Some quick thoughts on holiday reading

 

As I said in my last post I read an awful lot of books while we were in Greece (when my attention wasn't on some of the cute cats in the area - like this little one who was very interesting in my fish dinner but not brave enough to come down!).

Some of the books have really stayed with me so here are few thoughts on them:

Love, After All by Ewald Arenz, and translated by Rachel Ward (Orenda Book) - I've loved the previous books by Arenz that have been translated by Ward but this one was really special. It is love story but one featuring older characters at complicated times of their lives. It really got under my skin and I'm recommending it (and the other 2 books) to everyone.

Whistler by Ann Patchett (Bloomsbury) - another quiet book in many ways but again it was the writing and characters that really made an impression on me. Another book featuring older characters, although Patchett writes children exceedingly well too.

Miss Buncle's Book by D E Stevenson (Persephone) - this is a book set in the inter war period where Miss Buncle has fallen on hard times and decides to write a novel in order to make some money. She doesn't think she has much imagination and so fictionalises the people and village where she lives to very amusing results. I really like the Mrs Tim books by the same author and will look for the sequels to this one.

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke (4th Estate) - this book is one of the most hyped of the first half of 2026 and I was interested to see what it was all about. I quite liked the idea of seeing how (some) influencers actually manage to work, and it was interesting to see how the Trad Wives/Conspiracy Theorists come about but apart from that I wasn't sold on the book - even with the ending.

The Calamity Club by Katherine Stockett (Figtree) - I really liked Stockett's The Help when it came out, despite some of the backlash and criticism that came later, so I was looking forward to this one. On the whole I enjoyed it but I did find the middle section a little baggy and the ending a bit quick but I hope that Stockett does write more going forward.

Seven Lives and One Great Love by Lena Divani, and translated by Konstantine Matsoukas (Europa Editions) - as we were in Greece I wanted to read a book by a Greek author rather than a book just set in Greece by an anglophone. I found this one an interesting read - mainly because I find it funny how 'cat literature' whether in English, translated from the Japanese, or translated from the Greek, all feels very similar. It was quite a cute read but I think I need to find some other Greek authors to try as this one really could have been set anywhere in the world and very little 'Greekness' to it!

March Round Up

 

March seems to have passed in a flash this year but it was another good reading month - this time helped by two days of travel and also being trapped in Iceland for an extra day thanks to a late winter storm shutting everything down!

Before it all got complicated and we had to try to rebook flights and hotels etc we'd had a lovely time in Iceland - we saw the Northern Lights, tried the food (including the infamous fermented shark!), got to see the most amazing scenery on a sunny day, and also spent hours lounging in the Blue Lagoon!

I did also find the theatre and a couple of bookshops so all was well in the world 😉. I am even more at a loss to explain the proliferation of dark crime novels set in Iceland. One of our tour guides talked about the incredibly low crime rate on the island and also said that the total prison population is only around 80. Sadly it is the case that the majority of prisoners are foreigners, and the guide postulated that this was because Iceland is so small that every local knows everyone else making crime hard to get away with!

Before we went away it was the third Reading Around the World book group meeting where we talked all things Japanese. There was very little duplication in titles read this time although books by Murakami did crop up a few times. For April we're reading from North Africa...

In my own project I read books from China, the Australian state of Victoria, Oregon, Malaysia, Morocco, Mongolia, Japan, Venice, Mali, South Korea, Albania, Denmark, and Taiwan. Only those in italics  were new locations to me and my map of the world doesn't look too different this month. 

My top reads of the month were the International Booker shortlisted Taiwan Travelogue by Yáng Shuāng-zǐ (translated by Lin King) along with Cecile Pin's second novel Celestial Lights.

I didn't read a lot of non fiction this month and while Alan Bennett's new volume of diaries started well by the end the title, Enough Said, felt very apt. 

Where did January go?

How can a month that seemed to last about a 1000 days have passed in such a flash that I didn't manage to blog at all? Especially as somehow I read 27 books!

The first book I read this month is already one that I think will end up on my best of the year lists - it was recommended to me by a lot of people on BlueSky and they were absolutely right.

The Woman in Blue by Douglas Bruton (Fairlight Books) is a slender novel and all about one man visiting the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam just to look at one Vermeer painting and then his response to it. It is also the imagined story of the woman in the painting (Woman Reading a Letter). A wonderful gem of a book to start the year on.

