Part Four in the Increasingly Inaccurately Named Trilogy of FlossieT's Common Reading Confessions

(thread title in honour of the anniversary, obviously. And definitely NOT the 6th book.)

Previously from FlossieT (which I now hear, in my head, in the voice of the man that says "Previously (pause) on LOST"):

Common reading, confessions thereof,
January-init. April
April-June
June-September

Reading now:

Oscar and Lucinda - Peter Carey
The Crash of Hennington - Patrick Ness
The Striped World - Emma Jones

This year's list (decided to dispense with the touchstones as correcting them again every time I added a book was getting old):

January
1. The Sewing Circles of Herat - Christina Lamb (326 pages)
2. Ghostwalk - Rebecca Stott (324 pages)
3. Not the End of the World - Kate Atkinson (332 pages)
4. The Man in the Picture - Susan Hill (145 pages)
5. Don't Panic - Neil Gaiman (240 pages, or 241 if you count the acknowledgements...)
6. Through the Dark Woods - Joanna Swinney (152 pages)
7. Dead Lovely - Helen FitzGerald (298 pages)
8. The Master Bedroom - Tessa Hadley (309 pages)
9. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold (328 pages)
10. A Bit on the Side - William Trevor (245 pages)
11. The Flying Troutmans - Miriam Toews (274 pages)

February
12. 84, Charing Cross Road - Helene Hanff (97 pages)
13. Sleepyhead - Mark Billingham (405 pages)
14. I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You - Ally Carter (284 pages)
15. In the Woods - Tana French (592 pages)
16. The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman (289 pages)
17. Coraline - Neil Gaiman (185 pages)
18. American Gods - Neil Gaiman (588 pages)
19. Ella Minnow Pea - Mark Dunn (203 pages)
20. The 13 Clocks and the Wonderful O - James Thurber (158 pages)
21. Three Cups of Tea - Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin (338 pages)
22. Angels of the Flood - Joanna Hines (409 pages)
23. Cassandra at the Wedding - Dorothy Baker (225 pages)
24. No Time for Goodbye - Linwood Barclay (437 pages)
25. Proust and the Squid - Maryanne Wolf (295 pages)
26. My Antonia - Willa Cather (372 pages)

March
27. Vicky Had One Eye Open - Darryl Samaraweera (211 pages)
28. Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief - Rick Riordan (374 pages)
29. What Should I Do With My Life? - Po Bronson (400 pages - I'm counting the gushing acknowledgements and the saccharine reading group guide)
30. The Silver Linings Playbook - Matthew Quick (289 pages)
31. Tuesdays With Morrie - Mitch Albom (192 pages)
32. Death of an Englishman - Magdalen Nabb (238 pages)
33. The Dark Lord of Derkholm - Diana Wynne Jones (328 pages)
34. The Idle Parent - Tom Hodgkinson (223 pages)
35. Everything I Needed to Know About Being a Girl, I Learnt From Judy Blume - ed. Jennifer O'Connell (275 pages)
36. I Was Told There'd Be Cake - Sloane Crosley (230 pages)

April
37. Florence, A Delicate Case - David Leavitt (176 pages)
38. Imagined London - Anna Quindlen (162 pages)
39. In Other Rooms, Other Wonders - Daniyal Mueenuddin (237 pages)
40. Maps for Lost Lovers - Nadeem Aslam (369 pages)
41. I Like My Job - Sarah Herman (285 pages)
42. Kabul in Winter - Ann Jones (308 pages)
43. Designs for a Happy Home - Matthew Reynolds (240 pages)
44. Molly Fox's Birthday - Deirdre Madden (221 pages)
45. Earth and Ashes - Atiq Rahimi (54 pages)
46. Brooklyn - Colm Tóibín (252 pages)

May
47. Flood and Fang - Marcus Sedgwick (247 pages)
48. The Winter Vault - Anne Michaels (336 pages)
49. The Twisted Heart - Rebecca Gowers (280 pages)
50. Quite Ugly One Morning - Christopher Brookmyre (c.250 pages)
51. All the Living - C.E. Morgan (c.190 pages)
52. The Third Man and The Fallen Idol - Graham Greene (130 pages)
53. Hurting Distance - Sophie Hannah (408 pages)
54. Hens Dancing - Raffaella Barker (344 pages)
55. Fugitive Pieces - Anne Michaels (294 pages)
56. Second Honeymoon - Joanna Trollope (383 pages)
57. Everything Will Be All Right - Tessa Hadley (422 pages)
58. Devil's Kiss - Sarwat Chadda (279 pages)

June
59. Mr Toppit - Charles Elton (343 pages)
60. The Journal of Dora Damage - Belinda Starling (452 pages if you count all the various notes and acknowledgements - which I do)
61. The Knife of Never Letting Go - Patrick Ness (479 pages)
62. The Ask and the Answer - Patrick Ness (519 pages)
63. Anansi Boys - Neil Gaiman (457 pages)
64. The Gone-Away World - Nick Harkaway (532 pages)
65. After the Fire, A Still Small Voice - Evie Wyld (no touchstone, linked to work page) (296 pages)
66. Love and Summer - William Trevor (212 pages)
67. Just Like Tomorrow - Faïza Guène (184 pages including notes)
68. Dreams from the Endz - Faïza Guène (170 pages including notes)

July
69. The Angel's Game - Carlos Ruiz Zafón (443 pages)
70. Legend of a Suicide - David Vann
71. The Rehearsal - Eleanor Catton
72. Tender Morsels - Margo Lanagan
73. The Falcon's Malteser - Anthony Horowitz
74. Granta 106 (New Fiction Special) - ed. Alex Clark
75. Bareback - Kit Whitfield
76. Nothing to Be Frightened Of - Julian Barnes
77. Faceless Killers - Henning Mankell

August
78. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo - Stieg Larsson
79. An Elegy for Easterly - Petina Gappah
80. Not Her Real Name - Emily Perkins
81. Crimespotting - various
82. The Dogs of Riga - Henning Mankell
83. Mistress of the Art of Death - Ariana Franklin
84. The White Lioness - Henning Mankell

September
85. Twisted Wing - Ruth Newman
86. A Party in San Niccolo - Christobel Kent
87. Book of Clouds - Chloe Aridjis
88. Larklight - Philip Reeve
89. The Cambridge Murders - Dilwyn Rees

October
90. Unseen Academicals - Terry Pratchett
91. Can Any Mother Help Me? - Jenna Bailey
92. Exchange - Paul Magrs
93. The Dante Club - Matthew Pearl
94. Noughts & Crosses - Malorie Blackman
95. Knife Edge - Malorie Blackman
96. Checkmate - Malorie Blackman
97. Double Cross - Malorie Blackman
98. 31 Hours - Masha Hamilton
99. The Taste of Sorrow - Jude Morgan
100. Topics About Which I Know Nothing - Patrick Ness
101. The Third Pig Detective Agency - Bob Burke

November
102. Bang Crunch - Neil Smith
103. The Other Half Lives - Sophie Hannah
104. The 10PM Question - Kate de Goldi
105. The Slap - Christos Tsiolkas
106. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - John Le Carré
107. The Franchise Affair - Josephine Tey
108. The Vintner's Luck - Elizabeth Knox
109. Letters to a Fiction Writer - Frederick Busch
110. Green for Danger - Christianna Brand
111. Morality Play - Barry Unsworth

December
112. The Likeness - Tana French
113. The Song House - Trezza Azzopardi
114. Cold Earth - Sarah Moss
115. The Wilding - Maria McCann
116. Keeper - Andrea Gillies
117. An Expert in Murder - Nicola Upson
118. The Hidden - Tobias Hill
119. The Whole Wide Beauty - Emily Woof
120. The Next Queen of Heaven - Gregory Maguire

Not counting:
The Secret Scripture - Sebastian Barry (re-read)
The Devil's Children - Peter Dickinson (re-read)
Heartsease - Peter Dickinson (re-read)
The Weathermonger - Peter Dickinson (re-read)
Generation X - Douglas Coupland (re-read)

There was some talk of the "proper" point at which to start a new thread today, and since I'd crested 200, and was about to add a picture, I thought I'd better start again (even though I haven't actually finished a book..).

I don't normally do this but.... for those that have read Mistress of the Art of Death: I was idly flipping through my phone pictures last night and discovered my family picnicking at Wandlebury Ring, which inevitably I must share, for pure idle-amusement value:



Hopefully you can see why I might be just a weeny bit disconcerted by the use to which Ms Franklin has put one of my family's favourite al-fresco luncheon spots.

ETA: I will finish a book really really really soon as I'm only 10 pages from the end of The White Lioness...

Obviously going for the record of 'Longest Thread Title' :) Got you starred again!

Ditto! And a very cute photo, by the way.

#2 - What a wonderful picture! Thanks for sharing :)

...and I love the thread's title

>3 alcottacre: Stasia, I was amazed LT let me post one that long - was typing expecting to be interrupted by the Invisible Character Barrier with every keystroke.

>4 Cariola: & >5 petermc: - thanks both - I do feel a bit weird putting pics of my family on the Internet-at-large, at the same time as trying to teach the boys about the importance of identity preservation and security on the internet... but it really made me giggle when I found that.

I wouldn't worry about security too much. The one in front is well-disguised. And great title. Now, darn it, stop reading such intriguing books.

#6: You know, of course, that now everyone is going to try and beat it for length!

The eldest one is both well-disguised and a bit fierce looking. I wouldn't mess with him.

What a cute picture - *sigh* (Sigh = I have teenagers).

I would be interested in your impressions of the Busch book, which I have been intrigued in (Oh, it looks like he edits it - so not sure what it is about now).

Rachael, you could delete it when you end the thread. Love the ginger hair!

I get to see my grandkids in two weeks!

I can see the ookieness factor in the location's earlier history..."Don't pick up that chicken bone, sweetums, it might be a femur from a murdered medieval child" isn't a sentence one wants to say to a kid very often.

Lovely photo!! Your kids are really cute.

I haven't read all your posts about Edinburgh yet so don't type too fast on this one please...

Very cute picture :)

>9 kidzdoc: actually, the snow leopard is the middle child, so wild in nature as well as looks :) This was taken right at the start of the summer, before he fractured his wrist.

>10 kiwidoc: Karen, the Busch book is an anthology of letters from writers to writers, some written specially for it, some excerpted from already-extant correspondence. It is really interesting - I've had it on my TBR list for about 10 years, and a physical copy for at least 5 of them, and am not sure why it's taken me so long to get there. I love that one of the letters is addressed to Dan Chaon (of Await Your Reply fame) "before he was famous".

Thanks all for nice comments on photo!

Starred ya again :)

#1 glad to hear it was after the anniversary, not the 6th book ;)

Great photo - clearly I'm going to have to read the book, to understand why Wandlebury's disconcerting!

Enjoyed the picture.

One of my sons put me onto the Mistress of the Art of Death series. Guess his background in toxicology got him interested. Grave Goods, by Ariana Franklin, ends up in Wells, which we had a chance to visit in the 80's. I particularly remember the "scissor arches" in the Wells Cathedral.

I appreciate your review of Zafron's The Angel's Game; I will not need to add it to the TBR. I will eventually finish The Shadow of the Wind, if no other reason than it takes place in Barcelona.

Found and starred again!

Joining in on the party - oh, and your daughter is adorable!

Thanks Cait!

Just a quick one for Canadians who wanted to Atwood: in case you don't see it via other means, there's a Toronto event on 24 September, tickets from http://www.readings.org/. Sorry not to post individually on your thread(s)/profile(s) but so many people mentioned it I've forgotten...

I've learned that L'Atwood doesn't do book signings any more. She uses this bit of technology called the "long pen". I don't blame her, really. One gets to a certain age and the idea of flying all over, then sitting for hours on end in various venues, writing one's name endlessly for long lines of people....I've resigned myself to never having a signed Atwood in my collection.

Thanks, Floss - yes, it's the Canadian book festival happening simultaneously at big cities across Canada. Margaret Atwood will be at Queen's Park sometime after 3 p.m. on that Sunday.

#22

She may not personally do the signatures, but she personalised both Flossie's and my copies of The Year of the Flood when we went to see her on Monday night.

Oh, lucky you two! Treasure them.

#23 bother! I forgot all about that!!

My best friend and I are going to an Atwood reading on Sept. 26th, in Kitchener-Waterloo (about an hour from Toronto). It is at the Kitchener Public Library, and it is free, so I'm guessing it won't be a huge event. I believe it is a reading, q&a, and signing. I bought The Year of the Flood the other day. What did you think of the reading Rachael? Luna? I'm so excited for it!!

>22 tiffin: Tiff, I'd heard that the Long Pen was an invention whereby she could sign books from a distance - so she didn't have to hop on a plane to do her signings - but that she was still actually signing them (moving the distant pen, at least) herself. Would be v disappointed to hear it was not so!

I would "treasure it", but I actually got her to dedicate my copy for my mother-in-law, who defies all mother-in-law stereotypes and is truly wonderful (and obviously has been reading Atwood for many years longer than me...). It's my cunning plan to keep new books out of my house - I buy them for people that I know will (a) appreciate them (b) lend them to me at some point ;-)

>25 flissp:/26 fliss & Cait: feel free to chip in, luna, if you disagree wildly: my personal feeling was that the readings were good - from the actors - but the choir for our particular event was woefully under-rehearsed and under-powered for such a huge space as Ely Cathedral. Margaret Atwood also seemed like she'd reached the point of "OK, why on earth did I ever think this stupid book tour was a good idea?" and was on slightly glazed-over autopilot.

I'm still glad I went - after all, she is 70, and the Long Pen may be deployed in force for the next book, so I'm really glad to have seen her 'live' - and it may well be that the choirs in Canada are better prepared.

Oh, and I forgot to say: I finished a book!

84. The White Lioness - Henning Mankell

Have put this in August reads in my first post but I need to go back and fix it as it's definitely a 100% September read.

Definitely the best of the series so far - Mankell seems to have understood, finally, that if you want to write a thriller about global geopolitics, you have to have a personal element to hold the reader's interest - you can't just have it all happen neatly off-stage. I enjoyed this much more than the first two, but am still not entirely blown away by them - enough so that with only 10 pages to go, I found other things to distract me for a good 48 hours before I knuckled down to finishing it.

I'm going to follow Kurt a little further - I thought I was finally caught up to the one I actually own copies of, but it looks from Common Knowledge (how reliable is that??) as if I still have The Man Who Smiled to go before I get to Sidetracked. Will definitely stick with the series long enough to read the episodes that were televised as I really really loved the TV show - and this is spoken (typed) by someone who does not really watch telly.

Now reading a very enjoyable Cambridge-set murder mystery from Susan Hill's imprint Long Barn Books: Twisted Wing by Ruth Newman.

#27

Absolutely agree. The under-powered didn't annoy me so much (although I imagine it would have done had we not been so close to the front) but the under-rehearsed was pretty bad. Getting out of time to the music etc just felt so amateur, compared to the writing quality and the actors reading.

I am glad I went though, and it was an experience! I will definitely treasure the book, and to have bats flying round over the performance was wonderful.

Cait, I'm wondering if I can talk my cousin into going to the Kitchener library on my behalf! He lives in Waterloo. *devious plotting beginning*

You have a lovely family.

#27 & #29 Sorry the singing wasn't the best and for the autopilot - sounds like it was worth it nonetheless though! And wooo for bats!

Rachel, I remember you commenting that your husband's a Mitchell & Webb fan - don't know if you're aware that they're speaking at a showing of the first episode of the new series of Peep Show at the Film Festival? Hopefully they haven't sold out yet (only just got the program, despite being a member of the Arts - grrr).

Love, love, LOVED your Eleanor Catton interview in Belletrista! I think you did a brilliant job of it and asked really good questions. If anyone else wants to read it, here's the url:
http://www.belletrista.com/2009/issue1/index.html

Just scroll down until you see Catton's photo and click. Be prepared to be impressed!

Rachael - I loved it too, you did a wonderful job. Your questions were very good and her answers were expansive and gave us, the reader, a real insight into her creative process. Thanks.

Great job, Rachael!

Rachael! What a wonderful interview! I now want to read this book that I would never have considered before. "Thanks"!

Tui is being too modest to mention her own wonderful review of Yoko Ogawa's book The Housekeeper and the Professor. It's a lovely sounding book and is now on my wishlist ("thanks" to you, too, Tui).

oh yes, great great interview Rachael! and thanks tiffin for mentioning it and for the link!

Ditto to the above - I was really interested in her comments about parochial New Zealand and the anti-intellectualism. As someone who lived in NZ for my formative years (12-24), it was interesting to hear her impressions. Just an excellent format of questions, Flossie.

Thank you all of you for the very lovely comments (and especially Tiffin for posting the link!). I really, really enjoyed meeting Ellie - she was so ready to chat, and her answers were so interesting. Although it is very, very hard not to be pea-green envious of an early-20s writer who "doesn't draft, really". And it was great fun putting the piece together, although I'm still a little sad I didn't quite have time to write a proper 'profile' rather than just transcribe & edit the interview (my fault for having too many holidays).

I came to The Rehearsal almost by accident: a basic plot summary makes it sound sooooo unpromising, and I'd put it in the mental pile labelled "probably not" - until I saw a couple of positive reviews, there happened to be a copy on the shelf at work...I fell completely in love with it.

My current book is totally gripping so I'm evicting myself from LT herewith for the evening... desperate to finish it!! Oh, and I've stacks and stacks of laundry to fold too. Sigh.

What a fun time it looks like you've been having! Love the pic of your fam -- thx for sharing.

>40 suslyn: Suse, don't bother...Rachael has abandoned us, ne'er to be seen more by unworthy eyes. Two weeks now, it's been two weeks, and nary a dandruff-flake have we spied. Alack. Alas.

well she's alive and well -- I see her change her status from time to time on Facebook :)

I'm here, I'm here... I've just been reading reeeeeeeally slowly (updating the running list in the first post, from which you will see that I have finished a feeble THREE books this month) as I have been overtaken by some insane cleaning demon, and have been throwing stuff out, communing with the bleach, and committing genocide against the local spider population, like a woman possessed. Seriously: I spent five hours cleaning the bathroom at one point. I think I may be unwell.

Very exciting book was Twisted Wing, and is indeed totally gripping BUT not for the faint-hearted, being as it is (a) very violent (b) full of extremely twisted individuals (Richard, avoid). I got sucked into it very quickly because it's set in a Cambridge college which, while being named "Ariel", is recognisably Kings, and I always read faster when I don't have to put any effort into making the pictures up by myself...

Am trying vainly to catch up on threads.

