State of the TBR – April 2024

The piles have diminished! I have managed to get the first pile sitting normally on the shelf again with only a slightly smaller gap at the very bottom compared to last month. I took ten print books off the shelf and read them (three of them were Three Investigators Mysteries!), and I have started two more (one TBR project, one newer). I took the two oldest books off the TBR and read six more of my TBR Project books (23 read, 20 reviewed, 118 to go; will be reporting quarterly which means I should be reporting now and will do later!). The Liz and Emma Read Together books are in a separate pile (top shelf, to the left) because they don’t form part of the TBR project, and the books on the top left top are review books.

I completed 17 books in March (three with reviews to be published), reading 7 during a week’s holiday in Spain where we did little but sleep, eat, read and run / birdwatch. None of them were print review books and one was a book that I acquired in March. I am part-way through four more (including my current Reading With Emma Read and a read that will take all year). I read my remaining February NetGalley books and all of my March ones during March (I set one aside, “A Dirty Filthy Book” which was about Annie Besant – it was so long and detailed I had to skim it, and my NetGalley review percentage is at 91% due to all the books that came in (oops). I read one book for Reading Ireland Month and two for Reading Wales Month, one of which I bought during the month, undermining my own policy.

Incomings

I had a lot of lovely print incomings. Oh, this duvet cover has come around again rather than still being on, as I notice I photographed my books on it last month! Anyway, three from the Bookshop (two from an author event), two from a Bad Place, three from friends and two review copies for Shiny New Books

My best friend Emma read Sally Page’s “The Book of Beginnings” and enjoyed the story set in North London so sent me a copy. I was buying a Spanish phrasebook in a hurry to replace the one that has mysteriously disappeared and mistakenly thought I needed to buy more things to get faster delivery, so chose Darren Chetty et al. (eds) “Welsh (Plural)” (already read and reviewed) and Kenny Imafidion’s “That Peckham Boy”, never able to resist a story from the bit of South London I lived in for a bit in the 90s. Back to being Good at The Heath Bookshop, I went to a lovely event with Huma Qureshi and took the opportunity to pick up her memoir “How We Met” as well as her new novel, “Playing Games” (two sisters in London: one Emma might like, too). While I was there, I spotted Richard Askwith’s “The Race Against Time: Adventures in Late-Life Running” which I had to get really.

I was at Ali’s and she’d confusingly been sent this non-fiction book about Essex, “The Invention of Essex” by Tim Burrows – I had a hand in it so she happily passed it to me. While I was away, Steve Doswell popped a copy of his “Running: Me Running EU” running book through the letterbox – I edited this excellent memoir about his attempt to run in every EU country before Brexit was completed and we’re doing an event together at the Bookshop in June so I was thrilled to have a proper copy in my hand! Robert Ashton’s “Where are the Fellows Who Cut the Hay” is an Unbound book I subscribed to, looking at how old customs might be of use now.

Finally, two wonderful review copies for Shiny – Corinne Fowler’s “Our Island Stories” details country walks through colonial Britain (it will have a lovely cover which is why I’ve included the letter with it) and Zeinab Badawi’s “An African History of Africa” does what it says on the tin. Thank you to the publishers for those.

I have been incredibly unrestrained on NetGalley and all my ships came in at once. However their publishing dates are spread across a lot of months, fortunately.

I was offered Emily Kerr’s “The Typo” (published in May) by the publisher as I’d previously enjoyed three of her other books. Two strangers are brought together by a typo in an email address so I don’t even have to put my editor hat on while reading it! “Our Daughter Who Art In America” published by Mukana Press (April) is the publisher’s second anthology of African writing and I hope to find some new authors to read here. Thao Votang’s “Linh Ly is Doing Just Fine” (July) has such an enticing cover; it follows a Vietnamese American woman living in Texas as she gets perhaps too involved in her mother’s dating life.

