A Book Blog 2025 by Books do Furnish a Room

[Books do furnish a room]

Hunger by Choi Jin Young

“If only it were a billion years in the future, I’d leave Earth with your body on my back and we’d be a pair of happy boats. Doesn’t that sound nicer than cannibalism?”

A Korean novel, novella to be precise about two lovers, Dam and Gu. They meet at elementary school and their novel charts their lives and relationship. It is told from both points of view. It is a romance, albeit a rather macabre one. At the beginning of the novel Gu dies. He is killed on the street as a result of the debt he inherited from his parents. Gu cannot bear to be parted from him. She takes him home, washes him down and over a period of time eats him. It really doesn’t pay to think of the practicalities of this, that clearly isn’t the point. The novel flashes back to the couple’s history. They live at the lower levels of society and life is difficult.

The novel covers a lot of ground, but because of its brevity nothing is covered in any real depth. It emphasises the lack of choices for the working class in Korea. These aren’t Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers, there’s more struggle and desperation. It can’t really be called horror despite the cannibalism.

“But what do I know, really? Turns out we're as clueless in death as in life. The only difference is the dead don't agonise over the unknown. They know to leave some things alone.”

I think the trick is to focus on metaphor, but it didn’t really grab me, although it was interesting.

6 out of 10

Starting Brotherless Night by V V Ganeshananthan

 

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The Great Game by Peter Hopkirk

“There is no doubt that this secret battle of wits - political chess game played out across the vast geopolitical chessboard of Asia - changed the course of History.”

This is a history of the nineteenth century struggle between two imperialist powers, Russia and Britain for ascendancy in Central and East Asia. It was about a number of issues. A number of imperialist powers had coveted India and Russia was one of those. Russia also had expansionist ambitions in relation to the many small states in Central Asia and towards Afghanistan and China. Hopkirk lays out here the various disastrous incursions into Afghanistan by Britain and Russia very clearly. It does make you realise that the twentieth century incursions into Afghanistan by the Soviet Union and the US supported by other NATO powers had not been thought through and no lessons had been learned from the nineteenth century.

The phrase The Great Game was inevitably coined by that arch-imperialist Rudyard Kipling:

“Now I shall go far and far into the North, playing the Great Game.”

There are fascinating accounts of explorers and travellers from both sides going into places where Europeans had previously not ventured. There are descriptions of the harsh terrain, the various unpredictable rulers who soon learnt to play the British and Russians off against each other. There was one war in the nineteenth century between the two powers (Crimean War) but there were a number of other occasions where war was close:

“It was a shadow war, not fought face to face, but by proxy and by stealth, in the back streets of Kabul, the passes of the Hindu Kush, and the deserts of Central Asia.”

Britain’s primary ambition was to hang onto India with the occasional annexation of extra bits of territory (depending on whether the Whigs or Tories were in power). Russian ambitions were clear as well, this from Witte, one of Nicholas II’s ministers:

“From the shores of the Pacific, and to the heights of the Himalayas, Russia will not only dominate the affairs of Asia, but those of Europe also.”

Of course today many of those Central Asian states now have independence following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The story of The Great Game may also have lessons for the current situation vis-à-vis Russia and Ukraine. I am sure current Russian tacticians are still looking at the way things worked out in the nineteenth century. In the nineteenth century Russia had a vision and long-term goals, they still do.

Hopkirk’s account is interesting and provides insights into nineteenth century imperialism and how it worked (or didn’t work) on the ground.

6 and a half out of 10

Starting The Oregon Trail by Francis Parkman

 

[Books do furnish a room]

The Wych Elm by Tana French

“The thing is, I suppose,” he said, “that one gets into the habit of being oneself. It takes some great upheaval to crack that shell and force us to discover what else might be underneath.”

The title of this is The Wych Elm, written clearly on my copy. Not sure how it got changed to Witch along the way, because that title gives an entirely misleading impression of what the book is about. There is a variety tree called the Wych Elm. This variety is prone to having a hollow trunk as it ages and that is very relevant to the plot. The narrator is Toby Hennessey who is in his late 20s. He is not likeable, clearly unreliable and his attitude to women stinks. He is also privileged and entitled. This may be why many people did not finish the novel.

This is essentially a thriller. Toby’s uncle Hugo lives in a large rambling house (the elm tree is in the garden). Hugo is terminally ill and his family are rallying round. Toby has two cousins, Leon and Susanna. One of Susanna’s children finds a skull in the hollow of the tree and so a police investigation begins. The skeleton belongs to a teenage friend of the three cousins who had disappeared some 12 years earlier.  Incidental to this Toby has been the victim of a violent burglary which has left him with a significant head injury with some memory loss.

French sets up the plot well and there are plenty of twists and turns. The novel examines the nature of memory and its unreliability, what is luck, and what is culpability.

