Category: Memes

Top Ten Tuesday: Last year’s love affairs

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This week’s Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl) is a ‘Love Freebie’. I have decided to approach this topic by choosing ten of the most interesting, moving or memorable romances and love affairs from my last year of reading (February 2017 to February 2018).

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1. Frenchman’s Creek by Daphne du Maurier

This isn’t one of my favourite du Maurier novels but I still enjoyed this story of Dona St Columb who, having grown bored and disillusioned with her marriage, heads for Cornwall to spend some time away from her husband and his friends. Here she meets the pirate Jean-Benoit Aubéry and as she begins to fall in love with him, she struggles to reconcile her impressions of the polite, cultured Frenchman with the terrible tales she has heard from the neighbours.

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2. Shadow of the Moon by MM Kaye

I loved this book which I read as part of a readalong last summer. Set before and during the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857 it follows the story of Winter de Ballesteros, who travels across the sea to India to marry her fiance, the Commissioner of Lunjore. Captain Alex Randall is sent to escort her on the journey, but falls in love with her himself. Will he be able to prevent the marriage or is Winter too infatuated with the Commissioner to see clearly?

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3. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

I’m sure this one needs no introduction! This is one of my favourite books and I re-read it last February for the first time in years. As I said in my review, “the relationship between Heathcliff and Cathy is hardly a conventional romance and although there is love, it is an obsessive and unhealthy love”. It may not be the most romantic of love stories, but I have always liked the darkness, the passion and the melodrama.

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4. Wintercombe and Herald of Joy by Pamela Belle

During the English Civil War, the home of Silence St Barbe, wife of a Parliamentarian officer, is garrisoned by Royalist soldiers. The romance between Silence and one of the enemy captains, which develops slowly over the course of two novels, was one of my favourites of last year. There’s more to these books than romance, though, and I would recommend them to anyone interested in this period of history.

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5. Towers in the Mist by Elizabeth Goudge

The romance in this one forms a relatively small part of the novel. Published in 1937, it’s set in Oxford during the Elizabethan period and follows the story of fourteen-year-old Faithful Crocker who is welcomed into the household of Canon Leigh of Christ Church. We get to know all of the members of the family, but the romance between eldest daughter Joyeuce Leigh and the student Nicolas de Worde was one of my favourite storylines.

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6. Long Summer Day by RF Delderfield

The first volume in Delderfield’s A Horseman Riding By trilogy introduces us to Paul Craddock who uses his inheritance to buy an estate in rural Devon. There are two love interests for Paul: sensible, kind-hearted Claire Derwent, daughter of one of his tenant farmers, and the strong and independent suffragette, Grace Lovell. I won’t tell you which way the story plays out!

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7. The Fortune of War by Patrick O’Brian

Surgeon and spy Stephen Maturin and Diana Villiers met in the second book in O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin series; this is book number six and their tempestuous relationship still hasn’t been resolved. Will they find any happiness in the next volume? I have the seventh book lined up to read soon, so I’ll be able to find out!

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8. Wolf Among Wolves by Hans Fallada

Set in Germany in 1923, gambler Wolfgang Pagel loses his money at roulette – and loses his fiancee, Petra Ledig, who refuses to see him again until he reforms. The two are separated for most of the novel, as Wolfgang tries to build a new life away from the temptations of the city, but their relationship and the question of whether they will ever be reunited was one of my favourite aspects of the book.

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9. The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne

A very one-sided love affair! Our hero Cyril, whom we follow from birth to old age, is still a teenager when he falls in love with his more popular, more sophisticated friend, Julian Woodbead. Will he ever have the courage to tell Julian how he feels – and if he does, will his feelings be returned?

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10. Anne Boleyn: A King’s Obsession by Alison Weir

This may seem an unusual one to include in a list of romances, especially when you consider how it ended, but surely the love affair between Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn was one of the most important in English history. After all, it was one of the factors leading to the king’s divorce from Katherine of Aragon, the break with Rome and the start of the Reformation. Alison Weir’s novel tells Anne’s story right from her early years through to her beheading.

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What about you? Have you read any books with interesting romances or love affairs recently? What are your all-time favourites?

