john257hopper's 100 books in 2024

For some inexplicable reason, my thread for my 100 books of 2024 got created in another group. I could have sworn I started it in here, but it was in the Monthly Author Reads group for some reason.

So here it is again pasted from that group, my thread for my reads of 2024.

I read 104 books in 2023, one more than in 2022, which was one more than in 2021. In fact there is a remarkable consistency my total of books read in recent years:

2018 104
2019 110
2020 111
2021 102
2022 103
2023 104

1. Robots of Dawn - Isaac Asimov

This is the third of Asimov's robot novels featuring Elijah Baley and humaniform robot Daneel Olivaw. It is set two years after the events of The Naked Sun, though written some 30 years later, and containing themes (such as differing sexual mores on different planets) that would not have been explored in the earlier novels written in the 1950s. This is even more so a novel of ideas and sharp dialogue between a relatively small cast of characters exploring and critiquing these ideas. On the first Spacer world, the only other humaniform robot, Jander Pannell, is deactivated in unusual circumstances, and Baley is called in from Earth to investigate the circumstances. Numerous possible explanations and a variety of suspects are considered for this crime which Baley coins "roboticide". The final explanation, though, involves an unexpected pivotal character and provides a backdrop link to Asimov's Foundation series, which is set many millennia after the action of this novel. Possibly a bit overlong, but a very satisfying read for an Asimov fan.

2. The Stationmaster's Farewell - Edward Marston

This is the ninth book in the Railway Detective series set in the 1850s. A very popular local stationmaster in Exeter, Joel Heygate, disappears and his charred body is found at the base of a Guy Fawkes Day fire when it burns out. A number of people have obvious motives, including a local criminal who had sworn vengeance against him, the victim's own estranged brother, and his own successor as stationmaster who had been a rival for the position when Joel was appointed. The eventual culprit and their motive turns out to be completely unexpected, and could not be worked out by any reader in advance as new factors are introduced near the end of the plot. There is also an amusing sub-plot where Inspector Colbeck's future widowed father in law Caleb Andrews is pursued by two rival widowed sisters. At the end of the story Colbeck and Madeleine are married at last. I enjoyed the story as usual, though I felt the resolution of the plot was a bit of a cheat.

3. Happy New Year - Jason Ayres

This is the tenth book in the wonderful Time Bubble series, again centred around the life experiences of a minor character who has popped up a couple of times before, in this case Amy Reynolds, who nursed the dying Thomas Scott in hospital in January 2025 in the previous novel, and appeared as a little girl in an earlier novel whom Josh bumped into in 1992. The 39 year old Amy is transported back to the previous December 31st (2023) and after one or two further slipbacks realises she is reliving every 31 December and 1 January (her birthday). Inevitably she tries to change her future, in particular during her 30s by taking revenge on her ex boyfriend Rob who she had caught shagging the next door neighbour, and when they first met trying to get off instead with his much better friend Gary. As her life regresses she tries to tackle more serious problems like stopping her mum drinking herself to death, and rescuing her elder sister Rachel who died in the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami. As she regresses into childhood, she enjoys the experience of being a child with foreknowledge, while being worried about what will happen before she is born. However in the chance encounter with Josh in 1992, she is able to pass him just enough information for him to eventually put her back on the correct time stream. As much fun as ever, and interesting to see what happens to minor characters and how they were affected by the ripples of the actions Josh and co originally set in train.

4. Cousin Phillis - Elizabeth Gaskell

This novella has apparently been described by many critics as the author's crowning achievement in short fiction. I personally preferred Mr Harrison's Confession, though I can see why this more serious work is generally rated more highly. It is well written and presents a good portrayal of life on the Holman farm. But I found it curiously unemotionally engaging. It ended quite suddenly and I thought it felt almost more like a novel fragment than a novella. I discovered subsequently that further parts were planned but never written.

5. The Mighty Dead: Why Homer Matters - Adam Nicolson

This book is an exploration of the themes in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey and how they may relate to later human history and the world today. His central thesis is that Homer's epics probably originate about a millennium earlier than the 8th century BC period to which most historians assign it, and the Trojan War earlier than the 13th century BC period. This is based on comparing events and background details in the epics with archaeological evidence of the arrival of the ancestors of the Greek people in their current homeland, leading to the clash of two very different peoples, the nomadic proto-Greeks and the city-based Trojans ("The idea I have pursued is that the Homeric poems are legends shaped around the arrival of a people – the people who through this very process would grow to be the Greeks – in what became their Mediterranean homeland"). He pursues some interesting evidence about words existing or not in the Proto Indo European (PIE) language, to draw conclusions about the probable place of origin of these proto-Greeks, for example in small, inland communities, given that there are no PIE words for city or sea.

This is fascinating stuff, but I was not really convinced that this shows the epics were penned as early as he says, given that it is generally accepted anyway that Homer was recording, in the then very new medium of writing, epics passed down in oral form from generation to generation for centuries beforehand. Other scholars have pointed out that, given the similarity of style, the two epics were probably written down by the same person consecutively, as the Odyssey is aware of the existence of the Iliad, but not vice versa - "The Odyssey, with extraordinary care, is shaped around the pre-existence of the Iliad. It fills in details that are absent from the earlier poem – the Trojan Horse, the death of Achilles – but never mentions anything that is described there".

Despite this very interesting exploration of historical, archaeological, cultural and linguistic issues, I had a problem with aspects of his writing style and choice of material. The language is often rather elaborate and I found some of the description overblown and too "stream of consciousness" for my liking. I didn't see the point of including some of his personal material, in particular the inclusion of an incident from his youth when he was raped by a stranger of his own age, which seemed entirely gratuitous to me. So I was left with rather mixed feelings about this book.

