UK Book Club discussion
UK Counties Challenge
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Mercia and Other Queendoms
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thanks now to find the time to read the books to fill in the numerous gaps
1. Durham
Nikki Ashton's No Bra Required was originally entitled Lucy Steps Out and according to the advert in the back of the eBook it still is. The Lucy in question is the main character, a recently resigned primary school teacher in Cheshire called Lucy Meadows. The novel was written while the media was full of the suicide of the Lancashire primary school teacher Lucy Meadows. Beyond the name and profession there is no link to the deceased teacher. This Lucy Meadows is a recently separated woman who moves to Durham, walks into a temporary job (the most unlikely part of the plot), and meets a new man. The denouement is interesting, but it takes some resilience to get there as this is no literary classic.
2. Morayshire
J R Tomlin's Freedom's Sword: A Novel of Scotland (2011) shows an obvious link to the blockbuster movie Braveheart (1995), even down to recycling the title of a non-fiction response to the movie: Peter Traquair's Freedom's Sword: The Scottish Wars of Independence (1998). Tomlin's novel concerns William Wallace's co-commander at the Battle of Stirling Bridge, Andrew de Moray.
The story begins with Moray's capture at the Battle of Dunbar and subsequent imprisonment, and escape from, Chester Castle. Moray returned to his home territory on the Moray Firth and the bulk of the novel concerns the northern rebellion against the English invaders that was ignored by Mel Gibson's movie. The novel is a military one focused on battles and debates among commanders on how to win the next battle. There is little fleshing out of what the situation was like for the people in northern Scotland at the time and so this novel is definitely one for those who like the focus in military fiction to be on the battles.
3. Denbighshire
I re-read Ellis Peter's A Morbid Taste for Bones as part of my Kindle Unlimited trial. It was a journey of nostalgia. I first read it when living near the shrine of St Winifred in Holywell and I later came to know a parish priest of Gwytherin who like the one in this novel was called Huw. I have also purchased Brother Cadfael novels (although not this one) from the display underneath the Edith Pargeter (Ellis Peters) window in Shrewsbury Abbey and had my books stamped as purchased at the abbey.
This novel is the debut Cadfael novel and is not as well written as later ones, but enjoyable nonetheless although I knew the storyline of the mystery. I enjoyed the exploration of the differences of Welsh and English culture and the mention of places I once knew, such as Holywell, Llanrwst, Chester, and Shrewsbury.
I am placing in novel in Denbighshire as most of the novel takes place in Gwytherin (near Llanrwst) with only a few pages at the start and end of the novel set in Shrewsbury, although it launched the 20 Brother Cadfael books that are mostly located in Shrewbury.
4. Staffordshire
E's Complaint is set in contemporary Wolverhampton (it references a lot of 80s pop culture, but also Cadburys' chocolates made for the 2012 Olympics). It is the story of E, a mentally troubled chef, and his inner self Eric. It starts out well enough, but comes across as an attempt for the author to pour out his angst about life through the main character. Not a recommended read.
5. SurreyAtonement
The first half of Ian McEwam's book (and brief parts of later parts) is set somewhere in Surrey. I liked the ending, but felt that it was a good short story filled out to make a novel and the filling was not satisfying.
Mercia wrote: "thanks now to find the time to read the books to fill in the numerous gaps"Would you like authors whose books are set in some of those areas/counties to suggest titles for you? Only if it helps.
Anna wrote: "Mercia wrote: "thanks now to find the time to read the books to fill in the numerous gaps"Would you like authors whose books are set in some of those areas/counties to suggest titles for you? Onl..."
No thanks Anna. I only do this challenge on an as and when basis, i.e., as and when I'm not reading something for the world or US challenges. I think the moderators prefer authors to restrict promotions to the promotions folder, but you would need to ask them. Best wishes from a fellow author.
I take ages to read a book. I manage about four or five a year and the thought of trying to find books with specific locations and also being something I like would just take too much time. I don't know how you do it.
Anna wrote: "Anna Faversham (AnnaHunt) | 123 comments I take ages to read a book. I manage about four or five a year and the thought of trying to find books with specific locations and also being something I like would just take too much time. I don't know how you do it. "I can read so many books through a combination of speed reading ability and long-term health problems. I also don't watch TV or movies. I love these challenges as they force me to read about places that I might otherwise ignore, e.g., I look forward to one day finding a novel set in Clachmannashire because I just love the sound of that county.
6. Middlesex
Finished Will Self's Umbrella which interested me for its mental health background and setting in the part of North London I used to live in. Will Self is often accused of writing as if he had swallowed a dictionary, but for this novel he appears to have swallowed a London A-Z as he wants to name-check as many London locations as possible. An attempt to do a Joycean Ulysses for London, but not a patch on the original.
