Reading

Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell

This woman is a fellow at All Souls, writes books for children and is obsessed with John Donne (the author not the heroine of the book). I heard her on a podcast and liked the sound of her so I thought I would try this. It is based on some poem by John Donne which everyone finds baffling. It starts out reasonably cheerfully and I thought it might be good for my seven year old niece but then the assassin comes along. It’s set in a fantasy world which is nicely described. There is a lot of death and the door, I would say, is not open for a sequel. I found it very peculiar. Not bad, just odd.

Below the Salt by Thomas Costain

Oh my God, I heard John Major say on a podcast that this was his favourite/most inspiring book. I hated it. It’s set in two time periods: the 1930s /40s in the States and at the time of the signing of the Magna Carta in England. There is also an absolutely painful Irish interlude which I cannot even speak of. I guess Major hasn’t read it since he was a teenager and there’s a certain amount of derring do and the start of what we would now call the rule of law but, and this is really important, there’s a cringe on every page. Not recommended. Definitely in the running for my worst book of the year.

Beau Brummell The Ultimate Dandy by Ian Kelly

A friend gave me this. It’s quite long for a biography of someone whose influence was admittedly huge but who flourished only for a few short years. Most of his life was spent in France fleeing debtors and sinking forever down in the social scale. I think he must have been a dazzling companion during his brief heyday. Some of his bon mots still survive. Remember “Who’s your fat friend?” Interesting overall but surprisingly sad. You’d want to be a Regency enthusiast.

The Saint of Lost Things by Tish Delaney

This was a bookclub book which I would never have read under my own steam. It’s about an aunt and niece living together in rural Ulster and the set up is grim, grim, grim. But I loved it. It’s beautifully written; funny, sad and it felt very true in lots of ways. Absolutely recommended but you would want to be feeling strong.

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins

I enjoyed the Hunger Games books and reread them in anticipation of this. This is a prequel. I thought it was terrible: I could not get interested in the character of the baddie (this prequel is about him as a young man). Maybe the author has been convinced by her own writing as she utterly fails to make him sympathetic or very interesting. Extremely disappointing. Alas.

Her Majesty’s Royal Coven by Juno Dawson

I mean, alright. I read another one of these last year and I suppose I came back for a second. I can’t say I’d bother with a third. Witches and covens in the modern world. It has made me keen to visit the Yorkshire village of Hebden Bridge where much of the action is set. It looks like they may be making a film/TV series about it. I passed this group in the King’s Inns in the autumn.

They found him Dead by Georgette Heyer

Georgette Heyer is my first love in the field of Regency romance and I reread her books again and again. So often that I almost know my favourites by heart. She also wrote detective novels and I never liked these. However, I decided to try again with this offering. A mistake. Not recommended.

The Vulnerables by Sigrid Nunez

This book is a bit shapeless. It’s set largely in the pandemic and not a great deal happens. A woman minds her friends’ parrot because they are out of the city for the duration of Covid. You’re really not there for the plot but more for the atmosphere, characters and writing. This is not the kind of book I would expect to enjoy but I did.

Two Sisters by Blake Morrison

I like Blake Morrison’s writing a lot. He has really mined his family for content writing separate books about his mother, his father and now his sisters. One of these is the product of a relationship his father had with a family friend and he didn’t realise they were related until later in life. The focus is more on the sister he grew up with. She was an alcoholic and he spends a lot of the book trying to work out why. It felt a bit exploitative I thought in a way that the books about his parents didn’t. Still an interesting read and very well written if you can face the ethical issues.

Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton

Environmental groups, billionaires, prepping, planning permission, it’s all here in this book set in New Zealand. Well written and quite pacey. Not really my cup of tea but I could see how others might enjoy it.

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

I decided to read this after reading Demon Copperhead. I was impressed by how cleverly Barbara Kingsolver based her novel on the original. I did not, however, enjoy David Copperfield. It’s overly long – you can tell he’s being paid by the word – and I found it a bit dull though funny in places. It’s a much lighter read than the Barbara Kingsolver novel. That said it is definitely not my favourite Dickens.

Life in the Balance by Jim Down

Another book written by a doctor. I find these are reliably good. This is an intensive care doctor and he’s really interesting about the job. I don’t know what I thought they did in intensive care before but now I know they basically knock you out and most intensive care doctors trained as anaesthetists. Recommended.

Family Politics by John O’Farrell

John O’Farrell is reliably hilarious. This is not his best work (that remains “Things Can Only Get Better”) but it’s still funny. The premise is that the son of a middle-class staunchly Labour family goes off to college and comes home a Tory. The author takes every opportunity to skewer the politics of the right and the left. Enjoyable.

The Dictator’s Wife by Freya Berry

I read an article about (against) artificial flowers in one of the Sunday papers and I was really impressed by the ideas and the writing style so I picked up this book by the author of the article. It’s about the widow of a dictator of an imaginary Eastern European country (honestly feels quite like Romania) who is on trial for the sins of the regime during Communism. The writing was good and the ideas were interesting but it feels like an early work and that the author will get better in time.

The Hunter by Tana French

I love Tana French. This is the second of her books featuring an American detective who has moved to the west of Ireland and his teenage protégée. I didn’t think it was as good as some of her other books but a mediocre Tana French book is still very very good.

Everywhere an Oink Oink: An Embittered, Dyspeptic, and Accurate Report of Forty Years in Hollywood by David Mamet

I found this quite annoying. It’s funny in parts but Mr. Mamet is the king of entitlement. If you like David Mamet, I guess you’ll like this.

