Category: TBRs

My Tuesday Post: The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

Published on by Margaret15 Comments

Every Tuesday First Chapter, First Paragraph/Intros is hosted by Vicky of I’d Rather Be at the Beach sharing the first paragraph or two of a book she’s reading or plans to read soon.

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by The Purple Booker. Post two sentences from somewhere in a book you’re reading. No spoilers, please! List the author and book title too.

My first paragraph this week is from The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah, which I’m currently reading. It’s one of my TBRs.

The Nightingale: Bravery, Courage, Fear and Love in a Time of War

It begins:

April 9, 1995 – The Oregon Coast

If I have learned anything in this long life of mine, it is this: In love we find out who we want to be; in war we find out who we are. Today’s young people want to know everything about everyone. They think that talking about a problem will solve it. I come from a quieter generation. We understand the value of forgetting, the lure of reinvention.

Beginning in 1995 this novel moves back in time to the start of the Second World War to France.

Here is a teaser from page 88:

Vianne’s anger dissolved; without it, she felt inexpressibly tired. This essential difference had always been between them. Vianne the rule follower and Isabelle the rebel. Even in girlhood, in grief, they had expressed their emotions differently.

Blurb:

Despite their differences, sisters Vianne and Isabelle have always been close. Younger, bolder Isabelle lives in Paris while Vianne is content with life in the French countryside with her husband Antoine and their daughter. But when the Second World War strikes, Antoine is sent off to fight and Vianne finds herself isolated so Isabelle is sent by their father to help her.

As the war progresses, the sisters’ relationship and strength is tested. With life changing in unbelievably horrific ways, Vianne and Isabelle will find themselves facing frightening situations and responding in ways they never thought possible as bravery and resistance take different forms in each of their actions.

I’ve read nearly half the book so far and am really enjoying it, but I’m not sure yet about the identity of the narrator in the opening chapter – which sister is it? I keep changing my mind about it. Please don’t tell me if you know – that would be a such a spoiler …

My Friday Post: The Lake House by Kate Morton

Published on by Margaret24 Comments

Book Beginnings Button

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, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires.

This week I’m featuring The Lake House by Kate Morton. This is one of my TBRs.

It begins in Cornwall in August 1933:

The rain was heavy now and the hem of her dress was splattered with mud. She’d have to hide it afterwards; no one could know that she’d been out.

Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice. These are the rules:

  1. Grab a book, any book.
  2. Turn to page 56, or 56% on your eReader.
  3. Find any sentence (or a few, just don’t spoil it) that grabs you.
  4. Post it.
  5. Add the URL to your post in the link on Freda’s most recent Friday 56 post.

Page 56

Sadie pictured the muddy lake and its eerie avian population. ‘Yes, that’s it. What happened there?’

‘A terrible business,’ Louise said, with a sad shake of her head. ‘Back in the thirties, before I was born. My mother used to talk about it, though – usually when she wanted to stop us kids from wandering too far. A child went missing on the night of a grand party. It was a big story at the time; the family was wealthy and the national press paid a lot of attention. There was a huge police investigation, and they even brought down the top brass from London. Not that any of it helped.

What a coincidence! I think these two extracts sum up what this book is about – an unsolved mystery of a child who disappeared without a trace.

I’ll be reading this book soon. What do you think? does it tempt you too?

A – Z of TBRs: P, Q and R

Published on by Margaret15 Comments

I’m now up to P, Q and R in my A – Z of TBRs, a series of posts in which I take a fresh look at some of my TBRs to inspire me to read more of them, or maybe to decide not to bother reading them after all. This time I’ve included one e-book.

P  – is for The Power House by John Buchan, a book I’ve had since 2014. I bought this book because I’d read and enjoyed John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps.

The Power House

It’s a short book of just 108 pages and my copy has an introduction by Stella Rimington. She writes:

The Power House is one of the least known of Buchan’s mature works, a tale without a plot, and so full of holes that it calls to mind Samuel Johnson’s definition of a ‘network’ – ‘anything reticulated and desuccated at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections’. It is pure essence of Buchan – a demonstration of his magical power to weave a tale out of no materials but the threads and colours of his imagination.

