TBR Thursday 76…

Episode 76…

 

Where did it all go wrong?! I wrote this post on Sunday and boasted that the TBR had gone down 2. Since then it’s gone up again… by 4!! So now on 164 – I simply don’t understand it! It can’t be my fault…

Here are a few that will be rising to the top soon…

Factual

 

Ooh, I wished for this on NetGalley, and my wish was granted! The first time that’s happened. Let’s hope it won’t turn out to be a case of “careful what you wish for”. I’ve actually cheated and already started it. (Which means – Yes!! Henry IV is finished!! Phew – I think the book was longer than his reign.)

The Blurb says: Who, or what, is the Green Man, and why is this medieval image so present in our precarious modern times? An encounter with the Green Man at an ancient Herefordshire church in the wake of catastrophic weather leads Nina Lyon into an exploration of how the foliate heads of Norman stonemasons have evolved into today’s cult symbols. The Green Man’s association with the pantheistic beliefs of Celtic Christianity and with contemporary neo-paganism, with the shamanic traditions of the Anglo-Saxons and as a figurehead for ecological movements sees various paths crossing into a picture that reveals the hidden meanings of twenty-first-century Britain. Against a shifting backdrop of mountains, forests, rivers and stone circles, a cult of the Green Man emerges, manifesting itself in unexpected ways. Priests and philosophers, artists and shamans, morris dancers, folklorists and musicians offer stories about what the Green Man might mean and how he came into being. Meanwhile, in the woods strange things are happening, from an overgrown Welsh railway line to leafy London suburbia. Uprooted is a timely, provocative and beautifully written account of this most enduring and recognisable of Britain’s folk images.

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Fiction

 

Since it’s over a year since Revolutionary Road won the FF Award for Literary Fiction 2014, it’s way past time I read more Yates. This one comes courtesy of Santa…

The Blurb says: In The Easter Parade, first published in 1976, we meet sisters Sarah and Emily Grimes when they are still the children of divorced parents. We observe the sisters over four decades, watching them grow into two very different women. Sarah is stable and stalwart, settling into an unhappy marriage. Emily is precocious and independent, struggling with one unsatisfactory love affair after another. Richard Yates’s classic novel is about how both women struggle to overcome their tarnished family’s past, and how both finally reach for some semblance of renewal.

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Continuing on with my immersion in Pascal Garnier, next up is one that several people have said is their favourite. I’ve been categorising these as crime up till now, but I’m gradually concluding they really sit better in fiction. Courtesy of NetGalley…

The Blurb says: Given the choice, Martial would have preferred not to leave their suburban Paris life, but with all their friends moving away, or dying, his wife Odette is thrilled at the idea of moving to Les Conviviales, a gated retirement village in the South of France.

At first, Martial’s suspicions are confirmed. He and Odette are the only residents, and with the endless pouring rain, he is bored out of his mind. With the arrival of three new neighbours and a social secretary, Martial’s outlook improves and he begins to settle in to his new life. But in this isolated community, tensions never simmer far below the surface, and the arrival of some gypsies who set up camp outside the gates throws the fragile harmony into disarray. Everything comes to a head one terrible night; the night that the moon is reflected in the watchman’s eye…

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Crime

 

A People’s Choice winner from nearly 2 years ago, back when my TBR was a measly 96 (happy days!), it’s about time this one rose to the top of the heap. I have to tell you, People, you have a mixed history when it comes to your choices, so I hope this is one of your better efforts… 😉

The Blurb says: Gathering the finest adventures among private and police detectives from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries-including a wide range of overlooked gems-Michael Sims showcases the writers who ever since have inspired the field of detective fiction.

From luminaries Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Bret Harte, Wilkie Collins, and Arthur Conan Doyle to the forgotten author who helped inspire Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” to a surprising range of talented female authors and detectives, “The Dead Witness” offers mystery surprises from every direction. Introduced by Michael Sims’s insightful overview of detective fiction, “The Dead Witness” unfolds the irresistible antecedents of what would mature into the most popular genre of the twentieth century.

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NB All blurbs taken from Goodreads.

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So…what do you think? Do any of these tempt you?