I loathed Mexico

Graham Greene "was commissioned to write a book on the religious situation" in Mexico in 1938, which resulted in The Lawless Roads travel memoir, as well as inspiring his novel The Power and the Glory.

"I loathed Mexico" admits Greene, and after reading of his experiences it's no surprise. He travels by bus, train, boat and plane, but most memorably over the mountains by mule. He stays on the border, visits Mexico City, and promised himself to spend Holy Week "in Catholic Las Casas, to see how it was observed in a city where the churches were open - so I was told - but the priests not allowed inside." His travels are filled with mosquitos, black beetles, discomfort and dysentery, and yet on his return home Greene tried to remember his hatred. Like many travellers he finds "a bad time over is always tinged with regret."

Why Bournemouth?

There's no hanging around waiting for things to happen in The Fog. James Herbert has disaster strike at the end of the first chapter and follows up with scenes of violence and madness that tumble one after the other. It's as if he's imagined as many unconnected examples of people and animals behaving in a deranged, uncontrolled way as possible, then makes up the "fog" as a spurious device to link them. About half way through, after the Bournemouth episode, the plot eventually kicks in and the authorities, aided by the hero Holman, must work out how to stop the horror.

Grey Goose vodka, Louboutins, and Miu Miu

It's difficult to read Luke Jennings's Codename Villanelle without imagining the Killing Eve TV series (see trailer below), but here goes.

The book opens in an Italian lakeside villa where a group of twelve men are meeting to discuss their European business interests, which are being threatened by a Sicilian mafia boss. The men unanimously decide he must be killed. We then meet the assassin Villanelle and her handler Konstantin.

Delighted to be British

John Higgs calls Britain a "divided island [which] has lost a workable sense of identity". He journeys along Watling Street in an attempt to understand that division and because, "when you lose something, you retrace your steps until you find it again."

In "Watling Street: Travels Through Britain and Its Ever-Present Past" Higgs explores some of the quintessential myths and histories that feed into a sense of British nationality: the White Cliffs, Thomas Becket, Dick Turpin, bawdy humour, the sport of rugby, Merlin, Boudica.

All the freedom that loneliness brings

Quartet in Autumn traces the lives and thoughts of four office workers in London over the course of about a year, as they approach retirement. Written in 1977, Barbara Pym had herself reached the age of her protagonists and she paints a bleak picture of how the over 60s are viewed by those who are younger.

Marcia was "ageing, slightly mad and on the threshold of retirement." Her colleagues "shied away from her or made only the most perfunctory remarks." Janice, her social worker was patronising, and her neighbour Priscilla sanctimoniously believed "the poor souls just long for somebody to talk to."

They won't be so stupid as to fall for that clown

'You may think that Germans are political idiots [-] and you may be right, but of one thing I can assure you, they won't be so stupid as to fall for that clown.'

Such was the opinion of many in Germany in the early 1930s, including Peter Bielenberg, the lawyer husband of Christabel, an English woman who took German citizenship following her marriage. The Past Is My Life is based on diaries she kept while living in Germany during the rise of Hitler and the Nazis, through to the end of WW2.

Good story, disappointing book

What makes a good book? There are as many answers to this question as there are readers. And this reader's requirements weren't met by Hyeonseo Lee's The Girl With Seven Names.

That's not to say it isn't a good story. It's an autobiography/memoir of a North Korean woman who defected "by mistake" aged 17. She lived and worked as an illegal immigrant in China for several years before making her way to South Korea, where she was automatically entitled to citizenship. Then she executed a plan to help her mother and brother to defect and join her. They now all live happily ever with her American husband in the USA.

An alternative history of World War II

The Man in the High Castle poses an alternative history in which Japan and Germany were the victors of WW2, but don't be fooled by the book's blurb: "Slavery is legal once again. The few Jews who still survive hide under assumed names. [-] All because some twenty years earlier the United States lost a war - and is now occupied by Nazi Germany and Japan." This is misleading. Sure, slavery is mentioned once, but it has no bearing on the story. There is one Jewish character, but to promote this as a key theme is also deceptive. So, forget about slavery and the Jews.

A dislikable protagonist is no barrier to a good book

I would never be gratuitously mean or violent, [-] but then nor would I ever put up with anybody or any situation that made life unbearable [-]. I would be honest and reasonable, generous where generosity was due, and I would always always choose the road that led to a happy, healthy, normal life.

So says George Crawley, whose missionary father had been murdered for his faith. In Tim Parks's Goodness, George and his sister Peggy return home with their mother, whose "one thing I regret in my life is the words they made me speak" before they killed her husband.

