Category: Top Ten Tuesday

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.

The topic this week is Books with Geographical Terms in the Title (for example: mountain, island, latitude/longitude, ash, bay, beach, border, canyon, cape, city, cliff, coast, country, desert, epicenter, hamlet, highway, jungle, ocean, park, sea, shore, tide, valley, etc. For a great list, click here!) (Submitted by Lisa of Hopewell)

There are many books I could have chosen for this theme, but I decided to choose those with the word ‘River/s’ in the title. These are all books I’ve either read (marked with an *) or are books I own but haven’t read yet.

Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch* – This is a magical reading experience, and a fast-paced police procedural of a very different kind. It’s fantastical in the literal meaning of the word; an urban fantasy set in the real world of London. It’s a mix of reality and the supernatural. Peter Grant is a Detective Constable and a trainee wizard who is assigned to work with Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Nightingale (who is the last wizard in England) as part of a special and secret branch of the Met, dealing with all things magical and supernatural.

River of Darkness by Rennie Airth – the first novel in his John Madden trilogy, published in 1999. It’s set in 1921 and a terrible discovery has been made at a manor house in Surrey – the bloodied bodies of Colonel Fletcher, his wife and two of their staff. The police seem ready to put the murders down to robbery with violence, but DI Madden from Scotland Yard sees things slightly differently.

River of Smoke by Amitav Ghosh – In September 1838, a storm blows up on the Indian Ocean and the Ibis, a ship carrying a consignment of convicts and indentured laborers from Calcutta to Mauritius, is caught up in the whirlwind. River of Smoke follows its storm-tossed characters to the crowded harbors of China. There, despite efforts of the emperor to stop them, ships from Europe and India exchange their cargoes of opium for boxes tea, silk, porcelain and silver.

The Secret River by Kate Grenville* – one of my favourite books. It is historical fiction, straight-forward story-telling following William Thornhill from his childhood in the slums of London to Australia. He was a Thames waterman transported for stealing timber; his wife, Sal and child went with him and together they make a new life for themselves. William was eventually pardoned and became a waterman on the Hawkesbury River and then a settler with his own land and servants.

Rivers: A Voyage into the Heart of Britain by Griff Rhys Jones* – Griff is passionate about rivers and opening them up for people to use. The waterways of Britain are the ancient transport routes only superseded by road and rail relatively recently. He writes about the history of rivers – telling how the monks were the first people to use the rivers, creating the water meadows to irrigate the land, how people settled near rivers, how the towns grew up, how they were above all working rivers, and how we have lost our ancient connection with rivers. It is fascinating, complete with line drawings, maps and colour illustrations.

Mystic River by Dennis Lehane – Three boys’ lives were changed for ever when one of them got into a stranger’s car and something terrible happened. Twenty five years later they have to face the nightmares of their past. I’m not sure what to expect from this book, not having read any of Lehane’s books before, but a reviewer in the Guardian described it as one of the finest novels he’d read in ages.

The River Midnight by Lilian Nattel – this is about the fictional village of Blaska, a small Jewish community in Poland at the turn of the 20th century, when Poland was under Russian occupation. It is told from the perspective of a group of women, including Misha, the midwife, Hannah-Leah, the butcher’s wife, and Faygela, who dreams of the bright lights of Warsaw. Myth meets history and characters come to life through the stories of the women’s lives and prayers, their secrets, and the intimate details of everyday life.

Many Rivers to Cross by Peter Robinson – the 26th Inspector Banks book, in which he and his team investigate the murder of a teenage boy found stuffed into a wheely bin on the East Side Estate. But Banks’s attention is also on Zelda, who in helping him track down his old enemy, has put herself in danger and alerted the stonecold Eastern European sex traffickers who brought her to the UK

Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield* – An intriguing and mystifying book, a mystery beginning in the Swan Inn at Radcot, an ancient inn, well-known for its storytelling, on the banks of the Thames. A badly injured stranger enters carrying the drowned corpse of a little girl. It’s mystifying as hours later the dead child, miraculously it seems, takes a breath, and returns to life. The mystery is enhanced by folklore, by science that appears to be magic, and by romance and superstition.

