The end of 20 Books of Summer 2024 – and the start of RIP XIX

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I’ve taken part in Cathy’s 20 Books of Summer challenge every year since 2017, but have never managed to read all of the books on my list – until now. I’ve come very close once or twice, reading 18 or 19 of them, but usually I get distracted by other books and end up only reading 10 or 11. What did I do differently this year? I can think of three things: first, I only listed books I needed to read anyway – NetGalley review copies and books for various other reading challenges and events. I also took advantage of Cathy’s flexible rules and listed some alternatives in case any of the books on my main list didn’t appeal when the time came. Finally, I avoided including any very long, heavy books, which is a mistake I’ve made in the past.

Here’s what I read, with links to my reviews:

1. Three Act Tragedy by Agatha Christie (Read Christie 2024)
2. N or M? by Agatha Christie (Read Christie 2024)
3. Finn Family Moomintroll by Tove Jansson (Moomin Week)
4. Thomasina by Paul Gallico (Reading the Meow)
5. In the Upper Country by Kai Thomas (Walter Scott Prize project)
6. The Noh Mask Murder by Akimitsu Takagi
7. The Meiji Guillotine Murders by Futaro Yamada
8. The King’s Witches by Kate Foster
9. The Ballad of Jacquotte Delahaye by Briony Cameron
10. The Burial Plot by Elizabeth Macneal
11. The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands by Sarah Brooks
12. A Woman of Opinion by Sean Lusk
13. Babylonia by Costanza Casati
14. The King’s Mother by Annie Garthwaite
15. A Case of Mice and Murder by Sally Smith
16. The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club by Helen Simonson
17. The Lost Queen by Carol McGrath (didn’t finish – still reading)
18. The Trouble with Mrs Montgomery Hurst by Katie Lumsden
19. The Briar Club by Kate Quinn
20. Cabaret Macabre by Tom Mead

Alternatives

I listed four of the shorter books remaining on my Classics Club list as alternatives:

1. The Black Lake by Hella S. Haasse
2. The Silver Branch by Rosemary Sutcliff (didn’t read)
3. The Elusive Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy
4. The End of the Affair by Graham Greene (didn’t read)

As you can see, I actually read 19 of the original 20 books on my list, plus 2 of the alternatives, for a total of 21. I also enjoyed most of these books, which is the most important thing!

Thanks to Cathy of 746Books for hosting.

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Today is also the first day of another of my favourite reading challenges, RIP (Readers Imbibing Peril), which is back for its nineteenth year! This event, which used to be hosted by book blogs, seems to take place mainly on Instagram now (follow @perilreaders for more information); I’m not very active over there, but I still like to join in with RIP, even if it’s just in a casual, flexible way.

The idea is to read, watch or listen to anything that fits one of the following categories:

Mystery
Suspense
Thriller
Dark Fantasy
Gothic
Horror
Supernatural

After reading from my 20 Books of Summer list all summer, I don’t want to make another long list of RIP reads as I would prefer to be spontaneous and just read whatever I feel like reading. I’ve already started working through a collection of classic horror stories – Tales Accursed, edited by Richard Wells – and I have plenty of other suitable books on the TBR.

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Did you take part in 20 Books of Summer and did you complete your list? And are you taking part in Readers Imbibing Peril XIX?

My Commonplace Book: August 2024

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A selection of quotes and pictures to represent August’s reading:

commonplace book
noun
a book into which notable extracts from other works are copied for personal use.

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It was the end of August – the time when owls hoot at night and flurries of bats swoop noiselessly over the garden. Moomin Wood was full of glow-worms, and the sea was disturbed. There was expectation and a certain sadness in the air, and the harvest moon came up huge and yellow. Moomintroll had always liked those last weeks of summer most, but he didn’t really know why.

Finn Family Moomintroll by Tove Jansson (1948)

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Freedom of speech, in advance of experience, will lead you into saying some foolish things, while freedom of thought may run you into irreparable errors – of which the greatest is supposing that love is a matter for the scientists and doctors.

Miss Granby’s Secret: or the Bastard of Pinsk by Eleanor Farjeon (1941)

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Sopwith Camel fighter plane

Sheltered in the old boys’ bonhomie of the Flying Corps, he had been slow to realize how much more character was worth than pedigree. But rubbing up against all sorts and depending on the man next to you, he had come to see that competence, decency, and grit were not the sole purview, or even the natural gifts, of the well-born.

The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club by Helen Simonson (2024)

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Now I am doing the thinking.

‘So are you saying that perhaps a home does not need a roof?’

‘Perhaps not, Tibb. And besides, home can be a person as much as a place.’

