pamelad's eight easy categories, part 2

Best books of 2020, so far

Five stars

L'Etranger by Albert Camus
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk

Four and a half stars

The Kindly Ones by Anthony Powell
See What You Made Me Do by Jess Hill
The Long Prospect by Elizabeth Harrower
Good Morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos
Our Women on the Ground ed. Zahra Hankir
Wittgenstein's Nephew by Thomas Bernhard
The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes
W Or the Memory of Childhood by Georges Perec

Honorable Mentions

The House of Broken Angels by Luis Alberto Urrea
Milkman by Anna Burns
Stalingrad by Vasily Grossman

Links to Categories on Previous Thread
1. Books I Already Own
2. Bought This Year
5. On the Wishlist
4. CATs
5. A Dance to the Music of Time
6. Big Fat Books
7. Borrowed
8. Bingo Dog >3 pamelad:

Borrowed

The Shifting Landscape by Katherine Kovacic

This is the second mystery featuring art dealer Alex Clayton, her dog Hogarth, and her friend John, an art conservator. Alasdair MacMillan, owner of a Western District sheep station that has been passed from father to eldest son for generations, invites Alex to his property, Kinloch, to value the historic art collection. Alasdair's four adult children are also present, but this is not a happy family. There's a death, a stolen painting, and a missing child. There's also an important theme of aboriginal dispossession, imperfectly integrated into the rather fragmented plot.

I enjoyed this book for the descriptions of the art, the scenery, and the colonial and aboriginal history. I was less taken with the trivial details about food, the excessive involvement of Hogarth, and Alex herself. There's a lot of filler in this short book, and not a lot of plot.

Borrowed

China Rich Girlfriend by Kevin Kwan

Another light, amusing read from the Crazy Rich Asians series. I've put the next one, Rich People Problems, on hold.

8. Bingo Dog

This is my first Bingo Dog.

1. Book published under a pen name or anonymously After Leaving Mr Mackenzie by Jean Rhys Completed
2. Book with at least three letters of BINGO consecutively in order in the title A Question of Upbringing Completed
3. Book with a proper name in the title The Bertrams Completed
4. Title contains a pun Nothing Sirius, short story by Fredric Brown Completed
5. Not set on Earth Earthmen Bearing Gifts, short story by Fredric Brown Completed
6. Epistolary novel or collection of letters Gentlemen Prefer Blondes Completed
7. Red cover, or red is prominent on the cover Crimson Lake Completed
8. Book published by a small press or self-published Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead Text Publishing Completed
9. Book published in the year of your birth A Buyer's Market Completed
10. Book published in 1820 or 1920 R.U.R. by Karel Capek Completed
11. Book written by an LT author The House of Broken Angels by Luis Alberto Urrea Completed
12. Book about books, bookstores, or libraries The Returns by Philip Salom Completed
13. Read a CAT Full Tilt by Dervla Murphy Completed
14. Mythology or folklore The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker Completed
15. Book with "library" or "thing" in the title or subtitle Anything Is Possible by Elizabeth Strout Completed
16. Book by a woman from a country other than the US/UK The Secret Lives of Men by Georgia Blain Completed
17. Book set in Asia The Cruel Way Completed
18. Mystery or true crime Big Sky by Kate Atkinson Completed
19. Book about birth or death The Weekend by Charlotte Wood Completed
20. Book by a journalist or about journalism Our Women on the Ground by Zahra Hankir Completed
21. Weird book title The Lenient Beast by Fredric Brown Completed
22. Book with a periodic table element in the title The Golden Spiders Completed
23. Book that's in a Legacy Library L’Étranger by Albert Camus Completed
24. Book published in 2020 Rules for Perfect Murders by Peter Swanson Completed
25. Book involving a real historical event (fiction or nonfiction) Stalingrad by Vasily Grossman Completed

Happy Part 2 of your thread! I read The Plague a long time ago but feel I ought to read L'Etranger as well (and re-read The Plague, except this time in French).

>4 rabbitprincess: Thank you for visiting. The Plague is much longer than L'Etranger, so I'm impressed that you would read it in French.

Borrowed

Gone by Midnight by Candice Fox

Ted Conkaffey, falsely accused of raping and assaulting a thirteen-year-old girl and leaving her for dead, is still trying to put his life back togehter. He is living on the outskirts of Cairns, working with Amanda, another outcast, who has served her time for murdering a schoolmate. Ted and Amanda have been hired by the mother of a missing eight-year-old boy who seems to have been abducted from the hotel where he was staying.

Lots of mosquitoes, crocodiles, heat and humidity. An entertaining, twisty plot. I enjoyed this book, but I think the series is getting bogged down: Amanda's quirkiness is becoming annoying; it's time for Ted to be found innocent; the outlaw bikers are losing their menace and becoming heart-warmingly paternalistic; there's a never-ending supply of violent, moronic police; Ted's pet geese are taking up too much space.

Borrowed

I Remember Nothing by Nora Ephron

Ephron could stand back and find the humour in any situation. I very much enjoyed this short collection, which includes
pieces on ageing and forgetfulness, her love of journalism, her parents, and witty reflections on nothing much. Witty and amusing.

>5 pamelad: I'm functionally bilingual and use French at work, but it's only within the past few years that I've really felt comfortable reading for pleasure in French. I credit this to my current job, where my colleagues encourage me to speak French with them and give me room to make mistakes. Increased confidence in speaking has apparently translated into improved reading comprehension.

2. Bought this year

A Man by Keiichiro Hirano

A man named Daisuke Taniguchi settles in a small Japanese town and marries the divorced woman, Rie, who owns a stationery shop. Daisuke is well-liked by his neighbours and colleagues, and is a good father to Rie's son, Yuto, who loves him. The couple have a child, and are happy together until Daisuke dies in a forestry accident. But when Rie contacts Daisuke's estranged brother, Kyoichi, the puzzle begins. Was Rie's husband Daisuke Taniguchi? If not, where is Daisuke Taniguchi? Rie contacts Kido, the lawyer who handled her divorce, to investigate.

Everyone in Japan has a family register, which records the main events of a person's life: birth, marriage, children, criminal record. By trading family registers, a person can adopt a new identity and a new life. Kido himself is from a Korean family, an identity that is less than desirable in Japan, with its pockets of anti-Korean racism and violence.

I found this book fascinating for its picture of Japanese society, for its philosophical reflections, and for the twists and turns of the identity search. Unfortunately the translation is rubbish in parts, but the book was interesting enough for me to keep going over the rough bits.

Borrowed

The Villa in Italy by Elizabeth Edmondson

It is the nineteen fifties and the mysterious Beatrice Malaspina has left a legacy to each of four apparently unrelated people, but only if they stay in her villa for thirty-three days. Delia, the opera singer, who has a lingering case of bronchitis and is happy to escape to the sun, brings her friend Jessica, who wants to hide away from her evil husband. George, the nuclear physicist, is riddled with guilt for his part in the development of the atomic bomb. The tactless, poverty-stricken Marjorie, hears voices that give her extraordinary insight into people. Together, they must find a codicil to Beatrice Malaspina's will.

I enjoyed this utterly undemanding, unrealistic book: lots of sunshine; pleasant, well-meaning people who get the happy ending they deserve; a puzzle; some villains who get their deserts

I'd started to read Dominicana for the July Non-fiction CAT, bit have put it aside for the second time because I can't bear to know what happens to the main character, a thirteen-year-old girl who has just been forced into marriage with a much older man in the hope that she can become an American citizen and eventually bring her family to the US.

We're in a second lock down here in Melbourne, with the virus spreading through aged-care homes and politicians arguing about responsibility. I'm looking for light, frivolous and cheerful books to read.

Currently reading The Temptation of Gracie, by Santa Montefiore. It's definitely light, but could do with more wit, less judging.

I am so sorry about what Melburnians are going through at the moment. It could have been avoided if certain precautions had been followed fully. Now so many people are suffering from the irresponsibility of a few.

Tasmania might be opening up our borders to WA, SA and NT in a couple of weeks time.

>12 Zozette: No point in allocating blame right now. First we need to stop the community transmission, then we need to identify what went wrong and why and make sure it doesn't happen again.

Whether you prefer to blame the Federal Government or the Victorian Government depends on your political leanings! We're all armchair epidemiologists now. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDhyjgPetQE

I am not really blaming either government, I am more annoyed at those security companies which botched up the hotel quarantine. Also the casualisation of the workplace has helped to spread the virus especially though the aged care homes. I also cannot understand those people who refuse to obey restrictions.

Yes, it's a complex problem. Addressing the casualisation of the workforce would be a wonderful thing, and I hope it happens. Right now in Melbourne we're all really worried, and want our leaders to be focused on immediate solutions. The State Government is paying $1500 to people with no sick leave who test positive and have to isolate, and $300 to people who have to isolate while waiting for a test result, which is a good start. Pairs of ADF and DHHS workers are door knocking every positive case.

As for those conspiracy-theorists who film themselves breaking lock down restrictions and refusing to wear masks, they don't seem too rational to me. Hopefully they're a small % of the population. The police are finding them and charging the ones who've broken the law.

Over 700 cases today, and 13 deaths. Terrible news.

Borrowed

The Temptation of Gracie by Santa Montefiore

LT told me I'd like this and I was looking for something light and cheerful, so I gave it a go, but the characters never came alive for me. Pros: Sunshine, Italy, happy endings
Cons: Two-dimensional characters, silly story, dull writing

>16 pamelad: Uh-oh. Someone recommended Santa Montefiore to me and I picked up a couple of her books for my Kindle. Now I have my fingers crossed that they are better than the one that you just read.

>17 DeltaQueen50: I don't think romance fiction is my genre, apart from the books of Jane Austen, Georgette Heyer and some of Margery Sharp. They don't take themselves too seriously and are witty and observant. There was a bit of humour in The Temptation of Gracie, but it was too heavy-handed for my taste, and confined to one character.

But I wouldn't want to put you off. Sometimes predictability is comforting, and just what we want.

Like many Melburnians, I'm on tenterhooks each day, waiting for the Premier's press conference and the latest Covid case numbers. There's too much transmission from untraceable sources, so today he declared a state of disaster (we already had a state of emergency). On top of the existing stay at home restrictions, now we can't be more than 5 km from home, and there's a curfew from 8pm to 5am. Schools are closed again. (Good. A lot of my friends are teachers in their sixties, and no one believes that kids don't spread the virus.) Tomorrow we find out which workplaces have to close.

I realise that lots of places had even tighter restrictions and weren't even allowed out to exercise for an hour a day as we are e.g. northern Italy, New York, Wuhan, or get take away food e.g. New Zealand. But things are looking dismal, all the same. I hope it works.

