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Keep the Aspidistra Flying
George Orwell 1936 (Penguin 1975)



"Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936) is one of George Orwell’s earlier novels and one which he reserved little fondness for. Gordon Comstock, a mediocre poet, has left his comfortable job at the New Albion advertising agency in favour of dead-end work in a small bookshop. Gordon rails against the ‘money-god’ and the growing consumerism he sees around him, bemoaning his own impoverished state and his treatment at the hands of a society run on money. Refusing to accept help from his wealthy friend, Ravelston, and only taking small amounts from his sister, Julia, Gordon drags his uncomplaining girlfriend, Rosemary, down with him. As he blindly flails against the system, Gordon’s politics become evidently compromised, and when his first sexual encounter with Rosemary leads to an unexpected pregnancy he must choose whether to conform or to compound his suffering." (from Matthew Selwyn's book blog)

Orwell apparently knocked this one out quickly because he needed the dosh and tried to stop it from being reprinted. It's obviously not comparable with a great work like 1984 but I did enjoy reading it. Comstock's splenetic misanthropy is quite amusing and there are memorably pithy passages such as the one where Gordon describes advertising as "the rattle of a stick in a swill bucket". I had quite low expectations for this book and was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed it.

Jennings' Diary
Anthony Buckeridge 1953 (Collins 1960)



"Hah-ooh cinosrepus! 'Selbanev, Nosnikta, Senoj-Nitram,' said Jennings. 'They're the names of people, I bet you can't guess who!' 'Russian agents?…Zulu tribesmen?…Ancient kings of Egypt?' hazarded Darbishire. 'No, no, no,' Jennings flipped his fingers in delight and danced ungainly ballet steps round the tuck-boxes. 'Oh, wacko! If you can't guess, neither will anybody else, so we can use it for the code.' Jennings is suffering from beginning-of-term-itis, but things soon return to the normal state of mayhem and confusion when his new diary is made public property! Alarmed at the thought of his most private thoughts being made public, Jennings decides to invent a secret language. Will anyone be able to decode Selbanev si a llopdolc? Drazo Hsivips! Inspired by a visit to the Natural History Museum, Jennings and Darbishire establish their own collection of ancient relics, but they are not out of trouble for long and when the precious diary goes missing, Jennings finds himself on the wrong side of the law! Relggowsnroh emoseurg!" (from Google books)

Not quite up to the standard of the first four in the series. The usual schoolboy misunderstandings and misadventures occur but they feel a bit thinner than previously. This was published just three years after the first so I'm thinking Buckeridge may have been under pressure to churn them out quickly.
As well as the 25 Jennings books, Buckeridge wrote five novels about grammar school boy Rex Milligan and I'm going to try and get hold of one of those to see how they compare.

Athelstan - The Making of England
Tom Holland 2016 (Penguin 2018)



"The formation of England occurred against the odds: an island divided into rival kingdoms, under savage assault from Viking hordes. But, after King Alfred ensured the survival of Wessex and his son Edward expanded it, his grandson Athelstan inherited the rule of both Mercia and Wessex, conquered Northumbria and was hailed as Rex totius Britanniae: 'King of the whole of Britain'.
Tom Holland recounts this extraordinary story with relish and drama, transporting us back to a time of omens, raven harbingers and blood-red battlefields. As well as giving form to the figure of Athelstan - devout, shrewd, all too aware of the precarious nature of his power, especially in the north - he introduces the great figures of the age, including Alfred and his daughter Aethelflaed, 'Lady of the Mercians', who brought Athelstan up at the Mercian court. Making sense of the family rivalries and fractious conflicts of the Anglo-Saxon rulers, Holland shows us how a royal dynasty rescued their kingdom from near-oblivion and fashioned a nation that endures to this day." (from kobo.com)

I'm a bit of a sucker for book series so these slim Penguin Monarch volumes are right up my alley. Forty five planned in total, each one on a king or queen of England, Great Britain or the United Kingdom starting with Athelstan becoming the first king of all Angle land, which Holland dates to 924 when the kingdoms of Wessex and Mercia were united.
It's less than a hundred pages of narrative so it doesn't outstay its welcome. It has maps which list every place mentioned in the text (often a weakness in history books), a family tree for the whole clan so that you don't mix up your Ethelreds and your Ethelweards and an excellent bibliography which doesn't just list a load of books but actually says a bit about each one and why it might be useful to read them.
Not all of the series have been published in paperback yet so I'm having to jump more than a century forward for the next one on William the Bastard.

