Janet

Was it? What did it choose? I hope you have a great 2016 reading year.

Thanks, Gaia. I hope you enjoy it when you get round to it. Did you know the actress Emma Thompson's daughter is called Gaia?

Yes, that's true. Middlemarch was much longer in paperback than the Kindle said. Thanks.

Kylie will be so chuffed you loved it. I can't agree about Alice - I definitely preferred that, but I'm glad you enjoyed it so much.

Hercule Poirot’s Christmas by Agatha Christie The ‘blurb’ It is Christmas Eve. The Lee family reunion is shattered by a deafening crash of furniture, followed by a high-pitched wailing scream. Upstairs, the tyrannical Simeon Lee lies dead in a pool of blood, his throat slashed. But when Hercule Poirot, who is staying in the village with a friend for Christmas, offers to assist, he finds an atmosphere not of mourning but of mutual suspicion. It seems everyone had their own reason to hate the old man… My turn to host our Book Club fell in January again this year so I thought I’d pick a Christmas-themed book, and as I’ve read quite a few Christies this year and have enjoyed them I thought I’d chose this – I knew that the other members had not read her for many years, if ever. In this classic locked-room mystery, patriarchal tyrant Simeon Lee dies a violent death at the hands of an unknown perpetrator – not only is there a death but there has been a break in and some valuable uncut diamonds have been stolen. Superintendent Sugden happens to be in the house at the time in a lucky coincidence that he happened to be calling on houses collecting money for a police-related charity. He invites Poirot, who is staying nearby, to assist. As Poirot questions the family members it becomes apparent that any one of them had some kind of motive for the killing and none of them is an obvious killer, but as Poirot investigates he discovers that there is more to Simeon Lee’s parenthood than meets the eye… This isn’t the best Christie I’ve read, but it was still enjoyable. As always, my little grey cells tried to make up their minds who the killer was – and I changed my mind several times… but was still wrong! The reveal, when it came, was clever and I suppose also obvious – the clues were all there…! The paperback edition is 288 pages long and is published by Harper. It was first published in 1938. The ISBN is 9780007527540. 3½/5 (I enjoyed it) (Finished 27 December 2015)

How long is your copy, Claire? I've got a Kindle version and it's only 433 pages long - I'm wondering now if I've not got a full version...?

Is it okay to post in here yet? If not, please say and I'll copy my post and repost it when you're ready! I shall be following this challenge with interest. I hope you enjoy it as much as I'm enjoying the English Counties challenge. Have you ever read any Marion Keyes? Her stuff isn't my kind of read these days, but if you're not familiar with it then I remember Rachel's Holiday being really good, even if it is many years since I read it. You have such romantic sounding counties and regions/districts. Happy reading.

Please, don't apologise - it's nice to have a visitor! No, I haven't seen it. I would like to though, now I've read the book. I'm *rubbish* at watching films! When I see you guys (next week - yay! ) I seem to spend half our time together saying "who is that actor?", "What's he/she been in?" or, "I haven't seen that"!

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro The ‘blurb’ 'After all what can we ever gain in forever looking back and blaming ourselves if our lives have not turned out quite as we might have wished?' In the summer of 1956, Stevens, the ageing butler of Darlington Hall, embarks on a leisurely holiday that will take him deep into the English countryside and into his past... A contemporary classic, The Remains of the Day is Kazuo Ishiguro's beautiful and haunting evocation of life between the wars in a Great English House, of lost causes and lost love. Stevens, long-time butler at Darlington Hall, is now employed by the new owner, wealthy American Mr Farraday. When Miss Kenton, an old member of staff with whom Stevens used to be close, gets in touch and seems to hint at being unhappy with her lot, Stevens, who has planned some time off work, thinks he might be able to use his trip to help solve a slight employment problem at the hall. Farraday, who is much more relaxed than Stevens’ previous employer, Lord Darlington, insists that the butler borrows his car to go on a motoring holiday, and so Stevens sets off for the West Country. On the way he reflects on his time working at the Hall including his relationships with Miss Kenton and his father and even Lord Darlington’s brush with Oswald Mosley… This was my first experience of Ishiguro as a writer and although it didn’t set me on fire I did enjoy it and I loved the writing – there is a real feeling of melancholy throughout the book which echoes Stevens’ personality and contrasts with that of Farraday. Stevens at first seems quite content with his life, but as his journey unfolds the reader sees that this hasn’t always been the case. The Remains of the Day is a book full of themes – dignity, regret and loyalty, to name but three - and if it isn’t still then I’m sure it must have been on the English GCSE or A Level English curriculum at some stage. The paperback edition is 272 pages long and is published by Faber & Faber. It was first published in 1989. The ISBN is 9780571258246. 3/5 (I enjoyed it) (Finished 15 December 2015)

It's really funny - well, I think so. It's a sort of sequel to (they stand alone, but it references things from...) The Pursuit of Love, so you might be best of trying that one? I'm listening to an Audio Book which I think may be adding to my amusement!

