Just Finished Reading: Wailing Ghosts by Pu Songling [56pp] 

I’m not a great lover of the Horror genre (except for Vampires which I don’t really regard as horror to be honest) but, despite the micro-blurb on the back referencing macabre hauntings, monsters and magic, there was little in the way of the horrific to be had here. Despite its size we are presented with FOURTEEN tales, although one was a single page, and we are even presented with several examples of classical Chinese woodcarving artwork! There’s a LOT packed in here. 

So, what exactly are we presented with? The tales are essentially fables and morality stories in order to teach things like good manners and as explanations of luck (both good and bad). There are several tales of encounters with strangers who turn out to be spirits, gods, demons and so on. How these people are treated – in ignorance – results in good or bad things happening. In other words, treat strangers kindly because you never know who they might be. I couldn’t help drawing the parallel with similar Greek tales. Another theme – involving actual ghosts this time – again looked at the appropriate behaviours around ancestors and the unexpected rewards that occurred, such as staying overnight in a suspected haunted house and being invited to a ghostly wedding ceremony and receiving a silver cup as a gift. This cup turns out to be a long-lost family treasure of the local big wig. 

These are more interesting for their cultural differences than anything else. There’s no great character development or involved storytelling. They are, mostly, about a person having a strange experience, telling other people about it, and everyone learning a life lesson by it. So, parables. Interesting stuff especially as the author died in 1715 so there’s a historical aspect interwoven with the cultural one. 

Translated from the Chinese by John Minford. 

Quite beyond brilliant..............

The Best Books of 2025.   

It's THAT time of year again when we all look backwards to the highs and lows of the previous year's reads. As usual I’ll be splitting things into Fiction & Non-Fiction categories with the best of the best in BOLD. I reviewed a total of 102 books along with 2 DNF’s. 

Fiction:  

Poe’s Cat by Brenda Walker 

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell 

Fifteen Hours by Mitchel Scanlon 

Desert Raiders by Lucien Soulban 

The Little Sister by Raymond Chandler 

News From Berlin by Otto De Kat 

By the Pricking of Her Thumb by Adam Roberts 

First Person Singular by Haruki Murakami 

Count Zero by William Gibson 

The Excursion Train by Edward Marston 

The Killing Ground by Elleston Trevor 

The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue 

An Englishman in Madrid by Eduardo Mendoza 

Keane’s Company by Iain Gale 

Four Seasons in Japan by Nick Bradley 

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus 

Sherlock Holmes & The Twelve Thefts of Christmas by Tim Major 

Non-Fiction: 

Divine Might – Goddesses in Greek Myth by Natalie Haynes 

The Possibility of Life – Searching for Kinship in the Cosmos by Jaime Green 

Hardboiled America – Lurid Paperbacks and the Masters of Noir by Geoffrey O’Brien 

First Steps – How Walking Upright Made Us Human by Jeremy Desilva 

Footmarks – A Journey into Our Restless Past by Jim Leary 

Nomads – The Wanderers Who Shaped Our World by Anthony Sattin   

How Markets Fail – The Logic of Economic Calamities by John Cassidy 

How Civil Wars Start and How to Stop Them by Barbara F Walter 

The Scout Mindset – Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don’t by Julia Galef   

The Norman Conquest – William the Conqueror’s Subjugation of England by Teresa Cole 

The Shortest History of The Soviet Union by Sheila Fitzpatrick 

A Thing of Beauty – Travels in Mythical and Modern Greece by Peter Fiennes 

A Brief History of The Hundred Years War – The English in France, 1337-1453 by Desmond Seward 

The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine – A History of Settler Colonial Conquest and Resistance by Rashid Khalidi 

That’s All Folks! - The Art of Warner Bros. Animation by Steve Schneider 

Prisoners of Geography – Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics by Tim Marshall 

By Tank into Normandy by Stuart Hills 

Churchill & Orwell – The Fight for Freedom by Thomas E Ricks 

Brolliology – A History of the Umbrella in Life and Literature by Marion Rankine 

Red Moon Rising – Sputnik and the Rivalries that Ignited the Space Age by Matthew Brzezinski 

Foreign Devils on the Silk Road – The Search for the Lost Treasures of Central Asia by Peter Hopkirk 

1914 – Fight the Good Fight: Britain, the Army & the Coming of the First World War by Allan Mallinson 

1923 – The Crisis that Led to Hitler’s Coup by Mark Jones 

As you can no doubt tell, I had a very good & very varied year of reading in 2025. I’m a bit disappointed that only around 20% of my reads had female authors and I’ll see if I can address that a bit this year. I am impressed, however, at how many of that 20% showed up in my best list though! As is often the case I was slightly non-fiction heavy in 2025 with a little over 55% being in that category but its near enough a 50-50 split that I won’t worry about it! I was pleased with the age range last year: from 2024-1827 which is 197 years. Pretty good. So, onwards to 2026...

