My Week in Books: 18 April 2018

This Week in Books is a weekly round-up hosted by Lypsyy Lost & Found, about what I’ve been reading Now, Then & Next.

IMG_1384-0

A similar meme,  WWW Wednesday is run by Taking on a World of Words.

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently reading: I’ve made some progress with Little Dorrit, my Classics Club spin book. I’ve met the Meagles family with their spoiled daughter, Pet and her maid and companion, the wonderfully named Tattycoram, and also Arthur Clennam, recently returning to England from China. Arthur goes to his family home, a dark decrepit house in London where his mother lives, his father having recently died. But I haven’t met Little Dorrit yet – still a long way to go in this book.

Little Dorrit

I’m also reading Portrait of a Murderer by Anne Meredith, which is what it says in the title. I’ve nearly finished this book, which is fascinating, even though it is so long winded.

Description:

‘Adrian Gray was born in May 1862 and met his death through violence, at the hands of one of his own children, at Christmas, 1931.’

Thus begins a classic crime novel published in 1933 that has been too long neglected – until now. It is a riveting portrait of the psychology of a murderer.

Each December, Adrian Gray invites his extended family to stay at his lonely house, Kings Poplars. None of Gray’s six surviving children is fond of him; several have cause to wish him dead. The family gathers on Christmas Eve – and by the following morning, their wish has been granted. 

This fascinating and unusual novel tells the story of what happened that dark Christmas night; and what the murderer did next.

I’ve recently finished  A Dying Note by Ann Parker, her latest book in the Silver Rush Mysteries, which was published on 3 April 2018.

I loved this book, set in the autumn of 1881 in San Francisco, where Inez Stannert is making a new start in life, managing a music store. All is going well until the body of a young man, Jamie Monroe, is found washed up on the banks of Mission Creek canal.

I posted my review on Monday and gave it 4 stars.

What do you think you’ll read next:

Will it be Time is a Killer by Michel Bussi, which was published on 5 April 2018 and in last week’s post was the book I said I might read next? Or will it be something else? I still don’t know.

Description:

‘One of France’s most ingenious crime writers’ SUNDAY TIMES

‘Bussi breaks every rule in the book’ JOAN SMITH

It is summer 1989 and fifteen-year-old Clotilde is on holiday with her parents in Corsica. On a twisty mountain road, their car comes off at a curve and plunges into a ravine. Only Clotilde survives.

Twenty-seven years later, she returns to Corsica with her husband and their sulky teenage daughter. Clotilde wants the trip to do two things – to help exorcise her past, and to build a bridge between her and her daughter. But in the very place where she spent that summer all those years ago, she receives a letter. From her mother. As if she were still alive.

As fragments of memory come back, Clotilde begins to question the past. And yet it all seems impossible – she saw the corpses of her mother, her father, her brother. She has lived with their ghosts. But then who sent this letter – and why?

Have you read any of these books?  Do any of them tempt you? 

My Week in Books: 4 April 2018

This Week in Books is a weekly round-up hosted by Lypsyy Lost & Found, about what I’ve been reading Now, Then & Next.

IMG_1384-0

A similar meme,  WWW Wednesday is run by Taking on a World of Words.

Currently reading:

I have started to read The Fire Court by Andrew Taylor, due to be published 5 April 2018 and it’s looking good so far.

Blurb:

Somewhere in the soot-stained ruins of Restoration London, a killer has gone to ground…

The Great Fire has ravaged London, wreaking destruction and devastation wherever its flames spread. Now, guided by the incorruptible Fire Court, the city is slowly rebuilding, but times are volatile and danger is only ever a heartbeat away.

James Marwood, son of a traitor, is thrust into this treacherous environment when his ailing father claims to have stumbled upon a murdered woman in the very place where the Fire Court sits. Then his father is run down and killed. Accident? Or another murder…?

Determined to uncover the truth, Marwood turns to the one person he can trust – Cat Lovett, the daughter of a despised regicide. Marwood has helped her in the past. Now it’s her turn to help him. But then comes a third death… and Marwood and Cat are forced to confront a vicious and increasingly desperate killer whose actions threaten the future of the city itself.

Recently finished:

The Tenderness of Wolves

The last book I finished is The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney, historical fiction set in Canada in 1867. I am so, so pleased to finish this as it has taken me almost 4 weeks to read it. I found it really hard to get into it at first and disliked the use of the present tense throughout. But overall I did like the story and will try to expand on these thoughts in a separate post.

Next:

Now the difficult part – what to read next!

Little Dorritt

I really should get back to reading Little Dorrit which I temporarily put on the back burner so that I could finish The Tenderness of Wolves. It’s my Classics Club Spin book but haven’t got very far with it yet and it’s looking extremely unlikely that I’ll finish it by the end of April!

