Library Loot

My public library has finally reopened. The walls and ceiling are now pale blue and, more importantly, I have three new books!

Here’s this week’s loot:

An Equal Stillness by Francesca Kay

“Jennet Mallow is born in Yorkshire in the 1920s but her interest in art and creativity alienates her from her family, her father who is a priest, her conventional sister and her emotionally stunted mother. Jennet moves to London in search of a more exciting life and finds it in her new environment and in the handsome and enigmatic figure of the painter David Heaton. When Jennet falls pregnant, her parents more or less force the two to marry. In the postwar austerity of the 1940s, the young couple struggles to make ends meet and Jennet finds that her home life is gradually eroding everything she has fought to achieve. Aware that David is becoming increasingly reliant on drink and tired of the dank and drab bedsit in which they live, Jennet suggests they move to Spain. There, the bright blue skies, warm air and sunlit beaches give the couple and their children a new lease of life. Jennet begins to paint again and an agent takes an interest in her work. But as Jennet’s own career begins to take off, her relationship with David sours and the two enter a destructive spiral with tragic consequences. Written in the form of a biography, An Equal Stillness is an outstanding debut, breathtaking in the poise and beauty of its language and craft.”

I wanted to read this ever since I saw it on the shortlist for the Orange New Writers Award. It looks absolutely wonderful!

What To Do When Someone Dies by Nicci French

“‘This is not my world. Something is wrong, askew. It is a Monday evening in October. I am Ellie Falkner, 34 years old and married to Greg Manning. Although two police officers have just come to my door and told me he is dead . . . ’ It’s devastating to hear that your husband has died in a horrific car accident. But to learn that he died with a mystery woman as his passenger is torment. Was Greg having an affair? Drowning in grief, Ellie clings to Greg’s innocence, and her determination to prove it to the world at large means she must find out who Milena Livingstone was and what she was doing in Greg’s car. But in the process those around her begin to question her sanity … and her motive. And the louder she shouts that Greg might have been murdered, the more suspicion falls on Ellie herself. Sometimes it’s safer to keep silent when someone dies …”

Nicci French’s books have always been a bit hit and miss for me, but this one was shiney and new and the premise looked interesting, so I picked it up!

The Housekeeper by Melanie Wallace

“When Jamie Hall finds a boy tied to a tree and cuts him loose, she can have no idea of the desperate chain of events her act of humanity will trigger. An orphaned teenage runaway who has fetched up with only her dog and her backpack in the lonesome town of her grandparents’ birth, Jamie becomes housekeeper to Margaret, a retired photographer. There she meets Galen, a trapper who has done a stretch inside and who now lives at a remove from life. Slowly, they come to realise that each has something the other craves. But when the feral boy Jamie releases, mute and crazed from all he has endured, sets out on a lethal spree, he is stalked by Harlan, a dangerously unhinged poacher who was once a childhood friend of Galen. As Harlan persuades himself that Jamie is sheltering the boy, these various stories of loss, redemption and pursuit become shackled together, and Jamie’s hard-won chance of security is plunged into peril.”

Another Orange book – this one was longlisted in 2007.

Have you read any of these? What did you think of them?

And what did you find in the library this week?

See more Library Loot here.

Teaser Tuesdays / It’s Tuesday, where are you ?

Just quote a couple of spoiler-free sentences the book you’re reading to tempt other readers.

Here is mine:-

“When Saturday came she felt suddenly intoxicated. At midday she pirouetted across the studio floor.”

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by MizB

Hello, I’m Ellie. I grew up in Eastsea by the sea but now I’m in London. I have a bedsit in Chelsea, a job in a studio painting antique furniture, and, best of all, I have Quentin. I’ve never been so happy before in my life!”

It’s Tuesday, where are you? is hosted by raidergirl3.

This all comes courtesy of The Doves of Venus by Olivia Manning

Every Eye by Isobel English

Persephone Endpapers

“Sometimes, but not often, a novel comes along which makes the rest of what one has to review seem commonplace. Such a novel is Every Eye.”

Those are the words of John Betjeman, writing for Daily Telegraph in 1956 when Every Eye was first published.

It was republished by Persephone Books a few years ago. Their edition is, of course, quite beautiful and it comes with with an introduction by Neville Baybrooke, the author’s widower. He writes with such clarity about his wife and her writing and his love for her shines through. A wonderful start.