7. Kent
Keith Nixon's The Eagle's Shadow is set against the background of the first Roman invasion of what is now England. It is during the time of Emperor Claudius, later Emperor Vespasian is a general, and Queen Boudica even gets an appearance (at a funeral). It is set around the Medway in Kent and is a style of military historical fiction that I do not take to: it is a slightly novelised summary of the history books with little characterisation or narrative tension (beyond who will win the battle).
Mercia wrote: "Middlesex
Finished Will Self's Umbrella which interested me for its mental health background and setting in the part of North London I used to live in...."
Hi. I read this recently too. Finished it, was impressed to a degree by its cleverness but found it an ultimately unrewarding read.
By the way, if you reach Devon on your tour drop in to our Devon Book Club (Goodreads) group. You'll be made very welcome
Ian wrote: "By the way, if you reach Devon onbyour tour drop in to our Devon Book Club (Goodreads) group. Youll be made very welcome "It may take a while I'm busy filling in the world map at the moment and just fill in this UK one as when I happen to read an appropriate book. I wanted to read Will Self because I enjoy his newspaper articles. The book I have planned for Devon is a story about the visit of a young Jane Austen there.
Mercia wrote: "Ian wrote: "By the way, if you reach Devon onbyour tour drop in to our Devon Book Club (Goodreads) group. Youll be made very welcome "It may take a while I'm busy filling in the world map at the ..."
I can imagine! Interesting - which book is that? We also have an Around the World in 80 books challenge. The link is on our group page in the events section if you would like to take a look to compare notes or get ideas.
Will Self is a really interesting guy. I think I enjoy listening to him more than reading him though. I get it when he says, in defence of his complex language, that he wants people to have to think when they read his work (and I like it when books make mre react in this way) but I find his style gets in the way for me.
Ian wrote: "I can imagine! Interesting - which book is that? We also have an Around the World in 80 books challenge."If you go to initial post on each of my geographic challenges you get a book list with links. I was the first (I think) to complete the 51 States of the USofA and completing that challenge is why I'm still only at 64 in the Around the World challenge.
8. Buckinghamshire
Kate Atkinson's Costa Book Award winning Life After Life is set between London and the Chilterns bit of Buckinghamshire near Chalfont St Peter. This was the first book I downloaded to my beloved Kobo Mini, but it has sat unread for nearly 2 years. The Magical Realism challenge got me to dust it off the shelf. The premise is that the main character Ursula Todd gets to lead her life events more than once, beginning with her birth, when she died first time round. Unfortunately his magic only briefly intrudes on the languid realism, especially in the long drawn out opening chapters from which Ursula practically disappears. This reads like a short novel in search of a larger word-count and at times felt like Chapter After Chapter. It was educational, thanks to this eponymous challenge I've discovered that Bucks is in Mercia, although Mercia has never been in Bucks.
9. Norfolk
Martin Jensen's A Man's Word is set in Thetford during the Danelaw reign of King Cnut. It is a mystery series that tries to ape modern hard-boiled PI books, but does not come off for me. It has some merit for the historical fan, but the mystery buff should look elsewhere.
10. OxfordshireEM Powell's The Blood of The Fifth Knight is an excellent example of what historical fiction should be: a well-written well-paced story in a historical setting that tells the story and not the setting. The novel (set in 1176) opens with King Henry II on a pilgrimage in Canterbury to do penance for the murder of Archbishop Thomas Beckett. It takes as its inspiration another aspect of Henry II's life: that his mistress Rosamund Clifford is buried in Godstow Convent, just outside Oxford. An enjoyable thriller even if marketed as a mystery.
11. Sussex
Radio 4 Extra currently has Cold Comfort Farm narrated by Kenneth Williams on iPlayer. It is an abridged version of the novel, which is apparently a comedy, although the humour passed me by. Probably because its a bit too much jolly hockey sticks for me, posh girl tries to sort out the lives of people in the provinces is not my cup of char.
Mod
If you draw a horizontal line from the south-east corner of Wales to the east coast of England and another horizontal line from the north-east corner of Wales to the east coast of England you essentially have the boundaries of Mercia. By 850 the only other kingdoms were Northumbria to the north and Wessex to the south but originally there was also Sussex Essex Kent and East Anglia. So I've done three in later Wessex but not yet been to its original boundaries although Somerset is due to be read in the coming months. As well as being surprised that Buckinghamshire was in Mercia I was surprised that Oxford wasn't in fact it was built as a fortress by Alfred of Wessex to keep Mercia out.
Mod
Yes him. Despite his culinary deficiencies he managed to recapture London, where Mercia now lives.