To do evil that good might come

A ferry makes a foggy approach to the Port of Dover in the atmospheric opening of The Confidential Agent. Graham Greene's descriptions are no less brilliant when the action moves to London and to a mining village. Unfortunately I didn't much care for the characters.

D., the eponymous protagonist, has come to England on a mission to buy coal. An ex-academic, he has been widowed by the civil war that continues to be waged in his country. He is also something of a pacifist with principles, as he says, "You've got to choose some line of action and live by it. Otherwise nothing matters at all." Unfortunately the rebels and their representative agent L. are also after the coal.

Be true to yourself

Their Eyes Were Watching God is set in the southern USA when ex-slaves were still alive, and it's about the tribulations of a black woman as she searches for self-fulfilment and love.

On reaching puberty, the story's protagonist Janie Crawford is persuaded to marry an older man by her grandmother, who had been a slave. It's not the man "Ah wants you to have, baby," says the old woman, "it's protection." Janie quickly realizes that this is not what she expects of love or life and sets out to find her own way in the world. As she says, "Two things everybody's got tuh do fuh theyselves. They got tuh go tuh God, and they got tuh find out about livin' fuh theyselves."

Coming of age at the end of the world

By the end of the first page of John Lanchester's book, you know that the eponymous Wall is cold. So one could be forgiven for finding it a bit tedious to continue reading about the cold, the concrete, the sea and sky well into chapter two.

The story is narrated by Kavanagh, a new Defender on a two-year posting at the Wall. His mission is to keep the Others from climbing over it. If his unit fails to keep them out, then Kavanagh himself may be banished and cast adrift into the ocean.

It's not about the mystery

What happened to Rebecca Shaw? At the opening of Reservoir 13, a group is waiting to set out in search of the missing teenage girl, and we're led to believe this is a mystery story.

It's divided into thirteen chapters, each of which covers a year in the life of the Derbyshire village and surrounding countryside from which Rebecca disappeared.

A detective in Nazi Germany

It was the setting of Philip Kerr's March Violets that appealed to me: 1936, Berlin, Germany. Bernhard "Bernie" Gunther narrates the tale, a private investigator who specialises in finding missing persons. He's employed by the industrialist Hermann Six to recover some diamonds that were taken from the safe in his daughter Greta's home. The thieves set fire to the house and Greta and her husband Paul Pfarr die.

A wicked bestiary

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk is both the title of David Sedaris's book and one of its animal tales. Few humans appear in the stories, and when they do, it's usually as a harbinger of pain or death for the creature concerned. Many of the tales are humorous, even more are dark, but then the habits of birds, animals, reptiles and amphibians can be pretty disgusting when humans judge them against those of themselves.

Double standards and the end of the world

We're all going to die but most of us don't know when, unlike the characters in Nevil Shute's book On the Beach.

The story takes place in 1963, around five years after the book was written. A nuclear war that started by mistake and lasted thirty seven days has wiped out all human life in the Northern Hemisphere. As the world tilts on its axis, the deadly fallout is slowly carried into the Southern Hemisphere, and in Melbourne, the scientists calculate that there is up to 9 months left before residents of the city will start to die from radiation sickness. The story describes how some residents prepare for death.

Growing wealth, endless greed

Jonathan Dee's The Privileges is less a story, more a character study of a family. It's divided into four parts. In part one, we join Adam Morey and his fiancee Cynthia on their wedding day. Six years later, in part two, the couple have two small children, April and Jonas. By part three, the children are teenagers, and in the fourth section April and Jonas are in their early twenties.

The narrative explores Adam and Cynthia's growing wealth and endless greed.

A man who had given his best years to puddings

David Nobbs's Reggie Perrin is "a man who had given his best years to puddings," and wonders in his mid-forties what the point of it all has been. His relationship with his wife has become stale and he has no enthusiasm for his job. What is he to do?

Having watched The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin on TV in the 1970s and in 2009, I knew exactly what Reggie would do, but I wanted to see if there were differences between the book and the adaptation.

What it meant to be a girl

The Seraphim Room by Edith Olivier is a story driven by the character of Mr Chilvester, twice widowed, and living with his two daughters: the invalid Lilian, and the teenage Emily. The lease on their home passes through the male line, and Mr Chilvester, knowing that "the name of the family would die with him," transfers all his passion into his house.

David or Donny?