Niigaan Sinclair is one of the country’s most influential thinkers on issues impacting Indigenous communities in Winnipeg and “Winipek: Visions of Canada from an Indigenous Centre” (May) is a collection of his writings. I was offered Nikki May’s “This Motherless Land” (July) because I’d loved her “Wahala” – this one follows cousins who want different things from life between Lagos and England. I couldn’t resist the two sentences on Iqbal Hussain’s “Northern Boy” (June): “A Big Bollywood Dream. A Small-Town Chance.” It’s set in Blackburn, Pakistan and Australia. And I couldn’t resist the title of Damilare Kuku’s “Only Big Bumbum Matters Tomorrow” (October) and the story of family secrets as its heroine comes of age and only wants a bottom enlargement is enticing, too. Ayaan Mohamud’s YA fiction “The Thread that Connects Us” has two young girls of Somali heritage hating each other at first sight when one moves to England as the other’s new stepsister, but will they need to work together?

I was offered “The World After Alice” by Lauren Aliza Green (August) and was tempted by the comparisons to Anne Tyler (the email said it was because I’d read Charmaine Wilkerson, too) in this book about a split family brought together for a wedding. I was also offered Christie Barlow’s “The Vintage Flower Van on Love Heart Lane” (May), 14th in the sweet series about a small Scottish town and of course a yes. And finally I won Nailah Blades Wylie’s “Joyful By Nature” which is about (American) women of colour embracing activities in nature, something I’m interested in supporting and promoting even if it’s US not UK-based. That’s out in May but I had a bit of trouble downloading it so I’m going to read it this month if I can!

So that was 17 read and 22 coming in in March, however I have read one of the print ones already and one I just need to reskim.

Currently reading

I’ve picked the next oldest book off the TBR, Remi Adekoya’s “Biracial Britain”, which was another Oxfam Books find published only a year or so ago – fascinating so far. And I decided to give myself an Easter Monday treat and start “Birmingham’s Public Art” (also, because it’s quite a wide book it was taking up two spaces on the bottom shelf of the TBR as it had to go through to the back!). I’m also still reading Hunter Davies on London parks with Emma and my literary quotes for the year with Ali.

Coming up

Ever since Christian Cooper’s “Better Living Through Birding” arrived from Cari (thank you!) I’ve wanted to pair it with British Patrick Hutchinson’s “Everyone Versus Racism”: two Black men who have used their moments of (unwanted) fame as a platform to promote understanding and unity. So I plan to read these two this month.

And I have eight NetGalley books published this month. “The Husbands” is a fantasy about a woman’s loft creating multiple husbands for her: which kind will she choose? “Sweetness in the Skin” has a young woman trying to leave Jamaica for France to join her aunt: will she succeed? “100 Words for Rain” and “Just Add Nature” are two National Trust publications with nice illustrations and fun text – I’ll probably review both alongside the Shells one from last month, and I’ve almost finished “Just Add Nature” already. “Our Daughter Who Art in America” will give me a good anthology of African writing. Libby Page’s “the Lifeline” is the sequel to “The Lido” which I read back in 2018! and Emily Henry’s “Funny Story” has an ex-partner-swap story which looks fun. Rachel Kong’s “Real Americans” is a Chinese American family epic (although I note it has YET another Rich White American Boy as the love interest).

I also have “The Milliner’s Hat Mystery” by Basil Thomson to read for Kaggsy and Simon’s 1937 Week which runs 15-21 April. With the ones I’m currently reading, that’s three books to finish (Emma and I have two weeks to go on the current read), two review books to read and review and eleven others to read at a minimum, which might happen!

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How was your March reading? What are you reading this month? Are you doing any book challenges for the year or the month?

Book review – Horatio Clare – “Down to the Sea in Ships”

Paul from HalfMan HalfBook kindly sent me this book – I’d already read and thoroughly enjoyed Clare’s “Icebreaker” a few years ago (I obviously enjoyed the envelope he sent it in too, recording it for posterity when I received the book). There it sat on my TBR until I happily realised that Clare, having been raised on a South Wales farm, counted for Book Jotter’s challenge, Reading Wales! Hooray! So I picked it off the shelves and did a double challenge with it as I acquired it before the end of 2023 so it falls into my own 2024 TBR project.

