Susan's categories for 2024 - Thread 3

Hello!

Welcome to my third thread, for the last four months of the year. In this thread I will become a retired person, which is exciting. I have three weeks to go and then I'll be able to spend all my time reading as opposed to just *most*of it.

As I live in London, my categories are based on the London Underground (and Overground) lines.

1. The Elizabeth line is London’s newest line, so this category is for books published in 2024.



I love this image of Her Majesty opening the line in May 2022. It was one of her last public engagements. The Earl of Wessex (as he then was, also pictured above) was going to do the opening and people were milling about waiting for him to arrive when the staff at Paddington station took down the plaque with his name on it and set up a new plaque at a lower height :-)

1. One of the Good Guys by Araminta Hall
2. The House on Rye Lane by Susan Allott
3. Death on the Lusitania by R L Graham
4. Has Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter? by Nicci French
5. The Women by Kristin Hannah
6. The Great Divide by Cristina Henriquez
7. Saltblood by Francesca De Tores
8. The Beholders by Hester Musson
9. Mary I: Queen of Sorrows by Alison Weir
10. My Family and Other Rock Stars by Tiffany Murray
11. Mockingbird Summer by Lydia Rutledge
12. Writing on the Wall by Madeleine Pelling
13. Our Holiday by Louise Candlish
14. Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed by Maureen Callahan
15. A Little Trickerie by Rosanna Pike
16. A Mudlarking Year: Finding Treasure in Every Season by Lara Maiklem
17. The Stranger's Companion by Mary Horlock
18. Safe Enough by Lee Child
19. Melting Point by Rachel Cockerell
20. Le Fay by Sophie Keetch
21. The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
22. The King's Messenger by Susanna Kearsley
23. A Voyage Around the Queen by Craig Brown
24. The Examiner by Janice Hallett
25. The Walnut Tree: Women, Violence and the Law - A Hidden History by Kate Morgan
26. The Undesirables: The Law That Locked Away a Generation by Sarah Wise
27. The Everything War by Dana Mattioli
28. Vulture Capitalism by Grace Blakeley
29. Eden Undone by Abbott Kahler
30. When the Moon Hatched by Sarah A Parker
31. Kingmaker by Sonia Purnell

2. The Victoria line was named after another Queen. This is my category for Victorian literature, as October is “Victober” on BookTube and it’s made me determined to read more Victorian books all year long. (Hmmm - I wrote that in January but my determination has not so far led to any Victorian books being finished)



1. The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
2. Uncle Silas by J Sheridan Le Fanu
3. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
4. A Thousand Miles Up The Nile by Amelia B Edwards
5. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
6. The Doctor's Wife by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
7. New Grub Street by George Gissing
8. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
9. The Notting Hill Mystery by Charles Warren Adams
10. Sybil, or The Two Nations by Benjamin Disraeli
11. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
12. The Chimes by Charles Dickens
13. The Cricket on the Hearth by Charles Dickens
14. Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens

3. The Piccadilly line has the shortest distance between two stations. Leicester Square and Covent Garden are just 260 metres apart and the trip takes about 20 seconds. This category is for short stories.



1. Epic: Legends of Fantasy ed John Joseph Adams
2. Sabrina & Corina by Kali Fajardo-Anstine
3. The Casuarina Tree by W Somerset Maugham
4. Supporting Cast by Kit de Waal
5. Never Have I Ever by Isabel Yap
6. Normal Rules Don't Apply by Kate Atkinson
7. Roar by Cecelia Ahern
8. Bodies from the Library ed Tony Medawar
9. First Thrills ed Lee Child
10. The Man in Black by Elly Griffiths

4. The Overground is the orange line, seen all over London. Many years ago these lines were owned by different rail companies but a London mayor bought them up, rebranded them and they became the Overground. As there are so many parts of the line, it’s perfect for my series reading.



1. The Tinner's Corpse by Bernard Knight
2. The Secret by Lee Child and Andrew Child
3. The Late Train to Gipsy Hill by Alan Johnson
4. The Last Party by Clare Mackintosh
5. A Game of Lies by Clare Mackintosh
6. Devil's Breath by Jill Johnson
7. The Missing and the Dead by Stuart MacBride
8. Outcast by Michelle Paver
9. Raining Men and Corpses by Anne R Tan
10. Bake It To The Limit by Wendy Meadows
11. Dr Shine Cracks the Case by Cathy Tully
12. Scene of the Grind by Tonya Kappes
13. A Cutthroat Business by Jenna Bennett
14. Caramel Pecan Roll Murder by Joanne Fluke
15. Blue Monday by Nicci French
16. Butter, Sugar, Magic by Jessica Rosenberg
17. Witchy Coffee by Erin Rich
18. New Witch on the Block by Louisa West
19. The Crone of Midnight Embers by Iris Beaglehole
20. Bedsocks and Broomsticks by G Clatworthy
21. The Great Loveda Brown by Jolie Tunnell
22. The Killing Hour by Paul Cleave
23. A Good Girl's Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson
24. Birthdays for the Dead by Stuart MacBride
25. Good Girl, Bad Blood by Holly Jackson
26. Memory Man by David Baldacci
27. As Good As Dead by Holly Jackson
28. The Last Devil to Die by Richard Osman
29. The Last Word by Elly Griffiths
30. A Death in Cornwall by Daniel Silva
31. Binding 13 by Chloe Walsh
32. My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout
33. Anything is Possible by Elizabeth Strout
34. Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout
35. Three-Inch Teeth by C J Box
36. Addicted to You by Krista and Becca Ritchie
37. Ricochet by Krista and Becca Ritchie
38. Addicted For Now by Krista and Becca Ritchie

5. The Metropolitan line is the oldest part of the tube. This is my category for historical reads.



1. The Wager by David Grann
2. The Temple of Fortuna by Elodie Harper
3. Pompeii by Robert Harris
4. Act of Oblivion by Robert Harris
5. Absolutely & Forever by Rose Tremain
6. Papyrus: The Invention of Books in the Ancient World by Irene Vallejo
7. The Bookbinder of Jericho by Pip Williams
8. Frostquake by Juliet Nicolson
9. Hungry Ghosts by Kevin Jared Hosein
10. Loot by Tania James
11. In the Shadow of Vesuvius: A Life of Pliny by Daisy Dunn
12. The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng
13. My Father's House by Joseph O'Connor
14. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
15. Fabulosa!: The Story of Polari, Britain's Secret Gay Language by Paul Fraser
16. The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson
17. Butcher's Crossing by John Williams
18. A Calamity of Mannerings by Joanna Nadin
19. Young Queens by Leah Redmond Chang
20. The Slaves of Solitude by Patrick Hamilton
21. Coffee with Hitler by Charles Spicer
22. Cuddy by Benjamin Myers
23. Courting India by Nandini Das
24. Learned by Heart by Emma Donoghue
25. The Long Ships by Frans G Bengtsson
26. Gentlemen of Uncertain Fortune by Rory Muir
27. The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple by Jeff Guinn
28. Yellow Wife by Sadeqa Johnson
29. The Dark Lantern by Henry Williamson
30. The Indifferent Stars Above by Daniel James Brown
31. The Fraud by Zadie Smith
32. Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
33. Amazing Grace: The Great Days of Dukes by E S Turner
34. Donkey Boy by Henry Williamson
35. Royal Betrayal by Michael Scott
36. Cecily by Annie Garthwaite
37. Queen Mary by James Pope-Hennessy
38. Lady Tan's Circle of Women by Lisa See
39. Young Phillip Maddison by Henry Williamson
40. The Far Pavilions by M M Kaye

6. The Docklands Light Railway trains are driverless, which means you can sit right at the front and have a roller-coaster experience. This is my category for thrillers.



1. African Dawn by Tony Park
2. The Death Knock by Elodie Harper
3. The Quiet People by Paul Cleave
4. Far Horizon by Tony Park
5. Don't Swipe Right by L M Chilton
6. The Defector by Chris Hadfield
7. The Housemaid is Watching by Freida McFadden
8. The Silence by Susan Allott
9. The Spy Coast by Tess Gerritsen

7. The Hammersmith and City line goes through King’s Cross, home to platform 9 ¾ in the Harry Potter books. This is my fantasy category. This year I want to read one of the Raymond E Feist books every month. I’ve read the first three so far and I can see why they’re so enduringly popular.



1. Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb
2. Servant of the Empire by Raymond E Feist and Janny Wurts
3. Morgan Is My Name by Sophie Keetch
4. A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J Maas
5. Royal Assassin by Robin Hobb
6. The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu
7. Mistress of the Empire by Raymond E Feist and Janny Wurts
8. Assassin's Quest by Robin Hobb
9. The Witch's Heart by Genevieve Gornichec
10. Caraval by Stephanie Garber
11. Prince of the Blood by Raymond E Feist
12. Medea by Rosie Hewlett
13. A Fate Inked in Blood by Danielle L Jensen
14. The King's Buccaneer by Raymond E Feist
15. Fool's Errand by Robin Hobb
16. One Dark Window by Rachel Gillig

8. The District line goes to the South Kensington museums - the Science Museum, the Natural History Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum, commonly known as the V&A. This is my category for science and nature writing.



1. Pathogenesis by Jonathan Kennedy
2. Krakatoa by Simon Winchester
3. The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk
4. Impossible Monsters by Michael Taylor
5. Magisteria: The Entangled Histories of Science and Religion by Nicholas Spencer
6. Material World: A Substantial Story of Our Past and Future by Ed Conway
7. The Last of Its Kind: The Search for the Great Auk and the Discovery of Extinction by Gisli Palsson
8. The War Below by Ernest Scheyler
9. Farewell Mr Puffin by Paul Heiney

9. The Waterloo and City line runs from Waterloo to Bank, taking City workers across (well, under) the river into the City for their working day. This is going to be my category for books about business and all the things that go wrong with it. Will we see another WeWork or Theranos in 2024? Probably.



1. Very Bad People by Patrick Alley
2. Glossy: Ambition, Beauty and the Inside Story of Emily Weiss's Glossier by Marisa Meltzer
3. Bad Buying by Peter Smith
4. The End of Reality by Jonathan Taplin
5. When McKinsey Comes to Town by Walt Bogdanich
6. How to Stay Smart in a Smart World by Gert Gigerenzer
7. Cobalt Red by Siddharth Kara
8. Going Infinite by Michael Lewis
9. Dopesick by Beth Macy
10. Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe
11. Pain Killer by Barry Meier
12. Pain Hustlers by Evan Hughes
13. Anansi's Gold: The Man Who Swindled the World by Yepoka Yeebo
14. Bringing Home The Birkin by Michael Tonello
15. The Revenge of Analog by David Sax
16. Narconomics: How to Run a Drug Cartel by Tom Wainwright
17. You May Never See Us Again by Jane Martinson

10. The Central line runs from way out in the west to far out in the east. West End shopping? St Paul’s? The Bank of England? The Central line has something for everyone. This is my final category, for books that don’t fit into any of the others.



1. A Sunday by the Pool in Kigali by Gil Courtemanche
2. The Egg and I by Betty MacDonald
3. Bleaker House by Nell Stevens
4. Femlandia by Christina Dalcher
5. Portable Magic by Emma Smith
6. The Sentence by Christina Dalcher
7. The Binding Song by Elodie Harper
8. Poverty, by America by Matthew Desmond
9. Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll
10. In the Beginning by Simon Edge
11. Atomic Habits by James Clear
12. High Time by Hannah Rothschild
13. The Seventh Son by Sebastian Faulks
14. Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson
15. The Five-Star Weekend by Elin Hilderbrand
16. The Perfect Couple by Elin Hilderbrand
17. Uncommon Grounds by Mark Pendergrast
18. Long Bright River by Liz Moore
19. Clutter by Jennifer Howard

Welcome!

I'm going to post the "Victober" announcement video I mentioned in my last thread, for anyone who's interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynyQHVDh190

The BookTubers (different ones) are also doing "Spinster September": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5E_JZsKSZo

>12 susanj67: I watched all four Victober announcements yesterday because I want to try to read (some of?) the challenges this year. My October is looking kind of overwhelming, though, so I'm not sure how much I'll accomplish. Good luck with your Victorian reading!

>13 NinieB: Good luck to you too, Ninie! Last year I read The Way We Live Now, which was the group read, and I also read Hester and Coningsby and I started A Thousand Miles Up The Nile, which I still haven't finished. I should stop reserving things from the library in good time for October, but that doesn't really sound like me.

Having watched the Spinster September video, I am tempted to sneak in yet another reread of He Knew He Was Right, which has the Best Spinster in the World in it in Jemima Stanbury.

Happy new thread.
Good luck with your Victorians.

Happy new thread.

Happy new thread! I look forward to your Victober reading list.

>15 Helenliz: Thanks Helen!

>16 lowelibrary: Thank you, April.

>17 VivienneR: Thanks Vivienne! I am still thinking about my list, but mostly trying to finish library books in good time.



