BOOK BINGO! Dear Reader – I went all in!”

“Go All In” Bristol Libraries Challenge to read nine books from different genres for National Year of Reading, 2026.

I have had a continuous library card since I was aged 7 or 8, Staple Hill Library. In those ancient days you handed the “library lady” your card, she took another from inside the book, transferred it to the pocket on your card and filed it in a drawer. Then stamped your book. She gave your card back to you when you returned the book the next week. Such lovely, simple tech. I would still take a library over a party any day of the week, despite meeting my beloved at a party, but a party in a library – now there’s a thought!

I never went then, and still don’t, go anywhere without a book to read. Don’t bother giving me a Tablet. For ease of carriage, I like paperbacks. I hadn’t been in my now local, Wick Road Library, for some time because I’ve spent the best part of 2026 writing two books. The Linden Tree, (Denmark, Ireland, Spain, France, USA, England) and Wild Women, Incorrigible Rogues, (forcibly, Bristol to Australia). Both are ancestral.

Please respect anybody who researches, writes, rewrites, alters, spell-checks, proof-reads, cuts and pastes pictures, even designs the cover and the back of their own book, on whatever subject, however naff. Writing a book is hard graft, a grind, the devil’s trap. We are crazy. Those who live with us are driven crazy. We do it because we cannot help it. Few of us are Charles Dickens or J.K. Rowling so we won’t make our fortune, though a sale is always welcome and it is nice to see your book on a library shelf. This doesn’t mean you have to read the thing. We don’t mind, because to us the writing is all. We say we will never write another – until we do. I heard on Radio 4, 7 September 2026, that Barbara Cartland, romantic novelist, wrote twenty-five books A YEAR.

I came late to Book Bingo, on a Saturday, about ten weeks ago. The Wick Road librarian handed me a card with “Go all in” written on it and seemed quite pleased I was game. There are nine categories, with the challenge to read a book from each category. I could have easily ticked them all on the spot, (except “the staff recommended title”) but decided to go, mostly, full Nelson and borrow books new to me, to keep the library open and the librarians in a job. This is my list.

A NON-FICTION BOOK

This covers a wide field. I borrowed two, both “memoirs”, Motherwell by the late Deborah Orr, and How Not to be a Political Wife by Sarah Vine. Both authors are female, well-known, successful journalists, mothers, and divorced from equally famous men. Both endured traumatic childhoods, Orr, working class, in Scotland, in run down industrial Motherwell; Vine, nouveau riche mainly in Italy. Orr’s is about her girlhood and early years at university, and her tussles with her demanding mother, who expected her daughter to be a carbon copy of herself and was unwilling to accept that “times were a-changing”. Vine spent her youth in Europe with well-to-do parents, and left to escape her quixotic, often cruel father, who ridiculed her appearance, which had a lasting effect on her mental and physical health. Her story mostly covers the difficult situation of being the wife of a top man in government whilst being a parvenu among those whose toff-dom is inherited. Interminable dinner parties. At least Vine enjoyed cooking. I found the squabbling of the Brexit chapters the least interesting.

I enjoyed these books but would like to have been told more about the apparent ease with which the two women became journalists. I tried myself but only got as far as a stint at the small-ads desk of Bristol Evening World. Admittedly, this was 70 years ago, when the reporters were men, except for Barbara Buchanan of the “Women’s Page”.
Otherwise, I recommend two books I own. Sapiens, (Yuval Noah Harari) is a cracker. I wish it had been available when I was at school. The historical “progress”, (or balls-up), of humanity, with such gems of information as how banking works on borrowed money which does not exist, or the succession of events between the lid of a cooking pot flying off when water boils too fast, (you’ve got it – steam!) and climate change. Another is Rodinsky’s Room by Rachel Lichtenstein and Iain Sinclair, the biography of an ordinary man from the perspective of his abandoned time capsule of a bedsit. A journey through London, Germany, Poland, local, historic, geographic, cultural, poetic, personal. Don’t miss it.

