TBR Thursday 370 – The People’s Choice…

Episode 370

(A reminder of The People’s Choice plan. Once a month, I shall list the four oldest books on the TBR, then the next four, and so on, and each time you will select the one you think I should read, either because you’ve read and enjoyed it, or because you think the blurb looks good. And I will read the one you pick within three months! If I begin to fall behind, I’ll have a gap till I catch up again. In the event of a tie, I’ll have the casting vote.)

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OK, People, time for another batch of four, still all from 2021. I like to run three months ahead with these polls, so the winner will be a June read. Three of these are from my newish Classics Club list, which I was finalising around this time: The Chill by Ross Macdonald from the Genre section, The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad from the English section, and Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada from the Foreign in Translation section. The fourth is on my list just for fun – Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin. A varied bunch!

I’m intrigued to see which one you pick…

Classic Crime

The Chill by Ross Macdonald

Added 3rd July 2021. 3,935 ratings on Goodreads, with a 4.08 average rating. 352 pages.

The Blurb says: Private detective Lew Archer has better things to do than take on an investigation for Alex Kincaid, a young man claiming that his new bride, Dolly, has gone missing. Snapped by a hotel photographer on the day of their wedding, the beautiful girl vanished only hours after and Alex has heard nothing since. But when Archer begins digging, he finds evidence that links Dolly to brutal murders that span two decades, and a terrible secret.

In this byzantine and compelling tale, Ross Macdonald explores the darkest experiences that can bind a family together – and tear it apart.

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Classic English Fiction

The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad

Added 19th July 2021. 21,447 ratings on Goodreads, with a 3.59 average. 245 pages.

The Blurb says: Mr Verloc, the secret agent, keeps a shop in London’s Soho where he lives with his wife Winnie, her infirm mother, and her idiot brother, Stevie. When Verloc is reluctantly involved in an anarchist plot to blow up the Greenwich Observatory things go disastrously wrong, and what appears to be “a simple tale” proves to involve politicians, policemen, foreign diplomats, and London’s fashionable society in the darkest and most surprising interrelations.

Based on the text which Conrad’s first English readers enjoyed, this new edition includes a full and up-to-date bibliography, a comprehensive chronology and a critical introduction which describes Conrad’s great London novel as the realization of a “monstrous town,” a place of idiocy, madness, criminality, and savage butchery. 

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Classic Fiction in Translation

Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada translated by Michael Hofmann

Added 21st August 2021. 29,670 ratings on Goodreads, with a 4.25 average. 612 pages.

The Blurb says: Inspired by a true story, Hans Fallada’s Alone in Berlin is a gripping wartime thriller following one ordinary man’s determination to defy the tyranny of Nazi rule.

Berlin, 1940, and the city is filled with fear. At the house on 55 Jablonski Strasse, its various occupants try to live under Nazi rule in their different ways: the bullying Hitler loyalists the Persickes, the retired judge Fromm and the unassuming couple Otto and Anna Quangel. Then the Quangels receive the news that their beloved son has been killed fighting in France. Shocked out of their quiet existence, they begin a silent campaign of defiance, and a deadly game of cat and mouse develops between the Quangels and the ambitious Gestapo inspector Escherich. When petty criminals Kluge and Borkhausen also become involved, deception, betrayal and murder ensue, tightening the noose around the Quangels’ necks …

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Horror

Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin

Added 1st September 2021. 130,875 ratings on Goodreads, with a 4.03 average. 257 pages. 

The Blurb says: Rosemary Woodhouse and her struggling actor–husband, Guy, move into the Bramford, an old New York City apartment building with an ominous reputation and only elderly residents. Neighbours Roman and Minnie Castavet soon come nosing around to welcome them; despite Rosemary’s reservations about their eccentricity and the weird noises that she keeps hearing, her husband starts spending time with them. Shortly after Guy lands a plum Broadway role, Rosemary becomes pregnant, and the Castavets start taking a special interest in her welfare; as the sickened Rosemary becomes increasingly isolated, she begins to suspect that the Castavets’ circle is not what it seems.

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NB All blurbs and covers taken from Goodreads or Amazon UK.

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VOTE NOW!

(Click on title and then remember to also click on Vote, or your vote won’t count!)

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