Thanks, Claire. You may remember that I mentioned the beautiful cover when we were in Waterstone's... somewhere (Cirencester or, more likely, Bristol) and then I was chatting to a friend on a different forum and she said she'd send me her copy which was in her charity shop bag - and it had that lovely cover on it! I enjoyed it from the start, and though I'm not very far in it's still great. The two main characters have just finished breakfast on their first day in Italy!

I've read the first couple of chapters of The Enchanted April by Elizabeth Von Armin today and have also listened to some of Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford in my car. I'm enjoying both but the latter is particularly good.

I didn't mention it because I thought this was a thread about Malory Towers. I wasn't wanting to take over making a new thread - I merely meant I would split these into a discussion thread so as to keep this thread for its original purpose. Edit. In fact, I'm just going to do it - it doesn't make sense to leave this discussion here.

Yay, another fan! I'm so glad you enjoyed it. We've had some brilliant books in this challenge, haven't we?!

Thanks, Kay. I enjoyed it very much - I wasn't 100% sure about Hugh Grant before I watched because he's always Hugh Grant, but I thought he did a pretty decent job, actually. Don't get me wrong, I don't dislike him, but he's always the same! Alan Rickman was simply fab as Col. Brandon.

I've just downloaded a free copy of Just William from Project Gutenberg for my Kindle so is it okay if I join in? Also, would you like me to split this thread off from post 170 which is where Sari first mentioned the book?

Five Little Pigs by Agatha Christie The ‘blurb’ Beautiful Caroline Crale was convicted of poisoning her husband, yet there were five other suspects: Philip Blake (the stockbroker) who went to market; Meredith Blake (the amateur herbalist) who stayed at home; Elsa Greer (the three-time divorcee) who had roast beef; Cecilia Williams (the devoted governess) who had none; and Angela Warren (the disfigured sister) who cried ‘wee wee wee’ all the way home. It is sixteen years later, but Hercule Poirot just can’t get that nursery rhyme out of his mind… In this Poirot, the man himself is visited by Carla Lamarchant who asks him to solve a murder, sixteen years after the death of the perpetrator - the woman’s mother. Now grown up, Carla, is convinced her mother can’t have committed the crime – her mother’s wrote a letter just before her death proclaiming her innocence – and Carla swears that her mother always told the truth. Intrigued, and wanting to prove that solving a crime needs only the use of the “little grey cells”, he sets about interviewing those originally involved with the crime – the Five Little Pigs. As he questions each of them the same story is told, but with minor differences each person’s narrative. Initially the case seems clean-cut, but the more Poirot talks to the five people the more it appears that things are not necessarily as they first appeared... We listened to the audio book of this as we drove up to Yorkshire and back. This is the third or fourth Poirot narrated by Hugh Fraser that we’ve listened to in the car, and each has been very enjoyable. As with the others, our thoughts as to who carried out the crime changed and changed again as clues were revealed - Christie has yet to disappoint and I’m looking forward the next one! The paperback edition is 288 pages long and is published by Harper. It was first published in 1942. The ISBN is 9780007527519. 3½/5 (I enjoyed it) (Finished 11 December 2015)

Someone voted no in my poll! I was quite shocked. They can't have been a book lover!

Lucky by Professor Green The ‘blurb’ It was never easy for Professor Green. Born into a tough Hackney estate and raised by his grandmother, the rapper was always learning the hard way - whether at school, on the streets of east London or on stage during impromptu freestyle battles. Indeed life and music have always been intertwined for the young rapper, but it wasn't until he was 24 that the two were brought into focus by the suicide of his father -and his emotions, ever since, have been reflected in the raw and often passionate lines of his lyrics. In this wonderful autobiography, Professor Green - a.k.a. Stephen Manderson - reflects on his life so far and how his upbringing and encounters - both good and bad - shaped the person and musician he is today. Passionate, raw and totally open, Lucky is the story of a boy's journey, from life close to the streets, all the while working towards becoming a successful musician, achieving that dream and eventually gaining that success, only to realise it wouldn't quite solve all of his problems... Having seen a trailer, I wanted to watch the documentary Suicide and Me that was shown on the BBC in October - but for some reason I didn’t manage to catch it. It featured Stephen Manderson, best known as the UK rap artist Professor Green, talking about the suicide of his father when Prof Green was just 25 years old and about the wider issue of male suicide and mental health. Instead I read the first few pages of his autobiography, Lucky on a Kindle sample and then it came up on offer so I decided to download it. I would like to say it’s a tale of ‘rags to riches’, but whilst it’s true that Green and his family didn’t have much money the lack of material things was more than made for up by the love shown to him by his beloved Grandmother, Nanny Pat, who bought Stephen up and who worked several jobs to give him what she could. I enjoyed this book far more than I expected to. I’m familiar with a lot of Prof. Green’s music (for a start, he is responsible for the huge hit song Read All About It featuring Emeli Sande and for another thing, I have a teenager and a young adult in the house… ) but id didn’t know anything about him or his personal life. There is, of course, a lot of name-dropping in it – and a lot of the rap artists/bands he mentions I haven’t even heard of – I guess I’m not really his target audience – but it was a good read. It’s clearly written by him (no ghost-writing here – there is definitely a naivety in the writing quality). He comes across as a really nice guy with just a tiny bit of arrogance mixed in. This book was an unexpected pleasure. The hardback edition is 256 pages long and is published by Blink Publishing. It was first published in 2015. The ISBN is 9781910536322. 3½/5 (I enjoyed it) (Finished 8 December 2015)

