I00 books before the lights go out.

I have been away from Library Thing for a couple of years, and this seems a good way to return since I average 100+ books a year. Looking forward to meeting the rest of the group.

Book #1 The Hamlet by William Faulkner. Faulkner light, but still heavy. Plenty of humor but it's dark. The usual Faulkner style, plenty of obscure narrative that the reader has to piece together. The first volume in the Snopes Trilogy; I will continue. Strange to say but it was Faulkner who helped me to get into Oxford University - the English version - a very long time ago, so I have a soft spot for him.

Welcome to the 100 Books Challenge, Stephen.

Book #2 The House of Doors Tan Twan Eng. This book has an intriguing concept, about a visit to Penang by an impoverished Somerset Maugham in search of material for a collection of short stories. One of his sources, and the narrator of this book, is the wife of the old friend he, together with his gay "secretary", stays with. She tells him the story of a planter's wife who had shot her lover, and been tried for it. This leads to what is probably the most memorable story of his collection of Tales of the East.
Unfortunately this book is very unevenly written, combining a lot dull prose and clunky metaphors with the occasional flash of brilliance. It also does not give a powerful impression of place....the author should have taken lessons from Somerset Maugham himself.

Book #3 Dark Matter by Michelle Paver. A definitely creepy ghost story with a consistent build up of tension, mostly set in the endless dark of an Arctic Winter some time in the 1930's.
It is more than just a ghost story, it tells of class distinctions, the platonic love of one man for another, and his love for dogs.

Book #4 Dissolution by C J Sansom. An excellent historical 'death in the monastery.' In the reign of Henry VIII, Thomas Cromwell uses his powerful position to direct a hunchback lawyer, Mathew Shardlake, to explore the death of a Cromwell employee engaged in the dissolution of the monasteries.
In its own and very different way the book covers much the same ground as Hillary Mantel's Bring up the Bodies, involving the unprincipled scheming to convict and execute Anne Boleyn. Samson's Book predated Mantel's by roughly 10 years.

Tracks in the Snow by Lord Charnwood aka G.F.Benson. Well written in 1906, a fine example of the old fashioned country house murder. Appropriately for its period, it is gently paced which may annoy the impatient.
I found it recommended in The Story of Classic crime in 100 books by Martin Edwards

#6. Beware of Pity by Stefan Zweig. Published in 1935, this tells the story of a Cavalry officer in the last years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the unforeseen consequences of an unintended social gaffe he inadvertently makes. Zweig's works my seem a touch melodramatic but this is a consequence of his abilities to follow his characters into the depth of crises caused by loving too much. Zweig was a friend of Sigmund Freud, also a Viennese Jew.
After earning a worldwide reputation with his novellas such as Letter from an Unknown Woman,(ignore the movie) this is his only full length novel, and I really recommend it. If you are interested in cultural and social history I also recommend his autobiography The World of Yesterday.

#7. The Wager by David Gramm. Obama picked this as one of his 2023 choices, and so did The Economist (!) so how could I not read it. This book is not the usual wrecked on an arctic island and gnawing on crew member's bones sort of story. There were some really interesting twists among the real life events. It was fascinating to me that The Admiralty, usually ferocious in its punishments for mutiny, essentially swept the whole incident under the rug in order to avoid revealing weaknesses in the emergent Royal Navy.

#8. Pedro Palamo by Juan Rulfo. The New York Times book review recently ran a long essay about the relatively obscure Mexican author, who with this book is meant to have inspired Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude and encouraged the development of magical realism. By pure coincidence I was already half way through it.A man visits a remote Mexican village in search of his father. Nearly all the population is dead and soon he is too. But communication goes on in the haunted village, once dominated and abused by a local landowner.
Rulfo claimed that it would take three readings of this short book to understand it. Once is definitely not enough, so I will be doing some re-reading

>10 scunliffe: I also missed many layers of Pedro Paramo, some of them because I don't know enough about Mexico.

>7 scunliffe: Found the free ebook on ManyBooks.

After a re-read in a month or so, I will see if I can penetrate some of those layers and let you know.

#9. Dark Fire by C.J.Sansom. Second in the Shardlake series, not quite as good as the first but still an interesting mystery and very readable set in Tudor times. This has moved on to the period covered by Hilary Mantel in the third of her Wolf Hall series, the endless Mirror and the Light as Thomas Cromwell gets closer to losing his head. A new streetwise sidekick has joined Shardlake, and looks like he will still be with him in the next in the series. We shall see.

#10 Wrecker by Carl Hiassen. When I finished this very quick read I wondered what had happened to the usually gritty Hiassen.
Then I saw the book was for mid-graders and YA's, a target which I don't quite fit.
My mistake.

#11 The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte
I must confess to being a devotee of English Victorian literature, and particularly of the female authors. If you don't favor tomes of 600+ pages written in old fashioned eloquent prose, I can quite understand.
This book is not as good as Jane Eyre, it lacks the same depth of understanding of its characters, yet is more overtly feminist. It is definitely better than Wuthering Heights, which I just can't deal with.
It is a great romance story. A lovely young widow and her young son move into a semi-derelict country house, avoiding contact with the local gossipy community. But she does allow a local young gentleman to befriend her. He narrates about half of the book, the other part is her journal of about 7 years.
Will the course of true love run smooth? Most definitely not: there are some severe bumps in the road, threatening to wreck the happy ending that the reader hopes for.

#12, January's last book. The pace will slow down when the weather encourages me to get outside.
Another Girl by Peter Grainger, the most recent of his King's Lake Series which follows on from the D.C.Smith series.
Grainger is quite obscure over here in the States, but he is one of my most favorite mystery writers. He somehow deals with the solving of horrible crimes in a warm and sympathetic voice. I highly recommend the audio versions read by Gildart Jackson.

#13 Emperor of Rome by Mary Beard. A rare creature, a well respected academic who knows how to communicate, but this is not her best book of history. However by concentrating on two centuries of absolutist emperors beginning with Augustus, she does achieve her purpose of of describing what it was actually like to be to live and rule as the autocrat of an immense empire. Her final conclusion is that like with all autocrats, a lot of smoke and mirrors are needed to establish a semi-divine presence.

#14 Mr. Magic by Kiersten White. Last year I set up a zoom book group of 12 people, which has formed into a really interesting group where each person has their distinctively different reading preference, and where two generations are represented. There is no assigned reading, we talk much more broadly, we each talk about any book we have read in either the previous week or the previous decades.
Mr. Magic came from a youngish (30's) reader who likes weird stuff, so I thought I would give it a try. Glad that I did, it was at times quite ominous and the resolution is one you can take as either a happy or sad ending. I opted for both.

#15 Brief Encounters with Che Guavera by Ben Fountain. A great collection of short stories. The theme is mostly 'innocents abroad'. Set in what are politely but ridiculously called Developing Countries. Haiti, Sierra Leone are just two of them and are actually regressing rather than developing. Naive westerners come to face to face with the ugly realities of countries they would like to help, and react in different ways.
Definite shades of Graham Greene: The Quiet American and The Comedians.

#16 re-read of Light in August by William Faulkner. My second favorite Faulkner, just behind The Sound and the Fury.
As striking as it was the first time I read it maybe 20 years ago. The character who really stays with me is The Reverend Gail Hightower, long ago ejected by his congregation for preaching solely about his grandfather's death in the Civil War, on the confederate side of course, this being the Deep South, and for the flagrantly adulterous behavior and death of his wife.
In the long story of Joe Christmas, who has almost undetectable black blood we learn of another continuing legacy of the south, deep hatred of the population who had once been slaves.
Hardly a comforting read, but it puts you straight into Mississippi in the 20's. Besides a veneer of modernity, I wonder how much it has really changed since then?

