Read 50 books in 2007

Coming soon…

Coming soon…

Book 49: Revenge of the Middle Aged Woman by Elizabeth Buchan

The blurb:
Rose Lloyd was the last to suspect that Nathan, her husband of over twenty years, was having an affair, and that he was planning to leave her. But the greatest shock was yet to come; for his mistress was Rose’s colleague and friend, Minty. Left alone in their once-happy family home, where she and Nathan had brought up their children. Rose started thinking – about the man she’d married, and how well she really knew him. About the carefree yet studious girl she had been before she met him. Twenty years ago she had to make the choice between two very different lives. Could she now recapture what she nearly chose back then, a life where she put herself first?

The verdict: I thought this would be fluffy chick lit, but it’s really not at all – I quite enjoyed it and it’s not at all fluffy, even if the ending was a bit predicable…

Book 48 – Boy Meets Girl by Meg Cabot

Given to me by a colleague, I thought I’d try this on the way home as The Princess Diaries are famous and supposed to be good. Perhaps they are. This is absolutely dire. Written entirely in email and IM form, the characters are all unlikeable, unbelievable or incomprehensible. It took me two tube journeys to read this. It was less intelligent than the London Paper.

Reading Amazon to get these links, by the ay, is fascinating – people on there actually liked it. I can’t imagine why – I didn’t agree with a single one of their positive comments…

Book 47 – The Clematis Tree by Ann Widdecombe

This goal was thrown off target a bit by Fingersmith – not sure why, but this happened with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and the penultimate Rebus book as well – when I really, really love a book, I don’t really want to pick up another one afterwards.

Anyway, have broken it with the tried and tested “book by a famous person” but this one is actually quite good. Not brilliant, but definitely readable and not at all brainless.

Book 46 – Fingersmith by Sarah Waters

The blurb: It is 1862. Sue is an orphan, her mother hanged for murder, who has been brought up by Mrs Sucksby and her little gang of thieves – she’s a “fingersmith”, a pickpocket. One of the gang, “Gentleman”, has a plan to marry a lady, Maud Lilly – the niece of a man he is binding prints for, who is the heiress to a great fortune. Sue is employed as a maid to Maud Lilly, to help Gentleman elope with her, and, when the time comes, leave her in a madhouse and take her inheritance. For this Sue is promised £2,000. But then it all becomes a bit more complex, and nothing is quite what it seems…

The verdict: I can’t describe how much I loved this book – it’s quite long, but absolutely worth it – everyone should at least try it. The first section is the best, so read the first 50 pages or so -if you don’t like it by then, give up, because it’s all the same, but I think it’s probably the best book I’ve read this year.

Book 45 – Death on the Downs by Simon Brett

The blurb: Strait-laced Carole and her laid back neighbour Jude return in the second of Simon Brett’s Fethering Series. It wasn’t the rain that upset during Carole Seddon during her walk on the West Sussex Downs. It wasn’t the dilapidated barn in which she took shelter. No, what upset her was the human skeleton she discovered there… So begins the second investigation for Carole and her neighbour Jude. This time their enquires take them away from Fethering to the small hamlet of Weldisham. There gossips quickly identify the corpse as Tamsin Lutteridge, a young woman who disappeared from the village months before. Detective Sergeant Baylis will confirm nothing. So why is Tamsin’s mother, a friend of Jude’s, so certain her daughter is still alive? And why is the unstable Brian Helling so keen to announce that there is a serial killer on the loose…?

Book 2 in The Fethering Mysteries series

These are the most gentle murder mysteries I’ve ever read, but they’re not quite Miss Marple, they’re quite modern and funny in an entirely undefinable way. I recommend reading the first one to see if you like it – it will take about two hours and the others are all exactly the same.

Book 44 – One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson

The second novel featuring Jackson Brodie, the ex-policeman, ex-private eye, now wasting his life doing laps of his swimming pool in France. This is much more than a Jackson Brodie novel, though – in fact, he is somewhat peripheral to a complex murder-and-intrigue plot featuring a washed up comedian, a corrupt property developer’s wife, a writer of cheap crime novels and a cat called Jellybean.

Not the best Kate Atkinson by a long way (that would be Behind the Scenes at the Museum) but still a pretty good read.

Book 43 – A Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis

The blurb: A timeless and inspiring affirmation of faith in the face of senseless loss. To survive the “mad midnight moments” after his wife’s death, C. S. Lewis wrote about his agony and near despair. In A Grief Observed, his journal of struggle, we are allowed to witness Lewis’ classic trial of faith as he probes the fundamental issues of life and death, and summons those who grieve to honest mourning and hope in the midst of loss.

The verdict: Read it yourself: decide for yourself

Book 42 – Love OVer Scotland by Alexander McCall Smith

The blurb: With his characteristic warmth, inventiveness and brilliant wit, Alexander McCall Smith gives us more of the gloriously entertaining comings and goings at 44 Scotland Street, the Edinburgh townhouse. Six-year-old prodigy Bertie perseveres in his heroic struggle for truth and balanced good sense against his insufferable mother and her crony, the psychotherapist Dr Fairbairn, going as far as to make a short-lived bid for freedom on a trip to Paris with the Edinburgh youth orchestra. Domenica sets off on an anthropological odyssey with pirates in the Malacca Straits, while Pat attracts several handsome admirers, including a toothsome suitor named Wolf. And Big Lou, eternal source of coffee and good advice to her friends, has love, heartbreak and erstwhile boyfriend Eddie’s misdemeanours on her own mind.

The 3rd in the 44 Scotland Street series. I’m not sure I like these books as much as the Number One Ladies Detective Agency or the Sunday Philiosophy Club, but they are quite gentle and despite all the waffling about pirates in this one, they’re worth reading if only for the Bertie scenes.