>5 john257hopper: The nearest thing to a novella by Elizabeth Gaskell that I have ever read is Cranford which I found to be a bit dull. I really like her longer work North and South combining social commentary and a great love story. Having grown up in the industrial north of England, where my uncle actually owned one of the last operating cotton mills, which inside felt like about the third circle of hell, before moving to the South. I realized how little things had really changed in the century following the writing of the book.

>7 scunliffe: I quite agree on both counts. I loved North and South and Mary Barton but found Cranford dull.

>5 john257hopper: Cousin Phillis is admirable, but I preferred the humour of Mr Harrison's Confessions. Glad you've found yourself!

>7 scunliffe: I've read everything except the ghost stories. It must be time for a re-read of North and South. I suppose the mills are in Asia now. I hope they're better places to work.

ETA Loved Cranford!

>9 pamelad: thanks Pam. I was starting to wonder why I had received no comments on my reads so far this year!

I guess I could summarise Cousin Phillis for me as admirable, but not very enjoyable, if that makes sense.

6. The House of Doors - Tan Twan Eng

This book by this Malaysian author was longlisted for the Booker Prize 2023. It is set in Penang mostly in 1921 but with flashbacks to 1910 (and with a framing narrative in South Africa in 1947). It is narrated by Lesley Hamlyn, wife to a lawyer Robert Hamlyn, and centres around their hosting a visit to their house by Robert's old friend the author W. Somerset Maugham and his secretary and lover Gerald Haxton. Maugham is at that moment gathering material for his collection of short stories, published later as The Casuarina Tree. A large part of the book consists of a digression where Lesley tells Maugham about a murder trial back in 1910 where she was a witness at the trial of her close friend for murdering a man. These threads do link together, though it made the narrative feel a little disjointed to me. I did love the writing though and will read the other two novels by this author.

>1 john257hopper: So… The weird thing is that as I was reading your reviews, I realized I’ve read them before! I don’t follow Months Author Reads so I’m wondering what really happened! Regardless, glad to see you here for sure.

>12 Tanya-dogearedcopy: Thank you Tanya, I appreciate your kind comments :)

7. The Casuarina Tree - W. Somerset Maugham

This is an excellent collection of short stories published around a century ago and all based on the lives and exploits of the white colonial community living in Malaya at the time, their relations with each other and with the native communities. The final story, The Letter, was the inspiration for a major plot thread in Tan Twan Eng's 2023 novel House of Doors, which I read immediately before this. I love Maugham's crisp writing style and straightforward approach to telling a story. Unlike most short story collections which generally contain at least one or two weaker stories, I thought all six stories here were really good.

I think Maugham was a better writer than Tan Twan Eng. His prose seems to have a consistent level of high quality, whereas Tan Twan Eng is more variable, or at least it is in House of Doors.

>15 scunliffe: I have only read one of Eng's novels so far, so cannot judge fairly really. I think it hard to judge such things for a living writer at, presumably, the height of their powers. There is a consistency of quality of Maugham's writing though based on my reading so far, though that is only this collection of short stories, plus The Painted Veil.

>3 john257hopper: This series sounds right up my alley. Adding to TBR.

>17 R_Rose: yes, it's great fun, and thought provoking.

8. The Holocaust: History and Memory - Jeremy Black

This is an important book covering not only the facts of the history of the Holocaust but also reactions to it in various countries across Europe and wider from the immediate post war period until the 2010s when the revised edition of the book was published. One of the key trends is the argument about the extent of collaboration and co-operation from non-Nazis in various countries in persecuting and killing Jews. In the immediate aftermath of the war, and until the early 1960s, the emphasis was on post-war reconstruction, and the priority was the formation of Cold War alliances. In the West, this meant there was a lazy assumption for example that the German people collectively were merely passive victims of a small band of Nazi leaders and the SS. There was a widespread belief that the latter groups were solely responsible for atrocities against Jews and others, rather than the German army being key perpetrators, and collaboration and acquiescence by many ordinary non-Jewish Germans. It also meant much wilful blindness in, for example, France at the role of French police in deporting Jews to their deaths, often without or ahead of any Nazi pressure having been exerted. In the East, Cold War realignments meant that the Soviet Union emphasised their own central role in the anti-Fascist struggle and that Jewish victims of mass killings such as that at Babi Yar in Ukraine were described merely as killings of "peaceful Soviet citizens", denying the anti-Semitic element of the murders.

This situation started to change, at least in the non-communist world, from the 1960s with events such as the Eichmann trial reawakening consciousness of the Holocaust, and the advent of the new 1960s generation questioning the roles of their parents during the war. In Russia and Eastern Europe, this process did not start until after the fall of communism and has been rather more uneven, given the much more virulent historical role of anti-Semitism there and the more active part played by many non-Jewish and non-Nazi people in persecuting and killing Jews.

The book also looks at themes such as the debasing of the terms Holocaust and genocide when they are applied to other violent and killing episodes, often emotively or by states or actors that have a particular political perspective in mind in so doing: "large-scale killing alone, however reprehensible, does not compare with the Holocaust, because the attempt to define and destroy an entire ethnic group and its complete culture represents a different scale and intention of assault, indeed a global assault". It also deals with the role of Holocaust denial or minimisation, the latter of which sometimes overlaps with the relativism mentioned above.

This is a fascinating and obviously horrific book, and makes for very difficult reading in places, not only because of its subject matter, but also it is written in a sometimes overly academic style which can come across as a bit dry.

9. Mrs Warren's Profession - George Bernard Shaw

This play first performed in 1902 deals with bold themes for the time, with the title character a former prostitute and now owner of a brothel which is a successful business; none of this is explicitly stated, but the inferences are clear. The key relationship is between her and her daughter Vivie, and there are some sharp dramatic scenes, after a slow start in what comes across as a rather inconsequential Act I. A good read.

>19 john257hopper: I see there is a new book on the same subject by Dan Stone. Got a very good review in the NYTBR. But yoiu have probably had enough for now, it is such a desperately shocking subject. But one that must not be forgotten, as your summary suggests.

