August started with me in Florence with friends, then I went to Wales for a week to visit family, and then I came back to Florence with a stop in Turin, all this on trains. I’m still in Florence, where the weather is cooling to delightful, the art and gelato are great, and I am getting on well with my new novel. I read nine books, mostly on trains, and some of them were amazing and some of them were super long. Reading on a train and looking up to look out of the window is one of my very favourite things to do.
Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy — René Descartes (1637)
Read as part of the Harvard Shelf, which I continue to slowly read my way along. I’d never read this before, but I was of course familiar with the essential outline of what Descartes wrote. It was quite interesting to read it, but if you know the Existential Comics version of Descartes, this is very much just exactly that.
What We Are Seeking — Cameron Reed (2026)
This is coming out April next year, and it is brilliant and you’re going to love it. It’s very traditional science fiction, with space ships and colonized planets and aliens, and it could not have been written at any moment but the present. This is a traditional space SF story that is post-colonial, thoughtful about gender and other cultures, and it has great characters. Reed has thought about everything you’d expect this story to do and does interesting and thoughtful variations on that. It’s also worth noting that I could not stop myself from reading the first paragraph aloud to my friends because it was so beautiful and complex and wonderful. Gosh I loved this book. You can pre-order it now, and I’ll do my best to remember to tell you when it comes out. I may re-read it when it comes out too; that will be a treat. I’ll definitely be nominating this for awards. It’s just what science fiction should be doing right now. This is very different from The Fortunate Fall but it had the same grabby prose and if anything, I liked it even more.
The Earth and Its Inhabitants, Volume 1: Europe — Élisée Reclus (1878)
Reclus was a French anarchist geographer who wrote books describing everywhere in the world at the moment when he was writing. This one is available in English on Project Gutenberg. The others, sadly, are not. This volume is very long. It is on the one hand very interesting, a summary of the geology, rivers, climate, cities, and commerce, of every country in Europe, with sections on government and culture. On the other hand, it does sometimes go on a bit. It’s beautifully written, but it took me a long time to read. I may well use it as a reference of exactly what places were like in the 1870s. I’d love to get hold of the other five volumes on the rest of the world, but only as ebooks. This volume does not cover France or Britain, but it’s great on everything from Greece and the Balkans west to Portugal.
Wolf Hall — Hilary Mantel (2009)
Re-read, for a book club I couldn’t make, but I hear they had a good discussion. This is a long book, and it’s a wonderful book, an intimate, close-up story of Thomas Cromwell that’s subversive about Henry VIII and the English Reformation and unkind about Thomas More, but in a way that I like. It’s one of the most immersive books out there, and I am still immersed (reading volume 3 at the moment) and thus not detached enough to make reasonable comments. It’s written in third person but in the present tense, and everything is described in sufficient sense detail that it feels real and present. This volume covers the downfall of Cardinal Wolsey and of Thomas More. If you’re even slightly interested in historical fiction, you’ve probably read it already. It is as good as its reputation. An absolute tour de force of point of view and mode. It would be so impossible to make into a TV series without losing everything I love about it that I was horrified to learn that there is one.
Crimes of Cymru: Classic Mystery Tales of Wales — edited by Martin Edwards (2024)
Classic crime stories set in Wales or written by Welsh authors. A couple of the stories were really great, and only one of them dragged, so I’d say a very good collection on the whole. Edwards is great at finding little known older mystery short stories and compiling them into collections like this. And just as last year I managed to read the Scottish volume in Scotland, this year I read the Welsh one in Wales.
Orwell’s Roses — Rebecca Solnit (2021)
Excellent non-fiction book about Orwell, and roses, and the modern world and the 1930s, and the way people’s lives have (and need to have) small pleasures in them. Solnit, much of whose work has been to do with the way people behave in crises, visited Orwell’s old home in Wallington, England, where, in 1936, he planted two rosebushes. Roses are thriving in the garden and may well still be the roses he planted. He wrote about buying cheap rosebushes in Woolworths and the pleasure they gave him. Solnit looks at his political writing and the vein of loving nature and the tiny things of the world that runs through it, humanising it and making it more real. She looks at the biology and commercial production of roses. She looks at the “bread and roses” movement. This is a thoughtful, well-written, and interesting book—I’ve read a lot of Orwell, and a lot written about Orwell, and never seen this vein pointed out before, though I had noted it myself. Solnit is presently writing on a mailing list called “Meditations in an Emergency” which is well worth subscribing to. She isn’t Orwell, but she may be the closest we can get right now.
Bring Up the Bodies — Hilary Mantel (2012)
Second part of the Cromwell series after Wolf Hall, this one covering the fall of Anne Boleyn and the rise of Jane Seymour. The books definitely have structure and shape, but they’re really all one piece. Read Wolf Hall first. This is just as good, but it needs the first book to make sense.
The Furthest Station — Ben Aaronovitch (2017)
Novella in the Rivers of London universe. I read it, I enjoyed it, he’s an entertaining writer, but in the early books in the series I felt he was doing something (even if something closer to horror than I was comfortable with) but now I feel he’s just being entertaining and enjoyable and there’s no bite left. If anyone has read further than this in the series, please let me know if it’s worth continuing.
Paris Letters — Janice MacLeod (2014)
Interesting travel memoir in which a Canadian advertising executive working in LA decides to slim down her life, quit her job, and go to Europe for a year. This turns into a permanent trip when she falls in love with a French-Polish butcher in Paris. She’s not a particularly deep person, but she is honest, which is essential in a book like this. I found it captivating in spite of myself and raced through it.
