john257hopper aims for around 120 books in 2018

Hi folks. Each year from 2007 onwards, I have read over 100 books each year, 118 in 2017. I thought it might be interesting to consolidate my experiences here (I already post my reviews on the relevant book page). I read an eclectic mixture of material, but my particular favourites are historical fiction of various eras, science fiction, classics, and in non-fiction, histories and biographies.

Good luck everyone.

John

Go for it, John!

Welcome to the group!

1. The Lantern Bearers - Rosemary Sutcliffe

This is the third novel in the author's beautifully written Eagle of the Ninth trilogy. This is set some three hundred years after the first novel. Another Aquila, descendant of the legionary of the same name who discovered the lost legion's eagle standard north of Hadrian's wall, has lived in Britain all his life and is shocked when the disintegrating Roman Empire withdraws the legions from Britain early in the fifth century AD. Feeling more British than Roman, he deserts and rejoins his family. However, very soon they are attacked and most of his family and household are killed by Saxon raiders. After a long series of adventures, including a spell as a slave, Aquila is at the heart of the Romano-British resistance to the growing Saxon influence in the country, becoming close to the future king Arthur. This is a more introspective novel than its predecessors, with themes of loyalty, loss, revenge and forgiveness as Aquila's new life unfolds and he comes to terms with all that happens to him. There are a number of rather unlikely coincidences to push forward the plot, but this is superbly written and a joy to read. The eponymous bearers are those who carry the light of Romano-British culture in the face of what they see as the darkness of the Saxon onslaught, as an ally says to Aquila at the end: "We are the Lantern Bearers, my friend; for us to keep something burning, to carry what light we can forward into the darkness and the wind". Great stuff.

2. Gone - Michael Grant

This is the first novel in a series of six post-apocalyptic novels, set in a town in southern California where, one day in November, every adult and older child of 15 or over suddenly disappears literally into thin air, and the town is surrounded by an impenetrable barrier. This novel starts well, with a good sense of the mixed emotions of initial exhilaration, then paralysis, perplexity, worry and fear that such an event would naturally give rise to. Some of the children have special powers including firing lasers from their hands, controlling gravity, or teleportation. The novel moves from focusing mainly on the post-apocalyptic situation to focusing on the struggle between factions of children with various powers, in particular that of the hero Sam and his girlfriend Astrid, against Caine Soren's faction, particularly as the moment of Sam's and Caine's fifteenth birthdays approach, when they are due to disappear. This is a good page turner of a novel, though I found it a little repetitive at times, and I'm not sure if I'll bother with the sequels.

3. Master of Life and Death - Robert Silverberg

This short novel is set in a 23rd century Earth at a time when the population explosion in most of the world is causing severe overcrowding, such that a Bureau of Population Equalisation (Popeek) has been established by the UN more or less to forcibly redistribute parts of the world's population to less populous areas (though it should be said that the world population in 2232 is stated to be 7 billion, which is actually what it reached in 2011). Despite this grim backdrop, this novel has quite a humorous feel when read today; it was published in 1957 and the attitudes towards both the science fiction elements, and wider social attitudes, are of their time. There are pulp fiction aliens from a neighbouring solar system that Popeek wants to use as a refuge to relieve the overcrowding on Earth; there is an expedition landing on Venus to try to terraform it. At another level, though, the story is about the moral dilemmas faced by one man, Roy Walton, the head of Popeek, who comes into office unexpectedly following the assassination of his predecessor as part of a plot by anti-population equalisers. Walton finds that that predecessor had kept much of his work secret, and the decisions he needs to take to do his job and combat the conspiracy require him to assume arbitrary and even dictatorial powers as the novel's title suggests, though he genuinely believes himself to be doing these actions for humanity's long term benefit. My description probably makes this novel sound like a bit of a mess, but it is actually an enjoyable read that packs a lot into its 144 pages, but does so effortlessly as the narrative flows very easily with the minimum of effort and extraneous description. Not a classic SF novel, but definitely worth a look.

Nice review, John. I like the sound of that one.

I remember that one of my friends at school was a huge fan of Silverberg, and recommended his books relentlessly. I read a lot of science fiction back in those days so I don’t know why I never got around to reading anything by him. I shall give this one a go.

Yes, it's the first book wholly by him I've read, though I have read a couple of others that he co-authored with Isaac Asimov.

4. Make Room! Make Room! - Harry Harrison

This is another novel set in the future (1999, written in 1966), looking at the effects of over-population. The New York of 1999 has a population of 35 million, one tenth of the population of the United States, in a world where the population is 7 billion (what is actually became a little later in 2011). Most of the population of New York (the only part of the world we see in the novel) lives a hand to mouth existence, the economy has collapsed through almost complete depletion of resources, and even water is rationed for most of the year. This is the backdrop to a well written novel in which the details of the everyday life of police officer Andy Rusch and those with whom he associates in his work and private lives form the focus of the narrative. The plot based around the hunt for a murder suspect (who is known to the reader, but not to Andy and his colleagues) seems fairly incidental, and the collective condition of the city's inhabitants is really the central character as such. The book was the rough basis for the cult film Soylent Green, made in 1973 starring Charlton Heston. The food substitute soylent appears in the novel, though without the dramatic impact seen at the end of the film. A good read and a worthwhile addition to the dystopian/speculative fiction genre.

5. Agent 6 - Tom Rob Smith

This is the third novel in the author's best-selling trilogy beginning with Child 44, centred around the life of (latterly reformed) KGB man Leo Demidov. This novel actually covers a period of over 30 years, beginning when Leo is a young and still idealistic KGB officer under Stalin in 1950, convinced that spying on citizens who keep a diary is a justified activity for the State he serves. He also acts as escort to a visiting Communist celebrity from the USA, an Afro-American singer Jesse Austin (clearly based on Paul Robeson). 15 years later his wife and daughters get a once in a lifetime opportunity to visit New York as part of a peace delegation and Austin is once again involved. I don't want to give away too many plot details but it involves campaigns of dirty tricks and deceit, assassinations, "ordinary" murders, international cover ups, and a second half of the novel set in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan in 1980-81 where Leo is an informal adviser to the regime. A great deal happens throughout this near 500 page novel and there is a wide range of colourful, tragic and ruthless characters, Soviet, Afghan and American. The ethos of the cold war, the desperate ideological issues, the different perceptions of treachery and loyalty involved, come across clearly and with conviction. The ending of the novel is sad, albeit tinged with some happiness, and provides a slightly ambiguous end to Leo's run of luck, but in a way that seems to make it clear there won't be any more novels featuring him, which I slightly regret. An excellent read.

>10 john257hopper:. I am glad you enjoyed it, John. I liked Child 44 but struggled to engage with the second volume (to the extent that its name now escapes me). I remember that Colonel Stockdale was also a big fan of them, so I may revisit the series.

The Secret Speech was the second one. I thought it wasn't as good as the first and third ones (a 4 rather than the 5 I gave the other two).

6. The Betrayal - Helen Dunmore

This is the sequel to the author's magnificent novel The Siege, which I read last summer. It is the early 1950s, towards the end of Stalin's long rule. Siege survivors Anna and Andrei are now married and living with Anna's now teenage brother Kolya. Anna is a nursery school teacher and Andrei still works in the hospital in Leningrad that he kept attending even in the bleakest mid-winter days of the terrible siege. Andrei's professional life is thrown into turmoil when he is asked to advise on a case of a child's swollen leg. This seemingly minor event turns out tragically both medically and politically, for the child is the only son of a senior official in the Ministry of State Security, the forbidding S I Volkov, and many medical personnel are reluctant to get involved, the Hippocratic oath being perverted by the all-pervasive fear of becoming involved in any way with the secret police. The child's swelling turns out to be a tumour and he has to have his leg amputated. Later secondary cancer turns up in the boy's lungs and it is too late to save him. Volkov's natural horror as a parent is compounded by the political authority he possesses, and both Andrei and the surgeon who operated on the boy, Dr Brodskaya, are caught up in the maelstrom. Brodskaya is Jewish and the novel's plot mirrors the horrible real life events of the last months of Stalin's life when, in the so-called Doctors' Plot, a number of doctors, most of them Jewish, were arrested and charged with the medical murder of several top Soviet politicians who had died in the previous few years, including Andrei Zhdanov, Leningrad's leader during the siege. Andrei finds himself suspended from duty and later arrested and taken to the notorious Lubyanka in Moscow. Anna, pregnant with her and Andrei's child, struggles to find help on the outside but retains her freedom and takes refuge in the countryside with an old family friend. After a final meeting in prison with Volkov, who tries to persuade Andrei to sign a statement that he was hoodwinked by Brodskaya's "plotting" to cause his son's cancer to spread, Andrei is sent to the gulag in Siberia, not far from his home city, Irkutsk. The novel ends with Volkov's suicide as his son lies dying, followed by Stalin's own death. Anna faces the future with a little more hope than Andrei will eventually be released from the wrongful charges in the somewhat more liberal atmosphere (in real life, the arrested doctors were released very soon afterwards). This is another brilliant novel from Helen Dunmore.

7. The Robots of Dawn - Isaac Asimov

This is the third of Asimov's novels featuring Earth detective Elijah Bailey and Robot Daneel Olivaw. The first two were fairly short novels published in the 1950s, whereas this one was published in the 1980s and is twice as long. It is still distinctively Asimov, with the classic extensive exploration of the three laws of robotics and the differences between customs and attitudes of Earth and the Spacer world of Aurora, though it lacks the tight plotting of its predecessors, and some of the scenes are too drawn out. This is a novel of ideas par excellence, and sets the scene, very far into the future, for Asimov's Galactic Empire and Foundation series. Very good, though as a novel in its own right, not in the same class as The Naked Sun.

8. Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times - Soviet Russia in the 1930s - Sheila Fitzpatrick

This book looks at the experience of the extremely turbulent and traumatic decade of the 1930s in the Soviet Union, the era of collectivisation, industrialisation and mass terror, from the point of view of ordinary Soviet people: workers; peasants; students; the intelligentsia; Party and non-Party people; Russians and other nationalities. To the extent that the notion of "public opinion" can be held to exist meaningfully in the context of a totalitarian society without press freedom or freedom of assembly, there is a large body of evidence from: individuals' letters and petitions expressing grievances to local, regional or national authorities; discussions at near compulsory workplace and public meetings on the new Stalin constitution of 1936 and on restrictions to the abortion laws; and from conversations reported by third parties such as informers and the secret police. This all gives a wealth of information about people's views, and on the dire economic conditions many faced, with a lot of fascinating, bizarre and sometimes horrific individual stories. It's an interesting complement to more straightforward political narratives of the period, which are numerous. The author is an academic, and her research is thorough, but her writing style almost always accessible to anyone already knowing the basic flow of events. A good read.

9. Robot Visions - Isaac Asimov

This is a retrospective collection of many of Asimov's most famous and significant robot short stories that were written and published over a period of half a century, including seven of the nine stories in his classic "I, Robot" collection, from his first imagination of a robot childminder in 1939's "Robbie", through the early articulation of the three laws of robotics in "LIar" and "Runaround", and later examinations where loopholes in the laws drive some ingenious plots. One story features the return of Elijah Baley and R. Daneel Olivaw from the classic robot novels "The Caves of Steel" and "The Naked Sun". There is one new story in the collection, the title story which, unusually for Asimov, features time travel. The book is topped off by a collection of Asimov's short essays and articles, again published over a period of several decades, on his thoughts about how real robots might work, and how they might relate to humans and improve our life experiences. This sequence begins with a 1954 article on his approach to the conceptualisation of robots in his fiction compared to the approaches of earlier authors. The other articles are from the 1970s and 1980s, fascinatingly exploring the relationship between the fictional and real development of robots and computers. Asimov's writing is never less than engaging and the length of his writing career and his prolific output during 50 years of huge technological advance enable much interesting reflection and speculation about both positive and negative human reactions to technology.

Finally, the stories contain a number of slightly odd illustrations of robots depicted in various scenes, but nearly all of which look exactly the same, not matching the very varied descriptions of robots given in the stories, which in fictional terms take place over probably two or three centuries of human development of robots.

10. When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit - Judith Kerr

After hearing a Holocaust survivor, Eve Kugler, speak at a Holocaust memorial day event in my department last week, I read this book, aimed at older children but really for readers of all ages, which is a fictionalised account of the author's own childhood experiences in Germany in the early 1930s. Her father, journalist Alfred Kerr was a prominent Jewish journalist and critic of the Nazis in Berlin. Warned of a plan to take away his passport, he was able to smuggle his wife and children to Switzerland on the very day of the election in March 1933 where the Nazis became the biggest single party (though, despite being emboldened by Hitler's appointment as Chancellor and brutal intimidation against their opponents, without achieving an overall majority). The family, here fictionalised as the Papa and Mama of Anna (Judith) and her brother Max, later move to France when Switzerland's neutral state is compromised by Nazi pressure. After nearly getting sent by a porter onto the wrong train, bound for Stuttgart, the family settles in Paris and makes a decent life there, though suffering some hardship as Anna's father tries to get work. After a couple of years they move to London. Told from Anna's point of view (she turns ten shortly after they arrive in Switzerland), the story shows how she views her life as a child refugee, punctuated by the odd incident of anti-Semitic behaviour, though thankfully it never gets worse for her than bad words and rejection by some non-Jewish families. The author continues to live in this country, now in her 90s still illustrating children's books (and there is a bilingual English-German school in south London named after her).

11. Potsdam Station - David Downing

This is the fourth novel in the John Russell/Effi Koenen series set before and during the second world war. At the end of the previous novel, Russell had managed to escape Berlin for neutral Sweden in 1941, but Effi could not accompany him. This novel moves forward over three years to near the very end for Hitler's Germany, as the Red Army surrounds and advances on Berlin, in April 1945. Russell persuades his contacts in the Red Army to let him slip in as part of an advance party before the main army conquers the city, to find Effi and his now 18 year old son Paul. The action of the novel follows Russell's attempts to infiltrate, Effi's struggle to survive as the city collapses around her, and the completion of Paul's own disillusionment as a young member of the Wehrmacht. They do all eventually meet, but all is not quite neat and tidy, and the slightly ambiguous conclusion leads us into the fifth book. Downing describes the environment of fin de guerre Berlin very evocatively and creates well rounded and likeable characters, though as before this does ramble a little in places.

