Category: Books

Happy New Year 2025!

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

Happy New Year to you all! I’m wishing you all health and happiness for 2025 and lots of good books to read.

For my first post this year I’m looking back at some of the books I read in 2024 in My Life in Books 2024. The idea is simple: Using only books you have read this year, answer these prompts. Try not to repeat a book title. 

Links in the titles below will take you to my reviews where they exist.

In high school I was: Getting Better by Michael Rosen

People might be surprised by: The Hog’s Back Mystery by Freeman Wills Crofts

I will never be: The Fledgeling by Frances Faviell

My fantasy Job is: The Christmas Book Hunt by Jenny Colgan

At the end of a long day I need: Regeneration by Pat Barker

I hate being: Close to Death by Anthony Horowitz

I wish I had: The Black Tulip by Alexandre Dumas

My family reunions are (at): Blackwater Lake by Maggie Jones

At a party you’d find me (with) Shakespeare: The Man who Pays the Rent by Judi Dench, Brendan O’Hea

I’ve never been to Hemlock Bay by Martin Edwards

A happy day includes: The Silence Between Breaths by Cath Staincliffe

Motto I live by: To Love and be Wise by Josephine Tey

On my bucket list is (to find): The Tree of Hands by Ruth Rendell

In my next life, I want to have: Black Roses by Jane Thynne

The Classics Club Spin Result

Published on by Margaret3 Comments

The spin number in The Classics Club Spin is number …

3

which for me is The Stars Look Down by A J Cronin. The rules of the Spin are that this is the book for me to read by 18th December, 2024. I added The Stars Look Down by A J Cronin because I enjoyed The Citadel many years ago. So, I’m looking forward to reading it but I hadn’t realised that it is 712 pages long!

Synopsis from Amazon

The Stars Look Down was A.J. Cronin’s fourth novel, published in 1935, and this tale of a North country mining family was a great favourite with his readers.

Robert Fenwick is a miner, and so are his three sons. His wife is proud that all her four men go down the mines. But David, the youngest, is determined that somehow he will educate himself and work to ameliorate the lives of his comrades who ruin their health to dig the nation’s coal. It is, perhaps, a typical tale of the era in which it was written – there were many novels about coal mining, but Cronin, a doctor turned author, had a gift for storytelling, and in his time wrote several very popular and successful novels

In the magnificent narrative tradition of The Citadel, Hatter’s Castle and Cronin’s other novels, The Stars Look Down is deservedly remembered as a classic of its age.

Did you take part in the Classics Spin? What will you be reading?

Unnatural Death by Dorothy L Sayers

Published on by Margaret2 Comments

From the back cover:

‘No sign of foul play,’ says Dr Carr after the post-mortem on Agatha Dawson. The case is closed. But Lord Peter Wimsey is not satisfied.

With no clues to work on, he begins is own investigation. No clues, that is, until the sudden, senseless murder of Agatha’s maid.

What is going on in the mysterious Mrs Forrest’s Mayfair flat? And can Wimsey catch a desperate murderer before he himself becomes one of the victims?

This is the third book in the Lord Peter Wimsey series by Dorothy L Sayers, first published in 1927. My copy was reprinted in 2016 and I bought it secondhand five years ago. I’ve been reading this series totally out of order – I’ve already read the first two and several of the later books too. I think they each read well on their own.

Miss Climpson makes her first appearance in Unnatural Death, helping Lord Peter, working undercover. She is an elderly spinster, who runs what Wimsey calls ‘My Cattery’, ostensibly a typing bureau, but actually an amateur detective/enquiry agency. As in the first two books he works with his friend, Inspector Charles Parker, who is a Scotland Yard detective. Bunter, his manservant, only has a very minor role in this book. I think it’s an interesting mystery, not so much about discovering who killed Agatha Dawson and her maid, Bertha, but more about how the murders were committed.

Uncertain Death is most definitely a book of its time – that is the early 20th century. There is much banter, wit and humour, and plenty of snobbery of all types, clearly showing the class distinctions between the working and upper classes. Racism is prevalent and also lesbianism, although that is not directly stated. It is a clever story, well told, with colourful characters. There is a biographical note at the end of the book that reveals much about Lord Peter’s background, about his early years, school and university, and his experiences during the First World War.

The Classics Club Spin Result

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

The spin number in The Classics Club Spin is number …

17

which for me is How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn. The rules of the Spin are that this is the book for me to read by 22 September 2024.

