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 a Love Freebie (in honour of Valentine’s Day tomorrow). I usually find it a bit difficult with this freebie as I don’t read many romantic novels, but love is not just romance. These ten books all demonstrate some sort of loving relationship. I’ve listed them in alphabetical author order. The links take you either to my post, or if I haven’t written about them either to Amazon or Goodreads (marked *).

The Girl in a Swing* by Richard Adams. A shy young man meets a beautiful woman in the company of a young girl. He finds himself swept off of his feet and married to her, bringing her with him to live in his family home. She is his erotic dream come true; she does everything she can to bind him to her and join him in his comfortable life.

Soon, however, odd things begin to happen. Things in the house are strangely damp with what looks like seawater, bodies appear under the water that aren’t really there. It all winds up to a horrifying conclusion. I read this many years ago, after reading Watership Down, which I loved.

Days Without End by Sebastian Barry – Thomas McNulty is a young Irish immigrant, aged 17, who had left Sligo, starved and destitute, for Canada and then made his way to America where he met John Cole under a hedge in a downpour and they became friends and secretly lovers for life. After signing up for the US army in the 1850s, they, fought in the Indian Wars and then in the Civil War.

Midnight in St Petersburg by Vanora Bennett beginning in 1911 in pre-revolutionary Russia with Inna Feldman travelling by train to St Petersburg to escape the pogroms in Kiev hoping to stay with her distant cousin, Yasha Kagan. She is welcomed into the Leman family where she and Yasha are apprentices in their violin-making workshop. Inna is a talented, albeit shy, violinist and she falls in love with Yasha through their shared love of music.

Oscar and Lucinda* by Peter Carey. Peter Carey’s Booker Prize winning novel imagines Australia’s youth, before its dynamic passions became dangerous habits. It is also a startling and unusual love story. Oscar is a young English clergyman who has broken with his past and developed a disturbing talent for gambling. A country girl of singular ambition, Lucinda moves to Sydney, driven by dreams of self-reliance and the building of an industrial Utopia. Together this unlikely pair create and are created by the spectacle of mid-nineteenth century Australia.

I Love the Bones of You by Christopher Eccleston about his love for his father. This is not the usual celebrity autobiography that is just all about him and his work. It is a really vivid portrait of his relationship with his family and particularly with his father who had dementia at the end of his life. 

The Glass Guardian by Linda Gillard a ghost story and a love story, with a bit of a mystery thrown in too. It’s a ‘supernatural love story‘. When Ruth prepares to put her Aunt’s old house up for sale, she’s astonished to find she’s not the only occupant. Worse, she suspects she might be falling in love again. With a man who died almost a hundred years ago.

The Remains of the Day* by Kazuo Ishiguro – I love the pathos of this novel about Stevens, an English butler, reminiscing about his service to Lord Darlington, looking back on what he regards as England’s golden age and his relationship with Miss Kenton who had been the housekeeper at Darlington Hall. This was the first of Ishiguro’s books I read.

The Four Loves* by C S Lewis. This summarises four kinds of human love–affection, friendship, erotic love, and the love of God. Masterful without being magisterial, this book’s wise, gentle, candid reflections on the virtues and dangers of love draw on sources from Jane Austen to St. Augustine. I read this along with several other books by Lewis many years ago

Atonement by Ian McEwan. As well as being a love story and a war novel this is also a mystery and a reflection on society and writing and writers. It begins on a hot day in the summer of 1935 when Briony, then aged thirteen witnesses an event between her older sister Cecelia and her childhood friend Robbie that changed all three of their lives. Most of all, though, it’s a book about love.

Fire in the Blood by Irène Némirovsky, an intense story of life and death, love and burning passion. It’s about families and their relationships – husbands and wives, young women married to old men,  lovers, mothers, daughters and stepdaughters. It’s set in a small village based on Issy-l’Eveque between the two world wars. The narrator is Silvio looking back on his life and gradually secrets that have long been hidden rise to the surface, disrupting the lives of the small community. The people are insular, concerned only with their own lives, distrusting their neighbours

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 Top Ten Quick Reads/Books to Read When Time is Short (Books under 150 pages.)

