France

Early Morning Riser - Katherine Heiney This was a cheapie on Kobo with good reviews. It's very readable, very light, very funny in places and I suspect very forgettable. The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym - Paula Byrne One of the most surprising things about this book was learning how closely Barbara Pym based her books on her own experiences when most of her female characters are sensible women with a properly cynical view of men and Barbara herself was neither sensible or cynical. She racketed from one love affair with no future to another, making friends on the way, always writing, always seeming to enjoy herself. It's an extraordinary story told by a very good biographer - the part about the article in the TImes Lit which propels Barbara back into the literary limelight after so long in the wilderness is wonderful and heart -lifting to read. I'll be rereading her books soon. Ninth House - Leigh Bardugo Galaxy 'Alex' Stern can see ghosts. She has a chequered past to say the least and after being found unconscious at a horrific murder was offered a scholarship to Yale to join a society that polices the magic societies there. Of course nothing is quite as simple as she was promised. I absolutely loved this, it is quite gory in places and it ends on a semi cliff hanger but for me it was a can't-take-my-nose-out of it. I've been doing a major tidy on my daughter's bedroom (she's spent the last 7 years working on short term contracts so has tended to return home, dump her stuff then three months later she's back to dump more. Oh and she doesn't throw things away). Unpacking several boxes of books to put them in her book case meant discovering and reading some old favourites, in particular; Getting Rid of Bradley - Jennifer Crusie This was actually written as a genre romance but is stratospherically better than most of them, it's very funny, very smart, well written and not in the least bit soppy. Sorcery and Cecilia or the Enchanted Chocolate Pot - Patricia Wrede and Caroline Stevener - this book started off with a letter game where they took turns writing letters to each other adding to the story each time with neither knowing what the other was planning. The result, set in an alternative Regency period where there's a lot of magic, is absolutely charming.

Do let us all know what you think of it once you've finished. I really want to read this.

As often happens I have two on the go - Love After Love by Ingrid Persaud and on the Kobo Hollywood Homicide by Kellye Garrat which was recommended in the Guardian and is light, amusing and excellent reading for the bath.

I was given my original Kobo, similar to the basic Kindle, when Amazon was playing silly b's with certain publishers and refusing to list their titles, as it gave you wider choice (apart from books published by Amazon of course). Kobo uses epub so you can download books from most places, you can also get a programme to strip DRM from Kindle titles and convert them to epub, I don't bother with either any longer as I have more than enough books on Kobo to choose from. My old Kobo is much the same as my daughter's Kindle, the new Libra, according to the reviews, is better than the Paperwhite - marginally! What I love is the bigger screen and it seems to be lit differently, it's softer yet I am happy with a far smaller font size than the old Kobo; more words on the page make it seem even more like a traditional book. I wouldn't say Miss Pym is as good as Byrne's Jane Austen book but it's still very good. As was her book about Evelyn Waugh and the Lygons.

My reading highlight this month has been my new Kobo Libra, I can now read in the bath without worry and I had no idea what a difference the bigger screen would make. It's turned reading on a device from "OK but nowhere as pleasurable as a real book" to "This is nearly as good.' Real books are still just ahead though. Actual reading highlights have been Anything is Possible by Elisabeth Strout, The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym by Paula Byrne (I'll be re-reading my Pym collection soon) and Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo.

I hadn't realised Stella Tillyard had written any novels, thanks for the heads up. We read A Room Of One's Own for my book group a few years ago and it caused an absolute explosion from one of the members, very proud of his working-class Welsh roots, 'She's complaining about not being given partridge for dinner. Partridge! We were lucky to get anything more than a crust...' and so on. He still gets teased about it and he still hates Virginia Woolf.

She's an author and a journalist so she probably has a lot of books for research as well as the old favourites, books she knows she wants to read and the not-now-but-I-might-feel-like-reading-this-one-day section. My books on naval life during the Napoleonic wars (research for a novel) must amount to about 30 books by now and i can't afford to get rid of any of them because though I could make notes it's actually quicker to look up something about Admiral Collingwood in the biography of him than to search through piles of notebooks.

Our house is overflowing with books but then I don't have access to an English language library (that's my excuse anyway).

Long time since I updated! Again a brief run through of the best (and sometimes the not so best). Kindred - Octavia E Butler One of the reason I took so long in updating everything is that this book about an African American Californian who is repeatedly dragged back in time to a plantation in Maryland is that it affected me so deeply that I couldn't put my thoughts down. Dana the protagonist isn't always likeable and as she tries to survive in a world of slavery makes decisions and offers advice that can seem morally dubious to modern sensibilities but I'm not sure he had a lot of choice. I found it an incredible read. Ghosting - Jennie Erdal Jennie Erdal worked for 20 years for Niamh Atallah the flamboyant owner of Quartet books, writing everything for him - not only his business letters but his novels and his love letters. It's a little slow to get into but after that mesmerising and her writing is absolutely fabulous. Manhattan Beach - Jennifer Egan This story about a girl trying to become a diver in the navy yards in New York during WWII started off really well but petered out. A real shame. The Art of Dying - Ambrose Parry I had big hopes for this which is part of a series set in mid 19th cenbtury Edinburgh written by Christopher Brookmyre and his wife but it just didn't do anything for me. Anything is Possible - Elizabeth Strout A loose follow on from My Name is Lucy Barton, this is in Elizabeth Strout's trademark style of interlinked short stories which are quite different but as a whole make up a connected narrative. I'm prejudiced, I think she's brilliant and this is no exception. The Last Thing He Told Me - Laura Dave This book about a woman whose husband disappears one day leaving her a note to protect her antagonistic 14 year old stepdaughter is billed as a thriller, I'm not really sure that it's the right description but nonetheless it's a surprisingly good pacy read with a slightly unexpected end. Anxious People - Frederik Backman I have mixed feelings about this story of a farcical attempt to rob a bank and an even more farcical hostage situation with some pretty farcical policemen (father and son) thrown into the mix. On the one hand it is very funny in places and Backman's humour can be quite acid which I really like, on the other it can also be very twee. I galloped through it but I didn't love it in the way I did with A Man Called Ove or My Grandmother Sends Her Apologies...