Writing on the Wall: Graffiti, Rebellion and the Making of Eighteenth-Century Britain by Madeleine Pelling

This is a really interesting look at the 18th century, told with reference to graffiti left by protesters, prisoners and people who just wanted to say they were there. Some survives, but other graffiti was written about at the time and then disappeared. In Victorian times it became socially unacceptable, as it is today (unless you're Banksy), but in the 18th century it was common, and there are lots of illustrations of famous prints and paintings which include graffiti/drawings on the walls of rooms as quite a normal thing. I'll certainly be looking at 18th century works more closely in the future. This is a great read, and will interest anyone who likes British history.

I'll take this back to the library at lunchtime, where Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed is ready to pick up.

>1 susanj67: 3 weeks to go! I dream of such a thing! I hope your last few weeks fly by and retirement is all you hope for it!

>19 Jackie_K: Thanks Jackie! As I was leaving work last night I thought about it being dark in the evenings soon, and then realised that I won't be out at that time, waiting at the bus stop and hoping I don't get rained on. No more rush hour!



Our Holiday by Louise Candlish

I like this author's books, which are always cleverly plotted. This one was too, although it seemed very long. Maybe that was just because I had an e version. It's set near Bournemouth, in a coastal town where the locals are protesting against second home owners, and the second home owners are trying to have a holiday in the middle of it all. And then a building falls off a cliff (not a spoiler - it happens on the first page). The self-righteous teenagers are really well written. An A-level student thinks of someone else as "really old - maybe 25" and there are social justice warrior university students full of nonsense. The long-suffering parents are well done too, and there are lots of plot twists and general running around.

>20 susanj67: And no more dark winter mornings waiting for a bus in the rain.

I'm taking a BB for Louise Candlish.

>21 VivienneR: And no more alarm clocks! Also no more early morning medical/dental etc appointments, as I will have all day to go to them.



Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed by Maureen Callahan

This is a great read, looking at the women who were used and abused by Kennedy men. They include Jackie Kennedy, Carolyn Bessette, Mary Richardson Kennedy, Mary Jo Kopechne, Kathleen Kennedy, Rosemary Kennedy, Joan Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe. Why the Kennedy men have been allowed to get away with it for so long, and the family is still so feted in the US, is an enduring mystery to me. I saw the James Patterson book about the family at the library yesterday but managed to resist it, although now I wish I'd got it while the family tree is still at the top of my mind. Maybe next week, once I finish some books.

The current stack:

Safe Enough - short stories by Lee Child
A Little Trickerie
The Stranger's Companion
Yellow Wife
The Defector
The Dark Lantern, which is the first in a long series that's apparently famous although I'd never heard of it. It was originally published in 1951, and my library copy looks like a first edition :-O (it isn't - it just looks like it)
The Road to Jonestown
A Mudlarking Year

A Little Trickerie by Rosanna Pike

This is a fabulous historical debut, based on a real incident around 1500. Tibb Ingleby, the narrator of the novel, is a vagrant whose mother has always promised that one day they will have a roof over their heads. But Tibb's life is a hard one, and the roof seems elusive. I loved this, and the UK hardback cover is perfection (it makes sense once you get into the story).

Hi Susan, Happy new thread to you!

>24 mdoris: Thank you, Mary!



A Mudlarking Year: Finding Treasure in Every Season by Lara Maiklem

This is a follow-up to the author's very popular Mudlarking, which was published in 2020. It covers 2022 as the author searches for more finds on the foreshore of the Thames. It's an interesting read, at least partly for all the history of London content. But she does address the problem of sewage being pumped into the river far too often (not just a London problem - it happens everywhere). This is what puts me off going down to have a look. The Thames Tideway Tunnel (known locally as the "super sewer") is supposed to start operating next year and may make things better in London but the water companies need much tighter regulation.

The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple by Jeff Guinn

This is a very detailed look at Jim Jones and the eventual mass killing of his followers at "Jonestown", in Guyana. Most of the world's attention has focused on what happened that day in 1978, but most of Jones's work was in the US, and in the early days he and the "Temple" actually did a lot of good. But then he started taking drugs, and decided that he could have multiple "wives", and the usual lunatic playbook swung into operation. "Enjoyed" is the wrong word for this book, but it was well done. I can't remember now whether I heard about Jonestown at the time it happened (I was nearly 11) or whether I've only learned about it afterwards, but I didn't know a lot about its history.

>26 susanj67: I remember the incident very well. I had an interest in cults (from an apologetics standpoint) at the time and did a lot of research into them. In fact, my presentation topic for the 1945 and after section of our US History class in high school was cults. I naturally focused more on the cults that gained notoriety in the 1960s because they were tied to the youth/young adult culture and that was what our teacher intended, but since Jonestown had just happened, I definitely included it.

>27 thornton37814: Lori, it must have been terrifying hearing about it at the time, as the news came in bit by bit. I wondered whether modern communications would have made the members feel less isolated, but I suppose they would have had their phones taken off them. What struck me from the book was the way Jones went on and on about "the government" wanting to put them all in concentration camps or kill them, even though both the US and Guyana governments were bending over backwards to let them live in peace. But I suppose that's common with all cults - the idea that only the people in the cult are looking out for you and the rest of the world is against you.

I seem to have acquired a germ, so I'm coughing all the time. So annoying! I don't want to cough on my library books so I've set them aside and I downloaded The Kennedy Curse from the elibrary yesterday. It's the book I saw at the library in hard copy last week. It's a fairly fast read so far, and it definitely helps to have the family tree in my head.

We had a huge electrical storm over London last night, which went on for ages. I only learned a few years ago that thunder is the noise of the lightning, which is embarrassing. I never thought to ask why they always happen together and there are no storms with just one or the other.

Quote of the day, from a BookTuber about The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle: "It's set in the olden days - I wanna say Regency."

It's set in the 1920s.

My cough has calmed down, so I'm back to my library books. The Stranger's Companion is my current read, but it's really not compelling. Applying my usual test of "How would I feel if this book burst into flames in front of me?" the answer is that I wouldn't care at all.

That's a great test!
My current book involves a book being used to light a pipe, page by page. The main character is somewhat perturbed by this. I don't feel the same about my current read.

>30 Helenliz: Helen, it's a test I use from time to time :-) Often I DNF a book but this time I kept going.



The Stranger's Companion by Mary Horlock

I *should* have liked this. The premise is a good one. It's a nod to the "Golden Age" of crime novels, and it's set on Sark in 1923 and 1933, so the dual timeline aspect is good. But there are too many people, and a storyline about ghosts and there's something incredibly disturbing about one of the strands of crime that's going on. It's not the "rotter bopped over the head with a candlestick" type of mystery. It's disturbing, and not in a good way.

Safe Enough by Lee Child

This is a collection of short stories Child has written over the years. I'd read one of them before, but the rest were new to me, and they were great. The hardback also has the first chapter of the 2024 Jack Reacher novel at the end and a bonus Reacher short story by Child and Tess Gerritsen, set in a small town in Maine with characters who feature in her hew book The Spy Coast. I'm definitely going to get that.

The Met Office says that "London and the UK" may be in for "Arctic" temperatures later in the week. That's strange wording, suggesting that London is somewhere other than the UK, but the Evening Standard is running a story about cold-weather clothes, just to get everyone in the mood. https://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/fashion/arctic-blast-london-fashion-north-f... It might be cold enough for puffa, which is very exciting.

A very belated happy new thread, Susan.

>33 Ameise1: Thanks Barbara!



Yellow Wife by Sadeqa Johnson

This is a very good historical novel starting in 1850, and based on (or inspired by) real people. There is a lot of violence in it, which might put people off, but it's a story that needs to be told.

I now have only *two* hard copy library books left, and a bit of The Kennedy Curse in e form. I am clearing the decks for Victober, and haven't reserved anything for days. Well, there was one thing yesterday, but there's a huge wait for that, so it's not going to disrupt my plans. I've got four things to return later, and I must hurry out of the library without looking at anything else. Those new book displays always get me.

The temperature has dropped in London, as forecast, and I could, at a pinch, have justified a puffa coat this morning. But I resisted, as I have to have something to graduate into when it gets even colder. I've reorganised my coats, which now all live in the cupboard in the hall. It has hooks on each side, where I have put *some* coats in the past, but I finally got a telescopic rod and put that across the cupboard and now all the coats are lined up and I can see I have too many (in theory. There is actually no such thing as too many coats). I've also put some hanging shoe storage pockets on the back of the door so I can rotate pairs of shoes in and out seasonally. It's very exciting, and I keep opening the door to peep at the new arrangements and feel delighted.

Oh, you are so well organised 😃.

>35 Ameise1: I think some seasonal clothes rearrangement is next - all the short-sleeved tops are being taken out of rotation for the winter :-)



The Kennedy Curse: Six Generations of Adultery, Addiction and Tragedy by James Patterson and Cynthia Fagen

This was an interesting comparison to Ask Not, which I read last week. The men feature most in this one, and the women are just collateral damage. Boys will be boys etc. And that seems to be the view of people in the US too, or they wouldn't pay this family so much attention. I do wonder, though, whether all the accidents and sudden deaths are actually an unusual amount of tragedy or we just know about them because (a) the family is so famous and (b) there are so many Kennedys, who all make a big thing of being Kennedys. Other families don't tend to stick together down so many generations, and don't have names that make the papers. As the subtitle says, there are now six generations of Kennedys in the "story", but how many other people would know all the details of their five-times great-grandparents and all their descendants? I have no clue about mine.

The Dark Lantern by Henry Williamson

This is the first book in a 15-book series, and I've already reserved book 2. The story starts in 1893 and the main character is Richard Maddison, a clerk at a private bank and, frankly, a very annoying person who these days would probably be in court for coercive control. He marries (but does not deserve) Hetty Turney, and this volume is about their early married life and the birth of their first child. Mostly, though, it's about London and Kent at that time. The part of Kent they live in was about to become part of London, so there is a lot about the encroachment of the city, the end of the old way of life and so on. I loved all the day-to-day details of life and I'm looking forward to the next instalment. I am, however, hoping for a slightly later edition of the book than this one, which was a 1966 reprint. That's older than I am, and yet it's still on the shelf at the library in Merton.

It's exciting that your library has such old book editions. Could also mean that there is no newer edition? For someone who lives in London and the surrounding area this series is certainly fascinating. It shows how it all began and how it has changed over this long period of time.

>38 Ameise1: Some of them seem to have been reprinted in 1984, because the next one I've reserved is a 1984 edition, so just 40 years old :-) They were written in the 1950s, and the style is very different from books written today, so it took a bit of getting used to, but it was a captivating read.

I now have just one more hard copy library book, which I plan to read tomorrow. Last night I started The Woman in White, making an early start on Victober. The great thing about books from that time is that the library has the e versions always available, so there is no waiting. They added a lot of Duke's Classics a few years ago so there are heaps of choices. So far for Victober I have on my list:

The Doctor's Wife, which is the group read
Wuthering Heights for the "Read a Victorian book that plays with form in some way" prompt
The Woman in White for the "Read a Victorian work by Wilkie Collins" prompt
Maybe David Copperfield, which I have in hard copy, for the "Read a Victorian work that was originally serialised" prompt
A Thousand Miles Up The Nile (which I need to finish from last year)

I've spent the afternoon watching a silly thriller series - Riptide. It was very good and twisty.

The Defector by Chris Hadfield

I saw this on Vivienne's thread (Hi Vivienne!) and it was a great recommendation :-) It's set during the cold war and, as the title suggests, involves someone defecting from the USSR to the USA. It really rattles along and I finished it very quickly. It's the second in a series which starts with The Apollo Murders and I hadn't read that one, but this is set in a different place and the earlier book is explained well enough. I think I will get it at some point, though. And I'll definitely look for the next one.

The Woman in White is coming along well, and is also pretty gripping. I've been watching some more Victober videos and I have even more possibilities now...But I've managed to borrow only one further hard copy, which is The Perfect Couple and I have just one more ebook arriving soon (tomorrow, in fact) so I should still be OK to read mostly Victorian things during October.

>40 susanj67: I'm so glad you enjoyed The Defector. I noticed a couple of days ago that Hadfield was interviewed about the two astronauts "stranded" in space. His comments should calm any concerns.

>41 VivienneR: I really hope those two astronauts get on, because it's a long time with someone you don't really like!



The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

This is my first Victorian read of the year, which is terrible. But at least I've started! One of the Victober prompts is to read a book by Wilkie Collins, so I can tick that off. I really enjoyed this, which is told by different people, and in a range of styles - letters, a diary etc. It was perhaps a bit long, but it was still a good read. Unlike The Moonstone, where I heard the "twist" before I read it, I had no idea what went on in this one, so it really was a mystery.

I am now free, having worked my last day on Friday and handed in all my gadgets and my pass to the building. It is already fabulous not to be checking work email all the time. I'n not sure whether retirement can start on the weekend, or whether I need to wait until tomorrow, which is a Monday, but either way I'm enjoying it so far :-) I went for a long walk yesterday and would have done the same today but it's supposed to be very rainy all day. It's a little bit rainy already and I don't want to get caught in the forecast thunderstorms, so I'm going to stay at home, cook proper food, work on a jigsaw and watch the new thing on the BBC with Sam Neill in it.

