France's Reading 2023

[France]

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

Edited December 30, 2023 by France

[France]

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.

 

 

[Hayley]

On 1/16/2023 at 11:53 AM, France said:

and shy away from witchcraft and weird happenings The Buried is not for you.

I love witchcraft and weird happenings, so I've added The Craftsman to my wish list .

 

It's great to see that your first books of the year have all been good ones!

[Madeleine]

I've added that one as well, apparently it's been optioned for TV.

[France]

2 hours ago, Hayley said:

 

 

It's great to see that your first books of the year have all been good ones!

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!

[France]

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.

[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.

[Madeleine]

25 minutes ago, France said:

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.

I loved The Seeker, the 2nd book is also very good and I still have the others to read, I also have the Alexander Seaton books but haven't read them yet, and want to read the new one too.

[France]

Bleeding Heart Yard by Elly Griffiths.  From the Amazon blurb "DS Cassie Fitzherbert has a secret - but it's one she's deleted from her memory. In the 1990s when she was at school, she and her friends killed a fellow pupil. Thirty years later, Cassie is happily married and loves her job as a police officer.

One day her husband persuades her to go to a school reunion and another ex-pupil, Garfield Rice, is found dead, supposedly from a drug overdose. As Garfield was an eminent MP and the investigation is high profile, it's headed by Cassie's new boss, DI Harbinder Kaur. The trouble is, Cassie can't shake the feeling that one of her old friends has killed again.

Is Cassie right, or was Garfield murdered by one of his political cronies? It's in Cassie's interest to skew the investigation so that it looks like the latter and she seems to be succeeding."

 

I've never really got on with the Ruth Galloway books, I don't know why, if I come across one I'll read and finish it but I have no incentive to hunt another out. I got this one because it was a Kobo special offer, the reviews were ecstatic and it sounded very different to Ruth Galloway.

 

It is. Harbinder is a hugely appealing character, the plot moved well and I raced though thinking that maybe I'd done Ruth an injustice and should try her again. Then I got to the denouement. It's a huge let down as if Elly Griffiths had got to 90% through the story without knowing who actually did do it and reached for an unexpected twist like Indy bringing out his gun and shooting the sabre twisting opponent in the market place in Raiders of the Lost Ark, except this twist is far more unlikely and  not in the least bit funny. The explanation for other goings on relied solely on the baddie being in absolutely the right place at the right time both to realise their ill deeds were about to be revealed and to put their hand on the perfect murder weapon. In other words tosh.  I know detective stories are hardly real life but they do need a smidgeon of credibility.

 

Deeply disappointing after such a cracking start. Still loads of other readers don't appear to mind the ending, I'm obviously in the minority.

 

 

[France]

I love Australian crime novels, they have such a brilliant sense of place, and for me Chris Hammer is right at the top of the pyramid, just edging Jane Harper off the top though she's in the automatically read anything she's written section. Dead Man's Creek takes place along the Murray River and starts when an environmental activist blows up a mini dam keeping water out of an ancient forest and a body is discovered at the foot of the dam. The plot ranges between an Army major who went missing in 1943, a young local who disappeared in 1973, a young girl in love with him and newly promoted detective Nell - who is the young man's niece. As ever it cracks along at an incredible pace, there's a thoroughly satisfying ending with not too much tied up neatly and a strong desire that he'll get on with writing the next book.

[Madeleine]

I love Jane Harper's books, like you any new book by her is straight on top of the tbr pile.  I have the first two Chris Hammer books but still haven't read them!

[France]

Prepare not to do anything until you finish the Chris Hammers, particularly with  first.

[Madeleine]

Duly noted!

[France]

The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea by Stuart Turton.  This is the follow up to the Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle which was very strange indeed and I thought mesmerising and brilliant though I know not everyone agreed. This book takes place on a ship sailing back to Holland in the early 17th century where the governor of Batavia (a Dutch colony) is going to become a director of the Dutch East India company. Also on board are Sammy Phipps, the world's greatest detective, imprisoned for an unspecified  crime, his bodyguard Arendt who is Watson to Phipps' Holmes, the governor's wife who loathes him, his preternaturally clever daughter, his mistress who is also his wife's best friend... and an apparent demon called Old Tom who is systematically killing people. Phipps is the only one capable of solving the mystery but he's in chains...

 

This was a bit slow to start, then it became runaway compulsively readable. It's not as original as his first book, it's difficult to imagine how anything could be and like Seven Deaths it has a slightly weak and unsatisfactory ending. However it's still an excellent read.

[France]

On 1/29/2023 at 1:37 PM, Madeleine said:

I love Jane Harper's books, like you any new book by her is straight on top of the tbr pile.  I have the first two Chris Hammer books but still haven't read them!

You know there's a new one that came out last week?  I'm so tempted to break my temporary rule of no buying any more books until I've reduced the tbr pile.

[Hayley]

4 hours ago, France said:

The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea by Stuart Turton.  This is the follow up to the Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

I have this book but I didn’t know it was a follow up! Do you think it works as a standalone?

[Madeleine]

17 hours ago, France said:

You know there's a new one that came out last week?  I'm so tempted to break my temporary rule of no buying any more books until I've reduced the tbr pile.

