Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Was Reading On This Day Over the Last Ten Years

Published on by Margaret10 Comments

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish and now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. For the rules see her blog.

Today’s theme is: Books I Was Reading On This Day Over the Last Ten Years (taken from Anne @ HeadFullofBooks) Here are the books I was reading on this day, or close to this day.

2016 – The Plague Charmer by Karen Maitland – set in Porlock Weir in 1361 where a village is isolated by the plague during the Black Death, a fascinating tale full of atmosphere and superstition.

2017 – Jane Austen at Home by Lucy Worsley. I am not a great fan of her style – the play acting and dressing up – but she writes in a lively, chatty style. I gained a better understanding of the social history of Georgian England and of Jane’s wider family connections and what her family and friends thought of her both as a person and as an author.

2018 – The Story Keeper by Anna Mazzola – historical fiction set on the Isle of Skye in 1857 where Audrey Hart has been employed by Miss Buchanan to collect the folklore and fairy tales of the local community, a novel full of family secrets and unfulfilled desires. 

2019 – Gallows Court by Martin Edwards – an intricately plotted murder mystery with plenty of suspense and intrigue set in 1930s London. There’s a headless corpse; an apparent suicide in a locked room; a man burned alive during an illusionist’s show in front of thousands of people.

2020 – A Thousand Moons by Sebastian Barry – historical fiction set in the 1870s some years after the end of the Civil War in Tennessee. These are dangerous times. It’s beautifully written, rendering the way the characters speak so that I could hear them, and describing the landscape so poetically and lyrically that the scenes unfolded before my eyes. 

2021 – Framley Parsonage by Anthony Trollope – an evocative portrayal of country life in nineteenth-century England, told with great compassion, humour and an acute insight into human nature. It’s the story of Mark Robarts, a young clergyman with ambitions beyond his small country parish of Framley.

2022 – Nucleus by Rory Clements – mix of historical fact and fiction, set in 1939 when England and Germany are on the brink of war. It is a fast-paced and gripping book, involving murder, IRA bombers, and espionage, with many twists and turns. In Nazi Germany Jews are in fear of their lives, trying to leave the country. Some have made it to England and America. In both countries the race is on to develop an atomic bomb.

2023 – Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively – This won the Booker Prize in 1987, a novel about a historian in her seventies looking back over her life, from a her childhood just after the First World War to the Second and beyond.

2024 – The Voyage Home by Pat Barker – the third book in her The Women of Troy trilogy. At the end of the Trojan War the Greeks and their prisoners eventually set sail for home. This is a well written, brutal, bloody tale of revenge told in a modern, colloquial style, and full of grim detail of horror and squalor. 

2025 – The Spy in the Archive: How One Man Tried to Kill the KGB by Gordon Corera. It’s about Vasili Mitrokhin, a KGB archivist who defected to Britain in 1992. Mitrokhin, a quiet, introverted and determined man, was a reluctant defector, because whilst he loved Russia he came to hate the KGB and the Soviet system.

Heroes: Greek Legends Retold: Book Beginnings on Friday & The Friday 56

Published on by Margaret7 Comments

Every Friday Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Gillion at Rose City Reader where you can share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading. You can also share from a book you want to highlight just because it caught your fancy.

This week I’m featuring one of my birthday presents, Heroes: Greek Legends Retold by Stephen Fry.

The book begins:

Zeus sits on his throne. He rules the sky and the world.

Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice, but she is taking a break and Anne at My Head is Full of Books has taken on hosting duties in her absence. You grab a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% of an eBook), find one or more interesting sentences (no spoilers), and post them.

Page 56:

She looked down, plucked Alcides from her nipple and threw him disgustedly from her. Milk sprayed from her nipple in a great arc across the night sky, imprinting it with stars, which from that moment, would be known as the Milky Way.

Description from Amazon UK

In this companion to his bestselling Mythos, Stephen Fry brilliantly retells these dramatic, funny, tragic and timeless tales.

Join Jason aboard the Argo as he quests for the Golden Fleece. See Atalanta – who was raised by bears – outrun any man before being tricked with golden apples. Witness wily Oedipus solve the riddle of the Sphinx and discover how Bellerophon captures the winged horse Pegasus to help him slay the monster Chimera.

Filled with white-knuckle chases and battles, impossible puzzles and riddles, acts of base cowardice and real bravery, not to mention murders and selfless sacrifices, Heroes is the story of what we mortals are truly capable of – at our worst and our very best.

If you have read this book, what did you think?

Top Ten Tuesday: Cover Freebie

Published on by Margaret34 Comments

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish and now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. For the rules see her blog.