Happy retirement!

Happy retirement, Sunsan. Enjoy the new phase of your life. I can tell you from my own experience that it's great. 😃😎🥳

Happy retirement!

>43 MissWatson: Thank you, Birgit!

>44 Ameise1: Thanks Barbara! I do want to get out and about more, and you have been an inspiration there!

>45 Jackie_K: Thanks Jackie!

I've started reading The Indifferent Stars Above, which is about the Donner Party in the US. It's by the same author as The Boys in the Boat and I thought it was new, but he wrote it in 2008, so the publishers must be taking advantage of the success of The Boys in the Boat. It's very good so far. It arrived a bit unexpectedly from the elibrary so I'm fitting it in before getting back to my planned reading.

So far the deluge of rain hasn't arrived in London, which is vexing. Not that I want lots of rain, but if it isn't coming today, maybe it will come tomorrow, and I have already stayed at home today for it.

My colleagues gave me book-ends for my leaving present, and they are gorgeous. I'm going to "style" my hard-copy TBR pile, like an Instagrammer, and hopefully it will look a bit tidier.

>42 susanj67: Happy retirement! Sounds lovely.

The Woman in White is my favorite Wilkie Collins. I remember it seemed a bit long to me too but what a good story!

>47 NinieB: Thanks Ninie! I did enjoy all the different narrators, and particularly the part written by the uncle :-) I want to read some more Collins, and the elibrary has lots of them, available all the time.

I've spent the afternoon watching Apples Never Fall, which the BBC has bought from Peacock TV. I managed five episodes and then my TV earphones needed recharging, so I'll have to wait to find out what happened to Annette Bening's character.

Happy Retirement!

Congratulations on your retirement!

Congratulations Susan, hope your first week of retirement is a good one.

Happy retirement.
What are you going to do to fill your time now?!

>49 dudes22: Thanks Betty!

>50 pamelad: Thank you Pamela!

>51 charl08: Thanks Charlotte! I still can't quite believe it...

>52 Helenliz: Thanks Helen. I thought I might take up reading. It seems to be pretty popular :-)



The Indifferent Stars Above by Daniel James Brown

This is subtitled "The Harrowing Saga of a Donner Party Bride" and it focuses on Sarah Graves Fosdick, who left Illinois with her family and new husband to travel to California in 1846. The party famously got stuck in the mountains over the winter, and bad things happened. It's very well done. I don't think I'd realised that, even in 1846, once people crossed the Missouri river they were leaving "America" behind, and entering a whole new world. It must have been so daunting.

>53 susanj67: The best part about retirement is that I have so much more time for reading. It's wonderful!

>54 MissWatson: Birgit, yes, I am looking forward to that! I stayed up to finish The Indifferent Stars Above last night because I knew I could :-) Then, when I couldn't get to sleep because it was so muggy here, I realised it didn't matter, and that made it easier!

Today I visited the National Portrait Gallery, and did the individual painting talk at 11 (today was this painting of Henry and Millicent Fawcett https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw02189/Henry-Fawcett-Dame-Mi... and then the highlights of the gallery tour at 12. I haven't really had a good look around since the gallery reopened after its refurbishment. The NPG now has content on the Bloomberg Connects app, which is a project by Bloomberg Philanthropies that I think is supposed to replace the old Walkman + headphones audio guides. I've also used it at the Wallace Collection, and it's really good. Then I meandered home via Waterstones Piccadilly. If I win the EuroMillions lottery on Friday (£107 million) I think I could spend it all in that shop.

Tomorrow I'm going to walk over to the library as a reserve has come in, and I'm no longer over the road to pick them up at lunchtime. I'm considering changing my reserve delivery branch, but the walk to the Wharf is 45 minutes and good exercise, and there are two supermarkets there and two branches of Boots.

Congrats on your retirement!

Enjoy your retirement, Susan!

>55 susanj67: Yay to spending a lottery win like that! That's what I plan to do if it ever happens.

>56 thornton37814: Thank you, Lori!

>57 DeltaQueen50: Thanks Judi! Day 2 and the novelty hasn't worn off yet :-)

>58 MissWatson: Birgit, there were *so many* amazing books there yesterday!

This morning I walked over to Canary Wharf as The King's Buccaneer was ready on the reserve shelf. And somehow (and I still don't know how), the brand-new hardback Anansi's Gold *jumped* off the new books display and into my hands, so I was forced to borrow that too. Now I have three hard copies I want to finish before Victober starts next week, but I have at least finished the ebooks, with this one:



A Fate Inked in Blood by Danielle L. Jensen

This is a Norse-inspired "romantasy", which is very popular at the moment. The second (and final) book will be published in spring 2025. The plot is OK, but once again all the characters speak like 21st-century Americans, with someone saying "Fine" every couple of pages, or "I've got you" or "I need air". Not really expressions that would have been common in the 900s. So it's pretty silly, and I should give up reading these BookTube and TikTok sensations, because there are better things out there.

>59 susanj67: I'm assuming it might take more than 2 days for the novelty to wear off!
*snort* funny how some books take a death defying leap off the shelf and into your arms. They must really want to be read.

>60 Helenliz: Helen, now day 3 and still loving it :-)

I've read a third of Anansi's Gold this morning and it's excellent. Then I tidied up the study (alcove) with a view to connecting my Chromebook to the monitor, which I used to have connected to my work laptop. Of course everything uses different cables. But then I remembered that I used the Chromebook-compatible cable for the Fire TV cube, so I'll have to get one next time I'm out. Usually my Chromebook just sits on the arm of my chair, so I can open it and waste hours of time with no effort, but I might try and change that.

Anansi's Gold: The Man Who Swindled the World by Yepoka Yeebo

This is the story of a spectacular con, perpetrated by a Ghanaian man who said that he had access to a fortune in gold smuggled out of the country by President Kwame Nkrumah in the earliest days of Ghana's existence as an independent country. And far too many people believed him, and spent many millions of dollars chasing the money over decades. As President Nkrumah was well-known as incorruptible (even British and US intelligence sources agreed that he'd never taken a bribe) the story of the money lacked credibility right from the beginning, but that didn't stop the greed. This is a great read, and I'll definitely look forward to future books by this author.

Today I went up to the Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archive for their "Cockney Rebels" exhibition - "Popular Music in Tower Hamlets 1624 - 2003" and it was a good little display. I particularly liked the things about Helen Shapiro, who was a young, super-famous singer in the 60s, and had a little-known former skiffle group as her support act for some concerts. They were The Beatles. I wonder what happened to them. Then I walked back to Whitechapel station, so I could go to the big Curry's on the Mile End Road. At it's just as well I did. I decided against their gold-plated HDMI cables for £40 but it meant I was inside when INSANE amounts of rain started pelting down. Their roof is metal, so the noise was ridiculous. The staff stopped trying to sell things and everyone just stared out at the rain. Eventually it eased off and I carried on walking, but I was still pretty wet by the time I reached the library, which is handily almost next to the station. So I took off my coat, turned it inside out and carried it over my arm while I had a quick look at their new books section. I borrowed:

Melting Point by Rachel Cockerell
Uncommon Grounds by Mark Pendergrast (floppy US edition - exciting!)
Le Fay by Sophie Keetch, which is a follow up to Morgan is My Name which I read earlier this year
The Lagos Wife by Vanessa Walters

Now it's raining *again*, but at least I didn't leave the bedroom window open, as I feared.

The Perfect Couple by Elin Hilderbrand

This is the book that is now a Netflix series, although apparently with plot changes. It's set in 2018 on Nantucket, as a young couple is about to get married. There is a large cast of characters and a lot of running around, and I enjoyed it. Next time I get Netflix I'll watch the series, but I definitely don't imagine Nicole Kidman as Greer Garrison Winbury.

Once again London is rainy. The news said "Coastal surges", which I thought was a bit alarming, but they mean Florida. I've decided to stay at home today instead of getting rained on again, and I'm going to start the two new NF books I got yesterday from the library.

Melting Point by Rachel Cockerell

This is an excellent memoir about the author's family, told in a really innovative way. Her great-grandfather, David Jochelman, was a friend of Israel Zangwill, who in the 1890s was described as the most famous Jew in the world. Zangwill worked on the "Melting pot" project (and wrote The Melting-Pot), which aimed to redirect Russian Jews away from overcrowded New York to other parts of the western US, through the port of Galveston. It was part of a broader Zionist movement started by Theodor Hertzl, which looked at various countries in which Jewish people could settle after pogroms in Russia.

The first part of the book is about the Zionist movement and the Galveston project. The rest of the book looks at how the author's family came to live in London, and what happened during WWII and afterwards. In the preface, she says that originally she wrote it with a narrative, but, editing it, was annoyed by her narrative and decided to cut it out. This means the "narrative" is found in the arrangement of primary sources - extracts from letters, memoirs, newspaper articles, books and interviews etc. And it works really well. It reminded me a bit of "Making a Murderer", which was notable among documentaries at the time for not having a narrator, but just showing scene after scene that built up the story.

This is a really interesting read that may leave you with a long list of books and websites to investigate further. I kept stopping to google things, and learned so much. Very highly recommended.

It has finally stopped raining! Amazing. I went over to the Wharf this morning and returned three library books. I didn't borrow any at all, which is also amazing. I think they need a returns desk outside in the mall so people can take things back without having to go inside and be tempted by all the newness. Then I went to the supermarket, so I'm stocked up for a while. I've never meal-planned, as usually I ate in the canteen at work, and on the weekends I was the queen of the ready-meal, but now I'm going to start looking ahead and doing some actual cooking.

Today I want to read (at least most of) The King's Buccaneer, which is the next in the Raymond E Feist series. I might also sneak a look at Uncommon Grounds, which I didn't get to yesterday. I'm drinking a mug of Drink Me Chai, which is delicious.

>66 susanj67: I know what you mean about the rain. Blue skies here, which is quite the change.
You did better than me on the library books; I was feeling really virtuous at having returned 3 library books and collected 2 reservations, making a nett -1.

>2 susanj67: We were on the Elizabeth Line in May. Loved London and England with so much history. Great book list.

>67 Helenliz: Helen, we jinxed it! The grey skies are back in London and it's looking like rain again. I got an email from the library saying a reserve had come in, which must be just after I left yesterday as there was nothing on the shelf then. Grrr!

>68 mnleona: I'm glad you had a great time, Leona! There is so much to see - always something new.

I read about half of The King's Buccaneer yesterday, so I didn't make as much progress as I'd hoped. I'm going to try and finish it today, and not get distracted by TV or naps.

The King's Buccaneer by Raymond E Feist

This is the second in a duology and much better than the first one. The characters sail to a new land never visited before in the series, and there is lots of plotting and killing people. I hope these characters show up in later books, but I think the next quartet is about different people. The elibrary only has the next four as a single bundled download, so I think I'll risk a hard copy reserve at the end of October.

Happy Victober to everyone who celebrates :-P

Today I'm going to start the group read - The Doctor's Wife and continue with Uncle Silas, which is very good so far. Heavy rain is forecast for London, so it's the perfect day to stay inside and read. Mind you, most days qualify, regardless of the weather.

Victober is going well so far. One of the hosts had a reading sprints livestream last night, so I joined that and continued with Uncle Silas, which I really like. Then I read the first two chapters of the group read - The Doctor's Wife - which is excellent. A few BookTubers seems to be reading Elizabeth Gaskell's Gothic Tales, which Amazon had for 99p, so I've bought that. I'm not sure why the elibrary didn't have it, but for 99p it's not a huge issue :-)

Today I had to go out to get some more milk, so as I had my face on I popped into the local chemist to see if I could book a flu jab. When they realised I was paying for it myself, they said I could have it immediately. The government lowered the "free" age during Covid, so the hospitals weren't overwhelmed with flu, but it's back to normal now.

Uncle Silas by J Sheridan Le Fanu

This is a "Gothic" type of tale involving a creepy old house and an even creepier cast of people, including a mysterious uncle, a horrible French governess and various eccentric retainers. Heiress Maud Ruthyn finds herself in the middle of it all, trying to work out whether she can trust anyone at all. I liked it a lot. And it's my second Victober finish (although one of them was in September).

The Lagos Wife by Vanessa Walters

This is a really good thriller set in Lagos, about a young woman who goes missing and the attempts by her aunt, flying out from the UK, to find out what has happened to her despite all the attempts by the Nigerian husband's rich family to stop her. It's a dual-timeline story and very engaging. It's the author's adult debut, I think, so I'll be looking out for more by her.

Le Fay by Sophie Keetch

This is the second book in the trilogy that starts with Morgan Is My Name, which I read earlier in the year. The final book is due out next year, I think. I loved the first one and this was great too, although I wish I'd read them a bit closer together so I could remember everything that happened in book 1. This one sets up the final book, and as I don't know the Morgan Le Fay story it's all going to be a surprise when I get to it.

Now I have to read today's chapters of The Doctor's Wife and then I might start The Picture of Dorian Grey. Or Wuthering Heights. Or another Trollope. Eek.