...lol at the insane cleaning demon... :D

Five hours cleaning the bathroom? You ARE unwell. I do without food sometimes to afford a housecleaner on alternate weeks, simply because I do NOT want to clean bathrooms. But I'm older too, and at the point where life is just too short to clean bathrooms. So good for you! I guess...

Yes. Five hours. Hmmm. ;) You can come and do my place when you're finished if you like!

I've just noticed that it's your birthday today - HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!! I hope you've got lots of exciting plans? Is this why you've been doing all the cleaning?!

Happy birthday! I fear 5 hours of bathroom cleaning may be in my future too, and I know once I'm cleaning I will find it weirdly satisfying... Ugh to the spiders though.

Happy birthday, Rachael! Give yourself a cleaning service for your birthday. No one on earth should have a five-hour cleaning orgy in the bathroom. It's not Seemly.

Happy Birthday :)

And pay no attention to the dissenters! 5 hours spent cleaning the bathroom is not only laudable, but also a reflection on the highest hygiene standards you set for yourself and your family. Your own humble deprecation becomes you, and I, for one, stand in veneration.

Happy birthday!!!

Happy birthday, Rachael!

Umm...how large IS your bathroom, BTW?

Hope you have a lovely day, Rachael. No more cleaning on your special day. (However, I totally understand how you can spend hours cleaning a bathroom)

Happy Birthday Rachael! Hope you received lots of books for your birthday :)

Happy Birthday (um, I like cleaning bathrooms :)

Another Happy Birthday - hope your day went well.

And a day late, as usual: Happy Birthday Rachael! Hope it was a wonderful one!

Belated Happy Birthday. Hope it was a good one!

Hello everyone. First, thank you very much indeed for all the lovely birthday wishes. Birthday was a bit of a washout tbh - I wish I'd taken the day off as that might have helped a bit - but like my life in microcosm, in that there was so much other stuff that needed to be done that the actual celebration had to be kind of tacked on to the end.... ho hum.

Secondly, on the cleaning: lest it appear I am some domestic goddess, I need to stress that the reason I got so carried away was the dirt in my house had accumulated to levels of near-slum-like filth. Seriously: if it had been someone else's house, I would have been afraid to touch anything (but since it was my muck, I had a better chance of achieving an accurate risk calculation). It was that bad. I don't like cleaning at the best of times, and as is the way with things you don't like doing, I therefore find it hard to fit into the schedule. But somehow, a combination of being away so much over the summer and not having time to clean, realising quite how filthy it was, and then a looming first-ever visit by my brother's new-ish (and very lovely) girlfriend just tripped the switch.

Unfortunately, I have rather now run out of steam before actually finishing... and am now hit by that autumnal exhaustion thing, when the days get colder and the light gets less. Still. The baseline is set considerably higher than it was at the start of the summer, so all is not lost.

That's the boring life stuff. Bookwise, not much has been going on. Because of all the cleaning - and because our dishwasher broke down at the start of September and we haven't been able to afford to replace it until now - I've been spending considerably less time reading - and also, bizarrely, haven't really felt like it. Anyway, following will be some brief comments on some actual books.

85. Twisted Wing - Ruth Newman

This was a very, very creepy book. Impulse purchase on the internet, from Susan Hill's Long Barn Books - I just love books set in Cambridge. Someone is murdering pretty female undergraduates, and forensic psychologist Matthew Denison is convinced that traumatised student Olivia, found next to the latest corpse covered in blood and wearing only her underwear, holds the key to the mystery, if he can only bring her back to herself and get her to talk to him.

Very gory - lots of graphic violence - and some rather horrible abuse-filled backstories to some of the characters, this was nevertheless completely gripping. I'm realising that I'm a huge fan of the skilfully-managed bluff/double-bluff/counter-bluff style of plot, which this has in spades - just when I thought it was all going to be boringly straightened out really early on, there are twists and turns galore. I saw on Susan Hill's Twitter feed that it's been shortlisted for a presitigious French prize for international crime.

86. A Party in San Niccolo - Christobel Kent

Much cosier sort of murder mystery - darkness and violence in this one too, especially in the thread taking in immigrant prostitution, and lots of secrets, but this has more of a community warmth to it. Gina has been packed off to Florence for a brief stay with an old university friend, which happens to coincide with the party of the title, given by Frances, a 'grande dame' of the expat circuit who throws a lavish and enormous birthday party every year. Shortly after Gina arrives, the best friend of her hostess's daughter is found murdered, shoved carelessly through a shop window, and suspicion soon seems to be circling around her hostess's suave yet enigmatic architect husband.

The plot was a bit of a disappointment in this - fell flat at the resolution - but it was fun to read, with some nice characterisation. A bit too long for my taste, especially given the weak finish. I've seen some good reviews of her new series about a Florence detective, which I'm definitely going to look out for as the way she writes about the city is really wonderful.

edit for touchstones

87. Book of Clouds - Chloe Aridjis

This was an absolutely beautifully written book, but one that I found it strangely hard to keep a grip on - like the clouds in the title, it sometimes felt just a bit too insusbtantial, and I was oddly reluctant to pick it up again when I put it down.

The story centres on Tatiana, a Mexican expat drifting through Berlin, supporting herself through odd jobs. The position she holds for most of the book is for a reclusive historian, Dr Weiss, who wants her to transcribe the tapes of his thoughts and interviews that he's been accruing, and occasionally to conduct new interviews. Tatiana seems to crave solitude and silence - the book opens with a noisy scene set a few years before the main action of the book, as she explores Berlin with her family, takes part in a demonstration, and thinks she sees Hitler on the subway, and the rest of the book almost feels like a reaction against that.

Not much happens: Tatiana meets a weather scientist, Jonas, who is obsessed with clouds; she visits some key sites in the Berlin 'unterwelt', such as a disused Gestapo bowling alley; eventually, she leaves Berlin. But it is gorgeously written - not one to seek out if you want an enthralling plot, but if you'd like to spend some time pondering the loneliness of the wanderer in the city, you could do a lot worse than this.

88. Larklight - Philip Reeve

Nearly forgot this one - have been reading it in bits with my eldest for practically the whole year, and we finally finished. Lovely steampunk for older kids (not quite YA, I'd say): Art and his sister Myrtle are chased out of their beloved home, Larklight, by a host of giant space spiders that capture and, presumably, devour their father, and have a number of exciting adventures, many with the rakish space pirate Jack Havock.

Not as exciting as the Mortal Engines books, but funny and inventive - most of the book is from Art's perspective, although extracts from Myrtle's diary are included also, and Art and Myrtle's 'voices' are very nicely done, compensating for some of the sillier excesses of the plot.

89. The Cambridge Murders - Dilwyn Rees

Oh, this was such a silly book, and I loved it. Rather a different view of murder in a Cambridge college, this is almost in the style of Dorothy L Sayers, with a 'gentleman detective' figure (Sir Richard Cherrington, an archaeologist and fellow of the fictional 'Fisher College') at the centre of most of it. I borrowed this crumbly old Penguin Classic from a friend, who bought it secondhand off the market in Cambridge in her first year at university, so it was also a nicely nostalgic book to read just from the pleasure of holding it (take THAT, Kindle! You'll never be a crumbling Penguin Classic.) A porter is found murdered on the last day of term, with many possible suspects.

This was enjoyable for several reasons: the wonderful arcane silliness of Cambridge colleges around that time (it was first published in 1949), which is described in loving detail; the great sense of place; the various complicated college intrigues; Sir Richard Cherrington, but also the investigating policemen, both from the Cambridgeshire constabulary and from Scotland Yard (although it's Cherrington wot cracks it in the end, none of the policemen are stereotypical bumbling fools and all help in various ways to move the investigation forward). And actually, almost above all, for Fisher College itself, a very narrow college squeezed in between Trinity and St Johns (for those that know Cambridge, it's technically in the alley where they put the bottle banks behind St John's bar...) which is just such a bonkers idea. The back jacket copy implies there are more Cherrington books out there so I may well try and find some.

edit for touchstones (AGAIN)

Twisted Wing sounds good, I'll have to add it to my tbr pile, which does not mean it will get read anytime soon.
I'm also suffering a little from reader burnout, I need some more exciting fare than what I had planned for Sep/Oct, the slower literary books are stalling.
It's New Zealand Book Month now and I must finally read The Vinter's Luck and my chosen creepy Halloween read is a NZ novel as well - The Scarecrow.

Hmm, none of my touchstones seem to be working this evening. Not sure I can face going back and fixing them....

Finally, we're in October.

90. Unseen Academicals - Terry Pratchett

This is the first Discworld novel I have read since, I think, I was at university. So in one way or another, I've been indulging in a bit of a nostalgia fest with my last few books... Unseen University has discovered that in order to hang on to a rather useful bequest, they must field a team to play a game of 'foot the ball', an anarchic and technically illegal game played with great passion mainly in the streets of Ankh Morpork.

Besides some familiar wizarding faces, Vetinari (of course) and cameos from Vimes and the like, these are mainly characters that were new to me: Glenda, who runs the Night Kitchen; her dim-but-exceptionally-beautiful friend/sidekick/employee Juliet; Trev Likely, son of a legendary footballer employed at UU as a 'candle dribbler' (because you can't just have straight candles with no wax trails on them, that would be all wrong), who falls in love with Juliet despite their support for football teams that are Sworn Enemies ("two teams, alike in villainy..."); the shady but exceptionally well-spoken Mister Nutt, who works with Trev and appears to harbour a Dark Secret; and assorted other less significant people. As well as football, the plot takes in the immutable-or-otherwise nature of character, fashion modelling, mob violence, and an awful lot of pies.

I liked it, but.... it's definitely not one of his best. I was expecting it to be funnier and cleverer, but Pratchett didn't really run with the possibilities as much as I was hoping he would. Also, what IS it about big-name authors nowadays that they appear to be too important to be copy-edited?? There were some really awkward and stilted corners that would have taken a decent copy-editor not much more than a day or two to smooth out. Sigh. STANDARDS ARE DROPPING.

Now reading Masha Hamilton's 31 Hours and trying to figure out what it is about this book (and others) that makes me think "that's so American" - there's a particular style of writing that you just never find in an English book, but I'm having trouble putting my finger on its defining characteristics, which is irritating. Hope I've figured it out by the end.

Also still working my way slowly through Emma Jones's The Striped World, which very excitingly just won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection in the UK. Yay!

And also started The Crash of Hennington, which I've had on order for MONTHS and which finally arrived, although I'm technically meant to have set it aside for Masha Hamilton. Kind of want to read it before I go to see him in the Cambridge Festival of Ideas at the end of the month.

edit for - sigh - typoes

>62 avatiakh: Kerry, I've got The Vintner's Luck on the TBR list at the moment too, and actually just put in a 'stock suggestion' for Knox's YA fantasy books from the library - they are published over here but they don't have them in. Also just put in a book order to my Wellington friend - her husband's coming over to Europe for a conference this month and is going to post them to me (rather more cheaply!) from mainland Europe. Mainly short stories.

Twisted Wing was good - perhaps not the most skilfully written, and some of the characterisation was a bit cardboard cutout/soap-opera, but well plotted. Very violent though and I was completely creeped out by the very final final final twist.

Nerd alert: the Observer apparently just broke embargo-of-steel on the sixth Hitchhikers... I'm on my way.

ETA: and Euan Ferguson, whoever-he-be, seems to think it's quite good. Drat.

I don't know if that is a very recent Pratchett book, Flossie. However, I did hear news that he was suffering from Alzheimer's - so perhaps that explains the standards thingy.

Interesting to hear about the Autumn light diminishing effect. I have always have a terrible brain shrinking effect that starts in October and goes through to January - it is really not good for the productive side of things. I tried a SAD light but realized you actually have to stay in one place to gain the effects of it. Now I just try hard to get outside as much as possible.

Interesting (and unheard of ) reads, except the Pratchett. Good to see the Kiwi there plugging the NZ books!!

Some nice recent reads, Rachael. I am adding several to Planet TBR. Thanks!

I had missed your new thread, and finally caught up. Posted on Unseen Academicals on my thread. I think I liked it more than you did, perhaps. But this was my "gulp it down" read-through and I shall have to wait till my "follow up" reading to get picky.

#63 Unseen Academicals - bother - I've just started reading that. I skimmed your review a bit (as I'm still reading it), but caught the "...but definitely not one of his best". I've thought that for the last few Discworld novels unfortunately...

I think that mostly it's just that the idea is getting a bit tired now. I absolutely loved last year's Nation, which has nothing to do with the Discworld. Best thing he's written in ages.

#66 kiwidoc, it's his most recent Discworld book. And yep, he has early onset Alzheimers (poor man - I can imagine few diseases more terrifying).

#61 May have to read The Cambridge Murders just for the sake of Fisher College! (Twisted Wing's also going on the wishlist...)

Sorry about the dishwasher breaking down so soon Rachel! I hope my "machines not quite working" disease isn't catching!

>69 flissp: fliss, Roni liked it much more than me so I would pay more attention to her opinion! I do tend to get disproportionately annoyed by awkwardnesses in the copy, which may well have detracted from my ability to enjoy the book purely for its own sake. Also, I think I was looking for more of an out-and-out laughfest than this is - expecting much more poking fun at football than in fact went on.

I do wonder how much I'm missing as well through not having read any Discworld for so long - I think there's a certain amount of accumulation of backstory that I'm missing.

Utterly whacked today - had to work the late shift on Friday again, and more and more, it seems to wipe me out for the entire weekend. Still haven't really recovered... and it does affect my ability to read. Have had to put down all current books and have started instead Jenna Bailey's Can Any Mother Help Me? (touchstone won't load, grr), which I've had a copy of for ages but not got round to reading before. About a correspondence club amongst a group of mothers that kept going for an astoundingly long period of time, and just what I need right now: not too intellectually demanding, but not exactly pure fluff either.

I think shift work is a really hard job, Flossie. My hubbie is an ER (?A&E) doc and works wacky shifts. Now that he is older, the following day or two after a night shift are toast for him. I think interruption with call would be better than shift work. Combine that with a family and......

Get some rest!
(Can you not get a day job?)

>69 flissp: I think this book is much closer to Nation than to Making Money, for example, in my enjoyment factor, so read on!

>71 kiwidoc: most of my hours are normal actually, Karen! But I share responsibility for print production, so roughly every four weeks have to work a late Friday on top of my normal load (only three days a week, so mustn't grumble really). The couple before this have had more civilised finish times - 8-9-ish - but on Friday I got out at 11.30, which means a 0.06 train, which means actually getting home somewhere around 1.30 (and then you have to wind down, have supper, etc. etc.)

My husband's coming home early today at least so I should be able to get an early night...

#72 - oh I shall! I've never really disliked a Terry Pratchett book, just some are better than others. Yes, I'm already enjoying it more than Making Money too, but good to hear!

#70, You're probably not missing too much back story - he's quite good at making the books non-continuous. In fact, my big problem with the ones involving the Unseen University is that Esk (the female wizard from Equal Rites) seems to have completely vanished. Never got mentioned again. I still find this irritating, nearly 20 years since reading it.

Mostly what you miss is the history of the characters involved - particularly those that you only see briefly. For example, I'm about quarter of the way through, so I don't know if she'll crop up again, but Corporal Angua of the Watch has just made a brief appearance - if you hadn't read any of the Watch Discworld books, you might not know that she's a werewolf as it's not directly mentioned, so you'd miss a couple of minor smirks...

I can't say it's had me laughing out loud yet, but I'm enjoying the new characters (and do I see a Romeo/Trev and Juliet story evolving?!)

Boo to extended hours! And an even bigger boo to having to catch the 00.06 train - it takes so long to get back, particularly at the moment - and to have to take it not through choice is even worse... I hope you didn't get railworked?

>74 flissp: you'd miss a couple of minor smirks - I think that's what I mean about the accumulation of backstory: the sort of slow accretion of minor details over time, that provide a nice background smile. Actually, I realise I did know about Corporal Angua, despite not having read her book, as someone was telling me all about her the other day (she's his favourite character) - but nevertheless that reference went completely over my head.

I'd forgotten all about Esk. Shame on me.

I was lucky enough not to have to deal with engineering works as well - about 10pm, I suddenly got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach when I remembered there'd been some of those ominous little white notices around the station of late, so it was a huge relief when I finally got onto National Rail to find I was in the clear. Just about the only thing I can say about the 0.06 is it's not the 0.31 - which may be a quicker train, but those 25 minutes really matter at that time of night....

There's an 00.31? How have I missed this? I've been racing for the 00.06 all these years and I needn't have done??!!

...but I know what you mean about the extra 25 mins. I'm slightly ashamed to admit I always try to make a mad dash for the 23.15 these days when I can - it gets you home sooooo much earlier...

00.31 is a recent addition - I think they put it in at the last timetable change. I know exactly what you mean about the 23.15. It was clear on Friday that I hadn't a hope in hell of making that one though :-(

This discussion makes me so glad I'm a country girl doing a country job! Sometimes I feel like I'm missing out because I'm not urban and don't do things like going to events or meeting people. But I couldn't do taking the train at that time of night on a regular occasion.

The idea that your rail service is ADDING trains makes me chartreuse with envy. Shading into puce, actually.

Rachael...this soi-disant book drought of yours is costing The Divine Miss some serious money as I order the books I can't live without. Be careful if she makes a trip to England to see her niece...Bath to Oxford ain't that far to a Murrikan....

#80 Richard, the additional train thing is a blip. ...and 9/10 late night "trains" I've caught recently have actually turned out to be buses half way down the line... (I'd mind this less if I didn't get car-sick)

#79 Jenny, fortunately I very rarely need to go in to London for work, the late night dash is usually due to a gig/theatre/pub, so it's all my own fault really! ;)

#78 Rachel, ugh. Must be dreadful having to stay that late for work knowing that it's going to take nearly 2hrs to get home... Not envious. Commuting is eveel - much sympathy!

Commuting is indeed evil. I like working in London - I just wish someone would move it a bit closer to Cambridge.

I'm coming to the conclusion that the thing that causes a book drought quicker than anything else is a feeling of moral imperative - choosing my next read according to what I "ought" to read rather than what I feel like. I picked my next two books on an emotional whim and it made for a much happier time reading than I've had of late.

91. Can Any Mother Help Me? - Jenna Bailey

Several months after my first child was born, my grandmother was telling me all about her own experiences of child-rearing: about meeting the other mums in the playground to discuss "the latest tonic, the latest child expert, who was getting any sleep". So she was the first person I thought of when this came out a couple of years ago - I'm just sorry that it's taken me all the time since to actually get round to reading it.

