The Booker Prize -- LIST

THE BOOKER PRIZE

The Booker Prize is awarded each year for a full-length novel, written English and published in the UK. The Booker was traditionally awarded for novels by British, Irish, and Commonwealth authors published in the UK. In 2014, the award was opened to any novel originally written in English, mostly meaning Americans became eligible. The winner is awarded £50,000. The winner and the shortlisted authors see a significant increase in sales.

The Booker winners is one of my favorite books lists. That said, I am not going to keep updating the winners after 2021. My enthusiasm for prize-winners is waning with the 2020s. I plan to focus my efforts on reading the winners up to 2020 then declare victory and move on to other bookish projects.

If anyone else working on this list would like me to post a link to reviews or your progress report(s), please leave a comment with a link and I will add it below.

So far, I have read 46 of the winners. Here is the list, with notes about whether I've finished a book or if it is on my TBR shelf:

2021: Damon Galgut: The Promise ON OVERDRIVE

2020: Douglas Stuart, Shuggie Bain FINISHED

2019: Margaret Atwood, The Testaments ON OVERDRIVE; Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other ON OVERDRIVE

2018: Anna Burns, Milkman FINISHED

2017: George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo FINISHED

2016: Paul Beatty, The Sellout FINISHED

2015: Marlon James, A Brief History of Seven Killings FINISHED

2014: Richard Flanagan, The Narrow Road to the Deep North FINISHED

2013: Elinor Catton, The Luminaries FINISHED

2012: Hilary Mantel, Bring up the Bodies FINISHED

2011: Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending (reviewed here) FINISHED

2010: Howard Jacobson, The Finkler Question (reviewed here) FINISHED

2009: Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall (reviewed here) FINISHED

2008: Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger FINISHED

2007: Anne Enright, The Gathering (reviewed here) FINISHED

2006: Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss FINISHED

2005: John Banville, The Sea (reviewed here) FINISHED

2004: Alan Hollinghurst, The Line of Beauty TBR SHELF

2003: DBC Pierre, Vernon God Little FINISHED

2002: Yann Martel, Life of Pi FINISHED

2001: Peter Carey, True History of the Kelly Gang FINISHED
 
2000: Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin FINISHED

1999: J. M. Coetzee, Disgrace FINISHED

1998: Ian McEwan, Amsterdam FINISHED (twice)

1997: Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things FINISHED

1996: Graham Swift, Last Orders FINISHED

1995: Pat Barker, The Ghost Road TBR SHELF

1994: James Kelman, How Late it Was, How Late TBR SHELF

1993: Roddy Doyle, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha FINISHED

1992: Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient TBR SHELF, and Barry Unsworth, Sacred Hunger (reviewed here) FINISHED

1991: Ben Okri, The Famished Road AUDIBLE TBR

1990: A.S. Byatt, Possession FINISHED

1989: Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day FINISHED

1988: Peter Carey, Oscar and Lucinda (reviewed here) FINISHED

1987: Penelope Lively, Moon Tiger FINISHED

1986: Kingsley Amis, The Old Devils FINISHED

1985: Keri Hulme, The Bone People (reviewed here) FINISHED

1984: Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac FINISHED (twice)

1983: J. M. Coetzee, The Life and Times of Michael K (reviewed here) FINISHED

1982: Thomas Keneally, Schindler's List FINISHED

1981: Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children (reviewed here) FINISHED 

1980: William Golding, Rites of Passage FINISHED

1979: Penelope Fitzgerald, Offshore FINISHED

1978: Iris Murdoch, The Sea, the Sea (reviewed here) FINISHED

1977: Paul Scott, Staying On FINISHED

1976: David Storey, Saville TBR SHELF

1975: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Heat and Dust FINISHED

1974: Nadine Gordimer, The Conservationist FINISHED, and Stanley Middleton, Holiday FINISHED

1973: J. G. Farrell, The Siege of Krishnapur FINISHED

1972: John Berger, G (reviewed here) FINISHED

1971: V.S. Naipaul, In a Free State FINISHED

1970, The Lost Booker: J. G. Farrell, Troubles TBR SHELF

1970: Bernice Rubens, The Elected Member TBR SHELF

1969: Percy Howard Newby, Something to Answer For FINISHED


NOTES

Updated July 3, 2025. This is a redo of the Booker list I originally created in 2014. 

OTHERS READING BOOKER WINNERS

The Complete Booker: This group blog is no longer actively administered, but there is a treasure trove of Booker-related material.

If you would like to be listed, please leave a comment with links to your progress reports or reviews and I will add them here.

October Wrap Up -- My October Books

OCTOBER WRAP UP

Better late than never! Here’s my October wrap up. October is a particularly fun reading month ever since I discovered Victober on Instagram a few years back. Victober is when people read Victorian literature in October. Victorian novels seem well-suited to chilly, blustery October days.