Glad you are making the most of your retirement, Susan. What I like best is that if the weather is inclement, I don't have to go out unless I feel like it. Your walk to the library sounds lovely.

>76 VivienneR: Vivienne, yes, the staying at home if I want to is the best part! It rained for most of the week but I did go to the library and the supermarket yesterday as it wasn't raining. I seem to have finished ten books in the fortnight since I stopped work, so that part is going very well!

Today I'm going to read the next section of Uncommon Grounds and then do some Victober reading. Yesterday I started The Picture of Dorian Gray, which is irritating me because nearly every line is a famous Oscar Wilde quotation, and it feels like it was written to be quoted. There was a bookmark in it, suggesting I'd started it before and given up, and now I see why.

So then I started Wuthering Heights - my first time reading it. It seems to divide opinion, but it's going well so far.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Finally I have read this classic, after years of thinking it wouldn't be for me. I'm not sure now *why* I thought that. It's a great read. I read most of it today, pretty much without stopping. I'm pleased I finally read it, and it's another Victober finish.

Once again, rain is forecast. So I've stayed at home today and I'm making a Thai Yellow Pumpkin Curry with Millet. It's actually going to be a squash curry as pumpkins only seem to come whole here, and I can't cut one up without risking injury, whereas squash comes cut up in the freezer cabinet. I'm also using Thai red curry paste as I can't find the yellow paste the recipe calls for, and millet was similarly elusive, so I'm using quinoa. But it looks good so far :-) I've got some plain naan to have with it, which I realise is *not* a Thai thing, so I'll have to hope the curry police don't get me.

Today I'm going to read my Victober chapters and then The Ministry of Time, which I picked up at the library on Friday. I was waaaaay down the reserve list but suddenly it arrived. It's from my own borough, and they keep the books in-borough for the first six months, so I think the list must show everyone across the consortium of libraries and I was low down on that list but near the top for my own borough. I want to read it ASAP, though, and send it on. I'm not getting on that well with Uncommon Grounds, which is very US-centric, all about coffee companies in the early 1900s, and I'm bored. I was supposed to be reading it yesterday but gave up and read nearly all of Wuthering Heights instead. That's probably A Sign.

Looks like you are well into retirement AND Victober! Isn't it great to be able to go to all the galleries and stuff that you never had time for before? OR NOT, if you just feel like staying in. It's great!

I loved the The Woman in White, but I'm not a Wuthering Heights fan, although I have to admit it has fantastic writing and atmosphere. But I can't really like anybody in it (except maybe Nellie Dean!). And if you get to it, David Copperfield is perhaps my favorite Dickens. I can never decide between David and Little Dorrit. The Doctor's Wife is a good one; I read it last year, so I've decided not to re-read it.

Right now I'm reading The Heir of Redclyffe, one of Kate Howe's favorites and listening to Phineas Finn, which I've read before. So far, so good for Victober for me, too.

You really are making good progress on your Victober reads. I remember when I read Uncle Silas I stayed up half the night reading it to see what would happen! And The Woman in White, Wuthering Heights, and David Copperfield are all wonderful. I love the 1939 movie of Wuthering Heights with Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon, which I saw before I ever read it, and I don't mind that the movie distorts the book and leaves out half of it.

>80 kac522: Hello Kathy! Yes, retirement is a good opportunity to see and do All The Things :-) I must visit your thread to catch up with your Victober reads - I saw The Heir of Redclyffe mentioned somewhere yesterday, which may have been a video of Kate's. Of course I had to look it up and the tab is still open...

>81 NinieB: Hello Ninie! I thought Uncle Silas was great - it was really well-paced, and there were so many awful people in it! Poor Maud. I hope to read some more Victorian things today once I've read my chapters of The Doctor's Wife.

This morning I went to the British Museum and did three rooms, including the Enlightenment Room, with all the old books in the glass-fronted cases, and various treasures in between. It's my favourite part of the Museum and I downloaded the audio tour bundle and listened to the tour for that room. I thought Monday might be quieter than other days, but there were so many people there that I wondered whether all the other museums in London were closed for the day. There was a massive queue at the front for "ticket-holders" - this means both people going to see exhibitions and people who've booked a ticket to see the general collection, which they now encourage (but do not require). If you don't have a ticket, go straight to the *back* entrance, where there is also a queue but it's shorter. Both entrances have security tents where bags are searched, which is what takes the time. My advice overall, though, would be *not* to book an exhibition before about 11, as the queues are so long you might miss your slot. There was no queue when I came out at 11.45.

I did quite a few steps into the City and got the bus home, so I was pleased to make it out of the house and see something.

A lot has happened since I was last on your thread. There are some exciting books you've read.
It's nice that you also visit museums.

>83 Ameise1: Hello Barbara! Yes, I am getting lots of books read. It's my dream life :-)



The Ministry of Time

This is a sci-fi novel with an excellent premise, which I won't detail here as I think this works best if you don't know anything about it. I thought it tried to do too many things, and I don't agree that it's a "new classic" as one of the quotes on the front says, but it was an interesting read.

Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How it Transformed Our World by Mark Pendergrast

I have to start by confessing that I read about a third of this book and skimmed the rest, sometimes stopping to read bits in full, but mostly not. It's a very detailed history of how coffee became A Thing, and the early days are interesting but there's is a lot (too much) about all the US companies in the early 1900s and US advertising campaigns and Latin American politics, and it all got a bit much. There is relatively little about coffee in other places, and although it's a new edition, published in 2019, there could have been more about 21st century developments. Coffee fans in the US would probably enjoy this more.

Last night I joined a Victober reading sprint and made some more progress with A Thousand Miles Up The Nile. Then I checked the table of contents and I only have two more chapters to go. The ebook is a lot longer in terms of page count, but there seems to be extra stuff at the end. So I'm going to try and finish it today, as well as The Picture of Dorian Gray, which is growing on me. I started David Copperfield yesterday afternoon and it looks promising. I have a hard copy of my own, which is a nice treat.

A Thousand Miles Up The Nile by Amelia B Edwards

I read about this book in the excellent A World Beneath the Sands, which is about the "Golden Age of Egyptology". The author mentions Edwards as a famous Victorian writer who made a very long trip up the Nile in 1873, and this book is her memoir of that trip. Her party went further than the usual tours of the time, and visited all the famous sites and some others which hadn't had a lot of attention. Despite the trip only taking place because a planned holiday to France was rained out and she and her friend needed to find somewhere else very quickly, Edwards knew a lot about the history of ancient Egypt and did a lot of drawing and writing while she was there, becoming a recognised expert and eventually co-founded the Egypt Exploration Fund. According to the internet, Amelia Peabody in the Elizabeth Peters series of Egyptian mysteries was named after Edwards.

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

My day of finishes continues. This book annoyed me at first because it seemed to be just a collection of epigrams, and the epigram aspect continued to annoy me, but there's more to it than that, and I ended up really enjoying it. It's also pretty short, so a good Victober choice for anyone looking for something that isn't 800 pages long :-)

The Doctor's Wife by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

This is the Victober group read, and I've been reading two chapters a day, as scheduled, until yesterday when I just couldn't help reading all the rest of it. I LOVED it - five stars. So, so good. It's described as Madame Bovary written from the point of view of the woman. It's years since I read Madame Bovary so I don't know whether that's accurate or not, but it's a great story in its own right. It was a great choice for the group read, and I know other Victoberers are also enjoying it.

I took some books back to the library today and picked up The King's Messenger by Susannah Kearsley, which LT insists is called The Lesser Stars (but their link has the cover of The King's Messenger). Maybe it has that name outside the UK. I've read a few others by this author and loved them, and this one is brand new. Hurrah! I'm not going to reserve anything more from my borough's libraries as I've joined the City of London library at the Barbican, which has the most amazing collection of books and is a lovely place to visit. I had a card 20 years ago when I worked in the City, and at that time you had to live or work there in order to join. But now they don't have that requirement, so I can join again. It's a nice walk up into the City from where I live, so I plan to go every couple of weeks. They also have talks from time to time, and I went to a good one on Tuesday.

>88 susanj67:

This seems a bit odd to me - I googled the book after looking up the LT entry

From Susanna Kearskey's FB page:

"This new novel is called THE KING’S MESSENGER. That’s the title it started its life with, and then I briefly changed it to LESSER STARS, but now I’ve changed it back again"

It looks as if it was catalogued as a forthcoming book - on the editions tab though there aren't actually any copies under the Lesser Stars title

>89 elkiedee: Maybe the touchstone will eventually catch up to the cover, if that's the case!

Today I visited the Ragged School Museum, which is in east London. It's tiny, but it was interesting, particularly the bits about how the schools were set up and the role of Charles Dickens (who was almoner for Angela Burdett-Coutts, a wealthy woman who donated a lot to the poor. Then I walked all the way home, only getting a little bit rained on.

I started New Grub Street last night, which is very good. I need to download a few more things onto my Kindle as my broadband keeps dropping out (the broadband provider insists it's all fine, which isn't helpful) and I have the Fear that I might run out of things to read OMG. There's a shelf of hard copies, but still...

>90 susanj67: I know the Fear; I experience it every time I travel. Do I have books on my phone? But my phone might run out of battery, so do I have print books? How many is enough?, etc., etc.

Never read any Gissing, looking forward to your report.

>91 NinieB: I think "enough" is always more than you have with you :-) I haven't read any Gissing either, but I saw someone talk about New Grub Street in a Victober video, and it was right there in the elibrary. I can see myself continuing with Victober all year now that I have more time for all the giant books.

Bringing Home The Birkin by Michael Tonello

This is a very entertaining read about the author's time as an accidental reseller of luxury goods from Hermes. After moving from the USA to Barcelona, he found himself without a job, so started selling his things on eBay to make some money. One of the things was an Hermes scarf he'd bought but only worn once. After the auction ended, the emails from Hermes fans started arriving. And then one of them asked whether he could get a Birkin...All this seems to have happened in the mid to late 90s, before Hermes had a website of its own, and long before the explosion of the luxury reselling sites that are so popular today. It's a bit of a blast from the past in terms of what the internet was like then, and how True Fans found one another. I loved it.

The King's Messenger by Susanna Kearsley

This is a good story, set in 1613 as one of the King's Messengers is ordered to go to Scotland and bring back a man suspected by James I/VI of being responsible for the death of Prince Henry. There are real historical figures in it, and the office of King's Messenger was also real, but the Messenger in this story, and his supporting cast, are fictitious. I've always liked Susanna Kearsley's writing and this was a good read, mercifully free of modern words and phrases in the dialogue.

Tonight there is a reading sprint for Victober which I will take part in, but first I might read the beginning of Fool's Errand, which I picked up from the library yesterday. I was hoping it might not come in for a bit, but I think I can bookhorn it into my reading.

Tomorrow I'm taking my ID up to the Barbican library and getting my card, so it's entirely possible I'll come away from there with a bag full of books. They have a lovely classics section so I should be able to find some additional Victober things there, and of course there are all the displays and shelves and shelves of history, and maybe I should just move up there.

Have fun at your new library.

>95 Ameise1: Thanks Barbara! I did have fun :-) My new card is lovely, and I had a good look around the collection. I could have stayed all day, and I was amused to see little shopping trolleys (carts) at the entrance. One of the libraries I go to from time to time has wheelie baskets, like the supermarkets, but these had more capacity.

I borrowed:

The Parlour Wife
The Rich People Have Gone Away (about New York during the pandemic)
The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter
Material World: The Six Raw Materials that Shape Modern Civilization

I'm watching the America's Cup, as I know someone on the team that built NZ's boat, so it's exciting to see it in action. I haven't watched it since the 1980s, and it's very different now.

New Grub Street by George Gissing

This is an excellent late Victorian novel about writers and writing, and the change in the market from "literature" to more mass-market writing, and what that meant for a range of characters who wrote, or wished they could write, or were married to men in various stages of success or failure. As with most Victorian novels about the middle classes, I'm always frustrated that the women's lives were so reliant on their menfolk, despite many of the female characters being very talented. These days, Marian Yule would be a university lecturer, Amy Reardon would be an influencer with lucrative sponsorship deals, and Dora Milvain would be an entertainment correspondent for a news network. But in the late 1890s, their fortune were very much tied to men in one way or another, and women never achieved their full potential. I did enjoy this, though, and Gissing is another addition to my never-ending list of authors to read.

My next Victober read is going to be Sybil, by Benjamin Disraeli. Last year I read Coningsby, which was good even if all the politics were a bit hard to get to grips with.

It's another rainy day here, so I might only go as far as Tesco if I go anywhere at all.

🌧☔️ In this case it's a fantastic reading day.🤭

>98 Ameise1: Yes, it's been good so far! The rain has stopped now, but I think I'll just stay at home anyway. Now I don't *have* to go to the supermarket on the weekends I should probably leave it for the people who do :-)

I've read the first section of Material World, which is excellent. The author looks at sand, salt, iron, oil, copper and lithium, and why they're so important to us. Lots of "developed world" economies now say most of their GDP is from the service sector, but those services won't run without the infrastructure and gadgets we are all so used to.