12. Five Days that Shocked the World: Eyewitness Accounts from Europe at the end of World War II

This is a grippingly written account of the events that took place between Saturday 28 April and Wednesday 2 May 1945 as the war in Europe came to an end. The stories are mostly very familiar: the capture and death of Mussolini and his mistress; the liberations of Bergen-Belsen and Dachau; and most famously of course Hitler's ignominious end in the Reichs Chancellery bunker as his Third Reich shrank to a few Berlin streets, then floors within buildings and finally to the bunker itself, as the city was blasted by the Red Army as they closed in on victory. The familiar stories are told in a lively style, with quotes from leading participants, including some who wrote later memoirs of their part in these dramatic events such as Hitler's secretary Traudl Junge (whose memoir was the basis of the film Downfall) and his bodyguard Rochus Misch. The narrative is also enlivened by accounts of the experiences of a wide range of people who later became famous in a wide range of fields, such as Sophia Loren (who is aunt to Mussolini's granddaughter), Spike Milligan, Robert Runcie, Bob Dole, Willie Whitelaw, Karol Wojtyla (future Pope John Paul II), Josef Ratzinger (future Pope Benedict XVI) and Gunter Grass. A great read.

13. Doctor Who and the Web of Fear

It is exactly 50 years since this classic Doctor Who story, featuring Yeti emerging from deadly mists and roaming in the London Underground, one of the iconic images of 1960s Doctor Who. This novelisation is adequate, but not one of the particularly outstanding ones, and is little different from the TV version, except for a bit of shuffling scenes round, with little or no deeper characterisation. It would have been nice to have seen some effects of the terrifying events on those living and working in central London.

14. Blood of Ironside - Martin Lake

This is the third in the authors tetralogy of novels about Edgar Atheling, the last Saxon claimant to the throne after the death of King Harold's death at the Battle of Hastings. This is considerably longer than either of the first two novels, and is very much a story of Edgar wandering from place to place trying to find allies and support, travelling between exile in King Malcolm Canmore's court in Scotland and the north of England, to Flanders, Paris and the south of France. While Edgar overall has matured since the first book, now at the age of about 20, he still sometimes shows the impetuosity of youth and sometimes lacks perspective in failing to remember that allies like King Malcolm and King Philip of France are looking to the interests of their own kingdoms first and foremost. As the events unfold, it becomes increasingly clear, even if we did not have the benefit of historical hindsight, that Edgar is never going to gain the throne that he regards as rightfully his, as he has no power base or deep support among the people of England, whose hopes have been crushed by William the Conqueror's oppressive rule, characterised by a scorched earth policy that amounts in places to genocide. Edgar is surrounded by an attractive and interesting set of close companions, Anna, Athelstan, Godwin, Willard and Hog in particular. But these loyal followers are obviously never enough. At the end of the book, Edgar is once again setting sail from Scotland to France, having been offered land and a powerbase by King Philip. Well written, if a bit long,

>19 john257hopper: this goes on my wishlist!

15. Isaac Asimov's I Robot: To Obey - Mickey Zucker Reichert

This is the second in the author's trilogy of spin off novels about the life of Susan Calvin, the robotics pioneer in Isaac Asimov's early robot short stories published from the 1950s onwards. When Asimov wrote, he had Susan being born in 1982 and working on robots in the early 21st century, but now that this is not plausible in the real world timeline, she is instead a young woman of 27 in 2036 (though that date really isn't that far off either). I found the existence of the one or two humaniform robots in this novel rather unrealistic given the early stage robotics is supposed to have reached by this stage. While these factors were also present in the first novel, I think I noticed them more here, as I was not generally as gripped by the plot as I was with its predecessor. Unlike that one, this was not a medical techno-thriller with an unusual theme, but more of a standard thriller involving bad guys out to steal secrets, and a rogue Government agency out to steal those secrets for its own reasons. There was still a fair amount of medical jargon in this book, especially in the first half, this time to do with various stages of dementia, but it wasn't relevant to the main plot. The ending was quite dramatic, though without the emotional impact of the ending of book one. So, a little disappointing overall, though I will read the third book in due course.

16. Ada's Algorithm: How Lord Byron's Daughter Ada Lovelace Launched the Digital Age through the Poetry of Numbers - James Essinger

Ada Lovelace, together with Charles Babbage, were early 19th century pioneers of the ideas behind what became the computer revolution a century after they lived. The author's central thesis is that Ada's contribution was neglected at the time, and to a large extent subsequently, due to her sex. I felt he slightly spoiled his own argument during the early parts of the book by talking very little about Ada and initially focusing, inevitably, on the notorious life of her more famous father, Lord Byron. Ada is a marginal figure in the narrative here, and only when her collaboration with Babbage comes to the fore, does Ada's role become clear.

Their roles were different. Babbage had the mechanical expertise, albeit that his Analytical Engine was never completed, due to lack of funds and the effective absence of a working precision machine industry for much of his life. He also lacked the people handling skills necessary to influence the course of events in his favour; he had a disastrous meeting with Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel in 1842 which, had he succeeded in convincing the latter of the economic benefits that could accrue from his machine, could have changed the future of technology over the next century, albeit that such intriguing "what ifs" are ultimately unprovable.

Ada was the one who had the vision of what the Analytical Engine might achieve, not only in crude mechanical terms, but in terms of a conceptual leap ("he Babbage saw machines essentially as mechanised servants of mankind rather than as a new area of discovery with its own mysteries. His scientific imagination was ultimately more prosaic and less incandescent than hers"). Drawing on the example of what had been achieved with a portrait woven on a French loom using a system of cards to control the threads, Ada conceptualised a clear distinction between data (the pattern of the woven portrait) and processing (how the principles behind the application of the cards could be replicated for other forms of information). In the author's words this is "a distinction we tend to take for granted today, but which – like so much of her thinking about computers – was in her own day not only revolutionary but truly visionary". She was effectively inventing the "science of operations", or what we would now call computing, a system that could be applied to any process involving the manipulation of information.

For all her vision, Ada Lovelace still struggled to be taken entirely seriously by her contemporaries, even by Babbage. Sadly, she had very little time to make further efforts in this regard, tragically dying of uterine cancer at the age of just 36 after two years of suffering and pain. Her doctors despaired of being able to do anything to relieve her condition, one offering the truly bleak prognosis that "The duty of the physician is thus a very sad one; as the highest success which he can hope to attain is to secure not recovery, but euthanasia".

As I said earlier, I thought the author initially failed to make the case for Ada Lovelace's significance, though this improved during the narrative. But the book did contain quite a number of typos and mistakes, including one bizarre one where Ada is described as paying a visit to Walter Scott in 1850 - 18 years after his death. Overall, not as good a read as it might have been.

17. The Piccadilly Pickpocket - Karen Charlton

I have greatly enjoyed the two full length mystery novels by this author featuring Bow Street Runners Detective Stephen Lavender and Constable Ned Woods in early 19th century London. This is the second of two short stories the author has also released, and was for me the better of the two (the difference being between excellent and merely good), the plot centring on the theft of a pocket watch belonging to the Prince Regent which carries a significance well beyond its material value. It's always great to see these two in action and I look forward to reading the third novel in the main series soon. 5/5

>25 john257hopper: Those books look intriguing, John. I love both Georgette Heyer's Regencies and also the Sir John Fielding mystery series by Bruce Alexander, so I'll have to check out Karen Charlton. The Heiress of Linn Hagh and the three following books seem to have mixed reviews on LT, but I'll give it a try.

#26 - yes, I think they're well written and set in a relatively unusual period for murder mysteries, and the protagonists are genuinely likable.

18. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

This is a re-read of this gargantuan classic novel of French, and indeed world, literature, prompted by watching the marvellous musical at the Queen's Theatre at the end of February. The novel is just as deep and splendid and thought-provoking as on my previous read ten years ago; but its faults also struck me now with renewed force. The main faults are the lengthy digressions on slang, sewers, monastical conventions, the Battle of Waterloo and other cultural and historical braindumps, which distract from the main plot and can, frankly, just be skipped, especially on a second read. I think these digressions struck me even more forcibly this time round, as the musical version brings out clearly the essential plot themes of redemption and forgiveness and the wonderful central characters, Jean Valjean, Cosette, Marius, Fantine, Javert and Thenardier in particular, without those distractions. I am generally a firm opponent of abridged works of literature, but this is one case where an exception can be made. At its best though it is a majestic work exposing injustices and poverty in early 19th century France and is rightly a classic of world literature.

19. Wrath of Furies - Steven Saylor

This is the third in the author's prequel trilogy featuring his sleuth Gordianus the Finder during his youth, in exile from Rome and living in Alexandria. He seeks out his former travelling companion with whom he visited the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World in the first novel of the trilogy, the historical poet Antipater of Sidon. The latter had become a spy for Rome's enemy Mithridates of Pontus, the self-proclaimed "King of Kings". Gordianus makes a perilous journey to territory that Mithridates has conquered, Ephesus, posing as a mute Egyptian, to hide his Roman-accented Greek from an Ephesian population that now hates all Romans, and has expelled them from the city to starve and worse. This book contains the usual colourful array of characters, though Gordianus's slave, lover and future wife Bethesda plays less of a role here than in other novels. It is quite a grim story with Mithridates determined to unleash genocide against all Romans on his territory. Gordianus, Bethesda and a few others only narrowly escape the tyrannical kings's clutches. I think this is probably the last of the prequel novels, as Saylor has now resumed the main series of Gordianus novels with a thirteenth mystery, set at the time of Julius Caesar's assassination.

20. A Briefer History of Time - Stephen Hawking

As its name suggests, this is a shorter, and less technical, version of the great scientist's most famous work, which I have read to mark his recent passing. It covers in fairly crisp form the main historical developments in our understanding of the history of the universe, and the nature of time and space, and sub-atomic physics. In places, it still got a bit too technical for a lay reader like me, but for the most part offered a fairly easily digestible summary of some mind-blowing theories and chains of reasoning. This is mind-expanding stuff, that puts our concerns on planet Earth into a unique perspective. The diagrams I thought were not very good, though.

21. The Walls of Troy (Sister of Odysseus Book 2) - Cherry Gregory

This is a sequel to the author's The Girl from Ithaca, the two novels together telling the story of the Trojan war from the point of view of Neomene, a fictional (i.e. non-Homeric) sister of Odysseus. She is a useful and sympathetic creation, her status meaning that she can plausibly be at the centre of action, while her specific activities are not circumscribed by the destinies Homer set out for his characters. I enjoyed this, and it contained some dramatic scenes, dealing as it did with the conclusion to the war and the famous wooden horse, with some horrible events taking place as Agamemnon and Odysseus sack Troy after one of the most famous ruses in history bears fruit and they penetrate the city. However, for reasons I cannot adequately explain, it slightly lacked the enjoyment factor of its predecessor. It has made me want to read more about the Trojan war, though, and I may actually tackle the Iliad again.

22. Shadow on the Crown (The Emma of Normandy, Book 1) - Patricia Bracewell

A visit to the former capital of Anglo Saxon Wessex, Winchester, over Easter prompted me to read this novel, the first in a trilogy about Emma of Normandy, a pivotal figure in the politics of England and indeed north west Europe in the first half of the 11th century, and queen to two Kings of England, Ethelred II the Unready, and the Danish invader Canute. The novel covers the first few years of Emma's time in England, from when she is shocked to be told she is being sent to Winchester on the other side of the Narrow Sea to wed the King of England, following the death of his first wife; through the horrors of the St Brice's Day massacre in 1002 when Ethelred ordered the indiscriminate slaughter of all Danes living in England; of Danish invasions, including the brutal sacking of Exeter; and through to Emma's eventually fulfilling the destiny of any queen before the modern era, that is of giving birth to a son, the future King Edward the Confessor, a potential rival to the many sons Ethelred already had by his first wife, particularly to his eldest son and heir, Athelstan. The novel is very well written, if perhaps a little long at 500 pages, full of colourful incident and characters. I have already downloaded the next book in the series.

23. Emma - Jane Austen

This started off quite well, and the constant misunderstandings by Emma Woodhouse of the romantic intentions of others were quite comical. However, I found too many of the characters difficult to distinguish in my mind (my favourite was probably Emma's hapless, hypochondriac father), and they lacked the colourful nature of the more eclectic cast of characters in Mansfield Park. So it was a bit of a struggle in places.

24. A Fall of Moondust - Arthur C Clarke

This is more of a thriller than many other Clarke novels. It is the 2040s and a group of tourists is visiting the Moon's Sea of Thirst, a featureless desert of incredibly fine powder, in a vessel logically if unimaginatively called Selene. A freak combination of circumstances causes Selene to sink into the dust without visible trace on the surface. The passengers and crew have only days to live before the oxygen runs out. Then begins a desperate race against time by the outside world (the Earth and the Moon) to locate and rescue them, punctuated by numerous setbacks. This is a very good read, though it lacks the majesty and grandeur of The City and the Stars or Rendezvous with Rama. Most of the characters are fairly wooden. Like a lot of SF, it tells more about the time in which it was written (1960) than about the future, in terms of relations between the sexes and the state of technology. Finally, it is also dated scientifically as in 1960 there were some scientists who believed the Moon's surface was made of such dust, caused by billions of years of erosion of the rocks out of which it was formed, and that no spacecraft would ever be able to land there. Clarke concedes this anachronism in a foreword to this edition, written in 1987. Despite these flaws, this is another great novel by one of the masters of SF.

