Pile

A busy day teaching, so I arrived at the end of the day without any photos taken, so, an emergency book blip: a pile of most of what I've  read in 2025  to date. 

A few observations, working my way up from the bottom of the pile, with links to previous blips where relevant:

Guterson - it must be 20-30 yrs since his famous book, ‘Snow Falling on Cedars’ - I’ve read one or two others as well - always a strong sense of place (Pacific Northwest). 

Haruf - more American fiction but a more recent discovery, this is the second of this series of connected novels that I’ve read.  Small town lives. Bleak but hopeful.

Allingham x 2 - I was late coming to the Campion series, but these are by far my favourite of the golden age of crime writing. Light and breezy with usually some interesting arcane undertones.

Sarah Hall - her second book (after ‘Haweswater’), half set in Morecambe, half in Coney Island, 1920s through to 70s. At times I found this a bit too immersive in the tattooing world, but it is a fine piece of historical fiction. And I kind of grew up in seaside towns too, so interesting from that sense.

Furst - I’ve been working through this ‘Night Soldiers’ series for around 30 yrs - this is the tenth. A really strong body of work - set in years leading up to and during WW2, but usually set in interesting central and eastern european locations.

Cynan Jones’ ‘The Dig’ - I will have picked this up as it’s Welsh fiction. Absolutely devastating piece of work on grief and badger baiting.

Rose Macaulay’s ‘Fabled Shore’ - non-fiction travel writing - a solo motoring tour of the Spanish coast just after WW2. Interesting in moments, but a bit too dry and guide book like. Disappointing as I’ve enjoyed a couple of her novels.

Brooks - the Shanarra books are really hopeless rip offs of Lord of the Rings, this is the second of the original trilogy, but I kind of enjoy the world building, and once you’ve started a trilogy you have to finish it :-) I’d previously read one of the later trilogies in the sequence (around 30-40 Shannara books all told) but I probably won’t go much further with these (other than to read the third in the trilogy, of course.)

Treece - I have a tendency to pick up vintage Puffin books when I find them, and to justify (to myself) this magpie activity I sometimes read one of them. Engaging historical fiction for kids set during the time of the Roman invasion of Britain. Treece write a series for adults set in the same period, but these are much trickier to get hold of - the one I’ve read was great though.

McBain x 3 - the 87th Precinct books is another huge (50+ volumes) series. These three were 18-20 in the sequence, so I’m not even halfway through yet. I probably have another 20 in my to read pile. They’re quite slim volumes, so I read these three in a week.

Ace SF Double - nice vintage copy of Simak’s ‘Ring Around the Sun’ with a bonus back to back novel from L Sprague de Camp. The Simak volume is one of David Pringles’ 100 Best SF Novels since 1945, which I’ve been using as a reading guide for about 40 yrs now - still about 15-20 that I haven’t read. My obsessive archiving tells me I read another in this Prague de Camp series when I was in my teens, I can remember the cover but nothing of the book. This one was quite fun, a bit like Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat series.

As you can see, I do like my series.