Books I have Read – Sept 21 to Mar 22

In April 2021 I started to try to note what I have read and what I thought about it.

I have made little attempt to edit my thoughts – some are probably unduly harsh, others wildly enthusiastic. There’s no real pattern to them, though I have often noted when I started and when I finished (if I did so)

September 2021

Jowetts Railway Centres (1993). Library 1/9/21 Vol One For the maps of the development of Lowestoft Railway Station. Intend to photograph maps and make a Shorthand story from them, as a kind of practice. Interesting book, as it appears to be a fascimile of a hand-written manuscript, and had-drawn maps. Visually compelling – to me.

The Talented Mr Varg (2020) – Alexander McCall Smith. Started 10/9/21, finished 15/9/21. Excellent. Title an homage to Highsmith, I reckon, as Mr Varg is as close to the opposite of Tom Ripley one could imagine. Or, indeed, Mr Smith  could imagine. Clever, thoughtful, witty, beautifully constructed. Written by a Scotsman, set in Norway.

Guilty Siobhan Macdonald (2020) Started 15/8/21. Finished 22/9/21. A sort of crime book, set in Ireland (though you wouldn't know it). OK, in a what happens next kind of way. Won't read any more of hers, though.

Curlew Coast – Judith Ellis (2018) Excellent book for dipping, lots of local and wider info.

This is What Happened – Mick Herron (2018) – Re-read. Another excellent novel, another spook story, but from yet another perspective.


October 2021


Imperial Mud – The Fight for the Fens – James Boyce (2020) Excellent read – still reading (1/11/2021) (bought with book token)

The Nighthawkers – Elly Griffiths (2020) Excellent read, again.(bought with book token)

Spread a Little Kirkleyness and Right Up Your Street Dean Parkin (2021). Poems. These are good, but I prefer the video versions.

The Waves – Virginia Woolf (1931) - hard going. Scan read the intro. Reminds me of lots of 60's 70's parodies (though they were probably done by Eng Lit students who had just read The Waves). Got audio book from library. Still only got a quarter of the way through. Not finished.

Devices and Desires – P D James (1988) Library. Set in north Norfolk, though it's a fictional set of places. Very very wordy. But in the end, enjoyable, though the denouement is unsatisfactory. Finished early Nov

Our Friends in Beijing – John Simpson (2021) Library.  Started this when I was about a third of the way into Devices and Desires. It took over. Lovely easy witty style, feels authentic, feels like it was written so you'd think it's a thinly disguised true story. Finished late Oct.

Lowestoft Tramways – David Mackley (2004) Library

November 2021
Defending the guilty -  'True' stories of being a barrister. Interesting and funny, in a morbid way – morbid, because of the picture of society it draws.

Love is Blind – William Boyd (2018) A compelling novel, so beautifully written, a story of love and the turn of the late nineteenth into the 20th century. Astonishing what a good writer can do. Set in Scotland, St petersburg, paris, south of France and northern Italy, and finally the Indian ocean.

On the Marsh – Simon Barnes – audio book. Better than I thought, as I had tried this before. 

Spilt Milk – Bookclub book. Hard going, so far. Awful. Got to page 129. Bookclub had a few positive comments, but generally agreed it was turgid.

December 2021

The Trio – William Boyd (2018) Started 4/12/21 Finished 12/12/21 Another excellent Boyd novel, three  main characters. All flawed and messed up, plotted around making a film. Boyd makes everything seem authentic.

The Ghost Fields - Elly Griffiths Started 3/12/21Not finished. Featuring the USAF airfields in Norfolk. For some reason, this didn't grip me at all. Gave up in the end.

Joe Country - Mick Herron a re-read, (bought recently). Stands up well, though the Lantern Men took over. Will return. Left round Suzie's. Need to retrieve.

The Lantern Men – Elly Griffiths (2018) 18/12/21 Finished 26/12/21 Enjoyed this, another Ruth Galloway novel.

Other Minds The Octopus and the evolution of intelligent life.– Peter Godfrey Smith (2017) Started around 18th Dec. (present from Suzie) Needs a lot of attention. Finished around 10th Jan. Super book. Smooth, unfussy wring, very clear, but conceptually still complicated and difficult for me -  not to sort-of understand but to remember.  The middle part of the book where the author looks at cephalopods, with stunning descriptions, is especially fine. And of course I find compelling the central suggestion that they are an evolutionary 'experiment' in creating consciousness.

DriftGlass – Samuel R Delaney. Science fiction writer, new to me, but published in the 70's. Short stories. First one, Star pit, is tough muscular prose more western or gangster but set firmly in a future where inter-galactic travel is normal and possible.  Themes of parenthood, difference, class, notions of intelligence.