>21 scunliffe: Thanks, yes, I need a contrast after that. But thanks for the heads up.

>21 scunliffe: strangely Amazon would not host that review of this book, as they said it breached their community guidelines, though they don't say why.

Ah they have posted it now, after I changed all references to "Jews" to "Jewish people" (even when that read poorly in context).

10. Richard II - William Shakespeare

This is not one of the better known of Shakespeare's historical plays, but I found its language rich and quite stirring. It centres around the King's conflict with the Lords Appellant who opposed him during the tyranny into which his reign had descended by the 1390s, in particular his cousin Bolingbroke, son of the King's uncle John of Gaunt, and the future King Henry IV. I think this will stimulate me to read the other historical plays covering the tumultuous 15th century.

A few years ago, I did a re-read of all of Shakespeare’s History plays. I did a lot of bonus reading & listening too:

• Asimov’s Guide to Shakespeare (by Isaac Asimov) - chapters on each of the plays with commentary on the play itself and its context seated within historical frameworks
• The Shakespeare Book (DK book edited by Stanley Wells) - Meant for Middle Graders but not inappropriate for adults
• Shakespeare’s Kings (John Julius Norwich) - Stops short of Henry VIII but everyone else is in there
• A selection of episodes from the BBC podcast, In Our Time” (hosted by Melvyn Bragg) I love it when British academics “fight” on air: lots of rattled teacups and stuttering over really obscure but interesting points 😂
• Hollow Crown episodes - Ben Whitshaw’s portrayal of Richard II is top tier)
• various historical novels set to the relevant king in print and audio (can think of the ones set during R2’s reign though!)

Two of my favorite things are Shakespeare and history so I tend to get a little carried away😅

ETA: Tracked down my R2 list!

• The Canterbury Tales (by Geoffrey Chaucer; translated by Burton Raffel) performed by six unlabeled narrators) Naxos recording which I thoroughly enjoyed until the last story which was about sin. Hours of being preached at was painful even without having to sit in a hard wooden pew.

• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Anonymous; translated by Simon Armitage; narrated by Bill Wallis - Gorgeous recording of the translation and in the original! Bought the print which has color illustrations by Clive Hicks-Jenkins. Pictures look like modern pastel and TBH I scrunched up my nose at them when I first saw them; but they kinda grow on you

• The Vanishing Witch (by Karen Maitland) - Dark Historical Fiction set in 1380. Times are rough and a terribly clever woman is suspected of being a witch… I always get excited when I see a Karen Maitland book but I always forget how long they are!

>25 Tanya-dogearedcopy: Many thanks for all these recommendations, Tanya. I should try Canterbury Tales. I listened to a podcast on Chaucer on my commute this morning.

I have read The Vanishing Witch and a number of other books by Karen Maitland. Always long and dark in tone. I have a couple of hers unread I should get round to reading sometime.

11. Six Tudor Queens: Jane Seymour, The Haunted Queen - Alison Weir

This is the third in the author's six novel series tracing the lives of Henry VIII's six wives. Jane Seymour was less significant as a political figure than her two predecessors and I had expected this to be a shorter novel, but it wasn't, though didn't feel at all overblown, given the consistent quality of Weir's writing. The novel covers her early life and the slow build up of her life at court first as a maid to Katharine of Aragon, then her frustration and dislike at the rise of Anne Boleyn, and the King's meeting and growing interest in her. At a purely human level, I can see why Henry was attracted to Jane's quieter and more amenable personality after the volatile Anne. Jane is not directly complicit in the horrific and dramatic events of April-May 1536 when Anne Boleyn was brought down, but of course she directly benefits and quickly marries Henry and becomes Queen. The King definitely genuinely loves her, and tolerates her attempts to soften the harsh edge of many of his actions, most famously, though unsuccessfully, over the Pilgrimage of Grace rebellion and the dissolution of the monasteries. In this novel Jane has one or two miscarriages before giving birth to the long awaited heir, the future King Edward VI, before tragically dying a few days later. In an afterword, the author explains how she has interpreted evidence about Jane's health and other developments to reconstruct the idea of the miscarriages and the causes of her sudden death. She thinks Jane died of a pulmonary embolism, exacerbated by weakness caused by food poisoning and the strains of childbirth (so it apparently wasn't a death in childbirth per se, or puerperal fever). A great read, with a tragic ending that left me feeling sad, even though of course totally anticipated.

12. The Unhappiest Lady in Christendom - Alison Weir

This e-short is told from the point of view of Princess Mary, King Henry VIII's elder daughter, and picks up the action from the ending of the Jane Seymour novel, covering Jane's funeral and, in brief, the actions of the following couple of years, so is in effect a bridge between the Jane Seymour and Anne of Cleves novels. I guess really this could have been included in one or both of those novels, so doesn't offer any new perspective on events, unlike the other e-shorts in this series.

I have read and enjoyed Alison Weir's non fictional histories, but but not any of her fiction. How does she compare with Hilary Mantel?

>28 scunliffe: She is considered to be less "literary" than Hilary Mantel. Alison Weir would never win the Booker Prize, though in my view this is probably more of a reflection of the Booker's priorities than anything else. I enjoyed the Wolf Hall trilogy as well, though.

>29 john257hopper: I enjoyed the first two of the trilogy, but The Mirror and the Light was simply too long. By half way through I was saying 'just hurry up and cut his bloody head off."

13. The Purple Cloud - M P Shiel

This is a post apocalyptic novel published in 1900 but feels quite modern in a lot of aspects. Adam Jeffson is the sole survivor of an early expedition to the North Pole. As he returns from the polar extremities he encounters large numbers of dead fish and animals, followed by shiploads of dead mariners, and a smell of peaches and almonds. He gradually realises that almost every living animal is dead, both on sea, in (or from the) air, and on land ("I could have come to land a long time before I did: but I would not: I was so afraid. For I was used to the silence of the ice: and I was used to the silence of the sea: but, God knows it, I was afraid of the silence of the land"). When he reaches London and is able to check newspapers, he realises that all living things have been wiped out by a purple cloud arising east of New Zealand and then proceeding at a pace of about 100 miles a day westwards. Panic ensued as people stampeded westwards to try to escape.