There have been 208 deaths in Australia since the pandemic began, but half of them have been in Victoria in the last month. The majority have been in aged care homes. I'm glad to live in a country that will take drastic measures to protect its old people.

Just seen your impressive Bingo card progress. I'm a bit behind you on that one.
It's a difficult time. initially it seemed Aus had managed better. Hope that you can collectively squash the second wave as well.

Well, we are slightly better off than you all in Melbourne, with the curfew and the 5km limit. I hope you are still able to get to where you need to within that limit. I am assuming there are exceptions for certain reasons. Melbourne at night will be an eerie place for a while.
Hope you are keeping safe and have lots of wonderful books to read.

>21 Helenliz: I've checked out your bingo card and added The Silence of the Girls to my wish list. It looks like a good choice for mythology.

Thanks for the good wishes. I'm sure we'll squash the second wave. Australia has managed pretty well, except for this recent surge in Victoria. We're teaching the rest of the country what not to do.

>22 JayneCM: No problems with the 5 km limit. My walking companion lives 9 km away by road, but we've found a place to start our walk from. There IS a use for Venn diagrams! It was quiet everywhere today, except for food shops.

Thank goodness for ebooks. It's good staying inside and reading weather for the rest of this week, so I hope you also have plenty of good books.

>23 pamelad: If that is your thing, I'd suggest A Thousand Ships as being the much better book. Barker starts being brave with her story, telling the Trojan wars and the fall of Troy from the perspective of one woman. Unfortunately in the middle section she gives in and narrates Achilles' story from his perspective. It felt like a disappointment. Haynes uses a different approach, of having multiple female narrators tell the same story, not always in chronological order. I felt that it was a much stronger book for retaining the purely female voice. And by using multiple female voices she can do much more with it, there's much greater light and shade. She can also fill in the gaps that any one woman's perspective would have without having to resort to the male view.

>24 pamelad: That is good! I am, once again, amazed by human behaviour - supermarket shelves are looking bare again and Dan is having to ask people again not to go and buy enough meat to last until Christmas time. I guess it is just human nature. I must admit I bought the last packet of toilet paper when I went shopping yesterday just in case it ended up ike last time.
It must be eerily quiet everywhere in Melbourne at the moment. Stay safe. Thank goodness for books!

>25 Helenliz: I am looking forward to this one too - I have heard lots of good reviews.

>25 Helenliz: Two possibilities for the mythology square. Excellent! I'll start with A Thousand Ships.

>26 JayneCM: I bought more wine and more coffee. Just the essentials.

There's a lot of tuna and lentils in the cupboard from the last big panic, so I won't participate in the meat rush for now. Still trying to work out what to do with two jars of asparagus. A recipe from the seventies?

GeoCAT

The Honjin Murders by Seishi Yokomizo is set in Japan in 1937, and was first published in 1946. It is a classic locked room murder with a Japanese twist, and concerns itself as much with the history and mechanics of locked room mysteries as it does with its own plot. The detective even stops mid-investigation to give a review of locked room mysteries. His own preference is for those that forego the use of mechanical contrivances, and his favourite of these is The Yellow Room by Gaston Leroux.

Back to the plot. Honjin families belong to the upper-crust and take pride in their lineage and traditions. The marriage of the oldest son of a Honjin family gives rise to the deaths in a locked annexe. He has insisted on marrying a young woman who, while capable and well-educated, comes from a family of a much lower class. His mother and brothers are unhappy, but he is the head of the family and cannot be swayed.

I liked this mystery for its glimpse into prewar Japanese society: the clothes; the buildings; the traditions; the customs; the music. I was also entertained by the writer's affection for locked room mysteries. It didn't help the plot in any way, but the oddness was appealing.

I enjoyed The Honjin Murders not for being a well-plotted mystery with believable characters, because it's not, but for its strangeness.

Bought this year

Line of Sight by A. C. Koning

The main character, Fred Rowlands, was blinded in WWI. He operates the telephone switchboard at a legal firm, where his employer is his former commanding officer, Gerald Willoughby. Attracted by the lovely voice of a woman who regularly rings his employer, Rowland listens in on their conversations. He becomes involved in their lives, draws some erroneous conclusions and precipitates a tragedy.

This murder mystery takes a long time to get started. There are many memories of WWI, descriptions of how Rowlands travels around London and manages his switchboard, and reflections on his marriage. Despite all of this detail, Rowlands didn't seem authentic to me, just dreary and a bit wet. The murder victim is satisfactory - he's a nasty piece of work - but the murderer is not. I groaned.

This is the first book in a series, so perhaps Rowlands improves.

ETA In my view, it's best for writers to stick to main characters of their own gender. I think A. C. Koning gave herself too high a degree of difficulty by putting herself in the mind of a wounded WWI veteran. Another example of this is On Chesil Beach in which Ian McEwan imagines himself as a virgin girl on her wedding night.

Stopping by to get caught up and sorry to see the uptick in numbers and the return to lockdown for Melbourne. Here is hoping that the daily number counts trend downwards. Light, fluffy reads are a good distraction from the news, that is for sure!

>31 lkernagh: Thank you for dropping in. We're two weeks into the stage 4 lock down and things are looking up. The number of daily confirmed cases has halved and the Rf is below 1. Sadly, over 200 people have died, most of them elderly, while politicians bicker about which government is responsible for old age homes. It seems to be the Federal Government, which had a plan for managing the pandemic in old age homes, but it's not their fault it didn't work because they weren't planning on people in the community being infected!

Borrowed

Hanged for a Sheep by Frances Lockridge and Richard Lockridge.

Pamela North is staying with her elderly Aunt Flora while her publisher-husband Jerry is interstate reading the next Gone With the Wind. Flora has recovered from being poisoned and asks Pam to find the culprit. There is a large cast of potential suspects, most of them the children and grandchildren of the much-married Flora. The drama escalates with the discovery of a body.

I've read 3 of these Mr and Mrs North books now and, while they're light and undemanding reading, I find them annoying: Pam North is irritatingly scatty and fey and seems to solve crimes by accident; there's an awful lot of waffle about the two Siamese cats; they are very slow, with lots of pauses to discuss what's been happening.

I would recommend this series to people who are happy to pause the plot to read about the antics of pet cats. I know you're out there!

A Dance to the Music of Time

The Valley of Bones by Anthony Powell

Nick Jenkins has managed to wangle a commission in the army, which is not easy for a man in his mid-thirties. He is serving in a Welsh regiment where he is one of the few officers who was not formerly employed in a bank. The regiment is training in Northern Ireland, and no one knows where it will go next.

I very much enjoyed this volume, in which Jenkins observes, with humour and compassion, the foibles of his fellow soldiers.

>33 pamelad: I have the first Mr. & Mrs. North on my Kindle - but I am not sure about those cats!

>33 pamelad: I tried Death on the Aisle and found it irritating for similar reasons. Couldn’t get behind their motivation to solve the crime and found them interlopers. I might have preferred to read only the cat bits and dispensed with the mystery.

Finished the Bingo card! I filled the last square, Mythology, with Pat Barker's The Silence of the Girls, which I enjoyed much more than I thought I would. It's about the Trojan War, told from the perspective of the enslaved Trojan princess, Briseis, who is the bed girl of Achilles.

>37 pamelad: Congrats. Glad you enjoyed the book.

>37 pamelad: Congrats! I find the Bingo slow going this year, some of the slots are hard to fill from my own shelves.

Congratulations on completing the 2020 Bingo.

>38 Helenliz: Knowing next to nothing about Greek mythology, I was keen to find out what happened, so I found the story-telling entertaining. I normally avoid mythology because of the fantasy aspect, but The Silence of the Girls was grounded in practicality i.e. the plague was as much due to the appalling sanitary conditions as to the insult to Apollo. I didn't even mind the use of contemporary British colloquial language. Normally anachronistic language really annoys me, but his was different, perhaps because it's set thousands of years ago, so there's no right language to choose. Also, colloquial British is closely related to colloquial Australian, so it didn't jar. Pleased to have found this on your thread. Thank you.

>39 MissWatson: Thank you. I now belong to five different libraries, so have a wide range of ebooks to choose from. This one was available on Overdrive. There's no way I could have finished if I was limited to books from my own shelves. Are you planning on reading only your existing books for the duration of the pandemic?

>40 DeltaQueen50: Thank you. You're nearly there too?

>41 pamelad: I still haven't really taken to e-books, so my own shelves are my main source. The ones that would fit the missing Bingo slots are mostly chunksters for which I am not in the right frame of mind. But I will get there eventually.

>41 pamelad: I am right behind you with one square left to fill and I know what I am going to read for it, so will finish up either later on this month or, more likely, next month.

Borrowed

Conviction by Denise Mina

Anna McDonald is living in Glasgow with her husband and small daughters, keeping her past a secret. On the morning that her husband leaves her for her best friend, taking the children, she has been listening to a podcast about a woman jailed for three murders she could not have committed. The crimes connect Anna to an old friend and a villain from her past. As an antidote to her suicidal despair, Anna takes off with an unlikely companion to investigate the crime. The pair career through Scotland, England, Italy and France, pursued by hired assassins with large knives.

An entertaining read. Recommended.

91. The Soldier's Art by Anthony Powell

I am still very much enjoying A Dance to the Music of Time. Nick Jenkins is working for Widmerpool the DAAG (I cannot remember what this, or any of the other many acronyms, stands for, which might be the point.) so has an insider's view on the politics and power plays taking place at Divisional Headquarters. Widmerpool, who appears to be devoid of human sympathy and motivated entirely by self-interest, is in the thick of them. In my review of the previous volume I said that Jenkins observed people with humour and compassion, but on further reading I think a better description is detached and tolerant.

Many people reappear, and sadly, quite a few die on active service and in the blitz.

The Duke and I by Julia Quinn
The Viscount Who Loved Me by Julia Quinn
An Offer from a Gentleman by Julia Quinn

These three came in one volume, so I read them all, one after the other. It's cold and wet, and we're in stage 4 lock down and they were just right. They're Regency romances, but there's only a thin Regency veneer over characters who are pretty much like contemporary Americans. I don't think people in Regency England were forever hugging one another and telling all and sundry that they loved them. They spoke formal British English and exercised decorum. Not much decorum here! Julia Quinn is no Georgette Heyer.

I started on The Passing Bells, which is the first book in a trilogy. It's a historical family saga, set in England, starting just before WWI. I've given up on it because I thought the author was British, but he's American and the book is clearly written for an American audience. Warning bells went off after a few pages, so I Googled the author. I'd feel the same about a British or Australian author writing fiction about Americans. There's always something not quite right.

