pamelad is buried in a book

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pamelad is buried in a book

1pamelad
Edited: Jul 1, 4:09 am

Hello and welcome. I'm Pam from Melbourne, the capital of Victoria, which is Australia's southernmost mainland state. My goals for 2024 are to read some of the big books that have been languishing in the tbr pile, and to read a wide variety of books and authors.

In the first half of the year the best books I've read are:

All Our Yesterdays by Natalia Ginzburg
Don Casmurro by Machado de Assis
The Devil in the Flesh by Raymond Radiguet
Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker

I've read a lot of crime, new authors, and books in translation, quite a few from the wish list, and a surprising amount of historical fiction. I haven't read many big books, Australian books or non-fiction, and have cheated on the books I own by counting recent purchases, so I'm going to try to read more from these categories.

Welcome!

10pamelad
Edited: Aug 22, 7:55 pm

8. Books by Decade



1900 - 1919
The Shuttle by Frances Hodgson Burnett 1907
The Judgement of Eve by May Sinclair 1907

1910 - 1919
Twilight by Frank Danby 1916
William: An Englishman by Cicely Hamilton 1919

1920 - 1929
The Casuarina Tree by Somerset Maugham 1926
Tension by E. M. Delafield 1920
The Enormous room by E. E. Cummings 1922
The Devil in the Flesh by Raymond Radiguet 1923

1930 - 1939
The Cases of Susan Dare by Mignon. G. Eberhart
The Chinaman by Friedrich Glauser
The Mysterious Mr Badman by W. F. Harvey

1940 - 1949
Snow Country by Yusanari Kawabata
Dragonwyck by Anya Seton
The King's General by Daphne du Maurier
Death on Gokumon Island by Seishi Yokomizo
Murder after Christmas by Rupert Latimer

1950 - 1959
The Devil's Flute Murders by Seishi Yokomizo
All Our Yesterdays by Natalia Ginzburg
Impact of Evidence: A Welsh Borders Mystery by Carol Carnac
Someone from the Past by Margot Bennett
Zazie in the Metro by Raymond Queneau

1960 - 1969
Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker
Kirkland Revels by Victoria Holt
Lady of Mallow by Dorothy Eden
Bel Lamington by D. E. Stevenson

1970 - 1979
Castle Barebane by Joan Aitken
Speak to Me of Love by Dorothy Eden
The Innocents by Margery Sharp

1980 - 1989
A Reputation Dies by Alice Chetwynd Ley
The American Heiress by Dorothy Eden

1990 - 1999
Whatever by Michel Houellebecq
Mona in the Promised Land by Gish Jen

2000 - 2009
The Visitors by Jane Harrison
Strange Weather in Tokyo by Hiromi Kawakami

2010 - 2019
Becoming Kirrali Lewis by Jane Harrison
The Green Road by Anne Enright

2020 -
The Visitors by Jane Harrison 2023
The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng 2023
The Secret of the Lost Pearls by Darcie Wilde 2022
Love and Virtue by Diana Reid 2021
Abomination by Ashley Goldberg

11pamelad
Edited: Dec 6, 9:44 pm

9. CATs



CalendarCAT

January: Becoming Kirrali Lewis by Jane Harrison; The Visitors by Jane Harrison
February: Curriculum Vitae by Muriel Spark
March: The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne; The Green Road by Anne Enright
April: Madam by Margaret Oliphant
May: The Judgement of Eve by May Sinclair
June: All Our Yesterdays by Natalia Ginzburg
July: Zazie in the Metro by Raymond Queneau
August: Voices in the Evening by Natalia Ginzburg
September: Night Fall by Joan Aiken
October: Meet Mr Mulliner by P. G. Wodehouse
November: The Body in the Bunker by Herbert Adams; The Judas Kiss by Herbert Adams
December: The Village of Eight Graves by Seishi Yokomizo

PrizeCAT

January: Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata Nobel
February: Love and Virtue by Diana Reid Australian Book Industry Award (and others)
March: The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Award; The Green Road by Anne Enright Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award for 2016
April: Factory Girls by Michelle Gallen Comedy Women in Print
May: Strange Weather in Tokyo by Hiromi Kawakami
June: Under the Net by Iris Murdoch; Dom Casmurro by Machado de Assis
July: Solito by Javier Zamora
August: All Systems Red: the Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells; The Maid by Nita Prose
September: Night Fall by Joan Aiken
October: Merivel: a man of his time by Rose Tremain; Absolutely & Forever by Rose Tremain
November: The Secret Countess by Eva Ibbotson
December: The Vegetarian by Han Kang

Assorted KITs and CATs

ScaredyKIT and HistoryCAT: Kirkland Revels by Victoria Holt

13pamelad
Edited: Jul 1, 3:55 am

12. BingoDOG



1. Food or Cooking Strange Weather in Tokyo by Hiromi Kawakami
2. A book with an ugly cover Unforgivable by Joanna Chambers
3. A book with nothing on the cover but the title and author The Shuttle by Frances Hodgson Burnett
4. Features twins Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker
5. A topic about which you have specific knowledge Another Man's Murder by Mignon G. Eberhart
6. Published in year ending in 24 The Lady Plays with Fire by Susanna Craig 2024
7. Epistolary or diary The Appeal by Janice Hallett
8. Big or little in title The Enormous Room by E. E. Cummings
9. A book from one of the libraries listed under the "Similar libraries" featured on your LT profile page Pirate Next Door by Jennifer Ashley
10. About friendship Satyr's Son by Lucinda Brant
11. Three-word title The King's General by Daphne du Maurier
12. Paper-based item in plot When the Marquess Was Mine by Caroline Linden
13. Read a CAT The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne
14. Short story collection The Casuarina Tree by Somerset Maugham
15. Person's name in title Miss Gordon's Mistake by Anita Mills
16. Set in a city The Secret of the Lady's Maid by Darcie Wilde
17. A book with fewer than 100 copies on LT Twilight by Frank Danby
18. Something written by a person of colour Becoming Kirrali Lewis by Jane Harrison
19. Written by an author 65 or older The Cuckoo's Child by Marjorie Eccles
20. Featuring water The Pirate Hunter by Jennifer Ashley
21. Involves warriors or mercenaries Sinfully Yours by Kathleen Ayers
22. Re-read a favourite book We by Yevgeny Zamyatin
23. Written in another cultural tradition Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata Japan
24. Something that takes place in multiple countries The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng
25. Current or recent best-seller The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne

Wiki

15pamelad
Jul 1, 3:44 am

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16pamelad
Jul 1, 3:44 am

16

17pamelad
Jul 1, 3:44 am

17

18pamelad
Jul 1, 3:44 am

18

19pamelad
Jul 1, 4:10 am

Open for business!

20MissWatson
Jul 1, 4:11 am

Happy new thread!

21Helenliz
Jul 1, 4:27 am

Happy new thread!

22dudes22
Jul 1, 6:00 am

Happy New Thread! Good work on finishing your Bingo card by the middle of the year.

23threadnsong
Jul 1, 8:59 am

Oh wow! Happy new thread and congrats on your accomplishments *and* your new goals!

24lowelibrary
Jul 1, 12:05 pm

Happy new thread.

26Tess_W
Jul 2, 11:22 pm

Happy New Thread!

27DeltaQueen50
Jul 3, 3:29 pm

Happy new thread, I hope your second half of 2024 is as successful as the first half has been.

28Jackie_K
Jul 4, 4:36 pm

Happy new thread! It was good to revisit your film posters.

29pamelad
Jul 4, 5:45 pm

30pamelad
Jul 4, 6:26 pm

2. Wish List
9. CalendarCAT

Zazie in the Metro by Raymond Queneau

Zazie's mother killed her father with an axe but was found not guilty because he was attempting to molest Zazie at the time. Now the mother wants a weekend away to pursue a young an, so she has sent Zazie to stay with her uncle Gabriel. She's a handful - a cynical, world-weary girl in her early teens. Her biggest wish is to travel on the metro, but the workers are on strike and it's closed.

This is a very funny book. Zazie and Gabriel have a wild weekend in Paris accompanied by a cast of ridiculous characters, including a parrot whose favourite phrase is "Talk, Talk. That's all you can do." The language is exuberant and playful, with phrases scrunched up into long, phonetically spelled words and literary references (few of which I picked up on because I'm not that erudite and this is Paris, 1959). Zazie's conversation is littered with obscenities and shocks her companions, but they're almost as foul-mouthed as she is.

