France

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Levin was OK but didn't manage to tick the boxes I was hoping it would. It's the story of Sam and Sadie who first meet in hospital aged 12, bonding over their passion for gaming, and their turbulent friendship over the next 20 years or so as they make ground breaking games together, quarrel, make up, get the hump, make up etc etc The driving force of the book is friendship, not romance (thankfully) though to be honest Sadie and Sam were frenemies a lot of the time and I got a bit irritated by Sadie who seemed very ready to take offence. I've seen comments in my bookgroups on Facebook from those who didn't get the book because they aren't gamers, I'm not either but I really enjoyed the the parts about creating the games. I think that for me the main problem was that the author writes mostly YA and she didn't seem to be able to shake off the style or being able to resist asides like 'Believe it or not, back then (late 90's) not everyone had a cell phone'. Still, overall not a bad book and it did keep me deeply absorbed.

The Seeker by S G McClean. London, 1654. Oliver Cromwell is at the height of his power, power resented by many, and he has a network of spies watching out for Royalist plotters. Damian Seeker, utterly loyal to Cromwell is one of those spies.In the city , coffee houses are springing up, hotbeds of plots and gossip. Then John Winter, one of Cromwell's most favoured captains is found dead with a radical lawyer, Elias Ellingworth, who openly fulminates against Cromwell's power grab, is found clutching a bloody knife. It seems open and shut but Seeker is not sure... This is absolutely top notch historical fiction, fast moving, believable nuanced characters, great sense of place and the undoubted deep research worn lightly. For me it also had the bonus of being about a period - the Commonwealth - I know a little of but not much. It's the start of a series and I'm searching out the rest of it and also her previous series about Alexander Seaton which are set in Scotland. Very highly recommended. Incidentally I'm also listening to her latest book which came up as an Audible special, The Bookseller of Inverness, set in the aftermath of the 45 which has so far a gripping plot and a sublime narrator.

Yes, I seem to be on a roll. Fingers crossed that I haven't just put the mouth on it! I can't say that either Ask A Historian or A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet were quite as good but they were both books I was happily staying up to read. I love history, biographies and all sorts of historical facts so Ask A Historian by Greg Jenner a collection of questions like 'Did Anne Boleyn have 3 nipples?' 'What was the first joke book?' and 'When did they first start making bread?' seemed right up my street. It's got loads of nerdy facts that I really enjoy like the Bible doesn't say anywhere that Eve gave Adam an apple( that was Milton), but Greg Jenner tries too hard to be funny. He worked on the BBC version of Horrible Histories, everyone in this family, adults and children, adored the books, but he doesn't have Terry Deary's knack for melding humour and fact and making it thoroughly memorable, with Jenner the sometimes heavy handed "jokes" get in the way. Still it's more than worth reading and it's on special on Kindle and Kobo this month. I was just slightly disappointed by A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers, possibly because I've heard so much good about it my expectations were too high. It's got much to commend it, it's good old fashioned space opera with lots of nice people of all species - that might be one of the problems, it might have had more oomph if they hadn't all been so nice and it is very episodic so it lacked a certain amount of cohesion. Still I sat up till 1 o clock finishing it which has to say something!

I'll be interested to read your opinion of Fairy Tale.

If you don't get on with Sharon Bolton or only enjoy her Lacey Flint series and shy away from witchcraft and weird happenings The Buried is not for you. If you do then you'll probably enjoy it a lot. It's a companion piece rather than a sequel to The Craftsman as both books have the same main characters, take place in 1969 and 1999 and are set in the same place, a small town in the shadow of Pendle Hill (hence the witchcraft). This book inevitably lacks some of the surprise of the Craftsman which has one of the most chilling endings I ever read but it's still a very good read. However you really need to read The Craftsman first. The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twang Eng about a young Straits Chinese woman's efforts to make a Japanese garden in the highlands of Malaya in memory of her sister who died in a labour camp during the Japanese occupation was shortlisted for the Booker and won other literary prizes. I'm not surprised, it's typical accessible Booker fodder; beautifully written, almost poetic, reflective and covers a difficult period in the country's history, both the Japanese occupation and the state of emergency afterwards when the communist party was trying to overthrow the government (Malaya was still under British rule) and launching terrorist attacks, particularly in the Cameron Highlands where Yun Ling wants to make her garden I thoroughly enjoyed it, I love books that open a light into different cultures and times and the writing is exquisite though I have to admit that it's a tiny bit slow in places, partially because of the lush language and partially because both the narrator and the Japanese gardener she becomes increasingly close to are highly reserved characters. I'm going to search out his previous book and I'm delighted to see he has another one coming out this year.