Top Ten Tuesday: Books that have been on my TBR the longest

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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?

Six degrees of separation: Lincoln in the Bardo to The Ashes of London

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I took part in Six Degrees of Separation hosted by Kate of Books are my Favourite and Best for the first time last month and enjoyed it, so I thought I’d try it again this month. The idea is that Kate chooses a book to use as a starting point and then we have to link it to six other books of our choice to form a chain. A book doesn’t have to be connected to all of the others on the list – only to the one next to it in the chain.

The first book this month is Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders, last year’s Booker Prize winner, which I read just before Christmas. With its unusual and experimental structure it wasn’t really my sort of book, but I did appreciate the originality and creativity.

In Lincoln in the Bardo, Abraham Lincoln visits Oak Hill Cemetery to grieve over the body of his eleven-year-old son, Willie. This brings to mind another book set in a cemetery: Pure by Andrew Miller. Pure is the story of a young engineer from Normandy who arrives in Paris to begin work on the destruction of the overcrowded and unsanitary cemetery of Les Innocents.

Pure appeared on the shortlist for the Walter Scott Prize in 2012. Another book shortlisted in the same year – the eventual winner, in fact – was On Canaan’s Side by Sebastian Barry. This beautifully written novel is narrated by Lilly, an elderly woman looking back on the eighty-nine years of her life.

Sebastian Barry is one of my favourite Irish authors. Another Irish author I love is John Boyne and the first of his books that I read was This House is Haunted.

This House is Haunted is a wonderfully entertaining and atmospheric ghost story set in Victorian England. At the beginning of the book the narrator and her father go to watch a public reading by Charles Dickens. I could have chosen a Dickens novel as my next link, but instead I’m going to highlight Claire Tomalin’s biography, Charles Dickens: A Life.

Claire Tomalin has written several other biographies on subjects including Thomas Hardy, Jane Austen and Mary Wollstonecraft, but apart from the Dickens book the only other one I’ve read so far is Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self.

In his diary, Samuel Pepys famously wrote about the Great Fire of London of 1666. The fire provides the setting for The Ashes of London by Andrew Taylor. It’s the first in a series of historical mysteries, with the second book, The Fire Court, due to be published soon.

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Have you read any of the books in my chain? What did you think of them?

Next month’s chain will begin with a book I haven’t read and know nothing about – The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf.

Top Ten Tuesday: Bookish resolutions

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Starting this week, Top Ten Tuesday is now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. Her first topic is “Bookish resolutions and goals”. I sometimes put a post like this together at the beginning of January but didn’t get round to it this year, so I’m posting it today instead.

I don’t set goals in terms of numbers (apart from the Goodreads Challenge which I use more as a way of keeping track of what I’ve read rather than an actual ‘challenge’) so I prefer to call this a list of resolutions. Some of these are the same as my resolutions from previous years (most of which I didn’t manage to keep) and others are new.

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1. Make more time for re-reads. I say this every year and never seem to do it. I re-read three books last year, because I needed to so I could finish my Classics Club list, but there are many more old favourites I would like to revisit as well. I will definitely try to re-read some of them this year!

2. Make some progress with my new Classics Club list. I posted my second list in November after completing my first one. The new list has 50 classics on it and a target date of 14th November 2022. So far I have only read one book from the list – Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather – but there are a lot of others I’m excited about reading.

3. Continue to work on my Walter Scott Prize project for which I’m working my way through all of the shortlisted titles since the prize was first awarded in 2010. This year’s shortlist will be announced in March, but I still have some from each of the previous years’ lists to read too.

4. Read more books set in different countries. Reading can be a great way to learn about the culture and history of countries other than our own. When I posted my analysis of the historical fiction I read in 2017, I found that the majority of the books I read last year were set in Britain, with the USA, France and Italy also well-represented. This year I want to include more books set in countries I know less about.

5. Join in with other bloggers’ projects or events which sound appealing e.g. Jane’s Birthday Book of Underappreciated Lady Authors (for which I’m currently reading Britannia Mews by Margery Sharp) and Karen and Simon’s club years (1977 Club is coming in April).