I'll probably read this again because I enjoyed it but missed a lot. Barbara White's translation seems to capture Queneau's wordplay but contains a few Britishisms which seem out of place (but might not be, depending on the original French), so anyone who's annoyed by that sort of thing might need to wait for Zazie in the Subway.

31pamelad
Jul 4, 6:43 pm

I'm 40% of the way through Operation Columba—The Secret Pigeon Service: The Untold Story of World War II Resistance in Europe by Gordon Corera, but have given up because Gordon is far too concerned with rivalries between the different British spy departments, he's repetitive, and the narrative is floundering in too many directions. Corera is no Ben McIntyre .

32Tess_W
Jul 7, 4:38 pm

>31 pamelad: I've read a couple of Ben McIntyre's and in one of them thought the very same thing about the rivalry within the British spy system.

33pamelad
Jul 9, 7:24 pm

>32 Tess_W: It's annoying to read, and I just want the author to move on. That sort of pettiness is everywhere.

34pamelad
Jul 9, 7:31 pm

6. Crime

Murder after Christmas by Rupert Latimer

A British Library Crime Classic from 1944, and the writer's only crime novel. Arch humour, a confusing and artificial plot, a huge cast of characters. This vintage crime novel was readable but annoying. The plot hinged on people behaving in unlikely ways, and I was quite put off by their lightheartedness in the face of the murder of rich Uncle Willy.

35VivienneR
Jul 12, 2:01 pm

A belated Happy New Thread!

>31 pamelad: Too bad about Corera's book, a secret pigeon service sounds intriguing. I always wondered how successful the pigeons were.

36pamelad
Jul 13, 7:25 pm

>35 VivienneR: Welcome!

7. Non-Fiction
9. PrizeCAT

Solito by Javier Zamora

Javier's parents escaped El Salvador and crossed illegally into the US, leaving him with his mother's family. His father left when he was one, for reasons connected with the civil war, which Javier doesn't full understand, and his mother left when he was five. He's now nine and his parents have paid a coyote to take him to the US. This is the story of his journey, which stretched from the expected two weeks into a harrowing nine, for seven of which none of Javier's relatives knew whether he was alive. Had he not been helped by three of the other illegals, a mother and her adolescent daughter and a young man who thought of Javier as a little brother, he would not have survived. Although Javier is vague about it, probably because his temporary family sheltered him from the knowledge, it seems that many of their companions died crossing the Sonoma Desert. It's a harrowing read because you're right there with them.

Highly recommended.

37pamelad
Edited: Jul 13, 7:50 pm

6. Crime

The Theft of the Iron Dogs by E C R Lorac

First published in 1946, this British Library Crime Classic is set in Lancashire. As usual with Lorac's books there's a real sense of place, and Lorac clearly loves the farming country of Lancashire. Inspector MacDonald and his off-sider Reeves really, really appreciate the plentiful fresh food and Lorac describes their meals in unusual detail for a crime novel! I've noticed this before in her books. I think rationing extended into the fifties. It must have been awful!

The plot involves clothing coupon fraud. The book is interesting for its time and setting, but as a mystery it's nothing special.

I read this under the title Murderer's Mistake in 2021!

38susanj67
Jul 14, 6:23 am

A belated happy new thread, Pamela!

>31 pamelad: I also started that one, but I can't see that I ever reviewed it, so I think I must also have given up! It's a shame for both of us, because the subject sounds so interesting.

39Jackie_K
Jul 14, 9:10 am

>36 pamelad: I won this book in a giveaway last year, it sounds amazing.

40threadnsong
Jul 21, 6:48 pm

>36 pamelad: This sounds like a worthwhile book to read. Difficult but also timely with current events.

41Helenliz
Jul 22, 7:53 am

>37 pamelad: I've not go to that one yet. I agree with you on the way Lorac evokes a sense of place.
Rationing ended in 1954.

42pamelad
Jul 22, 7:16 pm

>38 susanj67: Thank you, Susan.
>39 Jackie_K: It's well worth reading. Good win!
>40 threadnsong: People take terrible risks, and some die on the way. Another book worth reading, this time from the perspective of a member of the Border Patrol, is The Line Becomes a River by Francisco Cantu. The author is now a friend of Javier Zamora's and works for charities that support the people he once policed.
>41 Helenliz: It's not one of her best, but as a snapshot of a time and a place it's interesting.

43pamelad
Jul 22, 8:10 pm

6. Crime July - December Romantic Suspense

The Deadly Travellers by Dorothy Eden

Kate Tempest works as a commercial artist and supplements her income by doing casual jobs for an agency. She has been employed to pick up a little girl, Francesca, in Rome and take her to London, with a side-trip to the Eiffel Tower. The little girl goes missing, and even though Kate's employer says Francesca is safe, Kate is determined to see her in person to make sure.

Kate's a dip-stick who trusts the wrong men. The book started well, but by the end the plot was all over the place.

4. Australia and New Zealand
6. Crime July - December Romantic Suspense

Lamb to the Slaughter by Dorothy Eden

There are two glaciers on the west coast of New Zealand's South Island: Fox Glacier and Franz Josef Glacier. There are tourist villages near the glaciers, and the nearest town is Hokitika. I'm not sure which of the two glaciers this book is set near, possibly Franz Josef because it has the bigger village. In 1953 when this book was written there was only one hotel. One of the main characters guides tourists across the glacier and another drives the public bus to and from Hokitika.

Alice Ashton has been invited by her friend Camilla, a friend from school who is the local primary school teacher, to stay at her decrepit cottage, but when Alice arrives Camilla isn't there, the milk has gone off, and the cat is hungry. Camilla is notorious for her romantic entanglements and it seems that she is dangling three men: Felix Dodsworth, ex-actor, ex-theatrical director, ex-flame of Alice's, current bus driver; Dundas Hill, glacier guide and hoarder of small exquisite things; Dalton Thorpe, a rich man with a strange sister. Which of them is responsible for Camilla's disappearance? Alice becomes engaged to a suspect for no good reason that I can see.

I liked this for its New Zealand setting. Alice is an idiot.

44pamelad
Jul 24, 6:39 pm

4. Australia and New Zealand
6. Crime July - December Romantic Suspense

I've borrowed Dorothy Eden's Sinister Weddings from KoboPlus. It's a collection of three romantic suspense/gothic novels: Bride by Candlelight, Bridge of Fear and Cat's Prey. I've read the first two and am having a break before reading the third. These heroines could save themselves a lot of trouble if they were to stop marrying men they barely know!

Bride by Candlelight by Dorothy Eden

Julia met Paul in London during the war when he came to visit Julia's great uncle. Paul's grandmother was the great love of the great uncle's life, but she married someone else and moved to New Zealand. Years later Julia receives a love letter from Paul, and with her great uncle's encouragement decides to move to New Zealand and marry him! Paul is changed. He's no longer the sweet, naive young man Julia knew, and is is surrounded by beautiful young women. The grandmother is senile, but perhaps not as far gone as she seems, and believes that Paul's dead brother Harry is in the house. The conclusion is obvious from the start and the only mystery is "how can Julia be such an idiot?"

Once again I liked the New Zealand setting, a sheep farm in the Canterbury high country. The nearest significant town is Timaru, on the east coast of the South Island. The book was first published in 1953.

Bridge of Fear by Dorothy Eden

It's the Sydney Harbour Bridge! Quite a feat, setting a Gothic novel in Sydney in spring. Abbey has arrived from London to marry Luke, but he's not the carefree young man she remembers. She's stuck in their new house (on the harbour! This is where rich people live.) all day, waiting for Luke to get home. Luke bought a block of land from the owners of the big house up the hill, so his house is overlooked and there is little privacy. There's a swagman (wrong term, but that's what Eden uses) living in a boat nearby, and he's also keeping an eye on the house. Luke seems far too close to his neighbour Lola, and drives her to and from work every day so that she doesn't have to make a tedious ferry trip. (I wish! It might be time for a trip to Sydney and a ride on the Manly Ferry.)

There's a convoluted plot involving a pink lipstick and a missing cosmetics company. The protagonists include a grumpy man in a wheelchair, his long-suffering wife, her sister Lola and Lola's eight-year-old daughter, and the mother of the women. They all live in the big house.

I don't think kookaburras and the Sydney Harbour Bridge are menacing, and nor are sunny spring days on Sydney Harbour, so I couldn't take Abbey seriously. But at least things happen in Bridge of Fear, unlike Bride by Candlelight. The book was first published in 1961, when the construction of the Sydney Opera House had barely begun.

45pamelad
Aug 1, 5:57 pm

I've been bogged down in Guy Deverell by Sheridan LeFanu. I like the writing, and the author's reflections on character are entertaining, but the pace is leisurely so I've been putting it aside and not picking it up for days. Now I'm on the move again and the end is in sight.