Today's America's Cup races have been delayed due to a lack of wind, so I hope it picks up and the racing can start. The Kiwis staying up late to watch it in NZ will be exhausted. My brother says there are a lot of complaints that the NZ government wouldn't get behind (or maybe finance) it being held in NZ, which is why it's in Barcelona. I might sneak in a section of David Copperfield while I wait.

Another grey day here - there's supposed to be a big storm over Scotland but I think we're getting the rainy edges of it down here. Yesterday I started The Revenge of Analog, which is interesting. The "Vinyl" chapter made the point that young people are buying records because they're something new and different - their parents have all their music digitised. There was a funny anecdote from a record company person about a conversation with a youngster who asked what the "little lines" on the record were. "I had to explain to her that those are the songs". The second chapter is about paper, and I thought that one was a bit thin. It's mostly about Moleskine notebooks. The author doesn't seem to have anything to say (yet) about social media making these things fashionable again. I'm convinced that the boom in book publishing is at least partly due to all the Instagram photos and YouTube videos of lovely special editions and curated bookshelves. And I'm amused that the "book girlies" on YouTube with their huge hard copy collections have just discovered a "new" thing that they're all buying - a Kindle. It's a constant cycle of discovery and re-discovery.

New Zealand won the America's Cup yesterday, so I expect the whole country is jubilant. I was just relieved to be able to delete the YouTube channel from my subscriptions, because every second video was some random camera from one of the races. But now it's sports-free again :-)

Congrats!!! As a kiwi you must be very proud of that team. I hope that the storm doesn't cause too much damage.

>101 Ameise1: Thanks Barbara! I do think NZ cares far too much about sports, and it's one of the reasons I left, but I am pleased for the people involved with the boat. It's all very different from the last time I watched yachting!



Fool's Errand by Robin Hobb

This is the first in the Tawny Man trilogy, which is the second trilogy following FitzChivalry Farseer. As this one opens, Fitz is living an isolated life, but is drawn back to the court at Buckkeep to carry out a top-secret mission for Queen Kettricken. It was pretty slow to get started, but today I read nearly 400 pages and finished it, as the pace picks up. I had a water-damaged hard copy from the library, but the next two are available right now at the elibrary. I'm going to wait a bit before the next one, but at least they're there.

Today I went to the Silk Road Oasis exhibition at the British Library, which is not to be confused with the Silk Roads exhibition at the British Museum. The British Library one is small (and cheap at just £8) and based on scrolls discovered in a cave near Dunhuang, which was a city on the Silk Road, inhabited in the first millennium. There's also a "soundscape" of music playing from that place and time as you go round. I thought it was great. On Friday their big new exhibition "Medieval Women: In Their Own Words" opens, and I'm going to try and go to that next week.

Material World: A Substantial Story of Our Past and Future by Ed Conway

This is a good read by one of the economics journalists at Sky, who looks at six materials which make the modern world, and how they (and the world) are connected. The materials are salt, sand, iron, oil, copper and lithium, and the book is an excellent look at how they underpin our modern life, even though we probably spend no time thinking about them at all.

The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter by David Sax

This is an interesting book, looking at why the "analogue" world is still so popular despite the predictions that everything would be digital by now. Although my library copy is new, this was written in 2016 and is a bit out of date (at least one of the print-only magazines that would *never* go digital is now...digital) but the author's point still holds. I do think the world of work has changed forever following the pandemic, as people are so reluctant to return to their offices, but it would have been impossible to foresee that. And it might also be the case that today's workers are reluctant, but future generations might think it's cool to have an office to go to.

Things I must stop doing: Downloading freebies

Possible reasons for failing to achieve this goal: Book blasts - today from the cozy people: https://cozymysterybookclub.com/bookblast/

Yesterday I took books back to *two* libraries and I did not borrow any more books. I now have no library books, save for a copy of Sibyl from the elibrary, which is always available so doesn't count. It is possible that I've been taken over by aliens. What other signs should I look for?

In other news, the WriteIdea festival announced its programme yesterday and I have tickets to five talks: https://www.ideastore.co.uk/whats-on/writeidea-festival This year it's at the Tower Hamlets Town Hall, which is opposite Whitechapel tube station, so very easy to get to. (It's the old Royal London Hospital building, which has been poshed up).

Today has started quietly so far, but I'm hoping to make some more progress with David Copperfield.

>105 susanj67: I've downloaded Lady Rample Steps Out.

>107 pamelad: Pamela, that was very restrained! I looked at a few, but several listings said I already owned them, which was embarrassing. Next year I'm having a category for Kindle freebies!

It's a lovely sunny day here, and the clocks went back overnight, which surprised me this morning. I'm sure it used to get more publicity. I'm going to use my extra hour to read some David Copperfield, which I might be able to finish by the end of Victober. I've got a Bird & Blend "Mulled Cider" tea to keep me company. It's just a fruit tea, but I'm a sucker for the Christmas marketing. I bought their Christmas selection box, which has 15 x each of "Mince Pies" (black tea with flavouring), "Snowball" (also black tea with flavouring, including chocolate and coconut), "Gingerbread Chai" (rooibos tea with flavouring) and "Mulled Cider". That reminds me, I must count up how many sleeps till Santa...

Two e reserves have arrived. The Fraud came in last night and Narconomics: How To Run a Drug Cartel arrived this morning. It might have some useful tips for a retirement career :-)

I've nearly finished David Copperfield and I should also be able to finish Sybil by the end of Victober. It's been an excellent reading month!

I had to giggle Narconomics: How To Run a Drug Cartel arrived this morning. It might have some useful tips for a retirement career.
I can't wait to hear what you think of this book. A branch of my local library has a copy of it.

>110 Ameise1: Barbara, I'll let you know :-)



David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

This is another Victober read, and I loved it. I thought it would take me longer, but it reads up pretty fast for such a long book with so many characters. I think this is my fourth Dickens - I've definitely read Oliver Twist, Bleak House and Nicholas Nickleby - and I'm already planning my next one. I had a hard copy of this (actually the Penguin Classics one in the picture) and it was lovely to have a real book, even though I'm an ebook fan.



Long Bright River by Liz Moore

I also finished this one today, and it was another great read. I particularly liked the way little Thomas was written. It's set in an area of Philadelphia with very high levels of drug use, so sad overall but the family story at the heart of it was very well done.

I think that aliens may have abducted Susan - no library books out?!
Ahh, but then some reserves come in, all is well in the world again.

Dickens seems to start slowly and then race to a conclusion, in my experience.

>112 Helenliz: Helen, it was a very strange feeling! But I still had Victober reads to finish, so I thought I'd see what life was like with no due dates. And the two I have now aren't too onerous - the Zadie Smith is quite long but it looks good, and Narconomics has started well. The author has cleverly taken advantage of the popularity of Narcos and similar shows to explain using principles of economics how cartels work, and the ways in which they're similar to any other big business.

It's intermittently rainy in London today, so a perfect day to stay at home and read. I've also got some laundry going. It's so nice not to be limited to weekends for household stuff any more.

The Notting Hill Mystery by Charles Warren Adams

One of the Victober hosts mentioned this novel last month, and I read the Project Gutenberg version on my laptop. There's also a hard copy with the cover shown above, part of the British Library's classic crime collection. This was said to be the first "detective" novel, although it was published in between The Moonstone and The Woman in White, and those are certainly better known. It's told like those novels with letters and documents from various people, all put together by a man investigating a suspicious death for an insurance company. I liked it, although it's pretty silly :-)

Sibyl, or The Two Nations by Benjamin Disraeli

This was a bit of a struggle. The "two nations" in the title are the rich and the poor, and the story is set in the early days of the Chartists. But there are so many characters that it's hard to keep them all straight, and the timeline jumps around constantly, so it's hard to follow what's happening. Most of the characters are made up but the events are real, so I had to Google a lot to understand what was going on. It's also very long. But I've finished it, so hooray for that!

>115 susanj67: Well done! I've been hesitant to try Disraeli. Now I know I'll need an edition with LOTS of copious notes, if I ever get the nerve to try.

>116 kac522: I think I as so keen to avoid spoilers that I didn't read things that might have been useful before I started it. Having finished it, I can see how the various parts join up, but in the middle of it I was often just confused. The Guardian named it one of the top 100 novels some years ago, and this article is interesting: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/dec/02/sybil-benjamin-disraeli-100-best-n... I also found this on Victorian Web:
https://victorianweb.org/authors/disraeli/sybil.html#:~:text=As%20its%20subtitle...

I'm going to keep up the Victorian reading, and delve back a bit further too. I want to add some Georgian authors next year, so I Googled for some suggestions, and the AI said Jane Austen, yup, Fanny Burney, mm-hmm, Ann Radcliffe, Maria Edgeworth, two good suggestions, and also...Georgette Heyer. Oh, and wait, "Other notable writers from the Georgian period include...Thomas Gainsborough, Sir Joshua Reynolds, JMW Turner and John Constable." AI, ladies and gents - dumber than the average bear. Ooh, they could totally use that as a slogan.

>117 susanj67: Haha, I mean, some of Heyer's novels are set in the Georgian era, so that's close enough, right? And painting is basically the same thing as writing!

>118 christina_reads: That does seem to be the view of the AI. I just hope the answers to important medical or scientific questions are a bit more accurate...

That's going to be my final Victober book, with a whole day to go, not that anyone's counting and it's not a race etc. Today's searches about Sibyl highlighted a book about Chartism, which looked familiar. I delved into the depths of the Kindle and found the book, which I bought in the Verso sale in 2016, so I'm going to have a look at that.

>117 susanj67: *snort*.

Well done on the wading through Sybil. Note made that an edition with lots of notes is required.

>120 Helenliz: Thanks Helen!



A Voyage Around the Queen by Craig Brown

This is an excellent read. The author also wrote Ma'am Darling: 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret, which I loved a few years ago, and this book has a similar structure - 112 very short chapters, about HM Queen Elizabeth and how she saw, and was seen by, the rest of the world. There are also lots of photos and illustrations. This is a must-read for anyone interested in the British royal family or the Queen.

And I learned how to close a letter to the monarch - you don't write "Yours sincerely", as Margaret Thatcher once did. Someone from Buckingham Palace rang her Private Secretary to explain that the correct phrasing was "I remain, Your Majesty's most humble and obedient servant," and then your name.

This has made me want to read other royal biographies, and I have at least two in my Kindle library, including Queen Mary by James Pope-Hennessy and George V: Never a Dull Moment by Jane Ridley, which I haven't read yet.

>121 susanj67: Fortunately, on the few occasions I've written to the palace, I did my homework and both addressed and signed of correctly. (smug git icon required).

Can't decide if I'm tempted or not.

>122 Helenliz: I haven't yet had to consider it, but now I know for the future :-)

I've started Queen Mary this evening. It was republished (at least in ebook form) after Hugo Vickers' excellent book The Quest for Queen Mary in 2018, which was based on the diaries of James Pope-Hennessy during his research and writing of the biography. They couldn't be published at the time, but by 2018 everyone in them had died, so the story could finally be told. It was a great read :-) So far I've copied out the family tree at the beginning of the ebook and read the first chapter. Everyone has their actual name, at least one nickname and a name based on their title. I'm going to redo the family tree tomorrow on a bigger piece of paper, maybe with smaller writing and colour-coding.

Narconomics: How to Run a Drug Cartel by Tom Wainwright

This is an interesting read, but it was published in 2017 so it's already quite dated. Events move fast in the drug world, and in this book the Narcos TV series doesn't seem to have been made, El Chapo is still free and only a very few US states have legalised marijuana. But it looks at the basic rules of economics and how they apply to drug cartels (or any illegal business, really) and it's thought-provoking.

The Queen Mary biography is excellent, and I'm getting used to everyone's multiple names and the author's habit of describing Queen Mary's mother as both "Princess Mary Adelaide" and the "Duchess of Teck", often in the same sentence. The family tree is vital for this book.

The Fraud by Zadie Smith

This has many interesting threads, but I'm not really sure how they all went together. It's set in the 1800s, at various times, and the chapters skip back and forth all the time, which is confusing. The main character is Eliza Touchet, a cousin of, and housekeeper for, the novelist William Harrison Ainsworth. Much of the later (in time) part of the novel is concerned with the Tichborne trial, which I would like to read about more. The earlier (in time) parts are about slavery in Jamaica and there's a long section (the best part, I thought) told from the point of view of a black man who is connected to the Tichborne claim and living in London. But to me the novel seemed as though it was trying to do too much.

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

I must be one of the few people who hadn't read this, but now I have and I loved it. It's been on my Kindle since I got it as a 99p deal a while ago, and I found it in among the deluge of freebies and started it last night. Today has been a great day for reading as it's been misty outside, so that was a good excuse to stay in.

Tomorrow I'm having a smart meter installed, which I'm dreading in the same way I always dread Strange Men in the house. My meter cupboard is outside in the foyer, but apparently the Strange Man will have to conduct "checks" inside afterwards. I asked what these checks entailed but the man doing the bookings didn't seem to know. I'm hoping they're like the "full explanation of the vaccination process" promised for my most recent Covid booster, which involved no speaking at all on the part of the pharmacist, and just a jab. I'll lose power for about an hour, which will be annoying, but if it all works then the electricity company might finally stop spamming me by text and email. I don't want a new meter, but my tariff relies on a signal being sent by a radio frequency to switch on the hot water heating in the middle of the night, and the radio signal is being turned off next year. The texts and emails have got progressively more doom-laden.

