Micro Reviews 15 and 16 (2025)

 

Agent Zo by Clare Mulley (Orion Publishing) & The CIA Book Club by Charlie English (HarperCollins)

Thanks to the Women's Prize for Non Fiction list I picked Agent Zo up from the library recently and was immersed in her (and Poland's) story of the Second World War and after. 

While we 'know' that Britain went to war in 1939 because of the Nazi invasion of Poland after this event very little made of Poland's war - a paragraph or two about the Warsaw Uprising maybe and possibly a mention of the horrific massacre at Katyn but that's about it. Once the Iron Curtain fell Poland disappears again until the rise of Solidarity and eventually the fall of Communism.

Agent Zo really fills in the gaps as well as adding so much more detail. In focussing on the work of the women's resistance movement we get a new view of war and perhaps a more honest look at the treatment of women in the SOE movement.

What was most shocking about this book was the way that Poland was treated towards the end of the war by 'Allies' and how this fed into the second half of the twentieth century and how Poland became one of the most repressive Communist states.

Which leads on nicely to English's The CIA Book Club which while it does cover some of the same history as Zo focuses far more heavily on the 1980s in Poland and how the CIA helped the resistance movement in Poland (and their supporters in the West) keep the dreams of freedom alive via the printed word.

This book wasn't quite as engaging as Agent Zo and at times read more like a thriller than an exploration of how powerful words are. However as some of the same people from Zo appear in this book it felt very much like a surprise sequel. It also rounded out the time covered in Mulley's book briefly - once Agent Zo had more or less retired - and showed how Communism in Poland was overthrown.

While both of these books cover the past there is a lot that the current world could learn from reading these - especially how carving up a nation without including that country in the negotiations - is a very bad idea with longer lasting repercussions than are even dreamt of.

If you only want to read one book about Polish history then I would have to say go for Agent Zo, but The CIA Book Club really does add to that story. 

Micro Review 13 & 14 (2025)

 

Books About Books - my kryptonite.

I love books about books - whether its the history of books and publishing, the history of printing, author biographies, collated book reviews, and of course books that fall under the broad 'bibliotherapy' heading.

2025 has started strongly in this field with the wonderful Just My Type that I reviewed a little while ago and then two splendid books about reading journeys.

The first was Read Yourself Happy by Daisy Buchanan (DK) - which is  an interesting more modern approach to a bibliotherapy book. Buchanan would pick an emotion and then share details of her life to explain the choice and talk about the books she read to help with these times. What made it more than a typical self help bibliotherapy book was the personalisation and also the inclusion of all sorts of books - there was no hint of  'good' or 'worthy' books being prioritised, just books from all genres and times that gave Buchanan solace and then some similar books that might also work.

It is a book that can be read from cover to cover like any non fiction book, but is also one that you can dip in and out of as and when the mood strikes.

The second book is Bookish by Lucy Mangan (Vintage) and this is a much more of a straightforward autobiography from the author but told via the books she was reading at each stage of her life. Very much like her previous book (Bookworm) I felt like I was looking in a mirror as I was reading (at least up to the last quarter anyhow). So many of Mangan's life choices and career moves match my own and we were definitely reading a lot of the same books through the late 1990s and in to the 2000s. In fact I'm pretty sure that at some points we must have been in the same second-hand bookshops around Norfolk fighting over the same titles!

Mangan's life has diverged from mine more now, and by the end of it I was moved to tears several times - and also green with envy at her home book-nook. I also have another huge stack of titles to revisit at some point.

Micro Review 12 (2025)

 

The Green Kingdom by Cornelia Funke & Tammi Hartung (illustrated by Melissa Castrillon) Dorling Kindersely.

Right now the world feels a very strange (and scary) place and I am having trouble losing myself in novels, which does seem counterintuitive I know! Even old favourites and comfort reads aren't working so I was very pleased to become instantly immersed in The Green Kingdom.

This is a delightful middle grade novel and while it is packed full of action it is also incredibly gentle and positive.

Caspia's plans for a summer spent hanging out in the wilds of her hometown with her two best friends are scuppered when her parents announce that they will be spending the summer in Brooklyn, due to the work and learning opportunities that they have been offered.