46pamelad
Edited: Aug 2, 11:04 pm

3. Big Books

Guy Deverell by Sheridan LeFanu

Having read Uncle Silas and Carmilla, I was expecting a big reveal where one of the characters turned out to be a vampire, and was definitely suspicious of the pale man who looked exactly like someone who'd died in a duel twenty years before. But instead of one big climax there are a lot of smaller ones. There's the theft of a property deed that resulted in the duel, an eerie green room that might be haunted and a housekeeper who knows its mystery, a faithless wife, a doomed romance, two people with false names, too many house guests to keep track of... Overseeing all is the congenial hypocrite, Sir Jekyl (a name that sounds like jackal, appropriately).

I enjoyed the book, but when I reached the end I thought, like Peggy Lee, "is that all there is?"

47pamelad
Aug 5, 7:55 pm

4. Australia and New Zealand
6. Crime July - December Romantic Suspense

Cat's Prey by Dorothy Eden

Cat's Prey is the third book in Dorothy Eden's Sinister Weddings, a collection of three romantic suspense/gothic novels. It's set in Christchurch, where the heroine's cousin is living. He is on the point of marrying a woman who does not inspire trust, and who seems to be more devoted to the cousin's money than his person. He's inherited a few thousand pounds from an aunt, as has the heroine who has come from England to visit.

The action takes place in a house on a cliff, buffeted by winds and haunted by the screams of seagulls. What is the source of the mysterious light on the third floor? What is the real source of the screams? Who is the pale man who appears to be stalking the heroine?

The plot was full of holes and the characters behaved oddly, but I enjoyed this fifties gothic.

Dorothy Eden was born in New Zealand.

48pamelad
Aug 7, 1:12 am

9. CalendarCAT Women in Translation Month

Voices in the Evening by Natalia Ginzburg

Elsa's mother is worried that at 29 Elsa isn't married, but she doesn't stop talking long enough to listen to anything Elsa says. The mother is comically self-absorbed, a gossip and a hypochondriac, and leavens this sad novella with humour. The young people are haunted by WWII and decades of Fascism and seem trapped in their little village, surrounded by the people they've known since childhood. Village life revolves around the wealthy DiFrancisci family, which owns the textile mill.

Nearly everyone, including most of the members of the DiFrancisci family, is a Socialist. They disdain the Fascist thugs but are at risk, and people are killed. But Ginzburg doesn't dwell. Her tone is factual, detached and unemotional, but the unembellished details accumulate to show the devastating impact of Fascism and WWII on the lives of a generation of Italians.

Everyone needs to read at least one book by Natalia Ginzburg.

49pamelad
Aug 8, 5:24 pm

9. CalendarCAT Genre Prizes

All Systems Red: the Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells

The murderbot is part human, part machine and is supposed to be completely controlled by its employers, but it has hacked into its command module and is making its own decisions. It has been hired out to an organisation that is surveying a distant planet, and its job is to protect its humans. (I've just had to go back an change he/his to it, because I've been thinking of the murderbot as a person, but it's genderless and not a they.)

This novella was confusing, but entertaining, and I really liked the murderbot. I plan to read at least one more book in the series. This one won a Hugo and is available in KindleUnlimited.

50Tess_W
Aug 11, 1:32 am

>48 pamelad: Hmmm, I will ponder that one! It sounds eerily like the Bassani books we read!

51pamelad
Aug 11, 5:46 pm

>50 Tess_W: The writing style is quite different, but there are similarities between both writers - both Jewish, living in Italy during WWII, reflecting on their experiences decades later. Perhaps you would like Family Sayings. It's the first book I read by Natalia Ginzburg and is a memoir.

The places, events and people in this book are all real. I have invented nothing. Every time that I have found myself inventing somethinhg in accordance with my old habits as a novelist, I have felt impelled at once to destroy everything this invented.

52pamelad
Edited: Aug 11, 6:24 pm

9. CalendarCAT Women in Translation Month

Sagittarius by Natalia Ginzburg

A woman moves from her small village to a nearby city in search of culture and congenial companions, accompanied by her younger daughter her daughter's husband Chaim, a young relative, and her maid. Her other daughter, the narrator, shares a flat with a friend in the same city. The mother befriends a woman she meets in a hair salon, and together they plan to open an art gallery and perhaps a dress shop as well.

This little tragedy is driven by the character of the mother: a restless, foolish and domineering woman. Ginzburg's writing is, as always, wonderful and the mother is so realistically monstrous that I'm glad this book was a novella. Just the right length.

53threadnsong
Aug 11, 9:44 pm

>48 pamelad: This sounds like a good book with a different perspective on survivors of WWII and the fascism of the time. And I'm liking your journey through the novels of Natalia Ginzburg - she sounds like a thoughtful author.

54pamelad
Aug 16, 4:39 pm

>53 threadnsong: Like Giorgio Bassani, Natalia Ginzburg was there, so their books make an impact. They're writing about what they lived through. Ginzburg's books, in particular, are full of domestic detail.

55pamelad
Aug 16, 4:56 pm

8. Books by Decade Nineties

Whatever by Michel Houellebecq

Houellebecq's narrator is leading a meaningless life. His job is pointless; it's two years since he split up with the woman he used to love (she was ruined by psychoanalysis); he has no friends and is scathingly observant about the people he knows. Those unexpected observations of people and society are what make the book so funny, despite its depressing theme. It doesn't hang together well, but it's philosophical, original, thought-provoking and short. I enjoyed it.

56VivienneR
Aug 17, 12:12 am

>47 pamelad: Dorothy Eden caught my eye. Fifties gothic sounds like fun and my library has a few of her books. I'll investigate.

57pamelad
Aug 22, 6:04 pm

>56 VivienneR: Dorothy Eden writes a good, second-rate gothic. I liked the historicals best - Ravenscroft, Lady of Mallow, Darkwater - and they're in KoboPlus, which is a big advantage. I hope you like them.

58pamelad
Aug 22, 7:53 pm

1. Books I Own
8. Books by Decade Nineties

Mona in the Promised Land by Gish Jen

This twenty-seven-year-old paperback has been sitting on my shelf since 2010, when I read Typical American and went searching for Gish Jen's other books. Its small print and browning pages made it a challenge to read but it was well worth the effort because it's short, cheerful, humorous, intelligent and thought-provoking.

Mona Chang is the daughter of Chinese immigrants Ralph and Helen whose story was told in Typical American. They run a successful pancake restaurant and have made enough money to move their family to the wealthy suburb of Scarshill, New York, which has a big Jewish population. Mona is the favourite, even though her older sister Callie strives harder to meet Helen's demands and is the good Chinese daughter Helen says she wants. Mona is more outgoing, cheerful and amusing than the serious, studious Callie.

Mona's story begins in 1968 when she is in middle-school. Her best friend is Barbara Gugelstein, and all her other friends are Jewish. Mona spends so much time at the temple and is so impressed by young Rabbi Horowitz that she decides to convert to Judaism, which doesn't bother her parents too much because they're already Catholic for pragmatic reasons on top of being being Buddhist.

There are no WASPs in this book, just Jewish, Chinese and Black people. As well as being about Mona's passage from adolescence to adulthood, it's about multiculturalism, prejudice and class differences. Mona and her Jewish friends are naive, well-meaning do-gooders, while Mona's parents are insular and only trust other Chinese people. None of this is heavy-handed. It's witty, amusing and open-minded. You can't help liking Mona and her friends, even when they're acting like self-absorbed idiots.

Highly recommended.

59pamelad
Aug 22, 8:04 pm

Mona in the Promised Land and Whatever were both first published in the nineties, so they complete my Books by Decade category. I'll continue to add to it, but I've met the goal of at least two books per decade. I'm pleased to have found two such interesting, worthwhile books.

Now I must get cracking on the Non-fiction, Big Books and Books I Own categories. I've effortlessly read plenty for Crime, Historical Fiction, New Authors and Around the World.

60susanj67
Aug 23, 8:51 am

Hello Pamela! I must try some Dorothy Eden after reading your great reviews. There are some on Kindle Unlimited here, but most seem to cost a fortune so I'll have a look at Kobo Plus :-) I promise myself that as soon as I run out of library books I'll sign up, but there's a fatal flaw in that plan...

61Tess_W
Aug 24, 10:14 am

>59 pamelad: Congrats on completing your goal of the decades.