I have to admit to rather running out of steam when I read this. The writing is terrific and much of it has stayed with me but getting to the end was a slog (a teacher friend who is far more more intellectual than me admitted he felt the same).

1. The Buried - Sharon Bolton ++++1/2 2. Ask A Historian - Greg Jenner ++++ 3. The Garden of Evening Mists - Tan Twan Eng ++++ 4. A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet ++++ 5. The Seeker - S G Mclean +++++ 6. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow - Gabrielle Levin +++1/2 7. Bleeding Heart Yard - Elly Griffiths ++++ (Should have been ++++1/2 but downgraded because of the ending.) 8. Dead Man's Creek - Chris Hammer ++++1/2 9. The Devil and the Deep Water - Stuart Turton ++++1/2 10. The Cutting Place - Jane Casey ++++1/2 11. Ready for Absolutely Nothing - Susanna Constantine DNF 12. Love, Life and Elephants - Daphne Sheldrick ++++ 13. Bloomsbury Ballerina - Judith Mackrell +++1/2 14. The Three Body Problem - Cixin Liu +++ 15. The Close - Jane Casey ++++1/2 16. A Dry Spell - Clare Chambers ++++ 17. Amongst Our Weapons - Ben Aaronovitch ++++1/2 18. See Them Run - Marion Todd +++ 19. Warlight - Michael Ondaatje ++++1/2 20. Parnassus on Wheels - Christopher Morley +++++ 21. Sybille Bedford - Selena Hastings ++++ 22. Agatha Christie - Lucy Worsley ++++ 22. The Skeleton Key - Erin Kelly ++++1/2 23. Murder Under the Tuscan Sun - Rachel Rhys ++ 24. The Second Sight of Zachary Cloudsley - Sean Lock ++++ 25. Selling Hitler - Robert Harris ++++ 26. Shrines of Gaiety - Kate Atkinson +++ 27. Outback - Patricia Wolff +++ 28. Clara and Olivia - Lucy Ashe ++++ 29. Still Life - Sarah Winman +++++ 30. Playing Under the Piano - Hugh Bonneville ++++ 31. The It Girl - Ruth Ware ++++ 32. Heracy - S J Parris ++++ 33. Red Dirt Road - S R White DNF 34. The Words I Never Wrote - Jane Thynne +++1/2 35. The Russian Doll - Marina Palmer +++1/2 36. The Rising Tide - Ann Cleeves ++++1/2 37. The Vanishing of Class 3B - Jackie Kabler DNF 38. What Abigail Did That Summer - Ben Aaronovitch +++++ 39. The Bullet that Missed - Richard Osman ++++1/2 40. Black as He's Painted - Ngaio Marsh ++++ 41. The Poison Tree - Erin Kelly ++++ 42. The Midnight House - Amanda Geard ++++ 43. Femina - Janina Ramirez ++++ 44. The Hands of the Emperor - Victoria Goddard ++++ 45. The Crown in Crisis - Alexander Lerman ++++1/2 45. A Game of Sorrows - S G Maclean ++++1/2 46. Dead Rich - W B Shaw ++1/2 47. About Time - Jodie Taylor +++++ 49. The Bandit Queens -Parini Shroff ++++1/2 50. The Garnett Girls - Georgina Moore +++ 51. Act of Oblivion - Robert Harris +++ 52. The Heron's Cry - Ann Cleeves +++ 53. The Venetian Game - Philip Gwynne Jones ++++ 54. Daughters of Night - Laura Shepherd - Robinson +++1/2 55. Traitor King - Andrew Lownie ++++ 56. The Bear Bit - S J Maclean ++++1/2 Tall Bones - Anna Bailey DNF 57. This Must Be the Place - Maggie O Farrell ++++1/2 58. The Villa Diana - Alan Moorhead ++++1/2 59. The Serpent's Mark - S W Perry ++++ 60. Crucible of Secrets- S J Maclean ++++1/2 61. The Wonderful World of Jane and Oliver Bloke - Rorie Smith++++ 62. Ghost Girl, Banana - Wiz Wharton ++++ 63. The Satapur Moonstone -Sujata Massey ++++1/2 64. The Match - Harlan Coban ++++1/2 65. Lucy By The Sea - Elizabeth Strout ++++ 66. Venetian Masquerade - Philip Gwynne ++++ 67. Blackout -Connie Willis ++++ 68. Exiles - Jane Harper +++++ 69. Skye's the Limit - Janie Millman +++ 70. The Whalebone Theatre - Joanna Quinn ++++ 71. Venetian Gothic - Philip Gwynne Jones ++++ 72. The Devil's Recruit - S J Maclean +++++ 73!; Just Kids - Patti Smith +++ 74. The Cartographers - Peng Shepherd ++++ 75. Mortmain Hall - Martin Edwards ++1/2 76.. All The Wicked Girls - Chris Whittaker++++ 77. Thunderclap - Laura Cumming ++++1/2 . Utopia Avenue - David Michell

Wodehouse is like Shakespeare, you can open him at any page and find a brilliant phrase.