And that is the absolute maximum of threat/peril that happens in the book. Caspia's parents are happily married and not working through any issues and Caspia has only the normal worries of an on the cusp of adolescence girl and even her friendship triangle is mostly issue free.

What we get instead is an exploration of friendship, and cross generational friendship, and of the plant world that can be found even in the heart of a huge city. Caspia comes across some old letters from the family who own the apartment the family are renting and from these unfolds a botanical treasure hunt which spans the world.

In the best sense of the word this is an old fashioned story, and one that can be read and enjoyed by so many people. It reminded me a lot of Eva Ibbotson's Journey to the River Sea (but with less peril) and also of Elizabeth Enright's series about the Melendy Family. 

In fact it was so gentle that perhaps my biggest criticism is the freedom Caspia has to wander around a New York Borough - even with a mobile phone this lack of supervision did worry me a bit, although removing parents from a narrative to make the story is of course very common!

The botanical details and illustrations are as important as the story in this book and it is absolutely delightful. I was a huge fan of Funke when I was working as a bookseller and I am so pleased to rediscover her with such a gem.

Prize speculation

 

The Women's Prize for Fiction 2025.

Hot on the heels of the non fiction longlist the 2025 Women's Prize for fiction longlist will be announced on Tuesday and I've seen lots of social media speculating on what might make the cut (and lots of 'dream' longlists) so I thought I would join in.

Thanks to a list that has been pulled together on Good Reads (which you don't need an account to see) and careful scrutiny of my reading journal I think that I've read 42 books that are eligible for the prize, as well as having two on my to be read pile as they aren't out yet, and another two that I abandoned.

At first I was quite surprised how few books that I read last year were eligible and then I looked more closely at the rules for the prize:

• Books have to have been published between 1st April 2024 and 31st March 2025
• No translations
• No short stories or novellas
• The book has to have been published in the UK between the above dates

My reading choices last year wiped out a huge chunk of eligible fiction books as I read so much in translation, and my rediscovery of novellas and short stories eliminated another handful. Plus I read a lot of non fiction...

Anyhow the longlist will comprise 14 books this year, and while I can recommend many of the books I read last year I don't think that a lot of them would be deemed 'prize worthy', indeed looking at the Good Reads list I've read very little of the last year's 'literary' output!

I've created a list of 10 books I'd like to see on the list but I don't think that I'll have a great hit rate

Books on my list, in no particular order:

• There are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak
• The Instrumentalist by Harriet Constable
• The Silence in Between by Josie Ferguson
• The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
• Three Days in June by Anne Tyler
• The Glass Maker by Tracey Chevalier
• Elegy, Southwest by Madeleine Watts
• Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout
• Lula Dean's Little Library of Banned Books by Kirsten Miller
• Le Fay by Sophie Keetch

Micro Review 11 (2025)

 

The Prosecutor by Jack Fairweather (Ebury Publishing)

While I have read a few books in the past couple of weeks most of them have been ok but nothing more, with one that needs a lot more thinking about before I write about it. There was also the awkward coincidence of me starting Pope Francis' autobiography on my tea break only to hear he'd been hospitalised by the time I had my lunch break...

However Jack Fairweather's The Prosecutor was a book that I found as gripping as any novel and one that taught me so much on a topic that I thought I'd possibly exhausted.

The book is all about Fritz Bauer, a gay Jewish German legal man who after surviving the Holocaust was horrified at the cursory way 'de-Nazification' took place in West Germany and how many prominent Nazis regained their positions in society - and government. He wasn't just horrified however - he decided to do something about it, including helping track down Eichmann and ensuring he faced justice. He also managed to challenge the specific wording of German Law so that he could actually put perpetrators of the horror on trial.

As well as Bauer's story we hear how former Nazis were reintegrated into the higher echelons of government, how they formed the backbone of West Germany and how the Western powers let this happen. It also covers the slow way that Germany was forced to face the atrocities of the Holocaust, but also shows how the seeds of denial (which are sadly growing once more) were sown.

I've read a lot about East Germany in the period 1945-1961 but this was the first book covering West Germany and once more it just shows how the victors get to rewrite history - I found the book chilling but fascinating and I really recommend it when it is published tomorrow.