Writing to mothers' magazine 'Nursery World' in the 1940s, 'Ubique' asked, "Can any mother help me?" Feeling isolated by war and family, she was looking for penfriends. From this one letter sprang the Co-operative Correspondence Club, a group of women from across Britain, who came together to write articles simply detailing their own experiences, concerns and interests. An 'editor' from amongst their number collated their submissions into a regular magazine, which was then circulated between the members by post. The club continued to run for an astonishing length of time, finally disbanding in 1990.

Jenna Bailey's book collects selections from the magazines over the years, thematically organised and interspersed with more biographical detail on the writers, and historical detail on the period. It's a completely fascinating insight into life during and after the war - although the 'mother' in the title does suggest more information on parenthood than is actually the case; for a magazine begun in the pages of a childcare publication, there's surprisingly little about child-rearing, but a lot about what it means to be a wife, in particular at a time when women were forced to give up work when they got married. I absolutely loved this.

Still to come: Exchange - Paul Magrs, but I need a bit more time to review this properly.

#82: I am adding Can Any Mother Help Me? to the BlackHole. Thanks for the recommendation, Rachael. I think it is wonderful that the club ran for some 50 years - here's hoping LT does as well!

Can Any Mother Help Me? sounds really good. I'm going to look for it.

I know what you mean about finding things on a whim. It's why I haven't tried the 999 Challenge - I'd love making the lists but I wouldn't love reading off them all year! I have a friend who's obsessed with the 1001 and won't read anything unless it's on it... he's up to 300+ books now and said it's getting frustrating.

I have had that Bailey book on my list for a long while - I must fish it out. I think it must be relevant to all mothers/wifes, no matter the children's ages.

>83 alcottacre:/84/85: Stasia, Cushla, Karen, read it soon! It was just wonderful - SO interesting what the women got up to before and after marriage, how they coped with the war, what was on their minds. The biographical information was also absorbing. This is one of those books that I just gobbled up - it was so readable.

My mum has this book and really enjoyed it, but I don't think its for me. I'm not a mother and I'm only young, so I don't know that it would have that much relevance for me?

I'm glad you enjoyed it though

Hallo!

I keep forgetting to drop off The Knife of Never Letting Go, but it's just occurred to me that the Patrick Ness thing is this Saturday. Are you still planing on going? If you are, I'll hand it over then...

>88 flissp: yep, still going! Not very keen on this unticketed business: wondering how stupidly early to turn up.... Am feeling extremely disloyal as my father-in-law is doing a talk as part of the festival at exactly the same time and I'm going to Patrick Ness instead...

I was umming and erring about when to turn up too, I've got stuff to do in the morning, but I've a feeling there'll be quite a queue for him... Ho hum. I'm sure your father-in-law will forgive you ;)

Hope so! If I get there first I'll save you a place & text you :)

Is your father-in-law a writer, Flossie? (Assuming Ness is talking at a writer's festival).

>92 kiwidoc: Karen, not primarily: he's a strategy consultant in his 'day job', but he's published a business book, made contributions to a couple of other collections, and also this most recent one, which is a compilation of questions asked and answers given on the philosopher John Polkinghorne's website (which I believe he helps to maintain) - Questions of Truth.

Since I did a rather stressful, tight deadline proofread of the book earlier this year (long story...), I think I know most of what will be said.... but I still feel a bit bad for not going!!

It's part of the Cambridge 'Festival of Ideas', so not just writers: in fact, it's a fairly eclectic selection of stuff! A few writers, but lots of debate, hands-on activities, etc. etc.

92. Exchange - Paul Magrs

Another of these books I've had on the shelf for a couple of years and the moment just felt right. Magrs' latest, Hell's Belles, contains within its publicity blurb the unforgettable "Alan Bennett meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer", which jogged my memory. YA fiction.

This is one of those books where you're constantly expecting something actually magical to happen but it never quite does. 16 year-old Simon lives with his grandparents following the recent death of his parents in a plane crash. Struggling to fit in in a new town and a new school, he takes refuge in books - a love of reading being something he shares with his grandmother Winnie. This shared bond results in the two of them spending their Saturdays together trawling charity shops for hidden treasures. On one of their Saturday trips, they discover the Great Big Book Exchange, effectively a sort of private library - the books are cheap, but if you bring them back you get back some of what you paid for them. Staffed by the grumpy Terrance and his Goth assistant Kelly, Simon and Winnie begin to spend more and more time there and then...

I really enjoyed this: the characters felt real, flawed, recognisable from the everyday. The language is qite plain and unvarnished - I can imagine this working well for teen boys from that perspective, lots of short sentences. But really what sold it to me was the wonderful way he describes Simon and Winnie's feelings for books. Here's a good bit:

He loved novels because their writers took the raw, nasty stuff, the real world was made of, and they fashioned it into . . . something better. Not necessarily something sugary sweet and rose-tinted. But something brighter, maybe, larger than life and more dramatic. Simon's writers recreated the world so that it started to make sense to him. Novels gave him the feeling that there were, perhaps, answers out there somewhere.

93. The Dante Club - Matthew Pearl

Continuing my streak of random reading here... I've had a copy of this for ages; in fact, this is the second one I've had as I gave the first away via BookMooch unread after I read a bunch of unfavourable reviews. There's a lesson in there somewhere about which reviews you pay attention to, because I loved this. And that despite bearing, I realised with horror when I finally picked it up this week, a gushing cover blurb from Dan Brown which hails Pearl as the new thing in "literary fiction" (as if Dan Brown would know literary fiction if it bit him on the ****...)

Essentially a historical murder mystery, but one heavily embroidered with Boston literary history, American civil war snapshots and, of course, translations and history of Dante. I can see why other people have found this slow and boring, but this was just one of those books for me where I loved all the various bits independently. So I didn't, for example, feel annoyed that the mystery wasn't more rapidly paced, and that time was spent observing the poets' Dante Club soirées, discussing their translations, because I loved all of that.

Bizarrely, I first became aware of Dante via a murder mystery: Michael Dibdin's A Rich Full Death, which is set in Florence, and also includes a period investigation by a real-life poet of murders that appear to be patterned after the Inferno. Fab book, and one that awakened an interest in Dante that led to me studying him for a short time at university - which in turn has fuelled my interest in this book.

If you're just in it for the murder mystery, you may well find it a bit slow, especially at the start, but if you're going to get something out of all the other levels too, I'd definitely recommend this.

Now reading Malorie Blackman's Noughts and Crosses, after repeated insistence from eldest son who read the whole series over the summer. I've been unwell today, and my husband's been looking after the youngest, which has given me a bunch of time to read (and catch up on LT threads...)

I will look for the Magrs book. I think I actually own the Pearl book. I know I own the Blackman book, so I cannot wait to see your review of that one.

Hope you feel better!

I'll be interested in how you find the Noughts and Crosses series, mainly because the ending of the first book is 'very strong' for a YA book.

Noughts and Crosses blew me away when I first read it. I was stunned by the impact it had on me, and like avatiakh, the strength of the subject matter.

It was so shocking that I have never felt able to read the rest of the series, or re-read the first. I think its just that I wasn't expecting it.

Kerry/Jenny: finished it in one huge chunk last night and was pretty devastated by the end: many tears shed (not on the book, since it's my son's and he would have been a bit cross about crinkled pages). Yesterday was also a pretty emotional day for other reasons too, so am going to have to wait a little while before I try and get my thoughts down in any coherent sense.

We went to see Malorie Blackman in Edinburgh (talking about Double Cross, but actually mainly answering audience questions) and I now feel very relieved that nobody gave away the ending in the audience questions - it really needed to be a surprise, especially after the scene in the middle of the book, where reprieve is miraculously granted (if you see what I mean, trying to avoid spoilers).

Also provoking a lot of thought in me about my son's reading... I would have thought this way too grown-up for him, but he seems to have taken it in his stride. Nonetheless, I think I need to make MUCH more of an effort to discuss his reading with him. Am not stupid enough to think that I need to pre-vet his books, but just be more aware that he is reading widely and may not always emotionally comprehend some of the subject matter. I don't think this is necessarily a problem - I routinely read books that were way "too old" for me as an older child and teen, and just kind of glossed over what I couldn't handle - but his dad is not a reader, and has much more conservative attitudes to how 'big issues' should be introduced, so there is a tricky path to be negotiated. Sigh.

Yes, I thought about your son too, knowing how the ending was very untypical, powerful and mature. Didn't want to spoil it for you either. But wow, what a powerful ending.
Jenny - the rest of the series is really good, each one focuses on a different character, not all from the same generation.

I cried at the end as well. I can certainly see how you would fail to be able to put it into words. I don't think I'd be able to write a coherent review even now.

I would like to read the others but I think I should read the first again and I don't think I've got the emotional strength to do so!

I've added Twisted Wing and Exchange to the neverending wishlist. Thanks!

OK, you've all whetted my appetite about Noughts and Crosses - shall have to go onto the wishlist.

Rachel, hope you didn't get too wet cycling back from the Patrick Ness thing - it did suddenly tip down a bit (or was that after I went to the library)? Very much enjoyed it anyway...

Had to add Exchange to my wishlist immediately. Am waiting to see about Noughts and Crosses.

#104

I think that everyone should read Noughts and Crosses as it is well deserved of any and all attention it receives. Just don't read it if you're feeling emotional or a bit delicate as the subject matter isn't the easiest.

This will be a bit of a long post as I'm going to do the whole series in one go - sorry...

94. Noughts and Crosses - Malorie Blackman
95. Knife Edge - Malorie Blackman
96. Checkmate - Malorie Blackman
97. Double Cross - Malorie Blackman

(Can I just say how much I am LOVING this new touchstone tip? Koalamom is a genius.)

So, my son has been urging me to read these for a while. I was ill on Friday, finished my then-current book, and decided to read the lot... phew.

The series revolves around two families: the privileged Hadleys, a rich Cross family, and the Nought family the McGregors. In the world Blackman imagines, white-skinned Noughts are the ethnic minority and underclass in society, only recently allowed education beyond the age of 14; when the first book opens, we learn that Callum McGregor is one of only 4 Nought children that have been permitted to attend the exclusive Cross school Heathcroft, under a new education bill that has been brought in to comply with PEC (Pangean Economic Community) policy.

Persephone (Sephy) Hadley has grown up alongside Callum, as his mother Meggie was her nanny and is (when the first book opens) still her mother's most trusted employee; initially excited about finally going to school with her best friend, she completely fails to anticipate the brutal truths she will be forced to face about the structure of her society, her place within it, and that of her friend.

Noughts and Crosses is primarily Callum and Sephy's story, narrated in the first person by both of them; later books in the series take up the stories of other family members, exploring the far-reaching repercussions of political decisions and their devastating impact on ordinary people.

What I have to get out of the way quickly is that I actually didn't think the books were all that well-written: lots of clichés, dialogue that I sometimes struggled to really believe in, too many scenes and conversations that were several degrees too emotionally volatile to really convince me - and by the time I got halfway through Knife Edge, I thought if one more character said something "silkily" I would throw the book at the wall.

They did - but I didn't: because essentially, it doesn't matter so much when the concept and the plot are this strong. Blackman is exploring some really dark and enormous themes: as well as the obvious one of racism, she looks at loyalty to one's family and to political causes, terrorism and extremist violence, and in particular the question of how the personal can be twisted and used to manipulate people for political ends. I also really appreciated the way she looked at the issue of teenage pregnancy, and made an effort to try to express what it really feels like to be a mother when you'd rather be out clubbing. The final book takes up gang violence, and takes a hard look at the challenges that society's less economically-privileged young people must overcome in order to haul themselves 'up the ladder'. Despite being a bit irritated by the style, I was totally swept up in the story (hence reading all four of them back-to-back).

This is very strong stuff, and definitely not suitable for younger readers (like my son, argh argh argh, with whom I shall be rapidly scheduling some time to talk about the books. I know, I know. Feeling like a terrible parent right now... he doesn't seem, from an initial exploration, to have been irreparably harmed, but I want to make sure that he's got an opportunity to discuss it): a fair bit of sex, drugs, violence... The books got significantly better as they went along - Checkmate in particular has some really gripping two-handers.

The style clearly indicates that they're intended for teens - the elements I found annoying almost certainly make it more accessible to the average teen that doesn't necessarily read widely - but I think you're looking really for a teen with a fairly mature outlook, and one that is able to give the topics covered some proper consideration. Be warned, also, that this is a series in which really bad things happen to characters we are brought to care about deeply, which makes for quite emotional reading at times.

Recommended, but with reservations. And huge, huge motherly guilt. That phrase "not for younger readers" does seem to have a fairly wide range: some books that are captioned that way basically just include a bit of swearing and maybe some consideration of questions of sexual identity, none of which are any more complex than the average schoolchild hears about in their "citizenship" classes; this series went rather a lot further, and I should have been MUCH more cautious.

edit for touchstone

I know that perhaps this isn't my place to be saying, as I am obviously not a parent, much less a parent to a child old enough to read this kind of thing, but whilst its a good idea to keep an eye on what outside influences are saying to your child, I don't think that his having read this book is going to damage him.

As far as I can see, he comes from a stable and loving family where what he is subjected too is monitored. He sounds an intelligent boy who was able enough to read the book, and had no qualms in you reading it and probably discussing it with him.

Yes, they are adult themes discussed, but perhaps no more adult than things he will be subjected to in the playground. At least this way they are written in a way that looks at all aspects of the subject in an intelligent way, as opposed to him picking up confused and conflicting messages elsewhere.

I would say yes, sit down and talk with him about it, but I wouldn't begin feeling that you need to censor his reading. Have a flick through what he has chosen and if you feel that its quite adult, don't stop him reading it (unless he's picked up something like pornography of course) but make sure you discuss the subjects and allow him to ask questions.

I think the amount of violence shown on TV and in computer games, including light hearted things such as daytime soap operas, have further reaching repercussions in terms of the effect it might have on future behaviours or thought processes. At least in this way, he has seen that this behaviour is not acceptable and can effect people in a way that cannot initially be imagined. Computer games, films and tv doesn't tend to do that.

Hope you don't mind me giving my opinion, as I'm not a parent.

Jenny, not at all - and thank you for taking the time to give such a thoughtful response.

I'm fairly certain I know where I stand on the censorship question - in that, taken to its logical extension, if I were really determined to do so, I would have to 'pre-read' everything he reads. Which is just not going to happen. It would also be a bit hypocritical of me, since my parents never censored my reading when I was growing up, and I read all kinds of "unsuitable" trash.

If I had known before he picked them up, I'm also pretty (OK, maybe not 100% completely...) certain I wouldn't have stopped him reading the series. However, I wish I had been more aware of the general themes while he was actually reading, and to maybe have asked a few more casual questions as he was going along. I feel a little like I've missed an important opportunity to talk about Big Issues with him, and to a certain extent reassure myself that he's thinking along the 'right' lines.

My biggest concern was the sex, which while not explicit, is more 'graphically' described than he will have encountered elsewhere, but when I mentioned my concern, he confidently informed me, "No, Mum, we did all that stuff last year in All That I Am (the title of the course they followed for what used to be called sex education), it's fine. Miss _____'s a brilliant teacher."

Bottom line: I just want to make sure that I'm there for him if he needs me at the right moment - not after the moment has passed. So I feel a little like I let him down.

Does any of that make sense??

Miss _____'s a brilliant teacher

There's a statement that would worry me ;)

I'm still a few years away from facing the censorship issue, but my wife has told me, in no uncertain words, that my growing collection of "war books" are to remain invisible. Like Playboy magazines under the bed I suppose :)

I hadn't heard of these books, but loved reading your review and the discussion about what to let your kids read. We're just at the edge of that with our son but in a much less important way - he's still only 5 and having us read to him... but even the Star Wars books get quite nasty! I don't know what I'll do yet.

My parents did try to censor my reading. I remember Mum being horrified at a library book I found called Hey Dollface when I was about 10, making a fuss with one of the librarians, and embarrassing me horribly. She took it back as soon as she started reading it. At the time I didn't really get why (I'm sure there was a tampon vending-machine mentioned, which was **extremely exciting** and never seen in 1970s Dunedin) but I've just clicked on the work page and can see tons of tags saying "lesbian". That would have freaked Mum out completely. But it's interesting that I can remember the name of the censored book 28 years later! I must get it out of the library again and finish it this time...

The only book I can ever recall having had taken away from me was a joke book that we had when I was about 8 - one of those tall ones called '5,000 hilariously funny jokes' or something like that. It was identical in format and design to one we already owned and loved, but after I managed to shock my granny by reading her a slightly smutty joke from it (of which naturally I had completely failed to understand the full implications), it was swiftly removed.

I do know (and I've said this before on here, I'm sure) that no one tried to stop me reading Virgina Andrews as a fairly young teen - and my mum had read Flowers in the Attic, so she knew what the books were like.

I don't think you have missed your opportunity as you have now read the books and will be able to sit down and discuss their content, making sure he's ok with it all. I'm glad I wasn't out of place in giving my opinion.

What I really wanted to say is.......the fact you are worrying and berating yourself over this kind of thing shows that you are a loving and attentive parent, and I really don't think you should feel bad. You are a good mother.

The Dante Club is one of my favorites. I particularly liked the references to the literary characters of Boston.

Ditto what lunacat said...... My daughter tells me that some of the teen books I bought her (on great recommends from the kids book store), were extremely literal and adult. In fact, I suspect that the themes/content/language in some of these older teen books beats out anything I read as an adult.

BTW - she is a well-adjusted 18 year old now.

What's the touchstone tip again? I remember reading about it but it has totally slipped my mind...

In my preoccupation with Noughts & Crosses I missed a few posts...

>102 allthesedarnbooks: hope you like them, Marcia! Twisted Wing really gave me the creeps - it has some awkward corners but completely gripping. Exchange was a lovely read.

>103 flissp: flissp, somehow missed the rain heading into town post-Patrick Ness - it waited until I'd finished running my errands before soaking me.... sigh. Glad you enjoyed it! I thought he was excellent - just a shame he couldn't have had a better interviewer... I actually went into the central library and borrowed Topics About Which I Know Nothing, which I'm planning to read after I finish my current book - looks great fun, and I've had it on my wishlist for ages after a good Guardian review when it first came out.

>104 ronincats: roni, hope you enjoy it. I must admit that I'd picked it up almost expecting a "magic bookshop" sort of story, but what I got was much more interesting than that.

>109 petermc: :-) I knew what he meant... his teacher last year was really fantastic, Peter. Interesting about the 'war books': there is a HUGE amount of emphasis on WWI and WWII in the primary curriculum in the UK, possibly to the detriment of anything else historical, but that's another gripe, another post.... My middle son did the trenches (in fairly sanitised form, I think) last year and my eldest is doing rationing, shelters and evacuation at the moment.

