Top Ten Tuesday: Books Read During Hiatus

Posted on by The Book Lover's Sanctuary

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.

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Well, it’s been a while since I have done one of these posts… or any posts for that matter.

Life chose to become complicated and difficult for a little while back there!

Following on from the stress of the landlord giving us notice to quit, the process of finding a new house, deciding to investigate buying rather than renting, negotiating mortgages and making offers and putting together deposits and instructing solicitors… all took some time and generates some stress.

And alongside that, my dad’s health took a rapid down hill plunge. He had been suffering from cancer for some years but it had spread from prostate to bowel to bones. In the space of ten days he went from being active enough to be considering going for a drive to unable to manage the stairs to bedbound and then died. Over the last couple of months, I have been travelling up and down to Kent, a four and a half hour trip at the best of times, to initially visit and provide and arrange care, to support my mum when he died, to sort out funeral arrangements and the will… Some things had to give and for a while, the blog was one.

There were things that I did keep going to maintain my own mental health though: I kept up my Italian lessons and completed DuoLingo’s course, I kept up my running and of course, I kept up my reading.

So, I thought I’d take the opportunity this week – because I didn’t really feel the theme to be honest – just to recap the reading that I have been doing since I last posted, well, anything back in February.

Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

Mrs Bennet has five daughters to marry. Not easy when they have a small dowry, and suitors are scarce. But a new young gentleman has just arrived at Netherfield Park, the neighbouring estate, and the good manners of the English gentry of the Regency era quickly arrange a ball to meet him.

Mr Bingley soon becomes involved with the eldest daughter, Jane, and there is almost talk of marriage. The same cannot be said of his youngest daughter, Elizabeth, who for her part has met the man who is certainly the proudest in the county in the person of Mr. Darcy, a friend of Mr. Bingley’s, with whom she has an icy, barely polite relationship. This rather obnoxious and haughty character, however, takes a great interest in this sassy, witty and independent young woman.

If you are talking iconic and monumental books, you cannot get more iconic than Pride and Prejudice, can you? Part of my quest to revisit some of the classics, I thoroughly enjoyed re-reading this – it is charming and witty and the characters just sparkle, even the dour faced Mr Darcy.

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Weyward, Emilia Hart

Three women, five centuries, one spellbinding story

In the present day, Kate flees a traumatic relationship to the Cumbrian cottage she inherited from her great-aunt; but the cottage hides secrets of its own.

In 1942, Violet rebels against her father’s ideas of a ‘proper young lady’ . . . until he takes matters into his own hands.

In 1619, Altha is on trial for witchcraft, implicated in the gruesome death of a local man.

Three women they tried to cage – but Weyward women belong to the wild. And they cannot be tamed…

I loved the interwoven tales in this novel and Hart’s creation of women’s voices across time – aided by a great audiobook cast – was wonderful! Be cautious: all these narratives are pretty brutal and populated by almost unwaveringly brutal men and there is violence, abuse and rape depicted here as well as some visceral depictions of miscarriage and abortion. Hurrah for the one decent fraternal relationship we see between a male and female.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

The Maiden, Kate Foster

In the end, it did not matter what I said at my trial. No one believed me.

Edinburgh, October 1679. Lady Christian is arrested and charged with the murder of her lover, James Forrester. News of her imprisonment and subsequent trial is splashed across the broadsides, with headlines that leave little room for doubt: Adulteress. Whore. Murderess.

Only a year before, Lady Christian was newly married, leading a life of privilege and respectability. So, what led her to risk everything for an affair? And does that make her guilty of murder? She wasn’t the only woman in Forrester’s life, and certainly not the only one who might have had cause to wish him dead . . .

This was the first book I read from the Women’s Prize Longlist, and although I really enjoyed it, I do not think it would warrant a place on the shortlist. It is a great historical fiction, a murder mystery based on a true crime from the seventeenth century, told primarily in two narrative voices, those of the aristocratic Lady Christian and of Violet, a prostitute from Edinburgh. There was a third woman involved with Lord James Forrester too and part of me would have liked her voice included too…

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Restless Dolly Maunder, Kate Grenville

Dolly Maunder is born at the end of the nineteenth century, when society’s long-locked doors are just starting to creak ajar for determined women. Growing up in a poor farming family in rural New South Wales, Dolly spends her life doggedly pushing at those doors. A husband and two children do not deter her from searching for love and independence.