When his friend Charles Pitt-Heron vanishes mysteriously, Sir Edward Leithen, MP, is at first only mildly concerned. But a series of strange events that follow Pitt-Heron’s disappearance convinces Leithen that he is dealing with a sinister secret society. Their code name is ‘The Power-House’.

I cast my mind back to gather recollections of Pitt-Heron, but all I could find was an impression of a brilliant, uncomfortable being, who had been too fond of the byways of life for my sober tastes. There was nothing crooked in him in the wrong sense, but there might be a good deal that was perverse. I remember consoling myself with the thought that, though he might shatter his wife’s nerves by his vagaries, he would scarcely break her heart.

To be watchful, I decided, was my business. And I could not get rid of the feeling that I might soon have cause for my vigilance. (page 9)

Q – is for The Queen’s Man by Sharon Penman (on my Kindle for two years). I bought this after reading her Sunne in Splendour, which I absolutely loved.

The Queen's Man

It’s set in AD 1183, when Richard the Lionheart is missing, thought to be dead and his brother Prince John is scheming to take the Crown. Justin de Quincy has just discovered his father is the Bishop of Chester. A dying man, a goldsmith, gives him a letter to deliver to Queen Eleanor, (Richard’s and John’s mother) which brings him into great danger as it reveals whether Richard is alive or dead.

Captured by Henry’s soldiers, she [Eleanor] was held prisoner for sixteen years, freed only by Henry’s death. Such a lengthy confinement would have broken most people. It had not broken Eleanor. The passionate young queen and the embittered, betrayed wife were ghosts long since laid to rest. Now in her seventy-first year, she was acclaimed and admired for her sagacity and shrewd counsel, reigning over England in her son’s absence, fiercely protective of his interests, proud matriarch of a great dynasty. A living legend. And this was the woman expecting a letter from a murdered goldsmith? Justin thought it highly unlikely. (location 323)

R– is for Resistance by Owen Sheers a book I’ve had for nearly ten years. One of the reasons I haven’t read this before now is that I couldn’t find it for a while until I discovered it out of order behind other books that I’d double-shelved. I can’t remember now what had prompted me to buy this book. Owen Sheers is an author, poet and playwright.

Resistance

Resistance gives an alternative outcome to World War Two, one in which the D-Day landings had failed in 1944 and the Nazis had invaded the UK. Sarah Lewis wakes to discover her husband and all the men in the Welsh border valley of Olchon have gone. It’s the story of a community under siege.

The meeting with Atkins had happened too quickly for George to think on the consequences yet. His head was light, open, and he swung his scythe with a renewed energy. He felt exposed, as if a layer of skin had been shaved from him, bringing him into closer contact with the world. The blade’s edge against the young stalks of bracken, the calligraphy of the swallows above him. Everything seemed clearer, brought into sharper focus. Just an hour ago the war was a different country, the contours of which he’d traced through the newspapers, in radio reports. But now he was involved, connected. He had the strange sensation of his life simultaneously diminishing and expanding under the impression of Atkins’s words and for the second time that week he felt older than his seventeen years. (page 25)

What do you think? Do you fancy any of them? Would you ditch any of them?

A – Z of TBRs: M, N and O

Published on by Margaret11 Comments

I’m now up to M, N, and O in my A – Z of TBRs, a series of posts in which I take a fresh look at some of my TBRs to inspire me to read more of them by the end of the year, or maybe to decide not to bother reading them after all. These TBRs are all physical books – I’ve not included e-books. Looking at my books like this is encouraging me to read more of my own books as I’ve read two of the books I’ve featured in the earlier posts.

I’m enjoying searching my shelves – finding books I’d forgotten were there (the disadvantage of shelving books behind others).

MNO bks P1020320

M  – is for Mercy by Jodie Picoult, a book I’ve had since 2008. LibraryThing predicts that I probably won’t like this book. Two cousins are driven to extremes by the power of love, as one helps his terminally ill wife commit suicide and the other becomes involved in a passionate affair with his wife’s new assistant.

I bought this book because I’ve read and enjoyed three other books by Jodie Picoult.

According to the sworn voluntary statement of James MacDonald, his wife had been suffering from the advanced stages of cancer and had asked him to kill her. Which did not account for the raw scratches on his face, or the fact that he had traveled to a town he had never set foot in to commit the murder. Maggie had not videotaped her wishes, or even written them down and had them notarized to prove she was of sane mind – Jamie said that she hadn’t wanted it to be a production, but a simple gift.