The only things we bothered to watch was the Dollshouse programme and Ghostbusters. It left lots of time for reading and as my daughter had brought one of her library books with her for me to read and had to take it back with her I was rather pleased.

Favourite book cover The Feast by Margaret Kennedy, I saw this in a bookshop in Paris and had to have it. The book was as good as the cover. Picture below Favourite book shop/retailer Galignani , one, if not the, oldest English bookshops on the continent and a browsing delight. My go-to every time I'm in Paris. Audiobook La Belle Sauvage by Phillip Pullman, read by Michael Sheen. The narration is so sublime that the audio is almost better than the book. . Most read author Surprisingly Akbir Mukajee's detective novels set in 1920's Calcutta. My husband had the set and I discovered them. Recommended re-read I didn't re-read any books as such though I did read a couple of books that I'd listened to on audio first, I'll be re-reading Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo, definitely. Not worth bothering with The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune, it sounded absolutely my cup of tea, but the writing was clumsy, the plot ditto and the homosexual element was thrust at you (incidentally that's not a homophobic issue, I dislike banging on about heterosexual themes just as strongly). Really disappointing The book I most wanted to read in 2022, but didn't I've managed to beg, borrow or buy most of the books I really wanted to read this year but not Amongst Our Weapons bu Ben Aaronovitch. Ah well, it's coming out in paperback soon. Biggest literary let-down of 2022! Probably The Magician by Colm Toibin, by no means the worst book of the year but I generally love anything by Toibin, not this one though. It was a slog, far too long and it seemed as if Toibin was stuck between knowing whether to write a biography or a novel and ending up with a lot of the disadvantages of both. Your recommended classic of 2022! I'm ashamed to admit I don't appear to have read any classics this year! Favourite literary character of 2022! Not sure he's my favourite but the most memorable is definitely Barrington (Barry) Walker from Bernadine Evaristo's Mr Loverman. I chose this for my bookgroup who normally like rather soft books and they were all transfixed, if rather appalled by the gay cruising. I used to live by Clapham Common so I barely noticed that part! Favourite genre of 2022! Not exactly a genre but I discovered that I'd gravitated towards reading a lot of books by Black authors, Bernadine Evaristo, N K Jemisin, Octavia Butler and Brit Bennet among others. The funniest book in 2022! Probably Jodi Taylor's Time Police series (I don't like St Mary's anything as much). Jane and Grint's date makes me giggle every time I think of it. Favourite biography of 2022! Elizabeth of the German Garden by Jennifer Walker which I originally got simply because I was presenting Elizabeth and Her German Garden by Elizabeth von Arnim to my book club and wanted background material. She was a fascinating woman, very forward thinking and highly intelligent. Non-fiction recommendation of 2022! A Short History of the World According to Sheep by Sally Coultard, how the modern world has been shaped by sheep and their wool (did you know that Viking sails were made of wool or that the earliest woolen garment discovered is a cloak dating back to 6000BC?) Informative, amusing and full of the sort of facts you can't wait to pass on. Fiction book of the year, 2022 Girl, Woman, Other. Just brilliant. Author of the year, 2022 Bernadine Evaristo. Mr Loverman isn't quite as brilliant as Girl, Woman, Other but even so...

I've never thought a new year means much, for me the big changeover date when I expected things might change/improve is my birthday which is in June. Being 11 or 30 or considerably older has much more significance than a different year.

It's been raining all day so I've spent a lot of time with the miniature library kit I was given for Christmas. Most of the furniture is done, now I have to get going on making the books.

Substitute France for Scotland and I'm doing exactly the same!

Me too.

I did a bit of Kobo diving recently and randomly selected one of the books I'd bought on a special offer and hadn't got around to reading yet. I landed on Fresh Water for Flowers by Valerie Perrin , the story of Violette, a cemetery keeper who leads a contented solitary life looking after graves and growing plants. Then Gabriel turns up to fulfill his mother's last wish that her ashes but should be spread not on the grave of her husband but on the grave of someone Gabriel has never heard of. This was a runaway best seller in France, unusual as it's a long book and the French don't usually go for hundreds and hundreds of pages, but I can see why it appealed to so many. There's huge charm in the book, Violette, though a bit wet in places, is immensely appealing, the love story between Gabriel's mother and her lover is very moving and there are a couple of other plot lines which I won't mention for risk of spoilers. However it's far too long for my taste, and half way through the author began to head hop between Violette, the husband who abandoned her years ago and other characters which didn't add a lot. It's worth trying though, the translation is excellent (apart from French children calling their mothers Mommy), much of the story is lovely and I won't forget it in a hurry.

