The 20/10 Books of Summer Challenge hosted by Cathy  at 746 Books ended today. I did the 10 book version and didn’t do too badly, reading 6 books.

I read:

1. The Remorseful Day by Colin Dexter ‘“ the last Morse book. I loved it. The plot is detailed, complex and as usual with Morse a puzzle type murder mystery with plenty of challenging clues.
2. Sad Cypress by Agatha Christie ‘“ a most satisfying mystery, in which Hercule Poirot discovers that almost everyone he talks to is lying. It has a clever and most complicated plot and it kept me guessing right to the end.
3. Zen there was Murder by H R F Keating ‘“ murder on a Zen Buddhism course. This book has a surreal feel about it and for most of the time I was completely bamboozled – not a great success.
4. The Day of the Lie by William Brodrick ‘“ a Father Anselm book.  A meaty layered book that made me think. Nothing is straight forward as it delved into the past, uncovering secrets and revealing crimes.  I did enjoy it, but it was hard work in parts.
5. A Medal for Murder by Frances Brody ‘“ the second Kate Shackleton mystery, set in the 1920s.  It was easy to read but I just couldn’t see who could be the murderer. I had several suspects, all of whom turned out to be innocent of the crime. I liked the historical setting and the characters rang true.
6. The Man in the Wooden Hat by Jane Gardam ‘“ the second book in the Old Filth trilogy. I also read the third book, Last Friends.  Both books follow the lives of Old Filth, his wife and friends  over 50 years, told from the different characters’ points of view,  forming a memorable trilogy, of love and life, humour and heartbreak in colonial Hong Kong and the contrasting setting of the English countryside.

So actually I read 7!

And these are the ones I didn’t get round to reading:

1. Poirot Investigates by Agatha Christie ‘“ an early collection of short stories.
2. Silas Marner by George Eliot ‘“ a short classic.
3. Great Escape Stories by Eric Williams ‘“ it comprises twelve true-life escape and evasion stories from the Second World War and one from the Korean War.
4. How the Girl Guides Won the War by Janie Hampton.

If you did this challenge – or the 20 books challenge – how did you get on?

I read 9 books in August.  Here they are, in the order I read them with links are to my posts, where I’ve written them:

• Thin Air by Ann Cleeves – I didn’t get round to writing about this book, although I loved it. It’s the latest in the Shetland series in which Detectives Jimmy Perez and Willow Reeves are on Unst investigating the murder of Eleanor, a guest at her friend’s wedding. Before she went missing Eleanor claimed to have seen the ghost of a local child who drowned in the 1920s. Her interest in the legend of the ghost had seemed unhealthy – obsessive, even – to her friends: an indication of a troubled mind. So was her death suicide or was she murdered? Written with a wonderful sense of place, the plot twists had me in suspense and I almost couldn’t wait to find out.

• A Change of Climate by Hilary Mantel  –  one of Hilary Mantel’s early books, first published in 1994 and  described on the back cover as ‘˜a literary family saga’ and ‘˜a first rate thriller’. A great book on all counts, characters and locations beautifully described and a well constructed and convincing plot, powerful and challenging on several levels.

• One Life: My Mother’s Story by Kate Grenville –  a beautiful biography of her mother Nance Russell. A book that casts light not only on Nance’s life but also on life in Australia for most of the 20th century.  It brings to life both the good times and the bad times, as she writes about her mother’s heartache, worries, joys and sorrows, of the hard times during the economic depression, all of it as a whole making a rich and fulfilled life.

• Come, Tell Me How You Live:an archaeological memoir by Agatha Christie Mallowan, in which she wrote about her life accompanying her husband Max on his excavations in Syria and Iraq in the 1930s. The emphasis in the book is on the everyday life on a dig, about people and her insights into their beliefs  written with love and humour. I loved it.

• Appointment with Death by Agatha Christie, a Poirot mystery set in the Middle East in which he investigates the death of Mrs Boynton, a malignant and malicious tyrant who enjoyed exercising power over her family. This is a quick, easy read, with a lot of dialogue in a relatively short book (less than 200 pages). I enjoyed it, although it’s not one of my favourite Agatha Christie books.

• Alan M Turing by Sara Turing, a biography by his mother, with an added chapter by his brother. I’d recently watched The Imitation Game and wanted to know a bit more about Turing. This is not the right book for that – his mother’s account is hopelessly biased and his brother’s left a sour taste in my mouth. I think I should maybe read the biography by Alan Hodges Alan Turing: The Enigma, the book on which the film is based.