>20 scunliffe: Light in August is my favourite Faulkner, must get to a reread someday.. keep up the great reading Stephen!

>21 bryanoz: Thank you for the comment and encouragement.....

#17 All the Sinners Bleed by S.A.Cosby. In an unintended juxtaposition with #16, Faulkner's Light in August, things in rural Virginia dont seem to have changed much from things in rural Mississipi a hundred years ago, whites can still hate blacks. Otherwise this is a 'routine' procedural involving a not so routine slasher and serial killer. There are a couple of well drawn characters.

#18 The Story of Russia by Orlando Figes. Figes has written some very good books on Russian history, and in some ways I think this is best. As a narrative of 'Russia' from 500 to 2023 it is brief, not a source of detailed information.
The value of this book is the way it follows the myths that have supported the self perception of Russians as a unique people, namely Holy Russia, the Holy Tsar, the Russian Soul and Moscow as the Third Rome. These myths, much modified, are still in force in the time of Putin.
This is what I like about studying history, in which I got a Master's Degree so long ago as to be an historical times. I call it 'connecting the dots.' To understand an historicall event you have to understand what preceded it, and what followed it, and so on.

>24 scunliffe: I don’t have a good reason, but I’ve been intimidated by Orlando Figes’ work and have been letting the couple of books I have languish on the shelves. The Story of Russia sounds like a good place to start 🙂

#19 What Maisie Knew by Henry James. When James wrote this he was well into his period of extreme verbosity.
F.R. Leavis thought this was the perfect novel, Nabokov thought it was rubbish. I am somewhere between the two, leaning towards ho-hum. I am glad that Maisie ended up well, with her head screwed on straight, in spite of the awful treatment she had from her divorced parents. She came to know a lot, but was not spoiled by it.

#20 The History of Mary Price. 17th Century first hand account of a female slave in the British West Indies. Very short but it makes its powerful point, describing separation of families and sadistic violence.
This might make good background reading for Beloved in spite of different time and place. The horrors of slavery are universal.

#21. Cheri by Colette. I very much liked this little book about the winding up of a seven year affair between an aging (49) but still lovely courtesan who has saved enough money to live a lavish life style and a young and very handsome dandy. She is a sympathetic character who although very much in love finds herself able to deal with the situation, whereas the dandy, who is an egotistical little twerp acts on whatever emotion he was feeling at the time.
Good psychological portraits, and equally good writing.

#22 White Teeth byZadie Smith, finally got round to reading this reputation making book, and it fell a bit short of my expectations. The first half takes a long time to establish the main character, therefore repetitive with a tendency to caricature. Given that the dominant character is a south Asian moslem living in London, I preferred Rushdie's Satanic Verses.
But then the second half took off, as characters developed and children grew up. It becomes an impressive kaleidoscope of the mixed populations of the inner London suburbs, well plotted and moving fast, so it does require some concentration.
Lovely British irony throughout
3+5 /2=4

#23 Warlight byMichael Ondaatje. The author is always a good storyteller, but I was not very impressed by the story itself. Also, all the loose ends were tied off in the last two chapters. Too neat and tidy for me, I prefer more enigma.

#24 The Trees by Percival Everett. Southern Gothic lives on in this unusual, mystical, ironic to the point of absurdist, novel about mass killings of white men by black 'ghosts,' starting with retribution for the lynching of Emmett Till and moving on to retribution for all lynchings.

#25 This is Happiness by Niall Williams. A magical novel, a treasure. A septuagenarian tells the story of growing up in a small rural community in County Clare. Full of lovely gentle Irish humor, warmth and gratitude. The fictional reminiscences are not full of nostalgia, mourning the change of times. They just tell stories that are free of of sadness or sentimentality, describing what seems to have been a much appreciated adolescence.

#26 Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome
Thanks to another reader in this group I was inspired to re-read this childhood favorite, which I quite recently listed as one of the 10 most influential books in my life.
It was published in 1930, and I first read it in the 50's, when it did not feel as dated as it does now. But dated or not it was still fun to go back to the idyllic setting of a lake in the English Lake District, where six children lead a dream life sailing and living almost independently of parental interference by establishing camp on a small island.
Solidly upper middle class, with references to nannies, Daddy commanding a naval vessel in the far east, and the prospect of going away to school when the vacation was over. Therefore aspirational for me, but not so much as to be remote. I just wished I was one of them.

#27 Death of an Expert Witness by P.D.James.
I have a read a few of the Dalgleish series, and have tended to find them over-written, perhaps due to literary pretensions. Thought I would give the author one last try, and rather wish I hadn't.

>11 pamelad: Right now I am reading On the Plain of Snakes, recently written by Paul Theroux about Mexico, and it gives a lot of background to the sort of poverty stricken and remote village described in Pedro Palamo, so I will soon be well equipped to start my second reading. Quite uintentionally I might add, just coincidence.

#28 on the Plain of Snakes by Paul Theroux.I really enjoyed several of Theroux's early travel books until in 1982 he wrote The Island by the Sea in which he described England with condescending, and supercilious, disparagement. Admittedly this was not one of England's finest hours, and in fact I had emigrated the previous year, but I was offended and stopped reading him.
To show that I only hold grudges for 40 years I read his latest, a very good account of Mexico. He sticks mainly to the economically most miserable places: the border, Oaxaca and Chiapas and largely avoids Mexico City, perhaps too cosmopolitan for someone searching for a more 'authentic' version of Mexico, and thereby dismissing the importance of more than 20 million people. His tendency to harsh criticism has not left him, as he disdains some of the best Mexican literature for indulging in fantasy. Maybe I haven't entirely given up my grudge.
But otherwise it is a very good book, and I feel I learned a lot from it

#29 The Aspern Papers by Henry James.
A relatively simple and early novella, before HJ was seduced by a dictaphone.
An unethical writer/publisher sets out to worm his way into the lives of an elderly woman and her middle aged spinster daughter, with the object of getting his hands on the love-letters of a deceased famous poet.
All he achieves is the destruction of the letters and the dashing of romantic feelings he had encouraged in the daughter.
I did not like it much at first, as the writer apparently had no conscience, but liked it better when he revealed apparently sincere sympathy and pity for the poor spinster.

#30 A re-read of Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo. I went back to this book, which the author claims takes three readings to understand, after reading Theroux's On the Plain of Snakes, which describes well the typical bleak setting of this book.
I certainly understood it better this time, partly because I read carefully and took notes. As a result was able to identify the relationships between characters, who appear in distinctly non chronological order, and in some sections are alive, and in others dead. And to grasp the key themes of poverty, oppression by ruthless landowners, and most of all, death.
This is a polarizing book. Should we really respect literature which is oblique and difficult to decipher? I believe we should. As in Faulkner's The Sound and there Fury the book does more than just tell a story, it paints a striking picture of the atmosphere of the place where it takes place.

#31 The Franchise Affair by Josphine Tey A pleasant little mystery, well written with plenty of humor, which does not take itself too seriously. A country solicitor uses his wits and large amounts of luck to save and old lady and her daughter from a very credible but wrongful accusation.

#32 Foster by Claire Keegan. A young girl from an Irish family of many children, with a mother hardly able to keep up and a father who would prefer to drink than help, is sent off to stay with her aunt and uncle for a few weeks.
There she is appreciated and loved in a way that does not happen at home. When she has to return to her own family we wish that something would happen to prevent her going.
But nothing happens, and we are left hoping that she will have more opportunity to visit her relatives and continue to grow in confidence there.
Not as well developed or as moving as Small Things Like These, but it is one of her earlier works.

