TBR Book Jar Lucky Dip — August 2026

It's the start of a new month so time to delve into my TBR Book Jar once more. As always I've used a random number generator to pick three titles from my TBR spreadsheet. From those I'll pick one to read in the next two months. This month's selection have a very pleasing international flavour. Antonio by Beatriz Bracher My first pick is a novel by award-winning Brazilian author, Beatriz Bracher.

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The Conquest of Plassans by Émile Zola #20BOS26 #ParisInJuly2026

After reading Émile Zola's experiment with fairy-tale romance in The Dream (Le Rêve)), it was a relief to turn to get back to what he does best: gritty social commentary. The Conquest of Plassans delivers this in abundance with a story line of greed, political opportunism and the thirst for power among the inhabitants of a sleepy provincial town.

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Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz #20BOS26

After the intensity of my last #20booksofsummer book — Quartet by Jean Rhys — I badly needed something that was less demanding. Magpie Murders fitted the bill nicely. It's a murder mystery with echoes of those classic Poirot tales set in a small English village. Actually it's two murder mysteries created using the nested narrative device. The premise is that author Alan Conway is found dead just days after handing in the latest title in his best selling crime series.

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Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon —an Irish spin on classical tragedy

In ancient Sicily two jobless young potters embark on an audacious scheme to stage a production of Greek tragedies in a quarry. The pair have oodles of passion and enthusiasm but little common sense. They don't have two drachmas to rub together. And they completely lack experience of the theatrical world. What could possibly go wrong? Rather a lot as it turns out because they completely misjudge how the authorities and citizens of Syracuse will react to their scheme.

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Spell the Month in Books: July 2026

I've neglected Spell the Month in Books in the last few months. It was only when I saw a few posts in my blog feed that I remembered all about this meme. It's perfect timing actually because ithe current heatwave in the UK has frazzled my brain so much I don't think I have the energy to write a book review.

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Quartet by Jean Rhys #20BOS26 

Painters and writers. Smoke-filled cafes. Rain-slicked streets, Grubby, cheap hotels. This is life in 1920s bohemian Paris as seen in Jean Rhys's first novel. Quartet. Exciting, liberated, vibrant on the outside but with a dark underbelly, particularly for those without money like the young Englishwoman Marya Zelli, She finds herself stranded and penniless in the city when her Polish husband is arrested and imprisoned for trafficking in stolen art works.

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My Reading Life: June 2026

Does anyone else find it difficult to decide what books to take on holiday? In the days before I set off, I keep changing my mind about which books to pack. What if I finish all of them before the holiday is over? What if I don't care for the ones I've chosen? Not a problem if you're visiting an English-speaking country where there's a good chance of finding a book-shop in a decent size town.

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Winter People by Gráinne Murphy #20BOS26 

Winter People was the perfect reading companion for my recent tour of Ireland's wild Atlantic coastline. Gráinne Murphy doesn't give any place names but i suspect we're in Western Cork since that's where she lives. It just so happened that's exactly where I was when I started reading the book. Winter People is a tale of three broken and damaged individuals who live on the edge of a small town near the sea.

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Afterlives by Abdulrazak Gurnah — living through colonialism

I've read scores of novels dealing with the damage caused by colonial ambitions in India and south east Asia, but until recently, little that related to Africa. Though I know Germany had a significant presence in South Africa and Namibia, I hadn't appreciated they were so active in East Africa (the region that is now Tanzania) nor the level of brutality they exacted on the local population.

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Review round up: Nita Prose & Louise Penny

I cancelled my Audible subscription some months back when I discovered that my subscription plan wouldn't allow me to download files and listen off line. So for entertainment/distraction while in the gym I've had to rely on the audiobook options available via my local library service. They'e not wonderful — the selection is very heavily weighted towards thrillers, crime and popular authors like Lucinda Riley.

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The Year of Less by Cait Flanders — inside the mind of a shopaholic

Ever felt you have far too much stuff in your home? Cait Flanders set out to tackle the problem with a year-long shopping ban. The Year of Less documents that experiment

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The Correspondent by Virginia Evans — life between the lines

One of my favourite episodes in Alan Bennett's Talking Heads series of dramatic monologues concerns a voracious letter-writer. The main character in A Lady of Letters, Irene Ruddock , hides her loneliness behind a stream of letters to newspapers, grieving relatives of a woman she barely knew, The Queen, crematorium officials and the police. Sybil Van Antwerp, the central figure in Virginia Evans's…

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My Reading Life: May 2026

May was the month in which I decided to part company with Angela Thirkell and her Barsetshire Chronicles series. I know she's much loved by readers for her humorous depiction of English village life between the wars. But they're not to my taste. There are thirty books in this series.I read the first one — High Rising — ten years ago and thought then, that would be my first and last.

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Pulse by Cynan Jones — nature in the raw

Pulse is another lean, intense work of fiction by Welsh author Cynan Jones. This is a collection of short stories deeply rooted in the rural life Jones knows so well — he was born in a traditional farming community in West Wales and worked on the land before becoming a writer. The world of Pulse is very similar to that depicted in his short novels, …

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#10Books of Summer — a sort of plan

Summer is fast approaching which means it's time once more for the #20BooksofSummer #20BOS26 reading challenge. I've joined in every year for the past ten years but have never once got close to reading twenty books.  So I'm being realistic this year and shooting for the #10booksofsummer option while hoping to do do a little better than that. That's what I love about this "challenge" — it's so flexible.