This is a horrific and chilling explanation, but after this the novel somewhat lost its way for me. Basically for months and then years he wanders around the world looking for survivors and there are endless descriptions of piles of bodies in streets, buildings, down mines (to try to escape the poison cloud) and so on - "the arrangement of One planet, One inhabitant, already seems to me, not merely a natural and proper, but the only natural and proper, condition; so much so, that any other arrangement has now, to my mind, a certain improbable, wild, and far-fetched unreality, like the Utopian schemes of dreamers and faddists....It seems to me not less than a million million aeons since other beings, more or less resembling me, walked impudently in the open sunlight on this planet, which is rightly mine". These thoughts are symptoms of a growing dislocation and megalomania. He starts to use his engineering skills to, highly implausibly, burn and destroy whole cities, and build himself an opulent palace in Greece. Eventually he finds one other survivor, but cannot decide on his attitude towards her and treats her horribly, though in time this changes. It is implied at the end that they are basically a new Adam and Eve.

This novel had many strengths as an early post-apocalyptic story, but the wanderings around the world were just too long and drawn out and affected the pace of the narrative, and the final encounter with the other survivor does not come across as realistic.

14. The Prince of Abissinia: A Tale - Samuel Johnson

This novella is ostensibly a tale about an Ethiopian prince, Rasselas, who, chafing under the boredom of the life of luxury he leads in the Happy Valley, contrives to escape with two companions, his sister Nekayeh, and a man named Imlac. In fact this is a vehicle for Johnson's exploring various philosophical ideas, in particular around the sources of and how to seek happiness in life, including who in society has or might achieve happiness and how, whether through living a good life or not, and what that means. There are some interesting pithy aphorisms arising from their conversations with each other and with other characters, including with a philosopher-astronomer who believes he has the personal power to move the sun and planets. Quite amusing and interesting.

>32 john257hopper: This does sound interesting, particularly since I've just read an oddity by Henry Fielding, a contemporary.

>33 pamelad: I just read your interview, will maybe try that one.

15. The Glass Pearls - Emeric Pressburger

This was quite a powerful novel by the author better known as half of the 1940s/50s classic film producing partnership of Powell and Pressburger. Written in 1965 it was forgotten about for half a century, after a negative review in the Times Literary Supplement, and reissued in 2015. Set at the time it was written it concerns a (fictional) escaped Nazi war criminal living in London under an assumed identity and seeking a normal life, 20 years after the war's end. He knows the net is closing on him, but does not know exactly who is wielding it, and who is helping them. This novel is highly unusual in being written from the war criminal's point of view, allowing the reader to identify to some extent with the subject's dilemma, while rightly not arousing particular sympathy for him...even more so as, shockingly, he is not just a "standard" concentration camp or Nazi official, but a Mengele type who performed experiments on subjects' brains. This is particularly remarkable a feat of writing given that the author was Jewish.

The book was a very good read, and also gave a good feel for the England of the time, two decades after the war, but before what we usually think of as the 1960s had really taken hold. The ending was certainly dramatic, with a twist in the resolution. My only criticism is that I think it might have been slightly better had the reader not become aware almost at the start of Karl Braun's true background, but come to realise it more slowly as clues emerge. He is certainly clever and cunning and could have deceived the reader for longer, as he does the characters he interacts with, especially Helen Taylor, his (sort of) girlfriend. But this was an excellent read.

16. We - Yevgeni Zamyatin

This is my second read of this early modern dystopian classic, written in the early years of the new Soviet Union, but almost immediately banned, then smuggled out and published in the West in 1924 - so we are now marking the centenary of its free publication. The writing style is quite brutalist - ironically, like Stalinist architecture - with the characters having serial numbers not names, and being described as looking like the letters of the alphabet in their serial numbers. The writing is also minimalist, with characters described in terms of angles and lines and simple colours - a lot of white and yellow, with true beauty being found only in the action of machines and the pure logic and simplicity of mathematical operations ("only the four rules of arithmetic are steadfast and eternal. And it is only the code of morals that resides within these four rules that is great, steadfast, and eternal").

The philosophy of the One State and its Benefactor is that happiness can only be achieved by absolute unanimity as though each individual is a cell of one body. The main character D 503 is chief builder of a rocket called the Integral, through which the Benefactor aims to spread his version of happiness to other planets, as the newspaper says: "YOU ARE CONFRONTING UNKNOWN CREATURES ON ALIEN PLANETS, WHO MAY STILL BE LIVING IN THE SAVAGE STATE OF FREEDOM, AND SUBJUGATING THEM TO THE BENEFICIAL YOKE OF REASON. IF THEY WON’T UNDERSTAND THAT WE BRING THEM MATHEMATICALLY INFALLIBLE HAPPINESS, IT WILL BE OUR DUTY TO FORCE THEM TO BE HAPPY. BUT BEFORE RESORTING TO ARMS, WE WILL EMPLOY THE WORD".

Eventually, the One State decides the only way to true uniform "happiness" is through a medical operation to excise the imagination from human brains, which seems to actually lead to the creation of machine conglomerations of people - though these chapters are very unclear and I found myself rather confused at what was going on for a sizable chunk of the book, which is why, despite its powerful overall message about the dangers of mindless collectivism, I don't think it is anywhere near as effective as a dystopian novel as is Orwell's 1984.

>36 john257hopper: I'm still reading We, taking it slowly. Here's Orwell's article.

1984 thoughtcrime? Does it matter that George Orwell pinched the plot?

