2026 - 50 Books a Year Challenge

12. The Keeper of Lost Things, Ruth Hogan

A cosy read, and ultimately feel-good, though there were some surprisingly dark episodes amongst the sweetness. The main plot is that of a rather lovely man who develops an obsession with taking home and cataloguing any lost items he comes across. When he dies he leaves everything to his assistant, on condition that she agrees to try to reunite his precious items with their owners. There are various sub-plots woven round the stories of the various items. I enjoyed the book, but did feel that the characters were a bit one-dimensional, either living saints or all out sinners, and some parts were just too daft, eg the would-be author who plagiarises famous books in the most obvious way. I’d still recommend it as an easy read though.

13. There Are Rivers in the Sky, Elif Shafak

This was anything but an easy read, weaving different times and characters into a wider plot loosely connected by a drop of water. We went from ancient Nineveh to Victorian London to modern day London and Turkey, from King Ashurbanipal to Thames toshers, a modern day soon to be divorcee, the plight of the Yazidis. Reading it was quite a commitment, but one that was well worth the effort.

13. Animal Farm by George Orwell - A reread. I forgot how utterly brilliant this book was. Not only depicting how the Russian revolution turned into a dictatorship and cult of personality, but the comparisons we can draw with more recent events, political actors, social classes etc. The different sides of human nature are so vividly represented by the pigs, the sheep and the rest of the animals. You watch a press conference by Trump or Farage stating "I've never said that" when there is clear evidence that they did indeed say that, and it's frighteningly like the pigs in the book rewriting history while their vicious dogs intimidate everyone into silence. Beautiful writing too, subtle humour throughout and not a sentence wasted.

I was listening to the audiobook version performed by Stephen Fry. I was so engrossed in it that I accidentally put the oven on microwave setting, igniting fireworks inside. It gave me a proper fright, but it looks like the oven has survived.

Diggingdoris I've just watched the new Grace episode that has come out. A good one. Have you tried audiobooks? I get them from the library through their app for free. I can get through a whole book in a day or two while doing housework.

24-Love You Dead-Peter James
With the new series coming on TV, I thought I'd read one of PJ's earlier books. I have never been disappointed with any of his works. The only problem is that once I've started one, I can't put it down, so the housework/gardening comes second best! As always a fast moving thriller, with some changes to the TV adaption.

20 Flashlight Susan Choi Audible

I massively wished I'd read this account rather than listen to it, because sometimes I think I missed relevant facts relating to a subject I knew nothing about. Both disturbing and riveting, but on Googling one of the main facets of the book, notably the unexplained disappearances of both Japanese and Korean individuals, some selected for specialist skills but also ordinary fishermen who operated around the Japanese archipelago, predominantly during the '70s and '80s and spirited away to North Korea. It does seem that Susan Choi a Korean/American herself had done her research as she weaved some of these incidents into her book.

Serk Kang is of Japanese/Korean ancestry born in Japan at the end of the 2nd WW at a time when like many of his fellow countrymen didn't have Japanese citizenship. There was a wave of Koreans encouraged to go back to the newly found communist state of North Korea, when the country is divided to reflect the power shifts in the region and some are duped into thinking their loyalties will lie with the communist regime. Most of his family are part of those who will return, just leaving him and one sister behind in Japan. Where being of Korean ethnicity they are treated as 2nd class citizens. However, he is given an opportunity to study in the US with the hope, in due course, of becoming a permanent resident there. Meanwhile, his yet to be encountered, American wife- to -be, Anne, has her own struggles, when she gives birth out of wedlock to her first child who she gives up to be raised by the father. At a later stage she will reconnect with him and he becomes a pivotal person in assisting his half sister in her quest to find her missing father but that is years down the line. Before that Anne and Serk are to meet and marry and they have that daughter Louisa. Towards the end of the '70s, Serk is to take up a secondment in Japan as an electrical engineering professor and the family leave the US to live there for a year, where Louisa, a precocious clever nine year old is to become reasonably proficient in the language. Meanwhile, Anne is unfortunately experiencing the early onset of Multiple Sclerosis and seldom leaves the house. One evening father and daughter take a walk on a nearby beach, where Serk disappears and Louisa is found barely alive on the shore, it is assumed that Serk has drowned although there is no evidence of this. Mother and daughter return to the US. Louisa is to suffer memory loss as to what happened that fateful night. It is revealed that Serk is still alive, abducted by North Korean government agents with a view to imbuing prospective undercover spies on how to blend in in Japanese society. All the while labours in dire conditions under the false belief that his daughter is also being held in North Korea and in that his co-operation is vital to her safety.