I read a couple of other chunksters in addition to the two Victorian doorstops I read for Victober, so only got through eight books last month. They are listed below in the order I read them, not as they are stacked up in the picture.

MY OCTOBER BOOKS

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins was one of my Victober reads. I loved this Victorian adventure story! 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates has been on my TBR shelf for a long time. I loved it all the more for reading while in upstate New York last month. Those granite hills and small towns with their mix of rural Yankee charm and diminished rust belt prosperity could be right from the pages of Oates’s 1996 novel. 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

May We be Forgiven by A. M. Holmes knocked it out of the park for me. This was definitely my October standout. I read it because it won the Women's Prize and had no idea what to expect – certainly not the wild, hilarious, audacious gallop it took me on. 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

The Theban Mysteries is a “Silver Age” (1960-1989) vintage mystery featuring English literature professor Kate Fansler. I’m a fan of the series. 🌹🌹🌹1/2

Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age by Sherry Turkle was excellent. I highly recommend it. It will make you put down your phone and start talking to everyone, including yourself, especially the children in your life, and even the grocery clerk.  🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot was my other Victober read. I loved it when I wasn’t rolling my eyes. The main plot of Maggie and her love triangle (quadrangle?) was tedious, but the "filler" was thoroughly entertaining. Then the ending all but ruined it for me. It's like Eliot got as got tired as the rest of us with all the hand wringing but had no idea what to do with Maggie so took the Victorian way out. Good grief!  🌹🌹🌹🌹

BUtterfield 8 by John O’Hara, which I read with my ears so isn't in the picture. The U is capitalized because it is an old phone number. BUtterfield 8 was a bestseller when first published in 1935. I can see why! It's all sex, scandal, and day drinking. Again with the melodramatic ending!  🌹🌹🌹🌹

Building Beauty: The Alchemy of Design by Michael S. Smith is a gorgeous coffee table book from Rizzoli Books. I got when I heard Smith talk a couple of years back.  🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

Now it’s on to Nonfiction November! Do you plan to read nonfiction books this month? I made it a goal to clear some space on my nonfiction TBR shelves this year, so have been reading more nonfiction than I usually do in 2021. I'll continue to read nonfiction in November, but no more than I have been.

MY FAVORITE COVER OF THE MONTH

 

Laura Thompson, author of Life in a Cold Climate: Nancy Mitford; The Biography -- AUTHOR INTERVIEW

 AUTHOR INTERVIEW: LAURA THOMPSON

Laura Thompson studied acting and dance before turning to nonfiction writing as a career. She has written books about greyhound and horse racing, historical true crimes, a memoir about her publican grandmother, and biographies of Agatha Christie and the Mitford sisters. Her biography of Nancy Mitford, Life in a Cold Climate, was reissued by Pegasus Books in 2019. Incredibly talented, Laura also made a tv movie about her return to ballet as an adult, has filmed several documentaries about Agatha Christie, and writes for Town & Country, Harpers Bazaar, and other publications. 

Laura talked with Rose City Reader about the Mitford sisters, her biography of Nancy Mitford, what makes a good biography, and more:

There are plenty of Mitford fans, but please give us a thumbnail introduction of Nancy and her family for new readers.

As a child I learned a little refrain by which to remember Henry VIII’s wives – divorced, beheaded, died, etc. – and one can, rather flippantly, do something similar with the six Mitford sisters: writer (Nancy); countrywoman (Pamela); Fascist (Diana); Nazi (Unity); Communist (Jessica); duchess (Deborah). Reductive, but accurate. 

They were born between 1904 and 1920 in the heart of England into the minor aristocracy, the daughters of Lord and Lady Redesdale, who also had one son – Tom, who was killed in the Second World War. Their early lives are documented, pretty much accurately, in Nancy’s classic novel The Pursuit of Love, which describes their posh-feral upbringing on their father’s land and their rebellions against convention, although the novel softens the reality about the form that these took. In fact, as depression and division took possession of the world in the lead-up to the war, three of the sisters became intensely politically engaged – two to the Right, one to the Left – and the consequences for their lives, and for the rest of their family, were incalculable.  Diana was imprisoned as the wife of Britain’s Fascist leader, Unity shot herself in despair at the outbreak of war between England and her adored Hitler (it took eight years for the bullet lodged in her brain to kill her), and Jessica, who lived in proud poverty in London and lost a baby there to measles, cut herself off from her family by moving to the US, where for some time she was in the sights of the FBI.

What is so remarkable about the Mitfords, however, is that despite all this they have retained – really thanks to Nancy’s writing – a fascination that is not wholly about their notoriety, but also about their style, funniness, aura of blithe confidence and, above all, their very English and self-aware brand of charm. Their story is astonishing – six bright individualists, coming to adulthood at a time when the world went up in flames – and often desperately sad. Yet in some way they rose above it all and lived by Nancy’s creed that "there is always something to laugh at."

 What is your background and how did it lead you to write a biography of Nancy Mitford?

