On The Same Page discussion

Read the The Iliad. My husband gave me the Emily Wilson translation for my birthday.

Read The World: A Family History of Humanity. I'm buying it as a Christmas present from my father-in-law and my mother to myself.

Read Terry Pratchett: A Life With Footnotes: The Official Biography. My 2022 birthday present from my husband.

That's it for 2024 as a challenge.

Place holder for if something comes up

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Good luck and happy reading, Carolien. I can't wait to see what you pick!! 📚📚👀

Nice prezzies from your hubby. The Terry Pratchett book sounds interesting.

The first two are definitely hefty tomes! Good luck on your challenge. Looking forward to your reviews.

I haven't read anything on my list above yet, but had a lovely January reading mainly crime novels.

I'm still inhaling James Oswald. Set in Edinburgh with a paranormal element, I read Written in Bones and The Gathering Dark in the Tony McLean series. The next in series is on the chair next to me. I also read the last in the Constance Fairchild series (this one set in Wales) Nowhere To Run which is full of Welsh mythology.

If you loved Ann Cleeves's Shetland series then you'll enjoy The Shetland Night Killings: The Shetland Sailing Mysteries, the third in a series set on the islands. I really enjoy Cass, who is independent and lives on a boat.

For Donna Leon fans, I enjoy the Nathan Sutherland series set in beautiful Venice. Nathan is the honorary UK consul in the city, a translator who deals with British tourists getting robbed and forgetting their passports, etc. Vengeance in Venice is set during the Biennale when art critics suddenly find Venice quite deadly.

I lost all will to be productive on Tuesday when the new DCI Evan Warlow arrived, The Light Remains. I adore this Welsh series with a group of functional police detectives and wicked humour.

I'm busy with Borderlands by Brian McGilloway, a new author to me. Set on the border of the Republic and Northern Ireland, I find the setting fascinating.

And I read the third in the Skelfs series The Great Silence, also set in Edinburgh. The Skelfs are the three women in the Skelf family who run a funeral undertaking and private investigation business. Dorothy, the matriarch, is searching for the body belonging to the lone foot found by her dog in the local park. Jenny, her daughter, is searching for her ex-husband who has kidnapped his own daughter (by another mother), and Hannah is studying astronomy. All while a panther prowls around the city. This is a wonderful series, I love the women.

Onwards to February. I'm going to London twice. On Monday evening I have a function at the Houses of Parliament which should be good.

I bought my first James Oswald book on your recommendation.. 😎 You've had a great month.

You are definitely a bad influence on my TBR!!

Carolien wrote: "I haven't read anything on my list above yet, but had a lovely January reading mainly crime novels.

I'm still inhaling James Oswald. Set in Edinburgh with a paranormal element, I..."

I have most of these on my list, thanks to Bill. He gets around!! I have The Borderlands on my physical shelf; so, I may grab it by summer. Great update, Carolien!! These get me excited!!

Bill wrote: "I bought my first James Oswald book on your recommendation.. 😎 You've had a great month."

I look forward to your thoughts!

I haven't read any of these books or any of these authors!! 😱
i have some serious work to do.
Happy reading in February, and I hope you'll read some of the books I've already read, otherwise I'm in real trouble.

Ioana wrote: "I haven't read any of these books or any of these authors!! 😱
i have some serious work to do.
Happy reading in February, and I hope you'll read some of the books I've already read, otherwise I'm in..."

LOL!

My February looked a lot like my January with more Tony McLean by James Oswald and Skelfs by Doug Johnstone. I've now caught up with the Skelfs, the next one is only out later this year, but highly recommend The Opposite of Lonely.

I picked up the latest Oswald which I had pre-ordered from the bookshop For Our Sins and nearly had an anxiety attack reading the blurb, so I am maniacally finishing the others in the series to find out if everything is as bad as the blurb indicates (which says a lot in this series).

I found the Leveler series by Dan Wheatcroft set in Liverpool and loved it. I read the trilogy over the course of a week. Great sense of place, but the author is a former policeman and the details are interesting. It's not the lonely detective fighting the system kind of scene, it's a major incident team with loads of interactions with other services and an assassin which I absolutely loved. The series is free on Kindle starting with The Road to Eden is Overgrown.

This then led me to another series written by a former officer, Dead Man’s Grave is the first in the series set in Scotland. Again, the procedural detail is fascinating, and it develops at a very fast pace. I've already found the next one in the library.

My brother-in-law came to visit and I managed to haul the family to Wales for a few days which allowed me to see some of the settings of the Evan Warlow series by Rhys Dylan which I enjoyed. It had all the essential elements of a trip to Wales - rain, getting lost on narrow roads and wild scenery. I was contemplating a trip to the local bookshop tonight to listen to a local author, but the weather is lousy with sleet, so will probably skip that.

A good police procedural is always interesting to read. I may check out the Leveler series.

I've read quite a lot of non-fiction recently which are worth commenting on.

