Down the TBR Hole #30

This meme was originally 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 until the entire list has been filtered

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It’s time for me to attempt a bit more pruning of my To-Read shelf on Goodreads which now contains 483 books, down six from last time…. Let’s see if I can reduce that still further. Come on books, you need to fight to retain my interest!

An Unsuitable Match by Joanna Trollope (added 14th March 2018)

Rose Woodrowe is getting married to Tyler Masson – a wonderful, sensitive man who is head-over-heels in love with her. The only problem? This isn’t the first time for either of them. And when you marry later in life there are a lot more people to consider. Like Rose’s daughter, Laura, who remembers her mom’s first marriage and doesn’t want her to get hurt again. Or the twins, Emmy and Nat, who are used to their mom being there for them whenever and for whatever they need.

And then there’s Tyler’s children: Mallory, a young actress who craves her father’s attention; and Seth, whose San Francisco bakery is just taking off and needs all the money he can get. Rose and Tyler are determined to get it right this time, but in trying to make everyone happy, can they ever be happy themselves?

Verdict: Dump – I’ve never read a book by Joanna Trollope and I think this must have been a giveaway prize as I don’t recall buying it. Although it’s a hardback copy, the blurb doesn’t really set my pulse racing so this will be making its way to my local charity bookshop and, hopefully, an appreciative reader.

You Don’t Know Me by Imran Mahmood (added 14th March 2018)

An unnamed defendant stands accused of murder. Just before the Closing Speeches, the young man sacks his lawyer, and decides to give his own defence speech.

He tells us that his barrister told him to leave some things out. Sometimes, the truth can be too difficult to explain, or believe. But he thinks that if he’s going to go down for life, he might as well go down telling the truth.

There are eight pieces of evidence against him. As he talks us through them one by one, his life is in our hands. We, the reader – member of the jury – must keep an open mind till we hear the end of his story. His defence raises many questions… but at the end of the speeches, only one matters: Did he do it?

Verdict: Keep – I still like the sound of this one.

The Death Chamber (The Detective’s Daughter #6) by Lesley Thomson (added 18th March 2018)

Queen’s Jubilee, 1977: Cassie Baker sees her boyfriend kissing another girl at the village disco. Upset, she heads home alone and is never seen again.

Millennium Eve, 1999: DCI Paul Mercer finds Cassie’s remains in a field. Now he must prove the man who led him there is guilty.

When Mercer’s daughter asks Stella Darnell for help solving the murder, Stella see echoes of herself. Another detective’s daughter.

With her sidekick sleuth, Jack, Stella moves to Winchcombe, where DCI Mercer and his prime suspect have been playing cat and mouse for the past eighteen years…

Verdict: Keep – I’ve read The Playground Murders which was the seventh in the series and I have a hardback copy of the sixth, The Dog Walker, in my TBR pile. I also have a NetGalley copy of book eight, The Distant Dead on my Kindle so I think it’s quite clear I like this series. But not enough to read them, I hear you point out.

The Antipodeans by Greg McGee (added 18th March 2018)

Three Generations. Two Continents. One Forgotten Secret.

2014. Clare and her father travel to Venice from New Zealand. She is fleeing a broken marriage, he is in failing health and wants to return one last time to the place where, as a young man, he spent happy years as a rugby player and coach. While exploring Venice, Clare discovers there is more to her father’s motives for returning than she realised and time may be running out for him to put old demons to rest.

1942. Joe and Harry, two Kiwi POWs in Italy, manage to escape their captors, largely due to the help of a sympathetic Italian family who shelter them on their farm. Soon they are fighting alongside the partisans in the mountains, but both men have formed a bond with Donatella, the daughter of the family, a bond that will have dramatic repercussions decades later.

Verdict: Keep – I feel guilty that I was sent this by the publisher over four years ago and haven’t yet read it, let alone reviewed it. I’m a little worried about the dual time line structure because it doesn’t always work for me and the fact the publishers describe it as ‘a novel of epic proportions’ (which usually means long). Actually it’s 346 pages which is not ‘epic’ in my book (forgive the pun). It stays for now… 

The Legacy of Elizabeth Pringle by Kirsty Wark (added 29th March 2018)

Elizabeth Pringle lived all her long life on the Scottish island of Arran. But did anyone really know her?

In her will she leaves her beloved house, Holmlea, to a stranger – a young mother she’d seen pushing a pram down the road over thirty years ago. It now falls to Martha, once the baby in that pram, to answer the question: why?

Martha is coping with her mother’s dementia and the possibility of a new life on Arran could be a new start.

Verdict: Keep – I read the author’s subsequent book The House by the Loch in 2020 and gave it 4 stars. The Legacy of Elizabeth Pringle is another book that was on my list for the 20 Books of Summer 2022 reading challenge, a list I’m still trying to work my way through. According to Goodreads, this book was nominated for the Bad Sex in Fiction Award 2014. I’m not sure if that should put me off or make me more interested to read it. Probably the latter, to be honest.