Non-fiction CAT History

The Hotel Years: Wanderings in Europe Between the Wars by Joseph Roth

Joseph Roth was Austrian and Jewish. He fought in the Austrian army during WWI, then became a journalist. Much of his work was published by the left-wing paper, Frankfurter Zeitung, and he was one of the most famous and well-paid journalists in Europe. Roth left Germany permanently in 1933 when Hitler came to power and died at 48, apparently from alcoholism, in 1939. His most well-known novel is The Radetsky March.

Roth wrote thousands of these short articles, called feuilletons, some of which have been collected previously. This selection was made by Michael Hoffman,who has translated a lot of Roth's work. It includes articles about individuals, some famous and some not e.g. a hotel waiter, the prime minister of Albania. He wrote about the cities and countries where he travelled, including Albania, the USSR, and Germany. There are feuilletons about commonplace things - listening to music, observations of the inhabitants of a seaside town, a cafe, a hotel, travellers on a train. He sees past the surface and writes with precision and lightness, but the tone is melancholy, increasingly so.

This is history from someone who was there, and I recommend it. However, What I Saw, reports from Berlin 1920 -1933, is even better.

Tamar by Deborah Challinor

Challinor has a Ph.D in New Zealand history, so her books are well-researched and based on real events. In this interview she explains that she chooses a historical event that interests her, then adds characters to bring it to life. This is exactly how Tamar read to me. There were lots of interesting historical details, some of which had no relevance to the plot. Some of the characters added nothing to the story, and seemed to be there to provide historical context.

The story starts in the 1880s. Tamar, daughter of an impoverished Cornish miner and a middle-class woman who married down and was disowned, is seventeen. She and her widowed father had planned to emigrate to New Zealand to join her sister there, but both relatives died, leaving her alone in the world. With nothing to hold her in England, Tamar decided to emigrate alone. On the voyage she was fortunate to meet a prostitute with a heart of gold and a saintly doctor, who proved themselves to be true friends.

This is the first book of a trilogy. It follows Tamar's life from her arrival in Auckland until the end of the Boer war.

Pros: Interesting, authentic historical detail; the story whips along entertainingly.
Cons: Two-dimensional characters.

I liked this enough to start on the next book of the trilogy: White Feathers.

>49 pamelad: I have this trilogy on my shelf - I really need to get to it! Like all the thousand other books on my shelf!

>49 pamelad: >50 JayneCM: I'm always on the lookout for good New Zealand books--on the BB list it goes!

Hi Jayne and Ninie. I've read the next in the series, White Feathers, which covers WWI. Three of Tamar's sons join the NZ Army Corps, and one becomes a stretcher bearer. Tamar's daughter, Keely, and niece, Erin, serve overseas as nurses. Having read many books about WWI, I skimmed some sections because I wanted to know who survived, but didn't want to spend a lot of time on incompetent officers, trench warfare, and living conditions. I was more interested in the fervid patriotism of the New Zealanders who enlisted and the community that pressured them to, and the fate of the men and women who survived. The sheer wastage of human life in WWI is always shocking to read about, and even worse for colonial troops.

Similar pros and cons to the predecessor.

Pros: historical accuracy, particularly about the lead up to and the aftermath of WWI in NZ; eventful story.
Cons: Cardboard characters; a lot of war bits (but the series is called Children of war, so they're expected.

I have borrowed the third book in the series. Four children were born during White Feathers, so I daresay some of them are off to WWII.

>52 pamelad: When I visited New Zealand many years ago, I was struck by the prominence of the war monument in each small town, and the lengthy lists of those who had given their lives.

Looks like Tamar is available but White Feathers will be more of a challenge.

>53 NinieB: It's the same in Australia, and some country towns still have an Avenue of Honour on the road in as well. Some war memorials are on hills overlooking the town, which is very respectful and shows how important they are. Everyone in these small towns would have known the young men and women who went to war, and their families.

Blue Smoke by Deborah Challinor is the third book in the Children of War trilogy. Tamar's grandchildren participate in WWII: a sailor; two soldiers; two airmen; one landgirl; two WAAFs; one sewing army uniforms. The men serve in England, Crete and Singapore. They don't all survive, but as in the previous volume an illegitimate child appears, looking remarkably like his dead father.

With the nine grandchildren (and a tenth who is far too young to serve), Tamar's three surviving children and their spouses, Tamar's niece and her niece's husband, Tamar's old flame, and the romantic attachments of the grandchildren, none of the characters get a lot of time. They don't have much of an inner life, and move briskly through the story, illustrating the historical events that interest the author. On the romantic side, the author pairs people up very tidily, except for one. The gay guy has a sad end.

Once again I was interested in the historical details and swept along by the story.

The Military Philosophers by Anthony Powell

WWII continues and Nick Jenkins is now working as a liaison officer for the Free Poles under the philosophical Pennistone. At Whitehall, the more important your job, the lower in the building your office. The manipulative, ambitious Widmerpool is here, in the basement, manipulating his way up the ladder. At the very top of the building is Blackhead, possibly the most obstructive clerk in any service.

The Free French and the Poles are numerous enough to have their own liaison officers, but all the other allied military attaches are the responsibility of one man. When he is promoted, Jenkins assumes his responsibilities for the Czechs, the Belgians, the Indians, the Chinese, and quite a few more. Jenkins and his boss, Finn, herd all the attachés over to France for reasons not clear to me, where they meet the Field Marshal (the actual Montgomery).

The tone of this volume is light and humorous, and Whitehall seems isolated from the war. Even so, important things are done. Pennistone, for example, manages to evacuate thousands of Polish officers from Turkey. Many thousands more have been found dead, apparently at the hands of the Russians, but Widmerpool, who seems more monstrous with every volume, treats this as an inconvenient incident and persuades his colleagues to take no action. He is also implicated in the deaths of two of Nick's old school friends.

Many people reappear, and new characters are introduced, in particular the femme fatale, Pamela Flitton.

I enjoyed The Military Philosphers but am bemused that Powell could write about WWII without mentioning the Holocaust or the bombing of Japan. He stays in his own world.

We're in lock down in Melbourne, and restrictions won't be eased significantly until October 26th. The Federal Government and the Murdoch press are making things harder by politicising the pandemic and undermining efforts to control the spread of the virus.

In this situation, Peter Singer's The Life You Can Save is an uplifting choice. Singer puts the case for donating to overseas causes that address extreme poverty, defined as people earning under $1.90 per day, to save lives. A relatively small donation can save a life For example, $50 can pay for a cataract operation to restore a person's sight. In the US, to raise, train and match a guide dog costs $50,000. While both causes are worthwhile, the choice is between helping one person close to home, or restoring the sight of 1000 people. This is one of the issues that Singer addresses: assigning an equal value to the life of a stranger as to a someone nearer home.

I recommend this book very highly. On thelifeyoucansave.org you can get a copy for free. The site also has links to nonprofits that have been stringently investigated so that you know your donation is effective.

ETA Gyms are closed in Melbourne so my membership has been on hold since March. I've donated some of the money I've saved to the Fred Hollows Foundation to restore sight, and some to the Fistula Foundation. https://www.thelifeyoucansave.org.au/best-charities/ This is the Australian site, but there are also sites for other countries.

Blood Upon the Snow by Hilda Lawrence

Mark East, private detective, has been employed, ostensibly as a secretary, by the elderly Mr Stoneman, an amateur archaeologist. Stoneman is a guest of the Morleys, a couple with two children, who are staying at a mansion on the outskirts of a hamlet a few hours train ride from New York. There is an oppressive atmosphere in the house: Stoneman is frightened; Mrs Morley stays in her room, often in tears; there is too much silence for a house with so many people.

I enjoyed this 1940's mystery. It had entertaining characters, a bit of humour, atmosphere, and a twisty plot.

Started The Private Face of Murder by John and Emery Bonnett, but ran into antisemitism on the first page, so gave up. Now reading A Time to Die, the sequel to Blood Upon the Snow.

A Time to Die by Hilda Lawrence

Mark East is staying for a week with Perley Wilcox and his family in the little town of Bear River, and is booked in for another week with Beulah Pond. Perley is the police chief East worked with in Blood upon the Snow, and Beulah a spirited old lady who helped East and Wilcox solve the crime. When Miss Cassidy, the woman who looks after the motherless Joey Beacham, disappears, Beacham hires East to investigate. Beacham and his two daughters, 8 year-old Joey and 18 year-old Roberta, are staying at a mountain resort outside Bear River, and East moves there with relief because it's the height of summer, and East is finding the heat of Bear River hard to handle.

This was a light and entertaining mystery, but a mess: too many people, too many plot strands, too little logic.

>57 pamelad: - Sorry to learn about the lockdown and that it will remain in place through October. Stay safe!

>61 lkernagh: Thank you. The lock down is working - 700 cases per day down to 35. The days are getting longer and the sun is shining, so things are looking up.

Death in Fancy Dress by Anthony Gilbert is a British Library Crime Classic from the thirties. I read it because I'd mixed up Anthony Gilbert with Michael Gilbert. This mystery was entertaining enough, but none of the characters ran true and the plot was silly.

Many important people have committed suicide. The mysterious person driving them to their deaths is nick-named The Spider. For reasons not at all clear, The Spider's activities are centred on the home of the evil Ralph Feltham which is rented to Sir James Nunn, a rich businessman from humble origins, and his wife Eleanor, the widow of Percy Feltham who committed suicide after the sale of government secrets led to a massacre in WWI. Percy's daughter, Hilary, is engaged to the secret serviceman, Arthur Dennis, who is tracking down The Spider. Also investigating The spider are the narrator, a solicitor with a limp, and his old school friend, who wants to marry Hilary. Hilary acts like an idiot.

Anthony Gilbert is the pen name of Lucy Malleson. Michael Gilbert was a real person, a solicitor who served in WWII. I will keep an eye out for more of Michael's books, but not Anthony's.

Crossed Skis by Carol Carnac

Carol Carnac and E. C. R. Lorac are pseudonyms for the prolific Edith Caroline Rivett.

Crossed Skis is set in 1951, when rationing persisted in Britain, and there were limits on the amount of currency taken out of the country. A group of sixteen friends and acquaintances is travelling from the gloom and dreariness of winter in London to a ski resort in Austria, and everyone is looking forward to the food. The characters spend a great deal of time eating meals, looking forward to meals, and planning meals. Nothing to do with the plot, but it contributes to the atmosphere.

It was quite an effort to organise a group of sixteen. People pulled out at the last minute and organised replacements, so some of the group are friends of friends, virtually strangers. When some money disappears, no one is sure quite whom to trust. Meanwhile, back in London, the body of a murder victim is found in a burning house. Outside, someone has left the imprint of a ski pole, allowing the police to connect the crime with an unknown person on the ski trip.

Which one of the ski trippers is the murderer? Will he/she escape? Will an innocent person die?