Silverview – John le Carre (2021). Present from Suzie. Haven't started yet (27/12/21)  Absolute Carre, class writing, thin plot, layers of deception. Finished around 3/1/22

Jan 2022

The Curator – M W Craven (library). Enjoying this. Features requisite male maverick investigator and female autistic sidekick, but sometimes witty, lots of twists, and firmly set in a landscape. Not bad, will try to remember the series.

In the Woods – Tana French (Library) |Seem to have lost this book, which is a Library one. Found eventually. Didn't read.

Scribblings of a Yarmouth Naturalist – Arthur Patterson

Hamnet – Maggie O'Farrell – didn't work for me. Read only a few pages.

Grasses, Moses ferns and lichens – Roger Phillips

Lowestoft 1550 – 1750 – David Butcher. Huge detailed book, superbly written for the genre. Dipping in and out. Will never actually read it!

The Stranger Diaries – Elly Griffiths – Good novel.

February

Afterland – Lauren Beukes (2020) Interesting concept, some wild characters, held up well to the end, even though it's long. (finished 10/2/22)

Sixteen Horses – Greg Buchan (2022) first novel, featured by Waterstones. Bought on a whim. Irritating one, this. I was initially put off by the bleak elliptical inferential style, but continued to the end. Feels Suffolk coast, feels a bit Lowestoft, reads like Sebald turns to crime writing. The stylistically bleakest novel I have read for years.(finished 22/2/22)

A Dark Sin – Dalgliesh – AWFUL. Managed about five pages of absolute drivel.

Suffolk Tales – Harold Mills West (1982) Short stories about life in Suffolk, most but not all in the early part of the 20th century. It's a loo book. The stories are short and sweet.

Diary of An Ordinary Woman – Margaret Forster (2003). Bookclub choice for this month. Started around 15/2/22). Finished 27/2/22. Enjoying it for the second time. Very hard to explain why I find it so attractive.It's in diary form, so an obvious linear structure. I'm intending to compare it it to Call of the Peewits. P291 interesting ref to records about Singapore fall being available in 2025. Excellent.


March

The Thursday Murder Club – Richard Osman (2020) Great read. Loved it. Read it in about four days. Finished 4/3/22.

The Old Ways -  Robert Macfarlane (20212). (started around 1/3/2022) This will be a bit of dipper, I think. Macfarlane's a good writer but it's hard to move fast through it.

Expectation – Anna Hope (2019)  Taken a library punt on this. A novel of relationships. We'll see. Enjoyed this. The lives of three women in the 90's/2000's. Interesting comparison with Diary of... (read in 4 days – finished early hours of the 8th March).

English Fairs and Markets – William Addison (1953) Got for Lowestoft market research

Markets in Early Medieval Europe – Tim Pestilli/Katherina Ulmschneider (2003) Got for Lowestoft market research

Sweet Dreams – Michael Frayn (1973) Borrowed from Lisa. Loved this, so witty and thought provoking. Like much of his early work (!) it's a man playing with with ideas. Very short (like Russian Interpreter/Tin Men). The narrator character resurfaces in Towards the End of the Morning, I reckon.

War Boy – A Country Childhood – Michael Foreman (1989). Brilliant, loved it. Childrens book, but direct clear writing. Excellent illustrations. Children's book.

The Order of Time – Carlo Rovelli (2017/8) Present from Suzie in Dec 2021. Been dipping in an out since December. Beautifully written, but I don't understand most of it.

Uncle Fred in the Springtime – P G Wodehouse (1939)

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian – Marina Lewycka (2005) (started around 10th March. Finished early hours of 15th ). Bookclub March read. Lisa's offering. Funny, sad, cleverly constructed. All about families, I suppose, with nationalism, politics thrown in. I've never read a novel mainly set in Peterborough. I liked very much the extracts from the grandfather's book, from which the novel gets its name, and would like a copy. After a while, got a bit irritated with it, though, it was strangely two or three jokes that are re-worked again and again. And the main protagonist – we don't ever get another version of her, except occasional one liners 'I felt sorry for her'. But it's a page turner, a very good read.

The Chain – Adrian McKinty. Thriller. Awful – that is, terrifying – premise. Finished.

Convictions – Denise Mina – Thriller. Another interesting plot, and also characters. Enjoyed this.

 A day at the Beach Hut -  Veronica Henry. Short pleasant stories all set in what's called a beach hut but is really a beach house. Interspersed with nice summer recipes. I shall buy this book, I think, for the recipes. And the writing is well-crafted.

Lowestoft Corporation Transport – Malcolm R White (2003). All about buses. Keep dipping in and out, esp now got models and photos.

Ordinary Thunderstorm – William Boyd (2009) One of Suzie's lent to me for self-isolation. I'd read it before, but it easily withstood a second read. Class act.