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.