This week’s Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, asks for ten books on our spring TBR. I’m sometimes hesitant to make lists like this because saying that I’m planning to read a book seems to guarantee that I won’t do it. There are still four books from the winter TBR list I posted in November that I haven’t read yet. Anyway, here are ten books that I really do intend to read in the next few months!

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1. Desperate Remedies by Thomas Hardy (1871)

This was the book chosen for me in the recent Classics Club Spin, so I need to read it before the end of April.

Cytherea has taken a position as lady’s maid to the eccentric arch-intriguer Miss Aldclyffe. On discovering that the man she loves, Edward Springrove, is already engaged to his cousin, Cytherea comes under the influence of Miss Aldclyffe’s fascinating, manipulative steward Manston.

Blackmail, murder and romance are among the ingredients of Hardy’s first published novel, and in it he draws blithely on the ‘sensation novel’ perfected by Wilkie Collins. Several perceptive critics praised the author as a novelist with a future when Desperate Remedies appeared anonymously in 1871. In its depiction of country life and insight into psychology and sexuality it already bears the unmistakable imprint of Hardy’s genius.

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2. Circe by Madeline Miller (2018)

Review copy received from NetGalley.

In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. But Circe is a strange child – not powerful, like her father, nor viciously alluring like her mother. Turning to the world of mortals for companionship, she discovers that she does possess power – the power of witchcraft, which can transform rivals into monsters and menace the gods themselves.

Threatened, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island, where she hones her occult craft, tames wild beasts and crosses paths with many of the most famous figures in all of mythology, including the Minotaur, Daedalus and his doomed son Icarus, the murderous Medea, and, of course, wily Odysseus.

But there is danger, too, for a woman who stands alone, and Circe unwittingly draws the wrath of both men and gods, ultimately finding herself pitted against one of the most terrifying and vengeful of the Olympians. To protect what she loves most, Circe must summon all her strength and choose, once and for all, whether she belongs with the gods she is born from, or the mortals she has come to love.

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3. The Illumination of Ursula Flight by Anna-Marie Crowhurst (2018)

Another review copy received from NetGalley.

Born on the night of an ill-auguring comet just before Charles II’s Restoration, Ursula Flight has a difficult future written in the stars.

Against the custom of the age she begins an education with her father, who fosters in her a love of reading, writing and astrology.

Following a surprise meeting with an actress, Ursula yearns for the theatre and thus begins her quest to become a playwright despite scoundrels, bounders, bad luck and heartbreak.

 

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4. The Pharmacist’s Wife by Vanessa Tait (2018)

And one more NetGalley book.

When Rebecca Palmer’s new husband opens a pharmacy in Victorian Edinburgh, she expects to live the life of a well-heeled gentlewoman. But her ideal is turns to ashes when she discovers her husband is not what he seems. As Rebecca struggles to maintain her dignity in the face of his infidelity and strange sexual desires, Alexander tries to pacify her so-called hysteria with a magical new chemical creation. A wonder-drug he calls heroin.

Rebecca’s journey into addiction takes her further into her past, and her first, lost love, while Alexander looks on, curiously observing his wife’s descent. Meanwhile, Alexander’s desire to profit from his invention leads him down a dangerous path that blurs science, passion, and death. He soon discovers that even the most promising experiments can have unforeseen and deadly consequences…

Reminiscent of the works of Sarah Waters, this is a brilliantly observed piece of Victoriana which deals with the disempowerment of women, addiction, desire, sexual obsession and vengeance.

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5. Munich by Robert Harris (2017)

One of those unread books from my winter list that I do still want to read as soon as possible!

September 1938
Hitler is determined to start a war.
Chamberlain is desperate to preserve the peace.
The issue is to be decided in a city that will forever afterwards be notorious for what takes place there.
Munich.

As Chamberlain’s plane judders over the Channel and the Fürher’s train steams relentlessly south from Berlin, two young men travel with secrets of their own.

Hugh Legat is one of Chamberlain’s private secretaries; Paul Hartmann a German diplomat and member of the anti-Hitler resistance. Great friends at Oxford before Hitler came to power, they haven’t seen one another since they were last in Munich six years earlier. Now. as the future of Europe hangs in the balance, their paths are destined to cross again .

When the stakes are this high, who are you willing to betray? Your friends, your family, your country or your conscience?

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6. Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew’d by Alan Bradley (2016)

The latest Flavia de Luce mystery, The Grave’s a Fine and Private Place, has recently been published but I need to catch up with this one first.