>37 pamelad: thanks for sharing that article, Pam. I agree with this conclusion:

"Perhaps We deserves more recognition than it has had, but if Nineteen Eighty-Four had never existed, it is extremely doubtful Zamyatin's book would have come to fill the unique place Orwell's work now occupies."

>38 john257hopper: I think that We deserves a great deal more credit, and that 1984 wouldn't exist without it. Zamyatin provided the imagination and the imagery that Orwell lacked.

>39 pamelad: I don't doubt We deserves a lot of credit. But I kind of understand why it has not received the traction of 1984 - partly as it was not originally written in English, but also it has a more fantastical feel, whereas 1984 gives a great feel for the mundanity of everyday life in the totalitarian society of Airstrip One, which I think makes it a more effective dystopian novel - it's easier to imagine oneself in that scenario.

Incidentally, re your thread, what do you think of Brave New World? It's a long time since I read it, 2007. I also read it (and 1984) at school in the early 1980s.

17. Salammbô - Gustave Flaubert

I was disappointed by this. Having listened to a 4 part podcast series on the first Punic War, which contained a number of dramatic readings from this book, I expected to find it more gripping. But now I have given up on it around a third of the way through. While Flaubert clearly researched the historical background very assiduously from Roman historian Polybius's work, the narrative reads like what we would now call an info dump, as though he was so determined to show off his research that he barely remembered to tell an actual story. I found it an uninteresting drag so cut my losses after chapter 5 of 15.

>40 john257hopper: It's many years since I read Brave New World. It really impressed me at the time, so I read a lot of Aldous Huxley's other books as well. Of variable quality and interest! I don't think I'd be as impressed today, but might give Brave New World another try.

>42 pamelad: yes, think I'm due for a re-read also.

18. Oedipus the King - Sophocles

This classic play is an out and out dramatic classic of murder,
incest, self-mutilation and suicide. It is amazing to think that this play was performed nearly 2,500 years ago, five times longer ago than Shakespeare's plays. Put another way, when Jesus was born and lived, this play was as far in the past to people living then as Shakespeare's plays are to us now in 2024. It won second prize in a competition in 429 BC to a play now lost to us written by a nephew of Euripides, one of the other two most prominent Greek tragic writers of the era. What huge influence this and other plays of the era has had on the literature of the past two and a half millennia.

19. Disease & History: From ancient times to Covid 19 - Frederick Fox Cartwright and Michael Biddiss

This book is a partly chronological, partly thematic study of the history of disease and how it has influenced, or may have influenced, the course of human history. Some of this is through grand historical events and developments, such as the ancient Greek struggle between Athens and Sparta, the fall of the Roman Empire, the Black Death, or the Spanish conquest of Mexico. Other chapters cover illnesses affecting the lives of pivotal historical figures, such as: the certain syphilis that led to the extreme cruelty of Tsar Ivan the Terrible; the probable syphilis that affected Henry VIII and may have led to the sharp change in his personality in the late 1520s from the perfect Renaissance prince of his earlier years to the cruel tyrant of his last couple of decades; and, most famously, the haemophilia that afflicted Queen Victoria's descendants and in particular the final Romanov heir, the boy Alexei, whose parents Nicholas and Alexandra allowed themselves to fall under the sway of Rasputin and others, contributing in part to the downfall of the dynasty.

There are also thematic chapters on specific diseases such as syphilis, smallpox, influenza, typhus and various types of malaria, how these diseases may have originated (often disputed or unknown), how they spread and how they have been partly or wholly combatted (though it's not always a straight line of progress).

Generally speaking the content I have described above was very good and interesting, but I thought the book lost focus and conviction as it went on. Much of the later material on historical personalities such as Napoleon and Hitler was not really how disease the influenced their actions and subsequent history, but more of a recounting of their rise and fall. Some of the later thematic material was also weaker, I thought, for example that on mob hysteria, the influence of Joan of Arc's voices, and the rise of environmentalism. There was some portentous language such as: "The solution will then surely lie in the hands of one or all of humanity’s age-old enemies, Famine, Pestilence, and War – those Horsemen of the Apocalypse who also bring with them Death upon his Pale Steed". The slightly polemical epilogue on COVID 19 (written in November 2020) concluded that it "had already served to demonstrate that the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse who haunt our histories were continuing to circle us, but now on swifter steeds".

Overall, though, this was a good read and a worthwhile reminder than historical events and developments are not just caused and directed by political and military forces.

As a one time historian, I have often wondered why historical analysis focuses so much on human actions. The role of geography, changing climates, and as you mention here, disease, is often not well recognized. And most of all, the role of purely random chance.

>46 scunliffe: yes, I would say random chance is probably THE most underrated factor...indeed people often refuse to believe it can even be a factor at all.

20. The Resurrection Mystery - Karen Charlton

This is the long awaited seventh book in this series of Regency era mystery novels featuring Bow Street Runners Detective Stephen Lavender and Constable Ned Woods. This presents a rather complex plot involving poisonous trousers, jewel thefts, feckless young aristocrats, bodysnatchers, disguises and vengeance based on past tragic events, and more. In the process of the story, Woods and his wife Betsy acquire a new foster son and a pet dog. Bow Street is under new command, that of Magistrate Conant, who is a stereotypical police boss, trying to limit his officers from displaying any initiative and trying to break up the successful Lavender-Woods partnership. By the end of the novel, and after the successful resolution of all the plot threads, he seems to have accepted their success, and Lavender is being referred to as the Chief Constable, with Woods as Assistant Chief Constable. Great to have the series back, and the characters are as great as ever, but I think this lacked some of the strong central drive of most of the earlier novels.