#32 Party Going by Henry Green.
The construction and style of this book make it a bit difficult to get into until you realize this is a reflection of the subject. Namely a group of young and wealthy travelers on their way from London to the South of France in the late 1930’s.
Because their lives are vacuous and meaningless so does the book at first sight appear to be the same. Their sole object in life is self gratification and avoidance of boredom.
The novel is in fact a brilliant caricature of class. There is a fundamental metaphor: the group is stuck in a London station by fog, moves into suites in the station hotel, and gazes down detachment on the great masses below.
Even among this small number of the upper class there are gradations. Two individuals rise above the rest, one very rich and handsome man and one very rich and beautiful woman. Besides being looked up to and rather mistrusted by the rest, they try to outmaneuver each other in a courting game, but with no more obvious purpose than self amusement. Seriousness is close to a mortal sin.
People like this really did exist, I rubbed shoulders with their children years ago at University, and they were just as bad. We lesser mortals used to call them ‘chinless wonders.’

#33 Manon Lescaut by Abbe Prevost
I came across a beautiful 1935 Heritage Club edition in a used bookstore last week for less than $10, and having had it in mind to read for decades, I bought it and read it. (lovely thick paper with letterpress printing).
Written in France in the 1730’s it was something of a shocker because not only did it deal with undying love, but also a ‘kept’ woman.
The nub of the book is that the beautiful heroine believes that fidelity in love can co-exist with infidelity in sex. Naturally the infatuated hero sees things differently, and is condemned to heartbreak.
As you might expect, there is not a happy ending.

>41 scunliffe: I tried reading Living, Loving and Party Going when I was in my twenties and didn't get far, but a few years ago I read Blindness and was encouraged to try Henry Green again. Now that I'm ancient I have much more tolerance for ambiguity and have enjoyed all of his books. Party Going was a favourite. I've gone back through my old threads to find my review and posted it on the book page.

I will take a look

#34 Pym by Matt Johnson
I wanted to enjoy this black and white novel because of its clever premise that Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym was actually based on a true story that the very racist Poe learned from Pym himself.
The books starts well with some good academic satire but then comes up with characters based on a variety of stereotypes, and further loses any subtlety after a most unlikely all black expedition lands in Antarctica.
I skimmed the second half of the book and don't think I missed much.

#35 Victory by Joseph Conrad
I have long been an admirer of Conrad, and have many times defended Heart of Darkness to people who have mis-read it, or not read it all and just taken on board common prejudice.
One of his strengths is the great variety - maritime stories excepted - of subjects he writes about. In this case most of the action takes place in a tropical archipelago, on an almost deserted island. Here an aristocratic and reclusive Swede has taken an English young woman who he has rescued from the clutches of a Dutch hotel keeper. They live together with the support of a Chinese servant. Then three undesirables arrive, with the encouragement of the vengeful hotel keeper. They are an amoral English former gentleman fallen from grace because he is a card sharp, a psychopathically murderous henchman, and a hairy simian servant of great strength.
They find themselves in a stand-off of mutual decision, and I wont reveal the ending which has a touch of Grand Guignol about it.
Does this sound like the makings of a very good novel, or a piece of pulp fiction? As I have presented it, the answer is pulp fiction. But in fact it is a fine novel, largely due to the way Conrad takes us into the minds of these six characters, who become real if somewhat grotesque individuals, rather than simple caricatures. And as ever, his writing is excellent.

#36 A Dark-Adapted Eye by Barbara Vine aka Ruth Rendel
This book seemed to be a hybrid between a regular novel and a mystery, and did not do particularly well at being either. It particularly fails any being a mystery, not least because we are told right at the beginning that there has been a murder, and who committed it. There are some mysterious elements, which are mostly revealed at the end, but you have to be pretty dumb not to have figured it out long before that. The psychological novel aspect became after a while, simply repetitive and dull.

#37 Twenty Four Hours in the Life of a Woman by Stefan Zweig
Typically for Zweig, a tale of obsession, which I for one rather enjoy in all its melodramatic splendor. In this case obsession with gambling is pitted against obsession with love, which turns out to be the shorter lasting of the two.

#38. What you are looking for is in the Library byMichiko Toyama
I know that for many readers this is a charming feel-good book, but for me it was a feel-bored book. Trite little stories of individuals who are dissatisfied with their lives, but find salvation in the obscure advice of a an eccentric librarian. Definitely not for me. Fortunately right now I am working on two excellent books so I wont have to sound so grumpy.

#39. North Woods by Daniel Mason
I do like good story telling, and this book makes me like it even more. Characters spanning three centuries are connected by the place they live, a house in remote Western Massachusetts, at first in an apple orchard, and then in an ever-changing environment of different trees.
There is an important smattering of the supernatural to make sure that all the characters are connected by the location. In fact they never die, so essentially the book has no ending.
Aspects of the book, particularly the connections through time, remind me of Cloud Atlas, one of my all time favorites.

#40 A Heart full of Headstones by Ian Rankin
Over the years, Rankin's Rebus series has been the mystery/whodunnit series that I have enjoyed most.
This one could be the last, ending with Rebus on trial for the murder of his long time criminal adversary. Or it could not, given Rankin's ability to spin a story.

#41 Living by Henry Green.
The first in Green's Living, Loving and Party Going series, although the last one that I read. Not that it matters, the books are entirely separate in plot and characters, and only connected by the theme of class distinction in 1930's England.
Upper class are represented by the owner of a foundry in Birmingham, and the lower class by the men who work there. It is the workers who dominate the story, an inverse of the almost complete dominance of the upper classes in Party Going. It tells of the workers rivalries, suspicions of each other and the owners, and tension between younger and older workers. There is a claustrophobic feeling to the boarding house where some of the key characters live. This includes the factory manager and his daughter, who escapes in a love affair with a rather irresolute worker. The affair goes nowhere, and nor do most of the characters in the book.

>52 scunliffe: The first time I tried Living I gave up after a few pages because I assumed Green was writing in a patronising worker dialect, but later I persevered and realised that it was the lack of articles that had given me that impression, and that he had great sympathy for the factory workers. I'm glad I tried again.

#42 Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
I strongly disliked this book when I read it maybe 50 years ago, but since I like the work of the other two sisters I thought I should try it again. And I disliked it just as much again.
Of the three sisters Emily was the most reclusive and least exposed to the outside world, and it shows; there are no constraints to her morbid imagination.
This novel has been retrofitted as an example of deep psychological insight, but to me it is a twisted love story buried deep within a dark horror story. Although Heathcliffe is capable of obsessive love, he remains an unredeemably evil character.

#43 Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee
I had only read on other work by Coetzee, Disgrace and found it unpleasantly
bleak. Barbarians was also bleak, but with a warm heart, belonging to the narrator, a long time magistrate in a distant outpost of an unnamed Empire in Southern Africa. My guess is that some of the inspiration for this Empire is drawn from the genocidal regime in German South West Africa, which expired in 1913. But it could also be an amalgam of German, British, French, Italian and Belgian.
The magistrate is an old fashioned liberal with a strong sense of history. He is deeply shocked by the cruelty of the Empire which has decided to eliminate the threat of the 'Barbarians' beyond its frontiers, using torture and savage execution. His attitude leads him to an accusation of fraternizing with the enemy. He himself is tortured physically, with long periods of solitary confinement, and near execution.
When the Empire loses too many troops in pursuit of the Barbarians it decides to abandon the once idyllic outpost. The magistrate decides to stay with the indigenous population that remains, 'waiting for the barbarians' who might well never arrive.