Restless Dolly Maunder is a subversive, triumphant tale of a pioneering woman working her way through a world of limits and obstacles, who is able – despite the cost – to make a life she could call her own.

I really liked this one – the moment in time that Dolly Maunder’s life covers is genuinely one of pivotal changes and the additional familial poignancy – I believe Dolly Maunder was indeed Grenville’s grandmother, it was not a fictional construct as in Graeme Macrae Burnet’s His Bloody Project – brought a humanity and intimacy to the novel which its almsot frenetic pace sometimes needed. Was Dolly Maunder an unexceptional everywoman as Grenville claims? Her compulsive restlessness, her extraordinary flair in business, her sucess with money would suggest not – this was an exceptional woman! Can I be charmed by a businesswoman whose maternal instincts had been stunted and fractured? Well yes. Can a writer combine gorgeous imagery with an authentic voice, absolutely!

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

Meddling Kids, Edgar Cantaro

SUMMER 1977. The Blyton Summer Detective Club (of Blyton Hills, a small mining town in Oregon’s Zoinx River Valley) solved their final mystery and unmasked the elusive Sleepy Lake monster another low-life fortune hunter trying to get his dirty hands on the legendary riches hidden in Deboën Mansion. And he would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for those meddling kids.
1990. The former detectives have grown up and apart, each haunted by disturbing memories of their final night in the old haunted house. There are too many strange, half-remembered encounters and events that cannot be dismissed or explained away by a guy in a mask. And Andy, the once intrepid tomboy now wanted in two states, is tired of running from her demons. She needs answers. To find them she will need Kerri, the one-time kid genius and budding biologist, now drinking her ghosts away in New York with Tim, an excitable Weimaraner descended from the original canine member of the club. They will also have to get Nate, the horror nerd currently residing in an asylum in Arkham, Massachusetts. Luckily Nate has not lost contact with Peter, the handsome jock turned movie star who was once their team leader… which is remarkable, considering Peter has been dead for years.
The time has come to get the team back together, face their fears, and find out what actually happened all those years ago at Sleepy Lake. It’s their only chance to end the nightmares and, perhaps, save the world.

The Scooby Doo confront a genuine necromancer and Lovecraftian God… This is one of those novels that delivers what it sets out to! Andy, Kerri, Nate and ghost Peter who may or may not be an hallucination, along with loveable canine companion are a band of cliches. The language in the novel is not literary, it has some very odd verbifications in places as Cantero throws in nouns repurposed as verbs, and suddenly veers into screenplay dialogue formatting before careening back to narrative… it was jarring to read… but also great fun. Quite a lot of gore and violence. Some slightly clunky romance. Kerri’s hair is practically treated as a character. But somehow compelling.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5.

Close to Death, Anthony Horowitz

Richmond Upon Thames is one of the most desirable areas to live in London. And Riverview Close – a quiet, gated community – seems to offer its inhabitants the perfect life.

At least it does until Giles Kenworthy moves in with his wife and noisy children, his four gas-guzzling cars, his loud parties and his plans for a new swimming pool in his garden.

His neighbours all have a reason to hate him and are soon up in arms.

When Kenworthy is shot dead with a crossbow bolt through his neck, all of them come under suspicion and his murder opens the door to lies, deception and further death.

The police are baffled. Reluctantly, they call in former Detective Daniel Hawthorne. But even he is faced with a seemingly impossible puzzle.

How do you solve a murder when everyone has the same motive?

Another Hawthorne and Horowitz novel… but with a twist: the pub on the title steps away from the linguistic puns of the other novels in the series, and this narration is not directly Horowitz’ own: this is an old case that Hawthorne allows Horowitz to publish. It therefore is not so dissimilar to the Sherlock Holmes stories that buck the trend of Watson’s narration and have Holmes narrate his own prior cases. And that echo is surely acknowledged in spirit in these novels! The story itself is right out of Midsomer Murders: a quiet isolated location, the outsider who has annoyed the whole community ends up dead. Investigations happen.