Many thanks to Ebury for providing access to an advance copy of the book via NetGalley

Thoughts on the Women's Prize for Non Fiction Longlist 2025

 

With the way the world is going right now haunting news sites early in the morning doesn't seem to be the best way to start the day, however on Weds 12th I was doing just that as I waited for the Women's Prize to announce their non fiction longlist.

As my reading round-up showed - last year 42% of my reads were non fiction.  I've looked at this list more closely I can say that 51% of these books were written by women so it was inevitable that I'd be waiting for this announcement quite closely.

There are 16 books on the long list and of these I've read just three - which shows that I probably missed a lot of good books in 2024! The ones I have read are in purple below.

Anne Applebaum – Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World – Allen Lane (PRH)

Eleanor Barraclough – Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age – (Profile Books)

Helen Castor – The Eagle and the Hart: The Tragedy of Richard II and Henry IV – Allen Lane (PRH)

Neneh Cherry – A Thousand Threads  (Fern Press (PRH))

Rachel Clarke – The Story of a Heart – (Abacus (Hachette))

Chloe Dalton – Raising Hare  (Canongate Books)

Jenni Fagan – Ootlin  (Hutchinson Heinemann, Century, (PRH))

Lulu Miller – Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love and the Hidden Order of Life  (ONE, Pushkin Press)

Clare Mulley – Agent Zo: The Untold Stories of Fearless WW2 Resistance Fighter Elżbieta Zawacka  (Weidenfeld & Nicolson (Hachette))

Rebecca Nagle – By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land  (William Collins (HarperCollins))

Sue Prideaux – Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin (Faber )

Helen Scales – What the Wild Sea Can Be: The Future of the World’s Ocean (Grove Press, Atlantic Books) 

Kate Summerscale – The Peepshow: The Murders at 10 Rillington Place  (Bloomsbury Circus (Bloomsbury))

Harriet Wistrich – Sister in Law: Fighting for Justice in a System Designed by Men  (Torva, Transworld, (PRH))

Alexis Wright – Tracker  (And Other Stories)

Yuan Yang – Private Revolutions: Coming of Age in a New China (Bloomsbury Circus (Bloomsbury))


Part of the reason why I have read so many non fiction books by women that aren't on this list is because I read indiscriminately - publication dates don't really matter to me, I just want to read books that appeal or that are recommended to me, so often new books do pass me by until they appear on lists like this!

From the longlist I've instantly reserved 4 books from the library, and added a couple of other ones to my 'might get round to some day' list - there are a few that just don't appeal at all but it might be that if they make the shortlist (announced in March) I am tempted to try them.

I don't think that I am even going to attempt to read the entire long (or short) list as a challenge but this is definitely a list that has added a lot of books to my TBR piles.




As an aside books published between 1st April 2024 and 31st March 2025 were eligible for the prize and here are a few of the books that I've read which fit this criteria and that I am sad didn't make the cut:

• Between Two Rivers: Ancient Mesopotamia and the Birth of History by Dr Moudhy Al-Rashid (Hodder & Stoughton)
• Broken Threads by Mishal Husain (Fourth Estate)
• Catland: Feline Enchantment and the Making of the Modern World by Katherine Hughes (Harper Collins)
• A Mudlarking Year: Finding Treasure in Every Season by Lara Maiklem (Bloomsbury)
• Poet, Mystic, Widow, Wife: The Extraordinary Lives of Medieval Women by Hetta Howes (Bloomsbury)



 

Micro Review 10 (2025)

 

Between Two Rivers: Ancient Mesopotamia and the Birth of History by Moudhy Al-Rashid (Hodder and Stoughton)

After reading Elif Shafak's There Are Rivers in the Sky last autumn I realised that while I am very familiar with the Greek and Roman histories/origin stories and somewhat familiar with Ancient Egypt I knew nothing about Ancient Mesopotamia.

From reading the the first two volumes of Sapiens: A Graphic History from Yuval Noah Harari I came across some parts of Ancient Mesopotamian history thanks to his featuring Hammurabi and his laws but I was still in the dark...

Just as I started looking for recommendations by other classicists I saw Between Two Rivers being talked about online and then it appeared on NetGalley - hurrah!

