Down the TBR Hole #17

This meme was created by Lia at Lost in a Story as a way to tackle the gargantuan To-Read shelves a lot of us have on Goodreads.

The rules are simple:

1. Go to your Goodreads To-Read shelf.
2. Order on ascending date added.
3. Take the first 5 (or 10 if you’re feeling adventurous) books
4. Read the synopses of the books
5. Decide: keep it or should it go?
6. Repeat every week until the entire list has been filtered (hmm, quite a few weeks then!)

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Here are ten more books on my To-Read shelf who need to fight for bookish survival.

The Essex Serpent by Essie Fox (added 29th June 2016)

London 1893. When Cora Seaborne’s husband dies, she steps into her new life as a widow with as much relief as sadness: her marriage was not a happy one, and she never suited the role of society wife. Accompanied by her son Francis – a curious, obsessive boy – she leaves town for Essex, where she hopes fresh air and open space will provide the refuge they need.

When they take lodgings in Colchester, rumours reach them from further up the estuary that the mythical Essex Serpent, once said to roam the marshes claiming human lives, has returned to the coastal parish of Aldwinter. Cora, a keen amateur naturalist with no patience for religion or superstition, is immediately enthralled, convinced that what the local people think is a magical beast may be a previously undiscovered species.

As she sets out on its trail, she is introduced to William Ransome, Aldwinter’s vicar. Like Cora, Will is deeply suspicious of the rumours, but he thinks they are founded on moral panic, a flight from real faith. As he tries to calm his parishioners, he and Cora strike up an intense relationship, and although they agree on absolutely nothing, they find themselves inexorably drawn together and torn apart, eventually changing each other’s lives in ways entirely unexpected.

Verdict: Keep – I love the cover (although I’ve only got an ecopy which doesn’t really do it justice), I still like the sound of this plus I’m hoping to use it for a reading challenge (a book with a mythical creature in its title). 

Time and Time Again by Ben Elton (added 5^th July 2016)

It’s the 1st of June 1914 and Hugh Stanton, ex-soldier and celebrated adventurer is quite literally the loneliest man on earth. No one he has ever known or loved has been born yet. Perhaps now they never will be.

Stanton knows that a great and terrible war is coming. A collective suicidal madness that will destroy European civilization and bring misery to millions in the century to come. He knows this because, for him, that century is already history.

Somehow he must change that history. He must prevent the war. A war that will begin with a single bullet. But can a single bullet truly corrupt an entire century? And, if so, could another single bullet save it?

Verdict: Keep – Time travel wouldn’t be something I’d usually go for in a book but the WW1 setting and the alternate history element means I’m still interested in reading this. It has great reviews as well.

Firedrake’s Eye by Patricia Finney (added 6th July 2016)

In the autumn of 1583, in the fetid alleyways of Whitefrairs, the loyal courtier Simon Ames is viciously beaten. The random prey of footpads – or victim of a subtly treasonous act? A nonsense poem written by the lunatic Tom O’Bedlam has become a favourite of London’s ballad-sellers. Who has taken the wild meanderings of a madman so seriously – and why?

Following a trail of murder, treason and terror, Ames and his dubious friend Becket set out to uncover the truth. But as they dig deep into the human midden that is Elizabethan London, puzzle becomes enigma, then riddle. What is the secret at the heart of the pageantry to be paraded before the Queen at the Accession Day tilts? Who is Tom and what does his ballad mean?

Verdict: Dump – Based on the blurb alone I really like the sound of this. However it’s written in ‘language eerily reminiscent of sixteenth-century England’. Having looked at the opening pages, I think this might make it hard work so on the pile for the charity shop it goes.  

The Pale Horseman (The Last Kingdom #2) by Bernard Cornwell (added 24th July 2016)

At the end of The Last Kingdom, The Danes had been defeated at Cynuit, but the triumph of the English is not fated to last long. The Danish Vikings quickly invade and occupy three of England’s four kingdoms – and all that remains of the once proud country is a small piece of marshland, where Alfred and his family live with a few soldiers and retainers, including Uhtred, the dispossessed English nobleman who was raised by the Danes. Uhtred has always been a Dane at heart, and has always believed that given the chance, he would fight for the men who raised him and taught him the Viking ways. But when Iseult, a powerful sorceress, enters Uhtred’s life, he is forced to consider feelings he’s never confronted before – and Uhtred discovers, in his moment of greatest peril, a new-found loyalty and love for his native country and ruler.

Verdict: Dump – Although I didn’t remember until I just checked, I have actually read the first book in this series. Although I’m not averse to some action in my historical fiction I feel as if I’ve read too many similar books in the meantime. Plus there are now thirteen books in this series and I can’t see me making my way through that lot. 

The Shadow Hour by Kate Riordan (added 8^th August 2016)

It was in the shadow hours of deepest night that this tapestry of lies fell to rags…

Harriet Jenner is just twenty-one when she walks through the gates of Fenix House. Reeling from a personal tragedy, she doesn’t expect her new life as a governess to be easy. But she certainly does not foresee the spell Fenix House will cast.