Best Science Fiction of the Year 8
Terry Carr (editor) 1979 (Gollancz 1979)



Twelve stories first published in 1978 including two new authors for me in Mssrs Kingsbury and Schenck. A pretty decent selection and interesting that none of these won the Nebula or Hugo awards for that year. None of the stories are real clunkers, which is unusual for these Year's Best anthologies, but equally there are no works that are outstanding in the sense that I would be keen to read them again.
If I had to pick my three favourites they would be:
Black Glass - Fritz Leiber
The Very Slow Time Machine - Ian Watson
The Man Who Had No Idea - Thomas M. Disch

Stamped inside the cover is the instruction "Not to be taken away from the 6th form common room at Stratford School." I hope the Borough of Newham don't send the old bill after me. I'm not a tealeaf, honest guv!

The Secret of Grey Walls
Malcolm Saville 1947 (Girls Gone By 2007)



"David Morton and the twins Dickie and Mary, with their friends Peter, Jenny, Tom and the Warrenders, go to stay in the little, forgotten town of Clun. Hard by Offa's Dyke the Lone Piners discover a lonely, mysterious house surrounded by high stone walls. It seems deserted, but is in fact the seat of strange happenings which are bringing disaster to the farmers in the neighbourhood. And there is the odd Mr. Cantor, who is staying at the same boarding house as the children, and about whom opinion is divided - is he friend or foe?

One of the satisfying aspects of the Lone Pine series is that they are all set in a variety of real places and contain a map of the area marked with the locations where the events take place. Several are set in the Shropshire hills and this one is in an even more remote area - the Clun forest close to the Welsh border. The sheep rustling plot is far fetched but it doesn't matter when nostalgia and escapism are what's required. A caravan even plays it's part in many of the books although it is Admittedly a horse drawn gypsy caravan with a chimney and not a 1995 Bailey Pageant Cabriolet with a beige vitreous enamel sink and drainer.
Next up is number five of twenty, the exotically titled "Lone Pine Five"

Let Sleeping Vets Lie
James Herriot 1973 (Pan 2006)



"With two years experience behind him, James Herriot still feels privileged working on the beautiful Yorkshire moors as assistant vet at the Darrowby practice. Time to meet yet more unwilling patients and a rich cast of supporting owners. Full of hilarious tales of his unpredictable boss Siegfreid Farnon, his charming student brother Tristan, the joys of spring lambing, a vicious cat called Boris and James’ jinxed courtship of the lovely Helen, this third volume of memoirs is sure to delight hardened fans and new readers of James Herriot titles alike." (from Hachette)

Desribed as memoirs but autobiographical novels might be more accurate. Whatever they are they are an easy, pleasant read and a lot of the time that's just what I'm looking for.

Magnificent Universe
Ken Croswell 1999 (Simon & Schuster 1999)



"Dr. Croswell has brought together outstanding photographs from leading observatories around the world as well as from an armada of interplanetary spacecraft. Images from the Hubble Space Telescope have been digitally reprocessed to create a degree of definition never seen before. With these superb photographs, he guides us through lucidly organized chapters on the planets, the stars, the galaxies, and the universe. Unique color-coded tables on the planets, moons, brightest stars, nearest stars, and Local Group galaxies appear in a useful reference section, along with a glossary and suggestions for further reading."Magnificent Universe" catapults you through the vistas of space that future generations will explore. It is a landmark in the scientific visualization of the cosmos -- one that will surely inspire artists, philosophers, and adventures of the next century." (from Amazon)

I got this book as a present about twenty years ago and finally got round to reading it. It's a coffee table book so I wouldn't have bought it for myself but I'm glad I read it as it's pretty good. I'd read Croswell's book Planet Quest about the discovery of extrasolar planets so I knew he was a good writer who knows his stuff and although I was mostly familiar with the material I did learn quite a bit of new stuff. The text is in bite sized chunks so I used it as my bedtime read which was quite risky. It's a big heavy book and falling asleep while reading it could result in a busted nose.