>54 scunliffe: I also disliked this book. Glad to see someone else say so. Frequently one is put down if they say they don't like a classic.

#44 Testament of Youth by Vera Britain
The period before and during the First World War has always fascinated me, and it is a surprise that I have not read this important book before, even though I have long been aware of it.
The book basically covers three sections of the author's life. The first tells of her growing up in a smotheringly conservative middle class household from which she finally escapes to make the rare move to become an undergraduate at Oxford. No sooner has she realized this ambition than the First World War begins. During the second section she suffers though the death of her fiancee, two of her best male friends, and her brother, while she is working as a volunteer nurse seeing first hand the damage done to men in trench warfare. Finally she returns from France to resume her academic career, and becomes a force in feminism and pacifism.
The second section is the tragic core of the book. Sometimes she has been thought of as a unintentional perpetrator of the myth of a 'lost generation' whereas in reality the high rate of loss among the junior officers who were her contemporaries was 'limited' to 20%. But for her it was 100%.

# 45 Heartburn by Nora Ephron
I needed a break after so much heavy reading and this provided it. Loved the New York Jewish humor, it comes as no surprise that the author was a friend of Woody Allen, presumably before he fell from grace.

#46 Erasure by Percival Everett
The book on which the movie American Fiction was based, and which I quite enjoyed. If I had read the book first I probably would not have watched the movie; the book is much more grim and dark and has none of the humor of its film adaptation.

#47. The first three parts of The Chronicles of Carlingford by Margaret Oliphant, namely The Executor, The Rector, and the The Doctor's Family.
The first two are longish short stories, and the third a short novella, so I shall count them together as one book. The series is unabashedly cast in the same mold as Trollope's Chronicles of Barsetshire series, which happen to be my favorite of his many works, with its warm and light hearted touch. Mrs. O needed the money to support her family, and adapted her undoubted writing skills accordingly.
I liked the first two well, but found the third a bit overstuffed with repeated identical description of the leading lady, small, dark, with a great head of hair and a strong will. The doctor falls in love with her but is infuriated with the way she puts her pathetic sister and family above all other considerations. It is a love affair between two imperfect characters, she is stubborn while he is impatient, both to excess. I does however end well.
I think I will read more of this undemanding entertainment.

#48 The Bartender's Tale by Ivan Doig
Ivan Doig is very popular here in the Pacific Northwest, but up to now I have steered clear of his novels because I was afraid they would be manly, muscular stories of Montana.
But a member of a different book group recommended this book, and much to my surprise I lapped it up. It is the story of a saloon owner/bartender set in rural Montana, told by his son. The story is very warmly told, and reveals some intriguing characters as the son persuades his father to slowly reveal his long and very checkered career in the hospitality business. Think of thousands of depression era workers building an enormous earth dam, in only masculine company, spending their weekly pay checks on a Saturday night at the local saloon where there just happen to be some opportunistic 'ladies'.
There are many other elements to the tale too; really excellent and inventive story telling. I will read more of Mr.Doig.

# 49. Book III of Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
I am very slowly working my way through this huge opus, mostly by listening to 30 minutes late some evenings, and then often rewinding 20 minutes the next day. I am now half way, with about 1200 pages left to go.
The Western Roman Empire has now officially fallen, although in fact in did not so much fall as fade away. For a couple of centuries the Barbarians, from East of the Rhine and North of the Danube; Goths, Visigoths, Allemani, Huns etc etc, created a slow attrition as they took over France, Spain and North Africa and ultimately Italy, becoming involved in the ruling of the Empire and hiring themselves as mercenaries to one side or another of the endless civil wars caused by conflicting claims to the Imperial crown. Now comes a thousand more years of the Eastern Empire, which lasted until Constantinople fell to the Turks in the 15th Century.
I have read other accounts of this period, but Gibbon is the most engrossing. Audible have an excellent reading by John Timson, who also read Johnson's Life and Times by Boswell, which was my previous bedtime reading.

#50 So You Want to Talk about Race by Ijeoma Oluo
I asked a black colleague what I should read next on the subject of race, after first rattling off the books I had already read. She suggested this particular book, and having read it I realize her recommendation was also a warning telling me of the many pitfalls of talking about race to African Americans.
The title itself describes the book exactly, it tells of many, often hidden minefields when whites try to talk about race, and I realize in retrospect I have stepped on many mines in the past without knowing about it, because their explosion is usually silent.
Good intentions are not enough, be prepared for your questions to provoke a negative and angry reaction. Your interlocutor may well be thinking "why do I have to teach another white person something they should be able to appreciate for themselves," and wondering "so what are you going to do about it?"
I am already 78 and like many only began to grapple with the notion of structural racism when George Floyd was murdered by the police. So I had better get a move on doing something about it.

#51 Waking up White by Debby Irving
This book tells the story of the author slowly waking up to the usually unrecognized extent of white privilege. I have often reflected on my life thinking of the many privileges I have enjoyed, but had never until recently thought of simply being white as one of them. I suppose being born in England makes it a bit less obvious than here in the U.S. The book is a long series of short episodes in which she begins to understand her privileges, especially coming from an upper middle class Massachusetts family. Then the series continues with multiple mistakes trying to communicate with the black population, and to provide counterproductive 'help.' She absorbs the hard way many of the lessons in book #50.
As a piece of writing it is clumsily naive and repetitious, but what it has to say is very valuable.

#51 Grant by Ron Chernow
This a monumental book, and not just because of its 1000 pages. In this biography Chernow has created a literary monument to Grant every bit as impressive as his tomb in New York. What little I knew of his career, confined to an executive summary of the later stages of the Civil War was a minimalist joke compared with what I know now. Chernow is an excellent biographer who greatly admires his subject, but is not shy in listing his faults. ( Unlike David McCullough who treats his subjects with such reverence that I think he must be kneeling when he writes).

#52 The Daughter of Time by Josephine They
An interesting approach to a mystery. Tey's regular detective by name of Grant is laid up in hospital with a broken leg and getting very bored. One of his friends suggests he does a bit of digging around in history, and supplies him with an enthusiastic would-be scholar who likes to spend lots of time in the British Library.
Using standard police methods, dates and times, who is where when, they focus on Richard III, the last Plantagenet famously turned into a villain by Shakespeare about a century after his death. But in truth the real character assassination was put together by the first Tudor, Henry VII, together with some real assassinations.....The Princes in the Tower which he attributed to Richard, who by then could not defend himself having been killed by the Tudor army at Bosworth.
It turns out that some other earlier and more prominent historians had come to the same conclusions, but that does not take away the fun that Grant has figuring it out for himself in his own way.

And here is a free piece of trivia that I learned as a schoolboy. Why was the family of late medieval royalty called Plantagenet?
Because their symbol was the flower of the gorse bush, for which the latin name is "planta genistes." Some trivia really sticks.

#53 The Golden Child by Penelope Fitzgerald
The usual take on this book "is it's her first and it shows", a fair comment if you have read her other works.
But also unfair. If you approach this book on its own merits it is not so bad at all.
A bizarre mystery set in what is in all but name the British Museum. Murder! Counterfeit exhibits! A Russian plot!
Plenty of humor, sometimes quite absurd with echoes of Waugh's early works, as it pokes fun at the lives of the pompous and effete who run such institutions, while standing firmly on the side of the staff who work for them.