My non fiction book of the month's reading was Frostlines by Neil Shea (Macmillan) which recounts his time spent with different communities living well above the Arctic Circle and how their societies have changed over the years thanks to cultural and environmental pressures. I am not a huge fan of the cold but he made me really want to see a lot of the places he visited before it is too late. 

A friend and I  also started our new Reading the World Book Club in January and at our first meeting just chatted about our favourite books in translation and related topics but for February we're going to be looking at all things Nordic. I've really enjoyed a lot of the books I've read from this region but I've never got to grips with the genre 'Nordic Noir' .

Having now tried one from Norway, one from Sweden and one from Denmark as well as ones written by women as well as men I can definitively say that they do not float my boat in anyway at all - however as I am not a crime/thriller fan in general perhaps I need to read some British/American ones from the genre too. 

February is #ReadIndie month where people are encouraged to read and support Independent Publishers - something I really enjoy doing so who knows perhaps there will be more reviewed in Feb!

2025 Round Up

 

Well my intention to blog consistently during 2025 didn't quite work - life got away from me a bit at the end of the year and while I kept reading I did become something of a hermit.

In book terms 2025 was a good year for me - somehow I managed to read a staggering 301 books, which I am almost embarrassed about. I think that the total is so high because I fell in love with the Penguin Archive books that were published for their 90th anniversary, and many of these are shorter reads. I've by no means read all 90 books but I've read and loved a lot of them. I've also liked how many new authors from all over the world that they've introduced me to.

I think that some of my increased reading total can be put down to some of the new reading habits I've started. These include no social media/doom scrolling/internet browsing when I go to bed in the evening - only physical or books on my kindle, and reading the books I get from NetGalley in order of publication and trying to read them just before they are published so that if any really appeal to me I can talk about them straight away without having to wait months for publication. Let's see if I can keep this up for 2026!

After realising that in 2024 while 8% of my reading was in translation I was shocked when I realised how few countries I was actually reading from so made it my goal to read from a lot more countries in 2025 with a reward map to keep me enthused.

On 1st January it looked like this:

By 1st January 2026 I can say that it looks significantly different as I have managed to read books from 90 countries around the world:

So before we get to my top books of the year here are my reading stats for 2025:

• 65% of books read were by women (33% were by men and 2% were by dual authors)
• 63% of books were fiction, including short stories & KidLit
• 37% of books were non fiction
• 28% of my reads have been in translation

Narrowing down to just 10 books from the 301 will be too hard so this year we have 25 for 25!

My top 10 fiction reads of the year are:

• The Wager and the Bear by John Ironmonger
• The Eights by Joanna Miller
• Theft by Abdulrazak Gurnah
• The Correspondent by Virginia Evans
• Seascraper by Benjamin Wood
• I Heard the Owl Call My Name by Margaret Craven
• The Country of Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett
• Voting Day by Clare O'Dea
• Atmosphere by Taylor Reid Jenkins
• Elegy, Southwest by Madeleine West

My top 10 translated books of the year are:

• Small Memories by Jose Saramago (tr. Margaret Jull Costa)
• My Pen is the Wing of a Bird: New Fiction by Afghan Women (tr. various)
• When the Cranes Fly South by Liza Ridzen (tr. Alice Menzies)
• Just a Little Dinner by Cecile Tlili (tr. Katherine Gregor)
• How I Came to Know Fish by Oto Pavel (tr. Jindriska Badal & Robert McDowell)
• On the Calculation of Volume (books 1,2 &3) by Solvej Balle (tr. Barbara J Haveland, Sophia Hersi Smith, & Jennifer Russell)
• Barbara Isn't Dying Yet by Alina Bronsky (tr. Tim Mohr)
• Lowest Common Denominator by Pirkko Saisio (tr. Mia Spangenberg)
• Notes from the Ginzo Shihoda Stationert Shop by Kenji Ueda (tr. Emily Balistrieri)
• Space Invaders by Nona Fernandez (tr. Natasha Wimmer)

My top 5 non fictions reads of the year are:

• Between Two Rivers: Ancient Mesopotamia and the Birth of History by Moudhy Al-Rashid
• That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America by Amanda Jones
• Mythica: A New History of Homer's World, Through The Women Written Out Of It by Emily Hauser
• Always Home, Always Homesick: A Love Letter to Iceland by Hannah Kent
• Burnt Eucalyptus Wood: On Origins, Language and Identity by Ennatu Domingo

Reading the World update

 

My scratch off map is becoming far more colourful and my reading life is really expanding.