Black Out (Inspector Troy #1) by John Lawton (added 30th March 2018) 

The Blitz, London, 1944. As the Luftwaffe make their last desperate assault on the city, Londoners take to the shelters once again and eagerly await the signal for D-Day. In the East End children lead police to a charred, dismembered corpse buried in a bombsite. The victim is German and it soon becomes clear that this is no ordinary murder.

For Russian emigré Detective-Sergeant Troy it is the start of a manhunt which will lead him into a world of military intelligence and corruption in high places; a manhunt in which Troy is both the hunter and the hunted.

Verdict: Keep – A book described by the publishers as ‘a stunning wartime thriller’ in the tradition of John le Carré is always going to attract my attention. The series comprises eight books and the only one I’ve read so far is the last one. I really enjoyed it so, guess what, I added all the previous books in the series to my wishlist. This is the only one I actually own a copy of right now. Another reason for keeping it is John Lawton is the author of another series I really like.

The Painter of Souls by Philip Kazan  (added 14th April 2018)

Beauty can be a gift…or a wicked temptation…

So it is for Filippo Lippi, growing up in Renaissance Florence. He has a talent – not only can he see the beauty in everything, he can capture it, paint it. But while beauty can seduce you, and art can transport you – it cannot always feed you or protect you.

To survive, Pippo Lippi, orphan, street urchin, budding rogue, must first become Fra Filippo Lippi: Carmelite friar, man of God. His life will take him down two paths at once. He will become a gambler, a forger, a seducer of nuns; and at the same time he will be the greatest painter of his time, the teacher of Botticelli and the confidante of the Medicis.

So who is he really – lover, believer, father, teacher, artist? Which man? Which life? Is anything true except the paintings?

Verdict: Keep – This is going well, isn’t it? Yet another book that was on my list for the 20 Books of Summer 2022 reading challenge. I first discovered this author when I read Black Earth as part of a blog tour. It was one of my favourite books that year and I also devoured the author’s next book The Phoenix of Florence. 

Appetite by Philip Kazan (added 14th April 2018)

In Florence, everyone has a passion. With 60,000 souls inside the city, crammed into a cobweb of clattering streets, countless alleys, towers, workshops, tanneries, cloisters, churches and burial grounds, they live their lives in the narrow world between the walls. Nino Latini knows that if you want to survive without losing yourself completely, then you’ve got to have a passion.

But Nino’s greatest gift will be his greatest curse. Nino can taste things that other people cannot. Every flavour, every ingredient comes alive for him as vividly as a painting and he puts his artistry to increasingly extravagant use.

In an age of gluttony and conspicuous consumption, his unique talent leads him into danger. His desire for the beautiful Tessina Delmazza and his longing to create the perfect feast could prove deadly. Nino must flee Florence to save his life and if he ever wants to see his beloved again, he must entrust himself entirely to the tender mercies of fortune.

Verdict: Keep – Everything I said above! Plus, I’m disappointed the author hasn’t published anything since although in a blog post in 2020 he did say he was working on another novel. 

March Violets (Bernie Gunther #1) by Philip Kerr (added 14th April 2018)

Ex-Berlin cop and private detective Bernie Gunther has seen his share of bad guys. But when the worst guys of all are the ones running the show, it’s much harder to stay out of their reach.

Hired by a wealthy industrialist to investigate the murder of his daughter and her husband in an apparent botched robbery, Bernie soon finds himself drawn into the complex – not to mention lethal – internal politics and corruption of the Nazi party. When Herman Goering himself calls Bernie in with a task for him that throws his existing case into a whole new light, he must weigh up his hatred of the Nazis against his desire to stay alive.

Verdict: Keep – Scoot back up to my comments about Black Out by John Lawton and we have exactly the same situation here. This is a fourteen book series (sadly the author died in 2018 so there will be no more) of which I’ve read only one, Prussian Blue, which was book twelve.  However, I enjoyed it so much I added all the rest of the series to my wishlist. I own two more books in the series of which more in a moment.

The Pale Criminal (Bernie Gunther #2) by Philip Kerr (added 30th April 2018)

Five German schoolgirls are missing. Four have been found dead. But unlike the undesirables who make up the majority of dead and missing people in Hitler’s Berlin, these girls were blonde and blue-eyed – the Aryan flower of German maidenhood – and their gruesome deaths recall ritual killings.

Busy with a blackmail case, Bernie is reluctant when he is asked to rejoin the Berlin police in order to track down the murderer. But when the person doing the asking is none other than head of the SD, Reinhard Heydrich, it’s not exactly a request he can turn down. As Bernie gets closer to the truth, he realises that at the heart of this case is much more than one lone madman – in fact, there is a conspiracy at work more chilling than he could ever have imagined.

Verdict: Keep – Everything I said above, again. 

The Result – 9 kept, 1 dumped. Almost complete failure… Would you have made different choices? Or perhaps just say: Cathy, give up this exercise as it’s quite clear you are unable to get rid of books.