In spite of being ejected from Miss Bodycote’s Female Academy in Canada, twelve-year-old Flavia de Luce is excited to be sailing home to England. But instead of a joyous homecoming, she is greeted on the docks with unfortunate news: Her father has fallen ill, and a hospital visit will have to wait while he rests. But with Flavia’s blasted sisters and insufferable cousin underfoot, Buckshaw now seems both too empty—and not empty enough.

Only too eager to run an errand for the vicar’s wife, Flavia hops on her trusty bicycle, Gladys, to deliver a message to a reclusive wood-carver. Finding the front door ajar, Flavia enters and stumbles upon the poor man’s body hanging upside down on the back of his bedroom door. The only living creature in the house is a feline that shows little interest in the disturbing scene. Curiosity may not kill this cat, but Flavia is energized at the prospect of a new investigation. It’s amazing what the discovery of a corpse can do for one’s spirits. But what awaits Flavia will shake her to the very core.

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7. Under Heaven by Guy Gavriel Kay (2010)

It’s been a while since I last read any of Guy Gavriel Kay’s books so I would like to read this one soon.

It begins simply. Shen Tai, son of an illustrious general serving the Emperor of Kitai, has spent two years honoring the memory of his late father by burying the bones of the dead from both armies at the site of one of his father’s last great battles. In recognition of his labors and his filial piety, an unlikely source has sent him a dangerous gift: 250 Sardian horses.

You give a man one of the famed Sardian horses to reward him greatly. You give him four or five to exalt him above his fellows, propel him towards rank, and earn him jealousy, possibly mortal jealousy. Two hundred and fifty is an unthinkable gift, a gift to overwhelm an emperor.

Wisely, the gift comes with the stipulation that Tai must claim the horses in person. Otherwise he would probably be dead already…

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8. Gentian Hill by Elizabeth Goudge (1949)

For the last three years I have joined in with Lory’s Elizabeth Goudge Day; she isn’t hosting one this year but I will still be celebrating Goudge’s birthday in April.

Unable to bear the prospect of a life at sea, young Anthony O’Connell deserts his ship at Torquay and escapes into the Devonshire countryside under a new name. When Stella Sprigg, adopted daughter of a local farmer, encounters ‘Zachary’, the pair instantly know they are destined to be together.

Intertwined with the local legend of St. Michael’s Chapel, Stella and Zachary’s story takes them from the secluded Devonshire valley to the perilous Mediterranean seas and finally to the poverty and squalor of eighteenth-century London.

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9. Cashelmara by Susan Howatch (1974)

Having recently re-read Penmarric (review coming soon), I’m looking forward to continuing my Howatch re-reads with Cashelmara and then The Wheel of Fortune.

There were two subjects which lonely widower Edward de Salis never discussed: his dead wife and his family home in Ireland, ‘matchless Cashelmara’. So when he meets Marguerite, a bright young American with whom he can talk freely about both, he is able to love again and takes her back to Ireland as his wife. But Marguerite soon discovers that married life is not what she expected, and that she has married into a troubled family bitterly divided by love and hatred. Cashelmara becomes the curse of three generations as they play out their fates in a spellbinding drama, which moves inexorably towards murder and retribution.

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10. The Prime Minister by Anthony Trollope (1876)

Another book from my Classics Club list. I started to read it earlier this year but the time wasn’t right and I’m ready for another attempt now.

Despite his mysterious antecedents, an unscrupulous financial speculator, Ferdinand Lopez, aspires to marry into respectability and wealth and join the ranks of British society. One of the nineteenth century’s most memorable outsiders, Lopez’s story is set against that of the ultimate insider, Plantagenet Palliser, Duke of Omnium, who reluctantly accepts the highest office of state, becoming “the greatest man in the greatest country in the world.”

The Prime Minister is the fifth in Trollope’s six-volume Palliser series and a wonderfully subtle portrait of a marriage, political expediency, and misplaced love.

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Have you read any of these? What do you have on your own spring TBR?

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl asks us to list our ten favourite quotations from books, but I have taken a slightly different approach to the topic. There are so many passages I love from so many books that I would never be able to narrow them down to ten favourites – or even remember them all (which is why, for the last few years, I have been putting together my monthly Commonplace Book posts so that I will have some sort of record to look back on in the future).

Back to today’s post, though, and I have turned to Goodreads for help. Those of you who use Goodreads may know that there is a ‘Quotes’ function where you can find, ‘like’ and save notable quotations – and I have quite a few stored there, from which I have picked out ten that I found beautiful, funny, interesting or memorable in some way. Not necessarily all-time favourites, then, but I hope you’ll enjoy reading them anyway.