While I am reading a lot of books in translation or from authors living in a country I am also counting some travel writing in my project.

Some of these been accounts of journeys made in locations (Sovietistan by Erika Fatland) and some of the books have been from people who've settled in an area and are writing about their new lives (In Arabian Nights by Tahir Shah) and while I do want to read in translation where possible my bank balance isn't bottomless and I don't want to narrow my borders as I am trying to explore them!

Because my map does mark all of the US states, Canadian provinces, and Australian states I have expanded my challenge to include a book from each of these  - but I do wish that India and China has also been split up as they are such diverse countries it feels wrong to just read one book from these places and cross off the whole country!

This mix of fiction/translation/non fiction is working well for me so far and it has to be said that as this is the way Daunt Books organise their travel sections I feel I am in good company with this approach.

Some of the top reads from the past 6 months have been:

• Sovietistan: A Journey Through Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan by Erika Flatland. Translated from the Norwegian by Kari Dickson
• Theft by Abdulrazak Gurnah (Zanzibar and Tanzania) 
• Chopping Onions on My Heart by Samantha Ellis (Iraq)
• My Pen is the Wing of a Bird (Afghanistan) Translated from various languages by a variety of people.
• The Wager and the Bear by John Ironmonger (Greenland)
• Elegy, Southwest by Madeleine Watts (California, Nevada, Arizona & Utah)
• That Librarian - Louisiana 
• Between Two Rivers - Moudhy Al-Rashid (Mesopotamia)

Not all my reading has been focussed on this project and my top six books so far this year are:

• Between Two Rivers by Moudhy Al-Rashid
• Mythica by Emily Hauser
• Florrie by Anna Trench
• When the Moon Hits Your Eye by John Scalzi
• The Eights by Joanna Miller
• The Wager and the Bear by John Ironside

Picking these books was great fun - I scanned down my book journal and picked the ones that have stayed with me the most for whatever reason and/or are the ones I've recommended to other people the most!

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 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.

Books of the Year (and related thoughts) for 2024

 

2024 Reading Round Up.

Well another year passes and once more it has been book-filled with a mix of reading for projects and pleasure... while I have read about the same number of books as for the past few years fewer have leapt out at me as potential books of the year.

While I am still enjoying trying all of the Japanese and Korean books in translation that are breaking through to the UK market I might be reaching saturation point when it comes to ones set in cafes or restaurants with cats... I also noticed that lots of books set in the former East Germany (and covering reunification) crossed my reading path in 2024. I would like to read more nature writing/travel books by women so will be actively searching them out in 2025.

Before I share my reads of the year some statistics...

• 65% of books have been by women, or with women listed as the lead author.
• 58% of the books I've read have been fiction 
• 42% non fiction 
• 21% of my reads have been in translation
• 8% of the books were written with a children or YA audience in mind (probably the least I've ever read in this genre)

Narrowing the books down to a top 10 proved impossible and instead I have 24 books for 2024.

Fiction

El Hacho by Luis Carrasco (Epoque Press)

Berlin Duet by S W Perry (Atlantic Books)

The Instrumentalist by Harriet Constable (Bloomsbury)

The Glassmaker by Tracy Chevalier (Harper Collins)

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley (Hodder and Stoughton)

Brandy Sour by Constantia Soteriou, tr. Lina Protopapa (Foundry Press)

The Silence in Between by Josie Ferguson (Transworld Press)

One Grand Summer by Ewald Arenz, tr. Rachel Ward (Orenda Books)

Lula Dean's Little Library of Banned Books by Kirsten Miller (Harper Collins)

Le Fay by Sophie Keetch (Oneworld Publications)

There Are Rivers In The Sky by Elif Shafak (Penguin Books)

Letters from the Ginza Shihodo Stationery Shop by Kenji Ueda, tr. Emily Balistrieri (Bonnier Books)

The Lover of No Fixed Abode by Carlo Fruttero & Franco Lucentini, tr. Gregory Dowling (Bitter Lemon Press)

Non Fiction

High Caucasus by Tom Parfitt (Headline Publishing Group)

The Vanished Collection by Pauline Baer de Perignon, tr Natasha Lehrer (Bloomsbury)

Alice's Book by Karina Urbach, tr. Jamie Bulloch (Quercus Publishing)

Broken Threads by Mishal Husain (Harper Collins)

Cull of the Wild by Hugh Warwick (Bloomsbury)