21. The Heart of Midlothian - Sir Walter Scott

This is one of Scott's most famous novels, named after the Tolbooth prison in the heart of Edinburgh. The basic plotline concerns Effie Deans, who gives birth to a child who disappears and who as a consequence is arrested and tried for its murder on the basis of a harsh Scots law in force at the time which gives a presumption of guilt to a mother in these circumstances. Her sister Jean makes a solo trip to London to beg mercy from the King and Queen. This plot is well and dramatically told, as are the rebellious events around the death of Captain Porteous, but much of the story's effect was marred for me by the heavy use of Scots vernacular for the speech of many of the characters, and the doings of rigid and unbending members of the Scottish kirk. I know it is not the point for the style of novels written two centuries ago, but this could have been a better read if around 30% shorter. That said, this is a good novel and rightly regarded as one of Scott's best novels.

>44 john257hopper: Natalie Haynes has written several books twisiting mythology to be more women centered. the children of Jocasta is an excellent take on the story. If you havent heard about her, you might want to take a look

>50 cindydavid4: Thanks Cindy, I have heard of her and I have one or two of her books but not read them yet. Ed. just checked, I have A thousand ships, obviously about Helen of Troy.

Some years ago I read a brace of novels told from the point of view of Briseis from the Iliad, by Cherry Gregory, The Girl from Ithaca and The Walls of Troy.

I thini a thousand ships is my fav of hers

22. They: A Sequence of Unease - Kay Dick

This dystopian novella won a minor literary award in 1977 then went out of print a couple of years later and was only rediscovered in a second hand bookshop after the author's death in 2001. It concerns the takeover of the reins of power by a mysterious and shadowy group, or collection of individuals, known only as They. They hate individualism, single people, all creative art and literature, whether new or pre-existing. They randomly take action, smashing art, stealing books, beating up or arresting and torturing people who are or who carry out the things they hate. The prose is very matter of fact, and the relationships between the narrator and other characters rather unclear. While I usually enjoy (if that is the right word) dystopian stories I did not enjoy this as the motivations and background of the oppressive They were not explored, giving it a rather fantastical feel, a bit like a J G Ballard modern dystopian horror novel. It might be argued that this approach adds to the starkness and horror, but it didn't quite work for me.

>48 john257hopper: Time to try another Detective Lavender book. I enjoyed the first two. It's a big advantage that Karen Charlton is English, because there are so many books by American writers that are set in England, and they don't ring true.

>54 pamelad: that's true sometimes, though it depends on the level of research they have done, of course.

It's a lovely series, one of my very top 2 or 3 historical mystery series.

>55 john257hopper: I am not so sure that it is simply a matter of research. There are subtleties in language that can be hard to fully understand, in both directions. I have been married to an American for 20 years, and even now we can still misunderstand each other by not realizing these subtleties.

Recent Example:
Wife: how many bunches of kale do you want me to buy?
Me: a couple
Wife, slightly exasperated: That doesn't help, exactly how many?

In English 'couple' means precisely two. In American it can mean a less specific few. And so on and so on.
As someone once said "two nations divided by a common language."

Also subtleties in class can be difficult for the non English to grasp, especially when only revealed in dialogue. Which is probably why Evelyn Waugh leaves Americans cold.

>54 pamelad: Elizabeth George is a prime example. To the born and bred English, she drops clangers with a deafening effect. I never got through the first ten pages of the first and only of her books that I have ever tried. Creating an English sounding pen name is not enough.

23. Body of Proof: The Investigation of Theophilus into the Resurrection of Jesus Christ - Leonard Wibberley

This is effectively a sequel to the author's The Centurion: A Roman Soldier's Testament of the Passion of Christ. In the New Testament, Theophilus was the dedicatee of the Gospel according to Luke and the Acts of the Apostles, but his real identity is contested. Here he is a grain merchant who witnesses Jesus Christ's confrontation with Pontius Pilate and, moved to pity, offers him a cup of wine. After the crucifixion, Pilate commissions him to investigate rumours of Christ's resurrection, talking to a wide variety of different people. What this novel puts across well is how contemporaries, Jewish, Roman, Greek, or whatever, would have viewed the existence and teaching of a man who initially seemed to be just another of the many Jewish messiahs who had emerged from time to time. Over time Theophilus's bafflement and hostility to the Christian doctrines is worn down, but this is not a smooth process and the story is not at all "preachy". I enjoyed this, though I thought there were too many digressions into the general history of the Roman Empire of this time, unconnected to the subject of the book's subtitle, sometimes seemingly just to give the story a salacious feel by the inclusion of incidents lifted from Suetonius's Twelve Caesars.

>57 scunliffe: yes, this is a well worn issue, though I have never read anything by Elizabeth George.

What annoys me equally is when books published in Britain, written by British authors, and set in Britain, with no American element to their content, still sometimes use American terms like "pocketbook" for what we call a "wallet", i.e. the item where a man keeps his money and credit cards etc.

I mean, why? It grates hugely on me.

>59 john257hopper: And I no longer know which purse to picture: the woman's equivalent of the wallet, or a handbag. Perhaps writers use Americanisms to make their work international, thereby annoying everyone outside the US. Or it might be generational, with younger writers using more.

During my historical romance addiction I've come across some absolute horrors: cream in tea; Scottish people eating oatmeal instead of porridge; dukes tossing sovereigns to street sweepers; waking up, looking at the Regency clock and noting that it's 8:32 am.........

24. The Big Four - Agatha Christie

This early Poirot novel is pulp fiction and not really a whodunnit. Poirot and Hastings go on the hunt for the members of the Big Four, a criminal syndicate led by a Chinese man who is the master planner, an American industrialist who provides the wealth, a French woman who provides scientific know how, and a mysterious number 4, the Destroyer, who seems to be able to adopt almost any disguise at will. This syndicate is supposed to be behind every riot, labour unrest and political upheaval across the world, including the Russian revolution, and even behind some natural disasters using the French woman's expertise, aiming at world domination and the collapse of civilisation. Yes, four master criminals with thousands of agents supposedly in every country at their disposal. This is so ridiculous I could scarcely suspend my disbelief at points, but I guess was kind of enjoyable hokum.