In All the Wide Border: Wales, England and the Places Between, Mike Parker reflects on the border between England and Wales which at times in history has been insignificant and at other times it has had major impact. Living in Chester as I do on the border, it plays out locally where the local football stadium's main entrance is in England but the actual stands in Wales. During the Covid lockdown that resulted in the English team having to cancel games as rules differed between the areas, the Welsh team playing on the England side of the border in Oswestry had the opposite situation. A fascinating look at the places on the border and the people and perceptions.

James Rebanks is a shepherd in the Lake District and has written two beautiful books about the job of shepherding and the changes he has witnessed in his farming life since the 1980's. The Shepherd's Life: A People's History of the Lake District describes the seasonal changes and the role of the shepherd as well as a reflection on his own life trajectory from farmer's son to farmer. Pastoral Song: A Farmer’s Journey is also published as English Pastoral and won the Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing. This focuses on the changes witnessed by his grand-father and father as farming went from small family holdings to large commercial ventures sustained with fertiliser and large machinery. Both are beautifully written, not at all sentimental, but a reflection on the impact of change on communities and families.

The Farmer's Wife: My Life in Days tells the story from his wife who is farmer's wife, mother and daughter and all the roles in-between to her family. I'm looking forward to listening to her in May at a book festival.

Dust Tracks on a Road has been on my TBR for ages, it provides an interesting perspective on the author's early life and career. I especially enjoyed the descriptions of her childhood. Well worth the read.

I picked up Driven: The Men Who Made Formula One while sipping a glass of wine at the main library waiting for my daughter and it is a fascinating look at the managers and team owners of Formula 1. The development of the sport from being essentially a bunch of garage mechanics scraping together the money to build and race cars to the commercial behemoth of the modern era was fascinating. I still occasionally watch a race, but essentially stopped watching after the death of Ayrton Senna and this was a very readable overview from the constructor perspective.

I found Three Houses by Angela Thirkell a lovely read. A memoir recounting her childhood through her childhood home and her grand-parents' house in Kensington and their house near Brighton. I never quite appreciated how she was related to a number of famous people of the era, but here Rudyard Kipling is her older cousin, Arts and Crafts luminaries including William Morris wander through the lounge and her grand-father, Edward Burne-Jones, paints pictures for her on the wall of the nursery. Mellow, but interesting.

I'm reading Into the Woods: A Five Act Journey Into Story on story structure at the moment which is a good read on how stories are constructed and has changed over time.

Major dud of the month was Bad for Good, the author used to be a Chief Superintendent of Police. This has an endless cast of characters who all end up being very superficial, absolutely zero humour and too long by about 100 pages.

Best read Opal Country which is set in the Australian Outback, excellent plot and interesting characters. Going to continue reading this series.

I'm looking forward to the online Welsh Crime Festival starting this week. I've read quite a few of the authors speaking on Friday, so hopefully it will be good. https://gwylcrimecymrufestival.co.uk/....

Also hoping to sneak to a session or two in Wrexham during the next week. https://wrexhamcarnivalofwords.com/

You can sip wine at your library?!?

What a great bunch of books you've read, Carolien! I haven't read any of them, but most look amazing and need to go on my TBR. A lot of them (like Opal Country) aren't at my libraries, so it is fun trying to figure out how to get copies. How fun that you have your book festivals! Happy reading!

Our main library is part of an incredible place. It's called Storyhouse and there is a theatre, cinema, restaurant and bar, library and community spaces. It's open pretty much every day until late, so if I have to wait for anyone in town, I park myself there and have coffee or wine depending on the time of day and look at the books!

https://www.storyhouse.com/

The library is spread over multiple floors and passages so it is sometimes a bit of a search to figure out where the next letter in the alphabet or topic is housed, but it adds to the fun!

Carolien wrote: "Our main library is part of an incredible place. It's called Storyhouse and there is a theatre, cinema, restaurant and bar, library and community spaces. It's open pretty much every day until late, so if I have to wait for anyone in town, I park myself there and have coffee or wine depending on the time of day and look at the books!

https://www.storyhouse.com/

The library is spread over multiple floors and passages so it is sometimes a bit of a search to figure out where the next letter in the alphabet or topic is housed, but it adds to the fun!"

That sounds amazing! What a great place to visit!

Seems like great variety, Carolien. I hope you enjoy the rest of your April selections.

I have been reading mainly to please myself this year, and am trying to start and finish series if possible.

I read everything by Chris Hammer who just gets better with each book. His books are published under different titles in different countries for some reason, but all are excellent. Fortunately there is a new one on the horizon.

The Space Between Us was such a wonderful first encounters read described by Doug Johnstone as E.T. meets Thelma and Louise. An octopus like creature washes up on the beach near Edinburgh and three people with little connection set out on a road trip across Scotland with an abusive husband, the police and a shadowy government agency in tow to get the octopus to safety. Even if you don't like sci-fi (especially if you don't like sci-fi) this one is for you. Loved it.

Talking about road trips, I read Hunted which is a new direction for Abir Mukherjee as a thriller playing out across the US starting in Portland and ending in Florida with an assassination attempt on the candidates of the Presidential Election. Sounds familiar? It focuses on two parents who will do anything to save their children from death and I enjoyed it.