First there was "Sinatramania", then there was Elvis, and in the 60s it was The Beatles. When I was ten years old, I passionately defended David Cassidy and vilified Donny Osmond. The Bay City Rollers, Bros, Take That; Goldy Moldavsky's book, Kill the Boy Band, will speak to anyone who has had a teenage crush on an inaccessible, world-famous popstar.

The story begins in a hotel suite, where Rupert P., member of The Ruperts, is tied to a chair with a pair of tights. Four Strepurs, as fans of the band call themselves, are discussing what to do, and one of them, a self-confessed liar who is in therapy, narrates the story.

Labeled as a YA book, it's a very easy read, written in a casual and chatty style, with a lot of humour. There's a dark side too, raising questions about obsession, friendship and mental health. I found myself, early on, thinking if I would be chuckling quite so much if it were a bunch of teenage lads who had captured a female pop star.

You have to suspend disbelief at a couple of plot points, but overall it's a fast-moving, entertaining who-dunnit mystery.

As for David or Donny, you be the judge:

My return caused only confusion and uneasiness

Towards the end of his life, John Steinbeck took a road trip across America, "determined to look again, to try to rediscover this monster land." He converts a truck into a mobile home he calls Rocinante, and sets off with only his aged French poodle, Charley, for company.

Steinbeck's relationship with Charley forms the major part of the book's charm. The author's love for his dog shines through, and Charley's scenes are written with a great deal of humour.

Nothing to lose, everything to walk for

What would you do if you lost your home and your source of income, then your partner of 30 years was diagnosed with an incurable, degenerative disease? In Raynor Winn's case, she decided to walk the South West Coast Path to give her and husband Moth one or two months to consider their options.

The couple survived on benefits income of 48 GBP a week, living in a tent, eating packet-noodles. In spite of the hardship, "a wet sleeping bag in a wet tent on a windy headland," Winn says "I was grateful that I wasn't on a piece of cardboard behind the bins in a back alley."

The perfect date to start a bike ride

Reading Josie Dew's Slow Coast Home is very much like cycling: plenty of ups and downs, and a few diversions.

Josie says she "never planned to cycle around the coast of the British Isles. It just happened that way," which is a very pithy description of the book. I didn't really believe she had done no planning, but when 40% of the way in she had only got as far as Plymouth, a mere 185 miles from home, it seemed more likely that she had been telling the truth.

Expertise with agricultural implements

I really wanted to like Terry Pratchett's Discworld fantasy series, which many friends have raved about. A brief survey identified Mort as "the best", and since it's only the fourth in the series, I didn't think it would be difficult to get to grips with the peculiarities of Pratchett's imaginary world.

When we first meet the eponymous character, he's "tall, red-haired and freckled with the sort of body that seems to be only marginally under its owner's control; it appeared to have been built out of knees." Nonetheless, the lad is taken on as an apprentice by Death. It's a sort coming-of-age story for Mort, but the book's star character is really Death.

Water, shelter, clothes and olive oil: the primitive necessities of life

Lionel Shriver's The Mandibles: a family, 2029-2047 mostly takes place in the near future of 2029, when the collapse of the US economy leads to the collapse of society. Set primarily in the suburbs of New York, it relates how four generations of one family, many of whom think of "the primitive necessities of life as fresh water, shelter, clothing, and extra-virgin olive oil", deal with sudden and utter destitution.

For the librarians

How could I not enjoy Geraldine Brooks's People of the Book, when her dedication states "for the librarians"?

The story is about Hannah, an Australian book conservationist who has been asked to restore a treasured Hebrew codex (based on the real Sarajevo Haggadah). Brooks takes us back through time from 1996 to 1480, revealing a fictional creator of the haggadah in Seville and its various protectors on its journey through Tarragona, Venice, Vienna and Sarajevo.

Valencia holiday preparation

Flor de Mayo (Mayflower) is the story of a family living in the late 19th century Valencian fishing community. It begins when Tona is widowed by the death at sea of her husband, "the most thrifty saver of all savers," "a fisherman in winter and a smuggler in summer." The resourceful Tona opens a tavern on the beach, using the upturned wreck of her husband's boat as her home and workplace. She raises her two fatherless sons alone, until she falls for Martinez, a handsome Andalusian and a cad. The remainder of the book relates what happens to Tona and her family, their fortunes, misfortunes and adventures.

It's not about Mormonism

"This story is not about Mormonism," states Tara Westover in the Introduction to her memoir, Educated. As such, you won't find much in the book that is critical of the author's fundamentalist upbringing. Plenty of bad things happen, often due to wilful negligence, but no blame is attributed.