6. Request fewer books from NetGalley and get caught up with my backlog. I have had the opportunity to read some great books through NetGalley but it’s easy to find yourself requesting more than you know you’ll realistically have time to read. This year I want to limit the number I request until I’ve read all the books already on my NetGalley shelf.

7. Continue to work through some of the series that I’m in the middle of reading. I’m very good at starting them but not so good at continuing with them!

8. Read the books that I really want to read. There are a lot of books that I’ve been wanting to read for years and am sure I’m going to love, but that I’ve been avoiding reading because I’m ‘saving them for later’ or ‘want to have something to look forward to’. I’m aware of how silly this is, so 2018 is going to be the year I finally read those long-anticipated books!

9. Abandon books that I’m not enjoying. Sometimes I can tell almost immediately that a book is not for me, but sometimes I’m not sure and decide to keep going in the hope that it will get better – and then even when it doesn’t improve I still struggle on to the end.

10. Try to make every book I read a potential favourite book of the year. I know this won’t actually happen, but it’s what we would all like, isn’t it? Resolutions 1-9 should help with this!

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What resolutions, goals or plans do you have for your 2018 reading?

Six degrees of separation: The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency to The Time Machine

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This is the first time I have participated in Six Degrees of Separation, hosted by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. Every month we are given the title of a book as a starting point and the idea is to link it to six other books to form a chain. A book doesn’t have to be connected to all of the others on the list – only to the one next to it in the chain.

I’ve seen other bloggers taking part in this every month and it always looks fun, so I thought I would try it myself. I picked a good month for my first attempt, as the opening book in the chain is one that I read and enjoyed just last year: The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith.

This is the first in a series of novels about Mma Precious Ramotswe, a woman who runs a detective agency in Botswana. Another book I remember enjoying which is also set in an African country is Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese.

Cutting for Stone tells the story of a surgeon’s twin sons who grow up in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and are raised by two doctors from the local hospital. This brings to mind another book about a doctor: A Country Doctor’s Notebook by Mikhail Bulgakov.

This is a fascinating and surprisingly funny book about a young, newly qualified doctor working at a small hospital in a remote Russian village. It’s the second book I’ve read by Mikhail Bulgakov; I also loved The Master and Margarita.

I remember feeling intimidated at the thought of tackling The Master and Margarita…until I picked it up and started to read. What a wonderful, original, unusual novel it is!

My next link is to another book with the word Master in the title. Master of Shadows by Neil Oliver.

Set during the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Master of Shadows is the first novel by historian and TV presenter Neil Oliver. Another historian who has recently started to write fiction is Ian Mortimer, so the next book on my list is one that I read a few months ago – The Outcasts of Time.

The Outcasts of Time is the story of two brothers who travel forward in time from 1348 to 1942, stopping in each century to see how things have changed. I have read a lot of books which feature time travel, but the obvious choice to finish my chain is H.G. Wells’ classic The Time Machine.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my first Six Degrees of Separation! It has taken me from a detective agency in Botswana to a futuristic world, visiting Ethiopia, Russia and the Byzantine Empire along the way. I wonder where the chain will lead me next month, when we’ll be starting with Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders.

Have you read any of the books in my chain? What did you think of them?

Top Ten Tuesday: New-to-me authors read in 2017

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This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic (hosted by The Broke and the Bookish) is:

Top ten new-to-me authors I read in 2017

I don’t take part in Top Ten Tuesday every week, but I thought this one would give me an opportunity to take another look back at 2017’s reading as well as looking forward to the future. The ten authors I’ve listed below were all new to me last year and I am now interested in reading more books by all ten of them, in 2018 if possible.

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1. Rebecca Mascull

Rebecca Mascull was the first author to come to mind when I saw the topic for this week. Until 2017 I had never read any of her books, but The Wild Air and Song of the Sea Maid both impressed me enough to win a place on my books of the year list. I still have her first novel, The Visitors, to look forward to.

2. Robert Graves

I read I, Claudius in 2017 and enjoyed it more than I’d expected to (Ancient Rome is not one of my favourite periods to read about). The sequel, Claudius the God, is on my Classics Club list and I will try to get round to it this year.