I found this book to be a great introduction to the subject, Al-Rashid takes us right back to the beginning and explains where/who we are talking about and then using archaeological finds talks us through how this part of history has been decoded and the cuneiforms translated to give us our current understanding.

As ever when working with dates BCE it did take me a while to work out the 'when' was - especially when Al-Rashid just says in the 18th century BCE but that it just my poor grasp on time and not a fault with the book! I really liked the little insights into the author's life as they helped bring an unfamiliar world in to a context I could relate to, but there weren't so many of them that you felt it was an autobiography hung around a history book.

The one thing I would really have found useful is a timeline that matched the Mesopotamian events to happenings in the Greek/Egyptian/wider-world and it might be that this is something that is in the physical finished copy and just not reproduced in the electronic proof I read - I've got a copy of the book on order so when it comes out towards the end of the month I can check for this. If it isn't there I shall have to make my own!

Right I'm now off to find a translation of Gilgamesh and some more entry level history books as I'm now fascinated by this new period in history!

Many thanks to Hodder & Stoaghton for the advance copy via NetGalley

Micro Review 9 (2025)

 

Just My Type by Simon Garfield (Profile Books)

Last year I read two of Garfield's shorter books about specific fonts and found them fascinating and so I knew that I had to put his longer book about them on my Christmas list - thankfully Father Christmas let my parents know and Just My Type was under the tree for me in December!

This has been a brilliant book to dip in and out of during tea breaks as it is split into lots of short chapters about fonts, design and printing in general with these interspersed with event shorter chapters on specific fonts.

As the daughter of a printer, someone who used to be really into calligraphy, and an avid consumer of the printed word I can't understand why it has taken me over 10 years to discover this book but better late than never! I can also imagine the 'fun' that the typesetter had incorporating all of the different fonts (sometimes in the same sentence) in to the text and still managing to keep the book legible.

As with any book that goes into such detail there are going to be some bits that weren't quite so interesting but these were few and far apart in this one and I am now looking forward to a visit to the St Bride's Print Foundation that a friend and I have booked for late spring.

As an aside the BBC aired a wonderful programme recently all about how the modern printing process works and it made a brilliant companion watch to this book, and this is currently still available to watch on the BBC iPlayer

Micro Review 8 (2025)

 

Poor Girls by Clare Whitfield (Bloomsbury Books)

I had this book marked as a February release and so had been saving it for a New Year read but I think that in fact this was published in 2024 - oops!

It was the premise of this book that drew me in - set just post WW1 and all about how the girls and women who'd had freedom and money during the war thanks to their work settled back in to an ungrateful society.

1922. Twenty-four-year-old Eleanor Mackridge is horrified by the future mapped out for her – to serve the upper classes or find a husband. During the war, she found freedom in joining the workforce at home, but now women are being put back in their place.

Until Eleanor crosses paths with a member of the notorious female-led gang the Forty Elephants: bold women who wear diamonds and fur, drink champagne and gin, who take what they want without asking. Now, she sees a new future for herself: she can serve, marry – or steal. 

I raced through the first part of the book which covered this return to society but then found my reading slowed down as Eleanor leaves home and joins the London gang. In this part I found that there were a few 'information dumps' from Whitfield as she explained how the gang worked and they didn't flow as well for me. Some of the actions and descriptions were also a bit too dark for me - I'm a real coward in my reading and viewing!

Overall I'm glad I read this book, it is always good to try new things and I liked the social history aspects a lot but rather than more crime/thriller books like this one I'd rather read the non-fiction books that formed the research for the novel!

Microreviews 6 and 7 (2025)

 

Holocaust Memorial Day 2025 and some recently read books.

While I was poorly I made an effort to read some of the physical books that I had piled up around the house and with January 27th being the 80th Anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz it seemed fitting that two of the books were about the Holocaust.

Last year when I posted about the 20 books that had stayed with me the most since reading two of this list were books about the Holocaust and I did write my MA dissertation on the way that it is portrayed in children's literature so it should be no surprise at all that I had books waiting on my TBR that covered this topic.