What it boiled down to, really, was Jamie’s word. Cam’s only witness was dead. He was supposed to believe the confession of James MacDonald solely because he was a MacDonald, a member of his clan. (page 39)

N – is for Notes from an Exhibition by Patrick Gale (on my TBR shelves since 2011). LibraryThing predicts that I probably will like this book. When troubled artist Rachel Kelly dies painting obsessively in her attic studio in Penzance, her saintly husband and adult children have more than the usual mess to clear up. She leaves behind an extraordinary and acclaimed body of work – but she also leaves a legacy of secrets and emotional damage that will take months to unravel.

I haven’t read any of Patrick Gale’s books, but I was attracted to it by the blurb.

‘We are here to say goodbye to our dear Rachel, who was a regular attender since Anthony first brought her to Penzance a little over forty years ago. For those of you who have never been to a Friends’ Meeting before, this may not be the kind of funeral you’re used to. The proceedings take the form of a Quaker Meeting for Worship. This is based on silent contemplation. There are two aims in our worship: to give thanks for the life that has been lived and to help those who mourn to feel a deep and comforting sense of divine presence within us. The silence may be broken by anyone, Quaker or not, who feels moved to speak, to pray or offer up a memory of Rachel.’ (page 62)

O – is for An Officer and a Spy by Robert Harris a book I’ve only had for nearly two years. LibraryThing predicts that I probably will like this book. A recreation of a scandal that became the most famous miscarriage of justice in history, this is the story of the infamous Dreyfus affair told as a chillingly dark, hard-edged novel of conspiracy and espionage. Paris in 1895. Alfred Dreyfus, a young Jewish officer, has just been convicted of treason, sentenced to life imprisonment at Devil’s Island, and stripped of his rank in front of a baying crowd of twenty-thousand.

I bought this on the strength of the other books by Robert Harris that I’ve enjoyed. I’ve heard of the Dreyfus affair but know very little about it.

Beneath the letters is a thin manilla envelope containing a large photograph, twenty five centimetres by twenty. I recognise it immediately from Dreyfus’s court martial – a copy of the covering note, the famous bordereau, that accompanied the documents he passed to the Germans. It was the central evidence against him produced in court. Until this morning I had no idea how the Statistical Section had got its hands on it. And no wonder. I have to admire Lauth’s handiwork. Nobody looking at it could tell it had once been ripped into pieces: all the tear marks have been carefully touched out, so that it seems a whole document. (pages 40 -41)

What do you think? Do you fancy any of them? Would you ditch any of them?

The TBR Book Tag 2017

Published on by Margaret18 Comments

I saw this tag on FictionFan’s blog and thought I’d do it too. it’s time I got to grips with my ever-expanding piles of books to read, particularly as right now I’m not at all sure how many TBRs I have.

How do you keep track of your TBR pile?

In 2007 I  began using LibraryThing to catalogue my books – it’s still not complete and I don’t always remember to add new books to it. I don’t include e-books on LibraryThing.

When I first got a Kindle I began to sort my e-books into collections but that didn’t last very long and I soon had no idea what I’d downloaded – it was like sending the books into a black hole. So, because I decided to do this tag I decided it was time I was more organised and I’ve been busy sorting out an e-book TBR collection on my Kindle.

Is your TBR mostly print or e-book?

It’s mostly print books, although my e-book collection is  growing rapidly thanks especially this year, to NetGalley. For a while I bought quite a lot of the 99p Kindle Daily Deals books and also added a number of free e-books including e-book versions of the classics.

How do you determine which book from your TBR to read next?

It’s a bit of a juggling game, trying to fit in reading books I’ve had for years, with review copies. Recently the old TBRs have been left in preference to reading new books. But often it’s down to whichever book appeals most – I like to read whatever I fancy when I fancy. I like to browse my bookshelves and sometimes just pick a book at random. And I have to fit in library books too!

A book that’s been on your TBR the longest?

It could be The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone, which I bought for 50p over 20 years (no idea exactly when or where I bought it). It’s falling to pieces now, the pages are brown and the font is so small. I did start reading it once – there’s a book mark between pages 43-43.