3. Helen Steadman

I was pleased to discover Helen Steadman in 2017 because she writes about the North East of England, which is where I am from. Her debut novel, Widdershins, is about the Newcastle witch trials of 1650 and apparently a sequel is on its way.

4. Allan Massie

Death in Bordeaux is the first in a quartet of crime novels set in 1940s France. I liked it enough to want to read the others, which is fortunate as I need to read the fourth one for my Reading the Walter Scott Prize project.

5. Elizabeth Jane Howard

Having heard so much about Elizabeth Jane Howard’s Cazalet Chronicles, 2017 was the year I got round to starting the series myself. I enjoyed The Light Years and am looking forward to continuing with the second book, Marking Time.

6. Nicholas Blake

Nicholas Blake (Cecil Day-Lewis) is one of several classic crime authors I read for the first time in 2017 (Michael Innes is another). So far The Corpse in the Snowman is the only book of his that I’ve read, but I have another of his Nigel Strangeways mysteries lined up to read soon.

7. Nicola Cornick

I enjoyed reading two Nicola Cornick books in 2017 – The Phantom Tree and House of Shadows. Both are historical fiction involving dual time periods; her earlier novels don’t really appeal to me but I’m hoping she will write more books like these two!

8. RF Delderfield

Delderfield’s Long Summer Day was another of my favourite books of 2017. I’m planning to read the other books in his A Horseman Riding By trilogy this year, before going on to explore everything else he has written.

9. Antonia Senior

Antonia Senior’s The Winter Isles is a fascinating story set in 12th century Scotland. Although I didn’t quite manage to love it, it has made me curious about her other novels.

10. Gerald Durrell

I don’t read a lot of non-fiction, but I did enjoy Gerald Durrell’s Three Singles to Adventure and Golden Bats and Pink Pigeons in 2017. Maybe 2018 will be the year I finally read his Corfu trilogy!

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Have you read anything by any of these authors? Which new-to-you authors did you discover in 2017?

Top Ten Tuesday: Ten books on my Winter TBR

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This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic (hosted by The Broke and the Bookish) is Top Ten Books On My Winter TBR. I have a lot more than ten books on my TBR, but I’m listing below some that I’m hoping to get to in the next few months.

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1. Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather

At the top of my TBR is the book that was chosen for me in the recent Classics Club Spin. I’m looking forward to reading more Willa Cather.

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2. Voice of the Falconer by David Blixt

I read and loved David Blixt’s The Master of Verona a few years ago. This is the second book in the series and I really didn’t mean to wait this long to read it!

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3. The Pearl Sister by Lucinda Riley

The fourth book in Lucinda Riley’s Seven Sisters series will take us to Thailand and Australia. I’ve enjoyed the first three books so am looking forward to this one.

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4. The Oaken Heart by Margery Allingham

Not one of Allingham’s mystery novels but a non-fiction book giving an account of life in her Essex village during the Second World War.

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5. The Snow Globe by Judith Kinghorn

I’ve read all three of Judith Kinghorn’s other novels and this is the only one I still have left to read. The title sounds appropriate for winter anyway!

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6. Munich by Robert Harris

I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve read by Robert Harris so far (particularly his An Officer and a Spy and Cicero trilogy). I haven’t had a chance yet to read his latest book, Munich, but it’s quickly moving up the TBR!

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7. Post of Honour by RF Delderfield

This is the second part of RF Delderfield’s Horseman Riding By trilogy. I was intending to read it straight after finishing the wonderful Long Summer Day, but got distracted by other books.

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8. Fool’s Errand by Robin Hobb

Having loved Robin Hobb’s Farseer and Liveship Traders trilogies, I think it’s time I started the Tawny Man trilogy. I’ll probably read the first book, Fool’s Errand, in the new year, if not before.

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9. Marking Time by Elizabeth Jane Howard

I read the first of Howard’s Cazalet Chronicles earlier this year and want to move on to the next one. I can’t wait to catch up with the characters from The Light Years again.

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10. Sugar Money by Jane Harris

I’ve been waiting for a new book from Jane Harris for a long time! I loved Gillespie and I and The Observations, so have high hopes for this one.

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Have you read any of these books – or would you like to? What is on your Winter TBR?