There are umpteen facets to the book, most notably North Korean re-education camps, lost memory and trauma, identity and exile, family separation, and survival. I can see why it was short listed for the Booker Prize last year, quite a standout.

Book 9: The Killing Stones by Ann Cleeves. A new Jimmy Perez story. Jimmy has now moved to Orkney and has a new life. However Murder rears it's head among the archaeological heritage. An excellent tale.

#26. Lost River by Stephen Booth.

19 Broken Country Clare Leslie Hall

This novel described as a fiction/romance/thriller has had loads of accolades heaped upon it and, although set in Dorset, has probably reached a wider readership in the US through being endorsed by Reese Witherspoon as one of her Book Club choices.

It's beautifully written and I wanted to like it more but much of it I found irredeemably sad, too sad in fact although it does end on a lighter note.

The timeline is mid 1950s to late 1960s. As teenagers, Beth and Gabriel meet when off for a walk, she has strayed onto Gabriel's estate where he challenges her somewhat pompously as to being on private land. She, coming from an ordinary background, he from the wealthier landed gentry. They are to fall in love. Beth, a clever schoolgirl is due to follow Gabriel to study at Oxford a year behind him, but for various reasons, not least of all, Gabriel's manipulative mother, placing obstacles in the way, deeming Beth unsuitable, their relationship founders. Beth abandons her academic ambitions and marries a local boy and young farmer who has loved her from a distance. Their happy existence is shattered when Gabriel returns to the village some years later, now a divorced successful author with a son a similar age to hers and Frank's who died in a tragic accident, and for which Beth can't help but blaming Frank for taking an eye off him at a critical moment in time. It is into that setting the former star crossed lovers' paths are to cross and they are to resurrect their relationship realising they never stopped loving each other. Beth is to find herself in a love triangle, does she stay with her thoroughly decent husband who she also loves or make a new life with her first boyfriend who always held a torch for her throughout his own marriage. Her romantic trysts are to trigger a chain of events with fatal consequences.

A myriad of human emotions, love, loss, guilt, atonement, forgiveness and finally hope are at the heart of this book. Very good writing. Although I don't think I would describe it as a personal favourite.

The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell ( or any of her books)
They’re all listed on Amazon.
Really good, spooky Gothic type novels, real page turners!

Book 20 The Last Runaway by Tracy Chevalier. I read this years ago when it first came out, then noticed that a poster had mentioned it further back and decided it was time for a re-read. I was not disappointed.

It tells the story of Honor Bright who is a Quaker who leaves Dorset in 1850 to impulsively emigrate to America with her sister, where she encounters slavery and runaway slaves travelling from the South to the North and often on to Canada where they will be safe.

I loved Hamnet, I like Maggie O'Farrell . Her books are all different.

#25. Their Little Secret by Mark Billingham.

I have just read Take it Back by Kia Abdullah. I found that I couldn’t put it down and indulged in a whole afternoon reading it to the finish.
Briefly! As I don’t wish to spoil it for anyone; a disabled girl has allegedly been attacked by a group of Asian boys. She is defended by a young Asian solicitor. The big question - who is telling the truth?
The story is complex on several levels of race, feminism and sexuality. The reader has to consider how they would vote if on the journey.