Mod
12. Mid-Lothian
Irvine Welsh's insight into the 1980s drug sub-culture in Edinburgh, Trainspotting was popularized through its cinematic rendition in Danny Boyle's film of the same name. The novel is more plodding and episodic than the film, and is told from a variety of perspectives, not just that of the main character Mark Renton. It is a marvellous depiction of the devastation of drugs and poverty at a time when needle sharing was sending HIV rates sky-rocketing. It is a violent novel and the Renton of the novel is not the loveable character of the film and nor does the narrative have the feelgood factor given to it by Boyle. This is a dark and violent depiction of a dark and violent period in Edinburgh's history.
13. Cheshire
Set in wealthy rural Cheshire near Manchester Rachel Abbot's : Stranger Child
takes me back to some of my old haunts. It is about a child who went missing at 6 returning to her home 6 years later. It is a book in a series featuring the detective Tom Douglas of Manchester's Major Incidents Team. Despite that background this novel is a thriller containing a detective rather than a police procedural. The story is well told, but some of the plot points I find a little unconvincing, especially the major coincidence that connects Douglas to the thriller that is primarily told through the parents.
14. Shropshire
Last Tales of Mercia 1-10 was the First Kobo Download by Mercia, but it's taken me a couple of years to get round to reading it. This is a collection of ten short stories that were published separately and all tell episodes from the 10 years before the Battle of Hastings as a way of marketing a novel Edric the Wild. It a reasonable read,although not overly engaging.
Most but not all of the stories occur in Shropshire.
15. Yorkshire West Riding
Karen Perkins' The Haunting of Thores-Cross: A Yorkshire Ghost Story is a ghost story set in both 2013 (ish) and 1777 (ish) about a modern author and an alleged witch from the 18th century. It i set entirely in Thores Cross (modern Thruscross) and so is a better choice for West Yorkshire than my original option.
The following was the original entry, but only part of the novel was set in the West Riding.
EM Powell's The Fifth Knight is a re-imagination of the story of the murder of Thomas Becket and the flight of his killers to Knaresborough Castle. This is a debut novel originally written as a serial and you get the feeling that the author was still learning the craft as she wrote. The author has little concept of distances and so I would not put too much historical trust in her depiction of Knareborough. If you like your medieval dialogue peppered with modern slang this might be the book for you.
The sequel set in Oxfordshire The Blood of The Fifth Knight is a far better written book.
16. County Tyrone
I get my own wee country off the ground with the south west of the north east of Ireland in the form of County Tyrone and Martin Crosbie's My Name Is Hardly. It is set in Carrickmore a small settlement not too far from Omagh. The story idea was of a British soldier spying there in the aftermath of the Manchester bombing and just before the peace process took over. Unfortunately it is largely written as background information for fans of the the eponymous hero from Crosbie's best seller, and first in the series, My Temporary Life.
Not too much description of the area, but a good representation of what it was like living in so-called bandit country.
17. Gloucestershire
I bought Phillipa Gregory's A Respectable Trade specifically for this challenge although I thought Bristol was in Somerset. It is set among the slave trading community and their slaves in the dying days of The Trade before Wilberforce brought it to an end. It gives a good impression of 18th century mercantile Bristol, although the story did not draw me in due the at times pedantic style Gregory used to set out the history.
18. Derry
The Misremembered Man is a book that is both about two lonely hearts struggling to move on and about the abuse meted out to the man when a boy in a Catholic orphanage. The prose is well written but the story is poorly paced, apparently going nowhere fast then suddenly racing towards an overly swift denouement. Some of the subject matter is harrowing and it deserved being brought together into a better whole.
That's one third of Northern Ireland done, but then its only a wee place.
19. Essex
The Mysterious Affair at Styles tells the backstory to how Captain Hastings and Hercules Poirot began working together. It is not a great read and as a first peson narration by Hastings with a long post-denouement explainer by Poirot it is reminiscient of the first Holmes novel, although this was not the first Poirot novel published.
20. Shetland
Anne Cleeves' Jimmy Perez series of novesl was turned into a TV series called Shetland, so it's not too hard to guess the setting for Red Bones, except that it's the Shetland Islands. This one is set on the small isalnd of Whalsay, all 20 km2 of it. The pace is languid but it suits the setting, which is well described and I think I know now a bit more about the Shetlands in both the sense of landscape and history.
21.Yorkshire North Riding
A Great Deliverance is the first of the Inspector Lynley Mysteries about a Cornish Lord working for Scotland Yard and his working class sidekick Barbara Havers. It feels like an Edwardian mystery that stepped through a timewarp into the 1980s. The author, Elizabeth George, is an American Anglophile writing for other American Anglophiles and British readers may cringe a little at the class stereotypes and that Scotland Yard is seen as a sort of FBI, but the formula worked and the series became bestsellers, and got a TV series made by BBC.