A Ride Across America by Simon Parker (Duckworth Books)

The Place of Tides by James Rebanks (Penguin Books)

What I Ate In Once Year by Stanley Tucci (Penguin Books)

A Cheesemonger's Tour de France by Ned Palmer (Profile Books)

Sapiens: A Graphic History vol. 1 by Yuval Noah Harari & David Vandermeulen, illus. Daniel Casanave (Vintage)

Slow Trains to Venice by Tom Chesshyre (Octopus Publishing Group)

I am slightly surprised that in the end that slightly more than half of my top reads are by men, when compared to the overall ratio but pleased that a quarter of my best books were in translation. I've also tried to read more from independent publishers this year and I think that this is reflected in my top reads too.

I think that my absolute favourite book of the year is Tracy Chevalier's The Glassmaker although if you ask me tomorrow this could change to The Silence in Between or The Place of Tides!

Micro Review 16 (2024)

 

The Secret Christmas Bookshop by Cressida McLaughlin (Harper Collins)

A small disclaimer here as I do know the author and have worked with her on several events in my past role.

I don't read an awful lot of books in this cosy romance genre, and every time I do read one I ask myself why as they are great fun. Perfect for just curling up on the sofa, with a mug of tea, and losing yourself in the story.

To be fair once the characters are all introduced you have a fair idea of just how the book is going to end but the fun is in discovering how they get there and in this one the journey was very nice - and involved two of my favourite things - books and beautiful notebooks.

As well as the festive setting and romance this book also has a couple of more serious messages, including about the care system and also the decision to move away from what looks like an ideal childhood. The other very poignant one was about the decision surrounding putting a relative in a care home rather than looking after them yourself and how no one outside the family knows the whole story and so shouldn't judge and make comments.

These serious points didn't detract from the romance element at all, and also weren't crowbarred in to the story - they just added to the setting and made the people seem more real and less fairy tale.

An added plus to this book is that it is set in North Norfolk and I had great fun spotting which real locations Cressida and melded into her fictional town!

I can't say that I felt any more festive after reading the book, but I did feel all warm inside and it helped block out the frightful weather for the couple of afternoons I spent reading it!

 Thanks to Harper Collins and NetGalley for the copy of the book.

Micro Review 14 (2024)

 

Edith Holler by Edward Carey (Gallic Books)

I couldn't resist this book when Gallic Books were offering advance copies to reviewers, after all a book about theatre set in Norwich ticks so many of my personal preferences and to cap it all it also focuses on many of the tales/legends about Norwich that I know so well.

Norwich, 1901. Edith Holler spends her days among the eccentric denizens of the Holler Theatre, warned by her domineering father that the playhouse will literally tumble down if she should ever leave.

Fascinated by tales of the city she knows only from afar, young Edith decides to write a play of her own about Mawther Meg, a monstrous figure said to have used the blood of countless children to make the local delicacy, Beetle Spread. But when her father suddenly announces his engagement to a peculiar woman named Margaret Unthank, Edith scrambles to protect her father, the theatre, and her play – the one thing that’s truly hers – from the newcomer’s sinister designs.

Teeming with unforgettable characters and illuminated by Carey’s trademark illustrations, Edith Holler is a surprisingly modern fable of one young woman’s struggle to escape her family’s control and craft her own creative destiny.

I was a little surprised by the horror inflections in this book - it was a little creepier and more bloody than I usually like but as I did pick this up to read whilst poorly with Covid it might just be my fever talking!

The book is wonderfully visual, not just because of Carey's sketches which definitely add to the experience, I really did find myself wandering around Edith's Norwich. I think that there is scope to base a walking tour of the city on the book - just as they have done for Shardlake's Norwich!

I loved all of the local history - it will be interesting to hear from other readers as to what they think are true events, what are local legends and what come from Carey's incredible imagination! 

Like the previous book by Carey that I've read (Little) this book won't be for everyone, he has a style all of his own but however much they drag me out of my comfort zone I will keep reading him!

Many thanks to Claire at Gallic Books for the advance copy of this book which is published on Oct 3rd.

Busy doing nothing

 

A week away

After the dodgy summer that we've had Mr Norfolkbookworm and I decided that we needed a week away doing nothing except eating, drinking, reading, and relaxing - our only restriction was that we wanted to fly from Norwich.

We're just back from our first visit to Menorca and I don't think that it will be our last.

