charles barrow's writing

This is a companion post to my last one, 52 in 25, and it details the 26 books I definitely plan to read this year. I'll spread them out across the year, and drop other books in between these as I go. I've said it before, I'm a mood reader so I have to really be in the mood for something before I pick it up, so it's good there's such a variety of genre here. I should also mention that these are all ebooks, on my Kindle, the other books I'll read this year will mostly be physical books off my shelf. These book titles below aren't listed in any particular order of preference. Also, I've already read Yellowface from this list, and I'm currently reading Pretty, Pretty Boys, and Queen James. So I'm off to a flying start. I'd like to get to the Murakami soon, and the C.J. Sansom will finish off the series of Shardlake books that I've loved. In fact I've loved everything I've read by these two authors, so I have high hopes for these two ...

Autumn seems to have arrived very suddenly, seemingly all at once in the last few days. The wind and the heavy rains are dragging leaves off the trees and heaping them into soggy piles on the pathways, making a trip to the local shops a slippery and treacherous affair. And a lot of fungi, enjoying the damp and still relatively warm air, are sprouting in the verges around tree stumps, and giving off the earthy scent of decay. Indoors, I'm dusting off fat church candles, to help light the dark corners of the room at night, and shaking out the thick sofa throws I'll use for extra warmth and to draft-proof myself on the sofa in the evenings. I've already made my first pot of minestrone soup of the season, and will be swapping out my summer salads for bowls of macaroni cheese, and veg chilli in the coming days.  At the end of the week, at 2am on Sunday, the clocks will go back one hour, and the nights will draw in alarmingly quickly, and daylight will be all but done by 5.30pm. ...

My summer tbr* shelf.  I set these books aside in June *to be read over the summer. I will often do this, choose a handful of books to be read in the coming months, and I am often spectacularly unsuccessful at sticking with my choices. Earmarking, or, bookmarking, if you will, five books to read in succession, patently ignores the fact that there are shops out in the world dedicated to selling me more books. And it also assumes that I have the willpower to avoid buying said books, and opening one of them instead of one from my existing, carefully curated, selection. What I'm trying to say is that there is very little chance I will actually read through this selection over the summer, and that there will be other titles, not pictured, that I will choose to read (on a whim) instead. This is the quandary of every reader. There are too many books in the world, all vying for our time and attention. And we wouldn't have it any other way. Also, despite knowing all of the above, in th...