>112 lunacat: thanks, Jenny. At the risk of sounding a bit self-pitying, parenting can be incredibly stressful because there's no feedback loop, and you only really find out if you've done a good job about 20 years down the line... the author of m favourite pregnancy book, Vicki Iovine, memorably compared it to the caucus race in Alice in Wonderland - you just keep running until someone shouts, "Stop!", and the winner is arbitrarily chosen. Anyway, I'm muddling along. One awkwardness is my husband is much more jumpy about what the kids are reading - but without the advantage of being a reader, to take an active interest in what's going on (just a sort of Daily-Mail overreaction after the fact). Strangely, though, he's got no problem with them watching things like Top Gear that sling around the 'adult' references fairly liberally and in a rather less mature and considered fashion...

>113 HorusE: HorusE, I really enjoyed it: as I say, I can see why some people might find it slow, picking it up expecting something much more pacy, but for me it was all interesting. I think I may give The Last Dickens a miss - despite being interested in theory in the mystery surrounding Edwin Drood, I think I'm just too Dickens-phobic to enjoy it. But I may keep half an eye out for The Poe Shadow... can't imagine enjoying it as much as Dante though.

>114 kiwidoc: thanks, Karen - I REALLY needed to hear that!! Such a minefield: I do know one woman who vets her children's reading absolutely ruthlessly and entirely. I don't think that's the right way to go about it at all, but selecting one's own position on the spectrum from her up to "let them read whatever they like with absolutely no bounds" is a bit of a nervewracking thing. I probably won't stop being convinced I've got it wrong until he makes it to 18...

>115 allthesedarnbooks: Marcia, re touchstones, if you put both the book title and the author inside the square brackets with a double space (or space-hyphen-space, which is what I'm doing in my running reading list in my first post), it either finds you just the book you want, or at the very least greatly cuts down the list of options. VERY handy.

edit for typo

Awesome! Thanks, Rachael! In re to the conversation about censoring your son's reading, I have to say that my overprotective father did go through my library books until I was 15 or 16. He wouldn't let me read not only V.C. Andrews, but I also distinctly remember him taking away James Joyce's Dubliners when I was 12 or 13. This made me more determined to read them both. I bought the Andrews books at CVS on the sly and hid them behind a magazine, and I got Dubliners out from the school library.

#118 touchstone tip - wasn't aware of that - very useful!

#116 re Patrick Ness, I agree (both too few people and interviewer) - but, to be fair to the interviewer, he did step in at the last minute... That said, I wish the original lady had made it. Seemed to me that Patrick Ness was very happy to go off on his own tangents anyway - which were quite often more interesting than the original question! Topics About Which I Know Nothing... hmmm... :)

Speaking in great generalities, which can be dangerous, I think far more harm can be done by censoring a child's reading experiences, than by allowing the child to read as he or she chooses, and perhaps occassionally reading something "inappropriate." They won't be scarred for life, and you will notice if your kid is consistently choosing inappropriate reading materials. This was the approach I took with my 5 kids (now age 19 to 31) and--knock on wood--they're reasonably well-adjusted adults (and for the most part readers).

I was the one who may have overexposed them the most, probably, when I took the whole family, including the youngest who was about 7 or 8 I think, to see The Ciderhouse Rules. I had forgotten or didn't know the role abortion played in the story, and how graphically it would be portrayed in the movie. I wasn't prepared for that scene, or for my youngest's loud whispers: "Mommy--what's he doing? What's that? What's going on?" Mommy had some 'splaining to do after the movie. However, he and I can discuss this incident today, and he doesn't feel traumatized. :)

>119 allthesedarnbooks: Marcia, I'm having real trouble now thinking what could have been the problem with Dubliners... just about the only comment that comes to mind is Lily's in 'The Dead', something broadly like, "Men these days are all only fuss and palaver and what they can get out of you". Maybe it was reflected infamy from Ulysses??

>120 flissp: flissp, am racing through current book so expect Topics About Which I Know Nothing to feature here pretty soon! I think it's a collection of short stories, judging from the cover blurbs.

>121 arubabookwoman: thanks, Deborah - and eek re Cider House Rules!! Have to say that's a book and film I have completely steered clear of myself as I think I'd just find it too much.

Have been rather unwell over the last couple of weeks, but also off on leave, thank God, for half-term, so have read a fair bit. Catching up now.

98. 31 Hours - Masha Hamilton

This is one that I was originally supposed to review for Belletrista, but I'm not sure I can be positive enough about it: it was good, but in my view, not outstanding, and I was really disappointed, ultimately, in where it took the themes it appeared to be setting itself up to explore.

The fundamental plot centres on two figures. Jonas, a young student with the usual passions and confusions, has come into contact, through a comparative religion course, with a Muslim man bent on avenging the death of his brother. Masoud has introduced Jonas to radical factions, sent him to training camps in Pakistan, and when the story opens, is setting Jonas up in a New York apartment to prepare for his martyrdom in an orchestrated subway bombing, scheduled to take place in 31 hours. The second key figure is Jonas's mother Carol, who through maternal intuition becomes convinced that something terrible is about to happen to Jonas. As the book develops, she becomes increasingly convinced, and panic-stricken, as her attempts to contact Jonas fail one by one.

I was hoping for a much more interesting and thoughtful explanation of what it means, as an American, to become radicalised in this way. There was some consideration of the lack of spirituality in modern capitalism, and what that does to our emotional development, but it only went so far. Similarly, Jonas's own "radicalism" is essentially shown to be just a bit of a fad - his own personal bees-in-bonnet happening to coincide with some elements of Masoud's philosophy. Joanas is much more concerned with what Deirdre, the IRA bomber he has met on a summer visit to Ireland, would think of him becoming involved in terrorism, than he is with actually furthering the cause he is about to die for.

31 Hours would have been a MUCH more interesting book if it had attempted to explore what really happens when that youthful disaffection turns into sincere belief. I also had a fundamental suspension-of-disbelief issue with Jonas: I just couldn't believe that his essentially rather insincere and opportunistic allegiance to Islam would have convinced the movement behind the bombing to trust him.

That said: if you approach this book as more of a (fairly gentle) thriller and an exploration of splintering family relationships, you may enjoy it more than I did. But the hopes I had for it were disappointed, which makes it difficult for me to wholeheartedly endorse it. Just a three-star book.

99. The Taste of Sorrow - Jude Morgan

I've had this out from the library for several weeks now, after reading a good review and specifically requesting it (which I've been trying not to do); I did intend this year to revisit the Brontës: read/re-read the novels, and finally get through the Juliet Barker biography and edited letters (which are meant to be excellent but are mega-doorstop in size). Anyway, the prospect of an imminent forced return persuaded me to pick this up. And it was fantastic.

Jude Morgan's novel is essentially a fictionalised biography of the Brontës, beginning with the death of their mother. Although Charlotte does dominate slightly, we see the lives of the three novelist sisters and their brother Branwell from the perspective of all of the protagonists at various points. Sections in the currently-trendy historic present alternate with straight descriptive passages set as if in the past, giving it a nice variance, and lending the majority of the book a wonderful immediacy.

There's been a lot of controversy recently about 'fictionalising' real biographies, but frankly when the story's as good as this, and as well told, you just don't care. And it has definitely piqued my interest in reading some 'real' biographies too, which is definitely a good thing. HIGHLY recommended.

That's a shame about 31 Hours. It sounds as if it could have been a great book.

100. Topics About Which I Know Nothing - Patrick Ness

I've had this one on the wishlist since it came out, after a glowing review in the Grauniad, and hearing Patrick Ness speak at the Cambridge Festival of Ideas last week was the prompt I finally needed to borrow this one from the library.

I'm struggling to find a single adjective that does this justice. Nearly all the stories were excellent (only one really disappointed me), but in quite different ways. Several of the stories felt too 'big' for their pages - Ness seems to be exploding with too many wild ideas to be contained successfully within the confines of a short story; one or two would not have been out of place on the pages of The Onion; several strongly reminded me of the fabulous Nicola Barker (not a great surprise, since Ness cited her at his Cambridge talk as one of his favourite authors, and provided fulsome praise of Darkmans when he reviewed it, also for the Grauniad).

Above all, they are varied - in character and place, at least, even if the tone for the most part is a sort of absurdist-surrealist-scifi-comic hybrid. Two stories really stood out for me: 'Sydney is a City of Jaywalkers', the most "realist" of the collection, concerned a young man splashing out on the 'holiday of a lifetime' in Australia, only to run into the brother who he saw buried five years ago in a solemn military funeral - unexpectedly moving; and 'The Gifted', which closes the collection, was a totally chilling story about a competition between two groups of children participating in a 'gifted & talented' type programme at a local school, one of those doomed government initiatives that inevitably ends up being supervised by ineffectual, if sincere, teachers - beautifully observed and perfectly paced, with a truly disturbing denouement. If you like Nicola Barker, you'll probably enjoy this; if you like your fiction a bit more 'naturalistic', this is probably not for you.

>125 kidzdoc: Darryl, it's definitely a decent book - I don't feel I want the hours back that I spent reading it - but ultimately, I felt that it was weakened by a sort of pick-and-mix approach to spirituality and religion that I think is becoming increasingly prevalent. Regardless of where one stands on the question of religious belief, it's undeniable that it can motivate people in extreme ways - and I felt the book fell short of properly engaging with this truth, taking the normal disaffection of youth as a proxy in a way that failed to convince me.

It's odd, because given the time she's spent in Afghanistan, I would have expected Masha Hamilton of all people to get her hands dirty more effectively.

101. The Third Pig Detective Agency - Bob Burke

This fun little book was sent to me by the Friday Project (now an imprint of HarperCollins) as a 'surprise' with the book I was actually expecting. Harry Pigg is the pig that built his house of bricks; now struggling to scratch out a living as a private detective in the fairytale metropolis of Grimmtown, he's unexpectedly engaged by wealthy (and chunky) Mandarin mogul Aladdin to recover an old lamp that has been inexplicably stolen from its highly secure (laser beams, floor sensors, cameras etc. etc. etc.) location. Cue car chases, orcs, ogres, leprechaun impersonators, witches, lots of Chandler-derived clichés etc. etc. etc.

This was a great light read, with some very silly jokes (if a slightly obvious plot). Would suit anyone that enjoyed Jasper Fforde's Nursery Crimes books (The Big Over Easy, The Fourth Bear), or perhaps Anthony Horowitz's The Falcon's Malteser.

102. Bang Crunch - Neil Smith

October was clearly the month for backlist reading - this was another one I've had on my wishlist for ages, and there happened to be a copy on the 'quick picks' shelves in Rock Road when we dropped in to borrow a couple of Artemis Fowl episodes for the eldest. I read most of it last month and finished on Sunday (picnicking in Wandlebury Ring again!!)

I found this short story collection surprisingly moving. I've all but forgotten the substance of the review that led to me putting it on my wishlist, and all that remained was the title, which led me to expect something much showier. Most of the stories in this collection focus in depth on a relationship between two people: a widow and her dead husband; a student and his best friend; an artist's agent's administrator and her actor 'mentor'; and so on. The stories explore people coming to terms with their vulnerabilities and peculiarities, all the ways in which they are not, in reality, like the pictures they want to see of themselves in their heads - but done with tremendous sympathy, tact and gentleness. I really liked this, and hope there will be more from Neil Smith in future.

Now - FINALLY - reading John Le Carré. Before this year, I had always assumed he was a writer of pulp fiction; rebeccanyc encouraged me to see otherwise, and I've borrowed the Smiley trilogy from a friend. Struggling a bit with it at the moment, embroiled in spy jargon, but I intend to persevere... sadly a couple of the editors at work have given the thumbs-down to The Constant Gardener, which is the only other Le Carré of which I own a copy, but I'm determined to give him a fair hearing.

Right. Definitely putting in a request for book 100 at the library ;)

>131 flissp: I'd better return it then ;-)

#132 It's OK, I'm away in Copenhagen from tomorrow until Monday ;)

Congratulations on reaching 100!

Caught up here *whew*...oooh, Copenhagen!

PS, sorry you've been feeling grotty - hope you're better now?

#135 yep - yay!

#130, Good luck with the le Carré. I have heard the same thing about The Constant Gardener and his other post-Cold War novels, with the exception of his most recent, A Most Wanted Man, which came out last year, got great reviews, and led me to go back and read the other le Carrés I already owned. While I really enjoyed it, in my opinion, nothing he's written can touch the Smiley/Karla trilogy and A Perfect Spy.

I am definitely adding The Taste of Sorrow to the BlackHole. Thanks for the recommendation, Rachael.

>134 jbeast: thanks Liz! I checked back against my last year's reading and I didn't pass 100 until after Christmas in 2008. Rather unlikely to hit my tentative personal goal of 150 though (unless I get sick again).

>135 tiffin: nice to see you, tiff.

>136 flissp: on the mend, fliss: two different things, the second being just a nasty cold really which I'm still struggling with. Oh, and I got knocked down by a cyclist (mostly my fault) on Monday so am still recovering from bruises and handlebar-to-the-head. Kind of wish I could rewind to the beginning of September and have those two months to do over again differently...

>137 rebeccanyc: Rebecca, I'm nearly halfway through Tinker, Tailor now and still stumbling a bit on the basic bureaucracy and structure. I don't think it helps that I'm reading an omnibus edition that has really teeny tiny print. Anyway, having got this far I'll definitely finish, but I'm hoping the pace picks up a little soon.

One of the editors that didn't like The Constant Gardener has also endorsed A Most Wanted Man, so I guess that's another to try if I find the Cold War-era just doesn't suit me.

>138 alcottacre: Stasia, I was really surprised to find when I came to rate The Taste of Sorrow that the only other person on LT that had bothered to do so only gave it 2.5 stars!! I thought the writing was wonderful.

#139: It is amazing sometimes how tastes differ, isn't it? I read one the other day that was the same way - I gave it 4 stars, one person who wrote a review gave it 2 stars.

Ow! Sorry to hear about your accident, and your bad cold. I hope that November is more friendly to you.

Added The Taste of Sorrow to Project Wishlist. It looks quite appealing to me.

>140 alcottacre: Stasia, I think in some cases you can explain it as a difference of taste - but I can't imagine how anyone that likes this sort of thing (historical, literary fiction) could grade it that low. Must have cloth ears ;-)

>141 kidzdoc: Darryl, I really hope November is nicer to me as well. It couldn't really be much worse than the last couple of months. At least my husband has started back in the lab this week, which he's really excited about, but which also means that I am no longer solely responsible for the school run and the grocery shopping. YES!!!!

>142 nancyewhite: hope you like it when you get to it, Nancy!

The second issue of Belletrista is online now too, for those that are interested - my more considered review of Chloe Aridjis' Book of Clouds is in there, but of what I've read so far, the laurels have to go to citizenkelly for two fabulous pieces on Herta Müller and the Booker. She is my new heroine.

Have set aside Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy temporarily as I was grinding almost to a halt with it, and instead picked up the most recent Sophie Hannah - definitely a guilty-pleasure read. Actually, this one seems a bit better written than some of her others, with more consistent characterisation (but then I'm only halfway through). Like chocolate, you know it's not all that good for you, but sometimes, you just NEED some.

Also: it's my turn for late Friday again. It's pouring with rain, and I have a nasty suspicion it's going to be a late one... cross your fingers for me if you read this tonight!

Fingers crossed as requested :)

Congratulations on making 100 (plus) books!
I'd cross my fingers for you too but by now it's almost 6 am in England. Hopefully you've been home - and dry - for hours.
I'm surprised to hear that The Constant Gardener is not a good book. I haven't read the book but found the movie compelling.

>144 lunacat: Jenny, clearly you're my lucky charm... was on 2215 train and home before midnight!! Miraculous. Watch out, I may send you stalker-esque messages every 4 weeks from now asking you to cross your fingers for me, because I'm damned if I can work out what else might be influencing the time of my departure....

>145 VioletBramble: thanks VB! It wasn't raining when I had to cycle home, but my bike was soaked - somehow, despite living in Cambridge for over 10 years I still haven't got the hang of remembering to put a shopping bag over the bike seat so at least I don't get a wet backside on the way home. Doh.

What the two eds I talked to said about The Constant Gardener seemed essentially to boil down to stating that it was implausible - Le Carré trying to impose his standard Cold War spy plots on a 'big pharma' backdrop didn't quite come off. I haven't seen the film, and probably won't unless I read the book - but I may have a higher tolerance than them for plausibility ;-)

I haven't wanted to comment on the John Le Carre books, mainly because it's so long since I read them. But....I found The Constant Gardener a bit of a let down, I read it when it first came out because I'd been such a fan of his others.

#146

Glad I could be of service, and long may it continue!

I have just read your Book of Clouds review and think it is really excellent. Well done, Flossie. Sounds like it is a very nostalgic read - I will look for it in the library. You have a great way with words!

103. The Other Half Lives - Sophie Hannah

Aforementioned guilty-pleasure reading: I find Sophie Hannah's thrillers a bit uneven - heavily coincidence-based plots that usually provoke more than one "but... but..", not-always-completely-convincing characters, police officers that outrageously flout the normal regulations of investigative procedure and yet somehow never get disciplined for it - but totally compelling. Her speciality seems to be in creating damaged, confused, unreliable narrators who keep you guessing at what's going on until very late on in events, by which point you're completely sucked in.

In this one, the neurotic Ruth Bussey's boyfriend confesses to her that he once killed a woman. The problem is, Ruth knows her - and also knows that she is very much alive. So if it wasn't her he killed - who was it? And what is her boyfriend's strange connection with his claimed victim?

I think I guessed the twists earlier on than usual in this one, but I do think her writing is getting better. It would be nice to read one set somewhere else - she's used the same fictionalised set of towns for all of her thrillers so far, mainly, I think, because she wants to keep using the same pair of police officers, and it is beginning to feel a bit like St Mary Mead: a small area that is amassing an improbably high total of murderers and psychopaths.

Side note: one of those rare occasions when the 'sneak peek' of the next book might actually convince me to buy it: I usually pick up Sophie Hannah secondhand or via swap sites and dispose of them similarly once read, but the next one sounds so interesting I might even buy it in hardback: about a series of cot-death mothers wrongly convicted of infanticide, who start turning up dead.

edit for typoes

>149 kiwidoc: thanks Karen! There are some fantastic writers contributing to Belletrista - thinking of citizenkelly in particular, who completely awes me with her flair and panache. My writing always has a tendency to come out either way too formal or too chatty - can't seem to find that magic middle ground in between that achieves something like critical accuracy, yet with an entertaining style that makes you feel you understand something of the reviewer's character. Sigh. Writing envy.

