The Book Thread 2022

[UncertainSloth]

1. the long take - robin robertson - 8/10
2. the gatekeeper - russ kane - 5/10
3. dr potter's medicine show - eric scott fischl - 8/10
4. just one damn thing after another - jodi taylor - 8/10 -
5. trinity - louisa hall - 8/10
6. the night ocean - paul la farge - 9/10
7. washington black - esi edugyan - 8/10
8. the monsters of templeton - lauren groff - 8/10
9. hystopia - david means - 6/10
10. the bones of avalon ( dr dee #1) - phil rickman - 9/10
11. in a cottage in the woods - cass green - 7/10
12. the devil's larder - jim crace - 7/10 -
13. where the crawdads sing - delia owen - 9/10
14. the book of m - peng shepherd - 8/10
15 - woman in the window - aj finn - 6/10
16 - cunning folk - adam nevill - 10/10
17. the english monster - lloyd shepherd - 7/10
18. winterset hollow - jonathan durham - 8/10
19.the vessel - adam nevill - 9/10
20. the watchers - a m shine - 8/10 - a comlete punt on kindle unlimited but a worthy one, it transpired - decent slice of irish folk horror

[Blip]

First 50 here.

51. The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald
52. The Whalebone Theatre by Joanna Quinn
53. Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson
54. Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson
55. Lessons by Ian McEwan
56. Middlemarch by George Eliot

That it took me three weeks to read this is surprising, as I enjoyed it very much; we have been binge-watching Stranger Things though. It's also surprising that it's taken me so many years to get round to reading this, or indeed any Eliot.

[Kaleid]

Middlemarch is one of those books I was glad I persisted with. It seemed too dry at the start, and the idea of finishing it was a daunting task, but I soon got the rhythm of the plot(s) and ended up very impressed.

[Evolving]

It's one of my favourites.

I'm still angry at Casaubon, after all these years.

[Blip]

Middlemarch is one of those books I was glad I persisted with. It seemed too dry at the start, and the idea of finishing it was a daunting task, but I soon got the rhythm of the plot(s) and ended up very impressed.

The appealing thread of feminism and the psychological insights seem quite ahead of their time to me, although I must confess to a very patchy knowledge of Victorian literature.

It's one of my favourites.

I'm still angry at Casaubon, after all these years.

Yes, although I feel sorry for him too, such is Eliot's skill. The saddest character for me is Lydgate; I imagine that's the authorial intent.

[Evolving]

Yes: poor old Tertius.

I struggle to feel sorry for Casaubon, as I struggle (even less successfully) with Innstetten in Effi Briest. Yes, you can see how they became what they are; but I can't just ignore or pardon what they did as a result. (In Effi's case: what society did, as well. And even her parents.)

[don't get me started]