One contemporary review, in The Scotsman of 17 March 1927 sums it up perfectly for me: "The activities of Poirot himself cannot be taken seriously, as one takes, for example, Sherlock Holmes. The book, indeed, reads more like an exaggerated parody of popular detective fiction than a serious essay in the type. But it certainly provides plenty of fun for the reader who is prepared to be amused. If that was the intention of the authoress, she has succeeded to perfection".

25. Hide and Seek - Wilkie Collins

This is one of Collins's less well known novels, but is still a good example of his solid grasp of the essentials of a sensationalist mystery novel. The mystery essentially revolves around the identity of the father of Mary ("Madonna") Grice, a deaf and dumb child of around 10 years old, a man who abandoned Mary's mother, the young woman he had made pregnant. Different characters have different levels of knowledge about the truth of Mary's origins, so there is more mystery for most of the characters than there often is for the reader. I liked the interplay between the characters though and enjoyed this, albeit in a somewhat more low key way than Collins's greater works. The author's depiction of Mary as a disabled child who is somewhat more than just a passive figure was seemingly quite unusual for the time, and he apparently researched it quite well. A good read.

26. Witness for the Prosecution - Agatha Christie

This is a reread of this classic Agatha Christie short story on the train back home from seeing the play version at County Hall in London. The play obviously expanded the storyline a lot, but the basic plotline and much of the dialogue was the same. The written story almost feels like a summary of the stage version, it's a very taut piece of writing, with not a word going to waste.

27. Titanic Lives: Migrants and Millionaires, Conmen and Crew - Richard Davenport-Hines

This is an exploration of the Titanic disaster through the colourful and varied lives of some of the 2000 plus people, passengers and crew, who sailed on her notorious maiden voyage in April 1912. The story has been told so many times, but this is a somewhat different approach that allows us glimpses into the lives of a huge and varied cast of characters from American millionaire industrialists, to poor immigrants from Eastern Europe and the Middle East taking all they had in the world with them in a quest for a new life in the United States promising better economic conditions or freedom from religious or racial persecution. While fascinating in concept, it quite often threatens to become little more than long detailed lists of people and brief details of their backgrounds without much of a narrative structure. The usual range of dramatic, colourful horrific and pathetic incidents that one would expect are present here though, so this has quite a powerful impact in reminding the reader about many aspects of this most famous of maritime disasters.

28. Robots and Empire - Isaac Asimov

This is the fourth and final book in Asimov's series of robot novels. This is set 200 Earth years after the action of the previous three so does not feature detective Elijah Bailey, though a distant descendant of his appears, alongside the long lived Solarian/Auroran Gladia, and of course Robots Daneel Olivaw and Giskard Reventlov, the latter of whom has acquired the ability to read human emotions. The whole course of this novel is basically around Giskard and Daneel arriving through stumbling ratiocination at a new Zeroth Law of robotics, that a robot may not harm humanity or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm. They arrive at this law in the course of foiling the plans by two Auroran roboticists to wipe out Earth through accelerating its natural radioactivity until it gallops out of control and makes the planet unlivable, thus, in their estimation, freeing the galaxy for the Spacer worlds to conquer. This is, as always, a very clever narrative, yet, I felt it suffered without a strong and likeable central human character, so this is probably my least favourite of the robot novels, though still very good.

29. The Vampyre: the secret history of Lord Byron - Tom Holland

This horror novel is based on the mechanism of the supposed contents of the lost memoirs of Byron, which in reality were burned on his death with their contents unrevealed. Here they reveal Byron's transformation into a vampire, before he becomes world famous, the first real celebrity in the modern sense. There is a framework narrative set in the present day but the main story is Byron recounting his vampiric life and adventures around Greek and the near East; this is a very well written and atmospheric Gothic narrative, by an author better known as a historian of the ancient world. Inevitably there are some very disturbing and repellent incidents (frankly also true in Byron's real world biography), and by the end, I definitely felt my next read should be something "cleansing". But this is an excellent traditional horror story.

30. Doctor Who and the Empire of Glass - Andy Lane

This is a spin off Doctor Who novel featuring the first Doctor William Hartnell and his companions Steven Taylor and Vicky. I enjoyed the historical backdrop of early 17th century Venice, though I thought the history was rather crowded with Galileo, Shakespeare and an anachronistic Marlowe all featuring as prominent characters. Another Time Lord, Irving Braxiatel, is trying to convene an Armageddon Convention, a meeting of alien races designed to seek agreement to outlaw various weapons or methods of warfare, and to use the Doctor to try to mediate. Needless to say all does not go according to plan, and the various betrayals and counter-betrayals by some alien races left me a little confused. Enjoyable stuff overall.

31. Alchemy - S J Parris

This seventh entry in the author's series of 16th century murder mysteries sees historical Italian religious renegade Giordano Bruno called to investigate the murder of an alchemist in Prague, the capital city of Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II. Rudolf is eccentric and capricious but also a patron of artists and scientists and a protector of the city's Jewish community against the extremely widespread anti Semitism of the time. Various factions want to sow hatred of the city's Jews and/or topple the Emperor, and the machinations of Bruno's old nemeses in the Catholic church are as ever in the background. The real reasons for the murder of the alchemist and the later murder of a Jewish bookseller relate to murkier doings and include what I thought was a ludicrous plot element around the Emperor and a young Jewish woman, Esther. After the resolution of the plot threads, Bruno is left contemplating a job offer of Imperial librarian.