The first five are fiction.

The Black Mountain by Kate Mosse 136 pages - based on a real historical event, this is historical fiction set in May 1706 on the northern part of the island of Tenerife, where Ana and her family live in the shadow of a volcano, known locally as the Black Mountain.

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway 71 pages – this is the story of an old Cuban fisherman and his supreme ordeal: a relentless, agonizing battle with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream. 

The Guest Cat by by Takashi Hiraide 146 pages – a story of how a cat made itself at home with a couple in their thirties who lived in a small rented house in a quiet part of Tokyo.

The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett 124 pages, telling the story of Her Majesty, not named, but she had dogs, took her summer holiday at Balmoral and was married to a duke. She came across the travelling library outside the palace and borrowed a book to save the driver/librarian’s embarrassment. 

Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton 128 pages – a tragedy, signalled right from the beginning of the book, when the unnamed narrator first saw Ethan Frome and was told he had been disfigured and crippled in a ‘smash up’, twenty four years earlier. Life had not been good to him.

The second five are all nonfiction.

Ink in the Blood by Hilary Mantel 31 pages – a short memoir about how she had surgery to remove an intestinal obstruction that ended up in a marathon operation, followed by intense pain, nightmares and hallucinations. Writing was Hilary Mantel’s lifeline – it was the ink, as she wrote in her diary, that reassured her she was alive.

Blue Tits in My Nest Box by David Gains 76 pages – I read this because we had a new blue tit box in our garden – one with a camera and waited to see whether it would be occupied. I wanted to find out more about their nesting habits. After checking several bird websites, I found this little book, a mine of information.

Painting as a Pastime by Winston S Churchill 96 pages – Churchill was forty when he first started to paint and art became his passion and an ‘astonishing and enriching experience‘. He talks about the fun of painting, the colours and the pleasure he found in not only in painting a picture, but also the pleasure he discovered in a heightened sense of observation, finding objects in  the landscape, he had never noticed before.

A Short Book about Drawing by Andrew Marr 144 pages – this is also a book about being happy and the importance of drawing and making, for a happy life. It’s not an instruction book, but it’s full of insight into what happens when you draw and it’s dotted throughout with personal information.

A Short History of Scotland by Richard Killeen There are 31 short chapters covering the period from Prehistoric Scotland up to the Twentieth Century – all in 69 pages, including coloured illustrations of people and places.

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 New-to-Me Authors I Discovered in 2023. These are all books I read and reviewed in 2023. I enjoyed all of them, some more than others (marked with an asterisk*).

• Bonnie Garmus - Lessons in Chemistry 
• Weina Dai Randel – The Last Rose of Shanghai 
• Francis Faviell – The Dancing Bear *
• Michele Giuttari – A Death in Tuscany
• Barbara Pym – Excellent Women *

•  M L Stedman – The Light Between the Oceans 
• Corinne Demas –The Road Towards Home *
• Beth Cowan-Erskine – Loch Down Abbey 
• Cat Jarman – The Bone Chests
• H E Bates – Fair Stood the Wind for France

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 Meant to Read in 2023 but Didn’t. I have an enormous pile of books I’d love to read this year.

These are just ten of them, books I was so keen to read when I first got them, but for one reason or another I just never got round to actually reading them. And simply saying that I will read a book this year almost guarantees that I won’t. They’re listed in no particular order, because if I try to prioritise them that would be fatal:

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. “Some people are better off dead,” Bruno remarks, “like your wife and my father, for instance.” 

Recalled to Life by Reginald Hill – Set in 1963, Dalziel and Pascoe re-investigate a crime of passion in one of England’s great houses, an open-and-shut case. But thirty years later, when the convicted nanny is freed, then spirited off to America before she can talk, Dalzeil wonders did the wrong aristocrat hang?

How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn – a story of life in a mining community in rural South Wales as Huw Morgan is preparing to leave the valley where he had grown up. He tells of life before the First World War.

Here Be Dragons by Sharon Penman – set in 13th century Wales this is the story of Llewelyn, the Prince of North Wales, and his rise to power and fame and his love for Joanna, the illegitimate daughter of King John.