62pamelad
Aug 24, 6:45 pm

>60 susanj67: KoboPlus has a much better selection than KindleUnlimited. Well-written, professionally-edited books, by authors you've heard of, originally released by known publishers. Lots of vintage crime and historical romance. Too many KindleUnlimited books are poorly edited, direct to Kindle disappointments. Good luck with Dorothy Eden.

>61 Tess_W: Thanks Tess!

63pamelad
Aug 25, 12:01 am

6. Crime
9. PrizeCAT

The Maid by Nita Prose

I quite enjoyed this twee, sentimental crime novel. The heroine is neurodiverse in a way that fits the plot, but doesn't seem real. It's all a bit too cute for me, but it's a light-hearted easy read. Massively over-hyped.

64susanj67
Aug 25, 6:33 am

>62 pamelad: There are certainly some dubious things on Kindle Unlimited! I had a free trial last year and found some good things but also a lot of stuff that was very poor. It makes me unhappy when I see BookTubers raving about the "great writing" in things that are, in fact, not well-written at all. And now I sound like I'm 104.

65pamelad
Edited: Aug 26, 7:07 pm

6. Crime

The Christmas Appeal by Janice Hallett

The sequel to The Appeal is also a collection of emails, texts and WhatsApp messages. A retired KC has sent them to his former law students to use in solving a crime. Once again the suspects are members of an amateur dramatic group, The Fairview Players. They're putting on a pantomime of Jack in the Beanstalk. Amusing and satirical, particularly about the political machinations within the drama group. It's a quick, entertaining read.

66pamelad
Aug 30, 6:06 pm

6. Crime

Case in the Clinic by E. C. R. Lorac

It's an osteopathic clinic where most of the patients are elderly men. The exception is Falkland, an architect in his fifties whose painful leg injury hasn't responded to conventional medical treatment. After a conversation with a fellow-patient who witnessed the sudden death of a local clergy-man and believes it was murder, Falkland starts investigating. Other deaths occur, and Inspector MacDonald is called in.

The plot was all over the place, so there wasn't a lot of suspense and I didn't care too much about who did it. Ordinary but readable.

67NinieB
Aug 30, 6:16 pm

>66 pamelad: I'm still waiting for a great Lorac. The one I liked most by her was a Lancashire one, Crook o' Lune, because I liked the atmosphere.

68pamelad
Sep 1, 12:18 am

>67 NinieB: I haven't read a great one, but did enjoy Murder by Matchlight, and Crossed Skis, which was published under the name Carol Carnac.

69NinieB
Sep 1, 10:24 am

>68 pamelad: I have both of those, so I'll try them out soon. Thanks!

70pamelad
Sep 3, 5:42 pm

13. More Historical Fiction

Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson

Atkinson's version of 1926 London is a corrupt and sordid place. DCI John Frobisher is determined to get rid of the corrupt police who are hand-in-glove with Nellie Coker, owner of a network of successful nightclubs. Frobisher is also investigating a spate of murders - adolescent girls whose bodies have been recovered from the Thames - and crosses paths with Gwendolyn Kelling, former librarian and WWI battle-field nurse, who is searching for two fourteen-year-old girls, Freda and Florence, who have run away from home to go on the stage.

There's a big cast of characters and Atkinson deals with most of them superficially. By the end of the book she seems to have lost interest in them altogether so she rounds off each story in a paragraph or two and kills off quite a few people. There are numerous mentions of Harold Arlen's The Green Hat, a best-selling roman-a-clef first published in 1924.

I read the 400 plus pages of Shrines of Gaiety expecting that it would have a point, but it didn't, so I thought it was a waste of time. On top of that, it was depressing.

71pamelad
Sep 10, 5:54 pm

9. CATs

Night Fall by Joan Aiken

I don't usually read YA fiction, but Joan Aiken was born in September, and this novella won an Edgar Alan Poe Award in 1974, so it qualifies for both the PrizeCAT and the CalendarCAT. It's a sort-of Gothic, sort-of Romantic Suspense. The heroine's parents divorced when she was five, and she lived with her mother, but on her mother's death she returned to live with her father, a dreary old misery. Fortunately, she made friends with the boy and girl next door, and now that she's an adult she's engaged to her old friend. But as the wedding gets closer she's stricken with nightmares, which she's had since childhood but never with this frequency. Something happened in Cornwall, so she escapes her self-absorbed fiance and sets off to solve the mystery.

I enjoyed this light, undemanding read. Joan Aiken tells a good story.

72threadnsong
Sep 15, 8:08 pm

>71 pamelad: I read several Joan Aiken books in my younger years and thank you for your review of this one.

I hope your reading continues to go strong as the year continues!

73pamelad
Edited: Sep 18, 1:28 am

5. Around the World

Vintage 1954 by Antoine Laurain

I read this one for our book group, which is coming up soon. It's a short time-travel novel, with four characters who share a special bottle of wine being transported back to the year of its vintage, 1954. At the time of the grape harvest the vintner vigneron had reported seeing a flying saucer, and not long after had disappeared with his dog, so we suspect that he could be pottering around in 1954 as well.

This was not my sort of thing at all, being a twee sentimental fantasy with a too-obvious moral. I must think of some constructive things to say about it for the book club.

74pamelad
Sep 18, 1:24 am

1. Books I Own

The Castaways by Elin Hildebrand

This was a bargain buy from Kobo, $A1.99. I bought it because Susanj67 recommended another of Hildebrand's books which sounded like an engaging, undemanding read, but that one was dearer.

The Castaways reminded me a little of Liane Moriarty's books because it has a similar structure: there's an apparent crime, but we don't find out what happened until the end of the book; it's about four interconnected families and there are lots of domestic details; each chapter is told from the point of view of one character (in the third person, not the first, fortunately). It's missing the humour of Moriarty's books, and the characters are two-dimensional in comparison, but it was good enough and I wanted to know shat happened.

The Castaways is set on Nantucket. One of the couples has just died in a boating accident. Was it an accident, or was it murder?

75pamelad
Sep 18, 1:35 am

>72 threadnsong: I've seen that Joan Aiken is well-regarded for her children's books, so hope to find one of hers to read for the Children's Book Award month of the PrizeCAT.

76Tess_W
Sep 20, 5:20 pm

>73 pamelad: Love it when you guys use the word "twee!"

77pamelad
Sep 22, 5:50 pm

>76 Tess_W: It sounds like its meaning. Lugubrious is another.

Lugubrious reminds me of a Chinese student, very attached to his electronic dictionary, who submitted a report on an experiment involving pot plants whose soil had to be kept moist, or in this report, lachrymose.

78pamelad
Sep 22, 6:21 pm

1. Books I Own
4. Australia and New Zealand

The Last Anniversary by Liane Moriarty

First published in 2005, this is Moriarty's second book, and she hadn't quite hit her stride. As in her later books there is a mystery that is explained in the last chapter, and the story is told from multiple viewpoints.

In 1932, two teenage girls who live on a small island in the Hawkesbury River (inspired by Dangar Island), visit an isolated cottage to find it deserted except for a smiling baby. The kettle is almost boiled and there's a marble cake cooling on a rack, but the baby's parents have disappeared, never to be seen again. The girls, Rose and Connie, bring up the baby whom they name Enigma.

In the present day, Connie has just died and has left her house on the island to Sophie, the ex-girlfriend of Enigma's grandson Thomas. Sophie is thirty-nine and really wants to have children, so she's looking for the right man. The other important characters are children and grand-children of Enigma: Grace, who has just had a baby and isn't doing well; Margie, who is unhappily married to a man with a nasty tongue; Rose, who knows what really happened in 1932.

This was a silly book with an unrealistic plot, but I enjoyed it. It was a Kindle bargain.

79pamelad
Sep 22, 6:53 pm

I've bought a few Kindle bargains lately and, rather than leaving them to marinate, I'm trying to read them straight away. On the list are Liane Moriarty's first book, Three Wishes, and one by Elly Griffith, The Last Word.

There's also Travellers in the Third Reich. It's a bit more of an ask than the others, but looks very interesting. I also have Capitalism and Freedom and The Origins of Totalitarianism which are worthy and, at the moment, unappealing.

80threadnsong
Edited: Sep 22, 8:32 pm

>79 pamelad: I've just finished Elly Griffith's The Locked Room, but The Last Word seems to be completely unrelated to her Ruth Galloway series. Is that correct?

81kac522
Edited: Sep 22, 8:27 pm

>79 pamelad: Yep, you definitely need to be in the right mindset to absorb The Origins of Totalitarianism. Some of it went way over my head, but it is an important work.