Would this be what you mean, in Kay's 2013 blog? Edit: Hmm, maybe not - there's only a bit of discussion there. Edit again: I think there's more on the page before I linked above. Also, this... http://uk.businessinsider.com/most-famous-book-set-in-every-state-map-2013-10?r=US&IR=T

Mystery in White by J Jefferson Farjeon The ‘blurb’ 'The horror on the train, great though it may turn out to be, will not compare with the horror that exists here, in this house.' On Christmas Eve, heavy snowfall brings a train to a halt near the village of Hemmersby. Several passengers take shelter in a deserted country house, where the fire has been lit and the table laid for tea - but no one is at home. Trapped together for Christmas, the passengers are seeking to unravel the secrets of the empty house when a murderer strikes in their midst. When I was a child we had proper winters. None of this 1.5cms-of-snow-and-everything-grinds-to-a-halt type of snow, but snow 8” deep! What has that to do with this book you might ask? Well, recently I reviewed Crime at Christmas by C H B Kitchin and one thing I mentioned was that the weather was so unseasonably mild in the book that it could have been set any time of year. This book, however, absolutely captures the essence of Christmas and winter! Six passengers, an ‘elderly bore’, a chorus girl on her way to Manchester for a new job, a tall pale youth who works as a clerk, a brother and sister and an old man are travelling to their various destinations on Christmas Eve when their train grinds to a halt in the middle of nowhere. Enquiries reveal that the train is stuck in snow and is unlikely to move for several hours. The old man stares out into the snow as the other five discuss their options – suddenly he jumps from the train and eventually the rest follow suit, deciding to walk to the next small town of Hemmersley to see if there are any trains on the branch line. They quickly become disorientated and, having lost the old man’s footprints in the snow, are relieved when they come across a house. The front door stands open and upon entering they discover a lovely welcoming fire and a table set for tea – but the house is empty… or is it? I loved the setting of this book. The thick snow helped add to the atmosphere as Snow has that certain quality that makes the world seems utterly silent and this gives the house a sinister feeling of being blanketed and cut off from the rest of the world, which of course it is. The old man is Edward Maltby who is a member of the Royal Psychical Society and he detects a… presence in the house, which also adds to the creepiness. (As an aside, the ‘old man’ (Farjeon’s words, not mine) is 60 years old – a sign of the time the book was written, since I don’t think many people would consider 60 old these days!). The funny thing is that whilst I enjoyed this book, I am behind with my reviews and find that I can’t recall all the details to give it an accurate review – I will have to read it again next December and enjoy it all over again! The paperback edition is 256 pages long and is published by British Library. It was first published in 1937. The ISBN is 9780712357708. 3½/5 (I enjoyed it) (Finished 7 December 2015)

It is! Yes, On the Beach was one of them - Pied Piper was the other. Have you read The Radleys? Thanks for your comments regarding Charlie too. Coming from you that means a lot because I know just how much you love doggies. If (and it's a big if) we were to have a dog in future I'd definitely want a puppy.

I registered for a new account, searched, found the old me and then deleted my new account! It says I have a 'lifetime' account although I've never actually paid anything to Librarything...?!

I can't remember my librarything username or login! I just found you, Michelle, to see if I'm listed as your friend, but I don't think it works like that. Edit: I found them - but it appears I'm not your friend on there! I haven't used the site for years now!

It doesn't come as any surprise to me (or to anyone that uses it), but Shelfari is to close - or as they put it, merge with Goodreads. Since Amazon took over Goodreads (and already owned Shelfari), the site has been maintained less and less, so this was inevitable. For anyone who only uses Shelfari, there are instructions of what to do to save your books to a new account at Goodreads here.