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1. One that all book lovers will understand:

“What she was finding also was how one book led to another, doors kept opening wherever she turned and the days weren’t long enough for the reading she wanted to do.”

Alan Bennett – The Uncommon Reader

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2. One from a favourite children’s book:

“Animals don’t behave like men,’ he said. ‘If they have to fight, they fight; and if they have to kill they kill. But they don’t sit down and set their wits to work to devise ways of spoiling other creatures’ lives and hurting them. They have dignity and animality.”

Richard Adams – Watership Down

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3. One I find beautiful and inspiring:

“A hard truth: that courage can be without meaning or impact, need not be rewarded, or even known. The world has not been made in that way. Perhaps, however, within the self there might come a resonance, the awareness of having done something difficult, of having done…something.”

Guy Gavriel Kay – The Last Light of the Sun

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4. One of my favourite opening lines:

“He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.”

Rafael Sabatini – Scaramouche

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5. One that I can identify with at the moment:

“Are there any leading men in your life?”

“Several, but they’re all fictional.”

Catherine Lowell – The Madwoman Upstairs

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6. One with which anyone who has read Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles will sympathise:

“I wish to God,” said Gideon with mild exasperation, “that you’d talk – just once – in prose like other people.”

Dorothy Dunnett – The Game of Kings

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7. One from a favourite classic:

“Some of us rush through life and some of us saunter through life. Mrs. Vesey sat through life.”

Wilkie Collins – The Woman in White

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8. One of Dickens’ best:

“That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.”

Charles Dickens – Great Expectations

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9. One which gives us some good advice:

“The past can teach us, nurture us, but it cannot sustain us. The essence of life is change, and we must move ever forward or the soul will wither and die.”

Susanna Kearsley – Mariana

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10. One I find comforting when I’m having a bad day:

“Come what come may, time and the hour run through the roughest day.”

William Shakespeare – Macbeth

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Do you have any favourite quotations? How do you remember them? Do you keep a notebook or do you record them online somewhere?

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, asks us to list the ten books that have been on our TBR the longest. I keep track of my TBR through Goodreads so I decided that the easiest way to approach this week’s topic was simply to take the first ten books on my Goodreads ‘to-read’ shelf, which were all added in 2010/2011. Before I started blogging I was very good at reading the books that I’d bought before buying more, so I don’t have any very old books on my TBR.

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1. The Rose of Sebastopol by Katharine McMahon

Historical fiction set during the Crimean War. I remember buying this on a visit to my favourite bookshop, Barter Books; I did start to read it once but didn’t get very far with it.

2. The House at Riverton by Kate Morton

I added this to my TBR – and then read two other Kate Morton books instead. Because I was disappointed by The Distant Hours, I never went back to read this one. Maybe I should.

3. The Blasphemer by Nigel Farndale

A dual timeline novel divided between the First World War and the modern day. I won this one in a giveaway by the publisher, so I feel very guilty that I still haven’t read it!

4. Mornings in Jenin by Susan Abulhawa

I don’t know much about this one except that it’s set in Palestine, but I remember reading some glowing reviews from other bloggers a few years ago, which was why it was added to my TBR.

5. Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks

This novel about a 17th century village ravaged by plague has been recommended to me many times, but every time I’ve picked it up I’ve found that I was in the wrong mood for it.

6. Annie Dunne by Sebastian Barry

I love Sebastian Barry’s writing and have read several of his other books about the Dunne and McNulty families, but this one has been languishing on my shelf for years while I’ve been drawn to the newer ones instead.

7. Trespass by Rose Tremain

I added this to the TBR at a time when I hadn’t read anything else by Rose Tremain and I wasn’t sure whether or not I would like her writing. I’ve now read three of her other books and enjoyed them, so I think it could be time to try Trespass!

8. Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey

The Booker Prize winner from 1988. It has never felt like the right time to read it, but I said recently that I wanted to read more books set in Australia, so perhaps the time has now come.

9. Blood Harvest by Sharon Bolton

This is the only one of Sharon Bolton’s crime novels that I still haven’t read. I’ve no idea why not as I’ve loved all of her other books and her standalones, like this one, tend to be my favourites.

10. Beloved by Toni Morrison

I included this book on my original Classics Club list but removed it to replace it with something else. I do still want to read it and will hopefully find time for it soon.

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Have you read any of these? Which books have been on your TBR the longest?