Is your smart meter just for electricity or dual fuel, or is your flat all electric?

My electricity smart meter was installed years ago and the radio frequency doesn't work, whereas the gas meter, installed after I reclaimed lots of money in the spring (that is, I was £463 overpaid/in credit after the winter, in March, and another £188 at the end of May) has been working very well.

>127 elkiedee: The flat is all electric, so at least I just need one meter, and I'm hoping the new ones do everything correctly. But the internet is full of complaints...

Well, so far so good. The power was off for about 45 minutes while he put the new meter in, and everything is switched on again now. The little in-home display gadget is working, but I have resisted the temptation to turn things on one by one and see how much they cost to run :-) The next test is whether I have hot water tomorrow morning, as my tariff heats it up in the middle of the night and some people have complained that their new meter doesn't switch the supply on at the right time. Fortunately there's a peak hours switch on the tank for additional hot water. I was talking to our caretaker earlier this morning, and he said he's had a smart meter for years and it works perfectly well. And now the endless texts and emails should stop, so that's something.

I restarted Amazing Grace: The Great Days of Dukes last night, as I got 120 pages into it a while ago but then stopped - I suspect a deluge of library books was involved. It's a good read, although it was written 50 years ago and seems to assume a greater general background knowledge than I think most people would have today. I'm struggling with some of the references but it's entertaining.

I've also started The Far Pavilions, which was waiting patiently on my Kindle. I'm enjoying finally getting round to some of these things!

There is hot water! Very pleased :-)

In other news, an email has arrived from the Royal Collection Trust, giving details of some online talks I thought might be interesting.

"Curator's Introduction to Drawing the Italian Renaissance" (19 November, 19.00 - 20.00 GMT)
https://www.rct.uk/event/curators-introduction
This is an introduction to the new exhibition in the King's Gallery at Buckingham Palace

"A Victorian Christmas" (5 December, 19.00 - 20.00 GMT)
https://www.rct.uk/event/a-victorian-christmas?utm_campaign=1656032_2024_11_gene...

Today is yet again grey and overcast, and yesterday I saw it had a name - anticyclonic gloom. So now it's official! I am not gloomy though - already I have made another delicious curry and I'm going to read all day. Woo-hoo!

>130 susanj67: Curry and reading sound like the perfect approach to a grey day!

>131 NinieB: It was a good reading day! I read parts of the three things I have on the go at the moment, and Queen Mary is now the Duchess of York. But today The Examiner has come in on BorrowBox so I need to read that. I wish they had a "defer" option like Overdrive/Libby, but I'll just have to spend the day reading it and drinking tea :-)

We still have the anticyclonic gloom, which all the news websites have started writing about. It's very funny that typical UK weather now has a name, like it's a Real Thing.

The Examiner by Janice Hallett

This is the author's fourth novel (I think there is also a novella). I loved the first one, The Appeal. The Twyford Code started very strongly but fell apart spectacularly, and I didn't understand The Alperton Angels. This one was OK, but overall a bit silly. It follows six students on an MA in Multimedia Arts course, and it's told with emails and group chats. The students' personalities come through really well and very quickly, but the wider story is implausible.

>132 susanj67: I have usually lived in places with relatively high gloom levels. Most of my life I lived by the beach in Los Angeles where not one but two months are named after it--May Gray and June Gloom. Because of that I'm a lot more tolerant of gray weather here in upstate New York, where a lot of people complain a lot that it's gray too often.

How long has your current spell lasted?

>134 NinieB: Some parts of the UK have had no sun since last month (which I suppose sounds more impressive than "nine days") but it was sunny in London on Monday, as I was out and about then and I remember thinking it was a nice day. London has been gloomy since Tuesday. But it's not unusual - it's just that someone seems to have given it a name and now the TV news is running a segment on it as well. It's pretty funny :-) We long to have real weather, particularly when it does no harm at all.

Amazing Grace: The Great Days of Dukes by E S Turner

The is an entertaining look at dukes through the ages, with many anecdotes about the most outrageous of them. One sentence in particular stuck with me from the last time I started this:

"It might take centuries of service, solicitation and aggrandisement before a family reached the point at which it could sustain a duke, and there was no assurance that the candidate would be worthy of the honour when it came."

Often a father or grandfather or a male relation even further back would have done the brave or amazing thing for which the family was known, and that is very clear from some of the stories in this book.

It was written in 1975 and I did feel a bit dumb as I read it - there were uncommon words and an assumption of more general knowledge than perhaps I have about the history of royalty and the aristocracy, but as it moved forward in time I found it easier to understand as I've read about some of the more recent people and families already.

Three ebooks have arrived from the library, which is exciting. I've downloaded:

The Walnut Tree: Women, Violence and the Law
The Everything War
Vulture Capitalism

More books! Donkey Boy arrived as a hard copy reserve, so I picked that up today. My edition was published in 1984, and looks like it. I saw The Undesirables while I was at the library so I borrowed that as I'm going to hear the author speak at the WriteIdea festival. I've read The Blackest Streets, which was very good.

>137 susanj67: I finally read The Blackest Streets a few months ago, after borrowing it from the library a very long time ago - lots of returning and borrowing it again. I agree it's excellent. Need to find my copy of The Italian Boy and look for a copy of The Undesirables, also by Sarah Wise.

>138 elkiedee: I'll have to look out for The Italian Boy!



The Walnut Tree: Women, Violence and the Law - A Hidden History by Kate Morgan

This is an excellent look at some notorious aspects of women's lives in Victorian times (and earlier) - mostly it's about how the law failed to protect them from violence, trapped them in unhappy marriages and blamed them for men's violence against them. There are some shocking cases in which men killed their wives and got away with it despite going to trial, but the author makes the very good point that, despite a lot of changes in the law, it keeps happening today. Time and again men are handed pathetic sentences for violence against women and the word just shrugs. It's a depressing read from that point of view, but really well researched and full of legal nerdery, which I always enjoy (the author is a lawyer).

The Undesirables: The Law That Locked Away a Generation by Sarah Wise

In this book, the author looks at the Mental Deficiency Act 1913, which permitted people to be locked away not for committing a crime, but for being "defective", a term that had a very broad meaning. The Act was partly meant to stop defective people reproducing themselves (although it tended only to target women for this purpose) and partly meant to stop "undesirables" cluttering up society and making life unpleasant for everyone else. In reality, a lot of young people were locked up for behaving like typical teenagers and stayed in institutions for decades.

The Everything War: Amazon's Ruthless Quest to Own the World and Remake Corporate Power by Dana Mattioli

This is a new book looking at the history and operations of Amazon, and how they affect the world. It was published this year and has been listed for awards, and it's well worth a read. One of the author's best points is that even people who don't shop with Amazon are probably engaged with it anyway, due to Amazon Web Services, which hosts data for many other companies and makes far more money than the retail side of the business.

I've noticed quite a few BookTube videos by people giving up their Kindles and getting Kobo ereaders instead, and some seem to be doing it because they've just worked out that they don't own their Kindle books while others say that Kobo and other companies have better ereader products. It's years since I've had a Kindle but I prefer my Lenovo tablet with all the reading apps on it anyway. And the "not owning the books" aspect has always been an issue so I'm not sure why it's suddenly become A Thing for BookTubers.

A quick trip to the library to return a book saw me come out with The Last of Its Kind, about the search for the Great Auk and the discovery of its extinction (that's actually the subtitle). But I *could* have got lots more things, so I'm counting it as a win. I'm currently reading Vulture Capitalism and The War Below, which go quite well together (and with the Amazon book). I'm also sneaking in chapters of Queen Mary just so I don't forget who everyone is.

Vulture Capitalism: Corporate Crimes, Backdoor Bailouts and the Death of Freedom by Grace Blakeley

This is an interesting look at how capitalism operates, and at possible alternatives. There are lots of detailed examples, and not just about the US, which is refreshing for a Libby ebook. Their catalogue (at least as bought by my library) is very US-focused. But Blakeley is a UK writer, and the book has lots of UK references in it.

The sky is doing ominous things today, and already I've had to put the kitchen light on and it's only 12.30. I think it's going to be a perfect afternoon to sit and read Donkey Boy, which I have in hard copy from the library. It's the second in the series by Henry Williamson (of Tarka the Otter fame).

In other news, the in-home display for my smart meter seems to be getting used to me. When I got it ten days ago it would show an orange light if I switched on the kettle or the hair-dryer. But this morning I was making a chilli on the stove-top, with the extractor fan on, *and* I had a load of washing on, and the light remained green. It seems to realise that having an appliance or two going is "normal" for me. And no, I didn't plug in more things to see when it would freak out, but I'm not saying I wasn't tempted...

I realise that I haven't been on your thread for a while.
Good to hear that the whole ‘electricity’ thing went well.
You've been very busy reading. There are some interesting titles among them.
I wish you a good start to the new week.

>144 Ameise1: Hello Barbara! Thank you for the good-start-to-the-week wishes. I think every week is good now :-) This is week 9 of retirement for me, and work seems like something I did *years* ago. It's really funny.

Today we are having Arctic weather, but not really in London. It's just a bit cold. I'm waiting for the social media joke weather advisory: "Londoners should stay at home. Northerners, you will need your big coat."

I'm going to try and finish Donkey Boy today, and make a start on A Christmas Carol for the Dickens Christmas novella readalong hosted by Katie at Books and Things: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMgGhzhp-OI

This evening I'm "attending" an online book talk. I've discovered the "online" option on the Eventbrite app and there are so many things!

>145 susanj67: I was a bit shocked by the snow this morning (also in London but in a different area), but it melted quickly. Snow tends not to settle for long here. Apparently some schools were closed because of the snow, but I doubt that any were in London. Northern areas and places high in the hills tend to get more serious weather.

>146 elkiedee: There have been some amazing pictures on the news! It seems really early, but perhaps that's just my London-centric experience.



Donkey Boy by Henry Williamson

This is book 2 in the series A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight, although the series starts in the 1890s, so I don't really get the "Ancient" reference. The books are semi-autobiographical, and at the start of this one young Phillip Maddison is a toddler, and by the end of it he's 11. The first two books (at least) are set in the part of Kent that became part of the London County Council, with a lot of building going on as the area was opened up to houses. I already love this series and I've reserved book 3.

The Last of Its Kind: The Search for the Great Auk and the Discovery of Extinction by Gisli Palsson

This is an excellent read, focusing on a trip to Iceland by two British ornithologists in 1858, where they hoped to see or catch a Great Auk. The weather was too bad for the boat to leave Iceland to go to the last known nesting place, so instead they travelled around interviewing people about the "latest successful trip" for Great Auk, which seemed to have happened in 1844. They realised that the birds were becoming ever rarer, and started to think they might have become extinct. Extinction of animal species was not something that people at the time generally considered possible (at least until bits of dinosaurs started to be found). The book looks at all sorts of issues concerned with human experience of the natural world, and it's very thought-provoking.

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

I've finally read this famous classic, for the Christmas Dickens read-along on YouTube. I knew the story, but reading all the details was fun.

Next up is The Chimes.

>149 susanj67: This really is a great story.

>150 Ameise1: Yes, I enjoyed it, and I'm looking forward to the others. It's interesting that in Victorian times ghost stories were very much a "Christmas thing" - nowadays it's all happiness and light, it seems.

Today we have storm Bert, which looks bad in many areas. (I can't be the only person hoping that storm "E" will be called "Ernie"). London is just getting rain, and it's still pretty cold but there's no snow. It would be a perfect day to stay at home but I'm going out later to the WriteIdea festival. I'm attending two sessions today. Fortunately the festival is in a building just over the road from the tube station, so I won't have far to go when I get there. Less fortunately, the main branch of the library is also very close and I have to go in to return two books. Danger!

Last night Instagram showed me an ad for Kindle Unlimited. Usually when I click on it there's no special offer, but last night it said 99p for three months (i.e. all three months) and I couldn't help myself. I got it at about the same time last year and read a lot. They have some great history titles this time, but I've already read most of them. (Traitor King and The Uncrowned Queen are both excellent). But I've added a few titles to my library, so I'll see what they're like.

I borrowed just one book from the library, and it was Farewell Mr Puffin: a Small Boat Voyage to Iceland. The author of The Last of Its Kind wrote a little bit about puffins, and I was amused to learn that shops aimed at tourists in Iceland are called "puffin shops" by the locals (not a compliment). I saw lots of other things, but I'm trying to cut down on the library books.

The festival was good, although the talks were in different bits of a large space so there was a lot of background noise and they need to sort out the microphones. Next year I hope they move to somewhere with rooms and doors. But I saw Tiffany Murray and Madeleine Pelling and they were both excellent. I'm going to three more sessions tomorrow, and the good news when I left the house today was that it's not that cold outside. It looks colder than it is, I think. The BBC says it's 13C, and tomorrow is supposed to be 17C.