A Little Trickerie by Rosanna Pike (2024)

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Freedom is never absolute, it seems, and therefore escape, despite what they tell you, yields no final destination.

In the Upper Country by Kai Thomas (2023)

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Queen Mary I

‘But you know everything,’ Mary countered.

‘Some knowledge is not mine to impart,’ he replied, and would say no more.

Mary I: Queen of Sorrows by Alison Weir (2024)

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‘Some parts I still remember. Like the part about the candle flame that does not lose its brilliance till the moment it’s extinguished, and how, like that candle, we all carry flames of truth within us, and of justice, that should only be extinguished by our deaths. Yet, see how easily a candle is put out.’ She took the pewter snuffer in her hand and killed a flame. ‘And so it is with truth, and justice,’ Anna said. ‘Especially with justice.’

The King’s Messenger by Susanna Kearsley (2024)

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“It’s human nature to overcomplicate what is fundamentally simple,” said Spector. “Magicians know that. We thrive on the knowledge. And so – in some instances – do killers.”

Cabaret Macabre by Tom Mead (2024)

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It’s astonishing what the human heart will do to make allegiances. Loneliness is a kind of glue that can bind us to the most unlikely strangers.

The Golden Tresses of the Dead by Alan Bradley (2019)

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Hera on an antique fresco from Pompeii

‘There are other ways to rule. Sometimes the true power is in the shadows. Someone who stays out of the light, and watches others shrivel and burn in its glare.’

Hera by Jennifer Saint (2024)

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‘A panther isn’t the same as a monkey,’ Gerard said after a pause. ‘But is either one less than the other? A stupid question, you’ll say, and rightly so. The same applies to human beings. Being different – that’s normal. Everybody’s a little different from everybody else. I’m not the same as you. As for being less or more important on account of the colour of your skin or who your father is – that’s nonsense. Oeroeg is your friend, isn’t he? And if you can be friends with him, how he can he possibly be less than you or anybody else?’

The Black Lake by Hella S. Haasse (1948)

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The joy of history is it’s everything that ever happened and everyone who has ever lived. Whatever your story is or was, it is worthy of being told.

Eighteen: A History of Britain in 18 Young Lives by Alice Loxton (2024)

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Favourite books read in August:

The King’s Messenger and Cabaret Macabre

Authors read for the first time in August:

Rosanna Pike, Eleanor Farjeon, Kai Thomas, Alice Loxton, Tove Jansson

Countries visited in my August reading:

England, Canada, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Indonesia, Greece

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Reading notes: August has been mainly devoted to completing my 20 Books of Summer list and also taking part in two reading events – Women in Translation Month and Moomin Week. It’s been a varied month, with a mixture of historical fiction, non-fiction, children’s fiction, mythology and crime! I’m also pleased that I could add Swedish and Dutch to my list of languages read in translation this year.

In September I’m looking forward to some suitably autumnal reading as this year’s R.I.P. challenge begins. I’ll post more about that soon, as well as a look back at my 20 Books of Summer reading.

How was your August? What are you planning to read in September?

Eighteen: A History of Britain in 18 Young Lives by Alice Loxton

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What sort of person were you when you were eighteen years old? What had you accomplished by that point in your life and what were your hopes and dreams for the future? Or, if you haven’t reached that age yet, what would you like to achieve before your eighteenth birthday? In her new book, Eighteen: A History of Britain in 18 Young Lives, Alice Loxton explores the stories of eighteen historical figures, some famous and some more obscure, with a focus on the first eighteen years of their lives and how their childhoods shaped the adults they would later become.

The book is arranged in chronological order, so the first historical figure to be covered is the Anglo-Saxon monk and scholar, the Venerable Bede, and the last is the fashion designer Vivienne Westwood. Each section is quite short – it’s not a long book and there are lots of lives to get through – but I think Alice Loxton achieves what she sets out to do, which is to shine a light on the early lives of her subjects and the ways in which they are influenced by not only their own family background and upbringing, but also the world around them. She looks only briefly at the achievements that make them famous after the age of eighteen, but that information is available elsewhere and this book is trying to do something different.

Loxton chooses her subjects from all walks of life and a range of different backgrounds, including royalty, artists, engineers, actors and writers. They are almost equally split between men and women and England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are all represented. I was less interested in the people I’d read about before, such as Elizabeth I and the Empress Matilda, but there were others I was completely unfamiliar with and I found these chapters fascinating. I’m ashamed to say I knew nothing at all about the life of Jacques Francis, a diver originally from West Africa who attempted to recover the wreck of the Mary Rose during the Tudor period, or Sarah Biffin, an English artist born in the late 18th century without arms or legs.