I grew up in the English countryside and went to a performing arts school – hoped to be a dancer, then to act, wasn’t good enough – then got into Oxford where I read English. I sort of fell into writing, whereupon I realized that this was actually the thing that I should be doing.

The original edition of Nancy, published in 2003, was my first biography – I had adored her, like so many of us, from a teenager and desperately wanted to express my praise for her writing, which at the time was not always highly regarded. Lots of people dismissed her as a snob, who dealt only in superficialities, and I thought that was ridiculous – her authorial voice and style are remarkable, influential – I really wanted to say all this. So in a way the book is less a biography and more a love letter. One of her nephews wrote to me and said, you have taken her seriously, which would have amused her but also pleased her very much. I thought that was lovely. And her reputation has now risen to the place where in my view it belongs to be – I hope my biog played a small part in that.

How did you research Mitford’s life? Did you have access to primary source materials? Did you interview people who knew her?

I was extraordinarily lucky – Nancy’s sister Diana Mosley agreed to speak to me, and I visited her in Paris the year before she died. A remarkable experience, as you may imagine. She was extraordinarily kind to me, terribly funny, and clearly still enraged by the fact that back in 1940 Nancy had suggested to the authorities that Diana should be jailed on account of her dangerous pro-Fascist views. "Nancy was the most disloyal person I ever knew," she said to me. Later she reviewed my book very favorably, and invited me to lunch with her again in Paris. She died before I could go – a great regret. Diana encouraged Deborah to meet me, so I went to Chatsworth to talk to her – wonderful. These were the two surviving sisters, and to experience the Mitford charm first-hand was probably more useful to me than anything else.

There was also a cache of letters at Oxford that hadn’t been written about, between Nancy and Theodore Besterman, who was planning a book about Voltaire at the time that she wrote her biography of him. These were fascinating – so revealing about Nancy’s writing philosophy. She was constantly urging Besterman (who also edited Voltaire’s letters) to say more with fewer words – she said: "you mustn’t confound the letters, which tell all, & the book which tells the essential." He didn’t take the advice but I did!!!!

There are other biographies of Nancy Mitford, alone or with her sisters. What distinguishes yours from the others?

The Mitfords are one of the best subjects – there is almost too much material – so inevitably lots of people are drawn to them. What I tried to do was catch Nancy’s essence. I wanted to analyze from the outside what we find so appealing about her (because many people, women in particular, find her irresistible) - her style, her humor, her deployment of the façade, her blithe self-assurance. But I also wanted to understand, as far as possible, what she herself felt about her life. The accepted view was that she was a desperately sad woman, smiling madly in the face of griefs, somebody who made jokes all the time because she was disappointed in love and didn’t have any children. This may have been partly true, but in no way was it the whole truth. To be honest I found it rather unsisterly and, more importantly, not really relevant to Nancy. It seemed to me to measure her against conventional standards, against other people’s standards in fact, whereas what matters is how she herself viewed her life. She believed in the importance of happiness, and in her own happiness – that’s the kind of thing that a biographer has to penetrate, I feel.

But the main difference between my biog and those of Harold Acton and Selina Hastings (both marvelous) is that I concentrate very much on Nancy’s writing – the nature of her artistry – and how her imagination worked both in her books and upon her life.

What did you learn from writing your biography that most surprised you, either about Nancy or the Mitford family?

Not that much about Nancy, if I’m honest. I had instincts about her that I think were generally proved to be correct. With regard to the other Mitfords, however, I was truly fascinated to learn how much they diverged from their image (as created by Nancy, really, in The Pursuit of Love). For instance her father was rather a weak man, who suffered terribly over his daughters’ behavior and never got over having supported – however briefly – the Nazi regime. His wife was the strongest member of the family, and although I didn’t much like her I found her hugely admirable – for instance how she coped with Unity in between visiting Diana in prison, then with her son’s death - she had astonishing resilience. Today she would probably be a CEO, she was so incredibly capable. I was also surprised to find how much I disliked Pam, supposedly the "nice" and mild sister, whom I suspect of being a bit of a resentful bitch – as when she said to Diana that Nancy, who finally succumbed in 1973 after prolonged agonies with cancer, had wasted years of their lives while they waited for her to die.

So the family dynamic was not quite what I had thought, in fact it was even more complex and multi-layered. The letters (edited by Charlotte Mosley) are so revealing about all this. They left me very glad not to have any sisters, I must say.

What is your favorite Nancy Mitford book?

Probably The Pursuit of Love, which I find intensely moving, but that’s such an obvious answer that I’ll put in a word for The Blessing. The portrait of a marriage between a highly romantic Englishwoman and a charming, adulterous Frenchman, it is intensely adult, brutally sophisticated and spectacularly non-woke (as Nancy often can be, but seems to get away with it). Nancy herself is known for her long affair with a French politician who was similarly incapable of fidelity – the novel often reads as if she is giving herself a bracing lecture on how to handle him – it is certainly not how I would want to conduct my own life, but I find it replete with very feminine wisdom and disconcertingly honest. And hugely funny. My favorite character is the grand old French aristocrat, oozing sex appeal in her 70s and dressed in the latest haute couture, who comes to London and extols the delights of wandering "in the Woolworth."

