Read all about it

Spending a whole day reading is one of life’s pleasures and three months without TV or internet has meant perfect conditions for S to indulge in a book-reading extravaganza.

A shady fig tree has been a time-travelling machine taking us from pre-revolutionary Russia (Crime and Punishment), Escoffier’s kitchens in France (White Truffles in Winter), contemporary London (The Detective’s Daughter) and pre-war Berlin (Zoo Station). There’s been revolutionary 1970s Chile (Something Fierce) and a drug baron’s palace in Mexico (Down the Rabbit Hole).

So in no particular order – and for no reason other than to keep our own log of what’s been read so far – here are the books:

1. The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway
2. Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro
3. I Choose to Live – Sabine Dardenne
4. The Moors in Spain – Stanley Lane-Poole
5. The Spanish Temper – VS Pritchett
6. Bombsites and Lollipops – Jacky Hyams
7. Zoo Station – David Downing
8. Waiting for Sunrise – William Boyd
9. One Step Too Far – Tina Seskis
10. The Aquariums of Pyongyang – Kang Chol-Hwan, Pierre Rigoulot
11. Wild Swans – Jung Chang
12. Our Mutual Friend – Charles Dickens
13. Gone Girl – Gillian Flynn
14. Road Closed – Leigh Russell
15. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
16. Labyrinth – Kate Mosse
17. Pasodoble – Martin Cross
18. Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
19. Something Fierce – Carmen Aguirre
20. Crime and Punishment  – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
21. Ordinary Thunderstorms – William Boyd
22. Driving Over Lemons (again) – Chris Stewart
23. The Silence  – Alison Bruce
24. Down the Rabbit Hole – Juan Pablo Villalobos
25. Spanish Civil War – George Levrier-Jones
26. My Father’s House – Bethany Dawson
27. White Truffles in Winter – Nicole Kelby
28. Slave Girl – Sarah Forsyth
29. The Unlikely Pilgrimage Of Harold Fry – Rachel Joyce
30. The Marseille Caper – Peter Mayle
31. The Messenger of Athens – Anne Zouroudi
32. Watch Over Me – Daniela Sacerdoti
33. The Detective’s Daughter – Lesley Thomson
34. After the Fall – Charity Norman
35. The Last Templar – Michael Jecks
36. Road to Rouen – Ben Hatch

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