>34 john257hopper: I remember first reading A Fall of Moondust nearly forty years ago, and thinking it was marvellous. It was one of the first of Clarke’s books that I read, and I quickly became a huge fan. I reread it a couple of years ago and was less keen on it feeling it hadn’t aged too well, although by then I was familiar with his classic works such as Rendezvous with Rama, Imperisl Earth and The Fountains of Paradise.

I think my favourite of his novels is The Ghost from the Grand Banks about plans to salvage the Titanic. He had obviously been thinking along those lines for a long time as there is a chapter in Imprrisl Earth with that name, too.

25. 15 Short Stories - Isaac Asimov

This is a collection of 15 stories by Asimov from what is generally seen as the golden era of his published stories, 1940-60 (in fact all but the first one are from the 1950s). I have read nearly all of these before in other collections, some of them multiple times and they mostly come up well again, making their points about the use or abuse of technology, and the follies of humankind, all of course seen through the prism of the assumptions (Cold War, very large primitive computers) of the time in which they are written. There are not, in fact, 15 stories here, as two of them are slightly odd poems. The final story is a round robin story, in which Asimov contributes the second of five chapters, each written by a different SF author, but the storyline did not feel suited to Asimov's writing style or thinking. Overall, this is not a well put together collection, and is full of numerous typos.

26. Moreau’s Other Island (The Monster Trilogy) - Brian Aldiss

This is the third in the author's monster trilogy, this one being based on a less well known work of classic horror than Frankenstein or Dracula, namely H G Wells's The Island of Doctor Moreau. In the near future of 1996 (this was published in 1982), the superpowers are at war, with the USA and China facing off against the Soviet Union. A senior US official is the sole survivor of a plane crash who ends up on a Pacific island populated by apparent savages. These are the descendants of the real life half-human, half-animal creatures on which Wells supposedly based his novel. In this instance, the genetic horrors are perpetrated by an embittered survivor of the real life drug thalidomide, that caused limb loss and other deformities to babies of mothers who took the drug in the later 1950s/early 1960s. Despite this horribly realistic scenario, I thought it was the weakest of the three novels, and I found the characters and whole situation rather unrealistic even on their own terms. In fact, the book is not even really part of a trilogy as the characters and backdrop are entirely different from those in the other two, and much less sympathetic. Disappointing.

27. The Queen: Elizabeth II and the Monarchy

The author of this biography Ben Pimlott was better known for writing authoritative and very readable biographies of Labour figures such as Harold Wilson and Hugh Dalton, both of which I read many years ago, so it may seem surprising that he turned his biographical skills in the 1990s to our Queen. Indeed, in an afterword his widow Jean Seaton says that he was faced with rudeness, snickers, and warnings that he was risking irreversible damage to his reputation by doing so. This is a weighty and absorbing read tracing both the life and reign of its subject alongside changing attitudes towards the monarchy as an institution and to the Queen as an individual from: the breathless reverence of the 1950s; the loosening of that attitude in the 60s and 70s; through the scepticism and sometimes open contempt from the mid 80s and through the 90s as the Queen's children's marriages broke up, and royal wealth came under the microscope; and to the respectful but more distant and fairly indifferent attitude that came along in the early 2000s at the time of the Golden Jubilee and indeed that seems to prevail today as the Queen enters her 90s and the era must, inevitably, be nearing its end. The evolving relationship between the Crown and the Commonwealth, both collectively, and as individual countries is also interesting. The original 1996 edition was updated in the early 2000s to include the death of Princess Diana and the Golden Jubilee period, which also encompassed the deaths of the Queen's sister and mother. The discussion of the bizarre and hysterical reaction to Diana's death is examined in great and, in my view, excessive detail and this was perhaps the part of the book I found the most tiresome. Overall, this is an excellent read and it is difficult to see this being bettered, though no doubt there will be a slew of new biographies when the inevitable happens in the not too distant future.

28. The Queen and I - Sue Townsend

In this anarchic comical story, the Queen falls asleep on election night in April 1992, expecting that the following day either "nice" John Major or "perfectly agreeable" Neil Kinnock will be prime minister, both of whom she prefers to Mrs Thatcher, "whose mad eyes and strangulated voice had quite unnerved her". Instead, she wakes up to discover that republican Jack Barker has become Prime Minister, having used his position in the Television Technicians' Union to broadcast subliminal messages to viewers to vote the end the monarchy. The Queen and the rest of the royal family (except Andrew and Edward who are abroad) are forced to live on a council estate. Unlike the rest of the family, the Queen and Princess Anne take to their new lives and emerge with more dignity than the others. Written at a time when the monarchy was going through a lot of troubles and was relatively unpopular (this was the Queen's annus horribilis), this is very funny, but also rather sad and pathetic, and in my view hasn't aged well, unlike the wonderful Adrian Mole series, for which the author is better known.

>38 john257hopper: That sounds really interesting and I'll add it to my list. I've been watching The Crown on Netflix and am interested in the Queen's life (in a not-fictionalized form).

>40 jfetting: - my interest was stimulated by watching The Crown also, a very well made series. I'm not a royalist myself, but I do find the monarchy's role a fascinating one over the decades as it adapts, or not, to changing circumstances.

>29 john257hopper: A BB for me! I recently read Mrs. Queen takes the Train and enjoyed it thoroughly.

#42 - BB?

>43 john257hopper: Book bullet....gotta get it!

Just finished all The Crown episodes, fascinating! Hope there will be more seasons!

#45 - there is certainly to be a third season, as there has been speculation leading to announcements about who will take on the leading roles.

29. The Girl in the Photograph - Kate Riordan

This is a haunting novel set in the early 1930s, with flashbacks to the late 1890s. A young woman, Alice Eveleigh, falls pregnant by a married man in an era when this meant complete social stigmatisation. She is sent by her mother to a remote house in Gloucestershire, into the care of a lady, Edith Jelphs, whom she knew when she was younger. Mrs Jelphs is the guardian of a empty manor house in a remote valley, whose owner hardly ever visits. There Alice encounters the past in a haunting series of events that mirror those in her own life as her pregnancy advances. The author creates an atmosphere of creeping mystery and tension very well, in a style that reminds me of the creeping ghost stories of Jonathan Aycliffe, though I am not sure the final resolution entirely delivered on the sense of foreboding that had grown up, tragic enough though it was. A great read though.

30. A Man's Word - Martin Jensen (this was a book I read back in February, but forgot to post a review here)

This is the third novel in the author's trilogy beginning with The King's Hounds, and set in King Canute's England of 1018. The plot centres around a series of murders arising from a court case where a rapist perjured himself to go free, was rather convoluted and didn't seem to me as effective as the plots of the first two novels. The novel contains the same essential strengths and weaknesses as its predecessors; the narrator, half-Saxon, half Danish Halfdan is well drawn, as is Alfilda, the female companion of Halfdan's master Winston the Illuminator, though the latter has become rather irritating. The main flaw of the novels continues to be the dialogue which just sounds too modern, whether that is a feature of the original Danish, or of the US English translation (looking at the translator's website, I suspect the latter). According to the author's (Danish language) website, there are three further novels in this series, but these do not seem to have been translated into English yet. Canute's England is a fascinating backdrop for a historical novel series, but for me these are not as effective as they might have been.

31. In Search of Glory - Martin Lake

This is the final volume in the author's quartet of novels about the life of Edgar Atheling, the last male descendant of the Anglo Saxon royal line, who failed to make good his claim after William the Conqueror defeated King Harold at the Battle of Hastings and used his invincible power to overrun the whole country and firmly establish a new dynasty. Over the course of the novels, we have followed Edgar's path from boy to young man, but it has been a circuitous path, one ultimately doomed as he lacked the strategic sense and deep support that he would have needed to have had any chance of prevailing against Norman might. Some of the themes have become repetitive over the four books, including Edgar's constant shuffling to and from the safety of an increasingly cautious and sceptical King Malcolm of Scotland, and the constant habit of his closest companions of appearing to have been killed and then inevitably being revealed as still alive a few pages or chapters later - you can get away with that once or twice, but not more than that. Edgar's increasing disgust at the slaughter and mayhem arising from his attempts to seize the throne lead him eventually to accept the inevitable and submit to William - though with further twists and turns to follow. As the novel ends, Edgar and his companions, including his lady Anna, have fled to her home city Constantinople, as back in England William has just announced the commission leading to what came to be called the Domesday Book. Edgar was in fact very long lived for the time and at this point still had some 40 years of life left, though it appears the author is ending the saga here, probably at the right point. It's been a good series, albeit a bit repetitive in places.

32. Rookwood - William Harrison Ainsworth

I read eight of this author's slightly Gothic historical fiction novels between 2011-15, but this is the first since then, and I enjoyed this less than the others. Either the style has palled on me, or this was inferior to the others, but as this was the novel that made Ainsworth's name in the mid 1830s, it may be me. I found the Gothic plotting of the Rookwood family rather tedious, and the endless interpolation of songs and poems recited by the characters rather annoying after a while. These features were leavened only somewhat by the passages involving highwayman Dick Turpin, in particular during the part of the book detailing his famous flight from London to York on his famous horse, Black Bess. Rather a relief to finish this, to be honest.

33. Foundation - Isaac Asimov

This is one of the all time classics of science fiction that I first read 30 years ago as a student. Asimov has been my favourite science fiction writer ever since, and this still delights in its simple but intelligent and epic storyline covering a period of some 150 years, its crisp prose and sharp dialogue. Of course like most science fiction, it says more about the time in which it was written (1940s) than about the far future after 12,000 years of galactic empire, where there are almost no female characters (and almost everyone smokes like a chimney). But it is a memorable start to the Foundation series, the later books are even more diverse in scope.

34. The Bloody Meadow - William Ryan

This is the second novel featuring Alexei Korolev, a detective with the Moscow CID working in the late 1930s at the height of Stalin's purges. It is over seven years since I read the first novel, The Holy Thief (and six years since I bought this one), but this reflects the good and not so good aspects of the first book. The oppressive atmosphere of the times is quite well created, and the difficulty for an honest man to detect crime in an atmosphere where everything is mixed up with politics is well brought across. Korolev is a conflicted character, loyal to his country and accepting most of its mores most of the time, but also a religious believer, an interesting (and highly dangerous!) combination for the time. There are a lot of plot elements - a murdered actress, disaffected Ukrainians involved in gunrunning, and so on, and I did feel though that the various elements of the plot didn't hang together as well as they might have done, and I found the role of the Thieves a bit confusing. I wasn't initially totally clear exactly when this was set, but I think from the context it must be the late winter/early spring of 1937 - Yezhov has replaced Yagoda as NKVD chief, but Tukhachevsky is still around. Anyway, there will be a much shorter gap between my reading this and the third novel than between the first two books.

35. Foundation and Empire - Isaac Asimov

This is the second of Asimov's original Foundation trilogy, which I am re-reading now that they have at last been released in Kindle format in the UK. This is very much a book of two parts - the first third concerns the attempt by the last great Imperial general to conquer the Foundation and is competently told but fairly unmemorable. The bulk of the book is the much more gripping story centred around the rise from nowhere of the mysterious being known as The Mule, who sweeps all before him, including the Foundation itself. It is also noteworthy for being the story of the first proper female character in the series as originally written, Bayta Darrell, whose role turns out to be crucial. This part of the book is really the first section of the series written in a more modern thriller/quest narrative and echoing the later books of the series penned by the author in the 1980s and early 1990s. Brilliant stuff.

36. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

Quite a few books I have read of late have been re-reads and this is another one, prompted by watching a recent film adaptation of this classic mid-19th century French classic that revolutionised the literary coverage of the openly sexual side of adultery and led to the author's prosecution for obscenity (he was quite swiftly acquitted). The descriptions of the ecstasies and abysses of love are described in vivid and timeless terms. I wasn't that keen on this novel the first time I read it, but I can now appreciate its significance, and the poetry of the poignant and detailed descriptions of French provincial life. Emma Bovary is ultimately a very selfish character who views the whole world through the prism of her immediate desires, and I felt sorry for her hapless husband Charles and her innocent and trusting daughter Berthe, and the tragedy that overcomes the family is deeply sad. A genuine classic of world literature, and Eleanor Marx-Aveling's translation is rich and compelling - ironically she met the same ultimate fatal ending as the character whose life she was charting here.

>54 john257hopper: Has been on my bookshelf for 30 years........really must get to it!

37. Second Foundation - Isaac Asimov

This is the final novel of Asimov's original Foundation trilogy, and the individual novellas of which were first published at the end of the 1940s and in book form in the 1950s - where the series ended until the author returned to it in the early 1980s. Like Foundation and Empire, it is a book of two parts, with the first third concerning the Mule's unsuccessful attempt to locate the Second Foundation. As one of the most interesting and memorable characters in the saga, it is a pity we see no more of him after this. The bulk of the book concerns the attempts by scientists of the first Foundation on Terminus to locate their counterpart, set up by Seldon "at the other end of the Galaxy" hundreds of years before. This also features only the second proper female character in the trilogy, Arkady Darrell, a precociously intelligent 14 year old and the granddaughter of Bayta Darrell, who defeated the Mule at the end of the second book. But I don't think the narrative drive of this section works as well as in that book, so overall this novel is not quite as enjoyable as its predecessors.

38. The Last Jedi - Jason Fry

Being in a Star Wars mood again having watched the new Han Solo spin-off film over the bank holiday weekend, I was inspired to read this novelisation. Doing so seems to confirm a rule of thumb I've observed that the enjoyment I get from a novelisation is often in inverse proportion to that I derived from watching the film. I thought Last Jedi was an excellent and dramatic film, though this novelisation I thought was no better than workmanlike...there is some more background given to some of the characters, but nothing I found particularly memorable, and the descriptions of fight sequences and battles as usual don't make such exciting reading as they do viewing. That said, it was good to re-live the dramatic finale of Luke's self-sacrifice and Leia's final acceptance of the loss of those she has held dear.

