Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck

Read on the Kindle, after seeing the stage show at the cinema featuring James Franco and Chris O'Dowd.

How come you haven't read it before? Well, in my day, the English Literature O'Level focussed on British Writers, like Charles Dickens, so I suppose I never got round to it.

Two things surprised me.

1. The stage play stuck almost word for word and scene for scene to the book.

2. The book is very short, which in fact lent very well to it becoming a stage play.

Obviously a classic like this needs no introduction, and no review, but just as a summary.  George and Lennie are manual workers; they travel together taking agricultural jobs. Their dream is to one day have a farm of their own.  George is the pragmatic one, and Lennie is childlike in his mental capacity and character, but tall, broad and strong physically.  Arriving at a ranch, George and Lennie settle in, and meet the inhabitants, including the one handed Candy, the pugnacious Curly, and Curly's flirtatious wife.  Needless to say, this book does not end happily.

Skipping Christmas, John Grisham

Read on Kindle - Jo B's choice for our Christmas Book Club.

Luther and Nora Krank wave goodbye to Blair, their daughter and only child just after Thanksgiving.  She is going abroad to work with the Peace Corps in Peru.

Luther realises that they will be on their own for Christmas for the first time in years.  As an accountant he adds up what they spent on Christmas the year before, and is shocked at the result.  He decides that this year he and Nora will skip Christmas.

The novel unfolds with the reactions of Luther and Nora's friends and neighbours to their decision not to participate in the madness of the holiday season.

I probably wouldn't have read this book, if it hadn't been a Book Club book, but I did enjoy it very much, especially the fun it pokes at those holiday traditions that simply get out of hand.

More Fool Me, Stephen Fry

Read on the Kindle, after Amazon recommendation.

Note to self: Never read another Stephen Fry book on the Kindle - he uses so many footnotes that it just gets annoying switching back and forth, especially since my Kindle is the old style without a touch screen.

This book should have taken up where the last one left off, but does in fact start with a precis of his first two books of memoirs, which is OK if you read them a long while ago, like I did, but I can see it would annoy someone who had come directly from the previous book.

He then proceeds to talk about his cocaine addiction, opening up about a subject he hasn't discussed before, and the last third of the book is extracts from a diary Stephen kept in 1993, while he was writing his novel, The Hippopotamus.

I came to the conclusion that you have to be a real Stephen Fry fan to enjoy this book, the confessional is a bit contrived and the diary entries eventually get repetitive.  Luckily there were just enough celebrity anecdotes included to keep me reading to the end.

The Ladies of the House, Molly McGrann

Read in hardback - a birthday present, read while we were on holiday at half term.

Marie Gilles is at the airport.  She reads a newspaper article about three elderly people who have died in a house in Primrose Hill during a heat wave in London.  Marie suffers a panic attack, and feelings of guilt - could she be responsible for their deaths?

Skipping backwards and forwards in time, the book comes to explain who the three elderly people were, how they came to be living together and what their connection with Marie is.

A depiction of the secret world of the brothels of London in the sixties, this book did evoke a particular time and place.

I enjoyed this book, and found it interesting the way that some events were described over and again, but from different people's perspectives.

A Spool of Blue Thread

Read on the Kindle, following an Amazon recommendation.  I have been an Anne Tyler fan for years, and have read several of her other books.

This book centres on three generations of the Whitshank family, living in the house built by the Junior, the first Whitshank patriarch.

This is essentially the story of how the next generation, Red and Abby, met, fell in love, and raised their four children.

As Red and Abby age, and their health fails, the children return to the family home, and buried sibling rivalries and issues bubble to the surface.

You cannot fault Anne Tyler's writing, and she has created a character - the family - as fascinating as it is ordinary.

A Man Called Ove, Fredrick Backman

Read on the Kindle - Rachel's choice for book club, although we won't discuss it until after Christmas.

Pronounced to rhyme with "hoover", Ove is an elderly man, living on his own in a house on a normal housing estate.  Ove is a stickler for rules and regulations, and is downright rude to his neighbours.

Throughout the story, you come to find out why Ove behaves as he does, and you also find out there is more to him than meets the eye.

A whimsical tale, in the same vein as The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, the ending is similarly bittersweet.

