France

Ahem! I've read 46 on the list that I'm sure off including several of the books in A Dance to the Music of Time and a lot of Lee Childs so I think there's a good chance you would find book critics happily indulging in trash even though they won't admit it. I had a very interesting discussion with an editor at Mills and Boon once about the demographics of their readers and there was an astonishingly high proportion of graduates who read more than one M & B a week even though the general perception if that it's the barely educated who read those books. I would respectfully disagree about counting some of those series as one title, The Lord of the Rings is obviously one work split up into three volumes, none of them are complete entities in their own right, however His Dark Materials is three entirely separate books which are linked but still stand alone. You might well ask why Trollope is listed for Barchester Towers and not for the whole of the Barchester chronicles. Old Filth is the beginning of a trilogy that's linked just as closely as the three parts of Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy. Etc, etc.

Ahem! I've read both Lee Child and a lot of the books on that list too! I would respectfully disagree about counting those series as one book - the Chronicles of Narni

I must admit I've never had a flu jab but I have had 3 Covid jabs and unless I have to for work I'm not having a 4th, I had a strange reaction to the last one with pins and needles in my hands and feet for about 2 months afterwards so I'm a bit chary about more.

I can't remember to be honest.

I used to love HH, though I don't think I've even seen anything by him for about 30 years. On reflection that might be because I've been living in France for nearly that long.

I've read quite a lot of those, however whoever compiled the list doesn't appear to be able to count! The Chronicles of Narnia comprises seven books, the Forsythe Saga three and A Dance to the Music of Time is a 12 book series! Sorry to be pedantic! And the list was compiled by book critics, probably by the same sort of person who says they will be reading Proust on holiday when in fact they have the latest Lee Child (on the Kindle of course so they can't be caught out).

No it wasn't! It was Palimpsest, now defunct for some time. Mr HG and JfP on BGO were both refugees from there.

I was on BGO which was my go-to book forum though I've been a member on here for years and used to visit to get a different perspective on books. I also belonged to another online book which was run by a group who seem to positively enjoy looking down on the other members' lowly reading taste. Anyone who disagreed with them was liable to be chucked out. I stopped commenting, then stopped visiting as did a lot of others.

And a loooong wait here, Jasper fforde has finally written a sequel to Shades of Grey, it's out on June 1 next year.

I thought I'd I'd kick off a thread about shortly to be published books which we're really looking forward to. This article in the Guardian is a good starting point - I immediately added Maggie O Farrell, William Boyd, Robert Harris and Kate Atkinson to my wish list and discovered as I was doing it that there is a new Elizabeth Strout and a Robert Galbraith out shortly too, so the wish list grew a bit more. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/aug/21/seven-big-books-autumn-2022-maggie-ofarrell-cormac-mccarthy

Whoops, didn't mean to copy my list again. The Vanishing Half - Britt Bennet, this book about twins who take very different paths, one choses to pass herself off as white, the other although "light" embraces her blackness, was a chance pick up and absolutely blew me away. The storyline is good, so is the writing and it really makes you think. (I read an article earlier this week slamming books like this for pandering to middle class white readers and making them feel better for being slightly more aware of the myriad of obstacles non-whites face. My jury is still out on that, but I will unashamedly say that I loved this book.) After The Party by Clare Macintosh - a failing singer is found dead in a lake on New Year's day and there are a lot of people who had reason to want him dead. I got this as a Kobo cheapie because I needed something to read while I knit even though I had a feeling that I'd read Clare Macintosh once and wasn't impressed. How right I was. This is really slow and parts of the storyline are just plain silly, I got so bored that after half way through I started really skimming just to be able to get to the end of the blessed thing. I won't try her again.

I'd never heard of this and it sounds like the sort of biography I thoroughly enjoy.

I'm reading two books at once at the moment because I've been lent The Secret Life of Trees and I'm very very careful with other people's books so I only pick it up when I know I'll keep it clean and the spine unbroken, and the The Witness of the Dead by Katherine Addison is on the Kobo for when I'm in the bath or doing the sort of routine knitting that involves laying a a paper book flat on the table with something weighing down the pages so I can keep two hands on the needles.

I'll admit to enjoying the TV series, ridiculous as it is in places, more than the books as I've never really got on with Camillieri's style.

My problems seemed to be mainly related to book covers too.

That happened to me too. That's when I got really fed up!

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee which is terrific read is in the Kindle Daily Deal today.

Two very different but thoroughly enjoyable books read back to back (this seems to be becoming a habit). The Feast - Margaret Kennedy. First published in 1950 The Feast opens with a priest preparing a eulogy at the funeral service for those who died when a Cornish seaside hotel collapsed into the sea, everyone inside perished. Then he says some of the guests survived. The narrative goes back a week and each chapter is one day leading up to the collapse, going into the lives of the owners, the guests and the people who work there. It's wonderfully written and very evocative and very enjoyable. In the reprint edition there's an introduction which is well worth reading after you've finished, it makes you see how very clever it is but I'm glad that I read the whole book first. The Half Life of Valery K - Natasha Pulley This is a departure for Natasha Pulley whose previous books have all been alternative reality, this is far more closely grounded in real life and has its origins in a true story. It's 1963 and the Cold War, Valery is a physicist who was sent to the gulag and suddenly finds himself seconded to a top secret project studying the effects of radiation on flora and fauna - or so he is told. He soon realises that there's something else going on. While I miss the fantastical elements of her previous books I really enjoyed this, Natasha Pulley tells a very good story and can even make a believably sympathetic KGB officer. The storyline, including the parts she said she made up, also seem disturbingly credible. Sadly The Talk of Pram Town - Joanna Nadin didn't match up to the two above, I absolutely loved her first book The Queen of Bloody Everything which was both very funny and moving, for me this one fell flat on both counts, partially because the main characters, a suddenly orphaned 11 year old and her tightly repressed grandmother just didn't ring true.

I give up! Sometimes it won't recognise the ISBN numbers, others it won't load the cover or the publisher. I've managed to load one book out of about nine!