I'm actually two books behind now, including the ones I still haven't read!  I have the new ones on my wishlist, not sure if the local bookshops will have them, they don't tend to carry much stock now unless it's a big selling author or a "celebrity"🙁

[France]

17 hours ago, Hayley said:

I have this book but I didn’t know it was a follow up! Do you think it works as a standalone?

Sorry, wrong word! It's not a follow up, it's his second novel and not connected to The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle at all.

Edited February 13, 2023 by France

[Hayley]

18 hours ago, France said:

Sorry, wrong word! It's not a follow up, it's his second novel and not connected to The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle at all.

Oh, phew 😄

[France]

I came to France before Susanna and Trinny hit the TV screens so never saw them though I had heard of them. The only reason I bought Ready for Absolutely Nothing by Susanna Constantine is because a)she used to live in the house in Lincolnshire my brother now rents and I was mildly curious and b)it was a dirt cheap offer on Kobo. The only reason I'm taking the time to write about it is to warn you are it's utterly dire. Boringly written, full of faux apologies for being born rich and privileged, way too much information about her problems in flushing large poos down the lavatory - even my Kobo couldn't put up with this tripe and froze until I deleted it.

 

Daphne Sheldrick came from a Kenyan white settler family and spent her life passionately involved with animal conservation, particularly with Elephants. Her two husbands were game wardens and she spent nearly her whole life in National reserves, her particular passion being rescuing orphans, elephants naturally, but also rhinos, zebras, impalas, even warthogs. She was the first person to successfully raise a milk-dependent baby elephant (after several heart-breaking failures) as no-one could work out what the vital ingredient was and the babies gradually sickened and died. Love, Life and Elephants  is her memoir and it's fascinating, it's obvious that she's not a natural writer, it's a bit plodding in places but the content and the utter passion she had for Kenya and its wildlife come through clearly.

[~Andrea~]

On 2/18/2023 at 5:16 PM, France said:

The only reason I'm taking the time to write about it is to warn you are it's utterly dire. Boringly written, full of faux apologies for being born rich and privileged, way too much information about her problems in flushing large poos down the lavatory - even my Kobo couldn't put up with this tripe and froze until I deleted it.

🤣 Brilliant review. I will steer well clear if that one then.

[France]

Bloomsbury Ballerina by Judith Mackrell  Lydia Lupokova was the most famous and loved ballerina in England during the 1920s. Trained in St Petersburg she became a key member of the Ballet Russe, danced with Nijinski (whom she loathed) then in her 30s married the brilliant economist and Bloomsburyite John Maynard Keynes and was gradually forgotten.  This should have been absolutely fascinating and parts of it were especially if you are interested in both ballet and the Bloomsbury set but it's much too detailed and long and I was getting distinctly weary by the end.

 

I was suffering from fatigue by the end of The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu too, mainly because the sheer amount of physics in it was giving me brain ache. I've never read any Chinese SF before, the theme was promising and I loved the background and the descriptions of the game even though the closed I've got to playing on-line games is Solitaire, however the characters remain pretty flat for the most part and so generally unengaging and I might have coped better with the physics if I'd been more invested in them.
 

[France]

Jane Casey knows how to write a cracking page turner and The Close, the 10th in her Maeve Kerrigan series is no exception. What I like about these books is that people change and develop, for instance the super glamorous, super ambitious junior constable who was always trying to get one over Maeve in earlier books is becoming someone to giggle with even if she still makes needless mistakes.  If you have tried these books before start at the beginning and don't be surprised if you find yourself reading the whole series.

 

I did some Kobo diving amongst the unread books and came up with  A Dry Spell by Clare Chambers which is a gentle and undemanding read set in the 90's about a group of students who went on a field trip in the 70s and are finding somepigeons coming home to rest. It was very enjoyable, she is a superb writer and there's a wonderfully funny scene with Bones the labrador making his first appearance as an actor.

 

[France]

I haven't read a bad book by Ben Aaronovitch yet and Amongst Our Weapons is no exception, though I can't help wondering where the series is going to go. It seems he's backing into a slightly staid corner but I hope I'll be very surprised. No more said for fear of spoilers!

 

See Them Run by Marion Todd  was an object lesson in not getting seduced by a too good to be true offer on Kobo (3 books nin a series for 99p). If this really is an example of the best in Scottish detective fiction then all I can say is something has gone badly wrong with Scotland's writers. The first book was readable, just about, the second was abandoned. There's much better out there.

 

[France]

Michael Ondaatje is a poet as well as a novelist, memoirist and essayist which is probably why he has written so few novels. It probably is also responsible for the way he writes which is sublime, unshowy, simply yet every sentence is  perfect. Warlight, his most recent book, is the first of his books I've read. It's the story of 14 year old Nathaniel and his sister who are left in the care of a near stranger in post war London while their parents ostensibly go to Singapore for their father's job. Nothing is quite what it seems. The first half of the book which follows Nathaniel running wild with a decidedly dodgy friend of their 'guardian' is absolutely wonderful, the second half where Nathaniel is older and trying to find out exactly what his mother did do in the war is less successful, there's a fantastical boy's own feeling about the narrative which tips over into being downright unbelievable in places.

That said it's still a superb book.