I think Love in a Cold Climate is the funniest of all the books, however, and Lady Montdore her finest comic creation. "Whoever invented love ought to be shot" (as said by Lady M) is my favorite of all Nancy’s lines.

For readers new to Nancy Mitford, which book do you suggest they read first?

Definitely The Pursuit of Love. It’s the perfect introduction to her glorious authorial voice – light but not trivial, poised exquisitely between art and artlessness – and it contains one of the most beautifully realized love affairs in fiction. Its description of her upbringing is the origin of what one might call the Mitford mythology – without this novel, which gave the family a new life by purging it of darkness and celebrating its bright vital spirit, I think we would see them quite differently. We would certainly not be as bedazzled by (in Evelyn Waugh’s famous phrase) their "creamy English charm."

For you, what makes a biography worth reading?

When it observes the same principles as good fiction. Proper story-telling; selecting the salient facts and details that bring the whole to life; paying attention to the emotional dynamics – and of course when the biographer clearly yearned to write about that particular person. Sometimes one has the sense that a writer has been looking for somebody who hasn’t been "done," whether or not they themselves want to "do" them. I have every sympathy incidentally, it’s very hard to find good subjects!!!!

What are some of your favorite biographies or biography writers?

The best biography I’ve ever read is Meredith Daneman’s 2004 life of Margot Fonteyn. The author was a dancer so could understand Fonteyn’s achievements from within, as it were – and she conveyed a powerful, stunningly perceptive sense of both the star and the woman. I can’t recommend that book highly enough.

But I actually mostly read fiction, so I tend to prefer biographies written by novelists – such as E. F. Benson’s biog of Charlotte Bronte, which I suppose is old-fashioned but has so much atmosphere and intelligence. And I love Nancy’s historical biographies (unsurprisingly). Her book on Madame de Pompadour is rightly revered, it has all her characteristic astuteness about motives – she cuts to the heart of political machinations like a tremendously clever child – "the only time I’ve ever understood the Seven Years War," as her nephew said to me. And it has one of the best last lines of any book I’ve ever read – it hits one like a dark thud.

What's next for you? What are you working on now?

I have a book published in the US next February – Heiresses – about women who inherited vast sums of money and whose lives, perversely, were often destroyed by it: starting with Mary Grosvenor, born in 1665, whose marshy fields were developed into London’s most expensive residential areas, while she herself was a victim of date rape and ended her life described as a "lunatick"; all the way through to Winnaretta Singer, Natalie Barney, and Romaine Brooks, then to Barbara Hutton, Patty Hearst and many in between.

Right now, however, I’m working on a labor of love tentatively entitled Reading Women, about the 20^th century female novelists who have shaped our view of life and literature – chief among them Jean Rhys and Elizabeth Taylor, whose worth, I feel, cannot be overstated.

THANK YOU, LAURA!

LIFE IN A COLD CLIMATE IS AVAILABLE IN BOOKSTORES AND ONLINE. READ MY REVIEW HERE.

 

Funerals are Fatal by Agatha Christie -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

 

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

Funerals are Fatal would have been a good book to read last week for Halloween. I'm a bit late. Not it's time for Nonfiction November. Maybe next week I'll have a nonfiction book to share. I've been reading a lot of nonfiction this year to make room on my overflowing nonfiction TBR shelves, so November will be nothing different. But I have a couple of books set aside for Nonfiction November, including Walden by Henry David Thoreau. Are you reading nonfiction this month?

I'm trying to catch up on vintage mysteries these last two months of the year. I've made progress on the Vintage Mystery Challenge but have a ways to go to finish before the end of the year. Funerals are Fatal is one for the challenge. 

MY BOOK BEGINNING

Old Lanscombe moved totteringly from room to room, pulling up the blinds.

-- From Funerals are Fatal by Agatha Christie.

The Vintage Mystery Challenge has a "Scattegories" theme again this year and this 1953 mystery counts as my entry in the "Mystery By Any Other Name" category. Funerals are Fatal is more often found under it's other title, After the Funeral. But I love the campy cover on my old pulp paperback edition.

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

Please share the opening sentence (or so) of the book you are reading this week -- or just a book that caught your fancy. If you share on social media, please use the hashtag #bookbeginnings.

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THE FRIDAY 56

TIE IN: The Friday 56 hosted by Freda's Voice is a natural tie in with this event and there is a lot of cross over, so many people combine the two. The idea is to post a teaser from page 56 of the book you are reading and share a link to your post. Find details and the Linky for your Friday 56 post on Freda’s Voice.