Every Eye is the story of Hatty. She is a piano teacher who has married late in life, and as she and her husband are departing for a belated honeymoon in Ibiza she receives news of her aunt’s death. Her thoughts turn to the childhood and upbringing that brought her to this point.

The story moves smoothly between past and present.

Hatty never really felt at home in her own family. She had a lazy eye, and maybe that made her see the world differently.

She was a talented musician with a dream of becoming a concert pianist, but her straightened circumstances, her lack of confidence and her family’s failure to understand put paid to that dream. Hatty takes the line of least resistance and settles for a quiet life.

But now, it seems, she has reached a turning point. She is thrilled by the experience of travelling across Europe and she is steadily becoming more comfortable and confident in her new life. And when she reaches Ibiza she makes a startling discovery that sheds fresh light on her own past.

Every Eye is a quiet novel with very little incident, and yet it contains so much. Isobel English’s writing is flawless and you must read every single word, otherwise you will definitely miss something.

Hatty’s inner life is wonderfully created, the period is vividly evoked, and places and characters are perfectly observed.

An immaculate miniature.

It’s Raining Awards – and Zombie Chickens

Once again the Cornish coast is being battered by rain and winds and the outlook is grey to say the least. But things have been brightened by awards from lovely fellow bloggers and I have some thanking and passing on to do.

This came from the lovely Margot at Joyfully Retired.

Here are the rules for recipients:

1. Put the logo on your blog or post.
2. Nominate blogs which you think are fabulous.
3. Be sure to link to your nominees within your post.
4. Let them know that they have received this award by commenting on their blog.

I have been terribly slow posting this award and, as I have seen it already on so many blogs, I am not going to name any names. I have never come across a blog that didm’t have something fabulous about it, so if you don’t have this award and would like it please go ahead – help yourself!

*****

This came from Margaret at Books Please. I was thrilled that Margaret singled me out for an award because her blog is quite wonderful!

Here are the rules:

1.Accept the award, post it on your blog together with the name of the person who has granted the award and his or her blog link.
2. Pass the award to 15 other blogs that you’ve newly discovered. Remember to contact the bloggers to let them know they have been chosen for this award.

And here are my favourite recently discovered blogs that I would like to pass this award on to:

A Library is a Hospital for the Mind
Rose City Reader
Paperback Reader
MsBookish
Book girl of Mur-y-Castell
Lakeside Musing
Silly Little Mischief
Medieval Bookworm

*****

This came from Harvee at Bird Dog Book. Thank you!

I only discovered Harvee’s blog quite recently but now it’s on my must-read list.

I’ve received and passed this award on before so I’m not going to name names but if you’ve passed by or if you’ve commented please help yourself. I never expected visitors when I started blogging and it has been wonderful to meet so many lovely people.
 

*****

This was given to me by the lovely Belle at MsBookish. Another wonderful recent discovery.

I’d like to award it to five charming blogs that I haven’t mentioned yet:

My Cozy Book Nook
Stacy’s Bookblog
Life In The Thumb
Fresh Ink Books
Bookfan-Mary

*****

Yay! I’ve got a zombie chicken! That you so much MsBookish.!

“The blogger who receives this award believes in the Tao of the zombie chicken – excellence, grace and persistence in all situations, even in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. These amazing bloggers regularly produce content so remarkable that their readers would brave a raving pack of zombie chickens just to be able to read their inspiring words. As a recipient of this world-renowned award, you now have the task of passing it on to at least 5 other worthy bloggers. Do not risk the wrath of the zombie chickens by choosing unwisely or not choosing at all…”

Here are five blogs all with something quite unique that I think should have a zombie chicken of their own:

Bugsy
Paperback Reader
Joyfully Retired
Farm Lane Books
Gubbinal

Thank you so much to all concerned. You have made blogging so much fun!

The Spare Room by Helen Garner

It must be a couple of years ago now that I first learned about this book. The Book Programme had a feature where it asked authors to talk about three books they had read recently. Peter Carey was a passionate advocate for The Spare Room, and expressed the hope that it would reach a wider audience outside Australia.

Now it has and I can understand why he felt so strongly. The subject matter is difficult, and I had to read just one chapter at a time, but I am so glad that I did read The Spare Room – it is quite extraordinary.

The story opens with Helen preparing her spare room for a friend’s visit. She is thoughtful, practical and a little anxious – understandably so given that her friend is gravely ill. It felt completely natural to warm to Helen and to be drawn in by her narrative.