Alice Loxton’s writing style is very readable and I flew through this book in much less time than it normally takes me to read non-fiction. Although it’s not marketed as being for any particular age group, it’s clearly aimed at readers closer to the age of her subjects, so she doesn’t bombard us with too much information and provides sources and notes at the back of the book rather than interrupting the text. She tries to find analogies that will make sense to young, modern readers, such as comparing a royal progress with a rock band going on tour, and imagines what the lives of some of her other historical figures would look like as a film adaptation or a slideshow. The main biographical chapters are also interspersed with other chapters describing a very special 18th birthday party, but I’ll leave you to find out more about that for yourself if you read the book!

Eighteen would be a fun, accessible way for teenagers to explore British history, but for those of us who are older it’s still an entertaining read and provides a good starting point for further investigation into some of these fascinating historical figures. I’m now interested in reading Alice Loxton’s previous book, Uproar!, about printmakers in Georgian London.

Thanks to Pan Macmillan for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

Finn Family Moomintroll by Tove Jansson – #MoominWeek

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Translated by Elizabeth Portch

I’ve never read a Moomin book until now – and if it hadn’t been for Mallika of Literary Potpourri and Chris of Calmgrove hosting #Moominweek this week (in time for Paula’s Moomin-themed wedding), I would probably never have picked one up. I’ve seen some of the cartoons/animated series, but it hadn’t occurred to me that I might enjoy reading the books. With no idea where to start – I’ve found several recommended reading orders, which aren’t necessarily chronological – I decided to begin with Finn Family Moomintroll and I think it was a good choice! As it was originally published in Swedish, it also counts towards Women in Translation Month.

First of all, what are Moomins? Well, they’re small, troll-like creatures who live in Moominvalley. There’s Moomintroll and his parents, Moominmamma and Moominpappa, and an assortment of friends including the Snork and the Snork Maiden (a related species, but with hair), Sniff, a strange little creature resembling a kangaroo who has been adopted by the family, and Snufkin, who wears old clothes and a wide-brimmed hat. You can see some of them, and others, in the illustration below:

Finn Family Moomintroll begins with the Moomin family preparing for their winter hibernation. After waking up again in spring, the book then takes us through the rest of the year, during which the Moomins have a series of adventures revolving around the discovery of a top hat belonging to a Hobgoblin. The hat turns out to have magical powers – some eggshells dropped into it become clouds for the children to ride on, and when Moomintroll himself hides inside it during a game, he too undergoes an unexpected transformation. The Moomins also go on an expedition to the Island of the Hattifatteners, are visited by two tiny creatures called Thingumy and Bob, and finally encounter the Hobgoblin, who has come in search of the missing King’s Ruby.

This book was first published in 1948 (and translated into English in 1950) and is the third in the Moomins series by order of publication. Although it would have been helpful to see how the various characters were first introduced, I didn’t really feel that I’d missed out on much by not reading the previous two books first – and in fact, this one was apparently marketed as the first in the series until the 1980s. I do wonder about the original Swedish title, Trollkarlens hatt, which translates to The Magician’s Hat; he is referred to as a Hobgoblin in the edition I read, but ‘Magician’ would have made more sense, I think.

The book has an episodic feel, with each chapter almost a separate little story in itself, linked by the common thread of the Hobgoblin’s Hat and its magical properties. There’s a focus on the relationships between friends and family members and on the various quirks and eccentricities of the characters. It’s obviously aimed at children, but as with all good children’s books it can be enjoyed by adults as well. I’m not even sure if I would have liked it as a child; I was never a big fan of the adaptations and I think I probably appreciated the book more now than I would have done when I was younger.

There aren’t really any deep themes here, but there’s a message of kindness and tolerance (the Moomins welcome all sorts of visitors and unusual creatures into the Moominhouse) which would have been more relevant than ever in the aftermath of World War II. I’ve heard that some of the later books in the series have more depth. I’ll probably try another one, although not immediately, and I’m interested in reading Tove Jansson’s adult books as well.

Cabaret Macabre by Tom Mead

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After enjoying the first two books in Tom Mead’s Joseph Spector mystery series, Death and the Conjuror and The Murder Wheel, I was pleased to see that he had written a third one. I think this might even be my favourite of the three! If you haven’t read any of them, you could start here if you wanted to; although there are some references to Spector’s earlier cases, there are no spoilers and all three mysteries work perfectly as separate standalones.

