(Skip to the end if you just want the list of books.)

A good numbers year, sixty-two books read if I’ve counted right. My bookmarks must be wearing away (🤔).

There were quite a few non fiction books in the mix, including a run of four around February. Thanks to my son for pushing the J G Ballard’s under my nose. They are very good and he has a stack more I can borrow. The local Womens Centre’s library is also proving to be an excellent resource, especially for older books. I like swapping from one writer, genre, country, time, format etc to another and it makes me smile that I followed the Feminist Book Society’s How We Come Back Stronger with Fleming’s Goldfinger. Superb pairing. Incidentally the golf scene in the latter is gripping.

There were some surprises and diversions on the way. Greenmantle by Buchan had about 40 pages missing, only discovered mid-read. For 20p I couldn’t grumble (but I did). The Medieval Women book was written by the mother of my favourite tutor at university – Conrad Leyser. Houses of Power by Thurley had me designing my own Tudor palace, (just how many withdrawing rooms do I need?) I visited a Tudor Hall this week and walked in its Long Gallery. Great to experience something you’ve read about. I enjoyed Desperate Remedies and generally like Hardy, but I got stuck for weeks on that book. Le Carré I have to purposely read slow so it isn’t over too soon.

There were some howling duds in the mix, but I won’t mention them. ‘Well dones’ to Ballard, Brand and Thurley, Special Mention for Andrea Newman for An Evil Streak, but

Book of the Year 2023/24 goes to

Beware of Pity by Stefan Zweig.

2024/25 has started with the Collected stories of V S Pritchett. This year I’ll also get up to date with my card catalogue of books I’ve read. Much more enjoyable than an excel sheet. Thanks for reading, would love to read any book comments, recommendations you have.

• The Luminaries, Eleanor Catton
• The Book of Chameleons, José Eduardo Agualura
• An Unsuitable Attachment, Barbara Pym
• Money, Martin Amis
• Medieval Women A Social History of Women in England 450 – 1500, Henrietta Leyser
• The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman, Angela Carter
• Girl With a Pearl Earring, Tracy Chevalier
• The Drowned World, J.G. Ballard
• True History of the Kelly Gang, Peter Carey
• In the Prison of Her Skin, Violette Leduc
• The Unmapped Country, Stories and Fragments, Ann Quin
• The Quantum Universe Everything that can happen does happen, Brian Cox, Jeff Forshaw
• Kolymsky Heights, Lionel Davidson
• Life and Times of Michael K, J.M. Coetzee
• Holiday, Stanley Middleton
• Westmorland Alone, Ian Sansom
• An Anthology of Seventeenth Century Fiction, ed Paul Salzman
• Green For Danger, Christianna Brand
• The Snow Ball, Brigid Brophy
• Rappaccini’s Daughter,Young Goodman Brown, A Select Party, Nathaniel Hawthorne
• Family Roundabout, Richmal Crompton
• Jeeves in the Offing, P.G. Wodehouse
• The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye Five Fairy Stories, A.S. Byatt
• An Evil Streak, Andrea Newman
• Affinity, Sarah Waters
• Half of a Yellow Sun, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• Temporary, Hilary Leichter
• The Rising of the Moon, Gladys Mitchell
• Beware of Pity, Stefan Zweig
• Reader I Murdered Him, ed. Jen Green
• My Sister, The Serial Killer, Oyinkan Braithwaite
• For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway
• This is How We Come Back Stronger, ed. Feminist Book Society
• Goldfinger, Ian Fleming
• Bibliomaniac, Robin Ince
• Miss Pym Disposes, Josephine Tey
• High-Rise, J.G. Ballard
• W.H. Auden Poems Tell me the truth about love, Pub. Faber
• The Northern Clemency, Philip Hensher
• The Hollow Man, John Dickson Carr
• The Weird and the Eerie, Mark Fisher
• Brutal North, Simon Phipps
• Houses of Power, Simon Thurley
• Britain BC, Francis Pryor
• Necessary Rites, Janice Elliott
• Greenmantle, John Buchan
• Alfred Hitchcock’s Ghostly Gallery
• Silverview, John le Carré
• The Life and Loves of a She Devil, Fay Weldon
• The Habit of Loving, Doris Lessing
• The Moving Toyshop, Edmund Crispin
• The Celts A Sceptical History, Simon Jenkins
• Desperate Remedies, Thomas Hardy
• The Crystal World, J.G. Ballard
• The Silence of the Girls, Pat Barker
• Ice, Anna Kavan
• Micawber’s Ailment, Lucy Ann Watt
• Poison For Teacher, Nancy Spain
• Feminism Before the First Wave, Zoë Fairbairns, Five Leaves Bookshop Occasional Papers
• Not A River, Selva Almada, trans. A McDermott
• Bad Behavior, Mary Gaitskill
• The Gazebo, Patricia Wentworth