But I am so tempted to read The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton that I’ve borrowed from my local library as I suspect I won’t be able to renew it.

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

Blurb (Goodreads):

How do you stop a murder that’s already happened?

At a gala party thrown by her parents, Evelyn Hardcastle will be killed–again. She’s been murdered hundreds of times, and each day, Aiden Bishop is too late to save her. Doomed to repeat the same day over and over, Aiden’s only escape is to solve Evelyn Hardcastle’s murder and conquer the shadows of an enemy he struggles to even comprehend–but nothing and no one are quite what they seem.

Deeply atmospheric and ingeniously plotted, The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle is a highly original debut that will appeal to fans of Kate Atkinson and Agatha Christie.

Have you read any of these books?  Do any of them tempt you? 

My Week in Books: 28 March 2018

This Week in Books is a weekly round-up hosted by Lypsyy Lost & Found, about what I’ve been reading Now, Then & Next.

IMG_1384-0

A similar meme,  WWW Wednesday is run by Taking on a World of Words.

Currently reading:

The Tenderness of Wolves

I’m making progress with The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney, historical fiction set in Canada in 1867. In last week’s post I wrote that I wasn’t enjoying it as much as I hoped, or expected, but now I’ve read about 40% of the book I’ve settled more into the story as Lucy Ross heads north into the forest following the trail of her son Francis, suspected of murdering Laurent Jammet. Although, I am still finding the number of characters rather confusing and am uncomfortable with the use of the present tense.

The Ashes of London

I’m also reading The Ashes of London by Andrew Taylor and am totally immersed in the aftermath of the Great Fire of 1666 as work begins on rebuilding London. There is mystery too as among the many dead bodies a body of a man is found in the ruins of St Paul’s Cathedral – stabbed in the neck, thumbs tied behind his back. There are two strands to the story, one narrated in the first person by James Marwood, whose father was a Fifth Monarchist, and the other in the third person by Cat  Lovett, also the child of a Fifth Monarchist, whose father was one of the Regicides, and is now a fugitive.

Little Dorritt

And I have made a start in reading my Classics Club spin book – Little Dorrit. I was quite surprised to find it doesn’t begin in the Marshalsea Debtors’ prison but in a prison in Marseilles in 1826 with a  notorious murderer Rigaud telling his cell mate how he killed his wife.

Recently finished:

The last book I finished is The Daffodil Affair by Michael Innes, pure escapism, an Inspector Appleby book about a house in Bloomsbury that had disappeared, two young girls who had been kidnapped in York and London, and a cab horse named Daffodil that had gone missing in Harrogate.

I posted my review on Saturday.

Next:

It could be the sequel to The Ashes of London, The Fire Court by Andrew Taylor, due to be published 5 April 2018.Or it could be something different as I never really know until the time comes to start another book what I want to read next.

Blurb:

Somewhere in the soot-stained ruins of Restoration London, a killer has gone to ground…

The Great Fire has ravaged London, wreaking destruction and devastation wherever its flames spread. Now, guided by the incorruptible Fire Court, the city is slowly rebuilding, but times are volatile and danger is only ever a heartbeat away.

James Marwood, son of a traitor, is thrust into this treacherous environment when his ailing father claims to have stumbled upon a murdered woman in the very place where the Fire Court sits. Then his father is run down and killed. Accident? Or another murder…?

Determined to uncover the truth, Marwood turns to the one person he can trust – Cat Lovett, the daughter of a despised regicide. Marwood has helped her in the past. Now it’s her turn to help him. But then comes a third death… and Marwood and Cat are forced to confront a vicious and increasingly desperate killer whose actions threaten the future of the city itself.

Have you read any of these books?  Do any of them tempt you? 

My Week in Books: 21 March 2018

This Week in Books is a weekly round-up hosted by Lypsyy Lost & Found, about what I’ve been reading Now, Then & Next.

IMG_1384-0

A similar meme,  WWW Wednesday is run by Taking on a World of Words.

Currently reading:

The Tenderness of Wolves

The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney, set in Canada in 1867. A man has been brutally murdered, a woman finds his body and her seventeen-year-old son has disappeared. She has to clear his name, heading north into the forest and the desolate landscape that lies beyond it, Also tracking him is what passes for the law in this frontier land: trappers, sheriffs, traders. As the party pushes further from civilisation, hidden purposes and old obsessions are revealed.

I’m not enjoying it so far as much as I hoped, or expected. It may be because I can’t get the characters clear in my head and have to keep turning back the pages to identify them.

I’m also reading a rather strange book, The Daffodil Affair by Michael Innes, one of his Inspector John Appleby mysteries. It’s not at all what I expected but I am enjoying it. Set in the Blitz there’s a haunted house that has vanished, a horse, called Daffodil that has been stolen and two girls have been kidnapped. Appleby and another detective, Hudspith investigate. It is bizarre with elements of the absurd.