A BOOK THAT’S BEEN ADAPTED FOR TV/FILM

An all-time favourite TV series of our family is Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtrie, though as a rule, I’m not that keen on Westerns. It was a Pulitzer Prize winner so could have fitted another category here, but it was no. 34 on the library waitlist so I bought it.

It was a shock, in both senses, to get married (59 years ago) and discover that your new husband had not read a book, (except Golf books) since school. “No time.” “Too tired.” “Couldn’t concentrate.” He likes thrills and adventure, but being bossy, I said I would read a book to him. I did so. The Long Walk by Slavomir Rawicz (I found out only doing this that it was ghostwritten by Ronald Downing from conversations with Rawicz.) It is now controversial and may even be The Salt Path of its day but it’s a great read. At the start of WW2, Rawicz escapes from a Soviet gulag with a motley group of ten male companions who are joined by a girl they meet on the way. One by one they die. They cross the Gobi Desert on foot. Four of them get through to safety in India. As they disperse to go their separate ways, the last memorable line is “I was as lonely and bereft of friends as a man could be.” (It was filmed as The Way Back, [2010] which the director classed as fiction. It is not as good as the book.)

My ruse of reading aloud was successful. My man was hooked. He read the next book himself. It was Moby Dick. He never looked back. Thereafter I’ve had to change his books at the library as well as my own. He never goes to the library himself. When the nights draw in this autumn, I’ll read to him again: Lonesome Dove. If my one good eye lasts out. It’s 849 pages long.

A PRIZEWINNING or SHORTLISTED BOOK

“Control we have a problem” – sorry for the misquote. My problem is I can’t finish big book awards winners, especially the Booker. I am thick. It’s like me and a crowd of physics professors talking quantum mechanics locked in one room. I try hard but don’t understand a word anybody is saying. So, my choice is Persepolis a graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi, who takes her title from the capital of the ancient pre-Islamic Persian Empire.

I bought this book, which won the Angouleme Coup de Coeur in 2001, in the 1990s. I was so impressed I recommended and lent it to a young person who has so far failed to return it. And probably did not read it. I borrowed it from the library for this project. Another dilemma of a bemused child trying to make sense of the world around them. We are all amateurs when it comes to the accident of being alive. The madness of Satrapi’s experience is the historical – political – religious turmoil of modern Iran, a looking-glass world of hopscotch, back and forth, legal to illegal, ancient to modern and back to ancient, in the wink of an eye. Not quick enough and the consequences are devastating: Marjane’s uncle was executed as well as other friends and family. She left the country, returned for another try and then settled for good in France. Having read it again, I still find it pertinent for trying to understand Iran.

The current library version is in paperback, with smaller graphics than I remember. I needed a magnifier. Marjane Satrapi, who died much too young, in Paris in 2026, is shortlisted for my future celestial dinner party in the sky.

A CLASSIC YOU’VE NEVER READ

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. It won the Pulitzer Prize. I’m ashamed. I’ve not even seen the film with Gregory Peck as Atticus. (Gregory Peck was in Moby Dick too, as Captain Ahab.)

It starts as a simple story of two siblings, Scout and Jem, who live in small-town Alabama in the 1930s, with their lone parent, Atticus, a lawyer, and their indispensable black servant, Calpurnia. Their friend Dill is a holiday visitor. It is told from Scout’s point of view. Her first day at school resonates with mine in 1942. My “Miss”, previously retired and recalled for war service, was not impressed that I could read many words already. Like Scout, I also had to buckle down and learn the “right” way and continued at home doing it “wrong”. Scout suddenly comes out with the “N” word. “They all say it in school”, she says. The patient Atticus explains it is disrespectful and asks her not to use it. Many of the children’s games concern an imagined ogre – the sad prisoner next door, known as Boo Radley. Little by little Boo leaves them anonymous gifts, a packet of chewing gum, two tiny, handcrafted dolls.