It’s December 1938 and retired magician Joseph Spector has been approached by the wife of Sir Giles Drury, a prominent judge, who wants him to identify the sender of some threatening letters. She believes the culprit may be Victor Silvius, who attacked her husband nine years earlier and has been confined in a private sanatorium ever since. Having noted Spector’s involvement in solving the recent Dean case (described in The Murder Wheel), she hopes he will be able to find out who is behind the letters.

Coincidentally, Spector’s friend Inspector Flint of Scotland Yard has had a visit from Caroline Silvius, sister of Victor Silvius. Caroline believes someone is trying to murder her brother and she’s convinced that person is Sir Giles Drury. With Spector and Flint both investigating the same situation from opposite sides, it’s inevitable that their paths will cross. Arriving at Marchbanks, the Drurys’ country estate, during a period of heavy snow, both men are baffled when a member of the family is found dead under very unusual circumstances. Can they solve the mystery before another murder takes place?

I really enjoyed Cabaret Macabre. It’s very cleverly plotted, with not one but two locked room style murders for Flint and Spector to investigate, but unlike the previous book, which I found too complicated, this one was easier for me to follow. That doesn’t mean it was easy to solve, however, because it certainly wasn’t! I had no idea how the murders were carried out or who was responsible for them, even though the clues were all there in the text. Tom Mead really is a master of this type of mystery and it’s easy to see the influence authors like John Dickson Carr and Agatha Christie have had on his work.

The book has a large number of suspects (and also potential victims) including Sir Giles, his wife and their four sons and stepsons, Victor and Caroline Silvius and an assortment of servants at Marchbanks. There’s also another murder case – or was it suicide? – from nine years earlier (the source of the animosity between Victor and Sir Giles), which could provide the key to what’s happening in the present. It’s impressive that Mead manages to pull all of this together without leaving any obvious holes in the plot. What I particularly love about this series, though, is the idea of a former magician becoming an amateur detective and using his special knowledge of illusions and deceptions to solve crimes and assist the police. Although Spector is still something of a mystery himself and reveals very little of his past or his private life, I think he’s a great character and the perfect partner for the more practical, less imaginative Inspector Flint.

If you haven’t tried a Joseph Spector book yet and are a fan of Golden Age mysteries, I do recommend them; this one and the first one, in particular, have quite an authentic 1930s feel, as well as being fun and entertaining. I’m hoping there’ll be more!

Thanks to Head of Zeus for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

Book 39/50 for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2024

This is book 20/20 of my 20 Books of Summer 2024.

Yes, I have completed my 20 Books of Summer list with nearly a week to go! I’ll be looking back at my 20 books and my experience with this year’s challenge in a special post at the end of the month.

The Golden Tresses of the Dead by Alan Bradley

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I had thought this book, published in 2019, was going to be the last in Alan Bradley’s Flavia de Luce series, so I hadn’t rushed to read it, thinking that once I had I would have no more to look forward to. Then I discovered that there’s actually another book coming in September – which will be the eleventh in the series – and decided to pick this one up now in preparation.

The Golden Tresses of the Dead begins in 1952 with our twelve-year-old heroine Flavia de Luce attending the wedding of her elder sister, Ophelia (known as Feely). I won’t tell you who she’s marrying, in case you haven’t reached this point in the series yet – or haven’t started at all. Everything is going well, apart from the usual naughtiness of Flavia’s annoying little cousin, Undine, but when Feely steps forward to cut into her wedding cake she screams in horror. There’s a human finger inside the cake! As Feely retreats to her room to recover from the shock, Flavia whisks the finger away to her laboratory so she can examine it and try to identify its owner.

The next day, Arthur W. Dogger & Associates, the new detective agency Flavia has formed with her father’s friend and manservant Dogger, receives its first client. A Mrs Prill is trying to track down some stolen letters and wants Flavia and Dogger to help. When they begin investigating, however, they discover that Mrs Prill hasn’t been entirely honest with them. Are the letters really missing – and could there be any connection with the severed finger in the cake?

As I’ve come to expect from the Flavia de Luce books, The Golden Tresses of the Dead (the title comes from Shakespeare’s Sonnet 68) is a quick, entertaining read; I did enjoy it, but it’s not one of the strongest and I think if I didn’t know there was another book on its way, I would have been disappointed with this one as a conclusion to the series. In general, I think the earlier books are more fun and have more charm than the later ones, so if you still haven’t tried one I would recommend going back to the beginning and starting with The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie.