Horatio Clare – “Down to the Sea in Ships: Of Ageless Oceans and Modern Men”

(23 October 2023, gift)

Just beyond the horizon there is another world. It runs in parallel with ours but it obeys different laws, accords with a different time and is populated by a people who are like us, but wose lives are not like ours. Without them, what we call normality would not exist. Were it not for the labours of this race we coudl not work, rest, eat, dress, communicate, learn, play, live or even die as we do. For a little while, for some months over two years, it has been my privilege to explore the sea in the company of its people. (p. 2)

Clare made an arrangement with the huge shipping company Maersk to do voyages as a writer in residence on two of their boats, one south across the Pacfic with a huge, modern container ship, one north across the Atlantic in a smaller ship. I enjoyed the first voyage a little more than the second, as the second dwells a bit on the two world wars and the convoys, which had its interest but I preferred the day-to-day stuff.

The details of daily life were fascinating and Clare tried to get in everywhere and chat to everyone to see what was going on. He definitely covers the negatives (accidents, unfair pay, bullying) as well as the positives, and really gets the individual personalities across. I particularly liked the bizarre lists of what the containers contain – not told at the time to avoid theft, he got these from manifests months later and puts together narratives of where products are going around the world, making a point about global supply chains without labouring it, as he does about waste in the seas, too.

He talks about the kind of masculinity that’s engendered in the male workers (he encounters I think only one woman, who manages to create a sort of sisterliness for them): “Paradoxically, the isolation of seafarers from the fullness of the world, and the confines of the world they must fill, seem to make of them men in full” (p. 61). There’s a small update on some of the men at the end, when he’s back on land, his own life about to change dramatically.

You can read HalfMan HalfBook’s review here.

This was Book 2 for Reading Wales 2024.

This is Book 19 in my 2024 TBR project – 122 to go!

Book review – Darren Chetty, Grug Muse, Hanan Issa and Iestyn Tyne (eds) – “Welsh (Plural)”

I have been making an effort for the past few years to only do reading challenges using books already on my TBR. This has meant that in the Marches of most years I’ve either read a book for Reading Ireland Month or a book for Reading Wales. Well, this year I’ve already done my Reading Ireland Month book and I’d resigned myself to not having a Reading Wales one for Book Jotter’s challenge until the need to buy a Spanish phrasebook in a hurry led to a hasty purchase off my wishlist from an unmentionable retailer (sorry, Proper Bookshop!) and a read for Reading Wales. Of course, then I discovered that Horatio Clare counts anyway and I had one of his on my TBR but there you go. I took this one on holiday with me and had intended to start it on the plane home but got chatting to an interesting fellow-passenger instead, so it’s followed me around during the week after our holiday, and a very rewarding read it’s proved to be, too. Oh, and it’s published by the excellent indie publisher, Repeater Books.

Darren Chetty, Grug Muse, Hanan Issa, Iestyn Tyne (eds) – “Welsh (Plural): Essays on the Future of Wales”

(8 March 2024)

… we found ourselves returning to questions of what we mean by Welshness, Welsh identities and Welsh culture. What do these phrases mean to a Cardiffian, or a West Walian; those living in Wales, the Welsh diaspora, those newly arrived in Wales; those with ties across the border, across the sea? What do they mean to the Muslim, agnositc, lapsed Catholic, just-there-for-the-singing nonconformist The Welsh speaker, Welsh learner, non-Welsh speaker? In order to explore these questions collectively we sought a diversity of perspectives for this book. (Editors’ Introduction, p. 3)

A wonderfully varied collection of pieces by writers of all types and backgrounds, some known to me, many not. There are essays, experimental pieces, complex sociological works, memoir, poetry and a choose-your-own adventure among the 19 works in the book. Cerys Hafana’s “A Tradition of Change” looks at Welsh music and folklore traditions through an outsider’s lens, picking out and unpicking flexibilities and inflexibilities, imposed binaries. Darren Chetty takes a good, hard look at his local “Black Boy” pub and its changing sign, interrogating other pubs with the same name. In Kandace Siobhan Waalker’s piece we see what it’s like to be Black in the Welsh countryside – “We transpose, we self-graft. The braider in our front room. Cookouts in the orchard, barely twenty degrees. Ackee under apple trees” (p. 65).