A slow-paced but entertaining mystery. I enjoyed it.

>64 pamelad: I've got this on the shelf, ready to read.

>64 pamelad: I need to read Crossed Skis. Sounds like one I'd enjoy!

>64 pamelad: Oh wow, I'd seen that one on the British Library website but didn't realize that Carnac was another pseudonym for Rivett. I've enjoyed the E. C. R. Lorac books I've read so far. May have to check it out!

Checkmate to Murder by E. C. R. Lorac

The blitz is past the worst, and people are no longer having to race off to air raid shelters. People have left London to escape the bombing, but accommodation is scarce because so many houses have been destroyed. The blackout is rigidly enforced, and fog blankets London. Brother and sister, Bruce and Rosanne Manaton, rent a decrepit studio from an old miser. Bruce is a painter and Rosanne an etcher, but she has no time or space to work because her life is dedicated to looking after the selfish, bad-tempered Bruce. One night Bruce is painting a portrait of his friend Delaudier, who is dressed as a cardinal, Rosanne is in the combination kitchen/bathroom cooking a stew and two men are playing chess, when a pompous special constable bursts into the studio clutching a Canadian serviceman whom he accuses of murder. The old man upstairs has been shot.

An enjoyable mystery with plenty of atmosphere. Dark and foggy outside, arty and colourful inside. The nasty people have alibis, and the nice people are too unlikely, but Inspector Macdonald solves the case.

Manaton is such an odd name so, inspired by Lorac's reversal of her name Carol, I reversed it. Notaman! Also thinking that Delaudier is Deluder with a few extra letters.

Warm and sunny in Melbourne today, and only 14 confirmed covid cases! None at all in regional Victoria.

>53 NinieB: >54 pamelad: I live in country Australia and it is definitely a prominent feature in all our towns. Just near us is an area called Paschendale (they altered the spelling). It was originally part of a huge estate called Struan and after WWI the landowners divided 1600 acres of the estate into 39 soldier settlement blocks. We have a lot of areas near us that were soldier settlement.
I will look for the Tamar series when the library reopens.

>69 pamelad: Great news, isn't it?! Easier for us, of course, than Melbourne. Hope you are keeping well. On the home stretch now!

After a stretch of very little Covid activity our numbers are on the rise. This is happening all over Canada but our province of BC., along with Ontario and Quebec seem to be the hardest hit. I think we will be seeing some limitations put on us in order to try to bring this virus under some sort of control.

Only 11 new cases today. The goal is zero and we're going to make it!

Melbourne has been in a stage 4 lockdown for 7 weeks now. We're allowed to leave the house for 2 hours of exercise, shopping for essentials, work in essential industries, and providing or receiving care/medical treatment. Schools are closed except for children of essential workers and children at risk. It will be worth it if we can get community transmission back to zero, but it isn't easy. The seven states and territories have closed their borders. There are police checkpoints on the outskirts of Melbourne, preventing people from travelling to and from regional Victoria. Our freedom is severely restricted, but most of us have been surprisingly compliant. (I strongly disagree with the nightly curfew, but wouldn't break it.)

>71 DeltaQueen50: I hope Canada can halt the spread so you can feel safe to get out and about. Our business community waffles on about "living with the virus" by which they mean open everything up and let people die, but plenty of people wouldn't have the confidence to go out and risk catching covid, so getting back to normal is a fantasy.

Every day I get the Kindle daily deal email, Up to x% off on books, and every day I ask myself, why the on?

Is off on different from off of, and how are they different from off?

Sounds like the covid numbers in your area are trending in the right direction!

>73 pamelad: - Well, darn. Now you have me pondering that!

>73 pamelad: You've gotten me thinking about this question too! I'm wondering if the distinction might be "X% off on BOOK TITLE," but "X% off of PRICE." But probably the real answer is that "on" and "of" are interchangeable in this context.

I've asked Google, and it looks as though "off of" is colloquial American, but I can't find "off on". I used to teach Chemistry to ESL and international students, so I've seen what a problem prepositions are to language learners. No wonder! I'd say, "10% discount on books" or "10% off books" or "10% off the price of books".

Bored of?

>76 pamelad: 'Off of' is one of my pet peeves -sorry! It is not something we say so I really hate to hear it or worse, see it in a publication.

But the worst offence ever is the incorrect use of apostrophes. Don't get me started on that! If I see another shop sign that says 'Fish and chip's, I'll scream!

Great news about the possible loosening of restrictions next week!

We are getting pretty frustrated here. As we are so close to the SA border, there are numerous businesses that conduct cross border business. My hubby has an office in Penola and he hasn't been able to visit the staff in months. As the mayor of one of the towns said, someone can fly from Sydney where there are cases and land in Adelaide with no problems. But cross border towns cannot travel across, even though we haven't had cases in months. We even know of farmers that couldn't get permits to travel across the border to feed their stock as their farmland was situated on the border and was in two states. Madness!

Here's hoping that the announcements will be good for Melbourne - the numbers certainly look low enough for some changes. Let's open the libraries again!

>77 JayneCM: I think that in Britain they call it the greengrocer's apostrophe - potatoe's, carrot's. There are some unusual signs around here, perhaps because a lot of people don't have English as a first language e.g. a local hairdresser called Flare and Vision. Signs for free range chicken breasts make me smile because I can picture them.

I hope the border restrictions get sorted soon. A lot of these things seem to be because of policing - rigid rules that are easy to enforce. Like the Melbourne curfew. The numbers are looking really good, touch wood, so I hope some of the restrictions are relaxed sooner. I hope we'll be able to go more than 5km from home soon. Are your libraries open? In Melbourne they're opening for Click and Collect.

Only five new confirmed corona virus cases today in Melbourne! The curfew has ended!

>79 pamelad: - Happy news, indeed!

>80 lkernagh: Thank you. The case numbers are fluctuating, but still trending downwards. 5 is the best day so far. Melbourne's experience shows that lockdowns really do work. We've all been whinging, but overall it's heartening to see how united and cooperative most of us have been.

Finished The Magic Mountain and am still thinking about it. Mann recommends reading it twice in order to "penetrate and enjoy its musical association of ideas. The first time, the reader learns the thematic material.."

Well, I've read it twice now, though the first time was many years ago, and I wouldn't say I've learned the thematic material. I did get a lot more out of it on the second reading. It would be a hard book to read if you were busy e.g. having the patience to concentrate on the long philosophical discussions. The first time I read it, I probably didn't.

October Non-fiction CAT: The Arts

The Golden Age of Murder by Martin Edwards

Long, trivial and gossipy, this pretended to be an investigation into the inaugural members of The Detection Club. Edwards created his book from a few facts and a lot of speculation. I appreciate his efforts to review and republish forgotten examples of Golden Age detection, but I think he should leave biography alone.

>83 pamelad: Oh no, I'm sorry that one was a dud! Maybe I'll go with something else for my NonfictionCAT pick. :)

>84 christina_reads: It was quite readable and there were plenty of book recommendations, so I wouldn't want to put you off. But I'd recently read his The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books, which was a better source of books to look for, with more variety.

I found In the Dark by Loreth Anne White on DeltaQueen's thread. It's set in an isolated hunting lodge, somewhere in Canada, and is based on Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None. A good read.

The TV version of the Agatha Christie book has Aidan Turner in it, which is a plus.

>85 pamelad: Aidan Turner is a definite plus!

>85 pamelad: I looked for In the Dark in a library e-book or audiobook collection, but it wasn't there. I found it for $1.99 on Kindle so I purchased it. I might not get to it right away, but it's there to read.

>85 pamelad: >86 JayneCM: I too endorse the TV version of And Then There Were None with Aidan Turner :D

>85 pamelad: I have added The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books and In the Dark to my Wishlist. I might be able to get to them next year.

>87 thornton37814: I read it on Kindle Unlimited, which I joined for a month in order to read some classic crime novels. I managed 7, which isn't too bad. I hope you like In the Dark.

>89 Zozette: Quite a few of the books in The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books are available as British Library Crime Classics, and I hope Martin Edwards is planning to get the remainder published as well.

>86 JayneCM:, >88 rabbitprincess: I see that Aidan Turner is about to star as Leonardo Da Vinci in a miniseries. He certainly hops around in history.

Some of the recent Agatha Christie miniseries have been very dark e.g. The ABC Murders was bleak to begin with, but the John Malkovich version is even darker. When I watch Agatha Christie, I'm looking for froth. The French Series, Agatha Christie's Criminal Games, is nice and frothy. It's on SBS in Australia.

Since reading The Golden Age of Murder, I've been looking for books by early members of the Detection Club.

>63 pamelad:, >64 pamelad: E. C. R. Lorac and Anthony Gilbert were early members, as were Dorothy Bowers and John Rhode.

Postscript to Poison by Dorothy Bowers

Jenny and Carol are cousins, the granddaughters of Cornelia Lackland's late husband. Their parents, the daughters of Mr Lackland, died young, in poverty, leaving their children to be brought up by their autocratic father. He provided well for them financially, but since his death his second wife has been parsimonious and even more autocratic. She deliberately makes the girls' lives miserable. Someone poisons her. was it Jenny, or Jenny's secret fiance, a successful Polish actor? Could it have been Carol? Perhaps it was the doctor, devilishly handsome but going to seed.

Good writing, atmospheric. I will look for more of Bower's books. Unfortunately there aren't many.

The Robthorne Mystery by John Rhode

This one depends on ingenious methods of murder. The Robthorne brothers are identical twins. One dies, apparently a suicide. Which twin was he? Was it really suicide? Not much characterisation here, just a puzzle. I'm not a big fan of the impossible crime genre, but if you are, this is probably a good example.

Almost forgot I read this one: Nothing to Do with the Case by Elizabeth Lemarchand

The main character, Virginia Gould, is a drip, worried about being blackmailed by her cousin when she hasn't even done anything. She wants to avoid unpleasantness. The cousin, Nigel Kerslake, is a shifty art dealer. He expected to inherit absolutely everything from his uncle, but the old man leaves the money to the Nigel, and the house to Virginia. Virginia sells up and moves to an idyllic village, but Nigel finds her there. There's a murder. Did Nigel do it? I didn't much care. This book was dull.

Dorothy Bowers died young of TB and wrote only five books. They're all available as ebooks.

>91 pamelad: That's an interesting casting choice!

I really liked the French Agatha Christie series. I liked how they played with the stories but were faithful in their own way to the underlying story (e.g. the adaptation of Mysterious Affair at Styles).

>91 pamelad: I will watch it!

Borrowed

Distress Signals by Catherine Ryan Howard is written from the perspectives of three characters, initially unconnected.

Adam and Sarah have been together for ten years, since they were 20 and 19. Sarah has been supporting Adam financially while he writes a screenplay but when Adam is on the brink of success she disappears.