Looks like you can find all (or most of) the other ‘The Earth and Its Inhabitants‘ volumes free to read at your convenience on archive.org (I think of Internet Archive and Project Gutenberg as some kind of useful, beautiful free internet siblings)
Wolf Hall and its sequels are on my “why haven’t I read these yet?” list for sure. And I am definitely looking forward to Cameron Reed’s book.
“It would be so impossible to make into a TV series without losing everything I love about it that I was horrified to learn that there is one.”
And yet Mark Rylance makes it work. The series was brilliant, and caused me to pick up the book; which then, of course, was also brilliant!
Gonna pile on here. My wife and I loved both the Wolf Hall tv series. The second one (The Mirror and the Light, and done ten years after the first), covers the second two books. Mark Rylance is a treasure.
Still haven’t read the books, but will make time soon.
For Rivers of London, I would say that there is some bite left. The story that began in bool 1 ends in book 7; I think that it would make sense to read at least that much. Beyond the main books there are short stories and a graphic novel series (12 collected volumes so far); some of it is mostly just fun/pandering and others are serious.
I know what you are talking about concerning earlier Rivers of London. I’ve read or listened to all of them and would continue buying them though.
Going back to the first book I thought it was overloaded. I figured this was because BA had no idea this was going to be a monster seller and wanted to get all of his story he really cared about at that time into the first book.
That and Kobna Holdbrook-Smith ( who I sometimes call Kobna-Hobna-Kobna Smith ) is a really good reader.
Speaking of good readers, I like the short story Winter’s Gifts but I want a complete re-do, by the same reader if necessary. The word parka continually read as parker still drives me mad. That and the occasional other word horribly bent, but mostly the 1000 uses of the word “parker”
I’ve been tempted to find some AI editing tool that keeps everything as is except the word parka.
I had the same reaction to the parka-as-parker pronunciation as you. I agree it seemed as if it was used 1000 times and each time was an ice pick to the eardrum. On the other hand, I would listen to Kobna Holdbrook-Smith read anything. I love the entire series.
How else do you pronounce it? In my accent those two words are identical.
Paka, of course. (Written from Boston…)
I’d spell that one ‘pahka’. Otherwise someone might think it’s pronounced as pack-a or pay-ka.
That made me laugh!
It’s the intervocalic R! You find it in certain British and certain American dialects. When one word ends with a vowel and the next starts with a vowel, these dialects insert a muted R sound. So like where in Arkansas (where I live) we we say, “His parka is blue,” in those dialects it would be “His parker is blue.”
In an American or other rhotic accent, “parker” has an R sound at the end (and in the middle) but “parka” doesn’t. British speakers doing American accents tend to overcorrect and put an R sound at the end of words ending in -a, but there shouldn’t be. In non-rhotic accents, “-a” and “-er” are pronounced the same, with an R sound if they’re before a vowel and none if they aren’t (e.g. “America and Russia” would be pronounced like “Ameri-ker and Rush-uh”), but in rhotic accents like most American ones, the pronunciation is based on the spelling, and there’s only an R sound if there’s actually a letter R there. So “parker” and “parka” would never be pronounced with the same final sound.
Good explanation, but what I’ve noticed—and possibly why it seems as if British actors trying an American accent tend to overcorrect—is that unless you have what I’ll call a “native ear,” then you can’t distinguish the difference, in this case, between parker and parka. This is a quirk that shows up in Hollywood too, where many actors just cannot “get” a Boston accent, for example.
It’s a regional pronunciation.
I’ve added the Reed to my list of unreleased books to look out for. The first half if 2026 is looking so good!
the Wolf Hall show is actually excellent! The cast is brill.
I agree the Rivers of London Books taper a bit but I would definitely keep going to Lies Sleeping.
Also I just read A Death in the Rainforest on your rec and devoured it. Anything similar? I loved Darwin’s Dreampond which had a similar vibe
Agreed re Rivers of London books. Lies Sleeping is very good. I liked but didn’t love the next main books -but still worth reading. Lots of opportunity for a banger of a book going forward, so fee free to hang in. I very much liked some of the shorter words (such as The October Man). Ben keeps building out the world in an enjoyable manner.
Have read all the Rivers of London series bar a couple of the latest novellas, and still enjoying them. I think the next novel out soon is based in Scotland which will be a nice variation, and agree with others that there’s still plenty of mileage in the series.
I enjoyed the Rivers of London series. It was a happy accidental find,
Am I the only person in the world who really disliked Wolf hall? I hated the use of present tense, third person. My brain kept “correcting” it which made it exhausting to read.
On the other hand I have loved everything I have read by Aaronovich.
Also don’t read my novel Lent, I did the exact same thing with tense.
I didn’t hate Wolf Hall (also read it for a book club) but had trouble keeping track of the multiple Thomas’s and Annes.
I don’t get to say this that often so just popping my head in to remark that I adore the Wolf Hall trilogy so so much that I have So now get up tattooed on my left forearm.
The Rivers of London novellas, short stories, and comic books have to be non-essential to the main novels, so they tend to be less impactful than the novels. I love them because I enjoy the stories and love the world building and varying points of view, but they aren’t as ambitious as the novels.
One exception, which I think might be a bit of a mistake given the overall trend: I’m not sure how much Abigail’s grief in Stone and Sky will make sense to readers who haven’t read What Abigail Did that Summer.