One book that helped me understand Arendt was a graphic book The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt by Ken Krimstein. It's a biography, but also a history of the thinkers that influenced her. It helped ground me in her thought and philosophy, while not getting too much in the weeds, as they say.

82VivienneR
Sep 23, 5:03 pm

>70 pamelad: I'm a fan of Kate Atkinson and gave Shrines of Gaiety 4.5 stars when I read it last year. At the minute, I can't remember a single thing about it.

83pamelad
Edited: Sep 23, 6:24 pm

>80 threadnsong: The Last Word is the fourth book in the Harbinder Kaur series. I enjoyed the the first two, so had to snap up this bargain. I liked the Ruth Gallagher series but skipped a couple, including The Locked Room because I read too many Ruth Gallaghers too close together and was annoyed with the Ruth/Nelson romance. I just wanted to find out who the father of the baby was!

>81 kac522: The Origins of Totalitarianism seems particularly relevant now. Perhaps I should make it a project: 20 pages a day. That often works with heavy books - once I'm far enough in I become engrossed enough to read faster. Except Ulysses! A trial from beginning to end.

>82 VivienneR: I sort-of-like Kate Atkinson's books and have read most of them. Case Histories, the first in the Jackson Brodie series, is my favourite so far. She's in my will-read-if-free category.

84Tess_W
Sep 24, 3:06 pm

>79 pamelad: I have Arendt's book, but it's unappealing to me at the moment, also.

85susanj67
Sep 27, 4:36 am

>74 pamelad: I'm glad you didn't hate The Castaways, Pamela! I'm reading The Perfect Couple at the moment (new edition with the Netflix cover, so I was unable to resist it) and two of the minor characters are the children of the couple in The Castaways. I love the Nantucket setting in the book, but all the food descriptions make me hungry!

Travellers in the Third Reich is excellent, and it reads faster than you might expect. Some of the stories are amazing.

86pamelad
Sep 30, 7:46 pm

>85 susanj67: I'll have a look in the library for The Perfect Couple and will probably watch it due to patriotism!

Thanks for the Travellers in the Third Reich recommendation. I'll get back to it. Had to put it aside to read rubbish.

87pamelad
Sep 30, 7:52 pm

>73 pamelad: The book group's judgement on Vintage 1954: light, charming, undemanding, we liked the characters. We were glad there was a happy ending and that it was never in doubt. Enjoyed the nostalgia of 1954 Paris.

Two of us could have done without the space ship and there was one aspect of the happy ending that made us all roll our eyes.

88pamelad
Oct 5, 6:41 pm

1. Books I Own
6. Crime

The Last Word by Elly Griffiths

Harbinder Kaur is in London, and is mostly peripheral to the plot of The Last Word the fourth book in the Harbinder Kaur series. Natalka and Edwin have set up a detective agency, with Benedict assisting when he can spare the time from his beach-side coffee shack. Edwin is a dapper, eighty-four-year-old gay man who used to work for the BBC; Natalka is a capable, tough-minded, beautiful Ukrainian woman who runs a care agency; Benedict used to be a monk, but left the order when he realised that a cloistered, celibate life was not for him.

Edwin and Natalka are investigating the suspect death of an author: her daughters have accused the woman's much younger husband of murdering her. A friend of Benedict's, a priest, asks Benedict to look into the death of a vicar who wrote romances under a female pseudonym. Both victims attended a writers' retreat, and as Natalka, Edwin and Benedict investigate further, they uncover more suspicious author deaths.

The Last Word is cosier than the Ruth Galloway books, with a very unlikely plot, but I liked the characters and the humour. I've missed the third book in the series so have no idea how Harbinder ended up in London, and have missed a big slab of Ukrainian story-line, but I've just bought the third book to fill in the gaps.

89threadnsong
Edited: Oct 5, 8:59 pm

>88 pamelad: Yes, I can see where this is much different from the Ruth Galloway series! I like that it's a bit cosier than they are, as well; somehow the depth of the fens lends a darkness to the murders that Ruth and Nelson and Cathbad and everyone else solves.

I also have this Kate Atkinson in my TBR list, and it looks like it's best if I read it when I'm in the right mood/mindset.

90pamelad
Oct 6, 7:16 pm

9. CATs CalendarCAT

Meet Mr Mulliner by P. G. Wodehouse

Mr Mulliner is the raconteur of the Angler's Rest, a short, stout, comfortable man of middle age....I would have bought oil stock from him without a tremor. Of an evening in the bar parlour he regales his listeners with tales of his relatives.

These were very silly, comic stories. I loved them.

Wodehouse was born in October.

91christina_reads
Oct 7, 10:32 am

>90 pamelad: I also read a Wodehouse for the CalendarCAT, Doctor Sally. He is always such a joy!

92pamelad
Oct 13, 12:28 am

>91 christina_reads: There's time to fit in another Wodehouse this month and Doctor Sally would be a good choice, but it's expensive so I've downloaded a selection from KoboPlus ready to go. Fortunately he wrote a lot of books!

93Tess_W
Oct 13, 12:48 am

>90 pamelad: I have yet to read a Wodehouse, maybe this is the place and time to fix that!

94pamelad
Oct 13, 1:19 am

2. Wish List
9. CATs PrizeCAT

Merivel: a man of his time by Rose Tremain was shortlisted for the 2013 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. It's the sequel to Restoration, first published in 1989, so there were 24 years between the two books. Merivel is set fifteen years after the end of Restoration and the physician Sir Robert Merivel is fifty-six. King Charles II, Merivel's friend and mentor, is nearing the end of his reign and in declining health. Merivel's rambunctiousness has always been punctuated with fits of melancholy, which are now exacerbated by his awareness of his own mortality. He's looking for distraction so he travels to France in the hope of being appointed to the court of Louis XIV.

Merivel is a wonderful character. He's not a always a good man, being impulsive, selfish and thoughtless, but he's three-dimensional, alive and sympathetic. I preferred Restoration because Merivel is melancholy in comparison, but the decline towards old age is Merivel's theme, so the melancholy is fitting.

I'm pleased to have re-discovered Rose Tremain so have borrowed Absolutely & Forever which is longlisted for the 2024 Walter Scott prize.

95pamelad
Oct 13, 1:27 am

>93 Tess_W: Wodehouse is very funny, as long as you can give yourself up to his world, which is mainly populated by bumbling upper-class twits who lurch from one trivial crisis to another. He makes me laugh.

96Tess_W
Oct 13, 2:27 am

>95 pamelad: LOL, I can do that!

I also rediscovered Tremain and have read 4 of her novels (Restoration, Merivel, and The Gustav Sonata) , liking them all except Music and Silence not so much.

97pamelad
Edited: Oct 14, 12:56 am

9. CATs PrizeCAT

Absolutely & Forever by Rose Tremain was longlisted for the 2024 Walter Scott Prize.

Fifteen-year-old Marianne is besotted with Simon, who is three years older and studying for his Oxford entrance exam. He deflowers her in the back seat of his powder-blue Mini Minor, and she knows that she will love him absolutely and forever. Simon doesn't get into Oxford, so his shamed parents pack him off to the Sorbonne. Marianne exists between letters and fantasises about their future together, to the detriment of her present. And that's the way she continues: failing her exams; making no effort in a secretarial course; sleeping with men she doesn't much like; marrying a childhood friend she doesn't love. Rose Tremain has sympathy for her annoying heroine, but I had none. Even so, I like Tremain's writing, the book is short, and I'd made a guess that I wanted to verify, so I kept reading and was entertained.

Rose Tremain was born in 1943, so in 1959 when the book begins she was the same age as Marianne. Like Marianne she lived in Berkshire and went to boarding-school, so she knows the people she writes about. Like Merivel, Absolutely & Forever is melancholy, although it ends on a note of hope.

98pamelad
Edited: Oct 15, 6:31 pm

In preparation fro the November CalendarCAT I've been reading random snippets from A Catalogue of Crime by Jacques Barzun (who was born in November) and Wendell Hertig Taylor. The plan for the CAT is to read at least one recommended book, which is a pretty tenuous connection but will do. I've downloaded three from KoboPlus so far: The Body in the Bunker and The Judas Kiss by Herbert Adams and Tracks in the Snow by Godfrey Rathbone Benson Charnwood. The Herbert Adams books struck me because of the Australian pie manufacturer Herbert Addams, and the Charnwood because its author was a baron who wrote only one mystery.

KoboPlus has an excellent selection of vintage mysteries.