Nicola is coming to stay because she isn’t fit enough to stay in her own inaccessible house and because she has put her faith in questionable alternative treatments for her cancer that are available at a nearby clinic.

She either cannot or will not acknowledge the seriousness of her illness and she completly fails to recognise the heavy burden that her declining health, the side effects of her treatments and her cavalier attitude are having on her friend.

The author portrays the full range of Helen’s emotions – grief, anger, resentment, frustration and, eventually, despair as she begins to feel that she really cannot cope – quite wonderfully. Every emotion and every incident rings true and Helen Garner writes clearly and beautifully.

The Spare Room is a powerful and deeply emotional book. It was difficult and sometimes painful to read, but I am so glad that I did.

Library Loot

I thought I was going to have a bad week on the library front. The main part of the public library is closed for redecoration and there are very small numbers of books available in the lobby. Fortunately though a couple of reservations turned up and I picked up another from the shelf.

Here’s this week’s loot:

The Pyramid by Henning Mankell

“When Kurt Wallander first appeared in Faceless Killers back in 1990, he was a senior police officer, just turned forty, with his life in a mess. His wife had left him, his father barely acknowledged him; he ate badly and drank alone at night. The Pyramid chronicles the events that led him to such a place. We see him in the early years, doing hours on the beat whilst trying to solve a murder off-duty; witness the beginnings of his fragile relationship with Mona, the woman he has his heart set on marrying; and learn the reason behind his difficulties with his father. These thrilling tales provide a fascinating insight into Wallander’s character, and demand to be read in one sitting. From the stabbing of a neighbour in 1969 to a light aircraft accident in 1989, every story is a vital piece of the Wallander series, showing Mankell at the top of his game. Featuring an introduction from the author, The Pyramid is an essential read for all fans of Kurt Wallander.”

I have been meaning to try Mankell for sometime but I wasn’t sure where to start. But then I picked this one up and it seemed like a good place to begin.

Yellow by Janni Visman

“Stella lives with her cat in a top floor flat, where she waits for her clients to arrive for their massages, and her life is as perfectly ordered as the phials in her treatment room. As strictly inventoried are the contents of her rucksack, always ready by the door in case she needs to make a quick getaway. But she never goes out; she can’t. When Ivan moved in he was told: no stories from the past, no unnecessary anecdotes, no questions. But can Stella keep her own rules? Yellow is the colour of gas, of fear, of jealousy. And Stella has smelt something in the air that she cannot control. Janni Visman’s second novel is a twisted love story that takes place in a few bare rooms, a superbly taut thriller that confirms the arrival of a fantastic new talent.”

I read about this book here and I liked the look of it, so I put in an order.

Drood by Dan Simmons

“Sealed for 125 years, a secret manuscript by Charles Dickens’ friend and some-time collaborator Wilkie Collins, reveals the dark secret that obsessed both men – a secret that not only ended their long friendship, but also brought each writer to the very brink of murder. On June 9, 1865, while traveling by train to London with his secret mistress, 53-year-old Charles Dickens – at the height of his powers and popularity – hurtled into a disaster that changed his life forever. His train jumped the rail and plummeted into the marsh below. Dickens assisted the maimed and dying but the experience shook him to the core.His personality visibly darkened, his famous public readings began to focus on the most violent scenes he’d ever written, especially the terrible murder of Nancy by Bill Sykes in Oliver Twist. The author acted out the murder, adding dialogue and gesture, screaming, begging, strangling and cutting. By night Dickens and Collins began stalking the underbelly of London, obsessed with corpses, catacombs, murders, lime pits, opium dens, disguises and serial killers. Research – or something darker? Or perhaps Wilkie Collins – a laudanum addict with a seething, Salieri-esque jealousy of Dickens’ success – had another agenda?”

At last! I have read about this book on so many blogs and it feels like I’ve been waiting forever, first for the UK release, then for the library to add it to stock and then for my reservation to turn up. Tonight it arrived!

Have you read any of these? What did you think of them?

And what did you find in the library this week?

See more Library Loot here.

Henry: Virtuous Prince by David Starkey

This book held so much promise. It is beautiful, both inside and out, and the subject matter had much potential. The early years of Heny VIII, not the familiar tales of the six wives, but his childhood, his education and his life as a young prince.