1. Cognitive Discourse Analysis: An introduction - Thora Tenbrink
2. Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything About Race, Gender And Identity- And Why This Harms Everybody – Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay
3. A History of the World in 12 Maps – Jerry Brotton
4. Origins of the Specious: Myths and Misconceptions of the English Language – Patricia T. O’Connor & Stewart Kellerman
5. Peer Interaction and Second Language Learning - Jenefer Philip, Rebecca Adams & Noriko Iwashita
6. Eugene Onegin - Alexander Pushkin
7. Found in Translation: How Language Shapes Our Lives and Transforms the World - Nataly Kelly & Jost Zetzche
8. English Words: A Linguistic Introduction - Heidi Harley
9. Questions: Formal, Functional and Interactional Perspectives Jan P. de Ruiter (Ed.)
10. Persepolis Rising - James S.A. Corey
11. English Prepositions: Their meanings and uses - R.M.W. Dixon
12. Draußen vor der Tür - Wolfgang Borchert
13. Metonymy: Hidden Shortcuts in Language, Thought and Communication - Jeannette Liitlemore
14. Tiamat's Wrath - James S.A. Corey
15. Leviathan Falls - James S.A. Corey
16. The Horse, the Wheel and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World - David W. Anthony
17. The Unfortunate Traveler and Other Works - Thomas Nashe
18. A Qualitative Approach to the Validation of Oral Language Tests (Studies in Language Testing, Series Number 14) - Anne Lazarton
19. Are Some Languages Better than Others? - R.M.W. Dixon.
20. The Expedition of Humphry Clinker - Tobias Smollet
21. Body Part Terms in Conceptualization and Language Usage - Iwona Kraska-Szlenk (Ed.)
22.Think Least of Death: Spinoza on How to Live and How to Die - Steven Nadler
23. Vuelta Skelter: Riding the Remarkable 1941 Tour of Spain - Tim Moore
24. Cognitive Linguistics: An Introduction - David Lee
25. Space in Language and Cognition: Explorations in Cognitive Diversity - Stephen C. Levinson
26. An Immigrant's Love Letter to the West - Konstantin Kisin
27. Explorations of Language Transfer - Terrence Odlin
28: A war on Two Fronts: Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan and Terrence Malik's The Thin Red Line- Tibe Patrick Jordan
29. Grammars of Space: Explorations in Cognitive Diversity - Stephen C. Levinson and David Wilkins (Eds.) (Partial re-read)
30. Rethinking linguistic relativity - John J. Gumperz & Stephen C. Levinson (Eds.) Partial re-read.
31. A History of the World in 6 Glasses - Tom Standage
32. Cross-linguistic Study of the Principle of Linguistic Relativity: Cross-linguistic Research to Examine the Principle of Linguistic Relativity: Evidence from English, Mandarin and Russian - Ronan Grace
33. An Introduction to Linguistic Typology - Viveka Vellupillai
34. Mysteries of English Grammar: A guide to the complexities of the English Language - Andreea S. Calude & Laurie Bauer
35. Against a Dark Background - Iain M. Banks (Reread)
36. The Linguistics Delusion - Geoffrey Sampson
37. Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition - Peter Robinson & Nick C. Ellis
38. Where have all the adjectives gone? - R.M.W Dixon
39. Copulas: Universals in the Categorization of the Lexicon - Regina Pustet
40. Scoff: A History of Food and Class in Britain - Pen Vogler
41. Genesis: The Deep Origin of Societies - Edward O. Wilson

42. Conceptualizations of time - Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk (Ed.)

St Augustine touched upon the problem that humans have in conceptualizing time when he wrote, " “What is time then? If nobody asks me, I know; but if I were desirous to explain it to one that should ask me, plainly I do not know.” In this book, a variety of authors present data on the ways that different cultures metaphorize time in language.

As is argued by the proponents of the cognitive linguistic field, many aspects of human cognition operate through metaphors. For the abstract concept of time the source metaphor of three-dimensional space is often drawn on. For example, prepositions operate in a similar way with respect to time and space. In English there is a hierarchy of large/medium/small encoded in, at and on. (IN 2022/ London, ON the 10th of November/ North street, AT 6 o'clock/ the station)

But the mapping from space to time through metaphor can manifest itself in different ways. For English speakers the future is infront of us, the present is here and now and the past behind us. Two separate metaphors apply. The self is moving along a path through a static landscape, or the self is stationary and it is time that flows past us. (He's coming up to retirement Vs. Christmas is coming.)
The front/future, behind/past metaphor is switched in the South American language Aymara. The source domain is still based on the orientation of a human in space, but instead of drawing on facing the direction of travel, the metaphor draws on the visual sense. What is past is visible. What is to come is not visible. Thus the human faces towards the past and with his/her back to the future.

There is also data to suggest that sequential time (as opposed to diectic time) is conceived on a time line, with users of the Roman alphabet seeing earlier as left and later as right (as with the writing system) while those who use the Arabic writing system see earlier on the right and later on the left, in accordance with the direction of writing in their culture. For Chinese speakers, earlier is up and later is down, as with the traditional method of writing in Chinese.

This is only the briefest of outlines here. The chapters covered a wide range of data from a huge variety of languages and delved into some pretty technical aspects of language, linguistics, cognition, philosophy and more. A dense and sometimes difficult read but overall satisfying and a useful resource for thinking about these issues.

[Evolving]

There is also data to suggest that sequential time (as opposed to diectic time) is conceived on a time line, with users of the Roman alphabet seeing earlier as left and later as right (as with the writing system) while those who use the Arabic writing system see earlier on the right and later on the left, in accordance with the direction of writing in their culture. For Chinese speakers, earlier is up and later is down, as with the traditional method of writing in Chinese.

Interesting to imagine which way up/around Cartesian coordinates would be, if the Chinese had come up with them first.