99pamelad
Edited: Oct 19, 1:12 am

3. Big Books
7. Non-fiction

Travellers in the Third Reich by Julia Boyd

In 1939 the Thomas Cook company was still running cheap package tours to Germany: the exchange rate was good, the scenery and mediaeval villages were beautiful, and the locals were friendly. People went to enjoy themselves so most of them managed to ignore the violence, the militarism, the lack of freedom and, worst of all, the treatment of the Jewish population. This blindness was shared by many other travellers: academics; British aristocrats; politicians; recent school leavers sent by their parents to learn the language and to experience German culture; young people stopping off on their European travels; women marrying German husbands. Boyle has quoted from memoirs, newspaper articles, and private letters to gather travellers' impressions of Hitler's Germany. There is a great deal of anti-Semitism, particularly intense from British aristocrats and politicians, many of whom are Nazi sympathisers.

An interesting and worthwhile read.

7. Non-fiction

Safe Passage by Ida Cook

Ida and her sister Louise were mentioned in Travellers in the Third Reich. Louise, the elder, was a civil service clerk and Ida had taken a risk to leave her job, also in the civil service, to work on a magazine. Under the name Mary Burchell, Ida had begun as successful career as a writer of romantic fiction, so she had money to spare. Ida and Louise were mad-keen opera goers and had become friends with some famous performers, two of whom introduced the sisters to a Jewish music lecturer who made clear to them the perilous situation of the Jews in Germany and its occupied countries. The sisters helped the woman and her family escape to Britain, and went on to help many other Jews settle in Britain.

The parts of the book describing how the sisters got people away are the most interesting. Ida Cook doesn't dwell on the fear and danger, and touches lightly on the devastation of failing to save some of the people she tries to help, so she comes across as relentlessly positive. But she took those risks and saved those people, so she can tell her story however she wants. There's an awful lot about opera.

A quick, easy read. It's uplifting to read about good people.

100Tess_W
Edited: Oct 19, 10:05 am

>99 pamelad: The Boyd book is on my shelf. Must get to it. I've just added the Cook to my WL-although it's called The Bravest Voices in the US. I have a membership to Audible and pay by the year. That means come November I have 12 credits. I can use them all at once or spread them out. I usually use six pretty quickly and spread the others out. I consider this my "luxury" spend, as I don't buy books otherwise. I don't need to justify this, only to myself! Part Two: I volunteer once a week in a nursing home, reading to older folks who can no longer see to read. If that ever happens to me, I'm good to go with Audible books. By then, I probably won't remember that I've heard them before!

101threadnsong
Oct 19, 7:09 pm

>99 pamelad: What a fascinating duo of books! I saw that there is a biography of Corrie ten Boom, who wrote The Hiding Place. And the British aristocrats and their anti-Semitism adds some depth to the reluctance of the British to join the Allied forces in WWII.

102pamelad
Edited: Oct 26, 1:59 am

Just back from Kangaroo Island. We stayed in Emu Bay, 15km outside the main town of Kingscote, in a house with a big deck and an ocean view. One evening we even had a koala in the back yard. A mother and baby lived in a tree a few houses away, and we visited them every morning before we drove off and every afternoon when we arrived back. A Swiss couple who stay every year told us about the penguins who come out at night, and we managed to catch sight of two on Thursday. They waddled across the street then up a driveway into someone's back yard, which was unexpected. The babies live in burrows and we could hear them calling to their mothers but they didn't come out.

The other high points were the Remarkable Rocks and Seal Bay. There are also plenty of good beaches. On Stokes Bay there were people sun baking in weather that's too cold for Australians to strip off. They must have been British!





103Tess_W
Oct 26, 1:50 am

Looks and sounds lovely!

104pamelad
Oct 26, 2:14 am

>103 Tess_W: It's not commercialised. The two main towns are tiny, and in Emu Bay there are some houses and that's all. People go to Kangaroo Island to see wildlife and go to the beach. You can also go on boat tours and swim with dolphins.

The drive to Cape Jervis, where the ferry leaves for Kangaroo Island, goes through the Fleurieu Peninsula - green rolling hills, vineyards, historic towns and views of the ocean. We stayed a night in Goolwa.

105pamelad
Oct 26, 2:27 am

>100 Tess_W: That's a worthwhile thing to do. The days would get long in a nursing home. But I hope that you and I, post cataract operations, will be reading until we drop!

>101 threadnsong: reluctance of the British to join the Allied forces in WWII Not familiar with this. Are you thinking of the invasion of Czechoslovakia, Neville Chamberlain and the appeasement?

106pamelad
Oct 26, 3:06 am

1. Books I Own
6. Crime

Bleeding Heart Yard by Elly Griffths

Harbinder Kaur has been promoted to and is in charge of a team of detectives. She's in London, sharing a flat with two other women. She's attracted to one of them, but doesn't want to say anything in case her friend isn't interested. (London must be an extraordinarily expensive place to live, if women in their thirties, with OK jobs, have to share accommodation.) Cassie, a member of Harbinder's team, is at a school reunion when one of her old schoolmates is found murdered. A student died on the last day of exams, twenty years ago, and Cassie thinks that both murders are linked.

An entertaining mystery with touches of humour. Not too cosy, but not at all gruesome.

1. Books I Own
4. Australia

Three Wishes by Liane Moriarty

The Kettle sisters are triplets, two identical and one fraternal. They're celebrating their thirty-fourth birthday when the recently divorced Cat stabs her pregnant sister Gemma in the stomach with a cocktail fork then trips and knocks herself unconscious on the edge of the table. The third sister, Lyn the orderly one, manages the crisis.

The book tells the sisters' stories in a series of episodes. Light-hearted, humorous domestic drama. I enjoyed it.

5. Around the World

The Road to the City by Natalia Ginzburg

First published in 1944 under a false name, this is Natalia Ginzburg's first book, a novella about a passive, unobservant young woman who doesn't realise how important her cousin Nini is to her, and she to him. Everyone is doomed. It's very sad.

107Tess_W
Oct 26, 6:47 am

>105 pamelad: I was going to ask the same thing. I thought perhaps it was a perspective not taught in the U.S., and the Sudentland was the only thing I could think of!

108susanj67
Oct 27, 6:13 am

>94 pamelad: I also discovered Rose Tremain with Absolutely and Forever, but these two sound even better.

>99 pamelad: I'm glad you enjoyed Travellers in the Third Reich. I loved the story of the opera-going sisters, but didn't realised they had their own book!

>102 pamelad: Kangaroo Island sounds amazing!

109pamelad
Edited: Oct 28, 7:53 pm

9. CATs CalendarCAT

A Catalogue of Crime was written by Jacques Barzun, who was born in November, and Wendell Hertig Taylor. For the November CalendarCAT I'm leafing through the catalogue and choosing some classic crime novels. I've started with Herbert Adams whose name appealed because of its similarity to the Australian pie manufacturer, Herbert Addams.

The Body in the Bunker by Herbert Adams

First published in 1935, this British crime novel goes on a bit too much about golf, but is otherwise a good read. The villain is a nasty piece of work, so when his body is found in the bunker, no one is too upset. Unfortunately suspicion falls on the innocent, the police are misled, and a young barrister has to find the real culprit.

The main drawback of the book is that it's edited by Rafat Allam for the Al-Mashreq eBookstore. There's no editor's note to say what's been edited or why, so I'm blaming the minor mistakes, clumsiness and misspellings on the editor e.g. flowery potatoes instead of floury, an intrusive use of "like", Americanised spelling. But it's available free with KoboPlus, so I'm prepared to forgive.

I've started The Judas Kiss by the same author, but gave up on Tracks in the Snow by Lord Charnwood which I'd selected because it was his only crime novel and he was a Baron. But a Baron writing about a vicar isn't all that interesting.

110VivienneR
Oct 31, 3:20 pm

>102 pamelad: Your trip sounds wonderful and Kangaroo Island looks idyllic!

111pamelad
Oct 31, 6:07 pm

>110 VivienneR: It is, and it's lovely to have local koalas to visit. Parts of Kangaroo Island were affected by bush fires during the summer of 2019-2020 but the vegetation is coming back.

112pamelad
Oct 31, 6:18 pm

9. CATs CalendarCAT

The Judas Kiss by Herbert Adams was mentioned in Jacques Barzun's Catalogue of Crime. It was first published in 1955, twenty years after The Body in the Bunker, and is heavily moralistic. Many of the women in the book have lived with men outside the sanctity of marriage, which is just wrong and leads to the children of these unions having reduced moral sensibility! Adams was eighty or so when he wrote the book.

I found the moralising quaint, so it added to the entertainment of this classic British crime novel. A wealthy widower returns from France with a wife the same age as his oldest son. His four children are horrified and, two deaths later, are suspects in a murder.

