Cornflower readers recommend: 2

    

    Over on Cornflower today there's a post by which people can swap recommendations and suggestions of 'good things' - all manner of things, in theory. Here, of course, it's books we do, but let's keep to that theme and offer each other any particularly good reads we've recently enjoyed.

    My recommendation today is Anthony Quinn's Half of the Human Race, a beautifully modulated and moving novel set in the early years of the twentieth century. Its main characters are a county cricketer, Will Maitland, a man of means whose background and upbringing leave him with certain expectations regarding a woman's place in the world, and Connie Callaway, an independent, intelligent young lady whose ambitions to become a doctor have been thwarted by her family's financial difficulties. Caught up in the increasingly militant suffragette movement, Connie has misgivings about the efficacy and morality of the tactics her colleagues employ, but nonetheless her own actions will test her principles and the strength of her attachment to Will. Then war breaks out, and Connie and Will are drawn even further apart...

    The novel evokes the period quite expertly, and while I knew something of the suffragettes and suffragists, there was detail here which both set the movement in context and showed its various facets to illuminating effect. What was also fascinating, I thought, was the county cricket setting, and one plotline connected with that which I shan't give away but which gave the book another dimension. All told, it's a very readable novel with a steady, even pace and a thoroughly engrossing story, and as such it's one of my favourites so far this year.

    That's my recommendation for the day - how about yours?

Comments

[Simon (Savidge Reads)]

For me it HAS to be Gillespie and I. I feel naugty I havent blogged aboput it yet but to give anything away would be a nightmare so I am very slowly working out a way of saying as much as I can about with no giveaways... and same here. I can simply say read it, its utterly brilliant, a bit creepy and worth every penny.

[Cornflower]

Great! I'm really enjoying it, Simon, but I'm only about 100 pages in (no reading time to speak of in the last week!!), so it's good to hear you loved it.

[Anne]

I have just re-read all the Laura Ingalls Wilder Prairie books and absolutely loved them. You have a totally different persective reading them as an adult and I would urge people to have a go. I found them not only interesting, as an exploration into a different time, but also very thought provoking. I really got the sense that these pioneers were really building a nation - and quickly!- and I have a new found respect for these tough, courageous and highly resourceful families. And, and added bonus, they don't take long to read!

[Cornflower]

What a great recommendation! Thanks, Anne.

[Georgina]

I read A discovery of witches on my new toy - my iPad2 - and was entranced by both of them.

[Cornflower]

Entranced is the word! I haven't got an iPad, but I loved that book.

[Desperate Reader]

It's a cook book but I'm really excited and enthusiastic about Geraldine Holt's Cake book. It's new to me and I want to bake everything in it. Better than fiction!

[Cornflower]

You can't go wrong with a good cake book! Thanks, Hayley.

[Harriet]

I absolutely agree with Simon about Gillespie and I. But I must also speak up for a novel I've just read and not yet reviewed -- The Slaves of Solitude by Patrick Hamilton. It has swept me off my feet.

[Alex]

I'm only half-way through Douglas Coupland Generation A, but loving it, so that's mine 2euro-cents.

[Lyn]

I've just read Anne Hereford by Mrs Henry Wood. A sensation novel from the 19th century from the author of East Lynne. The first 7 chapters are breathtaking. A young orphan arrives to stay with her young, giddy aunt & her forbidding husband. Uncle's ward & another young man are competing for Aunt's attention. One young man is shot & accuses the other man of the crime with his dying breath. Aunt rushes about in the fog in inadequate clothing, falls ill & dies. I was exhausted by this stage & there were over 250pp to go! Echoes of Villette, Jane Eyre & Wilkie Collins, very readable & full of mysteries.

[LizF]

Two books that had me utterly hooked in recent weeks to the point that I would carry them around and pick them up at every spare moment are The Summer of the Bear by Bella Pollen and Appaloosa by Robert B Parker.

I read the former before I knew that it was going to be a Richard and Judy book and it really is a wonderful involving story about a family trying to cope in the aftermath of the sudden and potentially suspicious death of their diplomat father in 1976.
Beset by upsetting rumours that he might have been a traitor, they retreat to a holiday home on a remote Scottish island where their story co-incides with that of an escaped grizzly bear.... It sounds unlikely but I absolutely loved it and it would make a wonderful holiday read.
Appaloosa on the other hand is a Western set in 1887 New Mexico about a small town beset by a rancher cum robber baron and what happens when the town aldermen ask reknowned 'town-tamers' Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch to try and re-instute the rule of law.
I do have a real weakness for Westerns but by halfway through I literally couldn't put the book down until I found out what happened.

[B R Wombat]

I'd like to mention one of my old favourites - My Antonia by Willa Cather. It's possibly so well known that everyone will have read it, but, just in case you haven't, I'd say, do try it - the characters are very engaging and it's beautifully written. And I reckon it'll be available from Project Gutenberg so you won't even have to pay for it.

[Marina McIntire]

I must add my bit here. Molly Gloss is an author whose books have moved her onto my "buy-immediately-even-in-hard-cover" category. Her depiction of life in eastern Oregon in the turn of the last century -- focusing often on women who are not hmmmm compliant with the surrounding norms -- she has me always on the edge of my seat. A wonderful author!