#54 Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin
A lurid title for a lurid book, setting 12th Century Cambridge. The reader needs a strong system of ropes and pullies to suspend their disbelief
Here are just some of of the elements: ghastly sadistic murders of young children, persecuted Jews, a female doctor from Sicily who specializes in forensic pathology, the knightly murderer with a mad nun as an assistant, who (the knight) is eventually torn to pieces by dogs while the nun is walled into her cell alive (but not alive for long), a romance, occasional bodice-ripping, and lets not forget the active participation of Henry II. See what I mean by a heavy load to suspend?
I felt a bit like a voyeur reading the book, but I did read it all.

>68 scunliffe: The title puts me off and I incorrectly assumed there would be supernatural forces, and now you've provided even more reasons to avoid this book, not least being ghastly sadistic murders of young children.

#55 The Adversary by Michael Crummy
A well plotted, well written and very grim work of historical fiction. Set probably in the late 18th century colony of Newfoundland, where life depended on cod fishing, curing and shipping. It starts as a story of sibling rivalry, becomes a story of sibling hatred, and ends in sibling destruction. It feels as though the story starts in daylight and then plunges through twilight into darkness. Evil and good are equally punished.
Highly recommended for those who enjoy a good depressing read.

#56 The Man Who Died Twice by Richard Osman
This is the second in the Thursday Murder Club series, which must have been responsible for a huge upswing in enquiries about senior living communities.
The same unlikely quartet continues to investigate crimes: A retired senior MI6 operative who lives with her husband who is sadly slipping into a decline, a former nurse with surprisingly perceptive observations, a pugnacious former labor leader and West Ham supporter, and a retired Egyptian born psychiatrist. They co-operate, when it suits them with two friendly members of the local police.
In this case they are investigating the disappearance of £20 million’s worth of diamonds, property of the Mafia. After either discovering or causing 5 lethal shootings, they somehow end up with up with the diamonds themselves and devote the proceeds to a non-profit engaged in supporting those effected by senior mental health problems.

#57 Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Pierre de Laclos
I was going to write that this is the first epistolary (consisting entirely of letters) novel I have read, but then I remembered 84 Charing Cross Road written two hundred years later and in much simpler language.
A pair of upper class degenerate friends and former lovers plot a game of vengeance by means of seduction (sometimes more like rape) of innocent women and men. Ruining the lives of others has no consequences for them.
It is a book about seduction and manipulation, in which the woman of the couple is actually manipulating her partner, an undisguised and boastful rake. The woman by contrast must keep her conquests secret since exposure means social death.
I probably read this book too quickly, impatient with the ornate prose, not reading slowly enough to see some of the subtly precise points it contains.

>72 scunliffe: I was surprised by how much I enjoyed Dangerous Liaisons. Might the translation be a factor? I read Helen Considine translation which flowed well, but I have no idea how accurate it was.

#58 Solito by Javier Zamora
This is one of the most absorbing and moving books I have read in a long time.
A nine year old boy living in El Salvador with his grandparents is sent for by his parents who have already 'emigrated' to California. They send the money necessary for his trip, along with many others, under the guidance of a coyote. The resulting seven week journey, ultimately successful, is so traumatic the the author, under the advice of his psychiatrist, wrote about it some 20 years later as a sort of catharsis.
His account is riveting, told only from the point of view of a timid nine year old surrounded by strangers. Exclusive use of the present tense brings immediacy and creates tension. After traveling through Guatemala and Mexico, including a terrifying night time shake down by Mexican police and soldiers, the first attempt ends in arrest by US Immigration, 'La Migra', just after they have crossed the border at night.
The second attempt involves days of dehydration, walking in the Sonoran Desert. For more on just how deadly this experience can be read The Devil's Highway by Luis
Alberto Urrea. The party has been broken up into groups walking at different speeds, the boy and three others have effectively been abandoned by the others. They are spotted in the US by a rural householder who holds them at gunpoint and hands them over to 'La Migra.' They are arrested by a single officer who turns out to be sympathetic. He gives them plenty of food and drink and drops them off unofficially, without being processed like the first time, near a Mexican community where coyotes abound.
They are lucky in the one they choose who gets them across the border in a matter of hours, from where they are taken to Tucson. His parents come to pick him up in return for a payment to the coyote. The boy has spent the last few weeks of his trip as part of a 'family' that has coalesced around two adults. The 'wife/mother' and her 12 year old real daughter. A younger man who becomes the rock that keeps them all going. And the boy himself. He feels real grief at their final separation in Tucson.
Which is not surprising given the experience he has had of his own family. A father he had never known, and a mother who he loves but has always been strict and intolerant. His real family, after the first evening when they have picked him up, never talk about his experience. He only hints in the book about his feelings about his family, but enough to reveal his true feelings. Little wonder he grew up to need psychiatric help.
Very highly recommended.

#59. The Town by William Faulkner
The second volume of the Snopes Trilogy, although the first volume was originally conceived as stand alone this one followed about 15 years later. Not as much outright comedy in this volume, apart from one with wild horses running round and round a cottage, scattering chickens on each lap, and eventually causing a fire that burned the place down
The action moves from Frenchmen's Bend - the Hamlet, to Jefferson the Town. Flem Snopes had imported most of his extended family into Frenchmen's Bend, and starts in Jefferson in much the same conniving petty thievery as before. But by the end of the Town he's has come to seek respectability, first as the vice president of a bank, and then, having moved all the pieces and players around to his advantage, as president. He starts to convert the previous president's home into a southern mansion, which is no doubt the reason for the naming of volume three.
The likable and loquacious county Attorney Gavin Stevens plays a major role, especially with his concern to save Flem's daughter (who is not really his daughter because Flem is impotent) from the narrow minded confines of Jefferson. He is in fact emotionally inclined first towards her mother, the beautiful Eula, and then with the daughter, but takes no action to follow his inclinations.
For readers tempted to explore Faulkner, this trilogy is a good place to start.

#60 Eiger Dreams by John Krakauer
A collection of personal experience stories by the author best known for Into Thin Air. Written for vicarious climbers and adventurers by a man who is himself an experienced climber. The stories are as much about sensible decisions not to push on to the top as they are about the success of actually getting there. A quick and entertaining read, for me anyway.

#61 A Spy Among Friends by Ben Macintyre
Macintyre has written several very good books mostly about espionage during the Cold War, and this is my favorite. A re-read for me because I recommended it as a piece of light refreshment to a rather erudite book group I belong to. I
thought they would also enjoy the opportunity for a legitimate bit of Brit-bashing.
Philby's principled but amoral betrayal of participants in British and American espionage to the KGB is astoundingly successful due to his ability to engage and deceive members of his 'profession' at all levels.
Equally astounding is the stupidity of his upper class cohort in MI6 (overseas intelligence) who refused to believe the Philby was a traitor because he was 'a fine chap just like us.' MI6 literally circled the wagons to protect and exonerate him from investigation by the more middle class MI5 (domestic intelligence) who had very good reasons to suspect him.
When the evidence against Philby became undeniable MI6 swept him under the rug by making it possible his escape to Russia.

The pace is slowing down, blame the European football championship.
#62 Look at Me by Anita Brookner
I read the Hotel du Lac years ago, set in the same part of the north shore of Lake Geneva as I used once to live. It was very good, regardless of location. But I could not remember why I liked it, until I read Look at Me. Tightly written and able to convey in understated terms the pain of emotional crisis.
A lady librarian at what is probably the British Museum leads a dull life, until she is adopted by a 'perfect couple' who lead busy social lives that she is delighted to share. We feel this is not going to go well and it does not. The couple introduce her to a man with whom she falls in love, but only admitting it to herself when it is too late. The manipulative couple have introduced the man to someone else they find to be more suitable, more open and lively. The librarian is abandoned by all threeI shall re-read the Hotel du Lac.

