Down the TBR Hole #31

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 476 books, seven down on last time…. Most of that reduction is through deleting books I don’t own from my Want-To-Read shelf. Let’s see if I can be similarly successful with books I do own. 

A German Requiem (Bernie Gunther #3) by Philip Kerr (added 30th April 2018)

In post-war Vienna, the term ‘peace’ is relative – the Americans, British and Russians govern the city in an uneasy truce, and the main difference is that now it’s the Soviet secret police making people disappear rather than the Nazis. When Bernie is asked by a high-ranking Soviet official to clear an old Kripo colleague’s name of the murder of an American officer, he quickly realises he’s in over his head.

Bernie’s ex-colleague Becker was working for a secret society of Nazi hunters, tracking down and executing war criminals who faked their own deaths to escape the noose at Nuremberg. Infiltrating the group, Bernie finds himself face to face with men he thought he’d never see again. They’ve cheated justice once – now Bernie must see that they don’t get away a second time.

Verdict: Keep – Last time I undertook this exercise it included two books from this series I acquired after reading Prussian Blue, which was book twelve. Since I kept those, I guess this one should stay as well.

The Greengage Summer by Rumer Godden (added 7th May 2018)

On and off, all that hot French August, we made ourselves ill from eating the greengages….

The faded elegance of Les Oeillets, with its bullet-scarred staircase and serene garden bounded by high walls; Eliot, the charming Englishman who became the children’s guardian while their mother lay ill in hospital; sophisticated Mademoiselle Zizi, hotel patronne, and Eliot’s devoted lover; 16 year old Joss, the oldest Grey girl, suddenly, achingly beautiful. And the Marne river flowing silent and slow beyond them all….

They would merge together in a gold-green summer of discovery, until the fruit rotted on the trees and cold seeped into their bones…. 

Verdict: Keep – I have a rather lovely copy of this (probably picked up in a secondhand bookshop) which I simply cannot bring myself to part with. Older readers may remember the film version starring Kenneth More and Susannah York. 

Tombland (Matthew Shardlake #7) by C.J. Sansom (added 17th May 2018)

Spring, 1549. Two years after the death of Henry VIII, England is sliding into chaos.

The nominal king, Edward VI, is 11 years old. His uncle, Edward Seymour, Lord Hertford, rules as Edward’s regent and Protector. In the kingdom, radical Protestants are driving the old religion into extinction, while the Protector’s prolonged war with Scotland has led to hyperinflation and economic collapse. Rebellion is stirring among the peasantry.

Matthew Shardlake has been working as a lawyer in the service of Henry’s younger daughter, the lady Elizabeth. The gruesome murder of one of Elizabeth’s distant relations, rumored to be politically murdered, draws Shardlake and his companion Nicholas to the lady’s summer estate, where a second murder is committed.

As the kingdom explodes into rebellion, Nicholas is imprisoned for his loyalty, and Shardlake must decide where his loyalties lie – with his kingdom, or with his lady?

Verdict: Keep – Unusually for me, I only have this in audiobook form (probably picked up as part of an Audible trial). I rarely listen to audiobooks which is perhaps why I haven’t yet got around to this yet, despite having read – and loved – every previous book in the series. Perhaps it might get me through my eight hour overnight flight tonight…

The Visitor by Katherine Stansfield (added 26th May 2018)

He turns and waves, twenty feet or so away… she can’t swim as strongly as usual. She can taste blood again. Nicholas bobs where he is, letting her catch up. Her nightdress blooms around her like a sail. She reaches him and he touches her arm, very gently. She wants to grab him, hold him tightly in the water. Would he let her?

Cornwall. 1880. Pearl, Jack and Nicholas play among the fishing boats of Skommow Bay, not understanding the undercurrents beneath their games. As they grow older, the choices they make shape the pattern of their lives.

1936 and everything has changed. The fish have stopped coming and the Pilchard Palace is abandoned. Pearl, exiled in favour of holidaymakers, turns to the memory of her great love, and her greatest loss. She’s waiting for her own visitor. Will he come for her? The sea’s ghosts are stirring. The past can be more alive than the present… 

Verdict: Keep – This has more of a romance feel about it than I would usually go for and I have a chequered history with dual time novels. However, since both timelines are set well in the past, I’m going to overlook that issue.  My first experience of the author’s writing was when I read The Magpie Tree, the second book in her Cornish Mysteries series. I very much enjoyed it, as I did the next book in the series, The Mermaid’s Call.