You Can Run is the opposite of a road trip and set in a small, snowed in village in Northumbria. A group of mercenaries arrives to capture a teenage girl whose father had lived a bit like a hermit and it doesn't go according to plan as the locals step in to show the soldiers the same welcome the Vikings received. I loved it and I really want to read more by Trevor Wood.

I've listened to interviews with Elly Griffiths and thought I'd try some of her newer books (less books in the series to catch up that way I thought). I started with The Stranger Diaries set in modern day Brighton where an English teacher finds parallels between a short-story written by the Victorian owner of the school building and present day murders. The second series is set in the 1950's variety show world in Brighton in the The Zig Zag Girl. I enjoyed both and am waiting for the next in series from the library.

I picked up The Turning of our Bones in London at the Capital Crime Festival and have found the DI Rob Marshall series completely addictive. Set in the Scottish Borders, Rob Marshall trained as a criminal profiler, but became a policeman to have more direct influence on how his knowledge is applied. I read my way through the whole series on various train trips this month. I'm very pleased to have an excuse to visit the area later this year!

Lastly I started reading The Last Dance by Mark Billingham (one of the members of the Fun Lovin' Crime Writers Band with Doug Johnstone). Strictly come Dancing is a weekly ritual in the UK and this series is based in Blackpool with a detective who loves ballroom dancing. Detective Miller's wife has also recently been killed by one of the local crime bosses, but in the first instalment he is finding a the killer of two men in a local hotel. It's comedy and I thoroughly enjoyed the characters. I picked up Sleepyhead which was the author's first book on another visit to Euston station this month. It is one of the most original methods of killing I've read in a long time and the victim is central to the story line.

Should add a few authors to your lists!

You've a nice varied list, Carolien. Stop giving me ideas for new reads.. ;0)

Carolien wrote: "I have been reading mainly to please myself this year, and am trying to start and finish series if possible."

I love this! I've realized that I've gotten caught up in the "finish the next on the list" once too many times this year. On the one hand, I like having a challenge list but on the other, I love following my nose seeing where I end up.

As always, I'll be looking up the books you've read since they all sound interesting.

I should have posted some updates during the second part of the year, but it has been a bit chaotic with my mother not doing too well in South Africa and having to go and see her twice, plus children writing exams and work needing a lot of attention.

I continued reading for pleasure and having spent quite a bit of time in South Africa read quite a lot of Afrikaans books as a result. The only author who has been translated is Irma Venter who writes South African crime novels.

I occasionally catch an episode of Murder in Paradise on TV here in the UK and decided to try The Marlow Murder Club by the originator of the series. If you are a fan of The Thursday Murder Club definitely find this series, the plot is much more complex and a lovely cast of characters.

I discovered the DI Ian Drake series set in gorgeous North Wales by Stephen Puleston, the first in the series is Brass in Pocket also published as Songs for the Dead. They are well plotted and I am enjoying the setting as it is all within easy distance from our home.

One of the highlights of the year was a trip to the Bloody Scotland book festival in Stirling, just outside Edinburgh. It's been on my bucket list since Caro Ramsay wrote about it a decade ago. It's a lovely little town and a brilliant festival. As a result I discovered J.D. Kirk who has written a series set around Inverness. In his own words, his readers are invested in his characters and there happens to be crimes around. Thoroughly enjoying the series, starting with A Litter of Bones.

Neil Lancaster whose Max Craigie series I inhaled earlier in the year, recommended Denzil Meyrick as another former police officer now writing crime novels to me. I've read the first two in the series and can thoroughly recommend them, starting with Whisky from Small Glasses.

Something different is Andy Griffee's series set on a canal boat starting with Canal Pushers. As he himself acknowledged, it is a different kind of crime book when any chase happens at only slightly speedier than walking pace!

For fans of legal thrillers, worth taking a look at Tony Kent, who combines a criminal barrister with a master spy in his series. Great pace and plotting.

I'm reading Ann Cleeves's Two Rivers series starting with The Long Call which I am enjoying very much, she remains such a wonderful author.

Part of my work currently involves assessing coastal flood risk to some of our customers and I have been reading up on the Fen landscape in Norfolk/Lincolnshire as a result. On the non-fiction side The Fens: Discovering England's Ancient Depths has been very insightful and when I then read The Crossing Places it was an interesting collision of the fictional and reality. Elly Griffiths mentions some of Francis Pryor's earlier work as part of her research. I enjoyed the first in the series and will continue them.

Hopefully in 2025 I'll be more regular in posting some updates!

Happy reading in 2025 everyone!

You're quite right. The Marlow Murder Club was most enjoyable. My wife and I loved it.

Interesting update as always and more for my TBR. Sorry about your mother. Hope she is better.

Happy Reading in '25!

I have added so many books to my tbr from your 2025 update. I don't need to see this!! 😩

I do hope your mom is doing better. It's hard when they are so far away; but I am glad you were able to go see her.

That Bloody Scotland book festival sounds awesome. I am hoping to start my bucket list of book shenanigans in the next 2 years.

Congratulations on all of your progress!