Corinne is a woman in her sixties who has taken a job on a cruise ship in order to find someone. At one time she was infamous, but she has been living for years in anonymity.

Romain's story starts in childhood. He cannot understand why his mother loves her younger son Jean, but not him.

As Adam reaches the end of his search for Sarah, the three stories converge.

I was a bit disappointed in the ending, but overall this was a gripping read. If the pandemic hasn't put you off cruising, this book might.

Bought in 2020

They Liked Entwhistle by R. A. J. Walling

The businessman Entwhistle hires Tolefree, a private detective, to spy on a woman holidaying in a French seaside village and report back on who speaks to her. Tolefree and his associate Farrar are held up on their return by fog in the Channel, and arrive at Entwhistle's house to find him murdered and the police in attendance. Tolefree is invited to help in the investigation.

There is a confusion of motives: a potential divorce; a great deal of cash; a will that is about to be changed. The friends and associates present at Entwhistle's house on the night of the murder are all suspects, as is the elusive man who communicated with the woman in France. Everyone is hiding something.

An entertaining mystery, with a breezy tone and a traditionally know-all detective.

Borrowed

Resurrection Bay by Emma Viskic is set partly in Melbourne, which is why I read it. Caleb Zelic, a detective, discovers his childhood friend Gary, a cop, tortured and murdered by a sadistic knife-wielding killer. Caleb, who has been deaf since a childhood bout of meningitis, works with a partner, Frannie, an alcoholic ex-cop. In their investigation into Gary's death they encounter corrupt police and multiple murder victims. Everyone connected to Gary, Caleb and Frannie is in danger, and Caleb barely escapes with his life, more than once.

I disliked this book, mainly because of the graphic descriptions of wounded bodies and torture. Also, it's a big ask for a hearing woman to write from the perspective of a deaf man, and I don't think the attempt succeeded. However, there are many positive reviews of this book, and it has won prizes, so I could be on my own.

>99 pamelad: I have never understood how unpleasantly graphic books can get good reviews and win prizes . . .

>100 NinieB: Or why people like the films of Quentin Tarantino. I saw Reservoir Dogs when it first came out, not realising how violent and sick it was. Ironic violence? No such thing.

>101 pamelad: There were some really bad moments in that movie.

The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann

Hans Castorp, a conventional young middle-class man from Hamburg, has finished his engineering studies and is feeling run down, so he decides to make a three-week visit to his cousin Joachim who is undergoing treatment in a tuberculosis sanitarium in the Swiss mountains. The head of the sanitarium, the Hofrat, finds a moist spot on Hans' lung, and a slightly raised temperature, and advises that he stay a few months until it is cured, but the spot remains moist, the temperature remains high, and Hans stays on, never really ill, but never quite well. Perhaps the Hofrat is drumming up business; perhaps Hans prefers the ease and luxury of the sanitarium to work and responsibility; perhaps Hans genuinely has TB. Hans' stay stretches to seven years, ending with the outbreak of WWI.

The sanitarium is many things. It is a microcosm of pre-war Europe, with patients from many countries; a sanctuary, a place remote from the troubles of the real world; a hospital, where tuberculous patients seek treatment to postpone their early deaths; a resort, where the young patients seek entertainment and excitement. Hans becomes more and more attached to life in the sanitarium, and to a fellow patient, the sensuous Russian Mme Chauchat, and begins to cut the ties with his former life.

Hans arrives at the sanitarium an indolent, thoughtless young man, whose unexamined opinions are those of his upbringing. During his sojourn on the mountain he is introduced to other ideas, and learns to think for himself. Settembrini, a fellow-patient, lectures to Hans on his philosophy of humanism, and urges Hans to leave the passivity of the sanitarium and return to an active life in the real the world. Naphta, a Jewish Jesuit, preaches a philosophy of disengagement with life, where illness and death are to be desired and the flesh mortified. The long philosophical arguments between Settembrini and Naphta often went over Hans' head, and mine as well.

There are so many threads in The Magic Mountain, and so many ideas, that you could read it again and again and find more and more each time. A knowledge of music would be a help, as would an acquaintance with classical mythology. Fortunately it is a comedy so when you are bogged down in abstraction, light relief is not far away.

Zero corona virus cases in Melbourne today. 16 weeks of lockdown ends tomorrow!

>104 pamelad: Excellent news!

>105 rabbitprincess: Thank you! It's a second day of zero cases, zero deaths!

That must be such a relief!

>107 MissWatson: Absolutely! Looking forward to being able to travel into regional Victoria (after November 8th) and eventually interstate. A big reason why the lockdown went on so long, to get the case numbers so very low, is that the other states won't open their borders to us until we have as few cases as they do. Now we're starting to see cities around the world lock down again to defeat second waves, and I hope they succeed too.

>92 pamelad: Dorothy Bowers wrote only five books, so I'm going to read all of them. Fear and Miss Betony isn't as good as Postscript to Poison because the plot strains credulity and the characters are weaker, but it was readable enough. I like that Bowers characters struggle to earn a living, just like real people. Sometimes when I'm reading a British Golden Age mystery where people are carrying on about inheritances and being poor, I think to myself, "Get a job!"

Miss Betony is a spinster in her sixties, with no family and no real friends. She had worked as a governess and hadn't managed to put much money aside for her old age. When an ex-student asks for help and offers her a job, Miss Betony accepts. The action takes place in a school cum nursing home in a small seaside town, and involves poisoning, the occult, and a story from the past. It doesn't hang together very well. Miss Betony, however, is an engaging character, and gratifyingly competent.

>109 pamelad: Or they complain about poverty and having only two servants . . .

>110 NinieB: .. and a woman from the village to do the rough work.

At the start of the book, Miss Betony is waiting on a reply to her application for a house that is set aside for distressed gentlewomen, but she doesn't have much hope because her father was a grocer, so she's probably not gentle enough. I liked Miss Betony.

>111 pamelad: Exactly! I have read other Dorothy Bowers but not Miss Betony.

Books Do Furnish a Room by Anthony Powell

In the tenth book of A Dance to the Music of Time the narrator, Nick Jenkins, is the head reviewer at a new magazine, Fission, whose editor, Bagshaw is known as Books (do furnish a room) for coming up with that cliche in a famously inappropriate situation, or possibly two. The humourless, ambitious, manipulative Widmerpoole, now an MP married to the scandalous Pamela Fitton, contributes political articles. A new character, the eccentric, self-destructive, perpetually broke writer, X Trapnel, contributes reviews. Trapnel, who is central to the plot, is apparently based on Julian Maclaren-Ross. I've ordered his only novel, Of Love and Hunger, and am expecting tragedy because it has been compared to Patrick Hamilton's bleak and depressingly realistic Hangover Square.

Books do Furnish A room, however, is far from depressing, not just because of Powell's dry wit, but because of his detachment. He's the observer on the edge of the crowd, playing a minor role, never becoming too involved. I very much enjoyed this book.

I've made numerous attempts to type the e acute for cliche, but no go. If anyone has an easy, foolproof method, please tell.

I thought I'd read Hangover Square, but it was the first volume of The Gorse Trilogy, which was so depressing that I couldn't face reading the second.

>113 pamelad: On a Mac, press Option+E, then press E again. This gives you a lowercase é. For an uppercase É, press Option+E, then Shift+E.

On Windows, if you have a computer keyboard with a numeric keypad, press Alt and type 0233 (for a lowercase é) or 0201 (for an uppercase É).
If you don't have a numeric keypad, it's probably fastest to use Insert Symbol (if you're in Word) or the Character Map (if you're in another program).

If you're on mobile, you should be able to hold down the letter you want to put an accent on, and the phone will give you various accented letters to choose from. At least it does on iPhone; I don't know about Android.

>113 pamelad: To add to what rabbitprincess said, her answer for the mobile phone also works for me on my Mac computer -- I press and hold the E key, and a menu of E's with different accents pops up.

>115 christina_reads: Cool! Mine doesn't do that, but I don't have a very recent OS (I'm on High Sierra, with an older Mac Mini).

>114 rabbitprincess: >115 christina_reads: Thank you. I used Alt 0233 on the numeric keypad.

cliché

>104 pamelad: Glad to hear you are doing so well in Melbourne!

Nice review of The Magic Mountain. I'd hoped to do a reread of it during the group read, but I couldn't fit it in. I might still try to get to it before the end of the year.

>110 NinieB: There certainly is a great deal of classism in pre-WW2 cozy mysteries, Agatha Christie included. It seems, according to Agatha, working class girls have trouble with their adenoids.

Here is Tasmania, we have only have had 2 cases in more than 5 months, both were in quarantine when they posted positive. This might change now that Tasmania has opened up our borders.

>119 Zozette: Ah yes the adenoidal working class girls. I was always so puzzled by this as a kid--adenoids are not commonly discussed in the US.

>118 mathgirl40: Thank you. Things are still going well, touch wood.

Yes, adenoids are missing from detective fiction these days. >120 NinieB: No one talks about them in Australia, either.

I used to be puzzled when the servants talked of "gurls" because how else would you say "girls", but the upper classes said "gels", of course.

I've come across the following a few times: "It's me", she said, ungrammatically. Always makes me smile.

>119 Zozette: The case number requirements for opening the Tasmanian border are stringent, so hopefully there'll be no new cases, or hardly any. Melburnians are looking forward to being able to travel to the country (next week!!) and interstate. With the border open to arrivals but the other states not letting us in, we're like Hotel California.

>122 pamelad: "she said, ungrammatically"
Yes! that one is baffling for so many reasons.
Another puzzler: In American books (maybe British too?) a popular lower-class indicator was dropping the "h" after a W: w'ite rather than white, w'en rather than when. I don't think I've ever heard anyone say the H!

>123 NinieB: I haven't noticed that one, but am sure to from now on. Here we sometimes pronounce the h. It's quite formal.

Lower class characters seem to have a lot of problems with h's at the beginning of words. They even insert unnecessary h's, like h'in and h'out, which I've never heard. Perhaps it's a regional thing.

The h goes missing quite a lot in certain accents, and then appears where it shouldn't. It's not an h as such so much as an aspirated vowel. Think Eliza in My Fair Lady, it's a working class London accent. Nowadays it any number of letters that go missing a G on the end of a word is almost non-existent.

My biggest problem reading "dialect" is when I can't "hear" in my head what I think the author is aiming at. It starts to seem completely random. So glad that it's not generally done any more!

I'm reading another Dorothy Bowers, The Bells at the Old Bailey. Many of the characters are working women who are adenoid-free and speak normally, with no class indicators.