The Secret of Annexe 3 by Colin Dexter – Much too early on New Year’s Day, a grumpy Inspector Morse is summoned to investigate a murder at the Haworth Hotel. The victim is still wearing the Rastafarian costume that won him first prize at the hotel’s New Year’s Eve party; his female companion and the other guests in the annexe have vanished. It’s a mystery that’s a stretch even for Morse. But with pit-bull fervor he grabs the truth by the throat and shakes loose the bizarre secrets of a cold-blooded crime of passion. . . .

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn – on the day of Nick and Amy’s fifth wedding anniversary, Amy suddenly disappears. The police suspect Nick. Amy’s friends reveal that she was afraid of him, that she kept secrets from him. He swears it isn’t true.

 Birthright by Nora Roberts – a novel about an archaeological dig when five-thousand-year-old human bones are found, this has a sense of death and misfortune combined with a mystery about the archaeologist Callie Dunbrook’s past. 

 Earth and Heaven by Sue Gee – In the aftermath of the First World War, a young painter Walter Cox and the wood-engraver Sarah Lewis meet at the Slade, then set up home and a studio together. With their newfound happiness, and the birth of Meredith, then Geoffrey, the grief of war recedes. But children are unpredictable and have their own inner lives: events on a summer afternoon change everything …

 Tangerine by Christine Mangan – Set in Morocco in the 1950s, this is described as a psychological literary thriller and the perfect read for fans of Daphne du Maurier and Patricia Highsmith. The last person Alice Shipley expected to see since arriving in Tangier with her new husband was Lucy Mason. After the horrific accident at Bennington, the two friends – once inseparable roommates – haven’t spoken in over a year. But Lucy is standing there, trying to make things right.

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.

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 Most Anticipated Books Releasing in the First Half of 2024. The first three books are proof copies from NetGalley. The rest are books on my Wishlist.

The Hunter by Tana French – 7 March 2024

It’s a blazing summer when two men arrive in the village. They’re coming for gold. What they bring is trouble. Cal Hooper was a Chicago detective, till he moved to the West of Ireland looking for peace. He’s found it, more or less – in his relationship with local woman Lena, and the bond he’s formed with half-wild teenager Trey. So when two men turn up with a money-making scheme to find gold in the townland, Cal gets ready to do whatever it takes to protect Trey. Because one of the men is no stranger: he’s Trey’s father. But Trey doesn’t want protecting. What she wants is revenge.

Nero by Conn Iggulden – 23 May 2024

ANCIENT ROME, AD 37 It begins with a man’s hand curled around another’s throat. Emperor Tiberius first dispatches a traitor. Then his whole family.Next all his friends. It is as if he never existed.

THIS IS ROMAN JUSTICE. Into this fevered forum, a child is born. His mother is Agrippina, granddaughter of Emperor Augustus. But their imperial blood is no protection. The closer you are to the heart of the empire, the closer you are to power, intrigue, and danger. She faces soldiers, senators, rivals, silver-tongued pretenders, each vying for position. One mistake risks exile, incarceration, execution. Or, worst of all, the loss of her infant son. For Agrippina knows that opportunity waits, even in your darkest moments. Her son is everything. She can make this boy, shape him into Rome itself – the one all must kneel before.

Camino Ghosts by John Grisham – 28 May 2024

In this new thriller set on Camino Island, popular bookseller Bruce Cable tells Mercer Mann an irresistible tale that might be her next novel. A giant resort developer is using its political muscle and deep pockets to claim ownership of a deserted island between Florida and Georgia. Only the last living inhabitant of the island, Lovely Jackson, stands in its way. What the developer doesn’t know is that the island has a remarkable history, and locals believe it is cursed . . . and the past is never the past . . .

The Trial by Jo Spain – June 6 2024

2014, Dublin: at St Edmunds, an elite college on the outskirts of the city, twenty-year-old medical student Theo gets up one morning, leaving behind his sleeping girlfriend, Dani, and his studies – never to be seen again. With too many unanswered questions, Dani simply can’t accept Theo’s disappearance and reports him missing, even though no one else seems concerned, including Theo’s father.