The dark theme, hinted at throughout, comes when Atticus, against the biased local white population, takes on the defence of a black man, Tom Robinson, charged with battery (though rape is strongly implied) of a young white woman. Despite his innocence, proved by Atticus in court, the verdict is the inevitable “Guilty”. Tom is saved the horror of lynching, (reports of true events of which can be read in newspapers of the approximate time) but is shot dead trying to make his escape. Some townspeople recognising a great injustice has been done, “forgive” the ostracised Atticus, (and salve their own guilt) by showing the lawyer small kindnesses. The actual guilty party is murdered, probably by Jem, but the deed was done by Boo, saving Scout. The Sheriff, from whom the reader understands the difficulty of trying to ride two horses, decrees this second death was accidental. A kind of natural justice has been done. Scout, ashamed she and Jem had not responded to Boo’s gifts, says at the end that Boo “gave us gum, soap dolls …. and our lives.”

The book caused a sensation in 1960. It does not shock as much in 2026, in the second Trump era.

I am grateful that the publisher, “Vintage” has not altered the book by changing words that are now deeply offensive.

A classic I own and have re-read a few hundred times, is Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome. It was given to me when I was in bed with chicken pox aged 13. It was second-hand even then. “With love from Jenny”, whoever she is/was is written inside.

When our elder daughter was engaged in labour, bringing our first grandchild into the world, I read Heart of Darkness, (Joseph Conrad) and Brave New World, (Aldous Huxley)!

A BOOK WITH A NUMBER IN THE TITLE OR WITH A ONE WORD TITLE

Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. I have grappled with this book for years. I took it out again recently but still can’t make head or tail of it. It may well defeat me. But I have taken on board a quote from Vonnegut: “Do not use semi-colons. All they do is show you’ve been to college.”
I have read both 1984 (George Orwell) and 2001: A Space Odyssey (Arthur C. Clarke) to be on the safe side.

A STAFF RECOMMENDED TITLE

The Elements by John Boyne. It has 499 pages in hardback. I quailed at the prospect. I would normally have been put off by length and weight, and the older I get, the less I bother with novels. It has four sections, Water, Earth, Fire, Air, each one tenuously connected to a minor character from the previous story. It is set in modern times.

“Water”, is intriguing from the moment the woman cuts off her hair with an allusion to Sinead O’Connor. She has come to a small island, (where opinions are still those of twenty odd years ago), in the West of Ireland, trying to recover from a sickening series of family events, for which her crime is turning a blind eye. It stood well on its own as a novella. I enjoyed it as similar crimes have been in the news.

The second stave “Earth” is about a misfit boy, a closet gay, an acquaintance of the woman in the previous tale, who escapes from the island and his violent father to a financially successful, (he is a professional footballer), but into a vile world of sexual deviation and corruption in London. There is a small attempt at redemption in the last line, but as we learn later (from “Fire”) there is no “happy ever after”.

The protagonist of “Fire” is a juror from the trial which takes place in “Earth”. An illegitimate child, neglected by the rackety adults in her life, is raped and then buried alive by two teenage boys, but emerges from this trauma, despite apparent dismal poverty, by working hard at school (!) a “one leap and she was free” couple of lines, and re-emerges in her mid-thirties as a rich, high-ranking burns surgeon in a city hospital. Hey ho. Not surprisingly (!) she has a flaw. She takes cruel sexual revenge on any random fourteen-year-old male who crosses her path. I began to feel, having got the child-abuse gist from the first two, the author was going all out to shock. It descended into Grand Guignol.

I moved on, longing to come up for “Air”. This is less far-fetched, a meandering – in both senses – of a father-son relationship, with connections to both the surgeon and the woman from “Water”. There is non-horror in this sequence, a behind the scenes lesbian romance between grown-up women. I was grateful that the boy, though danger is heavily signposted, unlike the other boys, emerges unscathed. A suitable revenge is enacted on the perpetrator of the abuse of the original lad of “Earth”. The father of the boy of “Air” stays on the Irish island to recover from his own trauma.

The book is well written, a page turner, with a clever, if unlikely linking device. The likeable Nigerian priest from the small island who appears at intervals throughout, seems to be being set up for a sequel. Please, please, not with a bishop involved.

I objected to the occasional dropping of the “C” word, a trend I have observed in TB streamers. Regrettably, the fashion will probably continue until it becomes commonplace.

