My Man Jeeves (Jeeves & Wooster Series Book 1 by P. G. Wodehouse

Howards End by E. M. Forster

The Man in the Brown Suit by Agatha Christie

The Heart Of The Matter by Graham Greene

    

I really enjoyed this novel. It is a powerful, thought provoking and deeply profound novel about love and catholic guilt set amongst British colonial settlers in West Africa during the Second World War.
It is a tragedy where Major Scobie, a 50-year-old Deputy Commissioner, is
passed over for promotion and so becomes forced to borrow money to send his despairing wife away. In her absence he falls in love with Helen, a young widow, and his life is transformed by the experience.However, it does not have a happy ending.

The Ballad of the Sad Café: Wunderkind; The Jockey; Madame Zilensky and the Ki by Carson McCullers

This is a strange collection of 7 short, in some cases, almost minimalistic tales.I enjoyed them, especially the first one!
They are linked by isolation and the loneliness juxtaposed to selfless love in implausible triangular relationships. 
I love the way Carson McCullers paints a specific scenery in one's imagination while flawlessly dropping the characters there.

Middlemarch by George Eliot

 

I loved the descriptions of the depth and breath of society. 
It is full of insights into society, human nature, what to do in life when one can't quite make one's dreams come true, and how to make a marriage work. 
I love the large cast of townsfolk that round out the novel create an amazing mix of gossip and family histories.
I love the Elliot's idea in making her characters subjugated by the forces of society; they eventually have to conform to the role society has laid out for them. 
Elliot provides a great deal of historical context.
This is not an easy read but a very enjoyable one!  

Sad Cypress by Agatha Christie

 

I thought Agatha Christie had been clever with this story as the mystery that begins with court proceedings, as the accused suspect is being tried for the murder of an innocent, lovely girl!

A House For Mr Biswas by V.S. Naipaul

This tells the story continual struggle of Mr Biswas who wants to live his life with the opposing forces of obligation to family and the desire for independence as he struggles to delineate himself from the larger identity of the family that he is born into and then of the family that he marries into and the desire to have his own house!
It's not a page-turner - in fact in parts the plot is barely perceivable at all. However, this fits in well with the realism - the monotony of Mr Biswas' life!
The descriptions of family life, of community, and of the natural and social landscape of mid-twentieth Trinidad are beautiful. 

Crimson Snow: Winter Mysteries by Martin Edwards

The Mating Season: by P.G. Wodehouse

The Third Man and The Fallen Idol by Graham Greene

 

This book contains 2 stories: The first is about a Brit who is invited to post-war Vienna by a friend, only to discover that said friend is dead and may have been involved in a rather nasty racket. The Third Man is unlike other Greene books. As Greene himself points out in the preface, 'it was never written to be read but only to be seen', meaning that while it's not exactly a film script, The Third Man was written to be turned into one, and it shows - the story is light on characterisation and heavy on descriptions of actions and situations.

The second, much shorter story in the book, 'The Fallen Idol', this is a tragedy about an innocent child who gets caught up in the nasty games adults play and ends up accidentally handing his best friend over to the police. It has great characters, some menace, several 'Oh, no!' moments and an abrupt but effective ending.

Both stories are beautifully written with not a word wasted, and both are very bleak in different ways

Travels With My Aunt by Graham Greene

I really enjoyed this comic story which is the only book that Greene ever wrote for the fun of it. It tells the story of a middle aged man and his aunt's travels and the various places they pass through. It's not a travelogue, so there are no tourist brochure style descriptions – instead, it's a vague, impressionistic picture of the process of travelling and the places passed by as seen through Henry's untutored, and often uninterested, eye.  

I loved the aunt's character because she was brass, quite coarse, a bit vulgar and rather naughty! "I was very fond of Wordsworth while he lasted, but my emotions are not as strong as they once were. I can support his absence, though I may regret him for a while tonight. His knackers were superb."

He covers a lot of serious  topics with this  book - prostitution, the Nazi regime and how WWII changed the world, the plight of third world countries and even manages to swing in some commentary on the apartheid in South Africa along with how the pill had, rightly or wrongly, changed women’s sexual awakening and responsibility as well as Catholicism. However, at times this left story feeling sluggish.

 

Diary of a Provincial Lady by E.M. Delafield

This was published in book form in 1934, the “Diary of a Provincial Lady,” but it actually started life in 1930 as a serial in “Time and Tide.”. It is mostly  autobiographical; with the author substituting the names “Robin” and “Vicky” for her own children, called Lionel and Rosamund, but, aside from name changes, this is very much a light hearted diary of country life and based upon the author’s own experiences. 

I loved all the domestic disasters, the W.I., a monosyllabic husband, mutinous staff and the bossy and opinionated Lady Boxe. There are struggles with indoor bulbs and financial worries, tales of friends visits and reciprocal trips to see them – including shopping in London and a rash holiday to the South of France - it felt similar to life today - especially the musings of parenting, her statements on social snobbery, her opinions about neighbours, worrying about how she looks and feeling left out of discussions about shows she has not seen or books she has not read!

It wasn't a laugh out loud book but it was cheery and lighthearted!  A very enjoyable read. 

Hidden Lives: A Family Memoir by Margaret Forster

What a fascinating read about the changes in society over the last century.

It is an incredible and personal insight into family life.

I was intrigued by the hint of a little mystery, the woman dressed in black, that visits the Grandmother but disappointed that the story never was really addressed.