Far from the Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

The first "Great" Wessex novel is surprisingly hard to get into at first but eventually the going gets a bit easier and the flow of events starts to grip the attention. Bathsheba's near-disastrous marriage pre-echoes Hardy's later, more tragic, treatments of that institution. But in this book good still triumphs at the end and the long arc of struggle eventually yields a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

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The Inklings - Humphrey Carpenter

Ostensibly a "group biography", the focus here is very much on C.S. Lewis and Charles Williams. Of course, the same author has covered Tolkien's life pretty thoroughly elsewhere. The picture that emerges here is that it was very much Lewis that "made things happen" while the rather older Williams was an underachieving genius. The vivid depiction of Oxford life is wonderfully evocative and throws the outlandish worlds beloved of, and created by, the trio into sharp relief. The academic and creative life is portrayed in its realistic messiness and the three central figures are shown as fairly ordinary human beings with a "taste for" higher and more epic things without themselves living epic lives or being "higher" creatures. No Hemmingways here! While hardly indispensable, it's an engaging read that satisfies the desire of many readers of these authors to know more about the men behind the beloved stories.

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Seven White Gates - Malcolm Saville

The second book in the Lone Pine series of children's stories stays in Shropshire but moves the setting from the Long Mynd of Witchend to the wilder slopes of the Stiperstones. Local girl Jenny Harmon is introduced as the sixth member of the group and the twins charm Peter's fearsome Uncle before getting into trouble on the mountain. No "baddies" in this book but a series of difficulties are faced with bravery and hence overcome.

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The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents - Terry Pratchett

Pratchett brings his work for younger readers and his fabulously successful Discworld series for adults together in this first book for youngsters to share the latter's setting. Maurice the cat, along with two human children and a horde of preternaturally intelligent rats, faces great danger and moral challenges to return normality to a town in the grip of an obscure tyranny. A fun read for a grown up Pratchett fan.

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Lucia in London - E.F. Benson

After our introduction to Miss Mapp, the third of the series returns to Lucia and her runaway success as a social climber in London. In a single season she takes society by storm in a succession of outrageous manoeuvres and then, at the peak of her powers, retires to Risholme. Risholme, of course, has struggled to maintain its momentum in Lucia's absence while fiercely asserting its independence of its absent queen. Benson's lightness of touch and assurance in his characters carries us through a whirl of events and, while irony abounds, everyone and everything is depicted with affection. Utterly delightful.

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The Children of Hurin - J.R.R. Tolkien

The fullest available account of the tale of Turin Turambar is here extracted by Christopher Tolkein from the mass of his father's papers and published as a stand-alone book. The story of the doomed Turin's failure to escape his fate is downbeat in an almost Jude the Obscure-like way so this is far from a fun read. It is, however, a great treat to have the story put forward in this form: largely freed from the entanglements of the surrounding events and the vagaries of composition that crowd in on the various versions presented in the History of Middle Earth. Tolkien enthusiasts will, of course, have bought this book regardless but for those hooked by the Lord of the Rings it might actually be the best available taster for the stories of the elder days and draw in an additional readership for the legends that were central to Tolkien's great creation.

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The Traitor and the Chalice - Jane Fletcher

The second half of Lorimal's Chalice now appears as the second of three volumes of "Lyremouth Chronicles". The story continues from the end of The Exile and the Sorcerer and gains in strength and structural coherence from its new stand-alone presentation. Jemeryl, the sorcerer, and Tevi, the exile, combine forces to overcome danger and treachery to recover the lost chalice and return it to Lyremouth. The two lead characters are depicted with equal affection but the gritty realism of Tevi's mundane world is perhaps more strongly characterised than the rarified, politicised, atmosphere of the sorcerers' mellieu. Absorbing and rewarding reading; now that I'm caught up with the story I'm keen to know where we head in the third volume.

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