Ten years later, Dani returns to the college as a history professor. With her mother suffering from severe dementia, and her past at St Edmunds still haunting her, she’s trying for a new start. But not all is as it seems behind the cloistered college walls – meanwhile, Dani is hiding secrets of her own.

The Wild Swimmers (DS Alexandra Cupidi Book 5): by William Shaw – 23 May 2024

In the latest instalment of the D S Cupidi series low tide reveals a mysterious crime.

The body of a local woman is found washed up on the Folkstone shoreline. Cupidi must find the missing link between a group of wild swimmers, an online dating profile and a slippery killer who feels remarkably close to home.

The Last Word by Elly Griffiths – 39 January 2024

In the latest instalment of the D S Cupidi series low tide reveals a mysterious crime. The body of a local woman is found washed up on the Folkstone shoreline. Cupidi must find the missing link between a group of wild swimmers, an online dating profile and a slippery killer who feels remarkably close to home.

Natalka and Edwin, whom we met in The Postscript Murders, are running a detective agency in Shoreham, Sussex. Despite a steady stream of minor cases, Natalka is frustrated, longing for a big juicy case such as murder to come the agency’s way. Natalka is now living with dreamer, Benedict. But her Ukrainian mother Valentyna has joined them from her war-torn country and three’s a crowd. It’s annoying to have Valentyna in the tiny flat, cooking borscht and cleaning things that are already clean. To add to Natalka’s irritation, Benedict and her mother get on brilliantly.

Then a murder case turns up. Local writer, Melody Chambers, is found dead and her family are convinced it is murder. Edwin, a big fan of the obit pages, thinks there’s a link to the writer of Melody’s obituary who pre-deceased his subject. The trail leads Benedict and Edwin to a slightly sinister writers’ retreat. When another writer is found dead, Edwin thinks that the clue lies in the words. Seeking professional help, the amateur investigators turn to their friend, detective Harbinder Kaur, to find that they have stumbled on a plot that is stranger than fiction.

Close to Death by Anthony Horowitz – 11 April 2924

Richmond Upon Thames is one of the most desirable areas to live in London. And Riverview Close – a quiet, gated community – seems to offer its inhabitants the perfect life.

At least it does until Giles Kenworthy moves in with his wife and noisy children, his four gas-guzzling cars, his loud parties and his plans for a new swimming pool in his garden. His neighbours all have a reason to hate him and are soon up in arms.

When Kenworthy is shot dead with a crossbow bolt through his neck, all of them come under suspicion and his murder opens the door to lies, deception and further death. The police are baffled. Reluctantly, they call in former Detective Daniel Hawthorne. But even he is faced with a seemingly impossible puzzle. How do you solve a murder when everyone has the same motive?

Where Water Lies by Hilary Tailor – 1 June 2024

Eliza has lived two lives – one before she fell into an obsessive teenage friendship with Eric and Maggie, and the one after it was destroyed in a single afternoon. To Eliza, Eric and Maggie were irreplaceable, so she hasn’t. Instead, drifting through life alone, she spends every morning diving into her memories as she swims in Hampstead Ponds, her guilt never far below the surface.

Twenty years might have passed, yet Eliza still can’t help searching for Maggie everywhere. Then one day she spots a woman who looks just like her. Eliza has spent half her life wondering what really happened that afternoon and if Maggie’s back, will it help her finally get answers?

The Wrong Sister by Claire Douglas – 14 March 2024

Tasha and her husband Aaron are having a much-needed week away in Venice. With their two young children being cared for back home by Tasha’s older sister Alice, it’s the perfect opportunity for them to reconnect as a couple. Until they start to feel they’re being followed. Then Tasha receives a phonecall to say Alice and her husband Kyle have been attacked. Alice is in intensive care, and Kyle has died. The twins are, miraculously, safe.They rush home to be with their daughters, to support Alice, and to help with the police investigation.

But in the middle of it all a note arrives, addressed to Tasha: It was supposed to be you. What soon emerges are secrets buried far deeper than any of this family realise. Everyone has a history. But how far would you go to protect those you love?