>125 Helenliz: Yes. Some examples in crime fiction are, from memory, Wimsey's (or is it Campion's, or both?) manservant. I've noticed that it can also be an upper-class thing to drop the g on the ends of ing words, but dated even in a Golden Age detective novel. Huntin', shootin' and fishin'.

>103 pamelad: Lovely review of The Magic Mountain. I thumbed it when I saw it come up in the Reviews feed a few weeks ago. I especially like the balance between summarizing and commenting in your third paragraph. :)

(I'm loving this language discussion as well, though I don't have anything to add to it!)

>128 pammab: Thank you!

>126 NinieB: DeltaQueen's review has reminded me of Henry Green's Living, which is a book I couldn't get into because of the representation of the factory workers' dialect. It's jarring. I've read a lot of his books and that's the only one I haven't liked, but I'm sure it's worth another try.

The Bells at Old Bailey by Dorothy Bowers

Once again Bowers' characters are working women. Unfortunately there are too many to keep track of, particularly since a lot of of them are called sometimes by their given names and sometimes by their married names. The plot involves suicides, murders, secrets and poison pen letters. Once again I liked Bowers' writing, but found the plot inadequate.

November Non-fiction CAT

It was my plan this year to "read" one cookery book a month by cooking at least two recipes from it. I started in November with The Silver Spoon: Quick and Easy Italian Recipes. I jhave cooked three recipes: linguine with broccoli and pancetta; spicy broccoli with yoghurt; zucchini frittata. The linguine was a winner, and I'll cook it again. The other two were OK, but nothing to write home about. I'll probably cook a few more recipes, so would recommend this book.

The second book I planned to cook from was The Lebanese Kitchen, but there are great lists of ingredients and many steps, so I've found an alternative: Claudia Roden's Invitation to Mediterranean Cooking, and have made quite a list of possibilities.

It's almost summer here, so Italy and the Mediterranean are the go.

I've also checked out Simplissime, which is described as "the easiest French cookbook in the world". It's not though, because it relies on you having easy access to ingredients like duck confit, roast beef (that you don't have to cook yourself) and a wide variety of French cheese. Plus there's a lot of cream, which I don't much like. I'll put this one aside and, when the Op Shops re-open, will donate it.

The "ring of steel" between Melbourne and regional Victoria came down at 11.59 on Sunday night, so on Monday I went for a drive to the Yarra Valley with my good friend Tim. It was a beautiful, sunny day and the countryside is lush and green because we've had plenty of rain this spring. We had morning tea on a deck with a view of the hills, listening to the sound of the river. On Wednesday we're heading off to an old goldmining town in Central Victoria.

Ten days in a row without a covid case, touch wood.

>132 pamelad: That sounds heavenly!

>132 pamelad: Yay! We're back in lockdown. And while that was OK in March and April, when the weather was good, it's a lot less fun in November.

>134 Helenliz: Hang in there! Apart from a few conservative politicians and business people, Victorians agree that the effort was worth it. But winter's not nearly as cold here (more like your spring), so it will be harder for you.

>133 rabbitprincess: Best to enjoy it while we can, just in case!

The Antidote by Oliver Burkeman

This is an antidote to those self-help books about positive thinking. Since I don't read self-help books, I'm not sure why I bought this. It must have been a Kindle Daily Deal.

It touches on stoicism, buddhist meditation, and some other philosophies that made little impression but support the author's contention that the road to happiness lies more through negative thinking than positive. There's no real need to read this book.

Smile or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World by Barbara Ehrenreich is more interesting.

Consolation by Garry Disher

Paul Hirschhausen is the only police constable in the fictional town of Tiverton, in South Australia somewhere between Adelaide and Broken Hill. The author was born in Burra, a little town just like Tiverton, so he knows the place and the people well. A big part of Hirsch's job is checking on isolated people in the bush: the old man looking after his wife who suffers from dementia; the single mother whose car has been repossessed; the caretakers of a big, understaffed sheep station. He's a kind man, making an effort to become part of the community.

Hirsch likes to know what's going on around Tiverton so he can prevent small crimes from escalating. He's investigating a snowdropper who is stealing old ladies' underwear from clotheslines and, with the cooperation of the old ladies, has set a trap. He's the one people come to when they're worried about a child's welfare, the one who investigates environmental complaints, who follows up suspicions of fraud. He's chasing a group of Irish scammers who are gypping old people for roof repairs.

I really enjoyed this book. Disher is my favourite Australian crime writer, and as soon as I saw he had a new book out, I bought it. That was yesterday, and I finished it the same day.

Temporary Kings by Anthony Powell

The series is going downhill now. It appears to me that Powell is using Widmerpool as a vehicle for an attack on the Labour Party, and Labour peers in particular. Is there no limit to the depths to which Widmerpool will descend? I found this volume depressingly seedy. Pamela Flitton's behaviour is ludicrous, and the frequent references to her "frigidity" reminded me of the seventies, when it was used as a term of abuse. So, while I enjoyed aspects of the book, I had an overall impression of bitterness and sleaze.

Inspector Frost and Lady Brassingham by Herbert Maynard Smith

I enjoyed this short British crime novel, first published in 1930. It's light and cheerful, and nobody dies. Inspector Frost is jovial and good-natured, and the intimidating Lady Brassingham is an amusing off-sider. They're investigating the disappearance of Lady Brassingham's niece, Dorothy.

>137 pamelad:. I really need to find time to fit a Garry Disher book, or two, into my reads. So many books, so little time.

>140 Zozette: Definitely! He's my favourite Australian crime writer.

Magpie Lane by Lucy Atkins

Dee is being questioned by two police detectives about the disappearance of the little girl she is employed to look after. The child, Felicity, has suffered from selective muteness since the death of her mother four years ago. She speaks to her father and, initially, no one else. As Dee reflects on her life, we find out just how unhappy Felicity is with her selfish father and thoughtless stepmother, and how Dee, a promising mathematician, ended up looking after other people's children in Oxford.

Is Felicity still alive? Does Dee know what's happened to her? Is Felicity's stepmother the culprit?

This was a bit slow, but entertaining overall. Lots of bits and pieces about Oxford.

Lady of Quality, Cotillion by Georgette Heyer

Inspired by Leslie.98's thread, I've started a Georgette Heyer re-read. I started with two ebook bargains, and now that the local libraries are re-opening, have reserved another.

Lady of Quality

Annis is 29 years old, and single. Her father's will has left her comfortably off, and she doesn't want to give up her independence. On her way to set up her independent household in Bath, she comes across a two young people whose carriage has lost a wheel, so she gives the girl, Lucilla, a lift. Lucilla ends up staying with Annis, which is how Annis meets Lucilla's rude, overbearing guardian.

This is a later Heyer, a little tired, but still entertaining.

Cotillion

Kitty's parents died when she was small. She was adopted by a friend of her father's, Great-uncle Matthew, a rich old misery who has become even more parsimonious as the years go by. Kitty is now of marriageable age and the old man plans to marry her off to one of his great-nephews, on whom he will settle his fortune. If Kitty refuses to go along, she will be cut off without a penny and left destitute. Only two of the great-nephews turn up on time to propose, and Jack, the favourite of both Kitty and the old man, is not one of them. She is left to choose between a kind but sanctimonious churchman and a mentally deficient earl. Fortunately, when Kitty runs away to find work as a governess, or even a maid, anything being better than her two cousins, she meets up with her good-natured cousin Freddy and persuades him to help her out.

Amusing, as always, and livelier than Lady of Quality

I am now reading Angela Thirkell's Cheerfulness Breaks In because too much froth is never enough. It's available for free on Faded Page.

Just read about Untapped: the Australian Literary Heritage Project, untapped.org.au, which is digitising out-of-print Australian books and making them available to borrow and to buy. The authors are paid, and out of work arts workers are employed for proof reading.

I'm planning to start with Frank Hardy's The Unlucky Australians.

The website also mentions The Ligature Collection, another source of previously out-of-print books that will be made available for borrowing. https://www.ligatu.re/

>143 pamelad: There is something about seeing other people reading Georgette Heyer that makes me what to join in!

>145 DeltaQueen50: Good idea! The ultimate comfort read.

>145 DeltaQueen50: Go on, you know you want to. I'm reading all the romances in publication order. Approaching half way.

Cheerfulness Breaks In by Angela Thirkell begins just before Britain enters WWII. Rationing hasn't yet started, and the type of person no one wants to know is hoarding petrol. Families are making arrangements to move out of London, so the writer, Mrs Morland, moves in with the Brandons and lets her house to her publisher's family. Children are evacuated from London and billeted with local families. A London boys' school, Hosiers, is merged with the local Southbridge School. Hosiers' principal, Mr Bissell, and his wife, move into the cottage next door to a hard-drinking female couple, Miss Hampton and Miss Bent, and become friends.

Sons and nephews are going off to war. Daughters are working as nurses. Mrs Brandon's social circle is doing good works. The lower middle class, embodied by the Bissells, and the upper middle classes, Mrs Brandon and her cronies, learn to appreciate and accept each other. Romances unfold. The book ends on a cliff-hanger, with a man trapped in Dunkirk, and a telegram about to be opened. (I knew the outcome because I've been reading the series out of order. Such a relief!)

I enjoyed this book by suspending judgment. Thirkell wrote some of the speech of the Bissells in dialect, and was scathing about the evacuees and their parents. When characters carried on about how badly the evacuee children smelt, I was reminded of last year's Academy Award Winner, Parasite, though no one in Thirkell's book was punished so severely.

Overall, a light and amusing read, interesting for the picture of England preparing for war, and how a segment of the population felt and thought.

>148 pamelad: Sometimes it is nice to know how things will turn out!

I've been looking for books for the Oceania section of the 2021 GeoCAT, starting with the Pacific Islands. Hard to find, although there's a good selection from Tonga. I've left Australia and New Zealand for last because they're easy, but Dymphna Cusack popped into my head so I've had a look for Australian women writers and have found a couple of interesting sites.

This Exhibition catalogue is a good source of writers and books.

This website - Australianwomenwriters.com – has book reviews, a blog, and stories from the archives by decade starting in the 1840s. Stories from the archives includes books, some available for free download. You can sign up for the Australian Women Writers Challenge and submit reviews.

Dymphna Cusack's best known book is Come in Spinner and some of her others have been republished as ebooks. I'm also planning to check out the New Zealander Jean Devanny and am looking for an affordable copy of The Butcher Shop.

The touchstones aren't working, so I'll fix them later.

>149 NinieB: Ninie, I thought of you when I saw that catalogue. Ruth Park is there, of course, and many other writers who were well-regarded in their time but have fallen into obscurity.

Regarding the cliff hanger, I'm not hinting either way, just appreciating not being in suspense.