MY FRIDAY 56

From Funerals are Fatal:

“Mr. Timothy Abernathie is her only surviving brother and her next of kin, but he is a recluse and an invalid, and is quite unable to leave home. He has empowered me to act for him and to make all such arrangements as may be necessary.”

Life in a Cold Climate: Nancy Mitford; The Biography by Laura Thompson -- BOOK REVIEW -- and Mitford Book List

BOOK REVIEW & BOOK LIST

Life in a Cold Climate: Nancy Mitford; The Biography by Laura Thompson (2019, Pegasus Books)


In Life in a Cold Climate, biographer Laura Thompson returns to the world of the Mitfords she wrote about so brilliantly in The Six: The Lives of the Mitford Sisters. This time, her focus is on Nancy Mitford, oldest of the six Mitford sisters, author of the novels Love in a Cold Climate and The Pursuit of Love, as well as other novels, biographies, and works of journalism.

The Mitford sisters, and Nancy in particular, have fascinated onlookers since they first Nancy and Pamela first came on the scene in the 1920s and the sisters as a group captured the public’s imagination in the 1930s. Thompson draws from Nancy’s writing, including correspondence with friends like Evelyn Waugh; conversations with her two (then) surviving sisters, Diana and Deborah, acquaintances, and colleagues; and historic resources to paint a fully realized portrait of one of the most intriguing women of the 20th Century.

Thompson’s writing style befits the story of Nancy Mitford. She has a light, often irreverent touch, and brings charm and wit to her subject. Reading Life in a Cold Climate is like drinks with a friend while she gives you the backstory on a mutual acquaintance you always wanted to know more about.

LIST OF MITFORD BOOKS

I am nursing a case of Mitford Mania and have started a collection of Mitford books. Here is the list of those I’ve collected so far. These are book by and about the Mitford sisters. If you have suggestions for books to add, please pass them on to me!

All in One Basket by Deborah Mitford, Dutchess of Devonshire

In Tearing Haste: Letters Between Deborah Mitford and Patrick Leigh Fermor

Wait for Me! by Deborah Mitford, Dutchess of Devonshire

Hons and Rebels by Jessica Mitford

Poison Penmanship: The Gentle Art of Muckraking by Jessica Mitford

The Blessing by Nancy Mitford

Highland Fling by Nancy Mitford

Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford

Madame de Pompadour by Nancy Mitford

The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford

A Talent to Annoy: Essays, Articles and Reviews, 1929-68 by Nancy Mitford

Nancy Mitford: A Memoir by Harold Acton

The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family by Mary S. Lovell

The Mitfords: Letters Between the Sisters, edited by Charlotte Mosley

Life in a Cold Climate by Laura Thompson

The Six: Lives of the Mitford Sisters by Laura Thompson

Happy Halloween!

 

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Have a fun and safe Halloween! It is a beautiful day here in Portland. My neighborhood is geared up and ready to celebrate. It looks like most houses have some kind of decorations up, more than usual. I think last year was so grim, people want to make up for it. We expect we will have a lot of trick-or-treaters!

BUtterfield 8 by John O'Hara -- Book Beginnings

 

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

Boo! It is almost Halloween! Are you ready for the trick-or-treaters? Are you reading anything particular for this Halloween week?

It's time for Book beginnings on Fridays! Whether you have a Halloween book or not, please share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading -- or just a book you want to highlight. 

My book has nothing to do with Halloween and is not a scary book. It isn't even a mystery. BUtterfield 8 is just one of those books that has been sitting on my TBR shelf for decades and I finally decided to read it. 

MY BOOK BEGINNING

On this Sunday morning in May, this girl who later was to be the cause of a sensation in New York, awoke much too early for her night before. 

-- BUtterfield 8 by John O'Hara. Yes, it is spelled with a capital B and U because BUtterfield 8 is an old fashioned telephone number. 

BUtterfield 8 was a bestseller when it was published in 1935. I can see why! It is till racy close to 90 years later. It's all sex and day drinking so far. 

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

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THE FRIDAY 56

Another fun Friday event is The Friday 56. Share a two-sentence teaser from page 56 of your book, or 56% of the way through your e-book or audiobook, on this weekly event hosted by Freda at Freda's Voice.

MY FRIDAY 56

From BUtterfield 8:

It was useless to try to think of the names of speakeasies. His personal experience with speakeasies was slight, as he never drank; but he knew from going to them with Gloria that a place would be known familiarly as Jack’s or Giuseppe’s – and then when the proprietor gave you a card to the place (which you threw away the moment you were safe outside), it would be called Club Aristocrat or something of the sort.

Gloria is the girl who caused a sensation and who woke up to early after her late night. She is a firecracker!