I did like Horowitz’ ruminations about the writing process though – the different between first and third person . And again we discover more about the enigma that is Hawthorne but, as always, the more we learn simply raises more questions…

Rating: 4 out of 5.

What Feasts At Night, T. Kingfisher

When Alex Easton travels to Gallacia as a favour to their friend, the excellent Miss Potter, they find their home empty, the caretaker dead, and the grounds blanketed by an uncanny silence. The locals won’t talk about what happened to the caretaker. None of them will set foot on the grounds.

Whispers of an unearthly breath-stealing creature from Gallacian folklore don’t trouble practical Easton. But as strange visions disturb their sleep and odd happenings increase, they are forced to confront the dark shadow that hangs over the house…

I loved What Moves The Dead and was looking forward to this one – Alex Easton is back; the indefatiguable Miss Potter is back; the surly Angus is back. This time, after a stay in Paris, Alex has retreated to Gallacia where he encounters the supernatural again. This time, it is a genuinely supernatural antagonist, unlike the scientifically explicable fungi of What Moves…: the moroi, a vampiric ghost stealing your breath as you sleep. It was a great rollicking read, fast paced and well written. What Moves… has its share of body horror and there is perhaps less here… but for those of you who have an affinity to animals and horses, there is a particularly chilling moment.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

A Prayer for the Crown-Shy, Becky Chambers

After touring the rural areas of Panga, Sibling Dex (a Tea Monk of some renown) and Mosscap (a robot sent on a quest to determine what humanity really needs) turn their attention to the villages and cities of the little moon they call home. They hope to find the answers they seek, while making new friends, learning new concepts, and experiencing the entropic nature of the universe. Becky Chambers’s new series continues to ask: in a world where people have what they want, does having more even matter?

After all that had happened in the last few weeks, I needed a breath of fresh air and of calmness and of peace and Becky Chambers – particularly in the Monk and Robot novellas – delivers that. This was beautiful and charming and peaceful as Sibling Dex and Mosscap reverse the journey of the first book and head out of the wilds and towards the city. They encounter people. Those people are good. Nice things happen. Dex gets laid. Mosscap waterskis. There is a lovely moment when they discuss currency in their barter credit economy and Mosscap wonders what happens when you run out of credit. The answer, people come round and care for you because obviously something is amiss. I loved it but, for me, I think I preferred the first book, Psalm for the Wild-Built.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

How to Sell A Hounted House, Grady Hendrix

Every childhood home is haunted, and each of us are possessed by our parents.

When their parents are both killed in a car accident, Louise and Mark Joyner are devastated but nothing can prepare them for how bad things are about to get. The two siblings are almost totally estranged, and couldn’t be more different. Now, however, both with equally empty bank accounts, they don’t have a choice but to get along. Their one asset? Their childhood home. They need to get it on the market as soon as possible because they need the money. Yet the house has morphed into a hoarder’s paradise, and before they died their parents nailed shut the attic door…

Sometimes we feel like puppets, controlled by our upbringing and our genes. Sometimes we feel like our parents treat us like toys, or playthings, or even dolls. The past can ground us, teach us, and keep us safe. It can also trap us, and bind us, and suffocate the life out of us. As disturbing events stack up in the house, Louise and Mark have to learn that sometimes the only way to break away from the past, sometimes the only way to sell a haunted house, is to burn it all down.

Peace is not what I’d expect in a Hendrix novel and this did not therefore disappoint: it was a classic haunted house tale in many ways with tension building and falling and ratcheting back up again regularly; with its fair share of horror film tropes – haunted dolls; with its fair share of violence, body horror – and some minor dismemberment. Could the revelations about the past that both Louise and Mark make have been managed better? Yeah probably. Did the novel careen forward with an rollicking pace? Oh yes. A fun read that required little thinking!

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Wolf Den, Elodie Harper

Sold by her mother. Enslaved in Pompeii’s brothel. Determined to survive. Her name is Amara. Welcome to the Wolf Den…

Amara was once a beloved daughter, until her father’s death plunged her family into penury. Now, she is owned by a man she despises and lives as a slave in Pompeii’s infamous brothel, her only value the desire she can stir in others.