Mathematical Carnival
Martin Gardner 1975 (Pelican 1978)



"Gardner's latest collection of mathematical diversions is witty, literate, and properly maddening. The puzzles range from the traditional stuff with coins and cards to more esoteric maneuverings of infinities (yes, there's more than one). The anti-mathematical will probably be most interested in Gardner's accounts of Freud's flirtation with numerology and Escher's fascination with topological and geometric conundrums. For those whose goal is self-improvement, Gardner leaks many of the secrets of the ""lightning calculators,"" who multiply seven-digit numbers in their heads. Pascal's Triangle, ever an attraction for the mathematical inquirer, also gets its due as a source of puzzle and enlightenment. Yes, there are answers, and Gardner (who's been Puzzles Editor at The Scientific American for years) has included addenda to the original published columns that incorporate sallies and comments from calculating readers." (from Kirkus)

This is one of the books compiled from Gardner's monthly column in Scientific American with articles originally published in the years 1965-67. These books need a higher level of concentration than the average but it's worth the effort.
Seven down eight to go.

The World According to Clarkson
Jeremy Clarkson 2004 (Penguin 2005)



"The world is an exciting and confusing place for Jeremy Clarkson - a man who can find the overgrown schoolboy in us all. In The World According to Clarkson, one of the country's funniest comic writers has free reign to expose absurdity, celebrate eccentricity and entertain richly in the process.
And the net is cast wide: from the chronic unsuitability of men to look after children for long periods or as operators of 'white goods', Nimbyism, cricket and PlayStations, to astronomy, David Beckham, 70's rock, the demise of Concorde, the burden of an Eton education and the shocking failure of Tom Clancy to make it on to the Booker shortlist, The World According to Clarkson is a hilarious snapshot of the life in the 21st century that will have readers wincing with embarrassed recognition and crying with laughter." (from Booklore)

I'll admit that I feel conflicted about Jeremy Clarkson. On the one hand he voted to remain in the EU but on the other hand he once punched Piers Morgan. On the one hand he's a member of the Chipping Norton set and chummy with David cameron but on the other hand he punched Piers Morgan. Despite all that you have to try and judge the book on its merits and I was surprised at how much I enjoyed reading it. I say surprised because I wouldn't normally have bought this book (of weekly columns from The Sunday Times 2001-2003) but it was only a pound on a charity book stall and that's always a good opportunity to get yourself a read from outside of your normal range.
It's also surprising because he seems to be pretty well clued up on the issues of the day wheras anyone who has seen Jezza present WWTBAM will know how shockingly ignorant he is about anything other than cars and ...er... that's about it.
One of the articles from 2003 is called "You think SARS is bad, ther's worse out there" which seems moderately prescient.

William I
Marc Morris 2016 (Penguin 2018)



"On Christmas Day 1066, William, duke of Normandy was crowned in Westminster, the first Norman king of England. It was a disaster: soldiers outside, thinking shouts of acclamation were treachery, torched the surrounding buildings. To later chroniclers, it was an omen of the catastrophes to come.
During the reign of William the Conqueror, England experienced greater and more seismic change than at any point before or since. Marc Morris's concise and gripping biography sifts through the sources of the time to give a fresh view of the man who changed England more than any other, as old ruling elites were swept away, enemies at home and abroad (including those in his closest family) were crushed, swathes of the country were devastated and the map of the nation itself was redrawn, giving greater power than ever to the king.
When, towards the end of his reign, William undertook a great survey of his new lands, his subjects compared it to the last judgement of God, the Domesday Book. England had been transformed forever." (from Foyles)

This is the second of the Penguin Monarchs series that I've read and it gets another thumbs up. I thinks there's a niche in popular non-fiction publishing for books of about 100 pages, otherwise there's nothing filling the gap between articles in magazines and 400 page tomes which might represent overkill for a lot of readers.
The battle of Hastings is one of the great "what if moments" where it's fun to speculate on the course of history if the saxons had won. The author Marc Morris does exactly that in an interview with BBC History which I would like to read. Hastings only gets a few pages in this book so I've bought the Osprey book on the battle for a more detailed study.
I've not decided on the next one of the series to go for. Maybe right up to date with Liz 2.