Menorca also had the advantage that it is the setting for some of the books Mr Norfolkbookworm really enjoys - the Master and Commander books by Patrick O'Brian  - and we made a point of visiting Mao/Mahon one day just to see these settings, it was nice to do a literary pilgrimage for him as he is so patient when I do these!  I've read the first book and it was really good to see the locations and to work out just how small the ships of that time really were!

Anyhow apart from the day we spent sightseeing the rest of the time we did fulfil out goals of doing very little (although as the pool and sea were both very inviting we did add swimming to our to do list) and I read 9 books while we were away - catching up on my NetGalley back log.

All were good but nothing really stood out for me - they were perfect holiday reads! The exception is Le Fay - I loved My Name is Morgan last summer and was worried that the 2nd book wouldn't be as good but if anything it was better!

• Lula Dean's Little Library of Banned Books by Kirsten Miller
• The Voyage Home by Pat Barker
• Sandwich by Catherine Newman
• The Life Impossible by Matt Haig
• The Days I Loved You Most by Amy Neff
• The Boy I Love by William Hussey
• Meet Me When My Heart Stops by Becky Hunter
• Le Fay by Sophie Keetch
• Moon Road by Sarah Leipciger

Twenty books in twenty days (part two)

 

Books that have stayed with me.

As previously mentioned on Social Media I took part in a challenge to list a book that had stayed with me or influenced me each day for twenty days - it has been just the sort of icebreaker I can get behind.

However the challenge was just to post the book jacket with no reasons why you picked it and after picking my books I though I actually want a record of why it is these 20 books that feature.

Like online there's no order to these books, and while are some firm favourites and have been for decades some of the books that came to my mind really surprised me.

Invisible Women - while I knew that things weren't really equal for men and women despite laws and loud claims by men, this book really opened my eyes as to just how much of the world is set up for the default male and not most of the population.

Carrying the Fire - I don't think that this was the first biography/autobiography from the early era astronauts that I read but it certainly the best. A great mix of personal story and science and entirely readable, it is one of my great regrets that I never got to meet Collins as he comes across everywhere as such a nice person.

Black Beauty - I think my original copy of this one was once my dad's and despite being not a huge horsey person (and mildly allergic to them or their hay) I loved this book - even though it is quite bleak in places!

Diary of Anne Frank - I think that this was the first book about the Holocaust that I read, and it is one that I return to on an infrequent basis, along with other works - scholarly and biographical - related to Frank. 

Birds Without Wings - while Captain Corelli's Mandolin is the more famous book it was the epic sweep of this one that really blew me away, and I loved the way that de Bernieres mimics Homer in his turn of phrase.

Alanna: The First Adventure - I could have picked any of Pierce's books set in Tortall but this one was the first I read after (somewhat surprisingly) finding it on the shelf in my school library. I still buy Peirce's books as soon as I can and just hope that the one she's been talking about for a few years does see the light of day.

The Shell Seekers - this was another of the first 'grown up' books that I read in my teens, again I think it was a recommendation from my mum. It is a sweeping, multi generational family story with a strong WW2 setting and as well as this I think it also helped develop my appreciation of the Impressionist school of painting.

Rewild Yourself - after my brain haemorrhage we started spending a lot more time out in nature, and then with the pandemic limiting where we could go this book was ideal for focussing the mind on how just some small actions can keep you grounded while still expanding your connections with the natural world. While a lot of books in the nature writing genre are fascinating only this and Lev Pariakian's Light Rain Sometimes Falls have reinforced that you don't need to do big things/ take big trips to make the most of the world around you.

The Flowers of the Field - another sweeping, multi generational family story that I read and reread as a teen/ young adult, this time with a WW1 focus. The sequel, A Flower That's Free, is also good but if I shut my eyes I can still 'see' scenes from this one, and the main character (Thea) is one of my favourites in all the books I've read.

The Cut Out Girl - as I think can be seen from this list I do like to read books about the period in history from about 1900-1950, and when I  look through my full reading diaries for the past 20 years this becomes clearer. This book has stuck with me so much because thanks to The Diary of Anne Frank and other similar accounts from Holland during the Nazi occupation I had formed a fixed idea of this period of time and here Van Es presents a new point of view. I've since found other books and documentaries that add to this  and so it deserves its place on this list because it is always good to learn new things and have your opinions challenged and to remember that the victors/survivors write history.

Twenty books in twenty days (part one)

 

Books that have stayed with me.