I've got three, no clue about the rest.

The description of the battle in An Infamous Army was used at Sandhurst, the officers training college, as a resource so she must have been accurate.

I find him distinctly irritating!

A long time ago I was in advertising, PR and magazines. When I reached retirement age I fell into starting a new career and I'm now a tour guide. I absolutely love it, the best job I've ever had.

For seriously weird 18th century novels there's also Vathek by William Beckford. Fanny Burney was a great favourite of Jane Austen's. What about Clarissa by Samuel Richardson (the longest novel in the English language)? It's actually a terrific read, he also wrote Pamela about the virtuous servant girl whose employer is determined to seduce her which is a lot shorter and rather more saccharine.

I read The Long Call last year and found it distinctly underwhelming, it was a great relief to get my hands on The Darkest Evening, the ninth Vera book and find that she's absolutely back to form.

I rather agree about Crawdads, I felt it was a bit juvenile in places though I did enjoy it. It just wasn't superb. On the other hand I loved Miss Austen, I thought it was far better and more convincing than The Other Bennet Sister which is the one that has been garnering all the rave comments.

The Samaritan by Mason Cross was a good basic thriller about a serial killer in Los Angeles targeting women who have broken down. There was one place where I raised my eyebrows wondering if Carter Blake, the name the hero chooses to use, would really have allowed himself to be trapped so easily but still worthwhile. However Missing Pieces by Tim Weaver is severely lacking. It has a woman in peril who who so basically lacking in common sense that you are amazed she survived the first evening let alone several months stranded on an island. It's a standalone and I've heard good things of his other books and gather from reviews that they are in a different class so I might give them a go. 1971, Never A Dull Moment, Rock's Golden Year by music journalist David Hepworth is a paean to what he considers is the greatest year of rock. He is hugely knowledgeable about the music of his youth (he was 21) but even if nostalgia influenced his belief that 1971 produced more records that have really stood the test of time than any other year it's hard to dispute that there was some great music. It's a very enjoyable read, full of interesting little facts and written with a refreshingly dry cynicism but he's never spiteful. It's probably of most interest to those who are familiar with at least some of the tracks either through being there at the time or discovering Pink Floyd, the Who, Carole King, Sly and the Family Stone, Roxy Music etc much later on.

I loved this even if for my taste there was too much CGI though the battle scenes were spectacular. It's a long film, over 2 1/2 hours and I was really surprised when the credits came up, it felt like I'd been there an hour and a half. The pace doesn't lag and the actor playing Paul is excellent. I'm not sure why it isn't advertised that this is Part 1, Part 2 will be the second half of the book and there should be a third film based on Dune Messiah. However I think Denis Villeneuve was quite right, it's a very long book with a lot of content and needs the extra time I read Dune when it first came out and absolutely loved it, re-reading it several times shortly afterwards but haven't picked it up for many years so I can't comment on how close the film is to the book but somehow it just felt as if it had got all the important bits.

I've just read 1971, Never A Dull Moment, Rock's Golden Year by David Hepworth, excellent read and will send you racing to Spotify to remind yourself of the albums and tracks he mentions.

I have a vast TBR, justified in my opinion by living in a foreign country and not having easy access to an English language library so I have to stock up when I can both with paper books and on my Kobo. I also have several titles on both, I'll buy something on special offer on Kobo then if I come across the real life version I'll get that too as I prefer reading in print and like being able to lend favoured books to the family. Then there's my Audible library too...

I've read the first three or four then the series slipped off my radar slightly. The first one is really good, so are the next two then from what I remember the fourth was a bit too long. Well worth trying, two of my daughters enjoyed the books too (the third doesn't like fantasy).

I remember thinking it was a bit silly actually, but that was probably due to being 15.

I have! I read it when I was 15.

I'm sure Superman has been copyrighted so you wouldn't just be plagiarising, you'd get sued for copyright infringement too! And no, that level of similarity is not acceptable.

Getting a bit behind with commenting on my books so here's a quick run down on some of them: The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by NK Jemisin was a terrific read, wonderfully written and absorbing fantasy. Sadly I ended up abandoning her latest book The City We Became which is so didactic it became really tiresome, boring too. I've always adored Mary Lawson's writing and I think A Town Called Solace is probably her best to date. Absolutely simple, perfect prose, not a word wrong. it's been longlisted for the Booker which does surprise me as usually Booker nominees aren't this accessible. Highly recommended. Big Summer by Jennifer Weiner. can't even remember what it was about now. Nuff said. The Perfect Lie by Jo Spain is an excellent page turner, OK you can guess one of the key plot points about half way through and a considerable degree of suspension of disbelief is required but it didn't spoil the book for me. Mother May I? by Joshilyn Jackson about a woman whose baby is abducted is utterly brilliant until the last two chapters where having almost wound everything up she seems uncertain how to do the last bits and put in a jarring denouement along with a certain amount of preachiness. The point was fair but the reader, certainly this one, didn't need it pointing out so heavily. Very worthwhile reading up to there though.