The Riddle of the River by Catherine Shaw* – Set in Cambridge in 1898  Mrs Vanessa Weatherburn used to be a school mistress until she married Arthur. Now with two children (twins) she acts as a private investigator. Vanessa is enlisted by her friend, journalist Patrick O’Sullivan to investigate the death of a young woman found floating, reminding her of Ophelia, in the River Cam.

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.

The topic this week is School Freebie (In honor of school starting up soon, come up with a topic that somehow ties to school/education. The book could be set at school/college, characters could be teachers, books with school supplies on the cover, nonfiction titles, books that taught you something or how to do something, your favorite required reading in school, books you think should be required reading, your favorite banned books, etc.)

These are 10 of the books set in schools/universities/colleges that I’ve enjoyed reading.

J K Rowling’s Harry Potter books are an obvious choice – all 7 of them would nearly fill a Top Ten post on their own. I haven’t got this box set, but I have read all seven books telling the story of Harry and his friends at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. It’s a selective school, only children who show magical ability are admitted. Each student is allowed to bring an owl, a cat or a toad. And first-year students are required to acquire a wand, subject books, a standard size 2 pewter cauldron, a set of brass scales, a set of glass or crystal phials, a kit of basic potion ingredients (for Potions), and a telescope (for Astronomy). 

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark is set in 1936 in Edinburgh in the Marcia Blaine school, where schoolteacher Miss Brodie has groomed a group of young girls, known as the Brodie Set, to be the ‘creme de la creme‘. Marcia Blaine school is a traditional school where Miss Brodie’s ideas and methods of teaching are viewed with dislike and distrust. The Head Teacher is looking for ways to discredit and get rid of her. I enjoyed both the book and the film with Maggie Smith in the title role. The story is told in flashbacks from 1930 –1939 and quite early on in the book we are told who ‘betrayed’ Miss Brodie.

Cat Among the Pigeons by Agatha Christie is set in an exclusive and expensive girls’ school, Meadowbank, in England, said to be based on her daughter Rosalind’s school. Miss Bulstrode is the headmistress and like Miss Brodie she has built a reputation for excellence. But disaster strikes when two of the teachers, Miss Springer, the new Games Mistress and the History and German teacher, Miss Vansittart are murdered. Rather late in the day Hercules Poirot is called in to investigate their deaths.

Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay. On St Valentine’s Day in 1900, a party of nineteen girls accompanied by two schoolmistresses sets off from the elite Appleyard College for Young Ladies, for a day’s outing at the spectacular volcanic mass called Hanging Rock. The picnic, which begins innocently and happily, ends in explicable terror, and some of the party never returned. What happened to them remains a mystery. I loved the detailed descriptions of the Australian countryside and the picture it paints of society in 1900, with the snobbery and class divisions of the period.

South Riding by Winifred Holtby. Set in the early 1930s in Yorkshire this book paints a moving and vivid portrait of a rural community struggling with the effects of the depression. One of the main characters is Sarah Burton, the new headmistress of Kiplington High School for Girls, a fiercely passionate and dedicated teacher. As the villagers of South Riding adjust to Sarah’s arrival and face the changing world, emotions run high, prejudices are challenged and community spirit is tested. 

Miss Pym Disposes by Josephine Tey. Miss Pym was pleased and flattered to be invited to Leys Physical Training College by her old school friend, Henrietta Hodge, the college Principal, to give a lecture on psychology. But then there was a ’nasty accident‘. This is not a conventional crime fiction novel. It’s a psychological study focusing on the characters, their motivation and analysis of facial characteristics. It looks at the consequences of what people do and say.

Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte, published in 1847, is a novel about a young woman, a governess and her experiences working for two families in Victorian England. Agnes is the younger daughter of an impoverished clergyman. Her parents had married against her mother’s family’s wishes and when their fortune was wrecked Agnes determines to help out by working as a governess. It gives a very clear picture of the life of a governess, with all its loneliness, frustrations, insecurities and depressions. Anne Bronte based this novel on her own experiences as a governess and depicts the loneliness, isolation, and vulnerability of the position. 

The Hiding Place by Simon Lelic, a murder mystery set in Beaconsfield, a prestigious boarding school. When Ben Draper, a 14 year-old teenager with a troubled background, and a history of absconding from school, started at the school he is bullied, disliked and feels shunned and despised. But he does make three friends, Callum, Lance and Melissa. Longing to be accepted, he thinks they are his friends, but then he is drawn unwillingly into their plot to damage the school. After playing a game of Hide and Seek with them, that ended in terror, he went missing and his body was never found.

An Advancement of Learning by Reginald Hill, the 2nd Dalziel and Pascoe novel. It’s set in a college, Holm Coultram College, where Dalziel and Pascoe investigate the discovery of a body found when an eight foot high bronze statue of a former head of the College, Miss Girling, is being moved. The two detectives uncover plenty of disagreements and power struggles in both the staff and student bodies – from rivalries to revelries on the beach, and more dead bodies turn up before the mystery is solved.

I loved the setting in Gaudy Night by Dorothy L Sayers – Shrewsbury College, a fictional all female college, at Oxford University (based on Somerville College, Sayers’ own college). Harriet Vane decides to go back to the College to attend the Shrewsbury Gaudy (a college reunion involving a celebratory dinner), not sure she can face meeting her fellow students and the dons. It doesn’t go well – there are poison pen letters, nasty graffiti and vandalism causing mayhem and upset. Under the pretence of helping one of the dons to rewrite her manuscript that had been destroyed in one of the nightly attacks Harriet is asked to investigate. 

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.

The topic this week is Completed Series I Wish Had More Books, but I’m tweaking it a bit as I have lots of series on the go that I haven’t finished. So this is my list of Series I’m Still Reading:

1. Dr Ruth Galloway Mysteries by Elly Griffiths – 14 books have been published, with the 15th due out next year. I have read 8 of them.
2. Tom Wilde books by Rory Clements – 6 books. I have read 4 of them.
3. Seven Sisters by Lucinda Riley – 7 books have been published with the 8th due out next year. I have read 3 of them.
4. Kingsbridge by Ken Follett – 4 books. I’ve read 1.
5. Dublin Murder Squad by Tana French – 6 books. I’ve read 1.
6. Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin – 5 books. I’ve read 3.
7. Rachel Savernake Golden Age Mysteries by Martin Edwards – 3 books, with another due out next year. I’ve read 2.
8. Harry Devlin by Martin Edwards – 7 books. I’ve read 1.
9. Daisy Dalrymple by Carola Dunn – 23 books. I’ve read 4.
10. Sea Detective by Mark Douglas-Home – 4 books. I’ve read 3.

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.

The topic this week is Books I Love That Were Written Over Ten Years Ago. This is a hard topic because there are so many books that I love that were written over ten years ago. So, I have tried to choose books I haven’t featured before on my blog. I’ve linked them to either Goodreads or Amazon UK.

Chatterton by Peter Ackroyd (published in 1987). I have had this book for so long that I can’t remember when I bought it. Thomas Chatterton was an 18th century poet, a forger and a genius, whose life ended under mysterious circumstances. He died in 1770 when he was 18. His death was thought to be suicide: But what really happened?

A Passage to India by E M Forster (published in 1924). This was the first of Forster’s books that I’ve read. Dr Aziz is a young Muslim physician in the British Indian town of Chandrapore. One evening he comes across an English woman, Mrs Moore, in the courtyard of a local mosque; she and her younger travelling companion Adela are disappointed by claustrophobic British colonial culture and wish to see something of the ‘real’ India. But when Aziz kindly offers to take them on a tour of the Marabar caves with his close friend Cyril Fielding, the trip results in a shocking accusation that throws Chandrapore into a fever of racial tension.