Wow! I love your review of Book of Clouds, Rachael. I'll definitely look out for it.

Echoing the kudos for your review, Floss, which I thought was really good. What an issue of Belle! citizenkelly's two articles just blew my socks off, the reviews were excellently written and the book selections deadly dangerous. We're always hardest on our own writing, I think. A good review should nudge a book forward, open it a tiny bit to tantalise and intrigue the reader. Good review, Floss!

Going to have to go and check out citizenkelly's reviews after that description...

Glad you're on the mend - stupid cyclist! Sounds very painful (handlebars being designed to maim, I am certain).

I think that Jenny/lunacat may have sent your rain over to Copenhagen - pah! But the holiday-ness makes up for rain, so I'll forgive her just this once... Schoolboy error with the plastic bag though ;)

>153 kidzdoc:, >154 tiffin: aww, thanks, guys! It was kind of a hard book to review - I really did think it was just gorgeously written and put together, but it does... drift... somewhat, and I found that if I put it down, I could go many days before I persuaded myself to pick it up again. Once I was reading, I was loving it again, but the inertia factor was high.

>155 flissp: for someone with so many years of Cambridge-dwelling under her belt, I really am remarkably dim about certain practical cycling matters.

Have been delaying posting my next book as I wanted to wait until I'd finished the one after, as I was entertained at the thought of reviewing them as a pair...

104. The Ten PM Question - Kate De Goldi

I've been on a bit of a quest recently (well, for a few months, really) to get to know some more New Zealand writers. I lived there for a couple of years as a child, and conjectured that the high standards of children's writing in the country really ought to be reflected in the adult output also. Having loved The Rehearsal (this year's "bore you all to tears with fulsome praise" book - incidentally I'm also loving that it comes out as first choice for the touchstone now :-))) I've been determined to find some more good stuff.

I don't know whether I first heard of de Goldi's book via the Montana Awards short/longlists, or whether it was Mary McCallum's blog, but it sounded great fun. However, it was HARD to get hold of: basically, with 90% of NZ books, your options are basically (1) NZ Books Abroad or (2) a local NZ web shop - both of which attract high shipping costs on top of NZ's already pretty steep book prices. So I chose option (3) - my friend Jo's husband, who was over in the UK for a conference in October, and agreed to smuggle me an NZ book parcel. The parcel included The Ten PM Question.

Frankie Parsons is 12 (OK: gripe out the way quickly, I'd have put him at 10 myself judging by his behaviour and preoccupations - although he's worrying a bit about adolescence, puberty and all the rest of it, really he's still a kid) and permanently incapacitated by worry: the rash on his chest that may be terminal, the camp he can't possibly go away to because of not being able to look after his mother, the possibility that bird flu may cause a meltdown of society... anything and everything gives him palpitations, which in turn send him regularly in to his mother after lights-out to ask 'the 10 PM question'. The book spans four months of his life, during which the eccentric Sydney, who never stops asking awkward questions, flings herself determinedly into his life, and forces him to begin to re-evaluate the way he looks at things.

I gather that the book has been criticised for a slightly too idealised picture of family life - Kerry mentioned she'd seen a review comparing the Parsons family to the Waltons - but it was exactly what I needed at the point at which I picked it up.

What I liked, too, was that the darker elements are not completely absent - they're just not over-emphasised either. Our hero Frankie's mother has serious mental-health issues, his friend Sydney's mum may or may not be a sort of high-class prostitute (and she certainly is given to spontaneous relocation at the drop of a pin, dragging her three girls in her wake), his best mate Gigs appears to have a similarly irregular family setup - and yet everyone continues to make their way. In a world of misery memoir and Jacqueline Wilson novels about how grim it is to have a stepfamily, it was rather refreshing to read a book in which families are messed up and people still manage to be basically happy.

This reminded me a little of some of the less explicit Judy Blume books, and it is definitely a rather idealised picture: but it was just a lovely, uplifting story. I really enjoyed it. Hopefully the fact that it appears on the IMPAC longlist may boost the chances that it will get easier to obtain outside New Zealand.

And then I went on to a rather different portrayal of family life, across the Tasman sea....

105. The Slap - Christos Tsiolkas

This won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the Australian Book Industry Awards book of the year, and was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Prize - which I find phenomenally depressing, as I did the book. The basic premise is that a single incident - the vicious slap administered to a stroppy child at a barbecue by an adult who is not his father - has deep and lasting repercussions for the group of friends and relatives that witness it. The story is told from a large number of different perspectives - not each relating the moment of the slapping, for the chronology is continuous, but as if handing the baton on to one another.

I'm sure I'm letting this colour my perspective too much, but not a single sympathetic character in the book is allowed a slot in the narration. This is one of the most misanthropic books I've read in a long time: even those who appear superficially 'good' people are revealed to be morally compromised when their turn comes in the narrative cycle, and there's an ugly streak of misogyny: from the male perspective, all women are whores; from the female perspective, female friendship is a twisted and manipulative game, and women are mainly out for what they can get, sacrificing their marriages for their children, or their children for their careers, or their friends for their relationship obsessions, and so on.

Where de Goldi's book took messed up families and looked for their silver lining, The Slap takes what appear to be normal suburban Australian families and coldly, ruthlessly exposes the rot with which they are riddled underneath their veneer of respectability. It is well put together, and the narrative control is superb - but I just really, really didn't enjoy it as a reading experience because I hated all the characters SO much. The toddler who is slapped is a revolting creation, a vicious spoilt brat whose mother's extended breastfeeding is in part a self-indulgence to sustain her through her marriage to an alcoholic husband, and who has been allowed to run wild because of his mother's "liberal" parenting ideas. So you're naturally inclined to side with Harry, who slaps him when he appears to threaten Harry's son with a cricket bat - until you read Harry's perspective a couple of chapters later and realise what an unremittingly disgusting character Harry is, and learn what he thinks and feels about the incident.

It did also trigger in me something of a meditation on the question of novels of the domestic, and the sexism ingrained in the attitudes thereto. If this had been written by Ms Christa Tsiolkas, would it have done as well? It's essentially about family and friendship dynamics, but has somehow been allowed to rise out of the domestic bracket by dint of including a lot of violent sex and near-continuous drug use. Go ahead and call me a cynic.

Not sorry I read it. Couldn't say I liked it. Absolutely no idea how to rate it: anything from 2 up to 4 stars.

Maybe if you're Australian and meet these sort of characters day to day, you'll get more out of it.

Well, I'm Australian, but I can't say I meet these sort of characters everyday (or have ever met them!), and I'd hate to think that The Slap somehow represents modern Australia or Australians - eek! As for awards - I generally avoid any book that's won a prize for fiction!

That being said, excellent review on a book I'm sure to have ignored anyway ;)

By the by, if you are looking for a great Australian book, I strongly recommend that you hunt down a copy of my personal all-time favourite book: Wake in Fright (1961) by Kenneth Cook. It's a quick read and exceptionally well written - a real classic. Unfortunately, this book has often been a subject for study in the Australian high school English curriculum, and as such a few Australians have developed a dislike for it. Ignore them!

Glad that you liked Kate's book, do you see it being a children's book? I'm only asking because it has been marketed as for younger teens as well as adults. It won the NZ Post Children's and YA Book of the Year Award and was nominated for the Esther Glen Award for children's fiction as well. Librarians here have said that it is really popular with bookclubs and women in general, but I haven't seen much feedback from a younger audience, and I know a lot of kids received it as a Xmas present last year.

I heard Christos Tsiolkas and the other nominees all speak in Auckland in May when the Commonwealth Writers Prizes were announced there. My only comment is that while I couldn't wait to read Say you're one of them orCase of Exploding Mangoes after hearing the writers speak and read from their books, I walked out of the Tsiolkas' reading, it wasn't appealing at all. I will read another of his books but not The Slap. I have a copy of his Dead Europe which is about vampires or zombies I think.
Actually when I think about it, I was more excited by the readings from the debut novelists than I was by the more established writers.

Australian fiction - I still haven't read this book, but it is high on my tbr for next year - Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey, It's his second book and its been getting high praise everywhere. It won an award put out by Australia's independent bookshops a couple of months ago. He started his first book, Rhubarb while still at high school and it was also highly praised.

Hmmm. I've got The Slap on my wishlist - not so sure about that now... Great review.

I'm currently reading Say You're One of them. It is well written, but very depressing!

>157 petermc: Peter, someone I mentioned it to last night said, "I think I'll stick to Neighbours" - and it does read kind of like the anti-Neighbours. I think probably these people, or their near-equivalents, do exist, but I just didn't enjoy spending 480-odd pages in their company. Many of them deserved a slap nearly as much as the odious Hugo (the rotten toddler).

Thanks for the book rec too!

>158 avatiakh: Kerry, interesting thought on whether Ten PM Question is a children's book. I found myself reminded of my 10YO quite often when reading about Frankie... BUT. While I think there's nothing in it to stop it being a children's book, I don't necessarily think it's one children would enjoy: most kids want to be taken out of themselves a bit, I think, when they're reading, whereas this would present them with themselves. I loved it because it was a sort of slightly nostalgic portrait of being on the cusp of adolescence, but I imagine a lot of kids would find it very boring.

Interesting also that you walked out of the reading. The guy who lent me The Slap recommended Dead Europe, but I don't feel in any great rush to pick it up after this one. Will look out for Jasper Jones too - the LT reviews sound interesting and the average rating is astonishing!

>160 flissp: thanks fliss - it's out in the UK next year, I think (Feb maybe?) but I wouldn't rush to grab a copy before then.

>161 Whisper1: Say You're One of Them looks interesting - thanks, Linda.

Excellent review of The Slap, Rachael! I think I'll drop it from my wish list, though...

I never put The Slap in the BlackHole, which saves me having to take it out and for that I am grateful (going through that list takes a while!).

>156 FlossieT: I'll have to read The Slap now after that critique. It is considered a pretty hard hitting look at suburbia and second generation families. I shall be prepared. Girds loins.

>165 merry10: Meg, it is actually very insightful regarding the issues that immigrant families deal with, and the ways their ideologies and behaviour develop and adapt (or don't). I just felt Tsiolkas could have done a better job of conveying that by including the odd bit of positivity! It's not that there are NO likeable characters in the book - it's just that none of them attract concentrated narrative focus. So, as an example, there's a really interesting couple - one Aborigine, one very blonde - who convert to Islam: but neither of them gets a section to themselves; they're both 'supporting actors', if you like. Incidentally, the narrative is free-indirect rather than first-person, which is probably also in its favour, and helps the overall unity of the book no end.

It's probably a fault in me as a reader that I am so guided by character as to miss some more interesting messages being transmitted underneath.

I guess you sold me too--on taking The Slap off my list. Thanks! I needed that! ;-) (Hmmm! How old do you need to be to remember that ad?)

>167 bonniebooks: possibly American too, I suspect :)

106. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy - John Le Carré

I have spent most of my reading life firmly believing that John Le Carré was pulp fiction. He was on my parents’ bookshelves nestling up against Robert Ludlum, the tyopgraphy screamed ‘airport’, ergo he couldn’t be any good. For the corrective to this worldview, once again I have LibraryThing to thank: rebeccanyc read a couple earlier this year, and posted some very thoughtful comments...

GENDER STEREOTYPE ALERT: Rebecca notwithstanding, I have a feeling that this is a book generally more readily enjoyed by boys than girls. The essential plot device is the ‘one last job’: retired, respected spy George Smiley is called in one final time to investigate the allegation that there is a Russian mole embedded in the British secret service. But it’s tied up in so many knots it can sometimes be impossible to work out where the ends were. I have to admit that I found it very hard going after the first few pages. This is obviously deliberate: Le Carré is depicting a service so murky and characterised with bluffs, double-bluffs and personal politics that to lay everything out in a neat flowchart would totally defeat the point of the novel.

Halfway through, I put Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy down for a couple of weeks and read several other novels. This was clearly exactly what I needed, because a couple of weeks later, I found it much easier to stop caring about whether I was understanding everything.

Cautiously recommended. Still slightly undecided as to whether I’m going to attempt the other two books in the trilogy.

Now reading The Franchise Affair, which is stonkingly good: astoundingly fresh and modern, and yet somehow totally of its period all at the same time. And The Vintner's Luck, which is a bit weird. Fortunately divided into many short sections, and therefore easy to set down and do other things in between sections, and still pick up where you left off with relative ease.

edit to remove some dodgy paragraphing

Haven't tried any John Le Carre yet, but The Franchise Affair was amazing - I agree!

I got Himself a Le Carré for Christmas because of Rebecca so I hope it isn't a Gordian knot as well: A Perfect Spy. Hope to read it myself in the new year (of course *wink*).

I picked up a battered copy of The Franchise Affair yesterday at my favourite used bookshop, I'll have to read it soon. The Vintner's Luck is a bit weird but I ended up really enjoying it - I also appreciated the short 'chapters'.

Oh I love Josephine Tey - have you read Brat Farrar or The Daughter of Time?

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy IS difficult to untangle, but the reason I recommended reading it first is because I read the second book in the trilogy, The Honourable Schoolboy, first, and that gave away the secret of TTSS. In my opinion, THS is better than TTSS, and the last book, Smiley's People, is still better -- better in that they get more psychologically complex and less "spy novelish." And that is the reason why I thought A Perfect Spy is the best of all -- it is really a psychological novel about family, missing and tormenting fathers, and the impact of history on individual lives.

But I do wonder about the gender aspect of this -- while I can see in the general sense that there are "boy books" and "girl books," these categories seem much more extreme to me than le Carré's work, much of which I consider to be more literature than genre novel.

>171 avatiakh: Kerry, bump it up to the top of the stack! I'm absolutely loving it - so impressed that a book so replete with period detail could at the same time manage to feel completely timeless owing to the precision of its observations of human nature.

I am enjoying The Vintner's Luck - it just isn't quite what I was expecting, somehow (though I couldn't have told you what, exactly, I was expecting).

>172 flissp: this is my first Josephine Tey, fliss - although I've got a copy of The Daughter of Time, off a secondhand stall from one of those markets on Parker's Piece. I shall definitely be reading more based on this.

>173 rebeccanyc: thanks, Rebecca: your comments on the rest of the trilogy are encouraging! I don't mean to sound ungraciously unappreciative of your recommendation: I very much enjoyed Smiley as a character, but slightly less brain-mangling complexity of plot would not go amiss. My omnibus edition has THS and Smiley's People also, so it's relatively easy to press on once I've cleared the decks.

Re. "boy books": I've really noticed that the reaction amongst my friends on hearing that I was (finally) reading TTSS has been surprisingly universal (edit: that's inaccurate - I think I mean "consistent"): the boys all declared undying devotion to Le Carré, TTSS an amazing and wonderful book etc. etc. - whereas all the girls either said, hmm, I found it a bit of a slog, or, I was never able to finish it.

It's a style-of-reading thing, I think: one needs to have the ability either to spend a lot of time reading incredibly slowly (and sometimes re-reading) to get all the nuances - or one has to be willing to misunderstand maybe a third of it but carry on reading regardless and just let the momentum of the plot carry you through. I wasn't in the mood for reading in the former manner, and I'm not very good at reading in the latter, so found it difficult to match my preferences to the book.

Josephine Tey is an author whose name crops up frequently here on our challenge group. I haven't read any of her books...perhaps 2010 will be the time to do so.

This espionage male thing is interesting. Somebody, I've forgotten who, mentioned in this group earlier this year, that they thought Alan Furst was a very male-y writer. Another espionage writer to try is Robert Littell. Most Littell can't be read straight-up though. It has an absurdist element mixed with some satire. His biggest book, The Company, can pretty much be read straight-up as a sort of history of the CIA. Furst and Littell are Americans who have spent many of their years in France. And David Cornwell penned his work as John Le Carré. There's something going on here. ;)

>175 Whisper1: Linda, definitely: Stasia says she's one of her favourites, and lots more readers seem to agree. I put The Franchise Affair on the reading list after a really interesting piece by Sarah Waters in the Guardian, crediting the book with inspiring The Little Stranger (I'm not linking to the article because it CONTAINS SPOILERS - one of the reasons it's taken me so long to read Tey's book is that I needed to forget what happens!!).

>176 VisibleGhost: it also occurs to me that the cast of the book is extremely male-dominated: Ann, Smiley's wife, is a constant offstage presence, but portrayed extremely unsympathetically; then there's Connie, who has been essentially forced out of the service and gone slightly off the rails; the unstable Irina, who in part provokes the crisis; and a couple of walk-on 'housekeepers'. And there's a comment in a scene in which Peter Guillam is confronted by 'the board' about someone being the 'token woman'. None of which really helps the boys'-own atmosphere...

I shall look up your recommendations, VG - thanks.

And going back to >173 rebeccanyc:, Rebecca, two of the senior editors at work praise Le Carré's Cold War novels highly and were both very enthusiastic when I mentioned I was reading Smiley, so I think there are many in agreement on your 'literature over genre' point. They ought to know, really...

Well, I never think that people have to agree with me about books I like. I have pretty eclectic tastes, and there are lots of books that many people love that leave me cold. I love LT partly because we can have such interesting discussions, and it would be boring if we all agreed.

As to the male-dominated aspect of TTSP, I think it reflected the male domination of the British spy system, and I don't recall thinking that the women were treated significantly more unsympathetically than many of the men.

Oh, absolutely: I agree it's an accurate setup - I'm now really just looking for the roots of my instinctive labelling of it as a 'boys' book'!

I owe comments on FOUR finished books, and am not ready to post any of them yet, but I just had to put this link up as it made me laugh so much. We SO need to get lunacat on there to post about reading in the shower.

You Know You're Addicted to Reading When...

It wouldn't be so funny if it wasn't so darned true. My reaction to most of those comments was "Doesn't everybody?"

By the way, I got sidetracked and never told you that I sent that book to you over a week ago. On its way!

#180 - Thanks for the link :)

While I can laugh at many, some are too damn close to the truth for comfort. I know I'm addicted to reading because I always have at least three (and occasionally four) different books on the go to sustain me in my free time - 1) a book to read on the train to and from work, 2) a book to read at night in bed, 3) an audiobook to listen to when I'm walking between the station and home / work, and occasionally 4) an online book to read at work in a rare moment of downtime.

So I don't appear to be a total geek, I won't mention that I also take advantage of the Google News alert function to keep abreast of "e-reader" news, as I seek to take advantage of my 1,700+ digitized book collection!

Whoops! Did I just mention that?