39. The Final Solution - Michael Chabon

This Sherlock Holmes spin off novella was very well and eruditely written, but didn't for me work as a Holmes story. It is 1944 and a very elderly Sherlock Holmes (though he is not actually named as such in the text) is pottering around still keeping his bees on the Sussex Downs. Somehow he gets involved in a case involving a parrot that can sing in German, a silent Jewish refugee boy, and mysterious codes. Despite this backdrop, it all felt rather insubstantial and a bit silly to me, albeit so well written. 3/5

40. The Mayor of Casterbridge

My first ever visit to Dorchester prompted me to read my first ever Thomas Hardy novel - very few other writers are so closely associated with a specific town or city; the fictional town in this novel's title is based very closely on Dorset's county town. I loved this novel, and will certainly be reading more Hardy. The plot is simple yet at the same time captivating and timeless. Michael Henchard, an itinerant farm labourer, while drunk one day sells his wife and baby daughter to a sailor at a fair. He wakes up sober and immediately regrets his choice, forswearing alcohol for 21 years and going off to search for them, but it is too late. The ramifications of this moment of madness ring throughout the years and affect Henchard's life and those of his family and others. This is a story about fortune's wheel and how it can bring one man up and cast another man down. Marvellous stuff, full of colourful incident and some quirky minor characters.

>59 john257hopper: Glad you liked your first Hardy. I love Hardy and have read Tess of D'Urbervilles as well as Far from the madding Crowd. I will put this one on my wishlist!

41. The Tolpuddle Woman - E V Thompson

This sweeping historical novel covers the lives of the villagers of Tolpuddle, in Dorset, in the early 1830s when infamously six farm labourers were transported to Australia after a show trial for swearing an oath to become members of a union of farm workers (that was not itself illegal by that time), to protest against the gradual reduction of farm labourers' wages that was threatening them and their families with hardship and near starvation. None of the six is a major character in the novel though, and the lives and loves of the fictional characters weave a web that gives a strong feeling for the texture of life in this society at this particular time, the poverty, sense of community and strong religious, especially Methodist, underpinning to life, that underlay the concerns for social justice. The main characters are young Wesley Gillam, and the girl he comes to love, Saranna Vey, though the eponymous woman is Amelia Cake, a cantankerous but ultimately compassionate widowed landowner for whom Wesley and Saranna work. A good read, and I would read more by this author - I understand that many of his novels are set in Cornwall, a part of the country I love.

>59 john257hopper: I also really enjoyed The Mayor of Casterbridge and second Tess's recommendation of Far From the Madding Crowd.

#60/62 - thanks both, I'll aim to make these my next Hardy books.

42. The Sculthorpe Murder - Karen Charlton

This is the third in the series of murder mystery novels set in early nineteenth century England featuring Bow Street Runners Detective Stephen Lavender and Constable Ned Woods. This case takes them up to Northamptonshire to investigate the vicious bludgeoning of an elderly man William Sculthorpe in his home, based loosely on a true case the historical Stephen Lavender solved. Needless to say, all is not as it seems, and numerous other characters are up to no good of various shades, and the plot involves a heady mixture of: various gangs terrorising the county; hidden Catholics (at a time when Catholicism was no longer illegal but still not generally accepted); substituted babies; lost family members; poisonous mushrooms; and lots of ale and pies, especially consumed by our two heroes. I love this series. The central duo are a likeable and believable pair and you can imagine their rich lives outside the plots of these novels. The other characters are also a rich and colourful array from all levels of society, and in all sorts of circumstances. Another great book by this author.

43. Imperium - Robert Harris

This is a re-read of the first volume of Robert Harris's trilogy of novels about the life of the great Roman lawyer, orator and statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero, prompted by seeing the first play of the RSC's excellent two-part adaptation at the Gielgud Theatre in London last week. The novel comes across just as well as it did the first time I read it some nine years ago, and depicts marvellously the tensions and intricacies of Roman public life, with some great characters in particular Cicero's slave and aide, Tiro, and the former's wife Terentia. There are some great and pithy remarks by Cicero, such as:

in defence of politics - "Politics? Boring? Politics is history on the wing! What other sphere of human activity calls forth all that is most noble in men’s souls, and all that is most base? Or has such excitement? Or more vividly exposes our strengths and weaknesses? Boring? You might as well say that life itself is boring!"

and correspondingly against the notion of permanent state officialdom (a complaint which is echoed by some contemporary government ministers):

"These people,’ Cicero complained to me one morning, ‘are a warning of what happens to any state which has a permanent staff of officials. They begin as our servants and end up imagining themselves our masters!"

in defence of history - "To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?"

>65 john257hopper: On my wish list this goes!

44. The Spartacus War - Barry Strauss

This fairly short work effectively covers what we know about the course of the most famous slave uprising in history and the man who inspired and led it with a fair degree of success for two years until the Roman state's eventual triumph. In fact we know relatively few specifics about the detailed course of events and the individual battles involved, and very little indeed about Spartacus himself. In popular conception, Hollywood has of course filled in many of the gaps through the wonderful, though romanticised, classic film version starring Kirk Douglas (Spartacus actually fell in the final battle and his body was never recovered, although it is quite true that 6,000 survivors of that battle were crucified along the road from Capua, where the revolt started, to Rome). Strauss fills in some of the gaps through intelligent speculation and extrapolation from details of other Roman military engagements, analysis of the various Roman literary sources (none of which were contemporary), archaeology and even the topography of southern Italy. He doesn't fill space unnecessarily by writing extensively in general about the history of Rome, or of gladiators, as some authors might to make a book longer (the main text is 190 pages).

In the introduction he briefly covers the symbolism of Spartacus's later reputation (he and Julius Caesar are probably the two most famous names from ancient Rome to the general public). He has been hailed as a freedom fighter both by the political left, albeit sometimes in a rather romanticised way, as his aim was freedom and a peaceful life outside Italy for his followers, not the abolition of slavery as an institution; but also by the political right in the form of Ronald Reagan. His ultimate failure was probably inevitable, as despite the success of his guerilla tactics against complacent Roman generals, especially in the early stages of the revolt, his only plausible aim was escape from Italy and he faced the inexorable iron might of the Roman military machine. Nevertheless, we should not underestimate his significance. Even the little we do know shows he was an inspiring leader, and his earlier background in the Roman auxiliary forces gave him an understanding of Roman military tactics his fellow rebels lacked. In the author's words, "What began as a prison breakout by seventy-four men armed only with cleavers and skewers had turned into a revolt by thousands. And it wasn’t over: a year later the force would number roughly 60,000 rebel troops. With an estimated 1-1.5 million slaves in Italy, the rebels amounted to around 4 per cent of the slave population". He was clearly a force to be reckoned with and the Roman state only beat him when it sent one of its top people, Marcus Licinius Crassus, against him. Even then, it was only when the slave army split due to ethnic and other tensions that Crassus really began to succeed. The revolt represents one of the most dramatic series of events in Roman history, even in the extremely eventful first century BC filled with the doings of Caesar, Pompey, Cicero, Octavian, Mark Antony and others.

45. The Bright Pavilions A Prequel to The Herries Chronicles

Hugh Walpole was a prolific writer of historical novels between the wars, but is little heard of today. Among his many novels was a series called the Herries Chronicles, set in the Lake District between the 18th and early 20th centuries. As I am intending to read the first of these during my holiday there in a couple of weeks, I have now read this prequel novel, featuring earlier generations of the family during the Elizabethan era. The main protagonists are two Herries brothers, Nicholas, strong, extroverted amorous and down to earth; and Robin, introverted and other wordly, desiring universal brotherhood and peace, but also susceptible to influence by Catholic priests, at a time when the religion was persecuted in England and priests and those who sheltered them were liable to prosecution and worse. The writing style is very like that of 19th historical novelists like Sir Walter Scott and William Harrison Ainsworth, full of rich descriptions of the physical landscapes and emotional landscapes of the characters, although the references to sex here did not appear in the 19th century novels. There is frequently an undercurrent of homo-eroticism in Robin's relationships, reflecting I imagine the author's own homosexuality, necessarily kept in the closet at a time when this was illegal in this country. The characters become involved in a number of key historical events, for example the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, and the narrative contains many moments of drama and horror. I look forward to reading the series, though this novel was probably somewhat too long.

46. Lustrum - Robert Harris

As with the first novel in the trilogy, I am re-reading this second volume of Robert Harris's trilogy of novels about the life of the great Roman lawyer, orator and statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero, after seeing the second part of the RSC's excellent adaptation at the Gielgud Theatre in London, a fortnight after watching the first. Again, this novel comes across just as well as it did the first time of reading it, and is a real intelligent page turner, matching fully the quality and epic flow of the first book, with no mid-trilogy sagging of the narrative. The climaxes of the narrative revolve around: firstly, Cicero's consulship and his defeat of Catilina's rebellion; and secondly, the coming together of the first triumvirate of Caesar, Pompey and Crassus, and the true beginning of the end of the Roman republic. The human effects of these events on Cicero and his family and household are well portrayed, and offer a counterbalance to the hard core politicking and legal activity that necessarily dominates the narrative.

As ever there are some marvellous quotes, but one of my favourites is Tiro's: "It seemed to me at the time - and still does now, only even more so - an act of madness for a man to pursue power when he could be sitting in the sunshine and reading a book."

47. Katherine Christian - Hugh Walpole

This is the second prequel novel the author penned to his Herries Chronicles, four novels set in the Lake District from the 18th century onwards. This prequel follows on more or less immediately from the enjoyable and dramatic narrative of The Bright Pavilions, with Nicholas Herries married late in life and with a young son Robert, at the beginning of the 17th century. Despite this, I did not enjoy it as much and I don't think really worked as a novel. There is a great deal of description of the lives and personalities of the various Herries family members and simply not enough plot and drama, despite the backdrop of the country sliding towards Civil War as some family members take up either the Royalist or Parliamentary side. Sadly the author died while writing this novel and the story ends ironically on a moment of high drama as Robert, who does not want to take sides, sees his house invaded by Parliamentary soldiers who see him as an enemy, as he had been knighted by the King. Had the author lived, the rest of the novel would very likely have lifted the story as a whole. But as it stands, despite being as well written, this is a much weaker story than its predecessor; I also found the title character rather implausible.

It's just over half way through the year and I'm only now reading book no 48 - it's not a race, of course, but it's been many years since I have failed to read more than 100 books....

>71 john257hopper: Don't despair. The number is sometimes eclipsed by the type of book you read. I know when I read The Gulag Archipelago that was really equal to 4 books (and that's just part 1). This year I want to read part 2 and I have another book on Queen Mary of Scotts that is over 1100 pages in length...my "numbers" my suffer, but in reality, page wise, it's still the same.

Every year is different, ive never been this far ahead before (75). Usually I'm just squeaking in my hundred. But I had hip surgery and so was laid up with plenty of time to read, then I was hospitalized for asthma and read the whole time I was in. Now I'm on vacation and it has rained everyday, more reading! You will attain your goal!

48. Rogue Herries - Hugh Walpole

This is the first novel in the Herries Chronicles, a series of novels set in the Lake District, which I have read during my first week on holiday there, after reading the two sequels shortly beforehand. This one has a more organic feel than the prequels, as it follows in the main the life of the title character, Francis Herries (grandson to the Robert of Katherine Christian), and that of his son David. Set entirely in the Lake District and very nearby (occasional episodes in Penrith/Carlisle), it also brings across a love and huge feeling for the ebb and flow of life in the area during the 18th century, and for the beauty and wildness of the countryside. Numerous other members of the wider Herries clan make usually brief appearances, and there are very memorable female characters, in particular David's wife Sarah, and Mirabell, with whom Francis becomes obsessed and eventually marries. I came to care for the futures of these well-drawn characters. Wider historical events only rarely impinge on their lives, except in the case of the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion

As I said, the novel brings across very clearly the character of the Lake District as a region, as well as that of its inhabitants. Though it has been unusually dry during my holiday so far, as it has been everywhere, the novel contains a very evocative description of the more usual rainy conditions here:

"It was rain of a relentless, determined, soaking, penetrating kind. No other rain anywhere, at least in the British Isles (which have a prerogative of many sorts of rain), falls with so determined a fanatical obstinacy as does this rain. It is not that the sky in any deliberate mood decides to empty itself. It is rain that has but little connection either with earth or with sky, but rather has a life of its own, stern, remorseless and kindly. It falls in sheets of steely straightness, and through it is the rhythm of the beating hammer".

This is a beautifully written novel and I shall certainly read the following three volumes, though I will give the series a rest for now, having read three of them in a short space of time.

49. Journey Made in the Summer of 1794 - Ann Radcliffe

Ann Radcliffe is known chiefly as the author of a number of Gothic novels in the 1790s, in particular Mysteries of Udolpho, satirised by Jane Austen in Northanger Abbey. She also wrote this account of her travels in Holland, Germany and England. The English section focuses on the Lake District, hence my reading that section now during my holiday in this lovely area. Radcliffe's descriptions are very evocative and would be seen now as excessively flowery, but in general seem to suit the feelings that the landscape can evoke in the visitor to the region even today. She doesn't pull her punches in saying what are her favourite and least favourite lakes, being rather dismissive of Derwent Water and most of Windermere, but loving Ullswater. SHe is very fond of the word "sublime" and its derivatives to describe her impressions of the things she sees of which she approves. Her attitude towards the locals can be rather dismissive and/or patronising, but I have seen this in other early travel writings such as those of Mary Shelley. She can also show a, for the time, pretty typical English antipathy towards Catholicism: "...the ruins of monasteries and convents, which, though reason rejoices that they no longer exist, the eye may be allowed to regret." All in all, this is worthy of a read by a traveller to the Lakes.