The first one I read was Other People's Houses by Lore Segal (Sort of Books)

This is a fictionalised autobiography covering her life in Vienna pre-1938 and then her childhood in Britain after she was one of the children evacuated on the Kindertransport. It was a fascinating read because even though it was a novel it was so detailed and personal that it could be mistaken for autobiography.  Segal explains this choice in her afterword explaining that while what she writes feels like her truth she knows that this isn't the case as historical facts don't line up with her memories and so to avoid complaints writing it in a fictional way let her tell her story as she saw it.

Segal was lucky in that her parents did also manage to escape Vienna and come to the UK (although due to a quirk in the system they were not allowed to live with Lore) but the feelings and issues that this caused are also covered in the book. Segal doesn't always come across in the best light but again this adds to the accurate feel of the book.

I Seek a Kind Person by Julian Borger (John Murray)

Like Segal's book this also is about Jewish children who left Vienna in 1938/39 but rather than coming on the official Kidnertransport the children featured here came via adverts placed in the Manchester Guardian - desperate parents pleading with British people to foster their children.

The book is centred on Borger's father, who was one of these children and who sadly committed suicide in the 1980s - as Borger says, the reach of the Holocaust didn't end with the liberation of the Camps in 1945. We learn much more about life in Vienna before the war and then about the means and methods that people did escape Austria before war broke out.

This book is more scholarly and impersonal than Segal's account but they compliment each other perfectly and this one shows that even though Other People's Houses is all from memory Segal's memories were accurate and although each journey was different there were incredible similarities in all of the evacuees stories.

Neither book made easy reading, but there is (dark) humour in them both and even though I have read other books about Kindertransport experiences I learned new things from each book and in the challenging times we are currently living in it seems important to read and remember what happened 80 years ago in the hope that it can't happen again.

Micro Review 5 (2025)

 

What you are looking for is in the library by Michiko Aoyama, translated by Alison Watts (Transworld)

Before Christmas I took part in an online bookish Secret Santa run by the brilliant Big Green Bookshop . To take part you paid for an unknown book and then sent Simon an email saying what type of book you liked (and didn't like) and he found a surprise book for you and a wrapped parcel containing a fancy tea, a bar of chocolate and a book arrived before Christmas. If that wasn't enough work he also spent time to match you up with another person with similar tastes to create new bookish friends.

My parcel came with a lovely bar of Green and Blacks chocolate and inside was this book - and it ticked soooooo many of my boxes - translated fiction, set in Japan, about libraries and about books.

It was another perfect read for while I was poorly.

Like lots of the books in this genre it is more a collection of short stories that are connected by either a location or by chance encounters with other characters. In this case the main point of connection is a library that runs from a community centre that also offers lots of other activities. The characters are all visiting the centre for other things but end up in the library where they are helped to find the books they need and then also recommended a 'wild card' book which at first seems to make no sense to them...

As is to be expected in books like this the books all help to change the characters' lives and the book is a love letter to both the library and the book.

I've now read a lot of this type of Japanese fiction and every time I think that I've reached saturation point another good read comes along although I'm not totally sure how I missed this one when it was first published a few years back. 

Micro Review 4 (2025)

 

The Baby Dragon Cafe by A T Qureshi (Harper Collins)

Having been felled by a cold that morphed into a chest and sinus infection over the past 10 days I've felt decidedly below par recently and this book really was a case of right book at the right time.

The whole cosy 'romantasy' (romantic fantasy) genre has pretty much passed me by, but the cover of this book just made me want to read it and thanks to NetGalley I did get an early copy of the book although it was about publication date by the time I started it.

It really is nothing new in the world of literature and it doesn't even tip in to the enemies to friends to lovers trope - it really is about two people coming together in a cafe aimed at carers of baby dragons as they raise and train their own dragon.

At times there were hints of darker paths that the book could have taken (for example poaching or illegal and cruel sports) but it confounded my expectations by just remaining a gentle story with a romance blossoming.

I do wonder if I'd been fully well when I read it if the book would have touched me so much but I surprised myself by falling for it completely and being pleased that there are more in this world planned!

Micro Review 3 (2025)

 

The Artist by Lucy Steeds (John Murray Press)

Wow - two weeks into 2025 and I am still keeping on top of my vague bookish resolution with another review of a NetGalley book that will be published in January! I think that I will need a lie down soon...

