The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie

This has been recently dramatised on the BEEB - I didn't really enjoy the TV adaptation, I much preferred the book (although it is not my favourite Christie!)


IT is not a usual Christie mystery, more a John Buchan style ripping yarn with light-weight espionage and a heavy emphasis on adventure. I suppose a grown up famous 5.

There are many twists and turns. The start is a bit slow but I did enjoy the end!

Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante

 
This is the second book in the My Brilliant Friend series, featuring the two friends Lila and Elena set in the girls twenties.
Ferrante is a very powerful writer. yet she does it in such a simple way - the book moves slowly but at the end of it you think WOW.
I love the way it reads like the private inner thoughts of Elena with the mechanics of friendship and growing up with the added pressures of deeply ingrained habits and customs of a different culture and generation.
I love the characters because they seem very real with ambition, but yet are flawed.
The book contains incidents of domestic abuse and rape  acceptable in a culture for men to beat women and makes pertinent social and political observations of that time. 

Wildwood: A Journey Through Trees by Roger Deakin

I loved this book with its descriptions of the people who love trees and have let their lives be shaped by the woods around them. Some of these are artists, such as Margaret Mellis who fashions collages out of driftwood or David Nash who creates large scale sculpture in wood.

Deakin gives a glimpse as well into the relationship between mankind and the woods on a global scale in his travels, from New South Wales to Kazakhstan.

The chapters are very diverse in subject matter, while still being linked by the overall theme of wood/trees. 

It is beautifully written, deeply insightful and dotted with captivating anecdotes!

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. 

SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome by Mary Beard

This is the story of how Rome grew, covering 1000 years of Roman history;
giving the reader a feel for what it was like to live in Rome at the different times.

A general history book of over 500 pages can be a slog, but SPQR is fast moving!

The book is instead a precise explication of what it is we know about specific selected events in Roman history, what it is we do not know, and why we do or do not know.

I enjoyed the book and the way it organised its topics in Chronology and the way dealt with political aspects of Rome and at the same time intergrated ordinary life for Romans and their subjects both rich and poor.  

The author also makes an interesting distinction between "learning from the Romans" vs. "engaging with the Romans history"
Rome was built. Mary Beard’s sweep of events goes beyond the consuls, senators, generals and emperors to cover the lives of their spouses, the middle class, the poor, and the slaves.

Adventures in Human Being by Gavin Francis

 

This is an anatomy book for a non-medical audience that talks about the human body in highly accessible manner, with minimal jargon and many medical stories.  It starts with your head and ends where else at your feet  
I loved the parts where Francis described his patients and the quirky facts about our organs and body parts that are "insider info" not common knowledge. 

He tried to combine other disciplines to the chapters which sometimes made the chapters feel disjointed. 

It is not a long book and some chapters left me wanting more detail.

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante

This story isn't on the International Mann booker short-list but one of its prequels - however I thought I had better start with the first one!  It tells the story of intense friendship and rivalry between two girls growing up in the impoverished outskirts of Naples.

I really enjoyed the opening where suspense is created by the fact that the novel begins from the perspective of the story-teller as a sixty-something-year-old woman being told by her friend's son his mother has suddenly disappeared.

It feels vivid and authentic, more like an autobiography retold in the first person.

There are many characters -there are so many families in the neighbourhood, and everyone has nicknames that it was tough to remember who was who and who did what to which relative. (There is a cast of characters listed at the front of the book, but it's still confusing on a Kindle.)