Happy Birthday: John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) was an English writer and philologist. He was the author of the high fantasy works The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954–55).

From 1925 to 1945 Tolkien was the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon and a Fellow of Pembroke College, both at the University of Oxford. He then moved within the same university to become the Merton Professor of English Language and Literature and Fellow of Merton College, and held these positions from 1945 until his retirement in 1959. Tolkien was a close friend of C. S. Lewis, a co-member of the Inklings, an informal literary discussion group. He was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II on 28 March 1972.

After Tolkien's death his son Christopher published a series of works based on his father's extensive notes and unpublished manuscripts, including The Silmarillion. These, together with The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, form a connected body of tales, poems, fictional histories, invented languages, and literary essays about a fantasy world called Arda and, within it, Middle-earth. Between 1951 and 1955 Tolkien applied the term legendarium to the larger part of these writings.

While many other authors had published works of fantasy before Tolkien, the tremendous success of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings ignited a profound interest in the fantasy genre and ultimately precipitated an avalanche of new fantasy books and authors. This has led to his popular identification as the "father" of modern fantasy literature. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential authors of all time.

Just Finished Reading: The Half Life of Valery K by Natasha Pulley (FP: 2022) [373pp] 

Siberia, 1963. After 6 years in the gulag, prisoner K745 is starting to believe that he can survive the next 4 years of his sentence. However, when the camp administrator informs him one cold morning that a KGB officer was coming to get him, he realised that he was going to die that day. But the surprises just kept on coming. The officer gave him new clothes, food and a railway ticket. His destination was City 40 a place that he, now no longer a number but a man with a name, had never heard of. As Valery Kolkhanov got into the taxi and began his journey to his final destination he was bemused about the whole thing. What did they want him for? Why was so much effort being spent on a political prisoner? Then he saw the trees and began to see. They were dying, everything was dying and the car sped up with windows tightly closed and the ventilation switched off. The signs on either side of the road confirmed his suspicions when they warned drivers to move at their vehicles maximum speed. Only one thing could explain it – nuclear contamination on the massive scale. The briefing he received later that day was ‘off’. The map he was given made no sense. The radiation figures looked like they’d been put together by a team of incompetents. Unless of course that was the point. The ‘explanation’ of whatever happened made no sense either. The radiation levels were obviously far higher and caused by obviously other factors than the official line. The lying, although expected, seemed senseless. He might never find out the real reason for his presence, but the science couldn’t be hidden, at least not for long. Unless he wasn’t meant to survive long enough to discover the truth? 

As is usual for me, I picked this up because it looked interesting, different and would add to my non-UK/US located reading. I’m glad I did. Almost from the outset I was honestly gripped by the excellent narrative. I had thought initially that we would be spending most of our time in the gulag itself, but it was not to be, and I was almost as surprised as Valery was when we shifted to a nuclear disaster area. Seen primarily through the eyes of the main character (who was a brilliant invention) we get insights into both Soviet nuclear science and political incompetence/indifference to its results. In many ways Kolkhanov already considers himself dead and so can view the events that unfold at City 40 with almost Stoic indifference (or so it seems) but as he forms a friendship with the KGB officer in charge (another interestingly complex character) and slowly discovers what is really going on he can’t stop himself from getting involved no matter the threats or danger involved. 

I REALLY liked this. It's a very interesting story (at least part based on fact) that’s FULL of fascinatingly real characters – and you know by now that I’m a sucker for good/great characterisation. As I said before, Kolkhanov is a great character. You believe that he’s a SOVIET citizen with everything that implies (cynicism, fatalism, disgust). He’s also knowledgeable, curious, sensitive and, where required, both focused and lethal. One of the things that made me laugh, and love him all the more, was when he ordered an octopus for his lab just to see if they’d send him one (which they did). His relationship with ‘Albert’ was laugh out loud funny and he turned out to be one of my favourite sub-characters in the book. Although this does cover quite a lot of serious subject matter, I think that most readers will be able to cope with it. Definitely hightly recommended but you might want to pick up a Geiger counter when you turn the last page! A great way to start the reviewing year! 

Happy New Year! We made it to 2026! Now, I'm not one for predictions... but I *think* that this year will be.... noteworthy [muses]. One thing I do HOPE for is the end to the war in Ukraine. THIS year...!