[don't get me started]

Interesting to imagine which way up/around Cartesian coordinates would be, if the Chinese had come up with them first.

Quite.

As I have read more and more into various language and cultural systems (and also come face to face with them in real life), I am constantly reminded of how many things that we take as given are actually localized and fundamentally arbitrary.　

I am minded here of Stephen J Gould's essay* that connected deep evolutionary processes to mechanical design. Gould charted how the QWERTY keyboard was designed to be less ergonomic than the ideal. The common letters are top left meaning that the weaker fingers of the non-dominant hand had to do a lot of work. This was to stop typists getting too fast as the original typewriter had metal arms that would become jammed if they were pushed too fast. Once the QWERTY convention became established, it stuck. Even though modern keyboards (such as the one I'm typing this on) don't need to have any consideration to jammed metal arms, the pattern is now so established it would be hard to reverse.

Gould likened this to pentadactyl limb termination in vertebrates. Despite the variety of forms in modern vertebrates (fins, claws, hands, flippers, hooves, trotters etc.) the underlying architecture is still based on five digits. The roots of this form were laid down in the deep evolutionary past. There is no obvious reason why five, rather than four or six digits was optimal. Maybe some creatures in the Burgess shale had a heptadactyl configuration, but for some reason it never got established. So, here we are and it seems that evolution has settled on five as the number of digits (real or vestigial) across a very wide spectrum of lifeforms and that's now too established to reverse or re-engineer. (Unless some new niche opens up that favours a different number.)

*The essay is, I think, 'The Panda's thumb of technology" which appears in the collection of essays titled 'Bully for Brontosaurus'.

I just went to check my bookshelves and I appear to have misplaced this book...

Edit for typo

[UncertainSloth]

1. the long take - robin robertson - 8/10
2. the gatekeeper - russ kane - 5/10
3. dr potter's medicine show - eric scott fischl - 8/10
4. just one damn thing after another - jodi taylor - 8/10 -
5. trinity - louisa hall - 8/10
6. the night ocean - paul la farge - 9/10
7. washington black - esi edugyan - 8/10
8. the monsters of templeton - lauren groff - 8/10
9. hystopia - david means - 6/10
10. the bones of avalon ( dr dee #1) - phil rickman - 9/10
11. in a cottage in the woods - cass green - 7/10
12. the devil's larder - jim crace - 7/10 -
13. where the crawdads sing - delia owen - 9/10
14. the book of m - peng shepherd - 8/10
15 - woman in the window - aj finn - 6/10
16 - cunning folk - adam nevill - 10/10
17. the english monster - lloyd shepherd - 7/10
18. winterset hollow - jonathan durham - 8/10
19.the vessel - adam nevill - 9/10
20. the watchers - a m shine - 8/10
21. keeper of enchanted rooms - charlie holmburgh - 6/10 - fairly mindless but acceptably written book about magic and stuff

[UncertainSloth]

1. the long take - robin robertson - 8/10
2. the gatekeeper - russ kane - 5/10
3. dr potter's medicine show - eric scott fischl - 8/10
4. just one damn thing after another - jodi taylor - 8/10 -
5. trinity - louisa hall - 8/10
6. the night ocean - paul la farge - 9/10
7. washington black - esi edugyan - 8/10
8. the monsters of templeton - lauren groff - 8/10
9. hystopia - david means - 6/10
10. the bones of avalon ( dr dee #1) - phil rickman - 9/10
11. in a cottage in the woods - cass green - 7/10
12. the devil's larder - jim crace - 7/10 -
13. where the crawdads sing - delia owen - 9/10
14. the book of m - peng shepherd - 8/10
15 - woman in the window - aj finn - 6/10
16 - cunning folk - adam nevill - 10/10
17. the english monster - lloyd shepherd - 7/10
18. winterset hollow - jonathan durham - 8/10
19.the vessel - adam nevill - 9/10
20. the watchers - a m shine - 8/10
21. keeper of enchanted rooms - charlie holmburgh
22. the creeper - a m shine - 9/10 - liking this bloke's stuff, excellent irish folk horror

[Blip]

First 50 here.

51. The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald
52. The Whalebone Theatre by Joanna Quinn
53. Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson
54. Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson
55. Lessons by Ian McEwan
56. Middlemarch by George Eliot
57. A Guest at the Feast by Colm Tóibín

Easy reading, a collection of essays by a fine writer, some more interesting than others. One caused me to seek out an online image of Georg Gänswein: a handsome chap indeed!