The Witching Hour by Catriona McPherson

A new Dandy Gilver novel, I rejoice. There are loads of these detective books set between the wars in Scotland. I love Dandy our detective from the landed gentry (now a grandmother) and her sidekick and I love the period Scottish detail but the plots have always been a bit difficult to follow and this latest one is just completely bonkers. A qualified endorsement. If you want to read a Dandy Gilver novel, I wouldn’t start here.

The Farmer’s Wife by Helen Rebanks

I’ve read a couple of this woman’s husband’s books (James Rebanks) and loved them. I heard this recommended and thought I would give it a go. It’s an interesting book – very honest about the trials and tribulations of being a farmer’s wife but also acknowledging the joys of living on a farm. Well-written also.

You are here by David Nicholls

David Nicholls is funny. This is a romantic comedy about two strangers who end up walking across the north of England together. The character development is great and it’s very funny but also sad in places. Lovely. I recommend.

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

This is the second of Emily St John Mendel’s books that I have read. It also features unsettling jumps forward and backward in time. It is not a feature I love, at least as executed by this author. Also, it’s about the collapse of civilisation after a pandemic. Frankly, too soon. Despite these caveats it’s pretty good and I would broadly recommend, if you can face pandemic content.

The Land of Lost Things by John Connolly

I was really looking forward to this. I found The Book of Lost Things to which this is a sequel an amazing, creepy, clever read. It’s a book for children, as is the sequel. The sequel doesn’t work for me, I found it much less engaging and much less strange. Disappointing.

The Letters of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh edited by Charlotte Mosley

This does what it says on the tin, a lifetime’s correspondence between two authors that I really like. I enjoyed it hugely and was very sorry to finish it. My goodness though, Evelyn Waugh was a difficult, awkward person.

A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel

This is 1000 closely written pages about the French revolution. It’s an earlyish work and you can see flashes of what gave us Wolf Hall later but it contains a lot of tell don’t show for my money: Citizen Robespierre can you explain again the terms of reference for the revolutionary committees please? I would not recommend unless you are particularly interested in the French Revolution. They all die in the end.

Caledonian Road by Andrew O’Hagan

This has got rave reviews and I really enjoyed it at the beginning but ultimately I became very fed up with our hero and his mid-life crisis. It’s supposed to be a sweeping novel involving people a the top of society (Russian oligarchs, Dukes, landed gentry, star academics), the bottom (human traffickers, illegal migrants, teenage gangs) and everyone in between. Ultimately, I think it tries to do too much. I did not really enjoy.

Half Bad by Sally Green

Half Wild by Sally Green

Half Lost by Sally Green

I read all three books in this series having seen it on the TV with the kids. It’s young adult fiction. Quite a lot of fighting a war which is tedious. The first book establishing the magical world is the best – white witches/black witches and a mix of the two (no prizes for guessing which camp our hero falls into). In the second book he falls in love with a girl and in the third book he falls in love with a boy. I felt this triangle would be resolved by one of them dying in battle and so it was. I fully expected him to hook up with the girl. But he doesn’t, he goes to live in the wild. He has lots of powers including being able to transform into animals. In the very end of the last book (spoiler here) having seen so many people die and having killed lots of people himself he is quite damaged and he manages to turn himself into a tree, apparently forever. And that’s the end, I did not see that coming. Though poorly described here, I found it kind of moving. I suppose he can be revived if necessary for a book 4, but I think that’s the end.

My Favourite Mistake by Marian Keyes

I’ve read all the Marian Keyes books I think. Some of them are really good and extremely funny. This one is not. It’s about the Walsh family again who feature in many of her books. I just didn’t think it was very good and I found myself not caring at all whether the characters found love which isn’t great for romantic fiction.

Soldier Sailor by Claire Kilroy

This is the best book I’ve read so far this year. It’s about a mother and a child and I have never read anything that captures so well that first year of having a baby. I truly recommend it, I thought it was extraordinary. It really reminded me of when the Princess was a small baby. Except that the father in this book is useless. I’ll be searching out Claire Kilroy’s back catalogue.

How Finland Survived Stalin: From Winter War to Cold War, 1939-1950 by Kimmo Rentola

This is translated from the Finnish and assumes a much greater knowledge of Finland and its foreign policy than I have. Nevertheless, I found it really interesting and only about 200 pages. The Finns are not wordy. Did you know that Poland is known as a “Christ among nations” always having to sacrifice itself for other countries? Apparently Finns and Poles know this but other people not so much. Recommended, if you’re interested in this kind of thing.

We Solve Murders by Richard Osman

A new Richard Osman book moving away from the Thursday murder club. A detective story, an easy read; I found it just as I expected, perhaps a little twee, but pleasant to read. Would read another in due course.

Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead

This is about a black man making his way in Harlem in the 1960s. He’s mostly on the right side of the law but he occasionally slides into criminality. It took me ages to get into this but after the first 100 pages it really picked up and I found it interesting and engaging. The heist at the start was dull for me (some people like a heist, not me) and I thought it was going to take up the whole book but it did not. I might even try another but not for some time.

Hercule Poirot’s Silent Night by Sophie Hannah

I heard someone recommending Sophie Hannah’s new Hercule Poirot novels and I saw this in the library and thought I would give it a try. I was quite disappointed. Poirot is there alright, the period is right but I’m afraid Sophie Hannah is no Agatha Christie. Alas.

Dissolution by CJ Samson

This is an extremely popular series of novels set in Tudor times. This first one is set during the dissolution of the monasteries. Our hero as Cromwell’s Commissioner is sent to investigate a murder. I thought the period detail and the historical material was good (some caveats) but I just wasn’t super interested in finding out who committed the murder. Unfortunate as if I had liked it there were loads of them.

Related (to reading): I was speaking to a male colleague in his thirties today; a man who likes to read and he had never heard of Noel Streatfeild. How is this possible?

What have you been reading yourself? Anything good?