Spending the whole novel in Toby’s head is a trial and if I had been his longsuffering girlfriend Melissa, Toby would have ended up in the Elm as well. Of course there could be a link to Greek Myth here and the Wych Elm could be the entrance to the underworld. French looks at the darker side of human existence.

7 out of 10

Starting The Voices of Time by J G Ballard

[Hayley]

On 12/9/2025 at 2:11 PM, Books do furnish a room said:

if I had been his longsuffering girlfriend Melissa, Toby would have ended up in the Elm as well.

 this sounds interesting, I'm not sure if I have the patience to deal with Toby right now though 😂. I wonder whether the story was inspired by the true story of the body found in a wych elm after ww2.

 

Also thinking maybe 'witch elm' could be the American spelling? It does seem to give it a weirdly different meaning, if it's not!

[Books do furnish a room]

Hayley, I suspect it is the American spelling. I must admit it was better than I was expecting.

Roman Lincoln by Michael J Jones

This is a history of Roman Lincoln, published in 2002 and updated in 2011. Jones looks at the archaeological and other evidence about Roman Lincoln. There were settlements in the area prior to the Romans as the area has a steep defendable escarpment, a river and pool/lake and fertile land nearby. It became a significant Roman settlement and was one of the places where legionnaires were able to retire.

There’s plenty of evidence of the usual industries and public buildings. It was a walled city and some of the walls still survive, indeed an arch survives that is daily used by traffic. There are an awful lot of Roman remains around Lincoln and Jones details what you can see and where.

This is an interesting history, especially if you want to learn about Roman settlements. I discovered along the way that the street I live on used to be where the lodgings for centurions was located.

7 and a half out of 10

Starting Common People: A Folk History of Land Rights, Enclosure and Resistance by Leah Gordon and Stephen Ellcock

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Retribution Falls  by Chris Wooding

“Ladies, gentlemen, we're out of here! Your boss is upstairs, and only mildly wounded. Go help him if you have the inclination. You'll also notice the house is on fire. Make of that what you like.”

This is a Steampunk novel with pirates, airships, plenty of swashbuckling, revenge betrayal, golems, daemonologists, proper villains, plot twists, a dysfunctional crew and much more. All the elements of a good yarn. It is rather reminiscent of Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean. There is humour, but it is not out of balance with everything else.

All of the crew of the airship which the novel revolves (the Ketty Jay) around have their own significant issues and flaws:

“The Ketty Jay was staffed with drunkards and drifters, all of them running from something -- whether it be memories or enemies or the drudgery of land-bound life -- but since Yortland they'd been running in the same direction. United by that common purpose, they'd begun to turn into something resembling a crew. And Frey had begun to turn into something resembling a captain.”

Darian Frey, the captain and main protagonist is thankfully likeable. The plot is fast paced: completely unbelievable of course, but then this is steampunk. It’s pure escapism, but none the worse for that.

“They were happy, and free, and the endless sky awaited them. It was enough.”

8 out of 10 

Starting The House Keepers by Alex Hay

 

 

Edited December 14 by Books do furnish a room

[Books do furnish a room]

An Innkeeper's diary by John Fothergill

“Once a man told me, for no good reason on that occasion at least, that I was “no gentleman”, and I was glad to coin the only possible reply to this old cliché by saying, “I make no pretence to being a gentleman so we may continue the discussion on equal terms.” A don-like tu quoque.”

The writer of this diary, John Fothergill was the proprietor of the Spreadeagle at Thame in Oxfordshire in the 1920s. This diary runs from1922 to 1930. It is separated by year rather than by day and is basically a series of recollections of people and topics written at the end of the day.

Fothergill was an interesting character. He was an art student at The Slade and knew Augustus John and William Rothenstein. In 1898 he opened a gallery in London. He was a close friend of Reginald Turner, Robbie Ross and Oscar Wilde. Wilde gave him an inscribed copy of The Ballad of Reading Gaol.

As an innkeeper Fothergill was notably irascible and there are certainly shades of Basil Fawlty in his attitude to some of his clientele. He did though gain a national reputation for keeping a good house and for the quality of the food. Many of the 2brightb young things” visited and stayed and Waugh was a regular visitor. It was close enough to Oxford to attract dons and undergraduates.

The diary is full of amusing anecdotes and Fothergill’s irritation with the general public. He was undoubtedly a snob and there are stories of him adding to the bill if he didn’t like or approve of someone, although these may be apocryphal. The stories aren’t.

Two ladies complained about the cost of garaging their car and were told, “If you care to take it up to your bedroom there will be no charge for the garage.”

Jonathon Persse recalls a story his mother told:

In the late 1920s she lived for a year in Oxford. Sunday lunch at the Spreadeagle in Thame with undergraduate friends was, no doubt, a good introduction to one aspect of English life for an Australian girl. On one occasion when pudding was ordered, my mother asked for sugar. While she waited for it to be brought, Mr Fothergill approached the table, and saw her untouched plate.

