My Week in Books – 25th June 2023

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MyWeekinBooksOn What Cathy Read Next last week

Tuesday – This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was Books On My Summer 2023 To-Read List.

Wednesday – As always WWW Wednesday is a weekly opportunity to share what I’ve just read, what I’m currently reading and what I plan to read next… and to take a peek at what others are reading. 

Thursday – I published my review of The Voluble Topsy by A P Herbert.

Friday – I shared my review of historical crime mystery, Voices of the Dead by Ambrose Parry. 

Saturday – I published my wrap-up of The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2023, awarded this year to These Days by Lucy Caldwell.

New arrivals

HowToBeBraveHow To Be Brave by Louise Beech (Audiobook)

All the stories died that morning … until we found the one we’d always known.

When nine-year-old Rose is diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, Natalie must use her imagination to keep her daughter alive. They begin dreaming about and seeing a man in a brown suit who feels hauntingly familiar, a man who has something for them.

Through the magic of storytelling, Natalie and Rose are transported to the Atlantic Ocean in 1943, to a lifeboat, where an ancestor survived for fifty days before being rescued.

Poignant, beautifully written and tenderly told, How To Be Brave weaves together the contemporary story of a mother battling to save her child’s life with an extraordinary true account of bravery and a fight for survival in the Second World War. A simply unforgettable debut that celebrates the power of words, the redemptive energy of a mother’s love and what it really means to be brave.

On What Cathy Read Next this week

Currently reading

Planned posts

  • Book Review: The Square of Sevens by Laura Shepherd-Robinson
  • Book Review: Banyan Moon by Thao Thai

The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2023 – My Wrap-Up

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WalterScottPrizeThe announcement of the winner of the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2023 on 15th June 2023 at the Borders Book Festival – These Days by Lucy Caldwell – was the final stage in a process that began in August last year when submissions opened.

Over the next few months, books submitted by publishers were whittled down by the judging panel to a longlist of twelve which was announced on 14th February 2023.  The books that made the longlist were:

Walter Scott Prize 2023 Longlist
Photo credit: The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction

The Romantic by William Boyd
These Days by Lucy Caldwell
My Name is Yip by Paddy Crewe
The Geometer Lobachevsky by Adrian Duncan
Act of Oblivion by Robert Harris
The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho by Paterson Joseph
The Chosen by Elizabeth Lowry
The Second Sight of Zachary Cloudesley by Sean Lusk
The Sun Walks Down by Fiona McFarlane
Ancestry by Simon Mawer
I Am Not Your Eve by Devika Ponnambalam
The Settlement by Jock Serong

As an avid reader of historical fiction I like to think I have my finger on the pulse but, as usual, the longlist provided some surprises with books I’d not only not read, but never even come across. In fact, I’d only read two of the books that appeared on the list – These Days and The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho. And my attempt to predict the books that might appear on the longlist was pretty much a failure – I only got three right.

I managed to read three more of the longlisted books – The Romantic, I Am Not Your Eve and The Settlement – before the shortlist of seven books was announced on 4th April 2023.

Walter Scott Prize 2023 Shortlist
Photo credit: The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction

These Days by Lucy Caldwell
The Geometer Lobachevsky by Adrian Duncan
Act of Oblivion by Robert Harris
The Chosen by Elizabeth Lowry
The Sun Walks Down by Fiona McFarlane
Ancestry by Simon Mawer
I Am Not Your Eve by Devika Ponnambalam

I managed to read a further three of the books – The Chosen, Ancestry and The Geometer Lobachevsky – before the winner was announced.  Based on the books I read, my choice of winner would have been The Chosen. I still hope to get around to reading the two shortlisted books I haven’t read. My attempts to read all the longlisted books in previous years have ended in failure so I won’t even begin to think about trying to do that.

Have you read any of the books on the longlist or shortlist? If so, what was your favourite? And if you managed to read them all – kudos to you, if you did – do you agree with the judges’ decision?