Sheriff and Priest (Dodnash Priory Chronicles #1) by Nicky Moxey (added 7th June 2018)

Wimer could have become a monk. Instead, his decision to become a Chaplain – to make his way in the wider world of men – has put his soul in mortal danger. In 12th Century East Anglia, poor Saxon boys stay poor. It takes an exceptional one to win Henry II’s friendship, and to rise to the job of High Sheriff of all Norfolk and Suffolk.

Falling foul of the stormy relationship between Henry and his Archbishop, he is excommunicated three times, twice by Thomas a’Becket, and once by the Pope. He also falls in love with the King’s Ward, Ida. Before he plucks up the courage to do anything about it, the King takes her as his mistress, and Ida needs Wimer’s support to survive that dangerous liaison.

Although he is eventually reinstated in the Church, his problems with his religious superiors, and his love for Ida, will guarantee him a place in Hell, unless he can find land and resources to do something spectacular in the way of penance…

Verdict: Dump – I have a confession to make: this was a review copy sent to me by the author.  At the time I couldn’t commit to a review of the book but I did host a guest post. Fast forward several years and I still haven’t found the time – or sufficient enthusiasm – to read it.

Anna of Kleves, Queen of Secrets (Six Tudor Queens #4) by Alison Weir (added 14th July 2018) 

Newly widowed and the father of an infant son, Henry VIII realizes he must marry again to insure the royal succession. Now forty-six, overweight and unwell, Henry is soundly rejected by some of Europe’s most eligible princesses, but Anna of Kleve – a small German duchy – is twenty-four and eager to wed.

Henry requests Anna’s portrait from his court painter, who enhances her looks, painting her straight-on in order not to emphasize her rather long nose. Henry is entranced by the lovely image, only to be bitterly surprised when Anna arrives in England and he sees her in the flesh. She is pleasant looking, just not the lady that Henry had expected.

What follows is a fascinating story of this awkward royal union that had to somehow be terminated tactfully. Alison Weir takes a fresh and surprising look at this remarkable royal marriage by describing it from the point of view of Queen Anna, a young woman with hopes and dreams of her own, alone in a royal court that rejected her from the day she arrived.

Verdict: Keep – I’ve fallen rather behind with this series having read books two, three and five but not the first one (according to Goodreads) or the final book. I do feel I want to complete the set as I’ve also enjoyed several of the author’s standalone books.  

The Italian Couple by J.R. Rogers (added 23rd June 2018)

Colonel Francesco Ferrazza, a disciplined and inflexible Royal Italian Army officer with Italy’s Fascist Military Information Service, and his British wife, Emilia, are posted to Asmara affectionately referred to as ‘Little Rome’ by Mussolini. The colonel is a familiar figure at the military casino and bordello where he brags at the bar he can bend a fireplace poker in half. But he is astonished when in 1938 he is ordered by his Rome superior to set in motion an unusual, but clandestine sabotage operation of the engineering marvel that is the Asmara-Massawa Cableway that links Italian Eritrea to the sea.

Built by the Italians it is the longest aerial line of its kind in the world but it is of such strategic importance the army comes to realize they may have made a strategic mistake in constructing it. They fear it could fall into the hands of neighboring Ethiopia – whom they defeated in a colonial war just two years ago.

Fearful of the devastating power of exposure, Ferrazza sets out to find someone to carry out Operation Red Lion and meets Mario Caparrotti, an amateur race car driver. He plans to compete in the first Christmas Day automobile race through town. Greedy, boastful, and ignorant, Caparrotti is all of the things the colonel detests in his fellow human beings, civilians in particular. But Ferrazza is desperate to recruit him because he is a cableway mechanic who has unfettered access to the engine room. The colonel entices him with his wife. Prodded by her husband the reluctant Emilia unhappily plays her part by becoming Caparrotti’s lover.

But things begin to fall apart: Caparrotti balks and now also demands significant sums of cash and when the colonel murders a colonial civil servant who has somehow learned of the plot he orders Caparrotti to help him dispose of the body. With the driver more reluctant than ever, and with the deadline drawing nearer, the colonel will do anything to ensure the sabotage is carried out.