Gentlemen and Players by Joanne Harris (published in 2005). At St Oswald’s, a long-established boys’ grammar school in the north of England, a new year has just begun. For the staff and boys of the school, a wind of unwelcome change is blowing. Suits, paperwork and Information Technology rule the world; and Roy Straitley, the eccentric veteran Latin master, is finally – reluctantly – contemplating retirement. But beneath the little rivalries, petty disputes and everyday crises of the school, a darker undercurrent stirs.

Pictures of Perfection by Reginald Hill (published in 1994). High in the Mid-Yorkshire Dales stands the traditional village of Enscombe, seemingly untouched by the modern world. The disappearance of a policeman brings Detective Superintendent Andy Dalziel and DCI Peter Pascoe to its doors. As the detectives dig beneath the veneer of idyllic village life a new pattern emerges: of family feuds, ancient injuries, cheating and lies. And finally, as the community gathers for the traditional Squire’s Reckoning, it looks as if the simmering tensions will erupt in a bloody climax…

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, one of the most devastating and heartbreaking novels I’ve read (published in 2007). The book, which spans a period of over 40 years, from the 1960s to 2003, focuses on the tumultuous lives and relationship of Mariam and Laila, two Afghan women. Mariam, an illegitimate child, suffers from the stigma surrounding her birth and the abuse she faces throughout her marriage. Laila, born a generation later, is comparatively privileged during her youth until their lives intersect and she is also forced to accept a marriage proposal from Rasheed, Mariam’s husband.

The Light Years by Elizabeth Jane Howard (published in 1988). The first in the Cazelet Chronicles. In 1937, the coming war is only a distant cloud on Britain’s horizon. As the Cazalet households prepare for their summer pilgrimage to the family estate in Sussex, readers meet Edward, in love with but by no means faithful to his wife Villy; Hugh, wounded in the Great War; Rupert, who worships his lovely child-bride Zoe; and Rachel, the spinster sister.

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka (published in 2005). Sisters Vera and Nadezhda must aside a lifetime of feuding to save their émigré engineer father from voluptuous gold-digger Valentina. With her proclivity for green satin underwear and boil-in-the-bag cuisine, she will stop at nothing in her pursuit of Western wealth. But the sisters’ campaign to oust Valentina unearths family secrets, uncovers fifty years of Europe’s darkest history and sends them back to roots they’d much rather forget . . . .

Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake (published in 1946). I first read this as a teenager. It’s the first book in the Gormenghast trilogy, a gothic fantasy whose strange characters’ lives are dominated by the labyrinthine castle of Gormenghast and its ancient rituals.Titus, heir to Lord Sepulchrave, has just been born, he stands to inherit the miles of rambling stone and mortar that stand for Gormenghast Castle. There are tears and strange laughter; fierce births and deaths beneath umbrageous ceilings; dreams and violence and disenchantment contained within a labyrinth of stone.

Dark Fire by C J Sansom (published in 2004). I love all the books in the Shardlake series. This is the second book, set in England in 1540. Matthew Shardlake, believing himself out of favour with Thomas Cromwell, is busy trying to maintain his legal practice and keep a low profile. But his involvement with a murder case, defending a girl accused of brutally murdering her young cousin, brings him once again into contact with the king’s chief minister – and a new assignment . . .

A Jealous Ghost by A N Wilson (published in 2005). This is a re-writing of Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw. There is something rather disquieting about Sallie Declan, a young American in London, who is obsessed with The Turn of the Screw, the subject of her PhD. thesis. She leaves her studies for a temporary job as a nanny in a large country house and builds a fantasy about her emotional future there. Surely she can see it is all delusion? But a progressively darker reality unfolds leading inevitably to a terrible and shocking climax. It’s good, although not as good as Henry James’s novel.

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.