The Dead Bell by Reid Winslow - BOOK REVIEW

BOOK REVIEW

The Dead Bell by Reid Winslow (2021, Quid Mirum Press)

The Dead Bell drew me completely in from the get go. It has all the makings of an excellent murder mystery. Tom Edison is a cop in Lake County, Illinois, north of Chicago, called in to solve the murder of a society matron found dead in her back yard in the ritzy lakefront community of Lake Forest. Tom has the necessary accoutrements for hard boiled detective: an ex-wife, an estranged son, his own unresolved trauma, an alcoholic wild man for a sidekick, and an eye for the wrong woman.

With those ingredients, it’s just up to the author to bring them together correctly, and Reid Winslow does a masterful job. The Dead Bell is the best sort of mystery book, the kind that makes you forget you are reading a book and simply takes you along for the ride. Which is not to say that the book is all fast action and dialog. There is a lot of literary heft to it – backstory, descriptions, character development, an introspective protagonist, digression, side stories, and a complicated plot. But Reid Winslow’s writing flows so naturally you absorb all this without stumbling at transitions or having the writing itself get in the way of first-rate storytelling.

All in all, I am so impressed! The Dead Bell is so polished and the plot keeps the reader guessing all the way through. I’ve read plenty of mysteries published by big-name authors and publishers that aren’t nearly as good as this – not even close! Congratulations to Winslow on his accomplished debut and here’s to more books in the Tom Edison series.

NOTES

Less in the nature of "full disclosure" and more because I am excited about it, I'll mention that I've known Reid Winslow for a long time because we are both lawyers in Portland and worked together, briefly, many years ago. Many lawyers have a fantasy to write mystery novels, so I am excited for and proud of my friend for making it happen! 

I read an advanced copy of The Dead Bell and part of my review is blurbed on the back cover. If you order a copy (and I think you should -- it's a terrific read) you will also get a little souvenir of your being a Rose City Reader reader. 😃

 

Flavours of Greece by Rosemary Barron -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

It's raining and raining all week here in Portland! This sunny cookbook of Greek recipes is exactly what I need to lift the grey clouds.

What is your week looking like?

Please join us here on Book Beginnings on Fridays to share the opening sentence (or so) of the book you are reading. Or share a book you want to highlight. Leave the link to your Book Beginnings post in the linky box below. 

MY BOOK BEGINNING

It is impossible for me to think of Greece without thinking of the colours, sites, aromas, and, above all, the flavours of Greek cooking.

-- from the Foreword to Flavours of Greece by Rosemary Barron (2021, Grub Street).

Those who know Greece, even if only from a brief acquaintance, are aware that there is a vigorous culinary tradition in the country, with a distinct identity and character.

-- from the Introduction.

For modern Greeks olives and bread are the basic necessities of life, as they have been for centuries. The olive groves of modern Greece -- still, mysterious, and peaceful places -- date back to around 450 BC when olive oil was first recognized as a valuable export commodity and the land was given over to olive cultivation.

-- from part one, The Greek Kitchen, chapter one, Ingredients.

Rosemary Barron started a cooking school in Greece in the 1980s and has been championing Greek food ever since. This redo of her best selling cookbook, The Flavours of Greece, is a must-have for any lover of Greek food who wants to cook at home. 

The book is as lush and gorgeous as the dishes it promises. Barron starts with an inventory of a Greek pantry, including instructions on how to make such staples as yogurt and preserved lemons. She then moves through recipes from mezzes (appetizers) to desserts and miscellany. The recipes are as simple as a mezze of aromatic figs made by layering dried figs with bay leaves and cracked black pepper tightly in a jar for several days (intriguing!) to the more complicated, like Duckling Thessalia-Style, which involves roasting a duckling with lemons and pine nuts and things. None of the recipes are difficult and all look delicious! 

With over 250 national and regional recipes, dozens of color photos, fresh green and orange accent colors, and easy-to-follow instructions, Flavours of Greece will be your go-to Greek cookbook. 

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

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THE FRIDAY 56

Another fun Friday event is The Friday 56. Share a two-sentence teaser from page 56 of your book, or 56% of the way through your e-book or audiobook, on this weekly event hosted by Freda at Freda's Voice.

MY FRIDAY 56

From The Flavours of Greece:

These little pastries, filled with a creamy nutmeg-spiced spinach mixture, are perfect picnic food. You can make them with either pastry dough or with filo and they freeze beautifully (freeze before cooking). 

The recipe for spanakopita seems like a classic Greek recipe, and one a home cook can handle.  

The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot - BOOK BEGINNINGS

 

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

I'm continuing my celebration of Victober with another Victorian novel, The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot. 

What are you reading this week? Please share the first sentence (or so) here on Book Beginnings on Fridays. Add the link to your post in the linky box below. 

MY BOOK BEGINNING

A wide plain, where the broadening Floss hurries on between its green banks to the sea, and the loving tide, rushing to meet it, checks its passage with an impetuous embrace.

-- The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot. This one has been on my TBR shelf for a long time. Published in 1860, it is the story of Maggie Tulliver, her family struggles, romantic loves, and adoration of her brother. It is Eliot's most autobiographical novel. 