Thanks, Terri! Can't wait :)

107. The Franchise Affair - Josephine Tey

Oh, Miss Tey: why has it taken me so many years of my life to discover you? Like pomegranate, the (mumble) years I have spent to date without your acquaintance seem a poor thing now I know what I have missed.

Fans of murder mysteries should read this. Fans of period drama should read this. Fans of social comedy should read this. Fans of class-based drama should read this. Hell, everyone should read this because it's wonderful. I don't think I have ever read a book that so perfectly illustrates Douglas Coupland's point about the sterile feeling that creeps over books that try to seem "timeless". This book is crammed with period detail, and could belong to no other decade, but the psychology at the heart of it has hardly changed over thousands of years - it's just the cutlery has got fancier.

Robert Blair is a country lawyer unexpectedly called to the aid of the mysterious Marion Sharpe. Resident in the gloomy and isolated country house known as the Franchise with her elderly mother, she has been accused of kidnapping and beating a 15 year-old girl, and is about to be interviewed by Scotland Yard. Marion claims never to have seen Betty Kane before in her life - but Betty can describe the view from her attic window, the suitcases in her cupboard, the carpeting on the stairs and the pans in the kitchen. The Franchise Affair unpicks the knot of who is telling the truth and who is lying, examining as it goes along the frailty and importance of reputation, and the egoism of criminality, not forgetting to throw in a generous dose of poking fun at tabloid newspapers.

Marvellous, marvellous book. Go, read it now.

>182 petermc: don't worry, Peter, I don't think anyone heard you. And if they did, they won't tell. It's kind of like the principle of what's told in AA, stays in AA, right?

I seem to have found it in myself to comment on one book. The others will have to wait as I need to do a billion things before I go to bed, one of which is packing for a visit to the in-laws (who are babysitting so I can go to a book launch. I love them.)

The Franchise Affair is indeed marvelous. Nice review!

Peter, I'm drooling over your digitized book collection. I recently got an ebook reader and have ONLY 50+ books for it...;)

I only had...oh...79 messages to catch up on on your thread. All caught up now! :D

"What I have to get out of the way quickly is that I actually didn't think the books were all that well-written: lots of clichés, dialogue that I sometimes struggled to really believe in, too many scenes and conversations that were several degrees too emotionally volatile to really convince me"

I know, I'm taking you way back but I can really identify with that right now. I'm reading After You'd Gone, whose review I believe -when I get to it - will start with a statement akin to yours. That is despite the fact that I am enjoying it immensely and read half of it in one sitting. My main problem is Too Much Benevolence - sisters acting all goody-goody with no emotional depth or anger or fights and men who want to "bury themselves in her hair" or something like that. You get the picture :)

#180 They missed the "going past your stop on the train because you have to finish the chapter"... ;o)

#183 Great review - I may have to reread it (or at least work out if she's written anything I haven't read yet). I think you're going to enjoy Brat Farrar...

Flissp, they also missed "burning supper because you were reading at the kitchen table while supposedly cooking".

Yep, done that too. Good point. :o)

...and "waking up in the morning with print-face"

How about keeping your current book on your lap while driving in case you hit a long stop light?

Or when you walk into your favorite thriftshop and the lady behind the counter says, "Oh, here comes the Book Lady. I'll go get you a big box in the back."

Actually, when people all over town start recognizing you as "The Book Lady".

Or when, based on the size of your LT library, some random journalist emails you for an article he's writing about reading.

Or when people start coming to you instead of going to the local library to borrow books, but you're more likely to have what they want to read....

Or when you think that maybe it wouldn't really be inappropriate to bring a book to Thanksgiving dinner. There is that downtime after dinner when everyone wants to take a nap.

>190 alaskabookworm: when people start coming to you instead of going to the local library to borrow books

LOL! My sister tells her girls to "Go down and see if Aunt Terri has that book. She won't charge a late fee if you don't finish it in time."

>192 tloeffler: Aunt Terri is nicer than I am. I would definitely charge a fee (though I haven't yet), or show up on someone's door step demanding my book back (something I've sort of done). :)

You know you love to read when you have to rename your TBR list the BlackHole for its ever-increasing size :)

BTW Rachael - Josephine Tey did not write anything bad. I think you will really enjoy her writing. My favorite of hers is The Daughter of Time.

How about "when you can't decide which literary tattoo you're going to get next"? Does that count?

>185 BookAngel_a:/>187 flissp: thanks, Angela & Fliss! I will definitely be reading more.

>186 girlunderglass: Eliza, will be interesting to see what you've made of After You'd Gone (haven't seen your thoughts on it which makes me think I've 'lost' your thread amongst the starred posts again...). I do think it is possible to intellectually know that something is not that "well written", but find oodles of merit in it nonetheless (and be totally sucked in too).

>191 jmaloney17: I do that kind of thing all the time: the idea of downtime unfilled gives me the tremors.

I have recently made the mistake of finishing a bunch of books all in one go. This has meant, naturally, that I haven't posted any comments here on ANY of them. Bad Floss. Anyway, here's one I finished a couple of weeks ago now...

108. The Vintner's Luck - Elizabeth Knox

Well, this is quite unlike anything else I've ever read: a historical novel about a love affair between a 19th-century Burgundy vintner and an angel, who meet annually in midsummer over the span of Sobran's life, gradually becoming more and more deeply involved. It was both more historical and more fantastic than I was expecting, and trying to hold the two genre strands in my head at the same time was a bit brain-melting at times.

Also, I really need to learn how not to be quite so overwhelmingly swayed by character when reading novels. I found Xas and Sobran both immensely irritating in their rather arrogant self- and mutual absorption, which completely got in the way of my realising what a thoughtful (and beautifully written) exploration of the nature of loss Knox was conducting until I went back over my notes when I'd finished and dipped in relatively independently of the characters.

Straight historical fiction lovers would find this tough, I suspect, but spec. fic. fans who don't mind a bit (OK, a lot) of period detail may enjoy this.

Re The Vintner's Luck - was this discussed on Radio 4 a few weeks back? It sounds vaguely familiar (whichever the book was being discussed, it completely divided the people reviewing it).

I know what you mean by the character sway - I'm a sucker for getting pulled in by the characters - I tend to really struggle if I don't like (or at least, as in the case of Becky Sharpe, sneakily admire) at least one... It's a shame if it means that you can't appreciate the book properly.

...just got Miss Pym Disposes out from the library...

messsage 183.

Rachael, what a great review. Now I have to read books by Josephine Tey The Franchise Affair sounds great...thumbs up on your review!

>197 flissp: fliss, I didn't listen myself, but Penelope (there's that spooky-small-world thing again...) happened to be visiting when I was finishing it and said she'd heard about it on R4! I do think it would suit VERY specific tastes best. I may pick up the sequel, The Angel's Cut at some point (possibly in Borders closing-down sale, sob). One of the most wonderful things about the book is the way she describes the angel, and especially, his flight and his wings - really makes you 'see' it.

>198 Whisper1: thanks Linda - it really was fab. I've just swapped a book on ReadItSwapIt (UK swap site) for a novel by Nicola Upson (An Expert in Murder), who has begun a series starring Josephine Tey as the detective. Will let you know how I find that one.

Very spooky! ...although with given that my mother and her mother went to school together, I suppose we have some similar influences ;)

Hmmm. Can't decide whether to investigate The Vintner's Luck or not. I think it may have to be a bookshop decision (when I'm browsing in bookshops, I always read the first few pages of a book I'm undecided about - it's quite a good test of if I'm going to like the author or not). But am all in favour of those capable of making you 'see' something!

196: well I haven't reviewed it yet, which would explain why you haven't seen it. If you've lost my thread it is here:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/73211

Ha! I haven't lost it, then - mine is the last post :-) I 'lost' lunacat for about 3 months at one point... the 'my posts' list gets so long that by the time I've checked them all I've usually run out of stamina for the ones that I've starred but not posted on - with the net result that every time anyone starts a new thread, I usually lose them completely unless I make a completely gratuitous 'hello' post very early on. Am hopeless.

Re The Vintner's Luck - I finally read this a few weeks ago and really enjoyed it. It is different and while I quite liked Xas, I'm still not sure how much I like angels in my books. Another book with angels that unsettled me was Many Waters by Madeleine L'Engle where the children timeslip to the biblical setting of Noah and his ark.
One thing for sure - I won't be bothering to see the film of The Vintner's Luck it's had horrible reviews.

I saw an article about Elizabeth Knox's reaction to the film - it does rather sound as if they chopped it up and threw out most of what makes it such a distinctive book. A real shame as I was longing to see Xas' wings.

I seem to be in a place where I am much more interested in reading new books than writing comments on the ones I've read already, so just to update very quickly on some recent completed reads:

109. Letters to a Fiction Writer - Frederick Busch

110. Green for Danger - Christianna Brand

111. Morality Play - Barry Unsworth

112. The Likeness - Tana French

113. The Song House - Trezza Azzopardi (no touchstone, linked to work page)

114. Cold Earth - Sarah Moss

115. The Wilding - Maria McCann

I'm still intending to 'write these up' at some point.

edit to add link to Azzopardi work page

Here's a link to David Larsen's film review, he's a really good book reviewer so I appreciate his comments especially as he's compares the film to the book. Some film reviewers don't seem to be familiar with the books that films have been adapted from.
http://www.listener.co.nz/issue/3627/artsbooks/14378/down_on_its_luck.html

I really liked Morality Play - what did you think of it?

Kerry, David wrote articles for Salient (Vic student newspaper) when I was a proof reader - I am going to go and read it now!

Rachael, haven't read the Vintner's Luck but saw the fuss on the front page of last week's DomPost, and was really happy to see book news prominent 2 weeks in a row, just not happy that it was bad news.

The other news was about the plagiarism in Witi Ihimaera's new book - The Trowenna Sea - have you followed that story? It's all through it, and he's had a slap over the hand with a wet bus ticket.

#206 - then you know he's a reviewer worth following though he does specialise in scifi and fantasy. Here's the link to his 50 best books for children & teens, though you'll have to wait till Dec 19 to read it as the Listener only does previews while the issues are current. http://www.listener.co.nz/issue/3630/artsbooks/14520/the_50_best_childrens_books...
Their 2009 Best Books Lists won't be available online till 24 Dec.
I also love reading David Hill's reviews and articles in the Listener.

>205 avatiakh: wow, that is a vicious review!! Think I'll skip the film - it sounds dismal.

I am still (at this point, anyway, who knows whether I'll change my mind later) intending to write 'proper' comments on my missing books, but tbh I wasn't as impressed by Morality Play as I'd hoped to be; I found the last 30 or so pages, once the players are inside the manor house and in fear of their lives, totally gripping (not least because the narrator's escape was described in vivid terms that uncannily conjured up one of my least favourite recurring nightmares). But the rest of it didn't seem to me to be saying anything especially original or enlightening about the nature of drama - Shakespeare already made a much better job of it, so I was left searching for what was really original. Also found the integration of historical detail/research a bit clunky and teacherly at times.

>206 cushlareads: I saw a couple of short articles recently about Ihimaera's plagiarism - possibly on Bookman Beattie's blog?

Abandoned: Fool - Christopher Moore: I haven't read anything by Moore before, but had several of his books on the wishlist as they sounded so entertaining. But I really didn't like this - one truly brilliant phrase or joke about every 40 pages, set in a slow-paced, confusing, clunky and over-bawdy, IMHO, re-telling of the Lear story from the perspective of his fool, Pocket. I really did give this a proper chance - abandoned only after 200 pages, possibly my latest ever as usually when I get to that point I feel I've invested too much not to continue. But I know how the Lear story ends, and I had no particular interest in finding out how Moore was going to get us there.

I'll probably give him one more chance before giving up, but on the evidence so far, I'd seriously quibble with the marketing apparatchik that puffed him as "the new Terry Pratchett".

Finished book 116: Keeper - Andrea Gillies, winner of the inaugural Wellcome Prize for science writing, and a seriously excellent book. Will definitely be comments to come on that one as I would highly recommend it to anyone, not just those who've experienced the effects of dementia on a friend or family member; a very important book to read given our rapidly-ageing population.

I've been re-attempting a book that I stalled on at the start of the year: The Hidden - Tobias Hill - but am feeling really grotty today and not quite up to it so am seeking diversion in Nicola Upson's An Expert in Murder, the first in her novels featuring Josephine Tey as an amateur sleuth. Passable so far (the sort of brain fodder needed for temperature/headache/stiff neck/stuffy cold) but I would have expected a little more flair and style given the quality of Miss Tey's own writing. Maybe it'll open up a bit.

PS to hark back to the start of this thread, the snow is good here, and today we went tobogganing at Wandlebury. No murdered children discovered, though several will have left soggy and bruised given some of the impressive spillages we witnessed.

I'd seriously quibble with the marketing apparatchik that puffed him as "the new Terry Pratchett".

I hadn't heard that comparison before - how horrible for Pratchett!

I have a friend that loves Moore, so I gave three a chance. Two were ok, one was horrible, and I really have no desire to delve further into his work. Why someone would liken him to Pratchett I have no idea; it sounds to me like the person in charge of that marketing campaign hasn't actually read either author...

Murdered children???

Thanks for the reminder about Keeper; I'll definitely read it next year.

How much snow did you get? No snow here in Atlanta, but my parents in suburban Philadelphia got 18 inches yesterday. The airport received over 23 inches! Hopefully things will be back to normal by the time I fly home next Monday.

Adding Keeper: Living with Nancy to the BlackHole. It looks very good. Thanks for the recommendation, Rachael.

>210 London_StJ: Luxx, I'm guessing they both fit in the box marked "comic fantasy". On the slender evidence thus far, I'd say they must sit in opposite corners!! Out of interest, which were the ones you tried? I do want to give him another go but it would be nice to avoid anything too horrible.

>211 kidzdoc: Darryl, Mistress of the Art of Death is partly set in Wandlebury - I can't remember if a victim is actually found there, but it plays a significant part in the story. We're nothing like in the 18-24 inch bracket for snow - I'd guess 6 at the max, though I haven't checked the "official" stats. Enough for very satisfactory snowman-construction and speedy sledging, though! It has stuck around too - hasn't snowed more than the odd flurry since Friday, but there's still plenty on the ground, and another snowstorm due on Wednesday, apparently. So Christmas is likely to be "white" here for the first time in ages, even if it's not actually falling from the sky. Nice for the kids (and for the kids-at-heart...).

>211 kidzdoc:/212 Keeper is the best kind of accessible science writing, in the way she blends memoir and personal observation with scientific information, the two elements shedding light on and supporting each other. The topic is heartbreaking but it's a surprisingly easy book to read, and has such a very important message at its heart. The dementia care system in the UK is obviously going to be different to the US, so some of the observations on structural problems won't be quite so relevant to you guys, but that's a minor thing.

Right, must get on: my husband's grandparents were going to take the kids out for the day so we could get on with our Christmas prep, but they rang this morning to say the roads near them were "like glass" and they didn't want to risk it - so now have to try and do the same things, only with 3 under-11s in tow! Eek.

Drive safely, Rachael! Does not sound like you need to be going out at all.

>214 alcottacre: Stasia, most of what we have to do is actually walkable, with the right outdoor gear :-) So it should be OK. Actually, the roads round us aren't too bad either (yet...)

Well, I guess it is a good thing it is walkable. Get walking while the walking is still good!

213 - I'm a vampire nut, so the first ones I went for were Bloodsucking Fiends and You Suck: A love story. The latter was just horrible. The friend that loves Moore then sent me A Dirty Job for a hospital read, and it was just ok. Moore was one of those authors I had always meant to pick up because his titles are often delightful, but after reading these few I decided he's not really my cup of tea.

Ooooh, more snow for Wednesday - woo!

(Actually, that makes me worry about my mum who's supposed to be coming back from half way up a mountain in Wales on Wednesday... Hmmm)

Very much looking forward to the review of book 116.

#214/5 The main roads are actually pretty good (unless you're a cyclist) around Cambridge at the moment - the problem comes when you drive off them, onto the roads where the snow is slowly becoming more and more packed down... That said, there're a lot fewer people driving than usual, so it's not bad really...

#217: I read Bloodsucking Fiends last year and thought Moore's sarcasm over the top. If I read him again, it will be in very small doses. I am probably through with him though.

>216 alcottacre: well, Stasia, we drove in the end, but it wasn't too bad (aside from the wheelspin trying to get out of the parking space when heading home again...)

>217 London_StJ: thanks for the additional Moore info, Luxx: none of those were on my list, but I will "proceed with caution". I agree with you about the titles - I've had Island of the Sequined Love-Nun on my TBR list for years, knowing absolutely nothing about it, because it was such a fabulously silly title.

>218 flissp: forecast Wednesday snow has now vanished from forecast :-( Am sad, though it looks like what we've got may well last til Friday given the temperatures.

Really, I'm on here just to post a sad farewell to Borders UK, closing their doors for the last time today. We went into the Cambridge store briefly this afternoon but it was very bare - all stock now on mainly empty shelves on the ground floor.

I know that businesses usually fail for good reasons of bad management, but that doesn't stop me being sad - partly because a physical bookshop closing means yet more trade for Amazon, and a slice of sales lost forever, partly for sentimental personal reasons: we lived right across the street when we first got married, and were in that flat while the department store that preceded Borders closed down and was refitted for the new bookstore. So it feels like its whole lifespan has been contained within my time in Cambridge, which is a very distressing thought.

(Yes, I did buy some books, but I felt like a horrible vulture in doing so.)

I am glad you and your kiddos arrived home safely!

Wow - what a lovely spot to have had a flat!

I didn't really feel that sorry about Borders until I went in to check out the sale stuff at the weekend (nothing left that I wanted, beyond some travel books... know what you mean about the vulture feeling) - then it felt very sad. All those empty bookcases. :o(

Booo to no snow at Christmas - but then we are travelling to Kent on Christmas day, so maybe it's a good thing - and I think you're right about it hanging around.

We have very little heating here at work - everyone's sitting around with jackets on. Booo.

Merry Christmas Rachael!

I hope you are having a wonderful day with your family!

Rachael...help...I can't find your 2010 thread for nothin' and I can't bear the idea of losing you among the throngs and hordes of people threading it up over there! Please to post a link for an inept, elderly lurker on your threads? Pretty please?

Yes - I was looking for your new thread as well. There is already a huge line-up over there in 2010!! Let us know where you are!

>223 flissp: fliss, we lived there for nearly 3 years when we first got married: my husband was still studying (PhD-postgrad-medical), so it was a student flat - or actually, two student flats, as we started out in 9A and then moved two floors up to 9E six months later. It was nice, but the lack of parking and green space eventually wore us down: it really did mean there was no easy escape from Saturday shoppers.