Agony & Ecstasy

A book you recently added to your TBR?

I recently added eight books – this is one of them, The Shadow Sister by Lucinda Riley, the third book in Lucinda Riley’s series, loosely based on the mythology of the Seven Sisters star cluster.

The Shadow Sister

Blurb:

Star D’Aplièse is at a crossroads in her life after the sudden death of her beloved father – the elusive billionaire, named Pa Salt by his six daughters, all adopted by him from the four corners of the world. He has left each of them a clue to their true heritage, but Star – the most enigmatic of the sisters – is hesitant to step out of the safety of the close relationship she shares with her sister CeCe. In desperation, she decides to follow the first clue she has been left, which leads her to an antiquarian bookshop in London, and the start of a whole new world . . .

A hundred years earlier, headstrong and independent Flora MacNichol vows she will never marry. She is happy and secure in her home in the Lake District, living close to her idol, Beatrix Potter, when machinations outside of her control lead her to London, and the home of one of Edwardian society’s most notorious players, Alice Keppel. Flora is pulled between passionate love and duty to her family, but finds herself a pawn in a game – the rules of which are only known to others, until a meeting with a mysterious gentleman unveils the answers that Flora has been searching for her whole life . . .

As Star learns more of Flora’s incredible journey, she too goes on a voyage of discovery, finally stepping out of the shadow of her sister and opening herself up to the possibility of love.

A book on your TBR strictly because of its beautiful cover?

I don’t think I’ve ever chosen a book based on its cover. Having said that I think this book cover of The Brontës by Juliet Barker is just lovely.

The Brontës

A book on your TBR that you never plan on reading?

No – but there have been books that when I’ve looked at them I’ve wondered why I wanted to read them in the first place – and I’ve decided not to read them. So, every now and then I go through the list and get rid of any that no longer appeal. Ulysses by James Joyce is on my list but I’m not sure I’ll ever get round to reading it. Ditto – Moby Dick!

As for e-books at the same time that I made a collection for my e-book TBRs I realised that I’d got into the bad habit of downloading samples and then forgetting all about them – so I’ve deleted all the samples and I’m also going through the rest of my e-books and deleting those that no longer appeal.

An unpublished book on your TBR that you’re excited for?

Ian Rankin has announced that there will be new novel featuring John Rebus in autumn 2018. The novel will be published by the Orion Publishing Group in hardback, e-book and audiobook, with a paperback to follow in 2019. There are no details yet about the book’s title or plot, but as I’ve read all his other Rebus books I’m eagerly looking forward to this next one.

A book on your TBR that everyone has read but you?

It’s probably Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist – I know the story – it’s one of the stories that everyone knows  – but I’ve not read it yet.

Image result for Oliver Twist

A book on your TBR that everyone recommends to you?

The Dry by Jane Harper – it’s had a lot of acclaim. When a book receives so much praise I’m sometimes sceptical and will avoid it for a while at least. But it sounds so good that I think I’ll read it sooner rather than later.

Blurb:

Amid the worst drought to ravage Australia in a century, it hasn’t rained in small country town Kiewarra for two years. Tensions in the community become unbearable when three members of the Hadler family are brutally murdered. Everyone thinks Luke Hadler, who committed suicide after slaughtering his wife and six-year-old son, is guilty.

Policeman Aaron Falk returns to the town of his youth for the funeral of his childhood best friend, and is unwillingly drawn into the investigation. 

The Dry

A book on your TBR that you’re dying to read?

So many, but as I have to pick just one it’s Moriarty by Anthony Horowitz as I enjoyed his earlier Sherlock Holmes book, The House of Silk.

Blurb:

Days after Holmes and Moriarty disappear into the waterfall’s churning depths, Frederick Chase, a senior investigator at New York’s infamous Pinkerton Detective Agency, arrives in Switzerland. Chase brings with him a dire warning: Moriarty’s death has left a convenient vacancy in London’s criminal underworld. There is no shortage of candidates to take his place—including one particularly fiendish criminal mastermind.

Moriarty (Sherlock Holmes, #2)

How many books are on your Goodreads TBR shelf?