[don't get me started]

1. Cognitive Discourse Analysis: An introduction - Thora Tenbrink
2. Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything About Race, Gender And Identity- And Why This Harms Everybody – Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay
3. A History of the World in 12 Maps – Jerry Brotton
4. Origins of the Specious: Myths and Misconceptions of the English Language – Patricia T. O’Connor & Stewart Kellerman
5. Peer Interaction and Second Language Learning - Jenefer Philip, Rebecca Adams & Noriko Iwashita
6. Eugene Onegin - Alexander Pushkin
7. Found in Translation: How Language Shapes Our Lives and Transforms the World - Nataly Kelly & Jost Zetzche
8. English Words: A Linguistic Introduction - Heidi Harley
9. Questions: Formal, Functional and Interactional Perspectives Jan P. de Ruiter (Ed.)
10. Persepolis Rising - James S.A. Corey
11. English Prepositions: Their meanings and uses - R.M.W. Dixon
12. Draußen vor der Tür - Wolfgang Borchert
13. Metonymy: Hidden Shortcuts in Language, Thought and Communication - Jeannette Liitlemore
14. Tiamat's Wrath - James S.A. Corey
15. Leviathan Falls - James S.A. Corey
16. The Horse, the Wheel and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World - David W. Anthony
17. The Unfortunate Traveler and Other Works - Thomas Nashe
18. A Qualitative Approach to the Validation of Oral Language Tests (Studies in Language Testing, Series Number 14) - Anne Lazarton
19. Are Some Languages Better than Others? - R.M.W. Dixon.
20. The Expedition of Humphry Clinker - Tobias Smollet
21. Body Part Terms in Conceptualization and Language Usage - Iwona Kraska-Szlenk (Ed.)
22.Think Least of Death: Spinoza on How to Live and How to Die - Steven Nadler
23. Vuelta Skelter: Riding the Remarkable 1941 Tour of Spain - Tim Moore
24. Cognitive Linguistics: An Introduction - David Lee
25. Space in Language and Cognition: Explorations in Cognitive Diversity - Stephen C. Levinson
26. An Immigrant's Love Letter to the West - Konstantin Kisin
27. Explorations of Language Transfer - Terrence Odlin
28: A war on Two Fronts: Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan and Terrence Malik's The Thin Red Line- Tibe Patrick Jordan
29. Grammars of Space: Explorations in Cognitive Diversity - Stephen C. Levinson and David Wilkins (Eds.) (Partial re-read)
30. Rethinking linguistic relativity - John J. Gumperz & Stephen C. Levinson (Eds.) Partial re-read.
31. A History of the World in 6 Glasses - Tom Standage
32. Cross-linguistic Study of the Principle of Linguistic Relativity: Cross-linguistic Research to Examine the Principle of Linguistic Relativity: Evidence from English, Mandarin and Russian - Ronan Grace
33. An Introduction to Linguistic Typology - Viveka Vellupillai
34. Mysteries of English Grammar: A guide to the complexities of the English Language - Andreea S. Calude & Laurie Bauer
35. Against a Dark Background - Iain M. Banks (Reread)
36. The Linguistics Delusion - Geoffrey Sampson
37. Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition - Peter Robinson & Nick C. Ellis
38. Where have all the adjectives gone? - R.M.W Dixon
39. Copulas: Universals in the Categorization of the Lexicon - Regina Pustet
40. Scoff: A History of Food and Class in Britain - Pen Vogler
41. Genesis: The Deep Origin of Societies - Edward O. Wilson
42. Conceptualizations of time - Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk (Ed.)

42. Aftermath: Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich - Harald Jähner

432 pp.

I used to read a lot of stuff about the second world war - battles, campaigns, first hand accounts and so on. Over the years I started to develop an interest in the immediate post war period. I was increasingly drawn to understanding how wars end. (It is never as simple as expressed by Viz comic one time in a cut out and keep WW2 board game "VE day and our boys come home to a heroes' welcome. Except the ones who had been killed.")