113pamelad
Nov 3, 4:16 pm

6. Crime

Sixpenny Holding by Margaret Scutt

First published in 2018 but written much earlier (the author lived from 1905 to 1988 and this book seems to be set in the fifties), this is a gentle, cosy crime story. Marian has spent years looking after her invalid mother, and in her forties, after her mother's death, she buys a primitive cottage at the edge of a small village. she wants to become a writer, but her writing time is drastically reduced when she has to take in her four-year-old niece. There's a little bit of mystery involving an escaped convict and another man who is making her neighbour's life a misery. but at no time does it seem that things will turn out badly.

A pleasant, soothing read. A Kindle bargain.

114threadnsong
Nov 3, 11:01 pm

>105 pamelad: Yes, that's the perspective/history I was referring to. How Churchill changed the dynamics in Britain by not appeasing Hitler, and Chamberlain was all about not making waves. >107 Tess_W: And while it is taught in the US, Chamberlain and his appeasement is not given the same weight as the entrance of the US into WWII. Churchill is mentioned much more often (if memory serves) than Chamberlain.

115pamelad
Nov 3, 11:47 pm

>114 threadnsong: France and Italy were part of the Munich Agreement because they also wanted to avoid war. It wasn’t just Chamberlain.

I’m not sure what you mean in your reply to Tess - the relationship between Chamberlain and the entry of the US into WWII is not clear to me.

116pamelad
Nov 18, 10:08 pm

10. PrizeCAT

The Secret Countess a.k.a A Countess Below Stairs by Eva Ibbotson

This YA historical romance was a finalist for the Nestlé Smarties Book Prize. Anna escaped to England from revolutionary Russia with her mother and younger brother. The family entrusted their jewels to their wet nurse but she disappeared, leaving the family dependent on their English governess. Anna finds work as a maid so that she can contribute to her family's support.

This being a YA novel, the good people were very, very good and the bad people were very, very bad. Anna and her employer Rupert, a penurious earl, fall in love, but he's betrothed to the evil Muriel who is a devoted follower of the eugenicist, Dr Lightfoot, who is not even a real doctor.

I enjoyed The Secret Countess for its charm and humour.

117pamelad
Nov 18, 10:25 pm

10. CalendarCAT

Nothing Like Blood by Leo Bruce

Helena Gort, an old friend of Carolus Deene's mother, persuades Deene to investigate two suspicious deaths at the guesthouse where she has been staying. This entertaining, humorous mystery was recommended in A Catalogue of Crime by Jaques Barzun, who was born in November.

I've read another two, >109 pamelad: and >112 pamelad:, from The Catalogue of Crime, a drop in the ocean, but it's a reference book and I've referred, so I'm counting it and its author for the CAT.

118pamelad
Nov 18, 11:40 pm

I've just returned from a short trip to central Victoria. We visited some galleries and a plant nursery, had a look at some nice little towns, and drove along some scenic back roads we hadn't come across before. The local auto club was offering a very big bargain at one of its resorts, and I couldn't pass it up!

119christina_reads
Nov 19, 10:19 am

>116 pamelad: I'm glad you enjoyed the Ibbotson! Her books are the ultimate comfort reads for me.

120pamelad
Edited: Nov 20, 3:45 pm

>119 christina_reads: The Morning Gift and Madensky Square are on my radar now.

6. Crime

The Fifth Man by Manning Coles

Five men in a German prison camp are offered the chance of returning to England to become spies for the Germans. They accept because they want to get back to England, with no intention of working for the Germans. One of the men, a major, disappears in Berlin, and this is his story. At the beginning I was drawn in because I thought the narrative was going somewhere, but it was a collection of episodes that described how the missing major evaded capture. I wanted him to survive, so kept on reading to make sure, but the plot meandered around without a focus.

The Fifth Man was first published in 1946. It's the sixth book in the Tommy Hambledon series.

121Tess_W
Nov 21, 11:45 pm

>120 pamelad: Did you perhaps read books 1-5? I've read this one, also, in the very distant past, and felt the same as you.......waiting for a plot!

122pamelad
Nov 24, 4:19 pm

>121 Tess_W: I read the first one ages ago and don't remember much, but the second one, A Toast to Tomorrow, made an impression because of its utterly ludicrous plot. The Fifth Man appeared in a list, I think, because I went looking for it. I should write these things down.

The Mystery of Mrs Blencarrow by Margaret Oliphant

Mrs Blencarrow is a widow in her early forties, a self-possessed, capable woman who is the well-loved mother of five children. She's such a paragon that one of her neighbours, a vicious shrew, would like nothing more than to destroy Mrs Blencarrow's reputation.

This novella was first published in 1990. It's an interesting snippet of country society and its rigid class structure. As usual with Mrs Oliphant, the characters are well-drawn and believable.

123Tess_W
Nov 26, 3:38 pm

>122 pamelad: I'll pass on any future Coles' books. I do believe you are correct about being on a list, somewhere.........

I've got an anthology of Oliphant books I really need to get started on!

124pamelad
Dec 1, 10:03 pm

6. Crime

Case Without a Corpse by Leo Bruce

Young Rogers enters the public bar, announces to Sergeant Beef that he is a murderer, then dies by ingesting cyanide. Who's dead? Is it the suspicious Mr Fairfax who has been hanging around this small country town pretending to be fishing? Is it Rogers' discarded girlfriend? Perhaps it's Sawyer, an unhappy husband? Beef reports the case to Scotland Yard because it's odd and he thinks they ought to know, but the Yard is disdainful and tells Beef to get on with it. Eventually though, the briskly capable Stute arrives to take over.

Case Without a Corpse was recommended in A Catalogue of Crime. It's the second Sergeant Beef mystery, and like the first, Case for Three Detectives, is entertaining and funny. First published in 1937, it satirises the conventions of the Golden Age Detective novel.

I enjoyed it, but despite Sergeant Beef is extremely annoying. Deliberately so.

125pamelad
Dec 3, 1:08 am

My 18th LT anniversary was on the 30th of November. It slipped by again! I'm trying to buy only books I want to read right now, rather than adding any more to the tbr pile, because Segu and The Books of Jacob are still unread from 2021. It's only since joining LT that I've realised that many people have hundreds, even thousands, of books on their tbr piles. I have over a hundred now, but some are freebies, therefore optional.

When I've finished the two books I'm reading, I'll buy myself a book treat.

126MissWatson
Dec 3, 4:29 am

Happy belated Thingaversary! I’ll be loojing forward to learn more about your choice for a book treat. Nice word, by the way.

127dudes22
Dec 3, 6:24 am

Happy Thingaversary. I'll have 17 years the beginning of January and I've forgotten mine on more than one occasion. After the hoopla of Christmas, I often don't want to increase my TBR pile, so I keep track and call some of the books I've bought in the past year but not read as my Thingaversary purchase.

128pamelad
Dec 3, 7:45 pm

>126 MissWatson:, >127 dudes22: Thank you!

5. Around the World
9. PrizeCAT

The Vegetarian by Han Kang

Yeong-hye stops eating meat because her dreams are drenched in blood. Her violent father and her husband, Mr Cheung who relates the first section of this three-part story, try to force her to do what they want but Yeong-kye would rather die than eat meat.

In the second section Yeon-hye is seen through the eyes of her brother-in-law, a video artist who has been obsessed with her ever since he was told that she has a birth mark, a Mongolian mark that is often found on children but rarely on adults.

In-hye, the older sister of Yeon-hye, narrates the third and last section and in trying to see her sister's point of view, realises how little autonomy she herself has.

Yeon-hye is seen only from the perspective of others, except for her dreams, which intersperse Mr Cheung's narrative. The three male chracters are all awful, and the two women have little control over their lives. The book is steeped in misery and gloom, but since it's short the bleakness is manageable. The Vegetarian is fascinating and strange.

129Tess_W
Edited: Dec 6, 12:15 am

>125 pamelad: So restrained! When I began LT I had about 1000-1500 books on my TBR. I'm down to about 500 now and hope to get under that 500 number in 2025. Happy thingaversary!

130pamelad
Dec 6, 2:50 pm

>129 Tess_W: Thanks Tess. Congratulations on whittling down the tbr. A big reason for my restraint was the high price of books in Australia. Ebooks are very much cheaper than paper books, so I'm more likely these days to buy books on impulse. And there are lots of freebies, particularly the classics.

I've bought an anniversary book treat and already read it! Small Bomb at Dimperley by Lissa Evans, which I really enjoyed. Back to review it later.