My Goodreads TBR shelf is just for books I’ve read or am currently reading. I use my LibraryThing catalogue to keep track of my physical TBRs. At the moment the number stands at 320 but as I said above that might not be completely accurate. And I’m still going through my e-book TBRs weeding out the ones I don’t want to read.

 

A – Z of TBRs: J, K and L

Published on by Margaret16 Comments

I’m now up to J, K, and L in my A – Z of TBRs, a series of posts in which I take a fresh look at some of my TBRs to inspire me to read more of them by the end of the year, or maybe to decide not to bother reading them after all. These TBRs are all physical books – I’ve not included e-books. Previously I’ve just chosen books for these posts by using the titles, but this time I’ve also chosen books by using the authors’ last names.

I’m enjoying searching my shelves – finding books I’d forgotten were there (the disadvantage of shelving books behind others).

TRBs jkl

J  – is for The Journeying Boy by Michael Innes, a book I’ve had for three years. This is a green Vintage Penguin, first published in 1949, and in this edition in 1961. Humphrey Paxton, the son of one of Britain’s leading atomic boffins, has taken to carrying a shotgun to ‘shoot plotters and blackmailers and spies’. His new tutor, the plodding Mr Thewless, suggests that Humphrey might be overdoing it somewhat. But when a man is found shot dead at a cinema, Mr Thewless is plunged into a nightmare world of lies, kidnapping and murder – and grave matters of national security.

I’m not sure now that I do want to read this book. It looks quite daunting, with lots of description and  literary allusions as shown in this extract – the cinema goers had been watching a film, Plutonium Blonde:

Another squalid crime … Circumstances had made Inspector Cadover a philosopher, and because he was a philosopher he was now depressed. This was the celebrated atom film. This was the manner in which his species chose to take its new command of natural law. Fifty thousand people had died at Hiroshima , and at Bikini ironclads had been tossed in challenge to those other disintegrating nuclei of the sun. The blood-red tide was loosed. And here it was turned to hog wash at five shillings the trough, and entertainment tax five shillings extra. That some wretched Londoner had met a violent death while taking his fill seemed a very unimportant circumstance. To track down the murderer – if murderer there was – appeared a revoltingly useless task. Mere anarchy was loosed upon the world – so what the hell did it matter? (page 51)

K – is for Ghost Walk by Alanna Knight (on my TBR shelves for four years), the fourth in the Rose McQuinn series. This is historical crime fiction set in 1897 in Edinburgh three years after Rose McQuinn’s husband, Danny, disappeared in Arizona. Believing him to be dead, she returned to Scotland to start her life afresh. Now a ‘Lady Investigator, Discretion Guaranteed‘, she is about to marry her lover, Detective Inspector Jack Macmerry of the Edinburgh Police when a nun from the local convent claims to have received a letter from Danny, and after two suspicious deaths, it seems that a ghost is about to walk back into her life…

I’ve read and liked the first book in this series, The Inspector’s Daughter, and am hoping it won’t matter that I’ve not read the second and the third books.

I had no idea what were the views of Edinburgh City Police on the subject of female detectives or the milder term ‘lady investigators’, but I could guess that that they regarded criminal investigation as a ‘men only’ province.

I felt so impatient with authority. Would a day ever dawn when women ceased to be regarded as playthings or breeding machines, when they would be given equal rights with men. My hackles rose in anger at the suffragettes’ gallant struggles as portrayed in a recent pamphlet which I had been at pains to keep concealed from Jack.  (page 34)

L – is for The Other Side of the Bridge by Mary Lawson, a book I’ve had for 10 years! I was so keen to read it when I first bought it after loving her first novel, Crow Lake. It’s about two brothers, Arthur and Jake.  Arthur is older, shy, dutiful, and set to inherit his father’s farm. Jake is younger and reckless, a dangerous man to know. When Laura arrives in their 1930s rural community, an already uneasy relationship is driven to breaking point…

Arthur’s earliest memory was of standing in the doorway of his parents’ room, looking at his mother as she lay in bed. It was the middle of the day but nonetheless she was in bed, and Arthur didn’t know what to make of it. The bed was very large and high and Arthur could only just see her. She had her face turned towards the window. Then Arthur’s father called from the bottom of the stairs that the doctor was coming, and she turned her head, and Arthur saw that she was crying. (page 25)

What do you think? Do you fancy any of them? Would you ditch any of them?