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A Long Winter by Colm Tóibin — Review

Every book by Colm Tóbin I've read to date has had a female central character. The novella A Long Winter demonstrates without question that he can write from a male perspective just as powerfully. This is a story about loss and survival told from the perspective of Miquel, a young man in his early twenties. One morning in the depths of winter, his mother goes missing from their home high in the Pyrenees.

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Classic Club Spin #44 Lands On Jean Rhys

The Classics Club Spin landed on number 7 thus delivering me a novel I have been intending to read for several years. Quartet ,published in 1929, was the first novel written by Jean Rhys, one of four books thought to be highly autobiographical.  It's set in Paris where Mayra and her husband Stephan live a hand-to-mouth existence supported by occasional sales of artworks.

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The Classics Club: Spin#44

it's time for another round of the classic club spin and this time I'm hoping to get Zola.

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Review round up: Emma Kavanagh, Alis Hawkins

I'm playing catch up with reviews. These two novels are both by Welsh authors but I couldn't fit them into ReadingWales'26. Falling by Emma Kavanagh Emma Kavanagh's draws on her experience as a psychologist with the police service for her debut novel Falling . It begins with a plane crash in the Black Mountains in mid Wales shortly after take off in heavy snow.

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TBR Book Jar Lucky Dip — May 2026

My TBR Book Jar has enjoyed an extended holiday over the past few months while I concentrated on books I already knew I was going to read. Now that Reading Wales, Reading Ireland and the 1961 club are behind me, I finally have an opportunity to use the jar to elp guide my decision on what to read next. For the benefit of anyone new to this blog, the idea of my TBR book jar is to select three titles on the first of each month and committ to reading one of those titles within two months.

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My Reading Life: April 2026

I ended my last "My Reading Life" update with this statement: I'm hoping to get back to my Classic Club list and pick up another couple of African authors. That's the idea - whether April will turn out that way is an entirely different matter. That turned out to be wishful thinking on my part. I didn't read any books from my Classics Club books nor did I read a single African author.

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A Fatal Crossing by Tom Hindle — a nod to the Golden Age

I missed the book club meeting which discussed Tom Hindle's murder mystery debut. I've heard since that the general consensus was that it was an entertaining read though overly long; an assessment which matches my own thoughts. A Fatal Crossing pays homage to the traditions of the Golden Age of crime mysteries, particularly those using the locked-room device. It's set in 1924 on a transatlantic steamship…

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Anderby Wold by Winfred Holtby — clash of tradition and change

For years I thought that Winifred Holtby had written only one novel — South Riding. That turned out to be far from the truth. She actually wrote six novels plus two collections of short stories and two non fiction books plus hundreds of magazine and newspaper articles. Anderby Wold was her debut novel, written in 1922 when she was just 24 years old.

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Bitter Honey by Caryl Lewis

Caryl Lewis's self-confessed obsession with bees lies behind the second novel she's written in the English language. Bitter Honey is a tale of grief, friendship and new beginnings set at Berllan Deg, an orchard farm in the Welsh countryside. The farm and its cottage become a refuge for three women at different stages of their lives, helping them to make sense of their pasts and the possibilities for new futures.

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The Lost Man by Jane Harper

Australian author Jane Harper’s third novel, The Lost Man is a twisty murder mystery that's as rich in atmosphere as her previous novels. It opens with a horrific image of a man alone in the scorching heat of the Australian outback. Hours from the nearest habitation and out of water, he crawls in the sand trying to stay in a narrow band of shade from a gravestone.

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My Reading Life: March 2026

When I decided to take on the role of hosting a month-long reading event I didn't anticipate that I wouldn't have much breathing space for reading anything unconnected to that event. I'm not complaining — I enjoyed every minute in my second year of hosting Reading Wales. I'm just explaining why there's a heavy weighting towards Welsh authors in this monthly re-cap.

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ReadingWales26: The Testimony of Taliesin Jones by Rhidian Brook :

Rhidian Brook’s debut novel The Testimony of Taliesin Jones, is a coming-of-age story about a lad searching for answers in a world of uncertainty. Eleven-year-old Taliesin (aka “Tal”) Jones has known…

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ReadingWales26: The Testimony of Taliesin Jones by Rhidian Brook

Rhidian Brook’s debut novel The Testimony of Taliesin Jones, is a coming-of-age story about a lad searching for answers in a world of uncertainty. Eleven-year-old Taliesin (aka “Tal”) Jones has known only peace and stability in his life. Until just his birthday his mother ups and leaves home to live with Toni, her hairdresser. At first, Taliesin, his older brother Jonathan and his dad behave as if she's just popped out to the shops and she'll back soon.

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ReadingWales’26: Sugar and Slate by Charlotte Williams

Sugar and Slate is a memoir that uses a mix of poetry and prose to explore the complexities of identity. Williams grew up in the coastal town of Llandudno in North Wales, the daughter of a white, Welsh-speaking mother and a Black Guyanese father. She returns again and again to the feeling that to be half-Welsh and half Afro-Caribbean was to be half of something but never quite anything whole.

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Reading Wales Month — an end in sight

Only a few days to go before the official end of Reading Wales Month '26. I can't believe I'm saying that — it feels such a short time since I posted the start of this event. Kath, my co-host at Nut Press, and I have been thrilled to see all your contributions so far and the eclectic range of books you've discovered.

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