Reading Challenges – Page 206 – What Cathy Read Next…

The Runagates Club is the seventh book in my John Buchan reading project, Buchan of the Month 2019. You can find out more about the project and my reading list for 2019 here. What follows is a (spoiler-free) introduction to The Runagates Club. It is also an excuse to show off my two copies of the book: a Hodder & Stoughton edition from July 1929 and an undated Nelson edition. I will be publishing my review of the book later in the month.

The Runagates Club, a collection of short stories told around the dining table by members of the fictional private club of the title, was published in the UK by Hodder & Stoughton on 12th July 1928. The majority of the twelve stories in the collection had appeared in Pall Mall magazine between September 1927 and May 1928. In the United States, The Runagates Club was published in novel form by Houghton Mifflin on 13th July 1928. It was the last collection of John Buchan’s short stories published in his lifetime.

Compared with his adventure stories (or as Buchan termed them, his ‘shockers’), Buchan’s short story collections had less commercial success. Even so, Janet Adam Smith reports that combined sales for the Hodder & Stoughton edition and later Nelson edition of The Runagates Club totalled 85,000 copies by 1960.

Sources:

Janet Adam Smith, John Buchan: A Biography (OUP, 1985 [1965])
Kenneth Hillier and Michael Ross, The First Editions of John Buchan: A Collector’s Illustrated Biography (Avonworld, 2008)
Kate Macdonald, John Buchan: A Companion to the Mystery Fiction (McFarland, 2009)

Top Ten Tuesday new

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish and now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl.

The rules are simple:

Each Tuesday, Jana assigns a new topic. Create your own Top Ten list that fits that topic – putting your unique spin on it if you want.
Everyone is welcome to join but please link back to That Artsy Reader Girl in your own Top Ten Tuesday post.
Add your name to the Linky widget on that day’s post so that everyone can check out other bloggers’ lists. Or if you don’t have a blog, just post your answers as a comment.

This week’s topic is Books On My Summer 2019 TBR. This is an easy one for me because I’m taking part in the 20 Books of Summer Reading Challenge hosted by Cathy at 746 Books so it was just a case of picking ten books from my list that I haven’t yet read.

Click on the book title to view the full description on Goodreads.

A Modern Family by Helga Flatland – ‘a beautiful, bittersweet novel of rich insights and extraordinary perception as a family drama creates a quiet earthquake’
The Mathematical Bridge by Jim Kelly – historical crime mystery set in 1940s Cambridge, the follow-up to The Great Darkness
Improvement by Joan Silber – ‘a bold and piercing novel about a young single mother living in Harlem, her eccentric aunt, and the decisions they make that have unexpected implications for the world around them’
The Dinner List by Rebecca Serle – ‘Delicious but never indulgent, sweet with just the right amount of bitter’
The Narrow Land by Christine Dwyer Hickey – ‘A novel of loneliness and regret, the legacy of World War II and the ever-changing concept of the American Dream’
Transcription by Kate Atkinson – ‘a bravura novel of extraordinary power and substance’
Blood Orange by Harriet Tyce – ‘A disturbing, toxic and compelling novel that explores the power of fear and desire, jealousy and betrayal, love and hate’
In My Life by Alan Johnson – ‘this isn’t just a book about music. In My Life adds a fourth dimension to the story of Alan Johnson the man’
Munich by Robert Harris – September 1938. When the stakes are this high, who are you willing to betray? Your friends, your family, your country or your conscience?
Ponti by Sharlene Teo – ‘A radiant, achingly beautiful novel about relationships between women’ (Megan Hunter, author of The End We Start From)