How did the uncertain crown that Henry VII picked up on Bosworth Field become so secure that his son could hold onto it while behaving so monstrously?

What shaped Henry VIII into the man he became?

And of course David Starkey has a wonderful reputation as a Tudor historian. He sets out his plan well in the introduction, but I’m afraid the book doesn’t quite come off. Why?

Partly I think it is because the author is trying to two things that aren’t entirely compatible – draw out the circumstances and events that shaped the man and sustain an exciting narrative.

David Starkey succeeds in the latter – this is definitely a page-turner – but in doing this many key issues are simply glossed over and ideas and themes that could have been developed to shed more light on Henry the man are simply left hanging.

There is some great material here – as clear an overview of the Wars of the Roses as I have read, a wealth of detail about Henry’s upbringing, the pretender Perkin Warbeck and Henry VII’s response … It just doesn’t work as it should because so much background is missing.

What made Henry VIII the man he became? Well I have ideas but no fully formed arguments.

The first half of the book is stronger than the second. And in the end it just fizzled out. The threads will presumably be picked up in the planned sequel concerning Henry’s later years.

A disappointment.

Orange Prize: The Shortlist for 2009

 

Today the Orange Prize longlist was narrowed down to a shortlist of six titles.

I still haven’t read any of the titles, but it certainly looks like an interesting list with a good range of books.

Here are the six:

Scottsboro by Ellen Feldman

“In Alabama, 1931, a posse stops a freight train and arrests nine black youths. Their crime: fighting with white boys. Then two white girls emerge from another freight car, and as fast as anyone can say Jim Crow, the cry of rape goes up. One of the girls sticks to her story. The other changes her tune, again and again. A young journalist, whose only connection to the incident is her overheated social conscience, fights to save the nine youths from the electric chair, redeem the girl who repents her lie, and make amends for her own past. Intertwining historical actors and fictional characters, stirring racism, sexism, and anti-Semitism into an explosive brew”

The Wilderness by Samantha Harvey

“It’s Jake’s birthday. He is sitting in a small plane, being flown over the landscape that has been the backdrop to his life – his childhood, his marriage, his work, his passions. Now he is in his early sixties, and he isn’t quite the man he used to be. He has lost his wife, his son is in prison, and he is about to lose his past. Jake has Alzheimer’s. As the disease takes hold of him, Jake struggles to hold on to his personal story, to his memories and identity, but they become increasingly elusive and unreliable. What happened to his daughter? Is she alive, or long dead? And why exactly is his son in prison? What went so wrong in his life? There was a cherry tree once, and a yellow dress, but what exactly do they mean?As Jake, assisted by ‘poor Eleanor’, a childhood friend with whom for some unfathomable reason he seems to be sleeping, fights the inevitable dying of the light, the key events of his life keep changing as he tries to grasp them, and what until recently seemed solid fact is melting into surreal dreams or nightmarish imaginings. Is there anything he’ll be able to salvage from the wreckage? Beauty, perhaps, the memory of love, or nothing at all? “

The Invention of Everything Else by Samantha Hunt

“Louisa is an imaginative and curious chambermaid who, while cleaning rooms at the New Yorker Hotel, stumbles across a man living permanently in room 3327, which he has transformed into a scientific laboratory. Brought together by a shared interest in the pigeons that nest in the hotel, Louisa discovers that the mysterious guest is Nikola Tesla, one of the most brilliant – and most neglected – inventors of the twentieth century.”

Molly Fox’s Birthday by Deirdre Madden

“Dublin, Midsummer: While absent in New York, the celebrated actor Molly Fox has loaned her house to a playwright friend, who is struggling to write a new work. Over the course of this, the longest day of the year, the playwright reflects upon her own life, Molly’s, and that of their mutual friend Andrew, whom she has known since university. Why does Molly never celebrate her own birthday, which falls upon this day? What does it mean to be a playwright or an actor? How have their relationships evolved over the course of many years? Molly Fox’s Birthday calls into question the ideas that we hold about who we are; and shows how the past informs the present in ways we might never have imagined. “

Home by Marilynne Robinson

“Hundreds of thousands of readers were enthralled and delighted by the luminous, tender voice of John Ames in Gilead, Marilynne Robinson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Now comes HOME, a deeply affecting novel that takes place in the same period and same Iowa town of Gilead. This is Jack’s story. Jack ? prodigal son of the Boughton family, godson and namesake of John Ames, gone twenty years ? has come home looking for refuge and to try to make peace with a past littered with trouble and pain. A bad boy from childhood, an alcoholic who cannot hold down a job, Jack is perpetually at odds with his surroundings and with his traditionalist father, though he remains Boughton’s most beloved child. His sister Glory has also returned to Gilead, fleeing her own mistakes, to care for their dying father. Brilliant, loveable, wayward, Jack forges an intense new bond with Glory and engages painfully with his father and his father’s old friend John Ames.”

Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie

“In a prison cell in the US, a man stands trembling, naked, fearfully waiting to be shipped to Guantanamo Bay. How did it come to this? he wonders August 9th, 1945, Nagasaki. Hiroko Tanaka steps out onto her veranda, taking in the view of the terraced slopes leading up to the sky. Wrapped in a kimono with three black cranes swooping across the back, she is twenty-one, in love with the man she is to marry, Konrad Weiss. In a split second, the world turns white. In the next, it explodes with the sound of fire and the horror of realisation. In the numbing aftermath of a bomb that obliterates everything she has known, all that remains are the bird-shaped burns on her back, an indelible reminder of the world she has lost. In search of new beginnings, she travels to Delhi two years later. There she walks into the lives of Konrad’s half-sister, Elizabeth, her husband James Burton, and their employee Sajjad Ashraf, from whom she starts to learn Urdu. As the years unravel, new homes replace those left behind and old wars are seamlessly usurped by new conflicts. But the shadows of history – personal, political – are cast over the entwined worlds of the Burtons, Ashrafs and the Tanakas as they are transported from Pakistan to New York, and in the novel’s astonishing climax, to Afghanistan in the immediate wake of 9/11. The ties that have bound them together over decades and generations are tested to the extreme, with unforeseeable consequences”

The awards ceremony is on 3rd June.

Teaser Tuesdays / It’s Tuesday, where are you?

Just quote a couple of spoiler-free sentences the book you’re reading to tempt other readers.

Here is mine:-

“I fly in my sleep every night. When I was little I could fly without being asleep; now I can’t, even though I practise and practise.”

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by MizB

Well I was flying, high above the small town in South Wales where we live. But I saw a body floating in the pool and the fright plummeted me back to my bed. Bethany had stretched out while I was gone and I couldn’t push her back to her own side, so I got up early and came downstairs to practise wide-awake flying …

It’s Tuesday, where are you? is hosted by raidergirl3.

This all comes courtesy of The earth Hums in B-Flat by Mari Strachan

The Guardian’s List of 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read: The Ones That Got Away

I missed my daily book list when The Guardian’s week long series of 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read came to an end. But a week later there was a bonus – a list of books that readers had nominated as “ones that got away”.

That list is below. Isn’t it interesting that most of the nominations fell under the heading “love”?

The few books I have read are bold and the books that are in my TBR and the books that I know I want to read are starred.

And at the end I’ve added my list of the seven books – one for each category – that I would add to the lists.

Anyway, here come the books: -

LOVE

Before She Met Me by Julian Barnes (1982)
The Bread of Those Early Years (Das Brot der frühen Jahre) by Heinrich Böll (1955)
La Regenta by Leopoldo Alas Clarin (1884-85)
Belle du Seigneur by Albert Cohen (1968)
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (1849-50)*
The Siege by Helen Dunmore (2001)
Ask the Dust by John Fante (1939)
Senseless by Paul Golding (2004)
A Pair of Blue Eyes by Thomas Hardy (1873)
In Love by Alfred Hayes (1953)
The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith (1952)
What I Loved by Siri Hustvedt (2003)*
The Cloud Sketcher by Richard Rayner (2000)
I Sent a Letter to My Love by Bernice Rubens (1975)
Fanny by Gaslight by Michael Sadleir (1940)
The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu (early 11th century), translated by Royall Tyler
Zoo, or Letters Not About Love by Viktor Shklovsky (1923)
Gordon by Edith Templeton (1966)
Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton (1911)
The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder (1927)
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernières (1993) No!!!
Heart’s Journey in Winter by James Buchan (1995)
The White Guard by Mikhail Bulgakov (1955)
Aegypt by John Crowley (1989)
Chronicles of Thomas Covenant by Stephen Donalson (1977-83)
Troubles by JG Farrell (1970)
Night Soldiers by Alan Furst (1988)
I, Claudius by Robert Graves (1934)*
See You in Yasukuni by Gerald Hanley (1969)
The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V Higgins (1972)
Phantom Lady by William Irish (1942)
March Violets by Philip Kerr (1989)
Near to the Wild Heart by Clarice Lispector (1990)
Khan Al-Kahlili by Naguib Mahfouz (2008)
A Song of Ice and Fire by George RR Martin (1996-)
If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things by Jon McGregor (2002)
The Spanish Farm trilogy by RH Mottram (1924-26)
Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake (1950)
The Time of Our Singing by Richard Powers (2003)
Angel Pavement by JB Priestley (1930)

