The 1937 Club, hosted by Stuck in a Book and Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings, starts tomorrow and I thought I’d list the books I’ve read that were published that year and also see if I’ve got any more left in my TBRs to read.

These are the books I’ve read:

The links will take you to my reviews :

Bats in the Belfry by E C R Lorac – full of descriptive writing painting vivid pictures of the streets of London in the 1930s and in particular the spooky, Gothic tower in which a corpse is discovered, ‘headless and handless‘. For a while the identity of the murdered man is in doubt – is it that of Bruce Attleton who had unaccountably disappeared or that of the mysterious stranger, Debrette who it seems had been blackmailing Bruce? Chief Inspector Macdonald of New Scotland Yard is called in to investigate.

The Hobbit by J R R Tolkien – an adventure story of a quest set in a fantasy world, so beautifully written that it seems completely believable. Bilbo Baggins, a hobbit, is recruited through Gandalf, the wizard, to accompany a party of thirteen dwarves, led by Thorin, on their quest to recover the dwarves’ treasure stolen by Smaug the dragon and regain possession of the Lonely Mountain. Along the way Bilbo grows in confidence and becomes a hero, meeting elves, outwitting trolls, fighting goblins, and above all gaining possession of the ring from Gollum.

Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie – this shows Agatha Christie’s interest in Egypt and archaeology and also reflects much of the flavour and social nuances of the pre-war period. In it she sets a puzzle to solve –  who shot Linnet Doyle, the wealthy American heiress? It is essentially a ‘locked room mystery’, as the characters are passengers on the river-steamer SS Karnak, cruising on the Nile. Amongst them is the famous Hercule Poirot, a short man dressed in a white silk suit, a panama hat and carrying a highly ornamental fly whisk with a sham amber handle ‘a funny little man.’

Dumb Witness by Agatha Christie – The ‘dumb witness’of the title is Bob, Miss Emily Arundell’s wire-haired terrier in what is described as ‘the incident of the dog’s ball.’ Everyone blamed Emily’s accident on a rubber ball left on the stairs by her frisky terrier. But the more she thought about her fall, the more convinced she became that one of her relatives was trying to kill her. On April 17th she wrote her suspicions in a letter to Hercule Poirot. Mysteriously he didn’t receive the letter until June 28th … by which time Emily was already dead!

The Cheltenham Square Murder by John Bude – this is another complicated murder mystery. The tranquillity of Cheltenham Square is shattered when the occupant of no. 6 was murdered by an arrow to the head, shot through an open window. The puzzle is first of all to work out how the murder was carried out and secondly who out of the several suspects, including six keen members of an Archery Club, was the murderer. I enjoyed trying to work it out, but although I had an idea about the guilty person I couldn’t see how the murders had been achieved until the method was revealed.

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck – I really liked this short book about commitment, loneliness, hope and loss, the story of two drifters, George and his simple-minded friend Lennie looking for work and dreaming of having some land of their own. Their hopes are doomed as Lennie – struggling against extreme cruelty, misunderstanding and feelings of jealousy – becomes a victim of his own strength.

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James –  This story is dark and melodramatic, about good and evil and with hints of sexual relations, reflecting the Victorian society of the time. But is it a ghost story or a psychological study? Either way there are creepy, disturbing things going on. It’s a story within a story, told as a ghost story to a group of people as they sit gathered round a fire in an old house. It tells of two children and their governess. She has been employed by their uncle who wants nothing to do with them. Their previous governess had died under mysterious circumstances (was it in childbirth?).  The older child, Miles, was away at school and soon after the new governess arrives Miles returns home, expelled from school for some terrible unexplained offence. It’s all terribly ambiguous.

I have just two more books published in 1937 in my TBRs, so I’m hoping I’ll read at least one of them for the 1937 Club, probably Hamlet, Revenge: a Story in Four Parts by Michael Innes, which is described on the back cover:

The murder was planned, deliberately and at obvious risk, to take place in the middle of a private performance of Hamlet.

Behind the scenes there were thirty-one suspects. In the select and distinguished audience twenty-seven. ‘Suspicions,’ said Appleby, ‘crowd thick and fast upon us.’ (From the back cover)

or I might read The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell:

… a searing account of working-class life in the bleak industrial heartlands of Yorkshire and Lancashire in the 1930s, The Road to Wigan Pier is a brilliant and bitter polemic that has lost none of its political impact over time

Orwell’s graphically unforgettable descriptions of social injustice, cramped slum housing, dangerous mining conditions, squalor, hunger and growing unemployment are written with unblinking honesty, fury and great humanity. It crystallized the ideas that would be found in his later works and novels, and remains a powerful portrait of poverty, injustice and class divisions in Britain. Includes illustrations, explanatory footnotes, and an introduction by Richard Hoggart (Amazon UK)