I have ended up with quite a bit that was actually on my wishlist, and a couple that looked interesting. And apparently there is more snow due next week... not that this has anything to do with Borders, they just happened to be in the same post.

>224 Whisper1: thanks Linda! Happy Christmas to you too - and in fact, to everybody else. We had fewer people here for dinner than we had planned for, as my nana was unexpectedly taken into hospital for surgery on the 23rd and was unable to travel, which was sad. She's doing well - she broke her wrist earlier in the month, but the bones had shifted at her recent checkup so she had to be re-admitted to have it re-set (ugh). Still, they had a nice quiet Christmas just the two of them, and we had a lovely time here.

>225 richardderus: and >226 kiwidoc: Richard and Karen, am delighted to have been sought! Actually, I am cussedly not starting a 2010 thread until 2010. But when I do, I promise to put a link to it in here.

Will be back in a bit (where a bit may equal "a day or two", to be honest, as I'm enjoying my current book!) to update on recent reading, but 3YO is up way past her bedtime and has assembled a formidable battery of bedtime stories that must be tackled before I can persuade her to close her eyes...

I hope your grandmother's wrist heals quickly!

#227 Ah yes - I can see how the non-stop-shoppers could be a bit intensive - I used to live very near the Grafton Centre and had similar feelings, but at least was on a side street and near loads of parks there...

Hope your nana's wrist is doing well and you all had a lovely Christmas/will have a lovely New Year!

Rachael..

All good wishes for speedy healing for your Nana.

Having your wrist re-set can't be fun. I hope she's feeling better!

I'm catching up on threads, and I wanted to say hello and I'm glad you'll be back for 2010. Looking forward to your comments about Keeper, it sounds interesting.

>228 alcottacre:/229/230/231 Stasia, Fliss, Linda, Luxx, many thanks for the good wishes. She's reached the age (i.e. over 80) where she gets very nervous about things, so is working herself into a froth over her check-up next week - but it sounds as if she's doing all the right things, resting up and so on.

I am hiding up in the bedroom, away from the troops, and generously allowing my husband some "daddy time" with them. So I thought I would try and at least lay down some comments on the 12 books (gulp) that I haven't commented on, with a view to very nearly tying up my year's reading; my current book, Oscar and Lucinda, is over 500 pages so is more likely to be my first book of 2010 than my last of 2009.

109. Letters to a Fiction Writer - Frederick Busch

This has been on my TBR stack since 1999, when it was reviewed in the New Yorker, to which I had, at that point, a much-loved subscription (for one precious year only - too expensive to keep up). Somewhere between now and then, I cracked and bought a copy on Amazon (can't now remember why), but it took me several more years to actually get round to reading it.

A lovely collection, with some really fascinating insights - I particularly enjoyed the letter from Ray Bradbury to Dan Chaon, who at time of publication was still "aspiring" rather than published, and the book ends with a lovely chain of wisdom passing through Flannery O'Connor from her editor to a student of hers, and thence to a student of her student's.

There is lots to chew over here, for the budding writer and the avid reader alike (maybe even for the experienced writer too - I like to think experienced writers no longer feel the need to read books-about, though). The only thing that annoyed me somewhat was the rather strident tone adopted by some of the writers as they preached against the "wannabe writer": the book-lover who confesses at parties that they've "always felt they had a novel in them", and they will get round to it one day, soon. I felt these poor people came in for unnecessarily vituperative outbursts - after all, they are often the most avid of readers, and the aspiration to write in part contributes to the daily making and buying of new books. There is a strong stench of biting the hand that feeds lingering over some of the contributions.

That aside, this is a fantastic anthology, with some excellent insights into the creative process, not all of them from "big names" (though there are some big-name contributions included). My copy has sprouted a thick forest of page markers, indication of some useful thoughts to be added to my notebook for future reflection.

110. Green for Danger - Christianna Brand

This is another treasure out of the booty plundered from our house-party in Somerset - picked up on a complete whim. The cover describes it as "The Famous Novel of Detection" - one simply must obey that definite article, mustn't one?

This was a fabulously silly murder mystery, despite being set in a military hospital well within the bombing zone: as if Dorothy Sayers and that woman that wrote the Sue Barton books had gone out for several very boozy lunches, and put together a synopsis that was then ghostwritten by Nancy Mitford. A patient dies on the operating table, and several of the nurses and doctors attending him are harbouring Secrets Dark enough to give them cause or motive. Naturally, he is only the first...

Having said all of this, I genuinely didn't guess the murderer, despite having been ahead of most of the 'twists' along the way. A most diverting way to spend an hour or two if you like period mysteries, especially those with an acute sense of social class, but it is almost as much about the who-loves-who intrigues amongst the hospital staff as it is about the murder mystery. Which may not be a bad thing, depending on your reading preferences.

111. Morality Play - Barry Unsworth

More Somerset booty. I had been trying to read my way through all of the Somerset-derived reading as I was seeing their true owner for lunch, but in the event didn't quite make it.

Renegade priest Nicholas Barber joins a troupe of players, standing in for one of their number, Brendan, who has conveniently died shortly before he meets them. The players are travelling to Durham, but must earn their keep as they travel, and come to put on a show in a town which has recently experienced the brutal murder of a young boy, and the subsequent accusation of a peasant girl for his murder. The troupe's leader Martin becomes obsessed with proving the girl's innocence, leading his companions into very dangerous waters.

This wasn't quite as impressive as I was hoping it would be: as a historical murder mystery, it's a bit over-detailed; as an exploration of the nature of drama, it lacks originality. But it's very interesting on the nature of the group dynamic, seen through the lens of the players' troupe, and the last 50 or so pages, as the mystery comes to its denouement, are really gripping.

112. The Likeness - Tana French

Not sure there's much I can say to add to the reviews that others in this group have already provided. I didn't find this quite as pulse-speedingly engrossing as In the Woods, but that's in part due to my having difficulty completely suspending disbelief at the central premise: a false identity created (and inhabited) years ago by Cassie Maddox for an undercover drugs investigation has been assumed by a girl who has (1) been found dead in mysterious circumstances (2) just happens to be Cassie's complete doppelganger. Cassie's former boss wants her to go back undercover as Lexie Madison, pretending she's been seriously, as opposed to fatally, stabbed.

Strong resonances with The Secret History in this book, which is centred on the house in which "Lexie" has been living, and her not-entirely-normal co-habitants; their peculiarly tight bond of fellowship and tight communal routine is really the main subject of the novel, though the whodunnit that runs alongside is still pretty involving.

Minor format gripe: Hodder has obviously decided that people who read this sort of book are after a particular size, of about 600 pages. In the Woods is a similar physical size, but with much tinier print than The Likeness. Actually, I'd have preferred something that compromised between girth and print size. But that's minor. A good thriller, and despite my misgivings about plausibility, I'm going to keep on reading whatever she brings out as her characters are just so good.

Two books which I'm going to be reviewing for Belletrista, so just very brief comments here.

113. The Song House - Trezza Azzopardi

Another spoil from the proof shelf at work, I was initially reading this as a "pre-screening" as I wasn't expecting to like it - I read The Hiding Place years ago and really disliked it, finding the childhood abuse story just too much. But I found it surprisingly enjoyable: more damaged and flawed characters with dark pasts to process, understand and move on from, but well written, although it does peter out slightly at the end.

114. Cold Earth - Sarah Moss

Fabulously creepy story about an archaeological dig in Greenland. As the assorted scientists and hangers-on excavate a Scandinavian settlement, many of them begin to have bad dreams, and something strange is stalking the camp at night. Meanwhile, in the outside world, communication lines are failing as the virus that was making headlines when they left begins to reach epidemic levels. The novel is told through what are ostensibly the characters' letters home. Sort of a cross between The Secret History (again!) and The Brief History of the Dead.

OK, 6 done - halfway through. Time for a breather...

Now fuelled by baked potato. Onward.

115. The Wilding - Maria McCann

Another proof (such a sucker for proofs, me). I note this one has also been in the LT ER programme. I have not read her first, As Meat Loves Salt, but had made a note of this after a mention in The Bookseller. Reasonably decent historical fiction of the dark-family-secrets kind (yes, again - don't know why I'm reading so many of these, it's not really a genre of which I am especially fond). The "wilding" of the title describes an apple tree that is growing wild, but is also used to mean illegitimate offspring. Tamar is the latter kind of wilding - living in a cave in the woods, she is discovered by (somewhat naive) cider maker Jonathan Dymond, who is visiting his nearby aunt following the death of his uncle. Complications ensue.

I did find this quite difficult to get into, despite what ought to have been an exciting and intriguing opening (an urgent message delivered late at night, whispering behind closed doors etc. etc.). And Jonathan I found immensely irritating as a protagonist (not to mention a narrator) by the end of the book. But if you like historical fiction, this is decent enough.

I like the sound of Morality Play (though possibly not enough to cough up for a new copy) and Cold Earth. They've both gone on the wishlist. This thread is getting almost as hazardous to my TBR/wishlist as Stasia's.

116. Keeper - Andrea Gillies

As I may have mentioned before, I have a bad Saturday Guardian habit. I kid myself I can stop any time (in fact, I did manage it for a few weeks last year when attempting a Bookerthon), but actually, the ritual of croissants, coffee, paper of a Saturday morning has me in its deathless grasp. It was in the Guardian that I first came across Andrea Gillies - not in the books pages, but in the Family section, sharing an extract from her journal of her time looking after her mother-in-law, who was in the advanced stages of suffering from Alzheimer's. The piece aroused the ire of many a sensitive Grauniad reader, who felt Gillies was invading her mother-in-law's privacy in setting down plainly the messy reality of mental degeneration. How you are supposed to prepare to deal with an illness if no one talks about it in any detail, I have no idea.

The journal eventually evolved into Keeper, a memoir-cum-science-book spanning the three years Gillies spent looking after Nancy, moving to a large house on the coast with her husband, their three children, Nancy, and Nancy's husband Morris. Gillies does not pull her punches: the harsh reality of the effects of Alzheimer's, from the aimless wandering to physical violence to embarrassing public nudity, are all set down unflinchingly. So, too, are the emotions Nancy's behaviour provokes in Gillies and, to a lesser extent, her family; she explores not just the practical, clinical realities of the illness, but also the impact that it has on those who are caring.

Interspersed with the personal perspective are reflections on the impact of dementia on art and creativity in the "famous", and some truly excellent passages of 'popular science'. Gillies has clearly done her research, and perhaps more importantly, she has a real gift for conveying the scientific and clinical detail of what is happening to the patient as the disease progresses in terms that the average non-scientific reader can instantly relate to. I do slightly wish that she'd provided a bibliography, as she makes frequent reference in the text to the books that she reads about Alzheimer's, which seem to be of wildly varying quality and approach.

I was drawn to this in the first instance because of my own very slight experience of dementia - my paternal grandmother suffered from vascular dementia for several years, and her sister died of Alzheimer's; a lot of the descriptions of Nancy's behaviour rang very true when I remember their reactions to the world. But very early on in the book, Andrea Gillies highlights some crucial data points that show the very real need for more people to read this book, beyond those who have been directly affected: the ageing of the population, coupled with a dementia rate that is expected to double in the next 20 years, is leading towards an explosion in the numbers of dementia patients - and correspondingly, in the number of people who will have to care for them, in particular because the UK system is geared towards home care for as long as possible, something that Gillies sets out in heartrending detail.

Dementia is not sexy. It's messy. It's embarrassing. It's expensive. It's upsetting. But it's happening, and more and more of us are going to have to deal with it firsthand. I can think of no better preparation than to read Keeper. Highly recommended - not just by me, but by the judges of the inaugural Wellcome Prize for Science Writing, who gave it the nod despite it astoundingly attracting no reviews in any major UK newspaper.

>239 Eat_Read_Knit: Caty, Morality Play was listed for the Booker (can't remember whether short or long!). I seem to remember lunacat saying she loved it also. Cold Earth was great - the characters are not especially sympathetic, which usually I struggle to get past, but actually I found it completely enthralling. Again, someone else in the group read it recently and was disappointed so YMMV, as ever.

117. An Expert in Murder - Nicola Upson

Another find via The Bookseller, which highlighted the mass-market paperback publication early next year of the second in Nicola Upson's series of mysteries featuring Josephine Tey as a key character. As I'd just finished, and loved, The Franchise Affair, this sounded too good to miss; to my delight, I found someone on ReadItSwapIt with a copy who was willing to take The Kite Runner off my hands in exchange. And when a nasty cold blunted my ability to handle my then-current read, it seemed a good choice.

All of which said, this was a little bit of a disappointment. On her way down to London for the final week of the West End run of her play Richard of Bordeaux, Miss Tey encounters a young lady on the train. Elspeth has a passion for the theatre, and for Richard of Bordeaux in particular, and is on her way to London to meet her new sweetheart and attend the show. Unfortunately, shortly after their arrival at Kings Cross, Elspeth is murdered, her body left in a horribly staged tableau that highlights a link to the play.

The basic plot is OK, and nicely woven in with "the facts", but it just all felt a bit lumpen when you compare it to Josephine Tey's own fantastically economical and incisive prose. One feels that one is getting the whole of a character's 'personal profile' as assembled from Upson's writing notes, rather than conjuring them up with a few well-chosen words. A decent enough mystery, with perhaps more to commend it to theatre buffs with an interest in the period, but I don't now feel inclined to seek out the second.

Right, time for another quick break - the QI Christmas special is calling! Not many more books to go now.

*scribbles frantically at wishlist*

Slow down, slow down! Set up your 2010 thread or something! *whew*

I've already mentioned that I liked Morality Play, it was an airport read for me and I can remember it having religious overtones. I really enjoy those shorter novels that are able to pack a goodsized plot into them.
Keeper : Living with Nancy sounds like a must-read and even though I've taken a vow of not adding to my tbr list there are always going to be exceptions. Cold Earth catches my eye too, but I'll try to be strong.

edit: Keeper touchstone
and then to add that I'm reading The Franchise Affair at the moment alongside Wolf Hall.

Whoa! What was in that baked potato??? Great reviews, Rachael!

>243 richardderus: Richard, the completer-finisher in me is holding me hostage, and won't countenance the setting up of a 2010 thread until I've finished commenting on 2009's reads. Sorry.

>244 avatiakh: Kerry, "airport read" is a good idea. I think maybe I was disappointed because I'd expected something more impressive and 'deep', given the Booker listing. Hope you're enjoying The Franchise Affair!

>245 kidzdoc: just a nice Maris Piper with some of the husband's special birthday cheddar :) I'm afraid there may be a bit more to come...

(reviews, I mean. Not baked potato.)

118. The Hidden - Tobias Hill

This one went on the wishlist back at the start of the year after some good reviews in the UK press - and then I discovered via LibraryThing Local that Hill was speaking at Heffers in Cambridge. So of course, I had to get a copy. And then fail to read it for most of the year. Actually, I did try - but it starts with a couple of pages of lecture notes, ostensibly from lectures being prepared by Oxford academic Ben Mercer, which I just failed to get past on too many occasions. Having finished Cold Earth though, I was really in the mood for reading something else with archaeologists, and so a reflection on the myths of the Spartans and the battle of Thermopylae was less of a deterrent.

Ben has fled Oxford for Athens, escaping a messy marriage break-up. Taking a dead-end job in a grill house, he unexpectedly encounters Eberhard Sauer, who he knows of old - and doesn't entirely like. Eberhard mentions his current project, a dig near Sparta, and Ben decides to wangle his way in despite Eberhard's obvious antipathy. Once employed on the project, he discovers an unfriendly clique of disparate characters and becomes obsessed with penetrating their "inner circle".

The aforementioned reviews, to a person, compared The Hidden to The Secret History (yes, yet again, this is getting monotonous), which I think does it a great disservice. It does deal with a tight-knit group of slightly odd characters who are all obsessed with the ancients (Sparta here rather than the Greeks in general). But the pace is much slower - it takes 90 of the book's 352 pages to get Ben out of Athens and on to the dig site - and it's less about the mystical aspects, much more about the practical, and about what strange things can happen in modern-day life when people try to apply the attitudes and principles of other cultures.

This is quite a strange book: beautifully written, but oddly cold about its characters. Ben isn't very nice - there are dark hints scattered throughout the book that suggest his marriage breakup was caused by violence towards his wife - and nor are the people with who he is so desperate to ingratiate himself. It also took off in what was, for me, a completely unexpected direction towards the denouement, once Ben has successfully been accepted as part of the group (or at least, it seems that way to him). Cautiously recommended: I really like the way he writes, but am still a bit puzzled by the plot.

119. The Whole Wide Beauty - Emily Woof
(touchstone not working, linked to work page)

Last proof of the year. Emily Woof is a British actress, so I was a bit suspicious of this, but given she also has a reasonable roster of screenwriting credits, thought it was worth a shot. The plot centres on an affair between Katherine, a dissatisfied 30-something who has given up her dance career for motherhood, and Stephen, a poet recently in residence at the foundation run by Katherine's father David, now suffering crippling writer's block.

This is not a bad book, and the writing at the level of the sentence is fine (lovely in places), but I didn't find it at all compelling. It's very much a book written by, for and about the sort of arty people for whom the primacy of the self is all-important, a life philosophy for which I have very little time. I wasn't terribly convinced by Katherine and Stephen's 'falling in love', and I found the way in which Woof tries at times to turn it into a story about sublimating essential parts of oneself in the service of marriage and motherhood very irritating. Astoundingly, I would contend that it is possible to both bear children and continue to be creative - but not so in the world of this novel.

All this said, I would give this a solid 3 stars - it's far from the worst I've read this year - but am slightly struggling to work out what sort of a reader I might recommend it to. Possibly people who like Sebastian Faulks but aren't crazy about a wartime setting? People who like books about tortured affairs but don't like to read chicklit? I notice it's also listed as an Early Reviewers book.

Just one more to write up... but am too tired to do now. I don't think I'm going to finish any more books this year, so I'll be back in the next couple of days to write up that last set of comments and wrap up my year, then onward to 2010. Sorry for the thread explosion!

Rachael
You are reading at an amazingly fast clip. Congratulations on reading 119 books in 2009!

>249 Whisper1: Linda, I got really behind in my comments - Letters to a Fiction Writer, the first of the batch that I've "processed" today, I finished towards the end of last month, but it's taken me ages to get it together enough to comment on them all. I'd like to do it before moving on to next year, though - there are several books that I loved earlier in the year, like Kabul in Winter and The Winter Vault, that I never managed to comment on properly, and I feel really sad about missing that opportunity.