50. Wordsworth - F W H Myers

This 1880 biography is pretty much a literary biography of Wordsworth's development as a writer, and his relationship to early 19th century English society. The personal aspects are very scantily covered. How many modern biographers would begin their work with a statement like: "there is but little of public interest, in Wordsworth’s life which has not already been given to the world"? Myers states that he will not, and indeed should not cover anything "inconsistent with the dignity either of the living or of the dead", as "it is best to leave the sanctuary of all hearts inviolate, and to respect the reserve not only of the living but of the dead". So there is no mention of Wordsworth's youthful relationship with a French woman, Annette Vallon, whom he declared he would marry, and which resulted in the birth of a daughter Caroline. To be fair, the author did support Caroline later in life, but this whole aspect of his life is passed over in silence, not uncommon with Victorian biographies of lauded literary figures (for example, Adolphus William Ward's biography of Charles Dickens contains no mention of his long time mistress Ellen Ternan).

These points aside, there is much of merit in this work, particularly for serious students of Wordsworth's poetry, or indeed of the Romantic movement, or of literature in the late 18th and early 19th centuries more generally. As a senior classicist, Myers writes with erudition and fluid grace, though this makes it slower for the modern non-expert reader to follow, especially when the references to classical and other authors come thick and fast. He does cover non-literary matters as well. The tracing of the author's political views is interesting. An early supporter of the French revolution, Wordsworth considered throwing in his lot with the moderate Girondins during his French sojourn in 1791-2, which would have meant almost certain death when the Jacobins took over and guillotined their opponents. Like many people, he was turned off the Revolution by the brutal excesses of the Reign of Terror, expressed in memorable terms by the author: "For first of all in that Revolution, Reason had appeared as it were in visible shape, and hand in hand with Pity and Virtue; then, as the welfare of the oppressed peasantry began to be lost sight of amid the brawls of the factions of Paris, all that was attractive and enthusiastic in the great movement seemed to disappear, but yet Reason might still be thought to find a closer realization here than among scenes more serene and fair; and, lastly, Reason set in blood and tyranny and there was no more hope from France"; and "....France's conduct towards Switzerland ..... decisively altered Wordsworth’s view. He saw her valiant spirit of self-defence corrupted into lust of glory; her eagerness for the abolition of unjust privilege turned into a contentment with equality of degradation under a despot’s heel".

Later Wordsworth became conservative in his views and opposed even reforms that are very moderate by our standards such as Catholic emancipation and the Great Reform Act; yet his conservatism was largely cultural and philosophical, rather than ideological. He loved his quiet and introspective life in the Lake District, and I totally understand why. His last 37 years were spent in the beautiful isolation of Rydal Mount, whose lovely gardens look over the beautiful and peaceful Rydal water. From the literary point of view, though, these was not his most productive years, and Myers considers his real genius limited to the 1798-1818 period at the latest, brusquely asserting that: "The gift then left him; he continued as wise and as earnest as ever, but his poems had no longer any potency, nor his existence much public importance". This includes his period as Poet Laureate in the last seven years of his life, when he produced no poems (he made his not having to do so a condition of accepting the post). During the heart of the productive period, he lived with his wife Mary and sister Dorothy at the more famous Dove Cottage by Grasmere, years of which were chronicled by Dorothy in her Grasmere Journal. Overall, I am glad I read this book, though it is difficult in places.

51. The Grasmere Journal, 1800-1803 - Dorothy Wordsworth

This is a journal kept by William Wordsworth's sister Dorothy covering two and a half years (mid 1800 to January 1803) of their lives in Dove Cottage in Grasmere, in the heart of the Lake District, a house which she shared with William and his wife Mary (and assorted others, including sometimes Samuel Coleridge). The journal was not intended for publication, and indeed was not published until nearly 50 years after William's and Dorothy's deaths. Like any such journal, it contains a lot of mundane and repetitive detail, but these contribute towards the ebb and flow of their lives as the seasons and years roll by in this beautiful corner of the country. Most people would say (then and now) they had an idyllic lifestyle, marked mostly by reading, writing, and the walks they do round Grasmere/Easedale and Rydal, gaining inspiration for William's poems, and to Ambleside and Keswick (and one longer journey down the eastern side of the country via Yorkshire to London, and across the Channel to Calais, in the late summer of 1802). Also recorded is, of course, the famous walk of 15 April 1802 in the woods beyond Gowbarrow Park where they saw the host of daffodils that inspired the poet's most famous creation. Their walking capacity is very high by our standards and walking to Ambleside and back, in winter, a distance of some three and a half miles, to check if there is any post to be collected, or to visit friends, is nothing out of the ordinary. On one occasion, Dorothy records walking to Keswick on a frosty day in November, a distance of some 12.5 miles, setting off at 5 minutes past 10 and arriving at half past 2. But life is not all a bed of roses; one thing that strikes the reader is how often both William and Dorothy are ill, the latter regularly having toothaches and headaches that incapacitate her, and William frequently prostrate with exhaustion through the exercise of his creative powers and general constitutional weakness. It seems a minor miracle they both lived into their 80s. And the outside world does get in: one thing that struck me was the regular appearance at the cottage of various beggars and other itinerants travelling through the area looking for work and/or money, reflections of economic (the early stirrings of the industrial revolution) and political (the Napoleonic wars) developments. In sum, this journal gives a good picture of the lifestyle and habits of the poet and his family at this stage in their lives, set against the beautiful backdrop of the Lakes.

52. Star of the North - D B John

This is a real edge-of-the-seat page turner of a thriller set in a country that has been much in the headlines over the last year or so with the roller coaster relationship between Kim Jong-Un and Donald Trump. This novel does not, however, focus primarily on nuclear weapons, but on North Korea's abduction programme, with the story beginning with the capture of a young Korean-American holidaying with her boyfriend on a beach in South Korea. While they are written off as having drowned, back in the USA, her identical twin sister, convinced she is alive, sets out to find her. The novel involves many of the most prominent and notorious aspects of the appalling North Korean regime, in particular the Gulag camps, where three generations of one family can live out their entire lives in slavery because of a political "offence" committed by one family member. Another key character is a Korean high official who tries to defect after becoming disillusioned with the regime he has loyally served all his life, following a trip to the USA leading a delegation negotiating for more hard currency to support his country's ailing economy. Many of the characters and the situations they experience are based on incidents mentioned in real defectors' accounts. Despite this giving the novel well-grounded authenticity, I did find aspects of the conclusion of the resolution of the plot a bit far-fetched. An excellent read.

>78 john257hopper: on my wishlist this goes!

53. The Lake Poets - Gavin D Smith

I bought this lovely book in Sam Read the bookseller in Grasmere on my recent holiday. It looks at the lives and poems and other works of: William and Dorothy Wordsworth; Samuel Taylor Coleridge and his less well known son, (David) Hartley Coleridge; Robert Southey; and Thomas de Quincey, tracing their interrelationships, and how the landscape of the Lakes was reflected in their works, richly illustrated with photographs. I was particularly taken by a couple of poignant poems Dorothy Wordsworth wrote in the early 1830s as she was progressively succumbing to the mental illness that blighted the last two decades of her life, Thoughts on My Sick Bed and When Shall I Tread Your Garden Path? A lovely book for anyone interested in the Lakes or the Romantic poets.

I must just record one howler, in a photo caption on page 12 which mentions a visit by John Keats (not a Lakes poet) to the Castle Rigg stone circle in "1882", 61 years after his tragically young death from tuberculosis at the age of 25.

54. The Atlantis Gene: A Thriller (The Origin Mystery, Book 1) - A G Riddle

I was prompted to read this technothriller-cum-conspiracy theory novel, having heard the author being interviewed two weeks ago on Len Edgerly's Kindle Chronicles weekly podcast. I found this a bit of a mess, to be honest. There were some powerful elements - ancient Atlantis, terrorism and counter-terrorism, treachery, plagues, archaeology and palaeo-history - but it didn't hang together for me. I found almost all the characters two-dimensional, and largely interchangeable - I sometimes lost track who was on which side and found I didn't really care enough to remind myself. A bit of a shame, as there is a powerful science fiction idea here at the heart of the story - what caused the sudden explosion in human intelligence 60,000 years ago that made homo sapiens sapiens the dominant species on the planet. I probably won't bother with the sequels, but wouldn't rule it out entirely.

55. Twenty Years After - Alexandre Dumas

This is the banally-named sequel to Dumas's much more famous The Three Musketeers, once again bringing together D'Artagnan and his former comrades from the various paths in life that the events of the earlier novel left them in. There are the usual swashbuckling scenes, daring escapes and dramatic confrontations, but the villain here, Mordaunt, the son of the villainess in the earlier novel, is nowhere near as striking and memorable. Part of the novel takes place in England at the time of the trial and execution of King Charles I (and which gives rise to a memorable comment from Aramis showing his contempt for England and the English - "We shall be murdered there....I hate the English - they are coarse, like every nation that swills beer"). The politics of the Fronde are rather confusing (and I remember them as such from my History A level 33 years ago!) and overall this novel is not as strong as its predecessor.

>82 john257hopper: on my TBR pile but can't find any enthusiasm for opening it!

82 - Hi Tess, I sound rather negative about it, but it was still overall an enjoyable read, though not on a par with The Three Musketeers.

56. No Cunning Plan: My Unexpected Life from Baldrick to Time Team and Beyond - Tony Robinson

This is the autobiography of the wonderful Tony Robinson, comic actor, historian, archaeologist and TV presenter. For an actor's autobiography, it is long at 400 pages. While he is most famous for his iconic portrayal of Baldrick in Blackadder, and this is, of course, covered, albeit fairly briefly, any reader looking for lots of anecdotes about that 1980s comedy classic will not find them here. There is rather more about his various experiences of filming Time Team, from which he seems to have derived more pleasure. His early life in radical theatre in the 1960s and 70s is interesting. His campaigning for the Labour Party is also well covered, including his four years as an NEC member in the early 2000s. He is also very moving writing about his parents' struggles with dementia and his attempts to raise the profile of this issue. The most recent places I have seen him in are live at a talk at the Gloucester History Festival last year, and on DVD in a series Coast to Coast where he walks from Cumbria, through the Lake District, Yorkshire Dales and Yorkshire Moors to the north eastern coast. Everything in which he appears is made more watchable by his presence.

57. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

This short novel (barely 100 pages) is often cited as one of the great classics of 20th century literature and has been studied by countless students in the English-speaking world (as a touch of cynicism, its short nature has no doubt helped considerably with this). It concerns a period in the lives of two itinerant agricultural labourers in 1930s California, George Milton and Lennie Small. The former is the brains of the pair, who looks after and protects, but is also frequently exasperated by, by the unintelligent Lennie. The latter's lack of intelligence is combined with a gentle and naive disposition, but also great strength, the latter combination of factors giving rise to the tragic denouement of the story. There are some other interesting characters, including the black stable hand, Crooks. Despite the background of poverty, oppression and aimlessness in the lives of the protagonists, caused by wider national economic factors, the novel feels as if it takes place claustrophobically in its own bubble, cut off from the outside world. Despite its strong themes and emotional impact, I would say this is not really an all-time classic with long-lasting influence, at least not in the same league as other American classics such as To Kill a Mockingbird.

58. Picnic at Hanging Rock - Joan Lindsay

This is a re-read of this classic Australian mystery novel, prompted by watching the current BBC TV series. When I first read it 13 years ago, I thought it was less good than the superbly atmospheric 1975 film version, as I was somewhat bored by the doings of the more minor characters, which I thought distracted from the tightly plotted horror and suspense. This time round, I felt those elements melded together more organically to add to the mystery and sense that the events set off by the disappearance of Miranda, Marion and Miss McCraw are like ripples from a stone thrown into a pond. Excellent stuff, and the fact that the mystery remained unsolved in the published version was undoubtedly the right decision.

59. The Secret of Hanging Rock: With Commentaries by John Taylor, Yvonne Rousseau and Mudrooroo - Joan Lindsay

This very short book contains the unpublished final chapter of Joan Lindsay's classic Picnic at Hanging Rock. Her decision to remove this chapter before its publication was to my mind absolutely the right decision; the final chapter is, from a view of the text as a human mystery novel, very disappointing and leaves as many questions unanswered as it attempts to answer. The book includes a few commentaries offering explanations for the final chapter, which I found both mildly interesting and a bit annoying at the same time. Perhaps the most striking conclusion, though, was John Taylor's statement that the omission of the final chapter created the modern Australian film industry "because it is highly unlikely that there would have been a rush to buy the film rights in 1972 if Chapter Eighteen had not been deleted".

60. Dream within a Dream - Michael Fuery

This is a spin off novel from Joan Lindsay's Picnic at Hanging Rock. It provides an explanation for Miranda and Marion's disappearance from there on Valentine's day 1900, involving time travel and confusion between three time zones - 1900, 1950 and 1999/2000 - and the characters of Miranda St Clare and Claire Hammond and their families. I am a big fan of time travel and timeslip stories, so I loved this aspect and its being based on a wonderful atmospheric novel made this on paper a perfect read for me, with a great sense of mystery and otherworldliness being built up throughout. That said, this was not perfect. Some of the dialogue seemed a bit stiff and artificial, and (without giving away spoilers) some characters seemed to accept the otherworldly aspects of the plot too readily for my credibility. There were some minor internal inconsistencies in characters' ages, dates and lengths of marriages (even allowing for the timeslip aspect, that is), and inconsistencies in recalling some of the lesser aspects from the original Lindsay novel. Finally, there were a lot of often cringeworthy typos in the text, which appears to have been very poorly proofread, if at all. These were not enough to puncture my basic enjoyment of the story (though I had to grit my teeth rather!).

61. The Weirdstone of Brisingamen - Alan Garner

I was prompted to read this children's classic fantasy novel, first published in 1960, by seeing a post on Alan Garner in a blog by someone I know professionally involved in teaching children to read and enjoy literature. It's also to an extent a re-read as I read at least some of it as a teenager in the late 70s/early 80s, though I recalled nothing of it. It's wonderfully written and imaginative, the story of two children, Susan and Colin, who get involved with a variety of good and evil fantasy creatures, seeking the significant eponymous stone, chasing through caves and across hills, forests and plains in Cheshire, the author's native area. While it's definitely high quality, and gripping in places, I found it didn't really stir me emotionally quite as much as I thought it might. I will read the famous sequel, The Moon of Gomrath, and probably the third and very much later volume in the trilogy, Boneland.