They Thought I Was Dead by Peter James – 9 May 2024

Her name is Sandy. You might know her as the loving wife of Detective Superintendent Roy Grace. But there’s more to her than meets the eye. A woman with a dubious past, a complicated present and an uncertain future. Then she was gone.

Her disappearance caused a nationwide search. Even the best detective on the force couldn’t find her. They thought she was dead. Where did she go? Why did she run? What would cause a woman to leave her whole life behind and simply vanish?

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 Favourite Books of 2023. The links are to Goodreads or to my review if I wrote one. I’ve recently posted a list of Ten Five Star Books of 2023, so for this post I’m listing ten different five star books I read in 2023.

Virginia Woolf: A Biography vol 1 1882 – 1912 by Quentin Bell, her nephew. It tells of Virginia Stephen’s childhood and that of her sister Vanessa up to her decision to marry Leonard Woolf. The front cover shows the painting of Virginia Woolf by Roger Fry, a painter and designer and a member of the Bloomsbury Group.

Death is Now My Neighbour by Colin Dexter, the penultimate book in the Inspector Morse series Morse is nearing retirement and he is not a well man and his drinking is causing him problems, enough to make him go to the doctor, who diagnoses diabetes. But does Morse follow his doctor’s advice?

The Locked Room by Elly Griffiths, the 14th Ruth Galloway mystery novel. Forensic archaeologist Dr Ruth Galloway and DCI Harry Nelson are on the hunt for a murderer when Covid rears its ugly head. But can they find the killer despite lockdown?

Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones, a novel that has received both good and bad reviews. I loved it. Set on the island of Bougainville, part of Papua New Guinea in the 1990s during the Bougainville civil war, it’s narrated by Matilda (aged nearly 14). Guided by their teacher Mr Watt, a white man, the children have been reading the story of Pip in Great Expectations, which provides an escape for Matilda from the fear and violence of the horrific events that engulfed the island during the civil war.

The Hairy Bikers Blood, Sweat & Tyres: The Autobiography by Si King and Dave Myers – a fascinating book written in alternate chapters by Si and Dave. It’s funny, informative, sad and happy, revealing the tough times they went through, their health issues, family losses, how they came to work on TV and above all their friendship.

Just Another Missing Person by Gillian McAllister, the fifth book by her that I’ve read and one of the best books I read in 2023. It’s tense, tightly plotted and completely compelling reading, as DCI Julia Day investigates the disappearance of 22 year old Olivia.

A Winter Grave by Peter May. This is cli-fi, about the effects of climate change on human society, set in an independent Scotland in 2051. Addie, a young meteorologist checking a mountain top weather station, discovers the body of a man entombed in ice.

The Vanishing Tide by Hilary Tailor, her debut novel, beautifully written. When Isla inherits the cliffside cottage where she spent her childhood, she must face dark shadows of her past—the mother who rejected her in favour of her art, the aunt whose death haunted them both, and the silence that permeated every room. Digging through the belongings of someone she realises she never really knew, Isla finally has the chance to find answers to the secrets her mother spent a lifetime hiding.

Ultra-Processed People by Chris Van Tulleken, subtitled ‘Why Do We All Eat Stuff That Isn’t Food … And Why Can’t We Stop?’ I kept hearing about ultra processed food, but had little idea what exactly it is, so when I saw this book I thought it would be ideal – and it’s by Chris van Tulleken, who has impressed me on numerous TV programmes on nutrition. It is absolutely fascinating and a real eye opener!

The Sixth Lie by Sarah Ward, the 2nd Mallory Dawson crime thriller. Six lies killed Huw Jones.On New Year’s Eve 2011, Huw Jones disappeared from his bedroom while his father and five friends were downstairs. His body was later discovered on the nearby cliffs at St Non’s. That night, all six friends lied in their statements to the police. Over a decade later, Huw’s mother, Heledd is found dead. Mallory Dawson, a former police police detective, must uncover the lies lurking in the tight-knit community of St Davids. But someone has kept their secrets for years, and they would kill to protect them.