Gary Raymond’s “Being a Welsh Novelist: A Choose Your Destiny Adventure Game” really is just that, but cleverly with some paragraphs you can never reach by taking the pre-set routes, only by going off-piste (or knowing the right people) and Grug Muse’s “Datganoli / Devolution” shows communities undermining closures, with banks and schools stripped out of small towns being repurposed by committees as spaces for people. Two interesting pieces, Joe Dunthorne’s “We Bleed Red” and Andy Welch’s “Rhyl Talk” look at the diaspora: a non-Welsh-speaker who sounds English in a Welsh pub in London and a North Walian trying to explain that his accent is acceptably Welsh (I wonder if this one has changed with the popularity of “Welcome to Wrexham” on TV with its noticeable North Wales voices). Marvin Thompson’s “On Writing a Modern Welsh Horror” deconstructs the writing of his own poems about slavery and colonialism in a fascinating way.

Changing curricula, moving away to become more accepted as Welsh in Scotland, being a hijabi Welsh woman and failing to write an essay are more clever and deep approaches in the book, along with pieces about particular towns (Merthyr, Swansea) and just such a wide range of subjects, styles and experiences it’s impossible to cover in one review. I urge you to rush off and secure yourselves a copy (from an indie bookshop, bookshop.org or direct from the publisher, of course!).

This was Book 1 for Reading Wales 2024.

Book review – Richard Llewellyn – “How Green was my Valley”

It’s Reading Wales 2023 and this is my second read for the Month, read on holiday in Southern Spain, somewhat oddly, although we were staying in quite a working-class area. I bought this especially for the challenge as I’d agreed with Mallika from Literary Potpourri that we would do a buddy read of it (we both read it at the same time and are sharing each other’s reviews but didn’t discuss it separately to these, mainly for reasons of my holiday!). A classic of working-class literature, it reminded me in parts of “The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists” and, while distressing quite a lot of the time, is very well worth reading. Here is Mallika from Literary Potpourri’s review, do go and visit it, too! Do also visit Brona’s interesting piece about the controversies around Llewellyn’s claimed heritage and knowledge/experience (I’m still counting this for Dewithon as it’s set in Wales …).

Richard Llewellyn – “How Green was my Valley”

(13 January 2023, The Heath Bookshop)

In the evening after we had finished tea we all sat on the grass on horse cloths and sang hymns and songs, and we had prizes for the best. Indeed if I was not chosen again for the best voice among the small boys. There is pleased my father was. I will never forget the way he looked when Mr Prosser, St. Bedwas, gave me the sweets.

Singing was in my father as sight is in the eye. Always after that he called me the family soloist. That night he held my hand tight all the way home, with my mother on his other side, and my sisters behind us. (p. 19)

We meet Huw Morgan as a small boy, the youngest in his family, his brothers and sisters settling (or not) into their roles, and we follow him into his late teens; however, his story is being written from much later life, with the horror of a pit slag heap that’s slipped pressing and pressing onto the little house where he was raised and lives now. That gives a feeling of only barely repressed menace throughout the whole book, not particularly needed when everyone is going down badly maintained pits, struggling against the mine owners or struggling at school against bullies and anti-Welsh sentiment.

Huw has a temper on him and inflicts some damage on people, but that’s seen, I think, to not in the end help, as he’s still stuck where he started out, alone and looking back at the green grass of his youth, now obscured by slag heaps (this book was published in 1939, long before the horror of Aberfan; now the Valleys have been greened again by various initiatives, whether or not that will help the social and economic deprivation they have experienced).

There is a feeling of progressive doom about the whole book, as Huw’s siblings push against their constraints and end up leaving, his sister makes a choice of husband that may not be the best and Huw’s chance to escape may not be taken up. There are also some absolutely brutal scenes, especially when the community seeks justice for the assault and death of a child, and the passages where a long strike brings starvation to the people. Huw’s father is the centre of his life, even though he fundamentally disagrees with the actions of his own sons towards unionising, and, appropriate for a review published on Mother’s Day, you can only feel sorry for his poor mother, though she has her own flashes of temper and giddiness, as she is forced to watch her children leave, not able to understand the map of their travels she’s shown.

gbThere are flashes of positivity and possibility, with the local clergyman providing education in books, morals and carpentry, and humour, especially with the bad boys, Dai and Cyfartha, who wreak havoc and revenge wherever they go (but are revealed to be devoted and loving friends (a couple?) as the story goes on). And there are of course beautiful descriptions and all done in a Welsh way of speaking which is done beautifully and not clumsily, feels authentic and was probably quite surprising at the time. As it winds to its conclusion, it feels both inevitable and gutting: a book you have to sit with for a while after finishing it.