62. A Wrinkle in Time - Madeleine L'Engle

This is another fantasy novel for older children published in the early 1960s, though unlike the Alan Garner novel I read just before this, this one contains much more of a mixture of fantasy and science fiction ideas. Meg and her brother Charles Wallace and another boy Calvin meet three mysterious "witches" who go by the delightful names of Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who and Mrs Which. In search of Meg and Charles's father, who disappeared a year ago while supposedly carrying out top secret government work, the children are then whisked off through the eponymous medium to another planet threatened by a mysterious dark force which also threatens the Earth. However, most of the action takes place on the planet Camazotz, ruled over by a disembodied brain which enforces total uniformity on its inhabitants in the name of guaranteeing order and happiness, which is quite a stark idea, opening up readers' minds to concepts of personal freedom and the potential price that can be paid for order and happiness (or at least, as here, an absence of unhappiness or pain, which is not the same thing at all). The children's characters are quite clearly delineated and more three dimensional than many child central characters in young people's literature. The ending was rather abrupt, though I understand the author went to write a quintet of these novels.

63. The Time Machine - H G Wells

I thought a re-read of this seminal science fiction work was long overdue, as I hadn't read it for nearly 20 years. It deserves all the accolades it has received. It is a taut and crisp narrative of only a little over 100 pages, but within it contains many of the basic science fiction and time travel ideas that have formed a huge part of subsequent literature, film and ŧelevision; plus reflective parallels on class divisions and hostility in contemporary late Victorian Britain. A novel of ideas par excellence; it is of no importance that we never find out the Time Traveller's name.

64. The Heretic's Creed - Fiona Buckley

This is the fourteenth book in the Ursula Stannard series of Elizabethan mysteries. Reading this series over the last dozen years has made me feel I am growing along with the regular characters, understanding the many facets of their very three dimensional personalities. The plot this time revolves around ownership of a Medieval book promoting the heliocentric solar system, a theory that was regarded by the Church as heretical. There is a very interesting cast of characters, particularly the ladies of Stonemoor House, and some colourful rustic types. This and the previous novel have restored my enjoyment in the plots of a series that had become a bit repetitive. I have the next book already, and there is already a 16th one that has just been published.

65. Uncollected Short Stories - H G Wells

This set of stories from the Delphi Classics edition of the Complete Works of H G Wells is a bit of a misnomer, as half of the stories also appear in my single volume "Complete Short Stories of HG Wells" published in 1966 for the author's centenary (meaning, of course, the other half do not, so that wonderful book's title was a misnomer also). I was specifically prompted to read this now as it contains the story "The Chronic Argonauts", which contained Wells's first ideas that later went into "The Time Machine". The other highlights are a revised version of the author's classic "The Country of the Blind", with a more dramatic ending; and "The Land Ironclads", in which, in 1903, Wells predicted military vehicles that are effectively tanks (albeit larger than any real world tank). The other stories are mostly fairly lightweight and humorous, but also include a couple of stories depicting early humans, which reflect the state of science and assumptions of their time. All in all, not a classic collection, but the above mentioned titles make it worth a look.

66. Suite Francaise - Irene Nemirovsky

This is a re-read of this re-discovered masterpiece of the Nazi occupation of France, after watching the very good film version last weekend. Even before the war, Irene Nemirovsky had led an interesting life. Born in Russia in 1903, the daughter of an upper middle class Jewish businessman, her family fled to France after the Bolshevik revolution. From an early age, she showed great gifts as a writer for creating realistic characters, with detailed background and motivations. She produced a number of novels in the 1920s and 30s, married and had two daughters. Suite Francaise was written in secret in tiny handwriting in a leather-bound notebook, never (of course) published under the Nazi occupation, and not rediscovered until 1998 when her daughter Diane Epstein felt able to open that old notebook. Irene had intended this work to be a five part saga, detailing the whole experiences of the French people under Nazi occupation, but was only able to complete two parts, Storm in June and Dolce, before the Nazis came for her. She quickly died in Auschwitz in August 1942, followed by her husband, who had frantically tried to find her, gassed on arrival in the death camp three months later. The police came for their daughters also, but neighbours were able to hide them and pass them to safety (after the war, Irene's mother refused to have anything to do with her own orphaned granddaughters).

What is amazing about this work is the author's observation of the minutiae of the lives and outlooks of her characters and the places they live. Storm in June concerns the experiences of five families or sets of individuals, all unknown to each other, as they flee Paris after the Nazi blitzkrieg brings the invaders to the gates of the capital with dizzying speed. The sense of desperation of these internal refugees fleeing along the roads with their possessions, strafed by enemy bombing, is powerful. Many of them show their worst side, becoming selfish and even inhuman towards people outside their immediate circle, in their desperation. Only the Michauds, a quiet couple working for bank, emerge well from this desperate period. Dolce is, as its name suggests, a more peaceful and slower moving part, set in the countryside. A German officer is billeted on the Langellier house, consisting of young Lucile and her mother in law, absent Lucile's husband, Gaston. Their differing reactions to the presence of the charming and attentive German officer represent in microcosm the differing reactions of members of French society, feeling natural hostility against those who have invaded their country and taken away their menfolk, while needing to reach an accommodation with their new masters to continue a tolerable life. These tensions are laid bare in numerous small and large incidents affecting this small family and other villagers, reflecting the clash between the great struggles of the outside world and the petty struggles of daily personal life. This is a magnificent novel, and we are very lucky Diane Epstein opened that old notebook of her mother's twenty years ago. The novel is supplemented by the preface to the original French edition, plus appendices detailing the author's thought processes behind the planning of the saga and, most poignantly, letters to and from her and her husband as they struggle to preserve their quality of life and then their physical lives.

67. The Royal Succession - Maurice Druon

This the fourth book in the author's Accursed Kings series of novels set in early 14th century France during a developing crisis for the ruling Capetian dynasty. King Louis X has died young suddenly, leaving a pregnant widow Clemence, and the realm must wait in abeyance to see if she gives birth to a son. By the machinations of Louis's younger brother Philippe and other relatives acting either for or against him, chaos and civil war threaten to break out. Clemence gives birth to a son, who becomes King Jean I, but dies after only a few days, though there is a twist in the tail. Featuring the usual mix of plotting, betrayal, murder and mayhem, this is another colourful slice of Medieval historical fiction. These re-releases trumpet George R R Martin's statement that this series is the original Games of Thrones, but I think this is true only superficially, and I disagree strongly with his view in the foreword that he has "always regarded historical fiction and fantasy as sisters under the skin, two genres separated at birth". Great stuff.

>95 john257hopper:
>96 john257hopper:

Both on my wish list they go!

Glad my reviews are helpful to you, Tess :)

68. A Dance With Dragons: Part 2 After The Feast (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 5) - George R R Martin

So, finally, with this book, I have completed the currently published A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones series, nearly four and a half years after reading the first, and in my view best, book, the one actually called Game of Thrones. This final part felt rather scrappy, and only Daenerys Targaryen's story thread really held my interest. Some of my other favourite characters, Arya Stark and Tyrion Lannister, were not in it enough for me. The book ends on a cliffhanger, paving the way for successor The Winds of Winter, which seems to have been forthcoming for ages. Looking back at my reviews and ratings, and taking together the two volumes into which both books 3 and 5 are separated in the UK, I have given a lower rating to each successive book: 5; 4; 3.75; 3.5; 3. That said, I am sure I will read The Winds of Winter when it finally emerges.

69. The House Without Windows and Eepersip's Life There - Barbara Newhall Follett

As recently as 48 hours ago, I had never heard of this book or author. I stumbled across her while procrastinatingly surfing Youtube and watching a video on famous people who disappeared. Barbara Newhall Follett was a child prodigy who first wrote this book at the age of 9 on her father's typewriter, with no intention of its being published. The typescript was tragically destroyed in a house fire, recreated from memory, and published in 1927 when the author was 12. It is a beautiful story of childlike innocence, which could have been written only by a young child. Eepersip (I don't know how the author came up with this odd name) runs away from her parents' house to live in nature, making friends with animals and living on berries and roots - this description might make the novel sound either twee or ridiculous, but this is beautifully written, full of the joys of the natural world as seen through the eyes of an introverted child for whom the benefits of teenage and adult civilisation are as yet a mystery, and solitude in nature an ideal to be attained. The author's own (presumably) short life was deeply troubled - her father abandoned the family a couple of years after the book's publication (by which time she had published another novel), and she and her mother faced poverty, against the backdrop of the Great Depression. Later, after an initially happy marriage where she and her husband travelled widely together and she wrote, but never published, two more books, she discovered that he was having an affair, and on 7 December 1939, after an argument, she walked out of their home and was never seen again. There has been much speculation about her trying to relive Eepersip's experience, but it seems more likely to me that she committed suicide following depression, perhaps unable to cope with the sense of abandonment she felt, being a highly sensitive person with a rich inner intellectual and spiritual life, clashing with the hard realities of human relationships. But we will never know for sure.

70. The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit - Michael Finkel

This is a haunting and intriguing story about a young American man, Christopher Knight, who in 1986 decided, apparently on the spur of the moment, to abandon his life and live in the midst of thick forest in Maine. He was there for 27 years, almost entirely without speaking to a single other human being and may, in the author's words, be "the most solitary known person in all of human history". He supported this lifestyle choice through theft of food and other necessities (including a wide range of books) from holiday cabins around the nearby lakes. Becoming over time the legendary (and/or notorious) North Pond hermit, he was eventually captured during a raid on a canteen in April 2013. Charged with a series of burglaries (though only a fraction of those he had actually committed), he was imprisoned for seven months. Reactions to Knight and his activities varied widely, from sympathy for his sense of alienation from a world he could not understand or relate to, coupled with offers to let him live alone again with goods supplied to him legally, to disdain for the crimes he had committed and the sense of insecurity they had generated among the residents of the North Pond holiday cabins - and sometimes combinations of these differing attitudes. The author, himself an introvert with an admitted love for solitude, makes great efforts to understand Knight's mindset, without minimising his offences. He examines the role of hermits and other recluses in various historical and contemporary societies, and attitudes towards solitude from various writers, for example Ralph Waldo Emerson, who wrote that: “People are to be taken in very small doses. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself”, or Sartre who wrote “Hell is other people”. The author had several difficult conversations with Knight in prison; the latter articulated his own motives thus: “What I miss most in the woods is somewhere in between quiet and solitude. What I miss most is stillness”; seeing himself as a square peg, one that everybody he encounters "is smashing at him, pounding on him, trying to jam him into a round hole." An interesting read that prompts much reflection on the nature of relationships between individuals and society, and the vastly differing needs different individuals have for these relationships (or for their absence).

71. The Tailor of Gloucester - Beatrix Potter

This delightful story was the author's own favourite, and is the only one whose central character is a human being rather than an animal. I was prompted to read this following a visit to Gloucester for its annual history festival, which included a short Beatrix Potter walk round the city centre. The story is based on the life of a real Gloucester tailor, John Prichard, but the house now occupied by the Beatrix Potter museum and touted in the book as the tailor's shop in College Court is not the historical Prichard's shop, which was in nearby Westgate and is now the (very unassuming) Sword Inn. Anyway, it is of course a charming story.

72. Warriors of the Storm - Bernard Cornwell

This is the ninth book in the seemingly interminable Uhtred of Bebbanburg series. The historical backdrop to this book is the struggle by Ethelfleda, Lady of the Mercians (and daughter of Alfred the Great) to recapture North Mercian towns like Chester from the Danes. This was the usual course of attacks, sieges, bloodshed, betrayal and the set piece battle at the end. Having placed his son in law Sigtryggr on the throne of Northumbria, Uhtred is heading north to recapture his ancestral home, currently occupied by his cousin. That hook will keep me reading, I am sure, despite my periodic weariness with the bloodshed.

73. Othello - William Shakespeare

I read this seminal tragedy for the first time in anticipation of seeing it next week at The Globe. I'm ashamed to say I have read comparatively little Shakespeare and this is only the sixth complete play I have read. It remains a classic exposition of values of racism, revenge, jealousy and repentance. There are comparatively few characters, which makes it easy to focus on the main four or five and really get under the skin of their motivations.

74. The Price of Blood - Patricia Bracewell

This is the second book in the author's projected trilogy of novels covering the colourful and dramatic life of Emma of Normandy, queen to both the Saxon king of England, Ethelred II the Unready and the Danish conqueror king Canute. This novel covers the crucial years as England is ravaged by successive waves of Viking invasions, only finally driven away by the payment of enormous bribes, for example 48,000 pounds of silver. There are many interesting characters on both the Saxon and Danish sides, and some shocking and horrific incidents. I didn't enjoy this quite as much as the first book, as I got a little tired of Ethelred's bloody-mindedness (if he was really like this, he was not just ill-advised, but completely lacking in judgement and what we would now call people management skills), and his being haunted by the spirit of his murdered step brother, king Edward the Martyr. I wonder how much of Emma's life is to be covered by this trilogy, as she has another 40 years of life left to be potentially covered in book three.

75. The Twelfth Department - William Ryan

This is the third novel featuring Moscow CID man Alexei Korolev - an honest man trying to do his job investigating crime at the height of Stalin's Great Terror in 1937. Like its predecessors, this creates very well the atmosphere of oppression and the banality of arbitrary terror in a totalitarian society where even total loyalty to Stalin and the Party line might not be enough to survive. The plot again contains a heady mixture of elements, murder, faction fighting within the state security organs, secret experimentation and a direct threat to Korolev's own twelve year old son, Yuri. There is an eclectic mix of characters and I quite enjoy these novels, though somehow I always have an inchoate feeling that the various plot elements don't hang together as well as they might. One more specific sad reflection that struck me was when Yuri tells his dad that in his school: "Some of the kids’ folks have no books at all – they’re the lucky ones", i.e. because this means their parents are safer from the threat of arbitrary arrest for owning banned literature.