Today’s theme is Cover Freebie (Pick any topic related to book covers. You can make up your own topic or pick one from the list of previous ones!).

I’m featuring mainly black and white covers. These are all books I own. I have read all of them except for the ones marked with an asterisk *.

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke

The Outsider by Albert Camus

Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton*

What We See When We Read by Peter Mendelsund*

Head of State by Andrew Marr*

Nagasaki by Susan Southard

Season of the Witch by Natasha Mostert

In the Springtime of the Year by Susan Hill

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates

Six Degrees of Separation from Land to The Burry Man’s Day

Published on by Margaret27 Comments

This is a monthly link-up hosted by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. This month we are starting with Land by Maggie O’Farrell, her latest release. I’ve read a sample and it looks like a book I’d enjoy.

On a windswept peninsula stretching out into the Atlantic, Tomás and his reluctant son, Liam, are working for the great Ordnance Survey project to map the whole of Ireland. The year is 1865, and in a country not long since ravaged and emptied by the Great Hunger, the task is not an easy one. Tomás, however, is determined that his maps will be a record of the disaster.

The British soldiers in charge are due to arrive any day, expecting the work to be completed, but Tomás is sent off course by an unsettling encounter in a copse. His life, and those of his family, will never be the same again. Liam is terrified by the sudden change in his taciturn father. What was it that caused such cracks to open in Tomás and how is Liam, aged only ten, going to finish the mapping, and get them both home?

My first link is the first book by Maggie O’Farrell that I read – The Hand that First Held Mine by Maggie O’Farrell. I read it in March 2013 and loved it, but it’s such a sad story. It’s beautifully written, so much so that it took me a while to realise that for the most part it’s written in the present tense.

My second link is Mrs McGinty’s Dead by Agatha Christie which I also read in March 2013. Hercule Poirot, assisted by Mrs Ariadne Oliver solve the mystery. There are plenty of surprises and a lot of misdirection before the killer is revealed. It was first published in 1952 and written not long after the end of the Second World War, reflecting the difficulties of finding employment and the changes for the post-war impoverished middle classes.

My third link is another book with the word ‘Mrs’ in the title Mrs Harris goes to Moscow by Paul Gallico. It’s a lovely little book. Mrs Harris is a London char lady who wins a trip to Moscow, where she wants to find her employer’s long-lost love. Mayhem ensues when she is thought to be Lady Char (the Russians not understanding what a ‘char lady’ is had converted it to ‘Lady Char’) and also a spy.

The setting of Moscow is also my link fourth in my chain in Private Moscow by James Patterson and Adam Hamdy, a conspiracy thriller novel. Jack Morgan, the head of Private, a detective agency with branches across the globe, sets out to hunt for the killer of his best friend and former marine, Karl Parker. There are spectacular car chases, with violent shoot-outs, miraculous escapes and fight scenes, and intense danger throughout as intrigues, conspiracies, old secrets and deep-cover agents are revealed.

My fifth link is Let it Bleed by Ian Rankin, which also features a dramatic car chase. Set in Edinburgh, this chase ends in a crash on the Forth Road Bridge. Rebus and his boss Chief Inspector Lauderdale are both injured, whilst the youths they were chasing stumble from their car and plunge from the Bridge embedding themselves in the metal deck of a Royal Navy frigate in the Firth of Forth hundreds of feet below.

My final link is The Burry Man’s Day by Catriona McPherson which is also set on the south shore of the Firth of Forth, part of the city of Edinburgh in South Queensferry. It’s the second in Catriona McPherson’s Dandy Gilver series. Dandy is a wealthy aristocrat who is also an amateur sleuth. In this book she investigates the death of the Burry Man. He is a local man dressed in a suit covered in sticky burdock burr seedheads who walks round Queensferry during the annual Ferry Fair. Dandy is there to present the prizes when he drops down dead.

The links in my chain are words in the titles, books I read in March 2013, books featuring car chases, and books set in Edinburgh.

Next month (September 6, 2026), we’ll start with start either with your book group’s current selection or if you’re not in a book group, start with the book that you’re currently reading.

A Far Cry from Kensington: Book Beginnings on Friday & The Friday 56

Published on by Margaret8 Comments

Every Friday Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Gillion at Rose City Reader where you can share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading. You can also share from a book you want to highlight just because it caught your fancy.

I’ve borrowed A Far Cry from Kensington by Muriel Spark from my local library. After reading Like a Cat Loves a Bird by James Bailey about Spark’s life and works, I wanted to read more of her books. In the introduction to this novel William Boyd states that her novels are very varied –

there are surreal novels, allegorical novels, some philosophical fables – but all are united by a tone of voice, a very dry sense of humour, and a particularly honed terse style … However, A Far Cry from Kensington … belongs in a loose group of novels in the Sparkian canon that has a recognisable footing in history and the real world – environments that Spark was familiar with and with a clear connection to her biography.( page xi)

The book begins:

So great was the noise during the day that I used to lie awake at night listening to the silence. I eventually fell asleep contented, filled with soundlessness but while I was awake I enjoyed the experience of darkness, thought, memory, sweet anticipations.

Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice, but she is taking a break and Anne at My Head is Full of Books has taken on hosting duties in her absence. You grab a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% of an eBook), find one or more interesting sentences (no spoilers), and post them.

Page 56:

Before we sent Wanda to bed I gave her a notebook and told her to write down as soon as possible everything she could remember about the voice and what it said. ‘I don’t want to write down things’, said Wanda. I think already she had an inkling of who the voice belonged to. Perhaps, already, she had started putting two and two together.

Description from Goodreads

Set on the crazier fringes of 1950s literary London, A Far Cry from Kensington is a delight, hilariously portraying love, fraud, death, evil, and transformation. Mrs. Hawkins, the majestic narrator, takes us well in hand and leads us back to her threadbare years in postwar London.

There, as a fat and much admired young war widow, she spent her days working for a mad, near-bankrupt publisher (“of very good books”) and her nights dispensing advice at her small South Kensington rooming house. At work and at home Mrs. Hawkins soon uncovered evil: shady literary doings and a deadly enemy; anonymous letters, blackmail, and suicide. With aplomb, however, Mrs. Hawkins confidently set about putting things to order, little imagining the mayhem that would ensue.

Now decades older, thin, successful, and delighted with life in Italy–quite a far cry from Kensington–Mrs. Hawkins looks back to all those dark doings and recounts how her own life changed forever. She still, however, loves to give advice: “It’s easy to get thin. You eat and drink the same as always, only half…I offer this advice without fee; it is included in the price of this book.”

If you have read this book, what did you think?

This Immortal Heart by Jennifer Saint

Published on by Margaret10 Comments

This is the oldest love story of all time . . .

Aphrodite, Goddess of Love, wields unparalleled power over every divine and mortal heart. Though her world is one of beauty, she is the most dangerous god of all, ruled by passion regardless of the consequences.

Ares, God of War, is her perfect contradiction: feared, unwanted and relentless in his devotion to chaos. Where she breathes life into longing, he thrives in destruction.

And yet gods are no more immune to love and loss than anyone else, and soon their lives collide. But even divine love can’t protect them from the fates of Mount Olympus, and whilst the God of War may be capable of greater love than anyone else, so may the Goddess of Love be capable of the gravest mistakes . . 

I’ve read several books retelling the Greek Myths, but none by Jennifer Saint, and none about Aphrodite so when I saw This Immortal Heart on NetGalley I decided to request it. Aphrodite is the goddess of love, sexual desire, beauty and procreation and in this retelling Saint focuses on her relationship with Ares, the god of war and with his brother, Hephaestus, the god of fire, blacksmiths, and metallurgy. She also includes several other stories in which Aphrodite appears. It’s episodic, not a plot driven story, but rather a collection of stories about Aphrodite as she is seen interacting with the other gods and humans.

The book begins with a Prologue in which Saint describes how Aphrodite was born. Ouranos, the ancient god who personified the sky, split apart as he sank beneath the waves pounding the rocky shore of Cyprus. He was slain by his son and Aphrodite was born from his agony, as his golden blood was scattered across the earth and fell into the churning froth of the sea. Aphrodite rose from the surface and strode forward onto the island shore. Flowers sprang from the ground where she walked and she felt ‘her power awakening in every glorious inch of her body’.

It took me a while to get settled into reading this long book of nearly 400 pages. For a while I was tempted to stop reading because Aphrodite initially came across to me as rather immature but I carried on reading. It’s too romantic for my liking – her affair with Ares, the god of war, whilst passionate and fiery, comes across as a classical example of ‘opposites attract’. Ares is not intelligent, lacking imagination, thinking of little else than war and violence. Aphrodite thinks he is ‘savage and utterly unreasonable, handsome though he may be‘. The standout sections for me are about Hephaestus – his story is much more interesting, from the myth about Pandora to that of his mother, Hera bound on the golden throne that he had made. He refused to release her and Zeus declared whoever made Hephaestus free her would be rewarded with Aphrodite’s hand in marriage. I found this completely engrossing keeping me glued to the book.

Saint’s writing is richly descriptive and lyrical, and gives a vivid picture of the different settings. However, I think the ending was rushed. Overall I found this an interesting book, but by the end I was left feeling I wanted to know more.

My thanks to the author and NetGalley for a review copy.