The War Below: Lithium, Copper and the Global Battle to Power Our Lives by Ernest Scheyder

This is a timely read, as it's about attempts in the US to mine more of the materials needed in our modern lives instead of relying on imports from questionable places. The incoming president is likely to grant permission for more mining, raising issues about threats to biodiversity and also to land usage by indigenous peoples. The author is a Reuters journalist and I thought there was a bit too much detail of various company structures and takeovers, but that aside this is a good read.

Royal Betrayal: The Great Baccarat Scandal of 1890 by Michael Scott

I found this on Kindle Unlimited, and read it because I'd never heard of the Great Baccarat Scandal of 1890, but it turned out to have been very famous, and involved a high-profile trial. The man at the centre of the story was alleged to have cheated at baccarat, played at a house party where the guests included the Prince of Wales. This was apparently terrible for many reasons, although it all seems pretty trivial today. There was too much material in the book that wasn't really relevant to the story, and it's not a great book, but it was still interesting and there are other books on the subject filled with legal nerdery so I might look for one or two of those.

I have to go to the supermarket today, so I'll pick up a reserve at the library while I'm out. I was hoping that another one would come in so I could pick them both up together, but no doubt it will arrive this afternoon.

Binding 13 by Chloe Walsh

This book was written in 2014, but for some reason has blown up on TikTok in the last year or so and all the BookTubers are raving about it and the others in the series. The books are even available at The Works here in the UK, and they only have very popular mainstream titles. I was sceptical, but I picked it up from the library this morning, started reading it at about midday and didn't stop until I'd finished it. And it's 800 pages! Set in a private school in Cork, the hero is a rugby star and the heroine is a girl from a terrible background of violence and neglect, which is, I think, the reason it's recommended for an 18+ audience. It's definitely not a YA novel, regardless of the ages of the main cast. The book ends on a bit of a cliffhanger, so I've reserved the next one and I need it to come NOW.

Farewell Mr Puffin: A Small Boat Voyage to Iceland by Paul Heiney

This is a travel memoir, in which the author sails his small boat from the east coast of England to Iceland, accompanied by various crew who come and go. In particular he wants to see the puffins which are so numerous in the Orkneys, the Faroe Islands and Iceland. But you'll have to read it to find out whether any puffins actually appear.

The Housemaid is Watching by Freida McFadden

This is the third in the Housemaid series. I read the first two on Kindle Unlimited last time I had it, and loved them. This one came out a few months later so I was keen to get to it this time around. It's very good :-)

Eden Undone by Abbott Kahler

This is the crazy true story of some people who decided to make a new life on a small island in the Galapagos in the early 1930s. Of course it all went wrong - that is clear from the prologue. But it wasn't the total disaster that might have been expected. Word got out about their "utopia" and tourists were keen to visit, bringing with them may of the things that the islanders needed. So it wasn't really like Gilligan's Island at all :-)

Now I need to read The Chimes, as the week is nearly over and I've read everything *but* that book. I'm also waiting for an Amazon delivery which will include the cable I need to connect my Chromebook to the big screen in the study (alcove). I've had it in my basket for ages, but added some Black Friday groceries and laundry things. And then I can connect my proper keyboard and mouse, and type more accurately. It will also mean the Chromebook isn't sitting on the arm of my chair, ready to waste time whenever I read something and decide that I have to google.

Well, this is nice. My lovely screen is back! The Amazon box finally arrived about 15 minutes ago. When I placed the order, everything was supposed to come tomorrow, and that would have been fine. I've missed my screen, which is glorious, and it even seems to work with the Chromebook totally closed. I amaze myself with my tech smarts, which are only loosely related to a search for "mirror Chromebook screen" in Google...

Wow, you've been busy reading. Nice to hear that you're happy with the screen.
Have a great weekend.

>160 Ameise1: Hello Barbara! Yes, I've finished a few things recently :-) I'm delighted to have my big screen back - I added the cable to my Amazon basket weeks ago but kept thinking that surely I could find one in a shop instead of having to order it. But no.

Today the other part of my Amazon order is arriving, with Royal Mail. Their email says it will be delivered between 9.36 and 12.36, which is quite precise :-) So I'm going to wait in for that and then I might go for a walk. It's a gloomy day here but not cold. I'm thinking of making a flask of coffee and walking down to the marina, where there are seats. The gilded barge was there last time I walked through it: https://www.glorianaqrb.org.uk/ It looks out of place among the modern boats and yet very normal for London :-)

The Chimes by Charles Dickens

Hmmm. This was written after A Christmas Carol and isn't nearly as good. But it's short :-) I'm looking forward to the video explaining it. The next one in the readalong is The Cricket in the Hearth.

I now have no library books unless I count The Water Babies, which I don't because it's always available and there is no real deadline. It was mentioned in the book about the Great Auk, so I thought I'd try it. I've been reading chapters of Queen Mary (who is now the Princess of Wales and a mother of five) and it's interesting that the author mentions the birth of all of the children but (so far) never names Prince John. I wonder whether his death will be mentioned. I'm also continuing with The Far Pavilions, which is excellent.

Still no sign of my Amazon, which is a multi-pack of toilet rolls. The glamour, the glamour...

ETA: It turns out Prince John was the sixth child

Still no Amazon, but I don't think we've had any post today. The foyer was empty when I went down about 1pm, and usually you can tell that the post has been because there are various parcels and things sticking out of letterboxes (there are 23 flats in my building). Annoying! I've used the waiting time to create my 2025 thread, which is here: https://www.librarything.com/topic/366140#n8685317 .

Happy December, everyone! My little tree is up, and I'm waiting for Marks & Spencer Christmas Spiced Tea to steep. It's got a lovely citrus taste to it as well as the spices, and was part of the Christmas gift my brother and sister-in-law sent me last Christmas, so I've been waiting for it to show up in store again for the season. I just got home from Canary Wharf after going over there for a library event that was postponed. It wasn't ticketed, or mentioned on their website, so I think there will be quite a few people who made a wasted trip. But I decided to make the most of it, and got some groceries and other bits and pieces.

In other news, I'm enjoying the tantrum from Gregg (sic) Wallace about the Masterchef allegations and hoping Beyonce releases a new version of "Run The World" where the answer isn't "Girls" but "Middle-class women of a certain age, Gregg". I gave up Twitter a few months ago but I really wish I still had it today :-)

When the Moon Hatched by Sarah A Parker

Another KU read, beloved of the "book community" but really, really bad. Pointlessly long, and most of it was just "word soup", to steal a phrase from lead counsel to the Post Office inquiry. And the sentence fragments! So many. In every chapter. On every page. Also the constant full stops in sentences: What. Were. They. Thinking? Many words were also italicised when they didn't need to be, which was annoying. The characters seemed to be living in a medieval type society but they had flushing toilets and what seemed to be cigarette lighters. Common things had new names, but everyone said "Okay" and "I'm fine" and I think there was even an "I got you". The "banter" between the main characters was beyond tedious and there was a lot of violence. Just...no.

>165 susanj67: Thank you for this review. It’s brilliant.

>166 MissWatson: Ha! Thank you, Birgit :-) I'm pleased to say that my new book is much, much better (which wouldn't be hard, really). I'm reading Cecily, which I hope to finish this afternoon if the TV doesn't get me. Currently we are having a state visit from the Emir of Qatar, so the TV is full of royals and gilt carriages. I didn't realise it was going to be such an event.

Cecily by Annie Garthwaite

The title character of this novel is Cecily Neville, later Duchess of York, who was the mother of Edward IV and Richard III. This book covers events up to the point at which Edward takes the crown, and the next book, The King's Mother, starts from there. I'm not sure whether there's going to be a third one, as she was the mother to two kings.

I really enjoyed this, as it is beautifully written with none of the slangy modern language that appears in a lot of historical novels. Publicity describes Cecily as a "feminist", which I think is too modern for the way in which she probably saw herself, but she was a remarkable person. I'm looking forward to the next book(s).

It's that season again - no, not Christmas, but tax returns. And I have done mine! I started getting the figures together yesterday and decided I might as well continue this morning and fill it in, and now it's done and YAY. I am waiting for the feeling of zen to start, without it looming over me any more.

I currently have no library books, but I'm continuing with The Far Pavilions and Queen Mary and I might start Bess of Hardwick, which I have in hard copy. Tomorrow I'm going to a talk at a library, which could be dangerous for the TBR pile. Can I resist?

Another very windy day all over the UK, with a "red" warning for Wales. London only has a yellow warning, like most other places.

Yesterday I joined the library book club, and the next meeting is on Thursday. The book is Oh William!, which is nice and short, so I will probably read it today. I also found a lovely nearly brand-new copy of Dombey and Son, so I borrowed that as they're stamping things until 2 January now, so I have it for four weeks. I saw numerous other things, but resisted.

My Name is Lucy Barton
Anything is Possible
Oh William!

The book club book is the third in this series, so I decided to read the first two before I read it. Fortunately the elibrary had the first one as an ebook, and it's very short. The second was only available as an audiobook, so it took longer to finish, but I enjoyed my day in the world of Lucy Barton. I read the third one this morning. The second is my favourite, I think - it's linked stories which all relate to the Barton family. There are two more in the series, which I will definitely get to.

The Cricket on the Hearth by Charles Dickens

I liked this one more than The Chimes. It's the third in the Dickens Christmas read-along series, and next is The Battle of Life.

I admire the dedication for the Dicken's read. I find him best in small doses.

>173 Helenliz: The Christmas novellas are quite small doses :-) But I have Dombey and Son and I intend to start that tomorrow. I think I have more patience for him now than I used to, and reading during Victober helps because all the Victorian things are longer and slower. He's definitely a challenge in among modern stuff with short sentences and lots of action!

>171 susanj67: I hadn't realised that there were two more books in the Lucy Barton series, so thank you. I'm now on the 16-week waiting list for Lucy by the Sea and am hoping that Tell me Everything is on the library's to-buy list.

I don't yet have Tell Me Everything but the description I've read suggests it actually follows on from most of Strout's other work, as Bob Burgess is the other main character and Olive Kitteridge also features. I've already reread the first Lucy and Olive books in preparation for reading the other books about them. so I think I still need to read the three other Lucy books and Olive #2, and reread The Burgess Boys (first read summer 2016 so more than 8 years and may well be 9+ by the time I get to it) before Tell Me Everything. So maybe a plan for next year's reading pile.

>175 pamelad: Always happy to enable :-) I hope your library gets more copies of Lucy By The Sea!

>176 elkiedee: Thanks for that tip about Tell Me Everything, Luci! I noticed a reference to the Burgess brothers in Oh William! so I was going to read that one, but it sounds like I should revisit Olive too.



The Silence by Susan Allott

This is the author's debut novel, but I read her second book earlier his year. It's a dual-timeline "literary thriller" and very well done. The author is British but lived in Australia for a while, and there is a real sense of place (and climate) about this book. I found it on Kindle Unlimited, but don't let that put you off because it's not self-published nonsense like a lot of their stuff (or maybe that's just the "romantasy" books).

Queen Mary by James Pope-Hennessy

I loved this official biography of Queen Mary, which I've been reading for a few weeks. It was published 70 years ago, which seems amazing now, and I'm sure more papers and records have now come into the public domain. But it's a great look at a Queen who maybe we don't know that much about these days. She lived until 1953, dying aged 85, and was apparently incredibly popular.

You *do* need a hard copy family tree for the early part of the book, as the royal family uses the same few names over and over. Once she married and her children were born I was on more familiar ground. My next biography is going to be George V: Never a Dull Moment, because at last I've got all the people worked out in my head, so I may as well make the most of it :-)

>178 susanj67: because at last I've got all the people worked out in my head, so I may as well make the most of it

Too funny!!--I'm not sure I'll ever get to that point....or if I ever do, I'll get it confused almost immediately....

>179 kac522: Confusion is easy with the British royals! But I started it last night and it's great so far.

I went over to the library this morning and there were three reserves:

Young Phillip Maddison (the third in the series by Henry Williamson)
You May Never See Us Again (blurbed as "Half Ozymandias, half Succession" by one reviewer)
The Goblin Emperor, which I keep seeing on BookTube, and it's not new so I trust the reviewers more than with the brand new freebies.

I'm also reading Feeding the Machine, which is very dull for such an interesting subject. I might force myself to finish that this afternoon so I can send it back to BorrowBox.

At the supermarket I picked up the Christmas double-issue of the Radio Times (a Christmas staple here in the UK, and often bought by people, like me, who don't usually get the Radio Times). So that must mean it's officially Christmas. It includes an offer for a free month of Apple TV, so I think I'll get that in the New Year to see what it's like.

>180 susanj67: The Goblin Emperor is very good! It's a bit of a challenge in some ways -- a complex world, archaic forms of dialogue -- but well worth the mental effort. Hope you enjoy it!