Almost fifty years later, Harriet’s granddaughter Grace follows in her footsteps. For Grace, raised on Harriet’s spellbinding stories, Fenix House is a fairy tale; a magical place suspended in time.But the now-faded grandeur of the mansion soon begins to reveal the holes in Harriet’s story and Grace finds herself in a place of secrets and shadows. For Fenix House hides truths about her family, and everything that she once knew is about to change.

Verdict: Keep – I’m in two minds about this one. On the one hand I find the book description quite appealing and it’s had good reviews. On the other hand I’ve been disappointed by a few dual time books recently and this sounds reminiscent of other books I’ve read.  A reprieve for now, I think.

The Versions of Us by Laura Barnett (added 4th September 2016)

What if you had said yes? The moments that change everything… 

A man is walking down a country lane. A woman, cycling towards him, swerves to avoid a dog. On that moment, their future hinges. There are three possible outcomes, three small decisions that could determine the rest of their life.

Eva and Jim are nineteen and students at Cambridge when their paths first cross in 1958. And then there is David, Eva’s then-lover, an ambitious actor who loves Eva deeply. The Versions of Us follows the three different courses their lives could take following this first meeting. Lives filled with love, betrayal, ambition but through it all is a deep connection that endures whatever fate might throw at them.

Verdict: Keep – Described as One Day meets Sliding Doors, this sounds an intriguing premise although judging from the reviews it has divided opinion. I think I’m sufficiently interested to keep it for now.

Daffodils by Alex Martin (added 7th September 2016)

Katy, a maidservant at Cheadle Manor, longs to escape her narrow life but events unfold slowly in her rural village. Jem Phipps has always loved Katy. His proposal of marriage rescues her from scandal but after tragedy strikes, Jem becomes a reluctant soldier on the battlefields of The First World War, leaving Katy behind, restless and alone.

Lionel White, the local curate, has just returned from India bringing a dash of colour to the small village and offers Katy a window on the wider world. Only when Katy joins up as a WAAC girl does she finally break free from the stifling class-ridden hierarchies that bind her but the brutality of 20th-century global war brings home the price she has paid for her search. Through the horrors of WW1, she discovers only love brings freedom.

Verdict: Dump – This has some really positive reviews and it’s set in WW1 which is one of my favourite periods for historical fiction. However, again it sounds similar to other books I’ve read and it doesn’t appeal quite as much as other books in my TBR pile. The cover is not really calling to me either.

Defiant Unto Death (Master of War #2) by David Gilman (added 8th September 2016)

France, 1356. Ten years ago, the greatest army in Christendom was slaughtered at Crécy when Thomas Blackstone and his fellow archers stood their ground and rained death on the steel-clad might of French chivalry. Blackstone left that squalid field a knight. Now, Blackstone commands a war band and has carved out a small fiefdom in northern France. But the wounds of war still bleed and a traitor has given the King of France the means to destroy first his family, and then the English knight himself.

As the traitor’s net tightens, so the French King’s army draws in. Blackstone will stand and fight – in pitched battle and in single combat. He will defy his friends, his family and his king. He may yet defy death, but he can’t defy his destiny.

Verdict: Keep – Another one where I’m in a quandary. I’ve really enjoyed other books by the author and I have read the first book in the series, although it was a long time ago. On the other hand there are five more books in the series after this one. On balance, since I know the author writes brilliantly, this one stays. 

Commonwealth by Ann Patchett (added 17th September 2016)

One Sunday afternoon in Southern California, Bert Cousins shows up at Franny Keating’s christening party uninvited. Before evening falls, he has kissed Franny’s mother, Beverly – thus setting in motion the dissolution of their marriages and the joining of two families.

Spanning five decades, Commonwealth explores how this chance encounter reverberates through the lives of the four parents and six children involved. Spending summers together in Virginia, the Keating and Cousins children forge a lasting bond that is based on a shared disillusionment with their parents and the strange and genuine affection that grows up between them.

When, in her twenties, Franny begins an affair with the legendary author Leon Posen and tells him about her family, the story of her siblings is no longer hers to control. Their childhood becomes the basis for his wildly successful book, ultimately forcing them to come to terms with their losses, their guilt, and the deeply loyal connection they feel for one another.

Verdict: Keep – Okay, this is an easy one because this book has had so many glowing reviews, although I’m aware there are a minority who didn’t get on with it at all. 

Conclave by Robert Harris (added 19th September 2016)

The Pope is dead.

Behind the locked doors of the Sistine Chapel, one hundred and eighteen cardinals from all over the globe will cast their votes in the world’s most secretive election. They are holy men. But they have ambition. And they have rivals.

Over the next seventy-two hours one of them will become the most powerful spiritual figure on earth.

Verdict: Keep – This one is a no-brainer because I’m a huge Robert Harris fan.

The Result – 7 kept, 3 dumped. Why is it so difficult to get rid of books you’ve had for over 5 years and still haven’t read? Would you have made different choices?