I am quite flattered that the librarian suggested I read this book which took chutzpah. I am an 89-year-old woman, though not one to have the vapours. Apparently, he has not read it himself, but it was recommended to him by a female colleague.

I see that John Boyne has also written “Mutiny of the Bounty”. I go back to my introduction – and say Congratulations! But I don’t like fictional versions of great factual thrillers, so will give it a miss.

A BOOK UNDER 250 PAGES

Rooms of Their Own, also staff recommended, is a beautifully produced book by Alex Johnson, illustrated by James Oses, whose paintings in vibrant colours are magical. The book would suit a polished tabletop in the drawing room of an ultra-swanky hotel. It is a book for cherry-picking rather than something you will read all the way through. Congratulations to both contributors for finding a “different” subject: the writing rooms of eminent writers from Allende to Wordsworth, with the title of course via Virginia Woolf. If you are looking for a favoured author you may find them here with a short, well written biography, and apt quotes. I should have thought of it myself, but didn’t, having seen the working habitats of Dylan Thomas, (Laugharne), who is featured, and Arthur Ransome, (at Kendal, Lake District, but no longer there apparently), who is not. (Ransome’s creation Nancy Blackett is my alter-ego.) I was glad to see John Steinbeck included as it allows me to introduce something local. In 1959 Steinbeck and Mrs Steinbeck lived for a brief few months at Bruton, Somerset, when he was researching a book on Arthurian Legend: The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights.

A POEM or POETRY COLLECTION

My favourite poems are “Tarantella”, (Do you remember an Inn, Miranda…?) “The Song of Solomon”, (For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone, the time of the singing of birds is come…” or to put it another way, “sumer is icumen in, lhude sing cuccu!” I hate the winter. “Jabberwocky”, (Twas brillig and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe…) “When you are old” (When you are old and grey and full of sleep, take down this book…) “The General” (He’s a cheery old card, said Harry to Jack ….) with its chilling last line. Each one of these can transport me to a particular time and place in my life. I shall start crying in a minute. For the task in hand, I just grabbed one from the library shelves, “The ForWord”, (The best poems from the Forward Prizes, 2026.)

A Man Carrying his own Door, (Niall Campbell) reminds me of an oldish man, bent double, carrying a heavy door strapped to his back, through the streets of Istanbul, ca 1963. Seeing my look, the friend who worked there, said, “It’s normal here, cheaper to hire a man.”

The World According to Your Mum doing the Washing, (Joshua Idehen), a clever definition of every “ism” there is, fun and pertinent. Crabapple Moon, (Gillian Allnutt) commences “Bring me my preserving pan. It belonged to Gran, my Gran”. I didn’t know this last poem until 1st September 2026. On 7th August 2023 I posted on my blog “The Family Tree of a Jam Pan.” Two minds with but a single thought.

My prize-winner is Mae Diansangu for “Mary Magdalene”. The Manosphere will hate it, along with others prejudiced against the “different”. (Mae is another pick for the celestial shortlist.)

A GENRE YOU DON’T USUALLY READ

What a tease. I would read the HP Sauce Bottle, when young, including the French side, (no longer there these days) though I didn’t know any French then.

I don’t care for fantasy. Hobbits of any sort turn me off but there is an exception that proves the rule. I’ve never quite understood this phrase, but my exceptions are Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Carroll. Imagination, invention and wit. I first read them as a child and have read both again and again. I didn’t know then that my great, great grandfather was a hatter. I know now why hatters were mad.

ooOOoo

This was a very enjoyable exercise, and I enjoyed the discipline, (getting your homework in) but could have done with a category for humour among the nine genres. Nancy Spain, Molesworth, Adrian Mole, Beachcomber, (Tumbelova, the Ballerina; Dr Strabismus of Utrecht), Caryl Brahms and S.J. Simon. (Who could forget the “little stucco love nest in St John’s Wood”?) Asterix by Goscinny and Umberto. Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome is my Desert Island Book.

My card was stamped and entered at Wick Road Library 12.9.2026