The Black Moth and These Old Shades by Georgette Heyer

The Black Moth was Heyer's first published book and, while I enjoyed it, it's much more melodramatic that her later books. The hero has been banished from society for cheating at cards, and has become a highwayman. He saves the heroine from abduction at the hands of an evil duke, Devil Belmanoir. Hero and heroine fall in love, but scruples forbid the hero from offering his hand. Entertaining but silly.

These Old Shades is a sort-of-sequel to The Black Moth, with the main characters renamed. The evil duke, Devil Belmanoir, has become Justin Alastair, Duke of Avon, nicknamed Satanas. He has a reputation for vice, but appears benign in this book, even kindly and good-humoured. The character change is necessary because, had the duke remained evil, he would not have deserved to win the heroine.

On his way home from the house of his mistress, Alastair saves a boy from being beaten by his brutal brother. Taken by the boy's red hair, which reminds Alastair of a man on whom he has resolved to take revenge, Alastair buys the boy and makes him his page. Alastair becomes very attached to his page, who turns out to be a girl. She, in turn, is devoted to him. Another entertaining read, with the spirited heroine we expect from Heyer.

Devil's Cub by Georgette Heyer

This is a sequel to These Old Shades, featuring the Marquis of Vidal, the son of the Duke of Avon. He is a libertine, as his father once was, with a wild temper inherited from his mother. He is far too handy with the pistols and has killed men in duels for trivial reasons. He needs a good woman to sort him out, and Mary Challoner could be the one!

I love seeing the Heyer reviews! >143 pamelad: Cotillion is one of my absolute favorites. Freddy is such an unconventional but endearing hero!

The Convenient Marriage by Georgette Heyer

Lord Rule, an earl, has proposed marriage to Lizzie, the oldest and most beautiful of the Winwood sisters. Despite being in love with Edward Herron, a poor lieutenant, she feels she must accept in order to restore the family finances. Her youngest sister, Horatia, offers herself to Rule instead. Despite the age gap (Rule is 35 and Horatia 17), Rule is impressed by Horatia's energy and forthrightness and agrees to marry her, but Horatia's youth and inexperience, together with a former mistress and an enemy of Rules', impede the romance.

>154 christina_reads: Yes, and he's a relief from the usual the saturnine rakes.

A Civil Contract by Georgette Heyer

Captain Adam Deveril's profligate father has died in debt, his fortune, including his daughters' dowries, spent and his property heavily mortgaged. Adam, the new Lord Lynton, had had to leave the army to support his mother and sisters. He has to choose between selling his ancestral property, Fontley Priory, leaving himself with nothing and his younger sister unmarrriageable, and marrying a rich heiress. He marries the short, plump Jenny, the daughter of a vulgar businessman. The prosaic and practical Jenny is a sad contrast to the love of Adam's life, the beautiful and sensitive Julia. Will Adam come to terms with his choice, learn to love Jenny and stop pining for Julia?

Six Georgette Heyers in less than a fortnight! I'm about to start the seventh, Arabella.

Arabella by Georgette Heyer

Arabella is one of eight children, the eldest girl. Her father, a younger son, is a vicar, so the family has no money for extravagances, but her mother has been putting money aside for years to give her daughter a season, and has persuaded an old school friend to present her. On the way to London, the carriage breaks down and Arabella and her companion seek shelter at the nearest house, where she meets the nonpareil, Mr Beaumaris, who thinks that she has schemed an introduction because he has a large fortune. The insulted Arabella pretends that she is an enormously rich heiress.

Another enjoyable read.

Frederica by Georgette Heyer

Frederica who at 24 fancies herself a spinster, has brought up her younger brothers and sisters since the deaths of her parents. She has come to London to launch her beautiful sister, Charis, upon society. Her only London relative, a distant connection, is the Marquis of Alverstoke, a man of the world whom she has never met. Alverstoke agrees to help in order to annoy his overbearing sisters, but becomes attached not just to Frederica, but to her young brothers, Felix and Jessamy.

Another good one.

>158 pamelad: This is among my favourites. Felix is adorable.

>159 MissWatson: He is, and I liked the earnest Jessamy too.

Next on the list is Regency Buck. I'm reading these in no particular order, just as I come across them in the five libraries I belong to. Between them, five libraries are using four different apps. One library downloads books directly onto my Kobo reader via Overdrive. Two others use Overdrive, but I haven't found a way to get them to download onto the Kobo. Adobe Digital Editions hardly ever works, so I read them using Libby on the iPad. Another library uses iCloud, also on the iPad. One library has some ebooks on Overdrive and some on Bolinda. I also have Bluefire Reader for reading pdfs from the Open Library, but lately a lot of the books there seem to be available only for an hour at a time and can't be downloaded. A copyright kerfuffle, I think.

That's 6 apps for 6 libraries, counting the Open Library.

42 days without a Covid case! Last night our book club had its first get together since February. We caught up for a meal in the beer garden of a local pub (because we're not yet up for sitting inside). Warm summer evening, really festive! The Covid restrictions were eased last Sunday, so pubs and restaurants can have fifty people per section (large spaces have been divided up) which is enough for a bit of atmosphere. Everyone was pleased to be out. The young guys at the next table clinked glasses with us to celebrate.

>161 pamelad: You are so fortunate. It's really horrible here. Record case numbers and deaths.

>160 pamelad: Yes, they do 2-week lending now only if they have more than one copy.

>161 pamelad: I ate lunch outside today with a group. We were thrilled because it was 50 degrees (just checked and that's 10 in Celsius).

>162 thornton37814: It's incomprehensibly, indefensibly cruel that so many lives have been sacrificed. I hope that the worst is almost over, and that people will cooperate with whatever measures need to be taken.

We have been lucky in our leaders, that we live on an island, and that people cooperated with the strict 15-week lockdown. Because our population is small there aren't many conspiracists, so they've had little influence. It's not over though, so we're prepared for another outbreak. Enjoying the respite.

>163 NinieB: Was there a patio heater? Much safer to sit outside when you can.

Seven Years in Tibet by Heinrich Harrer

The Austrian Harrer was mountaineering in the Himalayas with some compatriots when war was declared. The British imprisoned them in a prisoner of war camp in the Indian Himalayas. Harrer took part in three escape attempts and the last one was successful. He and his companions made the perilous journey on foot, ill-equipped, frozen and often hungry. They walked and climbed for years, some of them determined to get to India, others to Japan and Harrer, with fellow Austrian Peter Aufschnaiter, to Lhasa. They made themselves useful, particularly Aufschnaiter, an agricultural engineer, and were allowed to stay. Harrer ended up as a tutor to the young Dalai Lama.

The book is interesting for its descriptions of a world that no longer exists. There were no roads through the mountains, and Tibet was almost isolated from the world. Harrer describes the palaces, the gardens, the pageants, a way of life dominated by religion.

The Austrians stayed in Tibet until 1950, when the Chinese invaded and the Dalai Lama escaped to India.

Worth a read.

>161 pamelad: Oh that is good news. Fingers crossed that it onwards & upwards from there for you.

>163 NinieB: No patio heater because this was just a parking lot lunch!

>166 Helenliz: Thank you. Hoping things will improve in the UK too, now that the vaccine is being rolled out.

Cousin Kate by Georgette Heyer

Not one of her best.

Kate Malvern's improvident father has died and left her penniless. She has jus lost her governess position because the boss' little brother proposed to her and is having trouble finding another. When Kate decides that she'd be better off as a servant than a governess, her old nurse writes to Kate's only known relative, her father's half sister, Lady Broome, who swoops in and carries Kate off to the Broome's Elizabethan mansion. There Kate meets her cousin Torquil who is subject to sudden rages. Is the nineteen-year-old merely petulant and childish, or is he as mad as a cut snake? Why is Kate locked in her room? Who screamed in the night? What is Lady Broome's plan for Kate?

Heyer didn't get the Gothic atmosphere quite right, and the book gets bogged down in waffle as she tries to explain why a person as capable as Kate doesn't just leave. Worth reading if you've run out of Heyers.

>161 pamelad: Congratulations! That is wonderful!

I miss hugs. Will be awhile here before they are possible. I do have some friends who have been gathering for coffee outside periodically.

Glad your book club could get out. Mine has not met since February. We have one scheduled for the end of January. I'm hoping things don't go south after Christmas, as they did after Thanksgiving. Our governor said if the numbers did not improve that children would not go back to school in January, sigh. Just too many think their freedom is being impinged and won't comply with the mask and meeting rules. However, IMHO, they are only making things worse for all of us! Ok, I'm done now!

I am sorry your Heyer wasn't better--I've not yet read Heyer, but I have my first lined up for 2021.

>170 markon: Sometimes it's hard to believe that the world just stopped. For months we had to wear masks whenever we left home, and I'd have to go back because I'd forgotten. So did everyone else I know. We can't quite believe that we're allowed out! I hope that things improve soon where you are, and hugs return! It's really good news that a vaccination program is about to start in the US.

>171 Tess_W: We were initially told that school children didn't spread the virus, but then we had some big outbreaks in schools, and they were closed except for children of essential workers and children at risk. There are always people who don't follow rules, but hopefully things will improve if the majority complies. It could be a cold, outside book club meeting, though!

Enjoy your first Heyer. Even a bad one is worth reading.

Regency Buck by Georgette Heyer

Judith Taverner, twenty, and her brother Perry, nineteen, are on their way to London for the first time. Their father died recently, leaving his children to the guardianship of an old friend, Lord Worth. At an overnight posting stop, Perry learns that an unmissable prize fight is scheduled the next day, so he persuades Judith to stay longer. While Perry is at the fight Judith, who is used to independent country ways, wanders the town alone, where she is accosted by a tall, dark, arrogant stranger who does not realise she is a gentlewoman, worthy of respect. Guess who!

Judith also runs across her estranged cousin. Her father had fallen out with his brother, so Judith and Perry had never met their uncle and his son. Should Perry die, the uncle would be heir to the family estate and title, and Judith would inherit the unentailed property, a huge fortune. The cousin insinuates himself into the lives of the young Taverners.

Perry narrowly escapes death on a number of occasions. Who is responsible? Is it the charming cousin, or is it the cold, lip-curling Lord Worth?

An average Heyer, but enjoyable all the same.

Venetia by Georgette Heyer

At twenty-five, Venetia has never been away from home. With her father dead and her brother in the army, she manages the family estate and looks after her younger brother Aubrey. She is beautiful and well-off, but has never met anyone she wants to marry, her two suitors being a dramatic adolescent and a pompous bore. Then she meets the depraved, dissolute rake, Dameral, and they strike up a friendship.

Venetia is an excellent heroine, so I enjoyed this one a lot.

>175 pamelad: I like that one too, even though I'm not generally a fan of the "reformed rake" trope. I feel like Venetia and Damerel genuinely are friends, so the romance aspect rings true for me.