23-The Rendezvous and other stories-Daphne du Maurier
A selection of 14 short stories for fans of this great author.

7. The Violinmaker's Secret by Evie Woods

A violin is lost in Heathrow Airport and ends up in Lost and Found. It is bought by a staff member and this is the story of the violin set over different time periods, of the people who cared for it throughout its life. The violin tells its own story and of the secret it held as the new owner, a violin expert and an old man try to discover its origins.

Book 8: Eleanor A 200 mile walk in search of England's lost Queen by Alice Loxton. In 1290,England mourned the death of Queen Eleanor of Castile, much loved wife of Edward 1, the famous warrior king.Her body was carried 200 miles across England. To mark the places where her funeral cortege rested heartbroken Edward commissioned 12 magnificent Eleanor crosses. Historian, Alice Loxton followed the route more than seven centuries later .A gruelling challenge ,she walked the entire route coping with December weather, mud and exhaustion. A very interesting account of her journey and what she learned about Eleanor.

18 There are Rivers in the Sky Elif Shafak

I thought this book club choice was a fairly complicated novel, although I quite liked it. There are three main characters who drive the narrative along which spans separate time lines, but eventually cantilever together through their loose connections of two rivers, namely the Thames and the Tigris and how a droplet of raindrop is the link that transposes through a timeline spanning thousands of years.

Arthur, born by the river Thames in 1840, the embodiment of Dickensian London born into poverty and destitution, but with a gift of a brilliant memory that is first to earn him a position as an apprentice at a publisher where one book particularly fires up his imagination the remains of Nineveh ancient city of Mesopotamia.

The second character, Narin a ten year old Yazidi girl in the year 2014 just as ISIS is gaining momentum in her part of the world, the ancestral lands along the River Tigris and to whom she eventually falls victim to.

Finally, a few years later in 2018 London, newly divorced Zaleekah a scientist moves into a houseboat on the Thames to lament her failed marriage. Orphaned as a child when her Yazidi parents meet with an accident, since adopted by a wealthy uncle and aunt and brought to London.

There is a lot to the book covering the themes of a despotic king of ancient Mesopotamia and the archaeological discoveries that pertain to that part of the world. The subject of the persecution of the Yazidi people with the up to date horrors of genocide, modern day slavery and sexual trafficking inflicted on them when the embodiment of evil as displayed by ISIS taking over that region and set up their De facto headquarters in modern day Iraq.

I thought it was an interesting read, lots to Google, made me want to go up to the British Museum again and spend more time in the Assyrian rooms, I always got waylaid by the Egyptian rooms first.

#24. Where The Dead Fall by MJ Lee.

#18 was Ahead of the Game by JD Kirk
My latest in the DCI Logan series (10th in the series), set in the Scottish Highlands.
A body is discovered the Well of the Seven Heads, a popular highland landmark. The body is missing its head, suggesting the killer is trying to send a message.
Full of great Scottish dialogue and locations, with well developed characters. I’m really enjoying this series. 8/10

I started reading Girl Unknown by Karen Perry. I made it about a 3rd of the way through, but decided I have too many other better books waiting to be read, so this is going to the Little Free Library.

Having failed in my New Year resolution to post my reading in a timely fashion, here are my titles so far

Persuasion by Jane Austen - my choice for book club. I was surprised what a challenge I found this at the beginning, the language and sentence structure. I obviously watch too many classics on tv! But I soon got into it and it was wonderful.

The Names by Florence Knapp - my February book club read. Others have listed this and commented. It is an amazing book, a sort of Sliding Doors story (if you’ve seen the film). One person, three names, three different life outcomes.

My Second Life by Patrick Charnley - a novel based on the author’s own experience of suffering a cardiac arrest and subsequent brain damage. Set on a small farm in Cornwall. The plot of a local ‘baddie’ involved in drug smuggling, is fairly basic but I found the description of the long-term effects of the brain injury very interesting.