Burial Rites, Hannah Kent

Read on the Kindle, after amazon recommendation.

The year is 1829, and Agnes Magnúsdóttir, living in Iceland, but under the jurisdiction of Denmark, has been convicted of murder and sentenced to death.

Since there is no prison system to accommodate her, Agnes is sent to live out the days until her execution at the house of Jón Jónsson and his family.

Obviously this causes a lot of disruption, and the family are very suspicious of Agnes. The neighbours are likewise scandalised.

Through Agnes' conversations with a young local priest, her history gradually comes out, and the family come to see her as a person, not just a criminal.

Based on the true story of the last woman to be executed in Iceland, the story moves to its inevitable conclusion in a very poetic way.

The Heart Goes Last, Margaret Atwood

Read on the Kindle, after seeing Margaret Atwood speak at the Cambridge Literary Festival in September.

After an economic collapse in America, Stan and Charmaine are forced to live in their car, in fear of hijackers and living on Charmaine's meager wages.

They dream of a better life, so when they see an advert for the Positron Project, they go to investigate and have soon signed up to living in Consilience.  The living arrangement is that they have possession of their apartment every other month, and when they are not there they are in prison, and their "alternates" live in the apartment.

Sooner or later, both Stan and Charmaine start to wonder, and fantasise about their alternates, and their comfortable lives start to unravel.

I'm a big Margaret Atwood fan, and her dystopian novels are not so very removed from the current world that they are unbelievable, which makes them compelling but uncomfortable reading.

For the record, she's also a great public speaker.

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying: A simple, effective way to banish clutter forever, Marie Kondo

Read on the Kindle, after reading reviews on various blogs.

Describes the "KonMari" method of de-cluttering and organising.

Some of the points Marie makes are very interesting; you should only keep possessions that "spark joy".

Some of her ideas sound a bit more bonkers; talking to your house to find out where it would like to store things.

Gave me some interesting ideas some of which I've tried, like folding and stacking clothes in drawers vertically. And also suggested stuff I'm never going to follow up - thanking my clothes for keeping me warm when I hang them up.

J by Howard Jacobson

Read in hardback - given to me as a birthday present as part of the Man Booker Prize shortlist.

This is the third book I've read from the shortlist, after the winner - The Narrow Road to the Deep North and We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves.

An exercise in imagination.  What would happen if there were another Holocaust, a "Twitternacht", during which a certain race were done away with, and society lost at a stroke its most feared and reviled enemies but also its best purveyors of art and sardonic comedy?

Set in small rural community resembling Cornwall, but difficult to identify as all names have been changed as part of the repentance of "Project Ishmael", the book follows the ups and downs of the love affair between two outsiders and misfits.

Not an easy book to read, but definitely thought provoking.

Elizabeth is Missing, Emma Healey

Read on the Kindle, our book club book for March.

After a disappointing first novel (The Miniaturist), this book, also a first novel, really gave me something to get my teeth into.

The narrator of the story is 82 year old Maud. Although never explicitly stated, it's clear that Maud has pretty advanced Alzheimer's. At the start of the book she is living by herself, supported by visits from carers and her long-suffering daughter, Helen, but it soon becomes apparent that Maud cannot be left on her own, and she is moved into Helen's house.

It seems a terrifying portrayal of what happens to a dementia sufferer when the familiarity of home is taken from them. Maud's grasp on reality becomes more and more tenuous as she tries to discover what has happened both to her friend Elizabeth, and her sister Sukey, missing for seventy years.

I pretty much devoured this book over three days. I thought the writing was superb and the way the two mysteries, historical and present day entwined themselves in Maud's mind was brilliant.

The Miniaturist, Jessie Burton

Read on Kindle, after recommendations by pretty much everyone, everywhere.

Nella Oortman, scion of an old and distinguished, but impoverished, dutch family, comes to Amsterdam in 1686 to live with Johannes Brandt, wealthy merchant of that city, to whom she has recently been married.

Johannes is not there to greet her, but his sister Marin is, along with their servants Cornelia, brought to the house as an orphan, and Otto, a former slave brought back by Johannes on one of his voyages.