Thank you, we were really afraid he'd end up in a wheelchair but amazingly enough he has made a full recovery.

Amanda had her DNA tested to see if she was her father's daughter. I don't care about Connie Willis's anomalies either or about Hilary Mantel's use of modern speech in the Wolf Hall, but was driven crazy by Philippa Gregory putting 21st Century thinking into the head of a 16th century girl in the other Boleyn Girl.

I had heard so much about Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, that it was a breath of fresh air, delightful, etc etc. I'm afraid it left me a bit underwhelmed, it was readable, some parts of it were good but it didn't have that vital can't-put-it-down factor. Partially it was because some of it was just too much, Elizabeth was too good at everything apart from making a success of her personal life, her child was way too clever, the same could be said for the dog though it was so quirky I forgave it a lot but the emphasis on what a hard time intelligent women had to be recognised in their own right in masculine-dominated areas in the 50s and early 60s was very heavy handed and there were glaring anachronisms. I didn't pick on some of them like Sweden not having universal child care till the 70s but DNA testing in 1961? I the book has absorbed me enough I can overlook those, not here though. Business As Usual by Jane Oliver really is a breath of fresh air. Written in 1933 it's an epistolary novel about Hilary Fane who come to London for a year to earn her own living while her fiancé finishes his medical studies in Edinburgh. She eventually gets a job in a thinly disguised Selfridges, ending up in their lending library. She's a great character, forthright, full of humour, bossy gets on the wrong side of her co-workers sometimes and is delightfully human. Not a long or heavy read, it hasn't dated at all and I really enjoyed it.

I suspect that's why I gave up on her. There are authors like Sharon Bolton who have plot lines which are completely unbelievable when you think about them later but she's so good at keeping the pace going that you don't really mind. For me Elly Griffiths isn't one of them.

Can I suggest then then that maybe your reading isn't that wide!!!😀 Unfortunately there are far too many so called thrillers with that sort of lazy plotting, spies who pick up a dark enticing woman and don't notice she has a Russian accent, people who just "find" someone who can provide a fake passport, looking identical to another person (not just similar), looking identical and they also have the same taste in suitcases so you pick up the wrong one, being in a train accident and declared dead when you walked away unrecognisable and then become your own children's nanny (East Lynne)...

And if you have an Audible subscription just about all her short stories including Christmas Past are free on Audible Plus

I picked up the Three Body Problem at a book fair a few months ago and it's been languishing in the bookcase, now I really want to read it. Hope you get better soon. Last time I had a serious neck problem I ended up with a baby! (Long story, but being in too much pain to remember pills had a lot to do with it).

I used to love Donna Leon's books then read an article in a writing magazine where she said she hadn't bothered to find out anything about how the Italian police system works. Talk about letting daylight in on the magic! She may have been joking, I hope so, but it still put me off reading any more of her books.

I agree this was a great book, I loved it.

Mrs Harris Goes to Paris - Paul Gallico This is a book I would have loved when I was a lot younger but now, though it's very readable, it feels both dated and saccharinely sweet. It's about to be made into a film and will probably work. There's a lot of Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead , I read it on my Kobo so can't say exactly how long it was, about 600 pages plus I reckon so if you're going to read it be prepared! There are two parallel stories, that of film star Hadley who is going to play Marion Greaves, one of the pioneering women pilots and becomes increasingly fascinated by her and Marian's story which isn't exactly what her modern day biographer thinks. Probably 3/4 of the book is Marian and it's by far the most interesting though Hadley's is by no means boring. This was shortlisted for both the Booker and the Women's Prize for Fiction and it's beautifully written, I thoroughly enjoyed it though it did require a certain amount of stamina! The Angels of Venice by Phillip Wynne Jones is marketed as a thriller and a thriller this story is not. I worked out who the baddies were almost from the first entry on the page and it has one of those plots where you start muttering 'Oh come on, surely ______ wouldn't be that stupid. However the sense of place is absolutely fantastic, you feel you can feel and smell Venice (the author lives there and obviously loves it, even though he doesn't have his rose tinted specs on) and for that alone, and the pleasant main characters this was well worth reading. I'll be looking out for other books in the series though I don't think I'd be prepared to pay full price for them.