As can be seen from my best of lists from 2024 I do like a novel that is based around art/music and in general the ones that aren't biographical work the most for me. I enjoyed Hamnet and The Painter's Daughters but I do spend too much time looking up the 'real' details to fully lose myself in these books.

The Artist could be about any of the artists working pre or post WW1 in France but is all based around a completely fictional artist - however it is obviously written by someone who knows a lot about art as it feels utterly real. I felt I could see, smell and touch every item described in the book and as I was reading it I am sure that I felt the hot Provencal summer sun beating down on me, even in a Norfolk winter.

It was refreshing to read a book that is set in France in the 1920s for it not to carry on into a WW2 setting, and the flashbacks to WW1 were beautiful and definitely opened up a new seam of history for me. 

There are a few twists and mysteries in the book but they aren't the point of the narrative as such and even when 'real' people pop up in the story it feels organic and appropriate.

The Bookseller has tipped this as one of the debuts of the year and I have to agree - it is published on 30th January and really recommend it! 2025 is really shaping up as a good book year. 

Many thanks to the publisher for providing me with an advance copy via NetGalley

Micro review 2 (2025)

 

The Life of Herod the Great by Zora Neale Hurston (HQ - Harper Collins)

Keeping on top of my vague 2025 plan and reviewing another NetGalley book that is published this January - this time the historical novel about Herod the Great.

I've long loved books that retell parts of history in novel form, and this includes novels based on parts of the Bible - The Red Tent from Anita Diamant came out back in 1997 and I think that I read and loved that one very close to its original publication date.

This book wasn't fully completed in Hurston's lifetime and has now been published using the drafts, notes, and letters that she left about the book and for the most part I think that the book works really well. Towards the end the details become more sparse and large chunks of time are passed over quite quickly, which is at odds with the rest of the book but there's just enough left that the book hangs together.

The Herod at the heart of this book is the King Herod from the Nativity in the Bible and we learn about how he came to rule Judea and what type of man he was. Hurston has obviously researched many of the contemporaneous sources as well as later interpretations and you are left with the idea of a man who could have called for the Massacre of the Innocents as in the Gospels or who might not have done and is on the receiving end of biased history - an interesting point to ponder.

I think for me the best part of this book was the way it clarified in my mind how all the various books/histories I'd read about before were actually linked. It hadn't actually occurred to me that Herod the Great and the birth of Jesus occurred roughly at the same time as is covered in Shakespeare's Anthony and Cleopatra / Julius Caesar  and Robert Graves' I, Claudius. I felt spectacularly dim as all the dots connected but also these other reference points did help to colour in some of the gaps from the book.

I'm certainly going to look out more of Hurston's books now - probably starting with Moses, Man of the Mountain.

Micro review 1 (2025)

 

Homeseeking by Karissa Chen (Sceptre)

Wow! What a start to the 2025 reading year - if it continues like this I am really excited to see what else is coming!

One of my (unofficial) New Year Resolutions is to try and read the books that NetGalley give me access to much closer to publication day so that when I love them I can talk about them instantly and this was rewarded by the first two novels I've read this year.

Homeseeking is a sweeping following the lives of two people - Suchi and Haiwen who meet as children in 1930s Shanghai and then thanks to world events are separated. They meet occasionally through the decades until the (almost) present day when there is time to tell their full life stories.

I don't want to say much more about the plot because discovering how their lives unfold organically is what gives the book its emotional punch.

The way Chen weaves the two characters together is very clever and I don't think that I've come across a book told in this way, or at least told so well in this way, for a long time and it really helped move the story through time in an organic way.

The author's notes at the beginning of the book are essential to readers to explain why the protagonists seem to change name but apart from that there is very little extraneous historical research dumped in to the novel. Chen gives just enough details for you to follow world events and politics that influence the plot but never dumps huge chunks of history - if you are interested then there's plenty of other books/information out there to give more information and the works used for research are all given at the end of the novel. 

I've already recommended this book personally to several people and I really hope they enjoy it - I'm just glad I read it now and didn't save it for a summer holiday read.