Recently finished:

The last book I finished is The Good Liar by Catherine McKenzie. An explosion rips apart a Chicago building, the lives of three women are forever altered.

Cecily whose husband and best friend were inside the building. Kate, who fled the disaster and is hoping that her past won’t catch up with her, and Franny, a young woman in search of her birth mother, who she says was also in the building. The story is told through each woman’s perspective. They all have secrets  – but who is the liar?

I’ll post my review soon.

Next:

I have so many books I want to read next, but right now I can’t decide. I really should start Little Dorrit, my Classics Club spin book soon. It was originally published  in nineteen monthly instalments, each consisting of 32 pages and I can’t imagine being a reader in 1855 keeping track of a story in monthly instalments over 2 years! I hope it won’t take me that long.

Little Dorritt

Blurb (Amazon):

When Arthur Clennam returns to England after many years abroad, he takes a kindly interest in Amy Dorrit, his mother’s seamstress, and in the affairs of Amy’s father, William Dorrit, a man of shabby grandeur, long imprisoned for debt in Marshalsea prison. As Arthur soon discovers, the dark shadow of the prison stretches far beyond its walls to affect the lives of many, from the kindly Mr Panks, the reluctant rent-collector of Bleeding Heart Yard, and the tipsily garrulous Flora Finching, to Merdle, an unscrupulous financier, and the bureaucratic Barnacles in the Circumlocution Office. A masterly evocation of the state and psychology of imprisonment, “Little Dorrit” is one of the supreme works of Dickens’s maturity.

Have you read any of these books?  Do any of them tempt you? 

The Classics Club Spin Result

Classics Club

The spin number in The Classics Club Spin was announced yesterday. It’s number …

3

which for me is Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens. The rules of the Spin are that this is the book for me to read by April 30, 2018.

Little Dorritt

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. As it’s on my list I do want to read it – sometime – maybe not right now.

I know very little about Little Dorrit, just that it’s long and my copy is one of the Wordsworth Classics in a very small font. I stopped watching the TV adaptation with Tom Courtney as William Dorrit – such a dark and dreary production with him in the Marshalsea debtors’ prison. The blurb on the back cover says that Dickens’ working title for the book was Nobody’s Fault. Well, it’s his fault for writing it – and mine for for putting it on the Spin List – oh, yes and the Spin God for spitting out number 3.

I just hope I enjoy it!

Here’s the blurb from Amazon:

Little Dorrit is a classic tale of imprisonment, both literal and metaphorical, while Dickens’ working title for the novel, Nobody’s Fault, highlights its concern with personal responsibility in private and public life. Dickens’ childhood experiences inform the vivid scenes in Marshalsea debtor’s prison, while his adult perceptions of governmental failures shape his satirical picture of the Circumlocution Office. The novel’s range of characters – the honest, the crooked, the selfish and the self-denying – offers a portrait of society about whose values Dickens had profound doubts.

Little Dorrit is indisputably one of Dickens’ finest works, written at the height of his powers. George Bernard Shaw called it ‘a masterpiece among masterpieces’, a verdict shared by the novel’s many admirers.

A ‘masterpiece‘ – that makes it sound OK – doesn’t it?

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

Classics Club Spin

The Classics ClubIt’s time for another Classics Club Spin. I feel rather guilty because although I did read my last Spin book, Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens, I still haven’t finished writing a post about it!

The Spin rules:

  •  List any twenty books you have left to read from your Classics Club list.
  • Number them from 1 to 20.
  • On Friday 9 March the Classics Club will announce a number.
  • This is the book to read by 30 April 2018.

This is my list:

Lorna DooneNicholas NicklebyLittle DorrittOliver TwistRomola

1) Lorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor by R D Blackmore

2) Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens

3) Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens

4) Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

5) Romola by George Eliot

 

BirdsongParade's EndMary BartonNorth and SouthFar from the Madding Crowd

6) Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks

7) Parade’s End by Ford Maddox Ford

8) Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell

9) North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

10) Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

The Return of the NativeThree Men in a BoatLove in the Time of CholeraOne Hundred Years of SolitudeAll Quiet on the Western Front

11) The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy

12) Three Man in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome

13) Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

14) One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

15) All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

East of EdenThe Grapes of WrathSweet ThursdayGulliver's TravelsFramley Parsonage (Chronicles of Barsetshire #4)

16) East of Eden by John Steinbeck

17) The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

18) Sweet Thursday by John Steinbeck

19) Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift

20) Framley Parsonage by Anthony Trollope

It shouldn’t matter which one comes up as I do want to read these books – but I’d like it to be one of Steinbeck’s books, or Birdsong.