Unexpectedly, Gyles Aiscroft, a Rome-based British freelance foreign correspondent, and an old family friend of Emilia’s parents arrives in Asmara. Her father, Edmund Playfair, the senior intelligence officer at the British embassy in Rome, has asked Aiscroft to look in on her. An older man she finds herself drawn to him and confides her plight to him. They embark on a brief, intense affair. But what she doesn’t count on is his falling in love with her and wanting to whisk her off to Capri.

Determined to leave Africa with his mission complete, and with the deadline almost upon him, Ferrazza instructs the resigned and fearful Caparrotti how to go about setting the dynamite charges. And as the tick-tock of the clock counts down the final hours the colonel belatedly grasps that in ‘Little Rome’ nothing is what it seems, no one can be trusted and, when serving Mussolini, failure will never be condoned.

Verdict: Dump – This is another author review copy that I never got round to reading. However, I did publish an extract from the book on my blog so that makes me feel slightly less guilty. To be honest, I feel exhausted just reading the blurb.

The One from the Other (Bernie Gunther #4) by Philip Kerr (added 7th July 2018)

Munich, 1949: Amid the chaos of defeat, it is home to all the backstabbing intrigue that prospers in the aftermath of war. A place where a private eye like Bernie Gunther can find a lot of not-quite-reputable work: cleaning up the Nazi past of well-to-do locals, abetting fugitives in the flight abroad, sorting out rival claims to stolen goods. It is work that fills Bernie with disgust – but it also fills his sorely depleted wallet.

Then a woman seeks him out. Her husband has disappeared. She’s not looking to get him back – he’s a wanted man who ran one of the most vicious concentration camps in Poland. She just wants confirmation that he’s dead.

It is a simple enough job. But in post-war Germany, nothing is simple.

Verdict: Keep – Scoot back up to my comments about A German Requiem. 

Wrecker by Noel O’Reilly (added 1st August 2018)

Mary Blight, stuck in a remote Cornish fishing village where ships are often wrecked on the rugged coast, longs for a life beyond Porthmorvoren. Picking among the corpses of the most recent washed-up dead, she spots a fine pair of leather boots on a dead noblewoman and unlaces them for herself. Only once she has removed the boots does she notice the woman’s earlobes are missing too. And by then it is too late. Village scold Aunt Madgie has seen her, bending over the corpse, blood on her lips.

The horror of the bitten noblewoman makes the national press. That the villagers are such savages to bite jewellery off a corpse their hands too cold to unfasten it causes a national outcry. The Porthmorvoren Cannibal is the stuff of nightmares. And still Aunt Madgie watches Mary, knowingly, waiting for her moment.

When Mary rescues a man who is washed ashore, lashed to a barrel, she cares for him in her cottage, despite her neighbours’ disapproval. Mary already has a bad name among those in the village, a situation not helped by her recent dalliance with the betrothed of her rival, Loveday Skewes.

The rescued man is Gideon Stone, a Methodist minister. He decides to build a chapel in the village over the months to come, and appoints Mary as Sunday school teacher. Her enemies are outraged, having assumed Loveday Swewes would be given this position. Meanwhile, Mary sees a notice announcing that the bereaved sugar baron is offering a substantial reward for information leading to the arrest of the person who stole his wife’s earrings. And soon, her enemies in the village are plotting against her and Mary must gamble everything.

Verdict: Keep – I recently read and enjoyed the author’s latest book, The Darlings of the Asylum, and the Cornwall setting of this one appeals to me. 

The House We Called Home by Jenny Oliver (added 1st August 2018)

The house where Stella and her sister Amy grew up never changes – the red front door, the breath-taking view over the Cornish coast, her parents in their usual spots on the sofa. Except this summer, things feel a little different…

Stella’s father is nowhere to be seen, yet her mother – in suspiciously new Per Una jeans – seems curiously unfazed by his absence, and more eager to talk about her mysterious dog-walking buddy Mitch.

Stella’s sister Amy has returned home with a new boyfriend she can barely stand and a secret to hide, and Stella’s husband Jack has something he wants to get off his chest too. Even Frank Sinatra, the dog, has a guilty air about him. This summer, change is in the air for the Whitethorns…

Verdict: Dump – I have this one tagged as ‘light read’ on Goodreads and although it’s set in Cornwall – a place I love – I think it’s too light for me. But I’m sure someone will pick it up in the charity shop and love it.

The Result – 7 kept, 3 dumped. Not bad, I suppose… Would you have made different choices?