‘Is there something wrong with the pudding, Madam?’

‘Thank you, but I’m just waiting for some sugar.’

‘I think you will find it sweet enough.’

‘Oh, but I like the grit.’

‘Madam, I shall bring you some sand.’

 

This is an interesting window into a past time and if you know anything about the Bright Young Things and 1920s culture it may be worth a look.

6 and a half out of 10

Starting Songs of the Wandering Scholars by Helen Waddell

 

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The Night Wire edited by Aaron Worth

This Tales of the Weird collection from the British Library looks at the development of technologies and their intersection with the weird and supernatural. Hence there are stories about television, wireless, photography, typewriters, railways, telegrams, phonographs, X-rays, film and cinema and some of the more esoteric inventions. This sort of story began, I suppose when the portrait became animated and stepped off the wall in Walpole’s Castle of Otranto and continues through films like the ring when the girl steps out of the television. This collection was written between the 1890s and the 1960s.

There are stories by Robert Milne, Marcel Schwob, Charles Crosthwaite, Bernard Capes, Rudyard Kipling, Oliver Onions, Francis Stevens, Stefan Grabinski, H P Lovecraft, Bessie Kyffin-Taylor, H F Arnold, H Russell Wakefield, Louis Golding, Marjorie Bowen, J B Priestley and Mary Treadgold. Some of these have not aged well (the Kipling for example), but others are still effective. The J B Priestley story Uncle Phil on TV still works well as does the last story by Mary Treadgold. The Lovecraft is old-fashioned horror of the Hammer kind. There is an artist who becomes his sculpture and a reflection on the effect of typing on the role of women.

7 out of 10

Starting Sunless Solstice: Strange Christmas Tales for the Longest Nights

 

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Lost in the Garden by Adam Leslie

Lost in the Garden

“STAY AWAY FROM ALMANBY.

Almanby is dangerous.

Go anywhere, but don’t go to Almanby.

But no one ever specified why. No one thought to impress upon the children exactly what terrible fate would befall them if they did happen to venture across its threshold. It was likely no one actually had any idea. It was simply a fact: Almanby was dangerous. Everyone knew it, even if they couldn’t remember how they knew. But there was certainly no need to question it or look into it any further. All anyone was really sure of was that if you went to Almanby, you’d never come back.”

“Don’t walk on the quicksand, don’t touch the powerlines, don’t go off with strangers, don’t play on the farm, don’t go to Almanby.”

 

I’ve read a review of this  which described it as psychedelic folk horror, not a bad description. It is strange, odd and haunting and Leslie nods at a number of genres. There is a touch of road trip. The dead walk around the countryside aimlessly and slowly (a nod to the zombie genre). Despite being slow the dead do carry wooden clubs, branches or other blunt instruments and use them on any who they catch,

This is very much a rural novel, it features villages rather than cities and towns. The whole landscape feels dreamy and out of focus and this is an alternate Britain, There are shades of The Wicker Man and The Day of the Triffids as well as more modern issues like the Covid pandemic.

There are three main characters who decide to travel to Almanby. Rachel says she has to deliver a package, Heather whose boyfriend has gone to Almanby and disappeared and Antonia who is in love with Heather.

Some sort of cataclysm has happened and most of the adults are dead:

“Only the young survived. They thrived, climbing trees, scavenging food and building fortifications. Childhood called them back; it had prepared them for this moment.”

The novel is impossible to date, but, it is very funny. There is also, oddly, a cosiness to it and anyone who knows English villages will relate to the descriptions.

The ending is as strange as the rest of the novel. It’s really not like anything else I’ve read.

9 out of 10

Starting The Housekeepers by Alex Hay

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Pandora's Star by Peter Hamilton

“Civilization was a blessing you never truly appreciated until it threatened to collapse around you.”

This one weighs in at a mere 1100 pages: there is a second volume, equally long. Hamilton therefore has plenty of space for worldbuilding, characters and description. He makes the aliens suitably alien. I’m not going to detail the plot: that would take a while! Hamilton does play with some ideas about society, capitalism and socialism. As there are many different planets in the Commonwealth there is room for a variety of societies. Hamilton also plays with styles of governance and the cumbersomeness of bureaucracy. He also injects a certain cynical humour:

“Wherever you find human misery, you find lawyers, either causing it or making a profit from it.”

“That was the trouble with freethinkers, they had overactive imaginations that made them uncertain.”

I can anticipate some difficult moral questions coming up in the next one.

This is a proper space opera. If you like your sci-fi hefty and complex this may be for you!

9 out of 10

Starting Cage of Souls by Adrian Tchaikovsky