#63 Camera Man by Peter Granger.
My favorite detective series, very English but still contemporary. Perfectly narrated 0n Audible.

#64 The Book of Imaginary Beings by Jorge Luis Borges
Not a book to be read straight through. In fact I spent probably two years occasionally picking it up and reading a few of the alphabetically organized items about mostly obscure mythical animals, which is probably th best way to enjoy the book. Given Borges' reputation for erudition, I could not help wondering how much of the contents he already knew before writing, and how much he had to research to confirm his existing knowledge.

#65 Hotel du Lac b6 Anita Brookner
A much richer plot than Look at Me. A writer of romantic novels is sent off by friends to stay at a Swiss Hotel on Lake Geneva, to sort herself out after standing up her fiancé at the altar. She had realized at the last moment that he was too much of 'a mousy man'. While at the hotel she accepts the proposal of a worldly and self centered man, only to see him one morning sneaking out of another woman's bedroom.
She is too much of a romantic herself to accept compromise, even if it does mean a lonely life ahead.
Several quite interesting and well drawn characters also populate the novel

#66 The Mansion by William Faulkner. Last volume of the Snopes Trilogy.
Jefferson Mississippi continues to be the setting. We see the further evolution of the relationship between Linda Snopes and the lawyer Gavin Stevens, who refuses to do as she asks and marry her, still insisting that the age gap is too great.
This time Mink Snopes is the central character. He has served 20 years for the murder of a man who humiliated him, and most of another 20 years due to a unsuccessful escape set up to fail by Flem Snopes, the head of the whole Snopes clan, and who over the course of the trilogy has manipulated and extorted his way from being a store clerk to become president of the local bank. Flem has also humiliated Mink, and is trying to keep him in jail as long as possible, out of fear that Mink will kill him too.
Mink's release at 38 years served is engineered by Linda and Gavin, both of whom have their reasons for detesting Flem. Once released the very small and very mean Mink cannot be stopped, he turns up at Flem's house (The Mansion) with a rusty pistol and one bullet and kills him. Linda and Kevin help Mink escape, and its all over.
As usual Faulkner's portrayal of the rural south superb.

#67 The Night of the Hunter by Davis Grubb
In complete contrast to the previous book this portrayal of the rural south is quite ineffective, largely because each of the characters is a one-dimensional caricature.
I also hate books in which small children are hunted as victims. Overall, I feel this book should have a large yellow sticker saying 'DO NOT READ'

>83 scunliffe: Charles Laughton took this bad book and made a memorable film. It's arty, artificial and so over the top that you can't take it seriously. The one-dimensional characters are a large part of the film's appeal and Robert Mitchum seems to be having a wonderful time as the villain. It also stars Shelly Shelley Winters and Lillian Gish.

#68 The Peacock and the Sparrow by I.S. Berry
A quite good spy story set in Bahrain during the Arab Spring. A jaded US spy, close to retirement, develops sympathy for the insurrectionists who oppose the oppressive monarchy who the CIA are there to support. He is influenced both by a beautiful woman, who becomes a suicide bomber, and by the integrity of the individual who is the main source of his intelligence.
Spying is far from glamorous in this book, which in some ways reminds me of the grittiness of early Le Carre novels.

#69 Come to the Window by Howard Norman
I have enjoyed every Howard Norman normal I have read, with its wistful wit, surreal plots, strong-willed and eccentric women, and compliant men. In this case the woman on the night of her marriage (although she is already pregnant from an earlier and still extant marriage) shoots her new husband because he will not get out of bed to look at a dead whale stranded on a Nova Scotia beach.
While on trial she escapes with the court reporter. This is 1918 and the Spanish flu pandemic is rampant. She dies of it but her baby is saved. This is all seen through the eyes of a newspaper reporter, who with his wife (strong willed woman #2) had decided not to have children. But on her initiative they adopt the baby.

#70 One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez Re-read
Enjoyable to read and difficult to write about. The story of a family that we learn at the end has been predicted by a mystical cabalistic gypsy, written in a combination of Sanskrit and a Spartan military code. The final painstaking decryption of these documents marks the end of the family and the town it founded in the remote swamps of the Amazon basin one hundred years before.
Solitude does not protect the town from the same outside influences that shaped Colombia, notably civil war and then exploitation by American agri-business, encouraged by a corrupt government. Perhaps it is a metaphor for the rise and decline of the Colombian state; I dont know. The remarkable creativity that goes in the description of dozens of family members, some of them true archetypes, combining evolution and repetition of family themes is what is probably what is best appreciated about this book. Again, I dont know.
Th magical realism for which it is so well known does not distort the book, it just amplifies it.

#71 The Ipcress Files by Len Deighton
I thought it would be fun to return to the 60's, the bright times in which the English of my generation grew up. And so
it was, but the plot was more complex and much more implausible than I remembered. Perhaps Michael Caine was a major reason for its success.
I will read some later Deighton, which I have not before, to see how he evolves.

#72. Berlin Game by Len Deighton
Written 20 years later, this book showed that the more mature Deighton had he had evolved very well. A tight and intriguing plot about the world of spying in Berlin. Apparently the first in a series, which I will definitely follow.

#73 The Member the Wedding by Carson McCullers
On a smaller scale, this book deals with the same sense of isolation within a community as does The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.. Frankie, a 12 year old girl, with only a father to bring her up, finds herself stuck in the limbo between childhood and adolescence. Her circle of friends is very small, only an insightful maid and a six year old cousin. The three of them spend many hours sitting around the kitchen table and talking on topics ranging from the everyday to the metaphysical, this is all the 'social' life Frankie has, and she gets little from her rather distant father.
When she learns her brother is about to get married, she instantly falls in love with the couple, and plans to escape her small town by having the couple take her away to live with them immediately following the wedding ceremony.
She tells the maid, who cautions her against such hopes, but does not tell the couple and is left wailing as they drive off on their honeymoon. At the very end her life comes together again as she finds a like-minded friend. But not all is happy, the maid leaves the household and the six year old boy dies in the agony of diphtheria.

#74 To the River by Olivia Laing
An engaging and thoughtful account, written by an English writer and critic who, after the break-up of a long term relationship, decides to walk the length of the river Ouse. There are several rivers Ouse in England, and this one is the Sussex Ouse, only about fifty miles long, and she allows her self an easy week for the trip. She reflects on nature and the countryside (the river starts in farmland, then flows though the pastures of the South Downs to the marshy estuarine area leading to he sea. She also tells of events and personalities connected with the river, ranging from the early medieval Battle of Lewes to the suicide of Virginia Woolf.
Critics liken her to the Anglo/German writer W.G. Sebald. I have read all his works and dont really agree. Only one of them The Rings of Saturn, has similar subject matter, the account of a walk along the East Anglian Coast, reflecting on local history and personalities. Nor is To the River saturated with the same sense of unwavering and almost hypnotic gloom that prevails in all of Sebald's works.
But both do contain passages of deep reflection. There are two in Ms. Laing's book which really made me, as an amateur historian, think hard.
One is 'The past is not behind but beneath us.' The other is 'Woolf noticed that process by which events are converted into history is inevitably distorting, for the past acquires in the telling a shape and coherence that is absent from the present.'
I love books that make me think.