Both a classic story of coming of age and an impassioned appeal against capitalism, it’s an absorbing read that I am happy to highly recommend

This was Book 2 read for Reading Wales 2023.

Book review – Charlotte Williams – “Sugar and Slate”

It’s Reading Wales 2023 and so of course I’m reading the book everyone read for the challenge last year! (I was holding out for an affordable print copy and gave up and bought an e-book at the end of March 2022). Lots of people loved this memoir of a woman of mixed heritage growing up in North Wales and I was determined to get round to it, so here I am, having done so! This book was first published in 2002 and then with a revised preface in 2006.

Charlotte Williams – “Sugar & Slate”

(21 March 2022, e-book)

They were little acts of resistance; small gestures of defiance from a very limited repertoire. How would we have known how to organise for resistance? We were far too isolated and in any case the pressure to conform kept a firm grip on any spontaneous acts of rebellion.

Charlotte grew up in North Wales, her and her four sisters very much the only people of colour in their small town, their mum a proud, strong Welsh woman, their father from Guyana but living a lot of the time in various countries in Africa, returning to Guyana in his old age. We end up in Guyana with Charlotte and her husband in the latter part of the book, her White husband fitting in in some ways better than her.

The narrative is not linear and straightforward, but you can follow it, and we return, like Narnia’s Wood Between Worlds, to an interstitial Trinidadian airport where Charlotte waits for a flight to Guyana and interacts with a Rastafarian from Slough in an Africa t-shirt who is setting off to become a tomato farmer.

We get the story of Charlotte’s father, a notable artist who is however not around much, and her strong mother, and the marvellous interval when both parents are in Africa negotiating the end of their marriage and the girls run deliciously wild, though without the theoretical framework to use that wildness for much effect apart from upsetting their neighbours.

We also learn about different aspects of Black Wales – the boys from the Congo buried near the missionary college they attended, the notable African independence politicians and thinkers who also gathered at the college, the Black community in Cardiff that goes back 150 years and gives Charlotte’s friends some slightly envied roots, the links between Guyana and a town in Wales, both centred on aluminium smelting and its raw materials. I also didn’t know that the Cardiff riots of 1919 triggered an upsurge in insurrections and Black consciousness in the Caribbean.

Moving between Wales, Africa and the Caribbean and South America, Charlotte charts how she feels and is seen in each place and mulls on identity and belonging, allowing space for no conclusions to be reached. She intersperses her narrative with her own poems and others’ and excerpts from her father’s books and historic books about the missionary centre, etc., giving a kaleidoscopic picture that is effective and moving.

This was Book 1 read for Reading Wales 2023, hopefully I will get “How Green Was My Valley” read soon.

An interesting Bookish Beck synchronicity (I allow these over a couple of books as I don’t read as many at the same time as she does), in this book, Charlotte is drawn to the shape of a Guyanese woman’s square shoulders and bottom shape, realising they match hers, and in “Windward Family“, Alexis Keir realises that his “small head” is just the head size and shape of his people in Saint Vincent.

State of the TBR – March 2023

Well, in good news, the bulk of books on my TBR has stayed essentially the same as last month, the bad news being that I still have almost an extra shelf of it!

I completed 20 books in February (one left to review) and am part-way through four more (one my new Reading With Emma Read). Sadly I didn’t read quite what I intended to, as I was struck down by an unpleasant virus that seems to be doing the rounds and only able to read a series of (nine!) very light and enjoyable novels on my kindle for about a week in the middle of it. I read three of the #ReadIndies books I’d laid out for myself, with one still on the go and therefore should still Count, and added two that came in through the month handily from indie publishers. So six ReadIndies challenge books in total, plus two of the ones I laid out for myself I really didn’t like at all and put to one side, at least thus removing five from the print TBR. I finished one of my other print review books (review to be done for Shiny) and am part-way through another (see below). And I DID read all five of my NetGalley books published in March, hooray, plus three more NetGalley books by Christie Barlow that were waiting for me to read the first six (I did). So eight books off the NetGalley TBR and my percentage is 88%!

Incomings

Not quite so many incomings this month (mainly because I couldn’t see very well or leave the house much this month, I suspect). The kindness of friends and publishers kept me supplied, though!