76. Edmund Ironside - poss. William Shakespeare

This anonymous Elizabethan play about the struggle between the Saxon King Edmund Ironside (son of Ethelred the Unready) and the Danish King Canute was discovered only in the 19th century, as a unique copy in a collection of texts inherited by the British Museum from a private collection. A few Shakespeare scholars consider this to be an early work of the Bard, based on the inclusion of certain words first used by Shakespeare, or rare words used by him. These scholars also consider that this bears some similarity to Titus Andronicus, not least in the level of bloody violence in the script. However, the attribution of this play to Shakespeare is not widely accepted by scholars, and I am not convinced myself; it seems crude and some of the lines cringe-inducing, even for an early work by the Bard. The fact that it was never mentioned in his lifetime also seems to tell against its authorship. That said, the anachronistic inclusion of an Earl of Southampton might raise one's eyebrows!

77. The Winter's Tale - William Shakespeare

This is another Shakespeare play I have read in anticipation of seeing it next weekend at The Globe, as I did a fortnight ago with Othello. However, I found this play to be nowhere near as enjoyable. The plot seems too thin and insubstantial in practice for five acts, and the atmosphere of fantasy does not work for me - this is considered one of the Bard's "problem plays", neither a true tragedy nor a comedy, though containing elements of both. Like Othello, it is marked by themes of jealousy and remorse, but nowhere near as vividly and convincingly for me.

78. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

After nearly three weeks, I have finished this mammoth satirical novel of late Georgian life, after watching the excellent ITV adaptation. Despite some rambling chapters, especially in the middle, this is a brilliant satire of life in that era, covering a whole range of human emotions and weaknesses, with some great characters. Becky Sharp is one of the most manipulative characters in 19th century fiction, but it is easy to see why she fools so many people. Amelia Sedley is much more of a stereotypical passive Victorian young lady, but still has interesting facets that lift her above similar characters in other 19th century novels. George Osborne is fairly shallow, but dies half way through the novel, so it is his memory that is a character, at least for Amelia, for the remainder of the story. Rawdon Crawley, who marries Becky, is also fairly shallow, but elicits more sympathy, not least due to his genuine affection for their son, a trait that Becky entirely, and cruelly, lacks. There are many interesting minor characters (though I do get rather confused by the various generations of the Crawley family - a family tree would be useful). My edition contained the
wonderful original illustrations by the author, which were often very amusing, especially the supercilious expression on Becky's face each time she is depicted. Each of the 67 chapters was also headed by an illustration around the initial capital in the style of a Medieval manuscript - these often seemed to have little or no connection to the story, but were a nice and amusing addition. Overall a brilliant novel.

79. Life of William Shakespeare - Sir Sidney Lee

This is an old biography of the Bard published at the end of the 19th century, included in the Delphi Classics edition of the Complete Works. It summarises the known facts of his life and the origins and performance history of each of his plays, plus how his work was interpreted in the nearly three centuries following his death. It also includes discussion of all the claimed portraits and signatures known at the time. Even at the end of the 19th century, Shakespeare's plays were being read and played across the world in all continents; as the author says, "Hamlet and Othello, Lear and Macbeth, Falstaff and Shylock, Brutus and Romeo, Ariel and Caliban are studied in almost every civilised tongue as if they were historic personalities, and the chief of the impressive phrases that fall from their lips are rooted in the speech of civilised humanity." There is also an overlong appendix, which I skimmed only, looking at a range of other issues, including the history of the sonnet as a literary form in the 16th century. Some of this will have been superseded by more recent discoveries and scholarship, but this is quite a useful if dated reference work.

80. Kitty Peck and the Music Hall Murders - Kate Griffin

This is a murder mystery set in the seedy theatres and backstreets of London in 1880. The atmosphere and the sense of time are well described, and the characters rounded and with interesting backstories. Despite these strengths, I can't say I hugely enjoyed this, perhaps because of some of the seediness and degradation involved which left a nasty taste in the mouth. Some aspects of the plot seemed a bit implausible as well. That said, I liked the central character enough to read the sequel, in which she seems set to rise in the world in which she lives.

81. Plague Pits and River Bones - Karen Charlton

This is the fourth in this wonderful series of murder mystery novels set in early 19th century England. Bow Street Runners Detective Stephen Lavender and Constable Ned Woods are a very likeable and believable pair, and their family members are striking and interesting characters in their own rights also. The plot of this one took perhaps longer to coalesce its various strands than the other novels, but it turned out to combine a number of elements relevant to the England of 1812: slave owners trying to evade the outlawing of the slave trade in the British Empire, which took place just five years beforehand; and the assassination of Spencer Perceval, the only Prime Minister in British history to have suffered that fate; plus also a more "ordinary" murder, a good measure of gang robbery, and civil unrest. It's a heady mix, but well handled and this is another great read.

82. The Long and Winding Road - Alan Johnson

This is the third and final volume of memoirs by the former Labour Cabinet Minister and trade union leader. This covers the period from around 1990 up to his being appointed to his final and highest post in government as Home Secretary in June 2009. Of necessity therefore this covers more of his public life than his personal one, so is in a sense more of a straightforward political memoir than its predecessors (and this period generally saw more stability in his personal and family life anyway, albeit punctuated by the tragic death of his daughter aged 32). Nevertheless, it is written in the same highly engaging and self-deprecating style as those earlier volumes and I raced through it in three days. Highlights for me included: his leadership of the fight against Post Office privatisation and break up under the Major government, a rare example of a successful trade union-led but broadly based campaign to overturn a very unpopular government policy; and his fight as MP for Hull West from 1997 for the rights of the distant-water trawlermen in the city, whose fishing fleets had been blighted following the "Cod Wars" of the 1970s. He was one of the very few examples of Labour politicians who made the successful transitions from leadership of a trade union to one of the highest offices in government (the only other one really was Ernest Bevin). One of his most prominent characteristics has been his ability to negotiate a reasonable compromise and get a decent, if not perfect result, seeing the "necessary components of success in negotiating a settlement as mutual respect, and indeed trust, between negotiators, the capacity to see the situation from the point of view of the other side of the table and confidence in the ability of the negotiators to deliver the eventual deal". Through these pragmatic means he has achieved more for social justice than those "whose finger-jabbing certitudes had been part of the reason for Labour’s long period languishing in opposition". Johnson was successful in government, though arguably his energies were dissipated through the excessive number of Cabinet reshuffles that marked the Labour government, especially under Tony Blair, when he held five Cabinet positions in six years - Work and Pensions, Trade and Industry, Education, Health and Home Secretary. This appears to be the final volume in these memoirs - he has been much less prominent since Labour went into opposition in 2010, and was only briefly shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer. His leadership of the Labour Remain campaign in 2016 was less than stellar, though to be fair it was difficult to make headway under an anti-European leader like Corbyn. I have hugely enjoyed this trilogy of memoirs, which contain much that is warm and human and non-political in addition to Johnson's trade union and political careers, fascinating as these have been as well.

83. The Vampyre - John William Polidori

I am no fan of Halloween, but this is a good time of year to read a Gothic horror story. This short story first published in 1819 was originally wrongly attributed to Byron. Despite the attribution of Henry Colburn in this edition, he was the publisher and the author was actually John William Polidori, a companion of Byron at one of the most famous literary encounters in history on the shores of Lake Geneva, with the Shelleys, as a result of which Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein. This short story is believed to be the earliest work depicting what later became the classic prototype of a vampire in literature, pre-dating by over 50 years Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla and by nearly 80 years Bram Stoker's Dracula. It's quite atmospheric and sparsely written, wearing its horror very lightly, but building a sense of mystery around the figure of Lord Ruthven. An important piece of genre fiction.

84. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson

This is a re-read of this classic 19th century novella which has been the inspiration behind so many spin-offs since. It is a taut and atmospheric piece of writing, and the conclusion that Jekyll and Hyde are one and the same, two sides of the same being, only becomes evident near the end - it is hard for us to understand how this would have shocked and thrilled the reader in 1886, so familiar has the Jekyll and Hyde motif become.

85. February 1809 - Karen Charlton

This is a prequel to the author's Catching the Eagle, a novel based on the life of her husband's ancestor, Jamie Charlton, who was tried for burglary in a community where the lives of he and many others were blighted by poverty and hunger. This prequel contains incidents that could not be covered in the main novel, but which give colour and texture to the fictionalised lives of these real people who lived in rural Northumberland two hundred years ago. I will now read the main novel.

86. Catching the Eagle - Karen Charlton

This novel is based on the life story of the author's husband's ancestor Jamie Charlton, a farm labourer accused in 1809 of robbing a vast amount of rent money (over £1,000) from his employer. While he seems to be innocent (though the novel doesn't quite make this absolutely clear beyond doubt), he splashes around money he has obtained from elsewhere and pays off a lot of debts in a short space of time. He generally acts in a cocksure way, spending money on brandy and gambling while his family goes hungry, so he is not a particularly sympathetic character, regardless of his guilt or innocence of the crime. He is discharged at a preliminary hearing due to lack of evidence, but then a year later tried and condemned to death, following new highly suspect "evidence" told by a cellmate. The judge has doubts and recommends clemency, and Jamie is eventually transported to Australia. There are many colourful and interesting characters, including the Bow Street Runners Lavender and Woods from the author's separate detective series, whose real world counterparts really did investigate the accusations against Jamie Charlton. Having read the four books from that series, the Bow Street Runners are much less sympathetic characters here, and only play a small part in proceedings. A good read, and I will now go on to read the author's non-fictional account of how she and her husband did the genealogical research that formed the basis of this novel.

87. Seeking our Eagle - Karen Charlton

This is the author's non-fictional account of how she and her husband researched his family history and in particular his 4 greats grandfather, Jamie Charlton, who was convicted of robbery in 1810 and sentenced to transportation to New South Wales, as told in her novel Catching the Eagle. The story of discovery, which eventually goes back to the early 18th century, is as fascinating as a novel in itself, and reveals other interesting stories both before and after Jamie's conviction and sentencing. It would be good to know what happened to Jamie after he was transported - in a postscript to this book, the author says she is writing a sequel to Catching the Eagle, but this has never appeared, she concentrating on her wonderful Detective Lavender series instead. Great stuff.

88. Forgotten Victory: The First World War: Myths and Realities - Gary Sheffield

"The First World War was a just and necessary war fought against a militarist, aggressive autocracy. In Britain and the United States it is a forgotten victory. It has remained forgotten for too long."

With this conclusion, the author ends this work which embodies the arguments of the critical mass of modern day historians of the Great War who, taking into account the experiences and knowledge of people at the time, rather than relying on hindsight, have challenged the view that the war was wholly futile and pointless, a pure and simple chaos consisting of trenches, mud and poetry, with little to choose between the warring states. The battles of the Western Front rightly remain the core focus of this and any other history of the war, but the growing role of technology such as tanks, aeroplanes and more efficient artillery and explosives in turning the tide of the war are also covered. The war at sea, often overlooked, is also vital in understanding how Britain was able to keep the Channel open for the supply of the army in France and Belgium. Crucial are the lessons learned after the horrors of the Somme in 1916: following this, the BEF and Haig underwent a "learning curve" or at least a sometimes erratic "learning process", involving better co-ordination of artillery and infantry and better use of communications, which bore fruit as the war of attrition eventually ground down their opponents' resources. Thus the war in 1917-18 was of a very different character from its course in the preceding years, though this was by no means of course a simple linear improvement in the Allies' fortunes. This is a fascinating and very readable exploration of issues connected with the Great War.

89. My Own Story - Emmeline Pankhurst

This is the autobiography of the great suffragette leader, written on the eve of the First World War when the struggle for women's right to vote was not yet won, and just at the time when she had a great falling out with her daughter Sylvia and others over some of the militant tactics of the Women's Social and Political Union. There is comparatively little about the author's early life here. She was born Emmeline Goulden, and grew up in a highly politicised family, acquiring experience of the poverty and injustice of working women's lives when became a Poor Law Guardian. She married a prominent suffrage supporter, barrister Richard Pankhurst, who drafted the first women's enfranchisement parliamentary bill in 1870. The bulk of the book recounts the increasingly bitter and militant struggles of the WPSU from around 1906 onwards, starting from rejections of the repeated petitions and requests for meetings with Campbell-Bannerman, Asquith and other Liberal government figures, suffrage bills being passed at second reading in the Commons, only to be dropped or have further progress frustrated by filibustering. This led to frustration and adoption of more militant tactics including window breaking, letter bombs and arson of (empty) buildings: "We had exhausted argument. Therefore either we had to give up our agitation altogether, as the suffragists of the eighties virtually had done, or else we must act, and go on acting, until the selfishness and the obstinacy of the Government was broken down, or the Government themselves destroyed". Pankhurst justifies these tactics by comparing them to the violence in earlier campaigns for democracy through the 19th century and earlier: "The militancy of men, through all the centuries, has drenched the world with blood, and for these deeds of horror and destruction men have been rewarded with monuments, with great songs and epics. The militancy of women has harmed no human life save the lives of those who fought the battle of righteousness". This bitter period was also marked by shocking violence of the police towards the suffragettes, the horrible force feeding of suffragettes and the hunger strikes, which provoked further acts of militancy.