As previously mentioned on Social Media I took part in a challenge to list a book that had stayed with me or influenced me each day for twenty days - it has been just the sort of icebreaker I can get behind.

However the challenge was just to post the book jacket with no reasons why you picked it and after picking my books I though I actually want a record of why it is these 20 books that feature.

Like online there's no order to these books, and while are some firm favourites and have been for decades some of the books that came to my mind really surprised me.

Vintage 1954 - It was hard to pick a single Antoine Laurain book as I've loved them all and eagerly await the translation of his new books. I surprised myself by picking this one and not An Astronomer in Love (which I liked so much a colleagues and I nominated it for the Dublin Literary Award), however when I shut my eyes it was this one that popped into mind and so on the list it went!

Testament of Youth - this book was so important to me as a late teenager and in to my early 20s and I think that it is the book that really started my love of autobiographies and also my interest into WW1 in a wider context. This was a case of not returning to a favourite however as when I reread it a few years ago it wasn't quite the profound book I remembered.

The Red Tent - I think that this was the first (feminist) retelling of a classic/Biblical tale that I read and again it is one that sparked my later interest in the genre.

The Song of Achilles - I felt bad picking this over the sublime books by Natalie Haynes but again this was the first book of its genre and the one that rekindled my love of Ancient Greek myths and legends.

To Serve The All My Days - I loved (and if I'm honest do still love) classic school stories and I think that this was the first 'grown up' book I came across that had this setting. It also has a strong WW1 and WW2 theme so event more boxes ticked! I'm not sure how I discovered this one - I know my parents introduced me to Delderfield's Diana & The Avenue books so it may be thanks to them...

Project Hail Mary - I really liked Weir's The Martian and didn't think that his Artemis was quite as bad as some say but this one was just on a different level - apparently it is about to be made into a film but I can't see how that would work as the pictures in my mind are so strong.

Shakespeare On Toast - after a visit as a tourist to Shakespeare's Globe I became more interested in the plays and Shakespeare himself and this book taught me so much - not least how to actually read the plays. It sparked such an interest that I ended up doing an MA in Shakespeare Studies!

Mossflower - it was a toss up between this one and Jacques' Redwall for this but I remember reading this one multiple times and loving the feel of it. Unusually this was a series that my sister also enjoyed and we used to swap books while we were on holiday. I have to confess that as a quick and constant reader I was probably initially drawn to these books because of their length - pre eReaders and with room in the family suitcase these books were ideal!

Little Women - and being in the UK this does mean only Little Women and not Good Wives too! I think the copy of this I had was my mum's and I know that even now it is a comfort read that I must have finished more than 30 times. I also know that some of my friends don't like it and find it out dated and sexist where as I read it as a fable and also as being quite empowering...

The Island - this book has a Greek setting and is historical so already pretty much had my name all over it, but when I did read it I discovered that it was set in a place we'd visited (and on our very first holiday together) it made the book event more appealing. I've enjoyed most of Hislop's books since this one but because it was about somewhere we'd been before it got 'famous' this one tips the scales as my favourite.

Micro Review 12 (2024) Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize

 

Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar (Pan Macmillan)

This was my last read from the Waterstones Prize shortlist and sadly it wasn't a case that I'd left the best until last. In fact for quite some time I wasn't sure that I'd even get to the end of the book - and I rarely mark a book DNF (did not finish).

Cyrus Shams is lost.

Ever since his mother’s plane was senselessly shot down over the Persian Gulf when he was just a baby, Cyrus has been grappling with her death. Now, newly sober, he is set to learn the truth of her life.

When an encounter with a dying artist leads Cyrus towards the mysteries of his past - an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as an Angel of Death, a haunting work of art by an exiled painter – he finds himself once again caught up in the story of his mother, who may not have been who or what she seemed. As Cyrus searches for meaning in the scattered clues of his life, a final revelation transforms everything he thought he knew.

The premise of this one was good - how does one respond when a parent has become a martyr? It was made all the more interesting as Cyrus's dad then moved them to the country responsible for his mother's death.

However for much of the book I found the descriptions of drinking and drug taking to be overwhelming and it was impossible for me to connect with the characters at all. 

Once the action moved to New York I did become more enthralled and the preconceived ideas I'd made from the blurb were challenged, and then the next ideas as to where the plot was going were also proved wrong and I found myself breathlessly turning the page to see how the story was going to resolve.

This book isn't going to be for everyone, and in a way made a nice complementary read to one of my Women In Translation books, but I am glad I did stick with it.