CRIME

The Fashion in Shrouds by Margery Allingham (1938)
The Tiger in the Smoke by Margery Allingham (1952)
The Final Days by Alex Chance (2008)
Night and the City by Gerald Kersh (1938)
The Way Some People Die by Ross Macdonald (1951)
The Underground Man by Ross Macdonald (1971)
Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (1986-87)
True Grit by Charles Portis (1968)
I Was Dora Suarez by Derek Raymond (1990)

COMEDY

The Caravaners by Elizabeth von Arnim (1909)*
The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin by David Nobbs (1975-78)
Some Experiences of an Irish RM by Somerville and Ross (1899)
Trooper to the Southern Cross by Angela Thirkell (1934)*
Drowned Hopes by Donald Westlake (1990)

FAMILY AND SELF

Pather Panchali by Bibhutibhishan Banerji (1929)
Parents and Children by Ivy Compton-Burnett (1941)*
Hopscotch by Julio Cortazar (1963)
Cards of Identity by Nigel Dennis (1955)
Death of an Ordinary Man by Glen Duncan (2004)
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (1998)
The British Museum Is Falling Down by David Lodge (1965)
The Country Girls by Edna O’Brien (1960)
The Fortnight in September by RC Sherriff (1931)*
Riders in the Chariot by Patrick White (1961)
Soul Mountain by Gao Xingjian (1990)
The Daisy Chain by Charlotte Mary Yonge (1856)*
L’Assommoir by Émile Zola (1877)

STATE OF THE NATION

Havoc In Its Third Year by Ronan Bennett (2004)
A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe (1722)
And Quiet Flows the Don by Mikhail Sholokhov (1934)
The Sea and Poison by Shusaku Endo (1958)
The Football Factory by John King (1996)
The Octopus by Frank Norris (1901)
Joseph Knight by James Robertson (2003)
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (2003)
Downriver by Iain Sinclair (1991)
When Memory Dies by A Sivanandan (1997)
Fame Is the Spur by Howard Spring (1940)
Sostiene Pereira by Tabucchi (1994)

SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY

Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card (1985)
Little, Big; or, The Fairies’ Parliament by John Crowley (1981)
Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson (1999-)
Lost Horizon by James Hilton (1933)
Island by Aldous Huxley (1962)
Canopus in Argos by Doris Lessing (1979-83)
The Boys From Brazil by Ira Levin (1976)
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward by HP Lovecraft (1941)
The Wave Theory of Angels by Alison Macleod (2005)
The Confidence Man by Herman Melville (1857)
Tom’s Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce (1958)
Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny (1967)

WAR AND TRAVEL

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2006)*
Riceyman Steps by Arnold Bennett (1923)
A Good Place to Die by James Buchan (1999)
The March by EL Doctorow (2005)
Consul at Sunset by Gerald Hanley (1951)
Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson (2007)
The Middle Parts of Fortune by Frederick Manning (1929)
The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara (1974)
The Miracle Game by Josef Skvorecky (1972)

MY SEVEN

Air and Angels by Susan Hill (Love)
A Pin to See the Peepshow by F Tennyson Jesse (Crime)
Crazy Paving by Louise Doughty (Comedy)
Skallagrig by William Horwood (Family and Self)
The Village by Marghanita Laski (State of the Nation)
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood (Science Fiction and Fantasy)
The Night Watch by Sarah Waters (War and Travel)

You can see all the lists plus some interesting extras here.

And Jennie at Biblio File is hosting a challenge to read 10 books from the list over the coming year. You can find the details here.
Now that’s definitely the end of this particular list. But I have more lists in reserve and I’ll share them very soon.

And I really must figure out where I’m going with the challenge …