Best reads - Club Together Book Club?

Lovely story on BBC news today about the unveiling in Barnsley of a statue commemorating Barry Hines,  author of one of my favourite books, A Kestrel for a Knave (and the film Kes.)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-59163711

Finished reading The Fine Art of Invisible Detection by Robert Goddard. Had to force myself past page 50 or so but glad I did. Quite a good plot.

WN, just spotted this for 99p on Kindle, so purchased it. 

Thanks, M, for the heads up to the article. A lovely tribute to all involved with Kes.

Just finished reading the first of a 4 book series to date from John Pilkington about Marbeck an Intelligencer in the Employee of Queen Bess and controlled by Cecil. Nothing that has been written by others but pleasant enough to pass an evening reading it, especially as it was from Borrow Box and free.

I'm enjoying his Thomas the Falconer series even though they were penned nearly 20 years ago. Always nice to come across a series that you've never heard of and find you enjoy it.

Also read The Fine Art of Invisible Detection and found it a good story - liked the twist at the end.  Should have expected something as Mick Herron made a reference on the front of the book.  Read a few of his books some time back about a group of demoted agents still working for the service.   Struggled with the names though as I also did with A Stasi Winter read a little while back. 

Just picked up the latest Ann Cleeves book "The Heron's Cry", the second to feature her new detective Matthew Venn (as in the recent TV series "The Long Call". Set on the north Devon coast, it's got a cracking start, looks like it'll be hard to put down! 

And just finished John le Carre's final book "Silverview" published just after his death. The usual intriguing, hard to follow, story, but rather disappointing compared to his best.

I’m part way through The Long Call and it’s good. Ann Cleeves' usual way of giving us background to the characters and knitting together the sub-plots has worked again.

To my mind, the TV adaptation didn’t do it justice. In fact, I gave up watching because I couldn’t follow it.

I'll look out for The Heron's Cry. Thanks M.

I have just finished reading a book called Thatcher's Progress, by Guy Ortolano an American academic. The title comes from a journey Mrs T took when she came to open the Milton Keynes Shopping Centre in 1979. It has taken me 40 years to discover that she actual drove past the end of my road!!! In a sense its just a throw away title as the book is about the New Towns movement and in particular Milton Keynes and traces how the political masters change their priorities over the course of time and the impact this has on those charged with these long term projects. These priorities swing from providing new houses to relieve inner city squalor to moving back to inner city regeneration. With new towns there is also an element of social engineering which I found interesting. I hadn't realised that by moving to MK I had been socially reengineered!!! Traditionally new towns have a much higher percentage of social housing but MK bucked this trend as the Development Corporation realised that they were always going to be under funding pressure (social housing needs a lot of funding) so from fairly early on they made sure that MK had a better balance social and owner occupiers. I appreciate that this book not going to be widely read outside of academia and planning circles but it does provide an interesting insight to how, where I live, was conceived and built and how those foundations have put us in good stead, hopefully, for the future.

David

I'm reading something completely different. Between The Covers by Jilly Cooper. It's a compilation of her newspaper columns, still funny and sometimes a bit near the bone. An entertaining, light read. 

We've also watched the latest series of Shetland,   ( a bit miffed at the ending) so I think I'll also read some of Ann Cleeves books from the series.

I’d try to read the Shetland books in order if you can, Brue. Again, the TV series is very much 'based on' rather than actual dramatisations of the books. The same can be said of Vera, in my opinion.

You'll enjoy trying to place the Shetland locations from the descriptions in the books and you won’t need to translate the Scottish accents which are surely not of the Islands😀

We've also watched the latest series of Shetland, ( a bit miffed at the ending) so I think I'll also read some of Ann Cleeves books from the series.

Brue, I guess they did that so that there can be another series!😁 Agree with TW that the series needs to be read in sequence to fully appreciate it. If you need to find out the sequence of any series the Fantastic Fiction web site is the place to go.