Synopsis from Goodreads

A poignant coming-of-age novel set in a Welsh mining town, Richard Llewellyn’s How Green Was My Valley is a paean to a more innocent age, published in Penguin Modern Classics

Growing up in a mining community in rural South Wales, Huw Morgan is taught many harsh lessons – at the kitchen table, at Chapel and around the pit-head. Looking back on the hardships of his early life, where difficult days are faced with courage but the valleys swell with the sound of Welsh voices, it becomes clear that there is nowhere so green as the landscape of his own memory. An immediate bestseller on publication in 1939, How Green Was My Valley quickly became one of the best-loved novels of the twentieth century. Poetic and nostalgic, it is an elegy to a lost world.


This is good as How Green Was My Valley is also on my 20 Books of Summer list. I’m looking forward to reading it. It’s been on my To Be Read list for so long!

Did you take part in the Classics Spin? What will you be reading?

Six in Six: The 2024 Edition

Published on by Margaret9 Comments

I’m pleased to see that Jo at The Book Jotter  is running this meme again this year to summarise the first six months of reading, sorting the books into six categories – you can choose from the ones Jo suggests or come up with your own. Or if you want to do a shorter version, then just post something about six books you have read in the first six months of 2024.

I think it’s a good way to look back over the last six months’ reading. As I’ve been reading less than usual this year (30 books in the first six months) I’ve had to use some of the books in more than one category. And as I’ve been reviewing less I haven’t written posts about all the books. Where they exist the links take you to my posts on the books, and some are just short posts, not reviews.

Six Crime Fiction

  1. The Hog’s Back Mystery by Freeman Wills Crofts
  2. I Let You Go by Clare Mackintosh
  3. Hamlet, Revenge! by Michael Innes
  4. The Flower Arranger at All Saints by Lis Howell
  5. Indefensible by James Woolf
  6. The Hunter by Tana French

Six Authors New to me

  1. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
  2. Maiden Voyages by Sian Evans
  3. Everything is Everything by Clive Myrie
  4. A Murder of Crows by Sarah Yarwood-Lovett
  5. Great Meadow by Dirk Bogarde
  6. Black Roses by Jane Thynne

Six books set in a country other than my own

  1. The Hunter by Tana French
  2. Nero by Conn Iggulden
  3. Black Roses by Jane Thynne
  4. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
  5. The Black Tulip by Alexandre Dumas
  6. Road Ends by Mary Lawson

Six Books I Read from My To Be Read List

  1. The Invisible Man by H G Wells
  2. The Fledgeling by Frances Faviell
  3. The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell
  4. The Silence Between Breaths by Cath Staincliffe
  5. Shakespeare: The Man who Pays the Rent by Judi Dench, Brendan O’Hea
  6. The Innocent by M R Hall

Six books I have read but not reviewed (yet)

  1. You Are Dead by Peter James
  2. Past Lying by Val McDermid
  3. The Death of Mrs Westaway by Ruth Ware
  4. The Cracked Mirror by Chris Brookmyre
  5. Cut and Thirst by Margaret Attwood
  6. In the Springtime of the Year by Susan Hill

Six books recently added to my wish list

  1. The Night She Disappeared by Lisa Jewell
  2. The Swimmer: The Wild Life of Roger Deakin by Patrick Barkham
  3. The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell
  4. Troy by Stephen Fry
  5. The Well-Lived Life by Dr. Gladys McGarey 
  6. Trouble in Nuala by Harriet Steel

How is your reading going this year? Do let me know if you take part in Six in Six too

The Classics Club Spin Result

Published on by Margaret7 Comments

The spin number in The Classics Club Spin is number …

8

which for me is The Black Tulip by Alexandre Dumas. The rules of the Spin are that this is the book for me to read by 2 June 2024.

Synopsis from Goodreads:

Set at the height of the “tulipomania” that gripped Holland in 17th century, this is the story of Cornelius van Baerle, a humble grower whose sole desire is to grow the perfect specimen of the tulip negra.

When his godfather is murdered, Cornelius finds himself caught up in the deadly politics of the time, imprisoned and facing a death sentence. His jailor’s daughter Rosa, holds both the key to his survival and his chance to produce the ultimate tulip.


I loved The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas so I’m hoping to love this one too.

Did you take part in the Classics Spin? What will you be reading?