But Amara’s spirit is far from broken. Sharp, resourceful and surrounded by women whose humour and dreams she shares, Amara comes to realise that everything in this city has its price. But how much will her freedom cost?

This had been on my TBR list for a long time and somehow I never quite got around to it. It is a harrowing tale of an enslaved whore, whose life is just as appalling and awful as you would imagine, its horrors relieved only a touch by her camaraderie with her other slave-whores and the glimpses of a chance for love outside the brothel. Amara was a convincing and compelling protagonist, striving for what tiny agency she could find, and the world created by Harper felt authentic and real. I will be reading the next in the series to see how Amara works as a protagonist with more real agency.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

A Desolation Called Peace, Arkady Martine

An alien terror could spell our end.

An alien threat lurks on the edges of Teixcalaanli space. No one can communicate with it, no one can destroy it, and Fleet Captain Nine Hibiscus is supposed to win a war against it.

In a desperate attempt to find a diplomatic solution, the fleet captain has sent for an envoy to contact the mysterious invaders. Now Mahit Dzmare and Three Seagrass – both still reeling from the recent upheaval in the Empire – face an impossible task: they must attempt to negotiate with a hostile entity, without inadvertently triggering the destruction of themselves and the Empire.

Whether they succeed or fail could change the face of Teixcalaan forever.

A Desolation Called Peace is the second book in the Teixcalaan duology.

I loved Martine’s A Memory Called Empire and was looking forward to the sequel which takes us away from the city – and planet – of Teixcalaan and into space where mysterious alien ships threaten the empire. These are the aliens that Mahit Dzmare used to secure her station’s security at the end of the first book. Could I quite get over the unlikelihood of either Three Seagrass or Mahit being involved in an alien first contact scenario – which seemed to be completely outside the experiences and training or skillset of either character from the first book? No, that really was a stumbling block. I’d have so preferred this to have been two different characters, a standalone novel in the same world – but that may just be me. Once in space, the fighting, the politics between captains and between ministries in Teixcalaan and the characters both old and new were fantastic – and I loved the aliens too.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Upcoming Top Ten Tuesday Themes

April 23: Unread Books on My Shelves I Want to Read Soon (Bonus points if you tell us how long it’s been sitting on your shelf waiting for you.)
April 30: Petty Reasons You’ve DNF’d a Book (Or reduced its rating. You don’t even have to say what the book was if you don’t want to!)
May 7: May Flowers — Pick your own title for this one to reflect the direction you choose to go with this prompt (books with flowers on the cover, flower names in the title, characters whose names are flower names, stories involving flowers/gardeners)
May 14: Favorite Book Quotes (You can pick your favorite quotes from books, or about books! You can set a theme like quotes from books about love, friendship, hope, etc. or you can just share quotes you loved from your recent reads!)
May 21: Authors I’d Love a New Book From (These could be authors that have passed away, who have retired from writing, who have inexplicably gone quiet, or who might jut not be able to keep up with how quickly you read their books!)
May 28: Books I Was Super Excited to Get My Hands on but Still Haven’t Read
June 4: Books I Had VERY Strong Emotions About (Any emotion! Did a book make you super happy or sad? Angry? Terrified? Surprised?)
June 11: Bookish Wishes (List the top 10 books you’d love to own and include a link to your wishlist so that people can grant your wishes. Make sure you link your wishlist to your mailing address or include the email address associated with your e-reader in the list description so people know how to get the book to you. After you post, jump around the Linky and grant a wish or two if you’d like. Please don’t feel obligated to send anything to anyone!)
June 18: Books on My Summer 2024 To-Read List
June 25: Most Anticipated Books Releasing During the Second Half of 2024

Published by The Book Lover's Sanctuary

#bookblogger, teacher, father | he / him |

9 thoughts on “Top Ten Tuesday: Books Read During Hiatus”

  1. Sorry for your loss. I’m glad you were able to keep up your running and reading during such a difficult time since both would help with stress relief. I hope the coming months are much better for you and your family.

    Liked by 1 person

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