Books read in October

A fairly average reading month for me this month. I had some quiet periods, one rather difficult week, and then this week being half-term is busy as well. A mixed month. Thus, it seems to me that seven books read is not bad at all. These are they:

68. The Happy Isles of Oceania by Paul Theroux. My first travelogue by this author, which seems odd given his fame and my taste for travel books but there you go. This one charts Theroux's travels, mainly by kayak, around the isles of the south Pacific. A long book this, possibly a bit over-long as it got slightly repetitive, but for all that I really enjoyed it as it's an interesting region with interesting people. I like the author's style so am currently reading his Great Railway Bazaar which is a bit more concise.

69. The Dead Secret by Wilkie Collins. Liked this a lot.

70. Women in the Wild edited by Lucy McCauley. An anthology of travel stories written by women. Patchy with some average stories and some really brilliant ones such as Diving the Jungle by Denise M. Spranger, Hyena by Joanna Greenfield, Survival at Sea by Deborah Scaling Kiley and Meg Noonan and Among Chimpanzees by Jane Goodall. This book is published by the US publisher Traveler's Tales, the same people who published the river anthology I read earlier in the year. I shall be on the look out for more of their books, although the likelihood of finding many in the UK is remote. This one I bought when I was in America a few years ago.

71. Mayhem by Sara Pinborough. A jolly good spooky Victorian read.

72. Sheer Folly by Carola Dunn. Book 18 in the author's Daisy Dalrymple crime series, set in the 1920s. Up to the usual good standard and thoroughly enjoyable.

73. Broken Homes by Ben Aaronovitch. Book 4 in the author's DC Peter Grant crime/horror/fantasy series. Excellent.

74. Strong Poison by Dorothy L Sayers. This deserves a word or two.

Harriet Vane has been accused of poisoning, with arsenic, her ex-boyfriend, Philip Boyes. If the jury find her gulity she will hang. Lord Peter Wimsey is convinced she's not guilty. The result of the trial is that the jury cannot agree so a retrial is scheduled for a month's time, giving Lord Peter precisely four weeks to prove Harriet's innocence. The case for the prosecution seems water-tight but the real murderer has reckoned without Lord Peter and The Cattery - a group of women he has working for him.

Well, this is my first Lord Peter Wimsey book and it won't be my last. It's not the first in the series, it's actually the fifth. It might seem like an odd place to start but several people suggested starting here with the first book about Harriet Vane, so I did. It was hugely entertaining - the culprit was fairly apparent from about halfway but the joy of the book was how Wimsey and the ladies working for him set about proving it and working out how the deed was done. There was also joy in the writing, so much dry understated humour that had me chuckling all the way through. A delightful book and I'm now on the look-out for more.

So, not a bad reading month really. All books read were enjoyable, and two were non-fictions which pleases me no end. My favourite book? Well it's close, The Dead Secret, Mayhem and Broken Homes were all strong contenders but in the end I think I liked Strong Poison most of all.

~~~oOo~~~