131pamelad
Edited: Dec 6, 9:37 pm

5. Around the World
9. CalendarCAT

The Village of Eight Graves by Seishi Yokomizo

This plot has everything! There are secret caves, a lost treasure, a missing psychopath who murdered at least 32 people with a machete, numerous poisonings, a newly-discovered heir, and a romance. The story is narrated by Tatsuya, son of the unwilling mistress of Yozo, the head of the wealthy Tajimi family. Twenty-six years ago Yozo went berserk, killed many innocent villages and disappeared. When Tatsuya is found, the killings begin again, but this time the victims are poisoned.

Exuberantly entertaining and quite mad.

132pamelad
Edited: Dec 7, 2:16 am

2. Wish List

Small Bomb at Dimperley by Lissa Evans

Valentine Vere-Thissett is a disappointment to his mother, but when her favourite son is finally declared dead after being missing-in-action for two years, Valentine succeeds to the baronetcy and inherits Dimberley, the family's decrepit estate. During the war Dimberley was a home for pregnant women who had been evacuated from London during the blitz. Zena Baxter has stayed on with her daughter Allison as the secretary of Valentine's Uncle Alaric, who is writing a long, tedious history of Dimberley and the Thissetts.

Small Bomb at Dimperley is charming, funny and cheerful. As my first 18th LT Anniversary book treat it was an excellent choice.

133pamelad
Edited: Dec 6, 11:08 pm

Two more for the LT anniversary and a wish list find on KoboPlus.

I've bought Margo's Got Money Troubles from my wish list, and The Editor's Wife because Clare Chambers popped up on the LT list of writers similar to Lissa Evans, and Death at the Durbar, a VivienneR book bullet which is in KoboPlus.

134christina_reads
Dec 9, 11:02 am

>132 pamelad: Adding Small Bomb at Dimperley to my list immediately!

135pamelad
Dec 9, 3:11 pm

>134 christina_reads: I think you'll like it.

2. Wish List

Death at the Durbar by Arjun Raj Gaind

The 1911 Delhi Durbar was held to celebrate the coronation of George V, and was the first durbar to be attended by royalty. It was a huge display of Britain's wealth and power. The maharajahs of India attended because they had to publicly support the Raj or be deposed by the British. The descriptions of the durbar, the machinations of the maharajas, and the snippets of Indian history are the most interesting aspects of the book.

A dancing girl, who had been purchased as a gift for the king, is found murdered just two days before the king's arrival. The Viceroy asks Sikander Singh, the Maharajah of Rajpore, to investigate. There's a huge cast of suspects, which is hard to keep track of, particularly since the suspect maharajas are all known by multiple names. At least one maharajah is a psychopath and most of the others have motives, so the plot consists of Sikander interviewing multiple maharajahs and using his intuition to decide whether or not they are guilty.

The plot's a mess and the writing is riddled with cliches, but the story is interesting because of the historical context.

136Tess_W
Dec 10, 4:27 pm

>130 pamelad: Sounds lovely. I've got her Old Baggage as an ebook and will read it before I see this one out.

I agree about ebooks--they are cheaper and few other plusses: don't cramp your bookshelves, don't have to be dusted, can be read at night without a light, can take all of them with you when you go away!

137pamelad
Edited: Dec 17, 6:26 pm

>136 Tess_W: Old Baggage is the first book in the series, but it's a sort of prequel. I liked it, but enjoyed the first published book of the series, Crooked Heart, even more and would start there.

7. Non-fiction

The Real Bridgerton by Catherine Curzon

Snippets of Georgian scandals. Entertaining enough to read for free from KoboPlus, but there's not much to it.

1. Books I Own

The Blue Santo Murder Mystery by Margaret Armstrong

First published in 1941, this mystery is now part of the Lost Crime Classics series. It is set in the American west, still a wild and remote place. Most of the characters are tourists who are staying at an up-market hotel. One of the guests, a rich and ruthless businesswoman, is murdered. Was it revenge? Was it her philandering husband? Was she killed for the $80,000 pearls she always wore? (In 1941 that must have been a fortune.)

A pedestrian mystery, but atmospheric.

13. More Historical Fiction

Greygallows by Barbara Michaels

A classic gothic romantic mystery, Greygallows has all the requirements: an orphaned heiress; a handsome vicar; a wicked aunt; an isolated mansion on the moors; an aristocratic, unknowable husband with a terrible reputation; a rumoured ghost; a beautiful woman who avoids the heroine.

A predictable story done well. Just what I felt like reading.

138pamelad
Edited: Dec 20, 12:05 am

1. Books I Own
13. More Historical Fiction

The Pride of the Peacock by Victoria Holt

I'm in a Gothic frame of mind so I enjoyed this one even though it has many faults.

Jessica is the misfit of the Clavering family, decades younger than her sister Miriam and brother Gerald. The Claverings have come down in the world and have had to sell the family mansion to a one-legged opal miner. Miriam, Gerald and their father are browbeaten by the angry, domineering Mrs Clavering but Jessica is a free spirit. She makes friends with the miner, and spends the second half of the book living in a mining town north of Sydney.

The problems with the story are: there's fabulous opal that brings misery to all who own it; a town is named Fancy; it's hard to sympathise with Jessica's fear of her husband, so there's not a lot of Gothic romance tension; Aboriginal people are stereotyped; the plot is so very unlikely.

139pamelad
Edited: Dec 21, 11:54 pm

This year I discovered Joan Aiken's historical novels, starting with The Five-Minute Marriage and following up with five more. She tells a rollicking story. Today there's an article in The Guardian celebrating the centenary of Aiken's birth. She's best remembered for her children's novels, but there's a mention of an adult novel I hadn't come across, Trouble with Product X aka Beware of the Bouquet, so I've bought it. Perhaps there are others? I hope so.

140Tess_W
Dec 22, 1:54 am

>139 pamelad: Going to have to set my mind to read these--I an anthology with 5 books on my virtual shelf.

141pamelad
Edited: Dec 25, 9:56 pm

>140 Tess_W: Which books are in your anthology, Tess?

9. CalendarCAT

The Girl from Paris by Joan Aiken is the third and last book in the Paget family trilogy. I could put it in my romance thread but, as I've come to expect from Aiken, the romance is perfunctory and not the main point of the book. I'd say that the theme is the corrupting influence of money.

Ella Paget is working as a teacher in a Brussels boarding school when her godmother swoops in and removes her to Paris, where Ella will be teaching the small daughter of a Comte, whose wife wants nothing to do with him. Ella's godmother wants Ella to befriend the wife and fix the marriage. A scandal erupts, and Ella moves back to England to look after her miserly father and small half-sister, Vicky. Vicki's other half-sibling is Benedict Masham, the younger brother of an earl and son of Ella's father's second wife.

Like the previous book in the series, The Weeping Ash, The Girl from Paris is a meandering tale with an abrupt ending. Once again I got the impression that Aiken killed off a few characters because she was sick of them and wanted to finish the book! That said, I was entertained and had to keep reading. Four people died in the final chapter. I was really annoyed!

142pamelad
Dec 25, 9:51 pm

6. Crime

Waiting for Willa by Dorothy Eden

Grace Asherton receives a letter from her cousin Willa, who has been working as a secretary for the British Embassy in Stockholm. It contains a secret code that tells Grace that Willa is afraid and needs help, so she rushes to Stockholm, only to find that Willa is missing. Willa's diary names four men, any of whom might be implicated in Willa's disappearance. One of them is Polson, a university lecturer who lives in the attic. Grace decides to trust him, but should she? She is looking for Gustav, Willa's lover. It's a false name, so Gustav might be Polson, or Willa's boss at the embassy, or the sea captain upstairs, or an elderly Baron whose beautiful wife ignores him. Can Grace find Willa before it's too late? Is Grace in danger?

I enjoyed this short, tidy romantic suspense.

143Tess_W
Dec 26, 4:28 am

>141 pamelad: I guess I used an incorrect word--- I should have said I have 5 of her books on my virtual shelf--the first five books in The Wolves of Willoughby Chase series.

144pamelad
Dec 27, 11:38 pm

1. Books I Own

The Editor's Wife by Clare Chambers

I looked up similar writers to Lissa Evans and found Clare Chambers so I thought I'd give her a try. Perhaps this wasn't the best book to start with, because I found the characters dreary and unsympathetic, so I had little interest in what happened to them. Liking the characters isn't a prerequisite for liking a book if it has something to say, but this one didn't. The writing was fine, so Clare Chambers is probably worth another try.

Glad I've finished it.

145VivienneR
Yesterday, 5:32 pm

Wishing you a happy, healthy New Year - and anticipating lots of BBs coming my way!