Ada Leverson’s “Bird of Paradise” was a kind gift from the publisher, Michael Walmer, and I have read and reviewed it already (here). Bookish Beck sent me Jeremiah Moss’ “Feral City” which is about New York and the pandemic (I’m aware I need to send this on to Laura Tisdall so will try to promote it up the TBR!). I spotted Bob Mortimer’s autobiography, “And Away” in The Works when milling around on the High Street and couldn’t resist it. Charlie Hill dropped a copy of his historical novel “The Pirate Queen” round (read and reviewed here) and my lovely friend Jenny dropped Deesha Philyaw’s “The Secret Lives of Church Ladies” (racy stories!) and Cyndia Lauper’s memoir round on the same day. I bought Hunter Davies’ “The Heath” for Emma as she lives near Hampstead Heath and we decided to make it one of our Read Together Books – even though we have one on the go and another two in hand, I decided I had to have this one, too, so ordered it from the (Heath!) Bookshop. Michael Hann’s “Denim and Leather” is the story of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal: I did a very small amount of transcribing for it (and he added me to the acknowledgements!) and decided to pre-order the paperback LAST Feb so thank you, Past Me. And Vertebrate Publishing sent an enticing email about review copies and I chose “The Outdoors Fix” by Liv Bolton which has essays by a lovely diverse group of people and how the British countryside has helped them in various ways (look out for that review soon as it’s out on 9 March).

I won four NetGalley books this month and didn’t buy any other ebooks:

Ryan Love’s “Arthur and Teddy Are Coming Out” (published April) is a feel-good novel where a grandfather and his grandson both want to come out as gay but one finds it easier than the other. Paul Morgan-Bentley’s “The Equal Parent” (March) looks at research from around the world about why parenting gets gendered and how to combat it – so much so that as a man married to a man, he gets called MummyDaddy by their local chemist. Christie Barlow has another one out but this time I’m caught up so can read it at the right time – “A Summer Surprise at the Little Blue Boathouse” (April) returns us to Heartcross and more warmth and community. Finally Catherine Joy White’s “A Thread of Gold” (June) brings Black women out of history to celebrate them as they should be.

So that was 20 read and 13 coming in in February, two of which I’ve already read – a win!

Currently reading

As well as Adam Nicolson’s “The Sea is Not Made of Water: Life Between the Tides” with Emma, I’m reading Lauren Fleshman’s “Good for a Girl”, about her own life in athletics and women’s experience in general, for Shiny New Books, and Liv Bolton’s “The Outdoor Fix” as described above.

Coming up

This month, I’ll also be reading for both Bookjotter’s Reading Wales (Richard Llewellyn’s “How Green was my Valley” and Charlotte Williams’ “Sugar and Slate” (which was the main read for it last year but I was balking at buying the ebook until I just had to) and Cathy at 746 Books’ Reading Ireland (Kate O’Brien‘s nun-based novel “The Land of Spices” and the novella “Small Things Like These” by Claire Keegan which I know everyone has read except me) for once (I usually manage one or the other).

My NetGalley TBR for March has eight books on it and an equal mix of fiction and non-fiction:

Jacqueline Crooks’ “Fire Rush” is set in reggae clubs in London and Bristol and takes our heroine through gangs and to Jamaica. Monica Macias tells of her life as a West African growing up in North Korea in “Black Girl from Pyongyang”. Nikesh Shukla’s YA novel “Stand Up” has teenager Madhu caught between helping her family and wanting to be a stand-up comedian. We’ve seen “The Equal Parent” above, and Katherine May’s “Enchantment” looks at how to help your mental health through finding wonder in life. Julie Shackwell returns to Scotland with “A Scottish Country Escape” – another reliably good light novelist. “Rootless” by Krystle Zara Appiah is a poignant novel about a British-Ghanaian marriage in crisis. Finally, Elizabeth Day explores her own friendships and broader discussions of friendship in “Friendaholic”.

With the ones I’m currently reading (not including my readalong with Emma as we won’t finish it this month), that’s three books to finish and twelve to read, which feels OK, though I would like to continue progress on reading hardbacks I bought recently before they come out in paperback …

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How was your February reading? What are you reading this month? Have you read or picked up any of my selection?