• A Medal for Murder by Frances Brody – the second Kate Shackleton mystery.  It is 1922 and Kate is investigating a pawn shop robbery, when she discovers the body of Lawrence Milner, outside a Harrogate theatre. She is also asked to find Lucy, Captain Wolfendale’s granddaughter who has gone missing and he has received a ransom note. This is a detailed, complex plot which kept me guessing almost to the end about the identity of the murderer.

• Fresh from the Country by Miss Read, set in the 1950s, this is a stand-alone novel telling the story of Anna Lacey, a newly qualified teacher, as she spends her first year teaching in Elm Hill, a new suburb in London. It highlights the differences between life in the country and the suburbs and overall the comparisons became too repetitive. But I did like this book, which transported me back to the 1950s, when children were taught in large classes and the pace of life was slower than today.

• Lady Susan, The Watsons and Sanditon by Jane Austen – none of these were published in her lifetime. Told in a series of letters (reminiscent of Laclos’s Les Liaisons Dangereuses), Lady Susan is the  story of an unscrupulous widow who plans to force her daughter into a marriage against her wishes. The Watsons is a fragment in which the main character, Emma Watson returns to her father’s house after fourteen years of absence, having been brought up by a wealthy aunt. She joins her three unmarried sisters, living with their invalid father  and looking for husbands whilst struggling for money. Sanditon is also an unfinished fragment, in which the the old world is contrasted with the new upcoming world as two landowners plan to develop Sanditon into a fashionable bathing place.  A real treat to read.

For most of the month I read new-to-me or library books, finishing with a flourish of three of my own to-be-read books (and I’m currently reading another TBR), and for once there are only two crime fiction books.

Once again it is so difficult picking which one I enjoyed the most – nearly all of them are such good reads and it’s impossible to decide between such very different and such very enjoyable books.

This Week in Books is a weekly round-up hosted by Lypsyy Lost & Found, about what I’ve been reading Now, Then & Next. A similar meme, WWW Wednesdays is hosted by Sam at Taking on a World of Words.

Now – Yesterday I began reading The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood. I was amazed when I realised that this book has been on my TBR shelves for almost 6 years! It’s certainly time I read it.

Blurb:

Margaret Atwood’s The Robber Bride is inspired by “The Robber Bridegroom,” a wonderfully grisly tale from the Brothers Grimm in which an evil groom lures three maidens into his lair and devours them, one by one. But in her version, Atwood brilliantly recasts the monster as Zenia, a villainess of demonic proportions, and sets her loose in the lives of three friends, Tony,Charis, and Roz. All three “have lost men, spirit, money, and time to their old college acquaintance, Zenia. At various times, and in various emotional disguises, Zenia has insinuated her way into their lives and practically demolished them.

Then: The last book I finished is Lady Susan, The Watsons and Sanditon by Jane Austen.  I loved it.

Blurb:

These three short works show Austen experimenting with a variety of different literary styles, from melodrama to satire, and exploring a range of social classes and settings. The early epistolary novel Lady Susan depicts an unscrupulous coquette, toying with the affections of several men. In contrast, The Watsons is a delightful fragment, whose spirited heroine Emma Watson finds her marriage opportunities restricted by poverty and pride. Written in the last months of Austen’s life, the uncompleted novelSanditon is set in a newly established seaside resort, with a glorious cast of hypochondriacs and speculators,and shows the author contemplating a changing society with a mixture of scepticism and amusement.

My review will follow shortly.

Next – I’m never really sure which book I’ll be reading next. It should probably be Adam Bede by George Eliot, but at the moment I’m feeling reluctant, so it is more likely to be The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters, which I’ve borrowed from the library.

Blurb:

‘There came the splash of water and the rub of heels as Mrs Barber stepped into the tub. After that there was a silence, broken only by the occasional echoey plink of drips from the tap…

‘Frances had been picturing her lodgers in purely mercenary terms – as something like two great waddling shillings. But this, she thought, was what it really meant to have paying guests: this odd, unintimate proximity, this rather peeled-back moment, where the only thing between herself and a naked Mrs Barber was a few feet of kitchen and a thin scullery door. An image sprang into her head: that round flesh, crimsoning in the heat.’

What are you reading this week?