I finished The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins last week and loved it. The Moonstone was on my Classics Club list, so I'm making progress. The Mill on the Floss is definitely a classic, but not onw on my personal list of 50 classics to read in five years, which is what the Classics Club is all about. Are you a Classics Club participant? Join in if it sounds like fun!

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

Please add the link to your post below and use the #bookbeginnings hashtag if you share on social media!

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THE FRIDAY 56

The Friday 56 hosted by Freda's Voice is a natural tie in with this event and there is a lot of cross over, so many people combine the two. The idea is to post a teaser from page 56 of the book you are reading and share a link to your post. Find details and the Linky for your Friday 56 post on Freda’s Voice.

MY FRIDAY 56

From The Mill on the Floss:

Tom was to arrive early in the afternoon, and there was another fluttering heart besides Maggie’s when it was late enough for the sound of the gig-wheels to be expected; for if Mrs. Tulliver had a strong feeling, it was fondness for her boy. At last the sound came—that quick light bowling of the gig-wheels—and in spite of the wind, which was blowing the clouds about, and was not likely to respect Mrs. Tulliver’s curls and cap-strings, she came outside the door, and even held her hand on Maggie’s offending head, forgetting all the griefs of the morning.

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

 

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

Happy Victober! 

One of my favorite things about Instagram is Victober, the annual bookstagrammer tradition of reading Victorian literature in the month of October. I look forward to it all year. There is something so cozy about reading Victorian novels in the fall.

Do you participate in Victober? What books are you reading this year? I'm reading The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins, The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot, and maybe one other one if I get the time. 

I plan to share some of the opening sentences here on Book Beginnings on Fridays. Please share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading (or just want to highlight). Add the link to your Book Beginning post in the linky box below.

MY BOOK BEGINNING

I address these lines—written in India—to my relatives in England.

My object is to explain the motive which has induced me to refuse the right hand of friendship to my cousin, John Herncastle.

-- The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins.

The Moonstone was published in 1868 and is considered the first (probably) detective story. It is the mystery of the theft of a yellow diamond the size of a plover egg. How big is a plover egg? I don't know. I don't even know how big a full grown plover is. But it's fun to say plover a lot.

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

Please add your link below. Please use the #booksbeginnigns hashtag if you post on social media.

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THE FRIDAY 56

TIE IN: The Friday 56 hosted by Freda's Voice is a natural tie in with this event and there is a lot of cross over, so many people combine the two. The idea is to post a teaser from page 56 of the book you are reading and share a link to your post. Find details and the Linky for your Friday 56 post on Freda’s Voice.

MY FRIDAY 56

From The Moonstone:

The Diamond takes us back to Mr. Franklin, who was the innocent means of bringing that unlucky jewel into the house.

Our nice boy didn’t forget us after he went abroad.

The Moonstone is an excellent book. It's a rollicking adventure with lots of funny bits and a pretty good mystery. I'm close to the end and still don't know who took the diamond. 

The Moonstone is one of the 50 books on my Classics Club list. 

September Wrap Up -- My September Books

SEPTEMBER WRAP UP

I finally launched my own Zazzle store. Crazy, right? It’s not like my law practice gives me a lot of down time! But I need a creative outlet. I have a couple of product lines so far, but my favorite is a collection of gifts and stationery with images of old books from my own library. The mug in the picture above is an example. If you want to see more, find me on the Zazzle website at RoseCityEphemera. I’m excited about it!

When I wasn't playing with Zazzle, I managed to read ten books last month. They are listed below in the order I read them, not in the order they are stacked up in the picture.

MY SEPTEMBER BOOKS

The Choir by Joanna Trollope, cozy and wonderful. 🌹🌹🌹🌹

Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity―and Why This Harms Everybody by Helen Pluckrose, which is not in the picture because I read the audiobook. This is an excellent book and a highlight of the month for me. Pluckrose is one of the three scholars, along with James A. Lindsay and Peter Boghossian, who submitted bogus "grievance studies" papers to peer reviewed journals and got many of them accepted and even published. It's worth looking up because the papers they got published are hilarious. 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

Uncommon Clay by Margaret Maron was a pretty decent mystery set in North Carolina. I read it with my ears so it isn't in the picture. 🌹🌹🌹🌹

An Alphabet for Gourmets by M. F. K. Fisher. This is a wonderful book of idiosyncratic food writing. It wandered off before I took the picture. 🌹🌹🌹🌹

Pope Joan by Donna Woolfolk Cross, another highlight of the month. This one was lurking on my TBR shelf for a long time and I'm glad I finally read it. It is historical fiction at its best. 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

Noah’s Compass by Anne Tyler. I'm an Anne Tyler completist, but I found this one disappointingly pointless. 🌹🌹🌹