Although this book has many of the same elements as most of the others in the series – it’s set, as usual, in and around the small English village of Bishop’s Lacey in the 1950s; Flavia still gets around on her trusty bicycle, Gladys; she still loves chemistry and conducting experiments in her fully equipped laboratory – there are also some differences. Feely leaves for her honeymoon early in the book and Flavia’s other sister, Daffy (Daphne), is tucked away working on her memoirs and only makes one or two brief appearances. The relationship between Flavia and her two sisters is one of the things that has always fascinated me about the series, so I was sorry that it’s not really explored any further here. We do see a lot of Undine, but I’ve never liked her and she doesn’t make up for the absence of Feely and Daffy! Also, as hinted at in the previous book, The Grave’s a Fine and Private Place, crime-solving is no longer a solitary activity for Flavia and she forms a new partnership with Dogger. It works well – Flavia does most of the trespassing, risk-taking and hunting for clues, but Dogger, with the benefit of age and life experience, knows how to interpret those clues. I’ve always loved him and was pleased to see him take such a prominent role in this book.

The mystery itself is complex, involving potential grave-robbing, poisonous plants and two missionaries who may not be quite what they seem, and I’ll admit that I found it confusing and didn’t really understand how everything tied together. I wondered if I just hadn’t been paying enough attention and had missed something, but looking at other reviews it seems that a lot of people had similar problems. This is not a favourite Flavia de Luce book, then, and I’m glad it’s not how the series ends! I’m looking forward to reading book eleven, What Time the Sexton’s Spade Doth Rust, and am hoping it will be better than this one.

Book 38/50 for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2024

The Black Lake by Hella S. Haasse – #WITMonth

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Translated by Ina Rilke

Since reading Hella S. Haasse’s In a Dark Wood Wandering, I’ve been looking forward to reading more of her books. This one, The Black Lake, is on both my Classics Club list and 20 Books of Summer list and is also perfect for this year’s Women in Translation Month. Always good when one book counts towards multiple projects!

First published in 1948 as Oeroeg, this book is considered a Dutch classic and is apparently often taught in Dutch schools. Now that I’ve read it, I can see why it would be a popular choice with schoolteachers; it’s a short novella (under 140 pages in my edition so doesn’t take long to read), is written from the perspective of a young protagonist, and deals with the subject of colonialism in Indonesia, formerly the Dutch East Indies.

Our unnamed narrator is the son of a Dutch planter and his wife and grows up on their tea plantation in Preanger (now Priangan), West Java. As a child, he forms a close friendship with Oeroeg, the son of his father’s estate manager, and soon the two are inseparable. The narrator becomes vaguely aware that his parents and their servants disapprove of his attachment to a ‘native boy’, but with the innocence of childhood he has no idea why. However, when Oeroeg’s family is struck by tragedy, his father feels a sense of duty to the boy and reluctantly allows the friendship to continue. It’s only when he and Oeroeg start to attend school that the narrator begins to understand that their lives will never be able to follow the same path and that society has different expectations for each of them. During World War II, he leaves to serve in the Dutch army and on his return he finds that neither Oeroeg nor Indonesia are the same as when he went away.

The Black Lake is a beautifully written book, with lovely, vivid descriptions of the island of Java – the mountains, the rivers and the black lake of the title, Telaga Hideung, where one of the story’s pivotal scenes takes place. Ina Rilke’s English translation flows smoothly and is easy to read, while keeping in place some Dutch words and terms which can be looked up in the glossary at the back of the book if needed.

With the whole story being told from the perspective of a boy from a white Dutch colonial family, it’s both interesting and limiting. If Haasse was writing this book today, I think she would be expected to include the perspective of the oppressed people as well as the colonists – or maybe not write it at all and leave the story for an Indonesian author to tell. But in the context of the 1940s, when it was published, it gives some fascinating insights into the colonial mindset and I’m sure Haasse will have drawn on some of her own experiences and views (she was born in Indonesia herself and spent most of her first twenty years there).

Although I found this a powerful book, it’s not really one that I can say I ‘enjoyed’. The writing style was too dreamlike and distancing for me to fully engage with and the narrator’s story left me with a feeling of sadness. He’s naive, oblivious and looks back on his earlier years with what seems to be a fond nostalgia for an idyllic childhood, with a lack of understanding that, for Oeroeg, it was hardly idyllic at all. Oeroeg is the centre of the narrator’s life, yet there’s no indication that Oeroeg feels the same way or places much value on their friendship. Oeroeg proves to be the most socially and politically aware of the two and eventually the narrator is in the uncomfortable position of having stayed the same while everyone and everything around him has changed.

Of the two Haasse books I’ve read, I preferred the much longer In a Dark Wood Wandering, but am glad I read this one as well. If you’ve read any of her other books which are available in English translations, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

This is book 19/20 of my 20 Books of Summer 2024.

This is also book 45/50 from my second Classics Club list