When the guns fall silent, what happens next? This book is a very thorough account of how German society coped with the catastrophic defeat, the social upheaval, the discrediting of Germans and Germany in the eyes of the rest of the world. There is too much to go into here, but one section really caught my attention. Because of the breakdown of society, many Germans in the immediate years after the war resorted to all manner of criminality to survive. Looting, corruption, thievery, deception, prostitution, and many other behaviors that would have been considered beyond the pale by respectable middle class Germans before the war, became necessary survival strategies.

As society started to re-cohere, many conservatives, churchmen and other self-appointed guardians of public morality lamented the rampant immorality they saw around them in war-ravaged and occupied Germany. The author remarks wryly on the blindness of these persons in thinking that it was after 1945 that German society slid into criminality...

There was also an interesting discussion on how the allies tried to deal with a large population that had been effectively brainwashed by 12 years of ferocious Nazi propaganda. Nazi views did not fall away overnight and the grievances that had been stoked by Hitler found new expression in the self-pity and slippery evasiveness of many in the post-war Germany as they sought to recast themselves as victims. The parallels with the propagandized Russian population of 2022 gives pause for thought. The infection wrought by Putin's propaganda is not going to go away any time soon, even if (as looks increasingly likely) the SMO ends in ignominious defeat for the Russians.

Not exactly a cheery read, but well written, detailed and morally courageous.

[Evolving]

I suppose this is "Wolfszeit: Deutschland und die Deutschen 1945 - 1955", in the original. I might get that, it looks rather good.

Always interesting to see how the society that I entered into a couple of decades later coalesced and took shape before I arrived.

Afterthought: I found Rosen für den Staatsanwalt fascinating, ever since I first saw it many years ago on German TV. It used to be on YouTube, but I suppose the copyright hounds have extended their remit and don't just check English-language uploads any more.

An ex-soldier struggles to make his way in post-war Berlin (I think), comes up before a judge and realises he's the same one who condemned him to death for desertion in the last days of the war. (You may guess that the sentence was then not carried out.)

[Blip]

First 50 here.

51. The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald
52. The Whalebone Theatre by Joanna Quinn
53. Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson
54. Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson
55. Lessons by Ian McEwan
56. Middlemarch by George Eliot
57. A Guest at the Feast by Colm Tóibín
58. Village Christmas and Other Notes on the English Year by Laurie Lee

Curate's egg collection of reminiscences and essays.

[UncertainSloth]

1. the long take - robin robertson - 8/10
2. the gatekeeper - russ kane - 5/10
3. dr potter's medicine show - eric scott fischl - 8/10
4. just one damn thing after another - jodi taylor - 8/10 -
5. trinity - louisa hall - 8/10
6. the night ocean - paul la farge - 9/10
7. washington black - esi edugyan - 8/10
8. the monsters of templeton - lauren groff - 8/10
9. hystopia - david means - 6/10
10. the bones of avalon ( dr dee #1) - phil rickman - 9/10
11. in a cottage in the woods - cass green - 7/10
12. the devil's larder - jim crace - 7/10 -
13. where the crawdads sing - delia owen - 9/10
14. the book of m - peng shepherd - 8/10
15 - woman in the window - aj finn - 6/10
16 - cunning folk - adam nevill - 10/10
17. the english monster - lloyd shepherd - 7/10
18. winterset hollow - jonathan durham - 8/10
19.the vessel - adam nevill - 9/10
20. the watchers - a m shine - 8/10
21. keeper of enchanted rooms - charlie holmburgh
22. the creeper - a m shine - 9/10
23. echoes of home - m l rayner - 6/10 - bit of a mess this one...basic english ghost story, an inevitable (and predictable) twist and some very sloppy writing...the author seems to want to adopt an almost m r james tone but can't sustain it so it just sounds clumsy...and the story within the story? oh dear...over 4 on goodreads as well, i suspect some shilling

[NamelessFaceless]

the movie handles it very well, i thought - i know what you mean about the dialogue

Definitely agree with you on the movie. Much better than the book, IMO.