>181 christina_reads: That's good to hear! I saw the giant list of people and concepts at the beginning, and thought it looked like a bit of a project :-)



Feeding the Machine: The Hidden Human Labour Powering AI

This is supposed to be about AI, but it's really just an anti-capitalist rant using AI as its latest target. The introduction is all about a content moderator for a social media platform, which isn't AI at all. Data annotators are the ones doing the work to train AI and the book does look at them too, but they're very different jobs. Looking at videos of abuse and beheadings all day raises very different issues to circling traffic lights and potholes, and differentiating between cats and dogs. There's also (of course) a chapter on Amazon, because you can't have a book about capitalism without getting stuck into Amazon.

But I've finished it now (there was skimming involved) so I can move on. I've also read today's chapters of Dombey and Son, which I'm enjoying.

>182 susanj67: It's not the right book for when you need something light and undemanding, but when you're up for putting in some effort, it's great!

>183 christina_reads: In that case, I'm saving it for the weekend! I'll start the other two first.

I got a 3 month free trial of Apple TV and now need to make myself unsubscribe, and hope that another offer will come up in the future. But I've not been watching it, I've been using Amazon Prime quite a lot to watch old films and Mad Men, it's taken me a few years to get to somewhere in the middle of Season 5. The Apple TV adaptation of Mick Herron's first 4 Slough House books is really quite good, and I'd like to watch a dramatisation of a crime novel by Laura Lippman.

Thanks for reminding me I need to get the Christmas Radio Times, it's a tradition from my childhood in the days of 3 and then 4 channels that I've passed on to my older son (now 17).

>185 elkiedee: Thanks for those recommendations for Apple. I'm mostly watching Death in Paradise on the iPlayer at the moment, but I'm only up to series 7. The BBC keeps emailing "Don't forget to finish Death in Paradise", but there are dozens of episodes left!

I went to book group at the library, which was my first-ever book group. Next month the book is 8 Lives of a Century-Old Trickster so I have that now. I also picked up The Marriage Portrait, the 2024 Joe Pickett instalment, Three-Inch Teeth, and The Spy Coast, which is the start of a new series by Tess Gerritsen. I read a Lee Child short story in which Jack Reacher visited the main character in this new series, and I have wanted it since then. Lady Tan's Circle of Women came in as a reserve on BorrowBox yesterday, so I may be a little over-booked although the hard copies are due back on 2 January, which is good. At least I've read today's chapters of Dombey and Son.

Lady Tan's Circle of Women by Lisa See

This is an excellent historical novel based on a real female doctor in 15th century China. (Her book is still available today). I've read See's previous book The Island of Sea Women, which I also enjoyed. I'm now going to see what else she's written.

Another wintry weekend here, but my tube line isn't running so I have the perfect excuse to stay at home. Not that I really need one...

I'm really enjoying Dombey and Son, and I think having a library hard copy helps me focus on it. There's something about a due date that galvanises me, even though (a) I know I could renew it if necessary, as the library has multiple copies and (b) I can get it free online at any time. I like the way the hard copy shows each section as serially published, though. I read one section every day. I think my favourite character so far is Susan Nipper, although Captain Cuttle is also a delight.

Young Phillip Maddison by Henry Williamson

This instalment in the 15-book series takes Phillip up to the end of his schooling. It finishes just before the beginning of the Great War, so his future is bound to be affected by that in some way but I'm trying to avoid spoilers for the next books in the series. I've already reserved book 4. They come in from far away, but this one didn't take too long. I hope the next one arrives in the New Year, by which time I will have read my current stack of things.

You May Never See Us Again by Jane Martinson

This is a very good look at the secretive Barclay twins, who were one two of the richest men in the UK. Or were they? The author is a financial journalist who digs into their beginnings, and how they got their hands on so much money to buy assets including the Ritz Hotel and the Telegraph newspaper. My copy was updated as the original was published in 2023. There's quite a detailed epilogue about new developments.

>168 susanj67: I'm far behind reading threads but wanted to let you know that I've taken a BB for Cecily and added The King's Mother to my wishlist. I'm looking forward to reading them.

>191 VivienneR: Hello Vivienne! I'm sure you'll love Cecily. I'm hoping the next one arrives soon so I can remember everyone!

Yesterday I picked up Kingmaker at the library, brand new and gorgeous. I think I'll start it later, as it's quite a chunkster but it looks excellent. I'm also doing the "World of the Brontes" jigsaw, and there are things I don't recognise at all, so I'll have to read the remaining Bronte books pretty soon.

>156 susanj67: I hope I can find that one. It sound intriguing.

>162 susanj67: A short Dickens? I must find this one, even if it doesn't measure up to A Christmas Carol.

>193 thornton37814: Hi Lori! I think I'd recommend The Cricket on the Hearth instead of The Chimes - it makes more sense and parts are very funny :-) I've fallen behind with the last two novellas, so I might save those for next year.

Dombey and Son is still going well, and Kingmaker is also very good. But I've just started Three-Inch Teeth, which is the 2024 Joe Pickett novel (the teeth belonging to a grizzly bear on the rampage in Twelve-Sleep County, just as elk-hunting season opens). I don't know why I didn't get to this earlier in the year, as these books are published every March. But I have a nice new paperback from the library and it will occupy me for some of the afternoon, anyway. They're always a pretty quick read.

Three-Inch Teeth by C J Box

This is the most recent instalment in the Joe Pickett series, and there appears to be a grizzly bear killing people. But it does seem to cover a lot of ground...Most of the recurring characters appear in this one, although not Joe's dreadful mother-in-law, Missy.

Happy winter solstice to those in the northern hemisphere :-) And those in the south, enjoy your longest day of the year. Once again it's overcast here in London, but I don't have anywhere to go so I think I'll spend the day reading (a plot twist no-one saw coming, I'm sure). After my Dombey and Son chapters I'm going to start The Spy Coast, which is a lovely new hardback. It will be my first Tess Gerritsen novel, but I see she's written a lot of other things, so there's plenty of back catalogue to investigate if I like it.

The Spy Coast by Tess Gerritsen

This is a fabulous opening novel in a new series from Tess Gerritsen, and I can't wait for the rest to come out. It starts in the small town of Purity, Maine, which is home to five former CIA agents who found somewhere pretty and out of the way to retire. But then someone shows up dead...There is lots of running around in this, and a backstory that's really well done. The next book, The Summer Guests, is out at the end of March 2025.

I've just received my first Boxing Day sale email, with a countdown. And it's not even Christmas Eve Eve yet! (I know opinion is divided on whether CEE is a thing, but it is in my house).

But at last we have some sun in London, and I *really* need to clean the glass doors out to the balcony. I might see if it gets just a bit warmer.

Today I want to finish Kingmaker, which is now up to the 80s in the US, and frankly very boring. The first parts of the book were much better. If I finish it today, I can return it tomorrow when I go over to Canary Wharf for groceries. The Wharf should be pretty empty of office workers this week, and the Marks & Spencer there isn't a big one, but big enough for me. This is either a really good idea or it isn't, but I won't know till I get there.

Kingmaker by Sonia Purnell

Most of this book was good. It looks at the life of Pamela Churchill Harriman, who started life as the daughter of a member of the British aristocracy, married Winston Churchill's son Randolph before WWII and lived much of the rest of her life in the US, finishing as President Clinton's US ambassador to France. I struggled a bit with the mid-80s section on US politics, but the book picked up again after Clinton's election.

Harriman was famous (or maybe infamous) as a "grande horizontale", but the author says this is unfair, and there was a lot more to her character than just her relationships with rich men. But there are so many people quoted who disagree that it's hard to know. Still, this is an interesting read, particularly for anyone who likes 20th century British history.

Clutter: An Untidy History by Jennifer Howard

This is a short book available via KU, and it looks at he history of "clutter" and how people deal with it. The author was faced with a hoarding situation at her mother's house, but hoarding is different from the clutter that most of us have. She interviews people who work in the field, including those who make a living from helping to clear clutter, but she makes the important point that just getting rid of stuff doesn't make it disappear from the earth, and we need to think more about what happens to it once it's out of our houses. Recycling isn't always possible. The long-term answer is to buy and use less, but that would mean the end of capitalism as we know it.

>199 susanj67: That's tempting. I read A Woman of no importance by her, which was quite good.

>200 susanj67: maybe not. We dealt with his parents' house, and they were both hoarders. He has a tendency to it, which we try and keep to 1 room. Not always successfully.

>201 Helenliz: I have A Woman Of No Importance in my Kindle hoard, so I will make more of an effort to get to it!

The clutter book is interesting in its explanation of how we are encouraged to buy so much, and how that started. Hoarding (in the sense of floor-to-ceiling junk that people die in the middle of and aren't discovered until later) has different roots, but consumer culture doesn't help by making so much stuff *available* to hoard. In the very olden days, there just wasn't the stuff to find and keep. It was an interesting read, but only touched on the digital hoarding that many of us now do. The author thought she had 40,000 family photos, for example! I don't have photos, but there is the Kindle...Still, at least the nephews won't have to deal with hundreds of digital books. It's a shame for families when photos are lost (but does any family really need 40,000?) but a lot of other digital stuff isn't important. (Even things in the cloud take up energy, though, which is a different issue).

I've just vacuumed and now think I deserve a medal. However, there are no medals, so I'm going to read my Dombey chapters and then continue with The Goblin Emperor.

>203 kac522: I've just vacuumed and now think I deserve a medal. 🤣

Absolutely! I need to do the same and don't look forward to it....especially without a medal (or some lovely chocolate reward...).

>203 kac522: I'm wondering about a sticker chart, like little kids have for doing their chores :-)

Today is laundry, although as I sat down I registered that the washing machine was not, in fact, washing. That's what happens when you forget to turn it on. But now it's on, and I didn't press any dangerous buttons and consign the towels to a half-day sudsy adventure. They should be done in two hours and 40 minutes.



Addicted to You
Ricochet
Addicted for Now

These are the first three in a very popular romance series, which runs to ten books (all on KU). They're Gossip Girl meets something and something else, apparently. That's because all the main characters are rich and have trust funds. And addictions. What they don't have is a good copy-editor. And they're published by Penguin! There are lots of words used in the wrong sense, like "insensible" for "unsuitable". There are phrases which make no sense at all. And there's too much "spice", as we apparently now call it in the romance world. I also wonder when, if EVER, American authors will stop using the "s" word for someone clumsy, and why their publishers (particularly publishers headquartered in the UK) still let them.

These books follow Lily and Loren, who both have addictions. His is booze. Hers isn't. There are other family members involved, and they have their own books, so I'm going to continue with the series but mostly so I can write judgey posts like this one, because that's always fun :-)

Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens

I was so close to the end of this today that I decided to read two instalments and finish it. I liked it a lot, although there were aspects that I didn't understand, including why Edith married Mr Dombey if she hated him so much. But Captain Cuttle may be my new favourite literary character, and I loved all the nautical terminology applied to him. The best was the scene on the doorstep of the shop: "The Captain, looking down, found that he had been boarded by Mr Toots while sweeping the horizon." And Mr Toots and Susan ending up together was perfection :-)

I haven't decided on my next Dickens, but Barnaby Rudge sounds good, so it might be that. Mostly, though, it will depend on the newest, cleanest book the library has available.

I wish you and your loved ones a happy and blessed festive season.

>205 susanj67: Dombey is not a favorite for me, and part of the reason is I can't explain Edith either. My favorite part of the book is the beginning with Young Paul. And also Mr Toots.

>206 Ameise1: Thank you, Barbara!

>207 kac522: Edith is yet another example of a woman who would be *winning* in the 21st century, able to have a job and make her own fortune. One of the depressing things about Victoriana is the waste of women's lives.



Merry Christmas to all my visitors! Thank you for your comments and recommendations in 2024.

I'm having a quiet Christmas day, but I have a toffee latte on the go and two KU books that I started yesterday. One is a fantasy in which someone has already "needed air" and there has been a reference to a Shakespeare quote. Hmmm. The other is a thriller, and much better.

In real life, the royal family has arrived at church and will be seen in more detail in about an hour. The crowds are huge. Prince Louis appeared to have a parent on each side of him, which is probably for the best.

Happy Christmas, Susan!

>209 Helenliz: Thanks Helen!



One Dark Window by Rachel Gillig

This is a romantasy novel, although pretty light on the romance. The fantastical elements are interesting - the heroine and others are trying to collect a pack of cards with various magical abilities, in order to stop a Bad Thing happening, so there's lots of running around. Characters were "fine" twice, and one of them complained that the heroine had "handed him his a**". There was also some use of Too. Many. Full. Stops. For. Emphasis. But it wasn't as bad as some other recent offerings. The book ended in a cliffhanger, but I don't think I'm interested enough in the story to continue.

The Far Pavilions by M M Kaye

I've been reading this for a couple of months, interrupted by library books, and it's a fabulous epic, nearly a thousand pages long and with many interesting stories within it.. It starts at the time of the Indian Mutiny in 1857, but most of it is set in the late 1860s and 1870s and it ends in 1879 (I'm trying to avoid spoilers). It's very evocative of the time and place, and I'm so glad I finally got to it. I've had it on my Kindle for a while.

Wishing you a happy, healthy New Year, Susan.