Rachel

I'm amazed that you accomplish so much, including a family, a job, a husband and all the books you read!

What a completely fantastic set of reviews. Book 111 in particular really made me giggle. I also like "the writing at the level of the sentence is fine"... I've never seen such a good example of being damned with faint praise!

Thanks also for mentioning Keeper - my mum actually cut that article out of the Guardian and gave it to me. She has always been worried about losing her faculties as she gets older and I think she wanted me to see the article as a way to prepare myself. (I also get a stream of articles about doing your own probate, green burials, etc. - do all parents start loving to talk about death when they reach a certain age?) The book sounds an interesting and worthwhile, if not terribly cheering, read. I will look out for it.

I am not even telling you how many of those books I added to the BlackHole. Completely unfair snowballing me like that :)

Oooh, great bunch of books! I added Cold Earth and Green for Danger to my neverending wishlist. Thanks! I'm also seriously conisdering The Wilding since I read As Meat Loves Salt a few years ago and really liked it.

wow great review of the Keeper: Living with Nancy, add to my wishlist!

>252 wandering_star: thanks, wandering_star. I know it's a bit weird to just divebomb my own thread with reviews, but there were some good books in there and I didn't like them to go unrecorded. I know what you mean about it not being "cheering", but Keeper is immensely readable: Andrea Gillies gets the balance just right, I think, between hard fact and personal testimony. Early on in the book, she points out that the UK currently spends £17 billion on dementia care, but that home care is saving the system a further £6 billion - so this is not a rare occurrence, just one that people don't talk about, and really ought to.

Re. damning with faint praise, I'm really struggling with this book, because I have read things that are much more badly written this year and don't want to suggest that it's really terrible. The narrative thread hangs together well and it flows nicely; I just found the characters a bit whiny and annoying, and didn't share their belief in the primacy of art over care for others.

>253 alcottacre: Stasia, I'm tempted to mumble something uncharitable about tastes of one's own medicine but that would be very mean-spirited ;-) Call it "sharing the love", perhaps.

>254 allthesedarnbooks:/255 glad to be of service, Marcia and Claire - thank you.

I was planning to write up my last book but got up too late... we're off to spend the day with the great-grandparents. This evening, perhaps, if I'm not too shattered! And also planning to write some sort of round-up for the year in preparation for starting 2010.

#256: I know you could not have possibly added that many books from little old me to your TBR mountain! Mumble, mumble.

Thanks for Letters to a Fiction Writer. On the lookout for it now.

Thanks for the review of Cold Earth Flossie. It's been on my wishlist since you sent me the link to the article about plague books. It's still not available in the US. I'll just have to order it from the UK.

>258 blackdogbooks: it's a nice one, Mac - I really like the 'anthology' approach. Lots of different perspectives.

>259 VioletBramble: VB, I think it's coming out in the US pretty early next year (Feb, maybe?), which is why Lois has it down for Belletrista - so maybe hang on just a couple of weeks longer!

120. The Next Queen of Heaven - Gregory Maguire

I've never read anything by Maguire before. All I knew about him was that he was the author of Wicked, which became a Broadway musical, and therefore was highly likely not to be my cup of tea. But then Terri read and reviewed this on her thread, and it sounded absolutely hysterical. Even better, she was super-generous enough to post it on to me so I could read it too, for which I owe her many thanks, for I really loved this.

Leontina Scales is a pious Pentecostal single mother of three teenagers of lesser or greater recalcitrance. In particular, her eldest, Tabitha, is causing her much heartache owing to her incessant cursing and apparent inability to attend school, and she's struggling to deal with her, despite her pastor's moral support and advice. This is how things stand when she is knocked out by a falling statue of the Virgin Mary while borrowing some milk from the Catholic church with whom her church shares a car park - and the tables are abruptly turned. Tabitha has to grow up rapidly in order to cope with a mother prematurely discharged from hospital, unable to speak or function normally, and with a sudden obsession with the Catholics (and especially the basement in which she was surprised by the statue).

Meanwhile, the gay music director at the church, Jeremy, is trying to maintain order amidst the complex politics of his choir, support his AIDS-afflicted friend, avoid the attentions of a now-happily-married love of his life, and find somewhere to rehearse a cabaret act (the line-up of which includes aforementioned friend). The cabaret is a central plank in his plan for escaping the happily-married love by getting out of the town, and is the catalyst for bringing Jeremy and company together with a group of elderly nuns.

This is all happening around Thanksgiving and Christmas, by the way, so I kind of count this as my token 'holiday read'.

The plot, as you will see from my hamfisted attempts to summarise its main elements, is completely bonkers; in style, it reminds me a lot of the whackier output of Douglas Coupland (e.g. Miss Wyoming, All Families Are Psychotic) and Miriam Toews' The Flying Troutmans - which I consider to be not a bad thing, but I know others will.

What I loved about this most was that it had real heart, and some incredibly sympathetic characters. The setup Maguire has created could have easily been turned into vicious and biting satire, but even the lecherous Pastor Huyck, who can't help falling in lust with the beautiful Tabitha even as he's meant to be helping her, attracts a tiny modicum of the reader's sympathy because he at least exhibits some self-awareness; rather than being an out-and-out pervert, he's shown as someone whose intentions are good but ultimately, totally overwhelmed by his baser instincts. Jeremy is one of the most unbelievably nice characters ever written (perhaps almost too unbelievable, but hey, it's Christmas), e.g. resisting Willem's advances out of a moral belief in the sanctity of Willem's marriage. And the nuns are just fantastic - especially bad driver and motorcyclist Sister Alice Coyne.

So, yes, I loved this. Really uplifiting and great fun. Nice to end the year on a high note. I'm really sad I have to give it away - it's published by Concord Free Press, and the deal is, you get the book for free, donate some money to charity (or give it to someone who needs it), and then pass the book on again when you're done. This would make a great annual Christmas read.

Stand by for a recap of the year...

Rachael.

I read Wicked a few years ago and was taken by the creativity of making the bad witch the good one! Though, parts of the book drug on and on and on.

I saw the play in New York twice and it is incredible!

I'm adding The Next Queen of Heaven to the pile tbr in 2010.

Thanks for your excellent review!

So this year I totally failed to meet most of my reading goals. Shame on me.

1. Focus on reading books I already own: a resounding fail. Here's where my books came from, in descending order of magnitude:

New (though this does include some things that had been on my wishlist for ages, and also one e-book; this category includes acquisitions of any source, e.g. BookMooch, proofs from work, gifts, secondhand...): 66
Borrowed from friends or family (including offspring; I've put Gregory Maguire in this category too since I have to give it away!): 18
Borrowed from the library: 16
Already owned (this is slightly cheating given that the first 8 I'm counting in this category were only acquired right at the end of 2008): 12
Bookswap circle - 4
Belletrista (this is really a subcategory of 'new', but I split it out anyway): 4

Despite this shameful set of statistics, I'm going to have another go next year, but my primary goal is to first read everything on my shelves that I have been forcibly loaned by, or borrowed from, friends and family; I figure I can GUARANTEE that these books will then leave the house and free up shelf-space...

2. More non-fiction - a minor success here, in that, yes, I did read more non-fiction than in 2008 - 17 versus 10 - but as a percentage of the total, it was still pretty feeble, and it's dropped off a cliff in the second half of the year, when I think practically the only non-fiction book I've read has been Keeper. Something to keep an eye on.

3. More politics - definitely achieved, with more political non-fiction, and more novels with political themes also.

4. Shorter books - I stopped tracking page counts in the middle o the year somewhere, but I'm pretty certain I managed this too - I've read hardly anything above about 400 pages. A relief!

5. Russian Classics - oh dear. Catastrophic mega-fail. Bought gorgeous Vintage Classics edition of the new War and Peace translation, in hardback because I was adamant I couldn't wait until the pb came out in August to read it. Dropped out of the group read after about 50 pages. Anna Karenina not even cracked open. Very poor showing here. I will address this one in 2010.

6. more Brontës - oops, another mega-fail. This one is also staying on the list for 2010.

The message I'm taking away here is not to set reading goals if I can possibly help it. That way it's not so embarrassing.

Favourites for the year to follow...

In chronological order (the chronology being, when I read them) but with no attention to quality order, here are what I considered the best of my reading in 2009. I gave up on trying to make the numbers into a nice neat top 10 or top 5, so you've got 14 novels (in this post) and 6 non-fiction (in the next) - which actually makes 20 in all, so there's something vaguely, if unintentionally, tidy about it. These aren't all 5-star reads as I tend to be very, very picky about the books I give top marks too, but all get at least a solid 4 stars.

Fiction

The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman - just a lovely read, I didn't want this to end. Sorry Richard. (my comments in full)

My Antonia - Willa Cather - Little House on the Prairie for grown-ups. Gorgeous depictions of the landscape, very moving. First Cather, won't be the last (not least because I acquired several more during the year that are now on the shelf...). (my comments in full)

Maps for Lost Lovers - Nadeem Aslam - not as amazing as The Wasted Vigil, but that would be very difficult. Thought-provoking, lyrical, balanced and well-constructed novel of immigrant experience. (my comments in full)

The Winter Vault - Anne Michaels - I'd never read Fugitive Pieces before 2009, but this went on the list after avaland recommended it. Can't link to comments because I never reviewed it, shockingly, but I found it a deeply moving book. Others have not cared for its overly-poetical style, but it works for me, and I loved all the stuff about the Aswan and St Laurence dams.

All the Living - C.E. Morgan - added to the list after Chris Cleave recommended it in a 'what I'm reading now' piece for a US newspaper. More poetics, but tougher and more earthy characters. (my comments in full)

The Knife of Never Letting Go - Patrick Ness
The Ask and the Answer - Patrick Ness - I'm putting these together since they're the first two in a trilogy. Impossibly exciting dystopian YA, tightly plotted. I often had to remind myself to breathe while reading. Can't wait for the final book in May of next year. (my comments in full)

The Gone-Away World - Nick Harkaway - the man never met a word he didn't like. Apocalyptic comedy at the apotheosis of baroque, with the most supremely audacious twist of any book, EVER. More please. (my comments in full)

The Rehearsal - Eleanor Catton - expected to hate this novel billed as a "high-school sex scandal". Quite the opposite. Astoundingly inventive and refreshingly different, really doing something new and unusual. Still gutted it didn't win the Guardian First Book Award. Don't seem to have reviewed it properly, but there are some brief thoughts here, and my interview with Ellie, which includes a sort of synopsis thing, is in the first issue of Belletrista.

The Taste of Sorrow - Jude Morgan - fantastic novel of the Brontës. Moving, compelling, tightly written. (my comments in full)

Bang Crunch - Neil Smith - the title suggests something flashy and show-off-ish, but this wasn't at all. Quiet and reflective, insightful, character-driven short stories, with nice range. (my comments in full)

The Franchise Affair - Josephine Tey - I have that where-have-you-been-all-my-life reaction to this book. The mystery is almost beside the point as her observation of character and society is razor-sharp and delivered in stylishly economical prose. Fab. (my comments in full)

Cold Earth - Sarah Moss - spooky goings-on on an inadequately prepared archaeological dig in Greenland, set against the backdrop of a massive viral epidemic. Superbly atmospheric, page-turningly eerie despite not especially sympathetic characters. No detailed comments yet as I have to review this for Belletrista... but see further up this thread!

The Next Queen of Heaven - Gregory Maguire - you've probably just scrolled past my review of this :) Lovely heartwarming end to the year. Great fun, utterly mad.

Non-fiction coming up...

Non-fiction

Three Cups of Tea - Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin - I don't like Relin's writing style AT ALL - too tabloid - but the story here is just so incredible it can't fail to make the list. Impossibly inspiring stuff. Looking forward to Stones into Schools next year, and a special thank-you to Jenny (lunacat) for lending it to me. (my comments in full)

Proust and the Squid - Maryanne Wolf - superlatively readable account of the science and history of the reading brain. Fascinating and absorbing. (my comments in full)

Kabul in Winter - Ann Jones - another book where (sob) I can't link to comments despite having loved it. This is a real must-read for anyone that wants to understand something of what life is like on the ground for women in Afghanistan. Much of what it has to say about aid efforts within the country is pretty shocking. A very, very important book. I've got Sarah Chayes' The Punishment of Virtue on the launchpad for early next year (once I've read all the borrowed books...) which should make an interesting complement.

Nothing to Be Frightened Of - Julian Barnes - at times, reading this, I had that separated-at-birth feeling: Barnes so exactly captures my own at-times crippling fear of mortality. Difficult to classify, but I loved this sort of extended meditation on death. Especially the story about Rachmaninov and the pistachios. Didn't manage to write a proper review for this one either, but a couple of thoughts here.

Can Any Mother Help Me? - Jenna Bailey - excellent compilation of and commentary on a 'circulating magazine' compiled by a group of mothers in the second World War (and afterwards). Some marvellous insights into daily life (and how some things haven't really changed all that much). (my comments in full)

Keeper - Andrea Gillies - my comments on this are not much further above on this thread! Another important book, this time about dementia, and specifically the author's experiences caring for her Alzheimer's-afflicted mother-in-law. Unexpectedly enjoyable to read given the often-dispiriting subject matter.

And that concludes my reading for 2009, as I still have a good 400 pages of Oscar and Lucinda to get through (nice that it started with an Advent wreath and a Christmas pudding though, so it still feels like seasonal reading). I'm being a bit anal-retentive about not setting up a 2010 thread until it's actually 2010, but when one exists, I'll link to it here.

Thanks for visiting!

WOW! Great reads for 2009. I'm adding those I haven't already added throughout the year when checking your thread.

Thanks Linda! I was quite heartened by how much I found - I did briefly attempt to get it down to a top 10, but gave up very quickly when I realised it was JUST TOO HARD.

I often get the feeling I'm reading mainly 3-star books: decent enough, don't regret having read them, but nothing really special or memorable; so it's nice to get to the end of the year and realise there were still a respectable number of great books in there too. 17% of this year's, in fact.

Great list of books, I'll be adding the Gregory Maguire as I enjoyed his Wicked. I've already added most of the others or read them already.
Did any of your great reads come from books you already owned? I noticed when I was looking for monthly highlights that a lot of my top reads came from books I acquired or borrowed during the year.

>240 FlossieT: "Keeper" sounds like an important book, Floss, but I don't know if I could read it right now, as we're going through it with my m-in-law. Too close to home.

I don't know how you manage to read so much with three young ones. I'm retired, my lads are raised and out, and I can't manage it. Kudos to you!

Bravo, Rachael! What a way to end the year. I loved your review of Keeper: Living with Nancy, and I've just ordered it from The Book Depository. Uh, this is my third TBD order today this week, and I'm planning another mega-haul at a NYC bookstore on New Year's Day. Yep, I'm doing real well on my 2010 goal to read more books than I buy...

You don't have to count the books you buy until tomorrow! I have also had a last-minute blast of bookbuying before the resolutions have to start...

Ooh, good idea! I normally wait until I receive the books to add them to my library. I'll do that now.

All right for you, Little Miss Rachael-I'm-So-Well-Read! I will have you know that, based on YOUR WORD ALONE I have reserved a liberry copy of The Graveyard Book and will see if it overcomes my Gaimanaphobia. You've been right about so many books this year, I will risk some of my ever-decreasinig-number of eyeblinks on it.

Obviously I haven't read Keeper: Living with Nancy yet, but I am here to report that Exelon has done miraculous wonders for my sainted aunt's mild dementia. I am almost tearfully grateful for the change it has wrought in her ability to have a conversation.

#272 & 272: I'm also guilty of a small spree before the New Year resolutions have to kick in!!!

#264/265: Rachael, terrific summary!

#274: I did the same thing :)

>268 avatiakh: Kerry, I've been back through my list, and the only book I already owned was The Knife of Never Letting Go (and obviously, I hadn't owned that for very long...). I really need to do something about reading books I already own this year, as the shelves are reaching critical mass. Feeling grateful for the quieter time for publishing in January and February, and fewer new books to get distracted by.

>269 tiffin: Tiffin, so sorry to hear that. Sending many supportive thoughts in your direction.

As for reading so much, I don't really watch TV (beyond the odd series on DVD over very long periods of time), but mainly, I steal time from other things I ought really to be doing more of (cleaning and sleeping, for example). This year I really am going to find a cleaner, but it may be harder to find someone to do my sleeping for me.

>270 kidzdoc: thanks, Darryl - so glad to hear you've ordered a copy of Keeper. My impression is that it hasn't done so well for sales despite winning a prize, which is a real shame as it's so well written. And as for New Year's resolutions: like wandering_star says, it's not 2010 yet, right? Just go easy on the plastic in NYC. Simple (ho ho).

>273 richardderus: Oh, cripes. I'm not sure I can handle the responsibility, Richard. At least it's only a library book, and you will apply the 30-page rule, won't you?

>274 avatiakh: thanks, Stasia!

I love that everyone's been sneakily splurging on books before the year ends. I bought 11 books during my vulture impression in the Borders closing-down scale so I've already had my splurge for the year's end. Hope I can hold off for a bit in 2010.

Flossie,

My wife and I got the privilege of hearing Greg Mortenson speak and then were able to get signed copies of Stones into Schools. the story of the title alone was worth the pricew of the ticket. He is truly inspiring and my wife and I are eagerly trying to find reading time for the book. It will be in my first TBR stack for the year.

Great list, Rachael! You've had an interesting reading year! I'm putting Nothing to Be Frightened Of on my TBR list. Your comment about an "at-times crippling fear of mortality" really resonated.

>278 blackdogbooks: - Mac - I bought Stones into Schools for my dad for Christmas. (He's read Three Cups of Tea every year since it came out.) I'm hoping to borrow it when he is done.

Happy New Year to you dear friend!

I so enjoy you!

Happy New Year, Rachael!

>278 blackdogbooks: what a great story, Mac. I felt so uplifted after finishing Three Cups of Tea - it really does make you feel you're not too small to try to change the world. Stones into Schools isn't out in the UK for a few months yet, but I'll be looking out for it.

>279 porch_reader: thanks Amy. I really liked the Julian Barnes. He doesn't have answers but it's soothing to read it, and also to feel that it's a normal sort of reaction to living. He's also very funny (quite impressive for a book about death!).

>280 Whisper1:/>281 alcottacre: Linda, Stasia, Happy New Year and thank you to you both, for being such lovely people.

I'll keep a vague eye on this thread to mop up any last replies, but am "officially" moving over to the 2010 group now - my thread's here. Hope to see you there?

#278, Yes, Mortenson has the ability to inspire you to change the world on an individual level. My wife keeps a picture of him and some of the school children over the computer where she works. He sort of inspired her to go back to school.