Mystery and Manners by Flannery O’Connor, occasional nonfiction. This was admittedly a little repetitive, but still excellent. 🌹🌹🌹🌹

A Changed Man by Francine Prose, slightly subversive, a little edgy, and I loved it. It's the second of her books I've read and she's becoming a favorite. 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

Split Images by Elmore Leonard, which was typical Leonard but still good. 🌹🌹🌹1/2

Slightly Foxed, Vol. 70, the recent summer edition, which I count so I can keep track of which ones I read. 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

MY FAVORITE COVER OF THE MONTH

Between Two Kings: A Sequel to The Three Musketeers by Alexander Dumas

 

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

My apologies for not getting this week's Book Beginnings post up last evening. My computer was in computer hospital. Ugh! Fortunately, it was an easy repair -- it just needed a (way) bigger hard drive. Let's just say my phone had twice as much brain power as my two-year old lap top. What was I thinking?

So I am here now and ready to share opening sentences (or so) of the books we are reading this week -- or just the books we feel like highlighting. What book captured your fancy this first week October?

MY BOOK BEGINNING

From Between Two Kings:

Toward the middle of May in the year 1660, at nine o’clock in the morning, when the already hot sun was drying the dew on the ramparts of the Château de Bois, a little cavalcade, composed of three men and two junior pages, was returning into the city across the Loire bridge.

Dumas published Twenty Years After, his sequel to The Three Musketeers, in 1845. Between Two Kings, shown here, is the first volume of Twenty Years After.

This is the latest edition of a new translation of the Musketeer Cycle by Lawrence Ellsworth, out now from Pegasus Books. Ellsworth’s is the first translation from the French to English in over 100 years. If you thought the Musketeers were fun before, wait until you see how they swashbuckle now! 

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

Please add the link to your Book Beginning post in the linky box below. If you share on social media, please use the #bookbeginnings hashtag.

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THE FRIDAY 56

Freda at Freda's Voice hosts another teaser event on Fridays. Participants share a two-sentence teaser from page 56 of the book they are reading -- or from 56% of the way through the audiobook or ebook. Please visit Freda's Voice for details and to leave a link to your post.

MY FRIDAY 56

From Between Two Kings:

As he was passing out of the gate, leading his horse by the bridle, a soft voice called from the gloom of a shaded path, “Monsieur Raoul!”

The young man turned in surprise and saw a brown-haired young woman who was pressing a finger to her lips and holding out her other hand.

Darrow's Nightmare: The Forgotten Story of America's Most Famous Trial Lawyer (Los Angeles 1911-1913) by Nelson Johnson- BOOK BEGINNINGS

 

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

It's time again to share the opening sentences (or so) of the books we are reading this week. What are you reading?

I have a lawyer book to share this week since I've had a very lawyerly week. I've been sitting through three days of (Zoom) court hearings in the Boy Scouts of America's bankruptcy case. I even got to argue one day! Although I've been suing the Boy Scouts for sex abuse since 2007, and even won a $20 million verdict against them, this bankruptcy case is the biggest legal battle I've ever been a part of. It's such a complicated mess!

MY BOOK BEGINNING

From Darrow's Nightmare:

Upon return to Chicago in January 1908, Clarence's priority was his law practice double dash namely, earning an income.

-- Darrow's Nightmare: The Forgotten Story of America's Most Famous Trial Lawyer (Los Angeles 1911-1913) by Nelson Johnson (Rosetta Books). This one came out a few months ago. Nelson Johnson wrote Boardwalk Empire that was adapted into such a terrific TV show.

Clarence Darrow was America's most famous criminal trial attorney in the first half of the Twentieth Century. Darrow's Nightmare is the nonfiction account of how Darrow was almost a convicted of crimes himself. Darrow went to Los Angeles in 1911 to defend two union agitators on trial for mass murder. While there, he the District Attorney indicted and tried Darrow for bribing a juror. A conviction would have ended his career as a lawyer almost before it got off the ground.

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

Please leave a link to your Book Beginnings post in the linky box below. Please use the #bookbeginnings hashtag if you share on social media.

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THE FRIDAY 56

Freda at Freda's Voice hosts another teaser event on Fridays. Participants share a two-sentence teaser from page 56 of the book they are reading -- or from 56% of the way through the audiobook or ebook. Please visit Freda's Voice for details and to leave a link to your post.

MY FRIDAY 56

From Darrow's Nightmare:

He viewed the courtroom as a battlefield; his profession was a means to pursue economic justice for the working class. Though Darrow was cynical about much of the law, he acted practically when it came to making a living.

I think most lawyers, at least litigators, view the courtroom as a battlefield. And lawyers with a plaintiffs' civil practice, like me, view the law as a means of pursuing economic justice for our clients. Civil lawsuits only offer economic justice. We can only sue for money to compensate for their injuries and their loss. The law isn't a time machine -- we can't get back our clients' former lives for them. The trick is to not grow cynical.