this had dated badly and didn’t really enjoy it. My...
Apr 25, 20191 min read
678. Jaroslav Hasek - The Good Soldier Svejk
Obviously having my own Prague spring as this was inspired by 677 above, and apart from Kafka, Hasek is the major Prague writer from the...
Mar 31, 20191 min read
672. Milan Kundera - The Unbearable Lightness Of Being
Haven’t read this for a long time but it is a brilliant book. About sex, love, metaphysics, and the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia in...
Jan 5, 20191 min read
647. Fydor Dostoyevsky - The Brothers Karamazov
This is a huge and very challenging book. The basic plot is relatively simple – three brothers with an unpleasant and dissolute father,...
Nov 24, 20181 min read
641. Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Crime And Punishment
I have never read this before, although our old paperback edition was bought 41 years ago. So better late than never. I didn’t enjoy The...
Oct 28, 20171 min read
545. Nicolai Gogol - Dead Souls
Been meaning to read this for years, strange and paradoxically both difficult and easy to read. Very long and unfinished, in fact Gogol...
Aug 12, 20161 min read
424. Ivan Turgenev - Fathers And Sons
This is a lot easier than Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky; a quite light social comedy on the surface, although the central figure Bazarov...
Dec 14, 20141 min read
269. Leo Tolstoy - Anna Karenina
I quite enjoyed this, although it took ages to get going (around page 300!?). One of my problems was that none of the characters were,...
Jul 31, 20141 min read
230. Ian Rankin - Exit Music
The last, I think, or intended last, Rebus. I found this structurally very similar to no.228 initially, with Russian money playing the...
Jun 17, 20131 min read
119. Henning Mankell - The White Lioness
A strange Wallander book that begins with an apparent Swedish domestic and expands into an attempt by the African white supremacists to...
May 4, 20131 min read
101a. Leo Tolstoy - War And Peace
Can't give this a number (see no.89), but I have finally finished 'War & Peace'; it is a huge book. i would like to re-read it, but would...
Mar 21, 20131 min read
89. Leo Tolstoy - War & Peace
21.03.2013 Meanwhile, where I am now halfway through 'War & Peace', which I started post no.83. It is good but hard work - last night's...
Mar 18, 20131 min read
87. Jennie Rooney - Red Joan
Best holiday read so far. About an English girl who goes to Cambridge pre-WW2 and falls in love with a Russian émigré communist. She is...