[NamelessFaceless]

Audiobooks in Italics

1. Hope of Heaven - John O'Hara
2. Pal Joey - John O'Hara
3. Invitation to a Beheading - Vladimir Nabokov
4. Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination That Changed America Forever - Bill O'Reilly
5. Haroun and the Sea of Stories - Salman Rushdie
6. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky
7. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd - Agatha Christie
8. The Innocence of Father Brown - G.K. Chesterton
9. The Lost World - Arthur Conan Doyle
10 The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
11. The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway
12. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
13. The Idiot - Fyodor Dostoevsky
14. A Study in Scarlet - Arthur Conan Doyle
15. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert (a re-read, this time listened)
16. Around the World in Eighty Days - Jules Vernes (I was really surprised at how much I enjoyed this!)
17. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (another re-read, this time listened)
18. The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde (another one I previously read and have now listened)
19. Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson
20. The Greatest Show on Earth - Richard Dawkins
21. The Forward Collection: The Last Conversation (Paul Tremblay); Emergency Skin (N.K. Jemisin); Summer Frost (Blake Crouch); Ark (Veronica Roth); Randomize (Andy Weir); You Have Arrived at Your Destination (Amor Towles)
22. Beyond Good and Evil - Friedrich Nietzsche
23. Sarah - J.T. LeRoy
24. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea - Jules Verne
25. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson
26. The Arabian Nights - Andrew Lang
27. The Prince - Niccolo Machiavelli
28. Meditations - Marcus Aurelius
29. The Europeans - Henry James
30. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin - Benjamin Franklin
31. Shirley Jackson: Novels and Stories - Shirley Jackson
32. Hush Collection: Snowflakes (Ruth Ware); Treasure (Oyinkan Braithwaite); Slow Burner (Laura Lippman); Buried (Jeffrey Deaver); The Gift (Alison Gaylin); Let Her Be (Lisa Unger)
33. Rachel Ray - Anthony Trollope
34. Battlefield Earth - L. Ron Hubbard
35. Summer - Edith Wharton
36. Disorder Collection: The Best Girls (Min Jin Lee); Loam (Scott Heim); Ungirls (Lauren Beukes); Anonymous (Uzodinma Iweala); The Beckoning Fair One (Dan Chaon); Will Williams (Namwali Serpell)
37. All the Lies They Did Not Tell: The True Story of Satanic Panic in an Italian Community - Pablo Trincia
38. Point Counter Point - Aldous Huxley
39. A Rogue's Life - Wilkie Collins
40. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark
41. A Farewell to Arms - Ernest Hemingway
42. A Head Full of Ghosts - Paul Tremblay
43 The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
44. Where the Crawdads Sing - Delia Owens
45. Reading Lolita in Tehran - Azar Nafisi
46. The Secret of Chimneys - Agatha Christie

[UncertainSloth]

1. the long take - robin robertson - 8/10
2. the gatekeeper - russ kane - 5/10
3. dr potter's medicine show - eric scott fischl - 8/10
4. just one damn thing after another - jodi taylor - 8/10 -
5. trinity - louisa hall - 8/10
6. the night ocean - paul la farge - 9/10
7. washington black - esi edugyan - 8/10
8. the monsters of templeton - lauren groff - 8/10
9. hystopia - david means - 6/10
10. the bones of avalon ( dr dee #1) - phil rickman - 9/10
11. in a cottage in the woods - cass green - 7/10
12. the devil's larder - jim crace - 7/10 -
13. where the crawdads sing - delia owen - 9/10
14. the book of m - peng shepherd - 8/10
15 - woman in the window - aj finn - 6/10
16 - cunning folk - adam nevill - 10/10
17. the english monster - lloyd shepherd - 7/10
18. winterset hollow - jonathan durham - 8/10
19.the vessel - adam nevill - 9/10
20. the watchers - a m shine - 8/10
21. keeper of enchanted rooms - charlie holmburgh
22. the creeper - a m shine - 9/10
23. echoes of home - m l rayner - 6/10
24. house at phantom park - graham masterton - 7/10 - interesting take on the haunted house story, using ptsd and pain from warfare as the driver....but that's a fckng awful title....

[Blip]

First 50 here.

51. The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald
52. The Whalebone Theatre by Joanna Quinn
53. Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson
54. Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson
55. Lessons by Ian McEwan
56. Middlemarch by George Eliot
57. A Guest at the Feast by Colm Tóibín
58. Village Christmas and Other Notes on the English Year by Laurie Lee
59. Scar Tissue by Clare Morgan

The author is founder and director of the Creative Writing programme at Oxford; I came across this collection of loosely related short stories in a promo email from Oxford ContEd so had high hopes but must admit to disappointment.