The topic this week is Books Set In a Place I’d Love to Visit, but I’ve tweaked a bit to Books with a Place in the Title. These are all books I’ve read and I’ve linked the titles to my reviews:

4.50 from Paddington by Agatha Christie

12.30 from Croydon by Freeman Wills Crofts

100 Days on Holy Island: a Writer’s Exile by Peter Mortimer

A Death in the Dales by Frances Brody

The Doctor of Thessaly by Anne Zouroudi

Excursion to Tindari by Andrea Camilleri

The Fall of Troy by Peter Ackroyd

The Good Thief’s Guide to Amsterdam by Chris Ewan

The Cleaner of Chartres by Salley Vickers

The Madman of Bergerac by Georges Simenon

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.

The topic this week is Books From My Past Seasonal TBR Posts I STILL Haven’t Read. I’m not very good at predicting which books I’m going to read next, so I’m pleased to discover that I have actually read some of the books from three of the last three seasonal TBR Top Ten posts!

These are the books I still haven’t read:

Five books from my Spring 2022 TBR List:

Quichotte by Salman Rushdie – a retelling of Don Quixote for the modern age. Sam DuChamp, mediocre writer of spy thrillers, creates Quichotte, a courtly, addled salesman obsessed with television, who falls in impossible love with the TV star Salman R. Together with his (imaginary) son Sancho, Quichotte sets off on a picaresque quest across America to prove worthy of her hand.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson – Harriet Vanger, scion of one of Sweden’s wealthiest families, disappeared over forty years ago. Years later, her aged uncle continues to seek the truth. He hires Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading journalist to investigate. He is aided by the pierced and tattooed punk prodigy Lisbeth Salander.

Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith – Guy Haines and Charles Anthony Bruno meet on a train. Bruno manipulates Guy into swapping murders with him. From this moment, almost against his conscious will, Guy is trapped in a nightmare of shared guilt and an insidious merging of personalities.

Night of the Lightbringer by Peter Tremayne – This is the 28th Sister Fidelma mystery, a medieval murder mystery,  featuring a Celtic nun who is also an advocate of the ancient Irish law system. It’s set in Ireland in AD 671 on the eve of the pagan feast of Samhain.

When Christ and His Saints Slept by Sharon Penman – the first book in the Eleanor of Aquitaine trilogy. Historical fiction about Stephen and his cousin, the Empress Maude, and the long fight to win the English throne.

Two from my Fall 2021 List and three from my Summer 2021 List:

Another Part of the Wood by Beryl Bainbridge – 159 pages -literary fiction set In a remote cottage in Wales where two urban couples are spending their holiday with the idealistic owner and his protege. The beginning is idyllic but catastrophe lurks behind every tree.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce, which I bought in 2013! It’s about Harold’s journey on foot from one end of the country to the other – from South Devon to Berwick-upon-Tweed and I was intrigued. I wondered which places he went through.

The Mouse Trap and Selected Plays by Agatha Christie – the world’s longest running play, plus three other thrillers adapted from the novels (which I have read) – And Then There Were None, The Hollow and Appointment with Death. Set in a manor house, a number of people are isolated from the outside world by a blizzard and faced with the reality that one of them is a killer. This is also on my 20 Books of Summer list, and is my Classics Club Spin book for August, but it’s in such a small font I’m finding it extremely difficult to read! I may not manage it.

The Enchanter’s Forest by Alys Clare – historical fiction set in Midsummer 1195. A ruthlessly ambitious man has fallen deeply into debt, his desperate situation made even more difficult by the contribution he has had to pay towards King Richard’s ransom. To make matters worse the beautiful wife he tricked into marriage has tired of him and her mother hates his guts.

The House on Bellevue Gardens by Rachel Hore – Bellevue Gardens is a tranquil London square, tucked away behind a busy street. You might pass it without knowing it’s there. Here, through the imposing front door of Number 11, is a place of peace, of sanctuary and of secrets. It is home to Leonie; once a model in the sixties, she came to the house to escape a destructive marriage and now, out of gratitude, she opens her house to others in need.