#75 By Night in Chile by Robert Bolano
A 98 page novella in the form of a single paragraph, considered by such a lofty critic as James Wood as Bolano's best work.
A dying Chilean priest makes a stream of consciousness recap of his life, very much in the form of a justification until on the last page he realizes that it is more like a confession.
It serves as a critique of the church, this priest tells nothing of the religious duties which he seemed to ignore, preferring instead to shelter in the world of literature as both writer and critic. He also serves the fascist government of Pinochet by teaching the dictator and his junta about the communism they fear, so representing the established phenomenon of the Catholic hierarchy's complicity with authoritarian governments.
There is one striking lengthy metaphor: the priest is sent on a long visit to Europe to see how the structure of old churches and cathedrals is preserved, for which read the non-physical structure of the old church. He learns that the damage is done by immense amount of bird droppings, for which read the communist threat of the common people. The church employs falcons which in one single dive leave hundreds of birds dead, (whereas in reality falcons only kill one bird at a time, if they are lucky)
I found this to be a quite fascinating, carefully crafted work, which reveals its meaning after a little reflection by the reader, a solvable puzzle.

#76 The Bullet that Missed byRichard Osman.
Number three in The Thursday Murder Club series. The usual far fetched plot and strange characters, which somehow comes together with the charmingly developed elderly characters of the club.

#77 The Country of the Blind by Andrew Leland
I read this interesting book about vision loss, recommended to me by fully sighted friends, because I am legally blind myself. Although the author's vision has deteriorated further than mine he has the same problem, absence of all peripheral vision and relying on a very small central section of one eye to actually do the seeing.
So his journey was familiar, written about not to seek sympathy as a 'victim' but to use his personal experience as a way to delve into the history of how blindness/low vision has been both misunderstood and supported by society in the past, and still is in the present.
He writes well about the conflicting need for independence while still depending on others (particularly spouses) for help. For me that internal conflict is almost more difficult to deal with than the vision loss itself.
For me at least a good read.

#78 Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
A very popular book which confirmed my often unjustified opinion that 'if it's that popular it can't really be good.' Yes there are very interesting elements, the history of downtrodden Koreans in Japan after no longer being downtrodden in Korea by the Japanese. The theme of women's lives being so much harder than the lives of men. The theme of the grief that can be caused to their mothers by errant sons.
But it is far too long as the themes are demonstrated by repetition. Reading the last 100 pages was only motivated by the need not to blow off the several hundred of pages I had read up to then.

#79 Everyone who is Gone is Here by Jonathan Blitzer
Informative and rather depressing, this details the cynically amoral political treatment of those in desperate need of humanitarian help.
Starting with the 20th century US support of autocratic, cruel and corrupt regimes by the US, creating the first waves of displacement in Central America. Ending with Trump and Steven Miller's evil policies of separation of families and children at the border. Although the policies of Biden and hopefully Harris are somewhat kinder, there is no clear path to a coherent immigration in sight. This topic, appealing to the lowest common denominator of society in the worst way, will always be used by right wing politicians in the US and Europe.
The author uses detailed stories of individuals to illustrate the bigger picture and it can sometimes be difficult to follow these individual threads, but the book is well worth the effort.

#80 Old God's Time by Sebastian Barry
An Irish novel about a man, Tom, who has lost the meaning of life and shut himself away on the east coast of Ireland after retiring from a career in the Dublin police.
He had some pride in his career, but that was overwhelmed by grief for his family who each suffered in their own way from the awful sexual abuse suffered by the mother at the hands of a predatory priest, raped repeatedly from the age of 6 onwards. The priest was protected by the church and the secular establishment it supported.
Tom's wife, in his surprised presence eventually murders the offending priest. They go on to have two children, who are grown by the time their mother deliberately commits suicide by setting herself on fire. The daughter, on her way to becoming a barrister, takes to drink and drugs and dies of an overdose. The son is shot in the Arizonan pueblo where he has gone to work as a doctor.
The book moves in and out of reality, in and out of the supernatural, and possibly in and out of dementia.
Tom's life is redeemed when he rescues a young boy from his abusive father by shooting the father using his old army skills as a sniper. Immediately after he swims out to sea, drowns himself, and wakes to find his wife by his bedside.
The novel is deeply gloomy, and densely written by a former poet who reveals the back story with obscure Faulkneresque glimpses....the only relief is the supernatural ending.

#81 Mexico Set by Len Deighton
Number two in the Berlin series, which I really like. More spy stuff with the same nonconforming first person narrator Bernie Samson. He plays out the game of M.I.6 vs KGB, set in Germany and Mexico.
In the first book Bernies' wife, also an M.I.6 operative, defected to the Russians, and now Bernie is fighting against suspicion at home as well as the Russians.

#82 Swann's Way by Marcel Proust
Several years ago I bought myself a lovely old edition of this work as an incentive to read it, and now I finally have and am glad I did.
The first section, "Combray" is told by the first person narrator, composing his memories as a young and highly sensitive boy at his grandparents country home outside Paris. It is written in high flown, ultra sensitive, and long sentences in which the adult thoughts of the narrator are mixed with the observations of himself as a young boy, making him seem unreasonably precocious. The 200 pages of this section are a bit of a slog, and must have prevented many readers from going further (much like the third or is it the fourth chapter of Ulysses, a hurdle at which I have fallen three times, and never cleared).
The next section, of equal length contains much more narrative. M.Swann is the owner of a nearby estate in Combray. He is shunned by the boy's family even though he is far more wealthy and better placed in society than they are, because of his reputation for association with 'loose' women. This section, taking place before the narrator is born, tells the story of Swann falling utterly in love with Odette, a beautiful woman well known for her previous affairs and status as a kept woman.
At first she is apparently equally in love with him, a period of bliss for Swann. But as time goes on it becomes clear that she is determined to have a parallel life of her own not to be revealed to Swann who is trapped in a downward spiral of jealousy and obsessive mistrust which also prevents him finding joy whenever he is in her company. This section makes excellent if not exactly simple reading, in which the reader can easily identify himself.
The final and short section tells years later of the narrator, aged perhaps ten, himself falling in love with Swann's young daughter and going through a junior version of the agonies once suffered by Swann. At the very end we learn that Swann's wife is Odette herself, leaving us with a sophisticated cliff-hanger. There is much to be learned I hope in the following volumes.

#82 James by Percival Everett
This book has been tremendously popular over here in the US, which tends to make one a bit suspicious but in this case it is a book which is both popular and well worth reading. Although I have lived here for many years I did not grow up here, so unlike most Americans I do not have a Huckleberry Finn strand in my DNA. At least I was able to approach this retelling of Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the story of a young boy and the runaway slave Jim, with no preconceptions.
I checked after I had read it and the actuall plot stays close to the original. But there is a great difference in the narrator's point of view. This version is told from the point of view of the slave Jim (James). He is self taught and highly literate, with a preference for philosophy. This skill of course he has had to hide from his owners, any sign of education in slaves was seen as dangerous and intolerable. In the same way James speaks two languages, one is simple and stupid sounding and used for all communication with whites, whereas slaves talk among themselves in much more sophisticated English. As you can tell, the book is loaded with irony.The main themes are the same as in The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates: the forced separations of families as they are sold off separately, the awful brutality of whites to blacks, and the dreadful fear felt by runaways.
I prefer this more recent and simpler book.

#83 If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino
More an intellectual game than a novel. The 'plot' follows two readers through a succession of books which consist of an interesting beginning but no end, which somehow lead on to another book of the same kind and so on. There are distinct and somewhat ominous shadows of Eastern European Literature.
There is much abstract discussion of reading and writing, which would make for great fodder for a lit. crit. class, but not for me who generally thinks of academic literary criticism as the most effective way of removing all pleasure from the act of reading.