>176 christina_reads: A shared sense of humour is definitely an asset.

Hearing Secret Harmonies by Anthony Powell is the twelfth and final volume of A Dance to the Music of Time. The harmony in the foreground is a slogan used by a pagan cult led in the present by a new character, Scorpio Murtlock, which recalls the less sinister cult led by Doctor Trelawny many years ago.

Kenneth Widmerpool continues along his downward path. At the start of the book he is a university chancellor of the King of the Kids variety. By the end he is suffering unspeakable degradation at the hands of Scorpio Murtlock. I find Powell's speculations on the sexual proclivities of his characters distasteful, and could have done without the necrophilia and voyeurism of the previous volume, so was disheartened by the sadistic rituals.

There were some entertaining sections, including a literary committee, a local conservation committee and an art exhibition, but overall I found this volume depressingly sad and sordid. My guess is that the entertaining parts relate to Powell's own experience and the rest is second-hand.

The Grand Sophy by Georgette Heyer

Sophie's father, Sir Horace, parks his daughter at his sister's house while he goes to Brazil on a diplomatic mission. She's an energetic, capable, managing young woman who takes it upon herself to fix up the lives of her cousins Charles, Hubert and Cecilia. I quite enjoyed this except for a burst of anti-semitism, and a romance between first cousins. Both would have been common in Regency England, I suppose, but Heyer wrote this in the 1950s.

Sylvester or the Wicked Uncle by Georgette Heyer

Sylvester, Duke of Salford, has decided that it is time for him to marry, so he takes the advice of his godmother and heads of to meet her granddaughter Phoebe, who lives with her nasty stepmother and indolent father. Neither Sylvester nor Phoebe are at all impressed with one another, which is a surprise to the Duke because he is used to having young women fall at his feet. Realising that, should Sylvester offer, she will be made to accept, Phoebe escapes with her childhood friend, the son of the local squire.

I quite enjoyed this, but saw no need for Sylvester to be a duke. Such an unlikely match!

The Black Sheep by Georgette Heyer

Unmarried at twenty-eight, Abigail Wendover lives in Bath with her older sister Selina. Together they have brought up their orphaned niece Fanny, who is about to embark on her first London season. Fanny fancies herself in love with the charming Stacy Calverleigh, who has a reputation as a fortune-hunter. Calverleigh's uncle, Miles, the black sheep of the title, was banished to India twenty years ago, but has arrived in Bath in the company of a young man, son of a friend of Abigail's, who was taken so ill in India that he could have died on the voyage had not Miles looked after him. Miles and Abigail strike up a friendship, which excites the ire of Abigail's stuffy brother, and drives Selina, a hypochondriac, into a decline. Will Fanny elope with the wicked fortune hunter? Will Abby go against her families wishes and marry Miles?

Not one of Heyer's best. Miles didn't really come alive, and there was too much repetitive explanatory waffle.

Peace, Perfect Peace by Josephine Kamm

Giles and June spent the war years with their grandmother in the country while their mother worked in London and their father fought overseas. When the time comes for the children to return to London to live with their parents, the grandmother tries to persuade Giles to stay with her. She is a manipulative woman who can see no one's point of view but her own and believes that everything she does is for the best. Life is difficult enough in London, with substandard housing, and shortages of nearly everything, including food, fuel and clothing, so the grandmother's attempts to cause conflict between her son and his wife just add to the bleakness.

This was interesting for the description of domestic life in Britain immediately after WWII and strangeness felt by families reuniting after years apart.

The Corinthian and The Talisman Ring by Georgette Heyer

These two were similar in that they featured naive young heroines in search of adventure, escaping from unwanted betrothals. Lots of comedy. Enjoyed them.

Duplicate post.

Duplicate post.

>184 pamelad: I've never read a Heyer. Do they need to be read chronologically?

>185 Tess_W: The Black Moth and These Old Shades and Devil's Cub are better read in that order, but all the books stand alone. They're definitely fluff and I've been enjoying them, probably because I first read them when I was about 14, so they remind me of simpler times.

From the current binge, those I've enjoyed most are Frederica, Arabella, A Civil Contract and Cotillion.

Heyer also wrote Golden Age crime novels, which I also like.

Adding Venetia, another good one.

>185 Tess_W:. Not usually There are a few that sort of follow in sequence, but they are the exceptions and even they stand on their own.
I envy you, finding her for the first time. I'm currently reading all her romances in order, and am half way through. First time reading most of them, and it's such fun. She is a master of the art.

>186 pamelad: Whereas I shunned them as a teenager because they were romnaces and I didn't "do" soppy stuff. Gah! What a waste! I acquired Mum's entire set when we cleared the house, so most of the ones I'm reading are older than I am. >:-o Some of them are in a worse state than I am as well!!

I'm enjoying your Georgette Heyer reviews. I've always liked her books and have been meaning to read more.

Happy holidays to you and your loved ones!

>188 mathgirl40: Thank you, and happy holidays to you too! Here's another one.

Friday's Child by Georgette Heyer

The young Viscount Sheringam cannot get control of his fortune until he turns twenty-five, or marries. Embarrassed by gambling debts, he proposes to his childhood friend, the beautiful Isabella Milborne. When Isabella refuses him he resolves to marry the first young woman he sees, who turns out to be his devoted young friend Hero, an orphan living with an irritable, penny-pinching aunt who plans to send Hero off to work as a governess. Sherry makes it clear that this is to be a marriage of convenience, and that he and Hero should lead independent lives, but Hero is far too naive and inexperienced to handle society on her own, and makes many mistakes.

At 420 pages, this was too long for a frothy romance. It sagged in the middle instead of bubbling along. Not that I disliked it, but shorter is better.

Jutland Cottage by Angela Thirkell

The comforting thing about Thirkell's books is their sameness. I've read her Barchester series out of order, and have mixed up many of the characters because they are so similar. People meet over dinner and say witty things to one another. There's always an engagement, sometimes two or three. There's no suspense, nothing to worry about. They're a good choice for reading in bed because nothing much happens, so you don't have to keep reading until the end. This one is about Margot Phelps, the fortyish daughter of Admiral and Mrs Phelps. The family's only income is the admiral's meagre pension, so there is not quite enough money to live on, not enough to buy new clothes, afford a telephone service, go on a holiday. When her parents die, Margot will be destitute. She needs a husband, pronto!

Charity Girl by Georgette Heyer

Cherry Steane lives with her nasty aunt who treats her like a servant and never has a kind word. Her mother died years ago, and her father disappeared. The aunt goes too far, even for the docile Cherry, so the poor girl runs away to her grandfather. Viscount Desford, a dashing young neighbour who is on his way to London in his curricle, finds her on the road trying to walk there and, after listening to her miserable story, promises to take her to her grandfather's house.

Desford is 29 and unmarried. Ten years ago, his father had tried to marry him off to his friend's daughter, Henrietta. Neither wanted to marry, but they have remained good friends. Desford calls on Henrietta to help look after the gormless Cherry, whose ill-considered flight has put the reputations of herself and Desford at risk.

Nice and short. Enjoyed it.

Jutland Cottage is available from Gutenberg Canada.

>190 pamelad: a good choice for reading in bed because nothing much happens, so you don't have to keep reading until the end

I like that idea. I've spent too many nights reading until dawn. :)

This journalist writing in The Guardian has discovered Georgette Heyer, Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers. Jolly, artificial and extremely satisfying: the simple joy of 'Grandma Lit'

I'd have thought I'd have had enough of Georgette Heyer by now, but no!

>192 VivienneR: It's a delicate balance. The book you read in bed has to be entertaining enough to make you want to read it, but not so gripping that you can't put it down.

Here's How I fell in love with romance novels, also from The Guardian. The author recommends a few.

>193 pamelad: I just purchased The Convenient Marriage and I look forward to reading it in January.

>194 Tess_W: I hope you enjoy it. If you do, there are so many more to read!

Hooray for more Heyer reviews! Sylvester is one of my favorites -- not surprisingly, since it's Heyer's take on Pride and Prejudice. I just finished a reread of Friday's Child myself, and I agree, it drags a bit. I do love Sherry's friends, but much of the book is about their shenanigans rather than about the development of Sherry's relationship with Hero.

>196 christina_reads: Sherry is annoyingly self-centred, too.

The Masqueraders is an early Georgette Heyer, 1928. It's set after the Jacobite rebellion, which ended in 1746, so seventy years or so before the Regency period. Society people wear face patches, powder and elaborate wigs and, in this book at least, speak a form of English that is more jarringly historical than the language of Heyer's Regency novels. The Marriots, initially Peter and Kate, turn out to be the cross-dressing siblings Prue and Robin, who are in disguise because they are Jacobites, and at risk of execution if found out. They are also protecting their father, a mysterious and manipulative individual. None of this makes a lot of sense, but it's a necessary complication because otherwise the road to romance would be easy and dull.

I quite enjoyed this, but most of the characters were caricatures and the plot was nonsensical. A bridge too far!

Best of 2020

Books I rated at 4.5 -5 stars

L’Étranger by Albert Camus 5*
The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann 5*
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk 5*
Wittgenstein's Nephew by Thomas Bernhard
I Remember Nothing by Nora Ephron
Our Women on the Ground by Zahra Hankir
The Long Prospect by Elizabeth Harrower
See What You Made Me Do by Jess Hill
The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes
The Kindly Ones, The Valley of Bones, The Soldier's Art by Anthony Powell
Good Morning Midnight by Jean Rhys

The three five star books are by Nobel Prize winners, so it looks as though I've given a Nobel half-star premium.

Worst of 2020

Books I rated at less than 3 stars

Nothing to Do with the Case by Elizabeth Lemarchand
The Lucky Stiff by Craig Rice
Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi
The Rub of Time by Martin Amis
The Home-Maker by Dorothy Canfield
Private Enterprise by Angela Thirkell
Pardonable Lies by Jacqueline Winspear

The lowest rating I gave was 2 stars. In 2021 I'll try to spread the ratings out more.

No touchstones, so I'll return when they're working again.

Books I Didn't Finish

Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz (Convoluted and tricksy)
The Private Face of Murder by John Bonet (Wrong politics)
The Passing Bells by Philip Rock (Americanisms in a book about Britain)
The Half-hearted by John Buchan (Wrong politics)
Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Perez (Dull)

Sex and Suffering Women's Health and a Women's Hospital: The Royal Women's Hospital, Melbourne, 1856-1996 by Janet McCalman (Dull)
The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund De Waal (Dull)
The Road to Little Dribbling by Bill Bryson (Too much moaning)
Breaking News: The Remaking of Journalism and Why It Matters Now by Alan Rusbridger (Gave up when he started talking about Economics)