When Johannes returns, he gives Nella a wedding present, a cabinet which is essentially a dolls house, and suggests she can keep herself occupied by furnishing it.  Finding the name of a Miniaturist in the equivalent of the Yellow Pages, Nella orders some items for her cabinet, but additional items keep being delivered which may or may not be relevant to Nella's circumstances.

I found this book ultimately unsatisfying.  The clues given by the miniaturists gifts are too obscure for either Nella or the reader to understand, and the ending just leaves more questions than answers.

Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel

Read in hardback, after reading Wolf Hall, again.

Because I had read it before, I was better able to concentrate on the scheme of revenge that Thomas Cromwell sets in motion against those he holds responsible for the downfall of his mentor, Cardinal Wolesey.

Still haunted by the loss of his wife, and cut off from the comfort of his brief affair with his sister-in-law, Cromwell has been admiring Jane Seymour. But a trip to Wolf Hall during Henry VIII's summer progression means Jane has a new admirer, and Cromwell has a new job - to rid the King of another wife unable to bear him a son, Anne Boleyn.

Still a fantastic book - still waiting for the last book in the trilogy.

The Children Act, Ian McEwan

Read in hardback, borrowed from Granny (we gave it to her for Christmas).

Looks like I haven't read an Ian McEwan novel since Sweet Tooth in 2012.

This slim volume (more of a novella) is the story of Fiona Maye, a high court judge in the family division.  She is daily called upon to make judgements on behalf of families going through divorce or other crises. Fiona and her husband, Jack, are themselves childless, and there is a very poignant paragraph explaining why it never seemed to be the right time.

Fiona is called upon to give a judgement in the case of a young man, Adam, a Jehovah's Witness, who is refusing treatment for his Leukaemia on religious grounds. Reeling from a conversation with her husband about the nature of their relationship, Fiona takes it upon herself to visit Adam in hospital - the pivotal action we've come to know and love in McEwan's novels which sets the rest of the book in motion.

Whilst it seems from the archives that I didn't enjoy Sweet Tooth, I did find myself involved with The Children Act. I had sympathy for Fiona, and the situation in which she found herself. Not a long read - I finished it in 2 days, but perhaps engaging if you were going somewhere by train?

Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel

Read in hardback, after watching the first episode of the television series.

Looking back, the last time I read this book was October 2012.  So this must be the fourth time I've read it!

This book tells the story of Henry VIII's reign from the point of view of his adviser Thomas Cromwell. Cromwell is a self-made man, coming from low birth in Putney (his father is a blacksmith), and devoting himself to the service of Cardinal Wolsey.  When Wolsey is brought down, over his inability to secure a divorce for Henry from Katherine of Aragon, Thomas must find a new master, and continue to make his way in the world through influencing the great and good.

I simply love this book.  Some of the subtlety of the dialogue has been lost in its translation to the small screen, as lovely as the Tudor Houses and courts look, it's definitely worth seeking out the original for the best of Thomas Cromwell's wit.

Blood and Sand, Frank Gardner

Read on the Kindle for Book Club, chosen by Ros.

An unconventional choice for an all female book club book. Frank Gardner's autobiography kicks off with the incident in 2004 where he was shot, and his co-worker killed whilst reporting on location from Saudi Arabia.

It is followed by accounts of Frank's education and career, and also of his recovery from the attack which has left him in a wheel chair.

Throughout the book, Frank's deep and emotional attachment to the Middle East are evident.  He doesn't shy away from giving his opinions on events in the region, covering 9/11 and the Arab Spring.

Not a book I would have chosen to read, had it not been for book club, and not one I shall read again, but a fascinating insight into the life of a reporter/journalist and very well written nevertheless.

Apple Tree Yard, Louise Doughty

Read on the Kindle, recommended by Granny.

When the book opens we discover that our narrator is on trial at the Old Bailey, but we don't know her name or crime, and that she has a co-defendant, also unnamed.

The first half of the book, then, is a series of flashbacks to how the two people ended up in the situation, and the second is an account of their trial.

Very difficult to describe this book without giving any of the plot away, which would definitely spoil it for anyone else as there are many twists and turns in the plot.

So, about all I can say is that as a psychological thriller it was a page turner, written with just enough pace and tension to keep you sucked in.