#84 Dom Casmurro by Marchado de Assis.
I enjoyed The Alienist and Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cambras but could not get much pleasure out of the apparently naive simplicity of this book. I have a feeling that the problem was more mine than that of this nineteenth century Brazilian author. I probably was just not in the right mood to tune in.

#85 Queen Lucia by E.F. Benson
A mildly entertaining and humorous portrayal of a phantom village inhabited only by the upper classes, in the 'golden age' before World War I, among whom Lucia reigns as the arbiter of all taste.
A succession of events shakes her reputation and dominance, but in the end she is kindly allowed to resume her throne. Thus there will be more books in the series, but I will not be reading them.

>99 scunliffe: Many years ago I started Scott Moncrieff's translation of Remembrance of Things Past and read Swann's Way, Within a Budding Grove and The Guermantes Way. In 2017, being retired, I had another try and read the lot, this time in the new edition edited by Christopher Prendergast. Each volume has a different author, so there isn't the consistency of the Moncrieff version, and most of the translators made an attempt to represent Proust's style, so the long, convoluted sentences were sometimes confusing. But compared to Moncrieff, the humour comes across much more strongly. In my initial reading I hadn't realised that Proust was so funny.

>102 scunliffe: Which translation of Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas did you read? I started the book with enthusiasm, but the translation killed all enjoyment. PerhapsI I liked Dom Casmurro more than you did because it was my introduction to Machado de Assis and was such a surprise.

The translation of Posthumous Memoirs was by Flora Thomson-DeVaux, published by Penguin Classics.
As for Proust I read Swann's Way translated by Moncrieff, and have not bought the next three in edition edited by Prendergast. Now I need a very long sequence of rainy days to read them........

#86 Brooklyn by Colm Toibin
Before reading the recent and well reviewed Long Island I thought I should read the book that preceded it.
The story of a young Irish woman, unable to find a decent job in her home town, who follows the priest's suggestion to emigrate to New York, where he knows a woman who runs a respectable boarding house for single women.
She finds a job and does it well, but is at first terribly lonely, until one day she meets a young Italian at a dance. Her sister dies back in Ireland and she has to return temporarily and the young Italian, frightened of losing her, persuades her into a secret marriage before she goes.
Back home she meets and is very attracted by a young local.....and so the plot thickens.
She is a sympathetic character, and even though most of her decisions so far have been directed by others, it seems she will emerge well out of the situation she is in.

#87 Funeral in Berlin by Len Deighton.
After the first two in the Berlin series, this is a let-down. The well developed characters of the first two books are gone, and the plot defies the suspension of disbelief.

#88. In Memoriam by Alice Winn
Recounting the plot of this novel set during the First World War does not do the book justice, so I will keep it very short. Two boys, pupils at a prominent English public school, are among the many who play sexual games in school.
In the trenches of the war they discover and consummate true love. Both survive, while emerging seriously scathed, but they continue to be a couple.

So, apart from its sexual content this book is about the tremendous losses of young men going straight from public school to the war, where as junior officers they died in droves leading their men 'over the top.' (and so of course did many of the men they led). A deadly loss of innocence.
This theme was extensively dealt with by Vera Brittain in 'Testament of Youth. She lost her brother, her fiancee and a good friend in just the same way.
Two more works that this book brings to mind are Memoirs of an Infantry Officer by Siegfried Sassoon and the war poems of Wilfred Owen. Poetry plays a prominent part in In Memoriam.

#89 Long Island by Colm Toibin
Compared with Brooklyn this book which takes place 20 years later is a bit less 'sweet' as the no longer innocent Eillis deals with grittier problems than she did before. Put together the two books tell the story of two lovers who are kept apart by their own mistakes and misjudgments, past and present.
As before Eillis continues to be pushed around by forces beyond her control. Now in the US, her Italian/American husband makes another woman pregnant, and decides together with his family from whom Eillis has always felt somewhat apart, to adopt the baby.
Eillis goes back to Ireland for her mothers 80th cantankerous birthday, and rekindles her thwarted love with pub-owner Jim. But in having meanwhile become secretly engaged to widow Nancy, once Eillis' best friend, Jim now tries to keep his options open too long.
There is a sad symmetry to the endings of both books.

#90 Below Stairs by Margaret Powell.
I think I remember the brief positive stir when this book came out in England in the early 60's. The theme of an uncowed underdog would have had particularly strong appeal so soon after WWII, as well as the nose thumbed at the upper classes.
It is a clear-eyed account of the hard and unappreciated life in domestic service in domestic service between the 20's and the 40's, told with a sardonic sense of humor.

#91 London Set by Len Deighton.
I was wrong when I thought that Funderal in Berlin was the third book in this series....it was in fact a standalone and not a very good one at that.
This book was far more satisfying.

#92 They Were Counted by Miklós Bánffy
I was very pleased to stumble across this book, the first volume of The Transylvania Trilogy.The setting, the last days of the Austro-Hungarian empire before it was destroyed by WW1, has always fascinated me.
There are three main elements: the extravagant life of the Hungarian aristocracy, the tensions between Hungary and Austria, and some rather melodramatic love stories which carry most of the plot.
The author himself was both an Hungarian aristocrat and a diplomat (and presumably a lover) so his credentials were good, and contemporary.
This first volume covers only 1904 to 1905; there is more to come which I shall definitely read.

#93 The Shadow Key by Susan Stokes Chapman
Its my fault for falling for a 'horror' book recommendation at the time of Halloween.
It has all the ingredients, rural 18th century Wales, underground caverns, satanic rights and dastardly characters, but they don't add up to much, and the ending is a damp squib.

#94 The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams
A gently feminist book, set around the early 20th Century compilation of the Oxford English Dictionary (which I liked to read just for pleasure in its original multi-volume and massive form in the college library when I was a student at Oxford.
Familiar territory if you have read The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester, but an unfamiliar point of view. Esme, the daughter of the one of the compilers, puts together her own dictionary of words pertaining to women that had often been excluded.
There is plenty of heartbreak, as she gives up an illegitimate baby, loses her husband in the trenches of WWI, and herself dies prematurely in an accidental death. But this still a warm book of female solidarity.

#95 The Mabinogi by Mathew Francis

An unusual but effective version of the four branches (stories) told in poetry, of these ancient Welsh legends.
The poetry is deliberately obscure, adding a sense of unreal mystery to these stories which are usually told in prose.

#96 Tom Lake by Ann Patchett
Not the best of her books, but enjoyable enough, as a former actor tells the story of her short and dramatic acting career to her three daughters during the pandemic when all of the family is sheltering on the cherry farm where their mother now lives.
As usual, the characters are distinctively and sympathetically drawn.
Being read as an audiobook by Meryl Streep is a definite advantage

#97 Karla's Choice by Nick Harkaway
Le Carre's son does more than a decent Job of writing a book about Smiley in the period between The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
In covering his tracks of an earlier misdeed Karla brutally sacrifices former friends and current co-workers, and confirms himself as an amoral and lethal chieftain of the KGB.

#98 Ringworld by Larry Niven
I don't normally read sci-fi but I did read this shortly after it was published in 1970. It has stuck in my memory since then, so I decided to re-read it. I am glad I did, and enjoyed it as much as I did the first time.
Remarkably inventive, which is what attracted me the first time.
The only other sci-fi book I have read and really enjoyed since then, thanks to Obama, is The Three Body Problem trilogy by Cixin Liu, even more inventive as it re-shapes the laws of physics.