Looking back from the perspective of 2018, a century after women first won the vote (albeit only those over 30 until 1928), it is easy to see Pankhurst as a great pioneer in achieving a simple and obvious measure of basic justice, for which she is rightly lauded. Yet some of the militant tactics increasingly adopted by the WSPU alienated some of the most prominent suffragettes and other supporters, and few would defend the use of such tactics by campaigning groups today. Pankhurst's philosophy was total dedication to the cause of women's suffrage, avoiding all distractions of getting involved in other social issues and causes ("No member of the W.S.P.U. divides her attention between suffrage and other social reforms. We hold that both reason and justice dictate that women shall have a share in reforming the evils that afflict society, especially those evils bearing directly on women themselves. Therefore, we demand, before any other legislation whatever, the elementary justice of votes for women". This tactic can be justified against the illiberalism on this issue of the leaders of the Liberal Party, which many early suffragettes supported ("our long alliance with the great parties, our devotion to party programmes, our faithful work at elections, never advanced the suffrage cause one step. The men accepted the services of the women, but they never offered any kind of payment".); nevertheless, it does seem to have become very narrow and Pankhurst's leadership of the organisation stifling and autocratic to the extent of her viewing it as more akin to a paramilitary organisation ("we have no annual meeting, no business sessions, no elections of officers. The W.S.P.U. is simply a suffrage army in the field. It is purely a volunteer army, and no one is obliged to remain in it. Indeed we don’t want anybody to remain in it who does not ardently believe in the policy of the army"). In some ways, despite her arguably fanatical determination, she was pessimistic about her ultimate chances of success: "Universal suffrage in a country where women are in a majority of one million is not likely to happen in the lifetime of any reader of this volume". She died in 1928 just before true universal suffrage was achieved, and women and men over 21 could both vote.

90. Dombey and Son - Charles Dickens

With the completion of this novel, I have now read every Dickens novel at least once in my lifetime. I have to say this is not one I am likely to read ever again, certainly not in a hurry. I found it difficult to be get absorbed in, in part as there is no strong central character with whom I as a reader can empathise: Paul Dombey senior is a cold and callous father, obsessed with the future of his business and dynasty, and cruelly neglectful of his daughter Florence, especially after the death of his sickly son Paul junior aged six. These offspring are archetypal Dickens child characters: the death of Paul is like a male version of the death of Little Nell in Old Curiosity Shop, while Florence, the leading female character, is a bland and beautiful cipher, arousing sympathy only due to the plight of her near orphan status, abandoned by her father and her mother having died at Paul junior's birth. Edith Skewton, Dombey's second wife is slightly more interesting and tragic in a different way, having been effectively "bought" by her husband as a trophy wife. As often, some of the lesser characters are more interesting and colourful, such as Mr Toots, Susan Nipper, Old Mrs Brown, and Captain Cuttle. Dickens's usual portrayals of abject poverty are rarer in this novel, mostly through the tragic figure of Alice, Good Mrs Brown's betrayed daughter. There is a much redemption and a lot of marriages in the last few chapters. As a curiosity, this novel also gives an interesting description of the coming of the railways in the 1830s, depicting them as a noisy and chaotically violent disruption of the landscape.

Now that I have read all 15 Dickens full length novels, for me they divide into three categories (the order within each category is not significant):

Favourites I have already re-read and/or would re-read again:

Great Expectations
Tale of Two Cities
David Copperfield
Nicholas Nickleby
Pickwick Papers
Bleak House

Not particular favourites, but ones I will definitely read again:

Oliver Twist
Old Curiosity Shop
Barnaby Rudge
Hard Times
Mystery of Edwin Drood

Ones I struggled with and am unlikely to read again:

Martin Chuzzlewit
Dombey and Son
Little Dorrit
Our Mutual Friend

91. A Darker State - David Young

This is the third in the series of novels featuring Oberleutnant (now promoted to Major) Karin Muller, the only female lead criminal investigator in East Germany in 1976. I still like Karin and her newly discovered family members continue to be the cause of some drama and give rise to conflict between Karin's loyalty to them and her professional duties. The plot this time concerns failed unethical experimentation on young gay men in order to try to "convert" them, in a society where, although homosexuality had been decriminalised in 1968, much prejudice still remained (as it did, of course in Western Europe as well). Despite this dark background, this felt to me like a rather more standard police procedural than the previous two novels, and this didn't wow me as much, though I will pursue the series, and have already pre-ordered the next book.

92. The Sorrows of Young Werther - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

This novella was the work that first established the reputation of the great German author, though he repudiated it in later life. It is a book of two halves. In the first half Werther reflects philosophically about the nature of beauty in the countryside he visits and envies the certainties in the lives of the peasant families he meets. His love for Charlotte here seems an innocent and healthy one, despite her being engaged to Albert. In the second part, however, his unrequited passion grows into an obsession that eventually destroys him, distorting his healthy outlook on the world. As Charlotte perceptively observes, "Why must you love me, me only, who belong to another? I fear, I much fear, that it is only the impossibility of possessing me which makes your desire for me so strong.” This second part lacked the simplicity and beauty of the first half and was harder to read. Werther is an unattractive character by the end and I am afraid his suicide evoked little sympathy in me. This short book was a key point in the development of European literature in the 1770s.

93. The Throne of Caesar - Steven Saylor

This is the 13th and final novel in the author's long running murder mystery series featuring the 1st century BC Roman sleuth Gordianus the Finder. Having delayed this finale by going back into the character's youth in three prequel novels, Saylor tackles the most famous murder in all history - that of Julius Caesar himself on the Ides of March 44 BC. Hardly a mystery, of course, though another murder is tacked onto the story at a late stage, taking place at Caesar's funeral. I must say I found the background explanation to this murder a bit hard to swallow, and overall, though the novel is very well written as ever, I thought its pacing was rather uneven, with quite long stretches where the plot does not advance, but a lot of poetry is declaimed and analysed. I will miss Gordianus and his eclectic family though, and I am sure a re-read of the early novels in this great series will be in order at some point before too long.

94. 4.50 from Paddington - Agatha Christie

This is one of the better of the second rank of Christie novels for me, beginning with the dramatic incident of an old lady on a train (not Miss Marple herself, as shown in the film version starring Margaret Rutherford) witnessing a woman being strangled in a train on a parallel track going in the same direction. The initial disappearance of the body is resolved, narrowing the place of its discovery to a remote house inhabited by an extremely cantankerous old man and his largely rather unpleasant offspring. The usual red herrings are present of course, and the final resolution and identification of the murderer only comes in the final few pages, with no previously laid clues that I could see. Published in 1957, this contains some of the attitudes of the time, especially the simultaneously amusing and rather alarming stereotyping by everyone including the police, for example, of bohemian types as being likely murderers, and of the murder of a French woman being much less important than the murder of an English woman. A good and well constructed story.

95. Sherlock Holmes and the Unholy Trinity - Paul D Gilbert

This was a full length Sherlock Holmes spin-off novel, like others by this author being based on other adventures casually mentioned by Holmes or Watson in Conan Doyle's stories. In this case, the author combines the mentions of the sudden death of Cardinal Tosca and the case of the two Coptic Patriarchs into a mystery involving lost Gospels and internecine strife between sections of the Christian religion. While this made for a suitably dramatic plot basis and international sleuthing in London, Rome and Egypt, I didn't think it hung together well and the motivations of the villains didn't convince me. Some of Holmes's more negative characteristics, for example, his arrogance and disdain for those he considers lesser intellectuals, seemed overdone here. I prefer this author's short stories.

96. Grim Tales - Edith Nesbit

A good selection of slightly macabre and chilling tales from an author better known for classic children's fiction. Man-Size in Marble and The Ebony Frame were probably my favourites.

97. Agatha Christie: An English Mystery - Laura Thompson

This biography of the crime writer, the best-selling novelist in the history of the world, is very well written and offers a pretty comprehensive account of her life, mindset and her works. Her life seems to divide into three phases (though the book doesn't quite present it in these terms): her early life and writing career up to 1926, the year of her famous 11 day "disappearance" at a crucial time in her life when her first marriage to Archie Christie was at breaking point; her flourishing into the "golden" age of her writing in the 1930s and 40s and a happier second marriage to Middle East archaeologist Max Mallowan; and from 1950 when she moved from being "merely" a highly successful and prolific writer to becoming a phenomenon of worldwide fame, though Laura Thompson considers her books were generally poorer in the last 25 years of her life. Her books exert a powerful effect on readers in countries and cultures across the world, despite the fact that nearly all of them are set against the kind of upper middle class background into which she was born in Torquay in 1890, probably because the lucidity of the situations and the careful construction of many of her plots can appeal universally. I found the post-war sections of the book rather dull in places, dominated by arguments over her tax liabilities and her moving between her various houses, plus the unsatisfactory nature of many of the plays and films based on her books, compared to the massive success of most of the latter. I thought Laura Thompson sometimes laboured some points too heavily and parts of the book were overwritten, though overall this was an absorbing account of a literary phenomenon whose influence and popularity continue to this day.

98. Shadow on the Wall - Jonathan Aycliffe

This is the fourth creepy Gothic horror novel I have read by this author, each one in the run up to four of the last five Christmases. In this one set in 1883, Cambridge classics Professor Richard Asquith becomes involved in a haunting in a church in a remote Cambridgeshire village. This is centred around the tomb of a 14th century abbot who in despair at the deaths of so many brethren in the Black Death invokes evil forces that then take hold. While the author built up the usual creepy atmosphere he does so well, I thought this lacked the impact of the first two of his I read, especially the fantastic Whispers in the Dark. This one did, however, have a more conclusively happy ending for Asquith and his newly acquired family.

99. A Christmas Tragedy - Agatha Christie

Review contains a spoiler.

This short Miss Marple story (just 14 pages) manages to pack quite a lot into its mini-plot and is even quite slow to get going as well. Miss Marple stuns fellow dinner party guests with a story set in a Hydro hotel in the run up to Christmas (like the one in Harrogate where she was found after her famous "disappearance" in 1926, four years before this story was published). While there she solved a convoluted murder by a man of his wife involving triple-crossing Miss Marple with a false corpse. Quite good fun.

100. Thin Air - Michelle Paver

Yes, my 100th read of the year! Achieved with a tighter margin than in most years....

This is the second highly atmospheric ghost story in an unusual setting I have read by this author. Whereas Dark Matter was set in the Arctic, Thin Air is set in the Himalayas, where a (fictional) expedition is trying in 1935 to climb Kangchenjunga, the third highest mountain in the world, in the footsteps of a failed earlier (also fictional) expedition of 1906 which ended in tragedy and the deaths of all but two expedition members. Dr Stephen Pearce, the narrator of the second expedition, is given a vague warning by one of the survivors of the earlier one, but the expedition, including his headstrong and imperious brother Kits, sets off anyway. As they get higher and the air gets thinner, there are strange sights and sounds - but are they real or products of the thin atmosphere? The final solution exposes a darker mystery within the tragedy of the first expedition and scars the lives of Stephen and his colleagues. This is powerful and atmospheric and like all the best ghost stories, relies on suggestion and atmosphere-building to achieve its effect. A great read.

101. Mr Dickens and His Carol - Samantha Silva

This is an engaging and heart-warming fictional recreation of the circumstances under which Charles Dickens wrote his famous and timeless Christmas story. Down on his luck after the recent instalments of his latest novel, Martin Chuzzlewit, have sold relatively poorly, his publishers give him an ultimatum - recoup money by writing a last minute Christmas story, or face further loss of funding. In this novel, he struggles to come up with an effective storyline, but has his own life-changing spiritual encounter that sets him on the path to writing the classic story we know and love. Very funny in many places, the story does nevertheless contain at least one error: one of Dickens's sons is said to be nicknamed after a character in his Christmas story The Chimes, but this was written the year after A Christmas Carol. There are also some slightly grating Americanisms (I know the author is American, but even so, they grate..). A good read.

Congrats on reaching 100!

Thanks, jfetting!

102. The Chimes - Charles Dickens

This is Charles Dickens's second Christmas book, published in 1844, following on the heels of the groundbreaking A Christmas Carol the previous year. This is, of course, nowhere near as well known, and when I read The Chimes for the first time seven years ago, I understood why as I thought it lacked any of the charm and deep impact of its predecessor (it's also a New Year's Eve story, rather than a Christmas one). I think more highly of The Chimes now. Its depiction of grinding poverty and class division is more starkly portrayed, and much of the time it is true that it lacks the popular warmth of the more famous story. It contains the same theme of redemption, that of Trotty Veck, though he is no Scrooge, and the worst that can be said of him is that he was naive and gullible. Things turn right just at the end after some harrowing experiences.

103. The Forest of Valancourt, or, The Haunt of the Banditti - Peter Middleton Darling

I downloaded this 200 year old Gothic novel as a curiosity, given that it is one of the rarest surviving printed books in the world - only a single copy of the 1813 edition survives, in the Bodleian library, and almost nothing is known about the author, other than that he was from Edinburgh and may have been a member of the legal profession and/or a bookseller. Unfortunately, these are by far the most interesting facts about it; the novel itself is a weak example of standard fare for a Gothic novel of the time, full of heroic nobles, villainous nobles, beautiful damsels, and a bit of horror and torture in dank dungeons thrown in for good measure. The characters are barely even one dimensional and the writing is poor, with no atmosphere despite the subject matter - it's hardly surprising the book was apparently unsuccessful at the time (the author had previously written a much more successful novel, Romance of the Highlands). As I say, a curiosity only.

Congrats on 100! Happy New Year!

Thanks, swimmergirl! I will have one more book to add later today, and have also signed up for the 2019 challenge! Hope to "see" you over there, and happy new year to you too!

104. The ABC Murders - Agatha Christie

This is one of the most convoluted of Agatha Christie plots, featuring a series of seemingly unrelated killings but with the common feature of a railway timetable being found beside each body. The final lengthy explanation by Poirot of the true solution demonstrates the ingenuity of the author's mind in concocting such a bizarre explanation for the series of murders, which confound the "too obvious" identity of the killer. The novel is a mixture of first person (by Poirot's sometime confidante Arthur Hastings) and third person narration, where Hastings supposedly faithfully records events at which he was not present. I like the Poirot-Hastings partnership, which was used only in some seven novels - it is very reminiscent of Holmes and Watson.

I was prompted to read this by watching the BBC TV adaptation last week. While I thought this was a good piece of atmospheric drama in its own right, it differed in several aspects from the novel, especially in terms of Poirot's background.

I now conclude my book reviews for 2018 on 104 books, so have met my target, albeit with only a week's margin.

See you all (I hope) in the 2019 group.