Spook Street by Mick Herron -I am reading my way through this series, televised as Slow Horses and loving it. It describes the fate of ‘failed’ spies/intelligence agents exiled to Slough House in London and given endless tedious, menial jobs to do in the hope they will leave voluntarily. They inevitably find ways of getting involved in various missions, with the dubious help of their ‘chief’, Jackson Lamb, sunk in a mire of alcohol and self-neglect and outrageously unpleasant behaviour, farting and belching without restraint. He is obviously severely damaged from the things he’s seen and done in his earlier career with MI5 but the one thing he has retained is a kind of loyalty to The Service and to his team of rejects (not that he’d admit to any such thing). Mick Herron’s writing is sardonically humorous and sharp in his characterisations and social/political commentary.

The Wrong Sister by Claire Douglas - my book club read this month - enjoyable to start with but not much character development so I read it quickly to see what happened.

Homecoming by Kate Morton - I was gripped by this from beginning to end. It’s quite long but a very good read.

Currently reading Gordon Brown: Power With Purpose by James Macintyre. Obviously the author is pro-Brown, as am I, but he tries to look honestly as his flaws as well as his strengths. Being a Scot, I was interested in his early life and I was at Edinburgh University at the time Gordon Brown stood for the position of student rector and remember seeing him campaigning on campus. I have heard him speak at an event last year and he was impressive. I’ve never enjoyed political biographies and this one is dragging in places but worth reading.

22-Celebrationa at the Toffee Factory-Glenda Young
A delightful end to the triple saga. I've enjoyed these books tremendously and will definitely put GY on my list to find more of her books.

17 They Knew Mr Knight - Dorothy Whipple

I discovered this writer from a bygone age, apropos of a thread about her on GN. I've really come to appreciate her observations about life in the earlier part of the 20th century. Particularly the constraints of the time placed upon women, domesticity and the social structure which was predictably pretty ingrained.

This book published in 1934 is the story of the middle class Blake family residing in the Midlands towards the end of the 1920s in a world teetering towards the Great Crash of '29 and subsequent Depression and although she doesn't specifically mention either of those the premise of the book is very much about over extending through unwise investments and financial ruin via the antagonist of the piece Mr Knight . Mr Knight on the surface, charming and urbane belying a darker fraudulent almost devil like nature that is to lead trusting Mr Blake into financial ruin and social disgrace in trying to buy back the family engineering business that his father sold to another employee and who has absolute control much to Mr Blake's ongoing annoyance. Meanwhile his wife Celia is supportive of his endeavours, his eldest daughter having just left school is appalled that her father expects her to actually get a job as a teacher or office worker her preferred expectation is to idle her young life away lazing around and going to events, before meeting a suitable husband to keep her in that style. Initially the family are delighted when Mr Blake realises his dream of buying back the family firm and their new found wealth finds them embracing life at a whole new level. However, before long disaster is to strike and their lives are upended by the shame of Mr Blake's conviction for fraud and the ensuing loss of their new found wealth and all that encompassed, large house, car, social life when they find their fall from grace swift into reduced circumstances.

Would appeal to anyone who would wish to read a first hand account regarding the social norms of the early part of the 20th century through this writer's well-honed observations.

I’m still reading it Sparklefizz.

I like Shari Lapena books, not very long and very readable.

Not too taxing either.

Maggiemaybe ^
I loved it, Sparklefizz and TerriBull. And for once, all seven of us in my reading group were in agreement. It lived up to every bit of the hype. I hope you feel the same, Calendargirl!^

So glad you enjoyed it Maggie.

Book 19 An Unwanted Guest by Shari Lapena. I enjoyed this although the storyline was the old classic of a random selection of people stranded in a remote hotel during a snowstorm. But it was well written and I was keen to know how it ended. I haven't found a book by Shari Lapena that I haven't enjoyed.

I see you're reading it Calendargirl. What did you think of it?

#23. An Unwanted Guest by Shari Lapena.

Yes, The Names didn’t take me long to read!

An intriguing book, well written.