22. Argyllshire
Ruth Hay is a Scottish born Canadian author whose debut novel Auld Acquaintance was about an older woman from Toronto who moves to Oban when she inherits a farmhouse from a relative she had never heard of. The story did not get to Oban until 45% as the story built up very slowly in Canada. The style is languid and reminded me of reading stories in my granny's copy of The People's Friend.
23. Northamptonshire
I began reading Janet Macleod Trotter's The Tea Planter's Daughter to have a book with more time in India for my Round the World Challenge than Life of Pi. It turned out that this book was set almost entirely in Newcastle Upon Tyne, although the part in India at the start were the best chapters. The rest of the book was a Catherine Cookson style family saga populated with pantomime villains. Not really my scene, but the book surprisingly got me Northamptonshire for this challenge.
24. Yorkshire East Riding
Kate Atkinson's Behind the Scenes at the Museum has nothing to do with a museum, but is a family saga set in York with a bit of mystery thrown into the debut novel of this sometime detective fiction writer. I am claiming this for the East Riding as a moderator (Ian?) declared that as York City is not part of any of the ridings it could be used for any one of them. The novel itself is a bit meandering in fact it is a bit debuty.
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Books mentioned in this topic
Behind the Scenes at the Museum (other topics)Behind the Scenes at the Museum (other topics)
The Tea Planter's Daughter (other topics)
Life of Pi (other topics)
The Tea Planter's Daughter (other topics)
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Merican and Non-Mercian Visitations 24
Visited
Argyllshire (Oban) Auld Acquaintance
Buckinghamshire (Chalfont St Peter) Life After Life
Cheshire Stranger Child
Denbighshire (Gwytherin) A Morbid Taste for Bones
Derry - The Misremembered Man
Durham (Durham) No Bra Required!
Essex The Mysterious Affair at Styles
Gloucestershire A Respectable Trade
Kent The Eagle's Shadow
Mid-Lothian (Edinburgh) Trainspotting
Middlesex (Friern Barnet) Umbrella
Morayshire Freedom's Sword
Norfolk (Thetford) A Man's Word
Northhumberland The Tea Planter's Daughter
Oxfordshire (Woodstock) The Blood of The Fifth Knight
Shetland (Whalsay) Red Bones
Shropshire Last Tales of Mercia 1-10
Staffordshire (Wolverhampton) E's Complaint
Surrey Atonement
Sussex Cold Comfort Farm
Tyrone My Name Is Hardly
Yorkshire East Riding (York) Behind the Scenes at the Museum
Yorkshire North Riding (Keldale) A Great Deliverance
Yorkshire West Riding (Thruscross) The Haunting of Thores-Cross
Unchallenged Counties
Aberdeenshire
Anglesey
Angus/Forfarshire
Antrim
Armagh
Ayrshire Turn of the Tide
Banffshire
Bedfordshire
Berwickshire
Berkshire The Unseen
Brecknockshire (Brecon Beacons)
Buteshire
Caernarfonshire
Caithness
Cambridgeshire (Cambridge) Starter for Ten
Carmarthenshire
Ceregidion
Clackmannanshire
Cornwall In the Blood
Cromartyshire
Cumberland
Derbyshire
Devon
Dorset - something Hardy
Down (Dundonald)
Dumfriesshire
Dumbartonshire
East Lothian Devil in the Detail
Fermanagh
Fife The Wasp Factory
Flintshire
Glamorgan
Hampshire Cry of the Peacock
Herefordshire
Hertfordshire Cry from the Grave Huntingdonshire
Inverness-shire (Dalwhinnie) The Key-Stone of the Bridge
Kincardineshire
Kinross-shire
Kirkcudbrightshire The 39 Steps
Lancashire
Larnarkshire Finn McCool Rises
Leicestershire
Lincolnshire Blown-Away Man
Merioneth
Monmouthshire Resistance
Montgomeryshire
Nairnshire
Northamptonshire
Nottinghamshire - The Rainbow
Orkney Standing Stones
Peeblesshire
Pembrokeshire Panic
Perthshire Blood Faerie
Radnorshire
Renfrewshire
Ross-shire (Lewis) Last of the Line Roxburghshire
Rutland Set In Stone
Somerset
Stirlingshire
Suffolk
Sutherland
Warwickshire (Birmingham) The DCI Jones Casebook
West Lothian/Linlithgowshire
Westmorland
Wigtownshire
Wiltshire
Worcestershire Poppy's Dilemma