32. To a Native Shore: A Novel of India - Valerie Anand

The author is better known for her historical novels usually set in Medieval or Tudor England, but this was I think her first novel, published in 1984, about an interracial marriage between a white English woman and an Indian man. I am assuming this is based on the author's own experiences. Melanie Purvis is from rural Somerset, Avtar Singh is from Chandigarh. This novel is in general not so much about racist prejudice per se, but much more about the duality of the cultures competing within Melanie and pulling her in two directions. I thought this internal conflict was very well described and quite nuanced. At varying times I thought she would settle definitively for one or the other. She visits England against Avtar's opposition as she yearns for a break from the ordered tradition of the Punjabi community. The final moment of decision came when her English relative Frances makes a casual remark about Melanie's future child being half caste, "they’re neither one thing nor the other, are they? People won’t accept them here". Melanie counters that the child will be “Indian as well as English. Inheritor of two lands, two tongues, two literatures. Someone with a chance of growing up richer, more knowledgeable and less prejudiced than anyone limited to only one of each. Is that supposed to make people into something less than human?" Melanie is reconciled with Avtar and returns to India to have her baby, while intending to return periodically to England for work and personal reasons. I really enjoyed this thoughtful novel.

33. Hamnet - Maggie O'Farrell

This prize winning novel is a fictional retelling of the short life and death of William Shakespeare's only son. It contains two time tracks, starting with Hamnet's illness and death, with alternating chapters going back to his parents' marriage. For much of the novel, Hamnet's mother, here called Agnes (Anne) Hathaway is the dominant character, a semi-magical white witch character (for which there is no historical evidence). But the last third of the novel follows on from the young boy's death from plague, centring on his parents' contrasting reactions to his passing, expressing their grief in very different ways, Agnes by being unable to move or carry on with her day to day life, William by returning to London and throwing himself into his dramatic work. The other two Shakespeare children, Judith, Hamnet's identical twin, and the elder daughter Susannah, also come across clearly with distinct characters. The author's writing style is very evocative of the sights, sounds and smells of Elizabethan Stratford and (in brief at the end) London. I greatly enjoyed the novel, though I thought the descriptions of grief, while very evocative, were perhaps a little overdone, and was initially slightly confused by the rapidly changing timestreams. The close connection of the names of Shakespeare's only son and his most famous play, crucial to the novel's ending here, is not accepted by all historians, though. A powerful novel.

34. Hamlet - William Shakespeare

This is a re-read of this most famous of the Bard's tragedies, and his longest play. Despite its colossal reputation, this is by no means one of my favourite of the dozen or so of the plays that I have read and in some cases, but not this one, seen on stage. I find it rather uneven. At its best it contains very striking dramatic incidents and so many phrases and lines that are remembered today and part of the English language. But it is contains some stretches that seemed pointless and unclear until their closing lines, for example Act II Scene II, and most of Act V until the fight and the series of deaths at the end.

35. The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

This is justifiably an out and out classic of 20th century American and indeed world literature. It tells of the migration of impoverished tenant farmers westwards from the Dust Bowl of Oklahoma to a supposedly better future in California. Alternating chapters detail the travels and experiences of the extended Joad family, with every other chapter containing more general descriptions of the experiences of the broader mass migration westwards. The style is very matter of fact in describing the struggles of the Joads as they move across the country, losing members of their party to death (two grandparents) and desertion (one son, one son-in-law), and their increasingly desperate search for work of any description and to get enough food to feed their party. They move through a succession of camps of varying quality and face provocations from the police and local populations in many areas, denounced as "Okies" swarming into California causing civil disorder and labour unrest, and even preaching "red revolution" merely for wanting to find the dignity of adequately paid labour to feed their families. A monumental and moving work.

36. Eadred - Mark Craster-Chambers

This short work covers what little we know about the life and reign of this mid 10th century Saxon king. Arguably we ought to know a little more, as it was under his reign that England definitively gained its territorial integrity as one country, under roughly the same borders it still has today. These pocket books on little known kings are a good idea (though there seems to be only one other, on Harold I Harefoot). That said, I was disappointed and irritated at the large number of typos, including sloppy punctuation, within such a short work.

37. The Harvest Gypsies: On the Road to the Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

This short book is a collection of articles Steinbeck wrote for the San Francisco News in 1936 about the issues of migrant labourers in California. His articles not only expose starkly the horrible conditions in which many migrant families lived, which progressively worsened over time on the road and in encampments, but also covers the earlier history of migrant labourers in the state, Chinese, Japanese, Mexicans and Filipinos, as well as proposing some practical solutions to the problems. These are worthy and well argued, but clearly did not have anywhere near the impact on public and wider opinion that The Grapes of Wrath has had. What a talent to write so well in both reportage and fictional form.

>74 john257hopper: a few years ago, my daughter had The Grapes of Wrath on her high school reading list. I read the same books as she did so we could talk about them over dinner and, if she was spitballing ideas for a paper, I would have a better grasp of what she was talking about. Anyway, I hadn’t read GOW since my high school days and I was amazed at not only how much I remembered but how much I really loved it despite its heartbreaking portrayals. The next time I read it, I think I’ll pick up a copy of The Harvest Gypsies: On the Road to the Grapes of Wrath. I’ve been reading a little more NF lately and have been developing a greater appreciation for long-form journalism in particular— so it seems like a perfect fit!

It is a novella size, fyi, but it packs a punch

38. To Seize A Queen - Fiona Buckley

This is the twenty-third book in the Ursula Stannard series of Elizabethan mysteries. Such a long series inevitably ebbs and flows but, after a couple of very strong entries, I thought this was rather weak. Seemingly random individuals living on the Cornish coast in and around Penzance and the Lizard peninsula are being kidnapped and Ursula impersonates a distant relative of one of them and inhabits his house in order to try to find out what happens. On the positive side, there are as usual some colourful and interesting characters and I nearly always like a novel set in Cornwall. But I found the scale and motivation of the whole kidnapping plot when this was revealed to be utterly implausible, as was the fake royal progress and the Queen Elizabeth doubles. I thought Ursula's reaction to Juniper Penberthy was out of character and, for the first time, I found myself hoping this would be the final end to the series. We will see - Ursula is 60 years old, which is probably the equivalent of about 80 now after all.