Daphne du Maurier's Brexit vision

Emma awakes one morning to the sound of aircraft overhead, an American warship at anchor in the bay, and US Marines making their way through the fields. Following its exit from the Common Market (European Union), Britain, with high unemployment and close to bankruptcy, has formed a coalition with America.

So opens Rule Britannia, in a rural area on the coast of Cornwall, where Emma lives with her grandmother Mad and her six adopted boys. The arrival of the US Marines is intended to be a peaceful precursor to the establishment of the USUK coalition, but when a soldier shoots the local farmer's sheep dog, it sets off a series of events that transforms the situation into a military occupation.

A toxic relationship

In Deep Water Patricia Highsmith has created a truly toxic relationship. Vic Van Allen's courtship of his wife Melinda was "like breaking a wild horse", but after several years of marriage and the birth of a daughter, Trixie, "she was not attractive to him as a woman." The couple live separately in the same house, where Melinda invites her men-friends and gets drunk with them, and where Vic tends his herbs and snails.

A very satisfying ending

By the end of Chapter Two of The Devotion of Suspect X, author Keigo Higashino has put the reader in the shoes of TV's Detective Columbo. It's an inverted detective story: we've seen a murder take place and we know who's committed it. Yasuko has killed her violent ex-husband Togashi. Neighbour Ishigami, a mathematical genius who keeps himself to himself has overheard the crime. He also happens to have a crush on Yasuko and offers to deal with the body and arrange things so that she will never be found guilty.

An elegant death

When we first meet Leonora Eyre, she speaks with "mock humility," which tells you, in two words, what a self-centred creature this middle-aged, unmarried woman is. The Sweet Dove Died spans about a year of her life.

After successfully bidding for a Victorian book of flowers, Leonora becomes light-headed and is helped out of the auction room by Humphrey Boyce and his nephew James, antique dealers. The two men become rivals for the affection of Leonora, who clearly prefers James, but the friendship develops only because the young man is willing to play along with the woman's need to be assured of her elegance and dignity.

Some things you've got to stop thinking about

Annie Fairhurst wants to start a new life. When A Kind of Intimacy opens, she is dancing naked around the home she is leaving, kicking the sofa she has always hated. You might think her reaction a bit strange, but in the circumstances, understandable. How did she put up with the hated sofa for so long? "What starts off as intolerable, [-] eventually becomes merely irritating and in time, in a matter of months or years, you become immune to it. You've got to, haven't you? Some things you've got to stop thinking about, or you'd never survive." Annie gradually reveals throughout the rest of the book what it is she has to stop thinking about.

The law does not always punish the guilty

"The truth is a tricky issue," asserts prosecuting barrister Kate Woodcroft QC, at the beginning of Anatomy of a Scandal. After losing a case, the "forty-two years old; divorced, single, childless" woman is reflecting on the nature of the justice system in the UK, in which "you can win even if the evidence is stacked against you provided that you argue better." At the end of the chapter, Kate is presented with her next case.

A pair of star-crossed lovers

A stick of Brighton rock is sickly sweet, often pink, and so hard it can break your teeth. It's a perfect metaphor for Pinkie Brown, the nasty protagonist of Graham Greene's book.

The story opens with Hale the journalist who's visiting the English seaside town of Brighton on a bank holiday weekend. In the guise of Kolley Kibber he surreptitiously places cards in public places, which entitle the finder to ten shillings (about 25 GBP today). His mind is not on his job 'tho, because he knows the local mob will murder him before the day is out.

Power and powerlessness

The God of Small Things opens with the return of Rahel to her childhood home in Ayemenem, in the south-west of India and to her twin brother Estha. Why did she leave? "It all began when Sophie Mol came to Ayemenem."

Arundhati Roy has said that the theme of much of what she writes is "the relationship between power and powerlessness and the endless, circular conflict they're engaged in." In The God of Small Things, there are characters who attempt to escape their 'powerlessness', and those who scheme to maintain, at all costs, their superior position.

'Tis not wealth makes men

Moonfleet is a cracking good children's adventure story with a moral. It begins with John Trenchard, aged 15, inspired by a story of buried treasure. He sets out to make his fortune by finding it.

John himself relates the tale, and most of the action takes place on the Dorset coast, in and around the fictional village of Moonfleet where he lives. The residents are poor but generally happy, as they make the most of what little they have.

Regretting is always pointless

"Regretting is always pointless, since there is no undoing". So says Claudia Hampton as she lies dying in a hospital bed. She has been writing "a history of the world. [-] The Life and Times of Claudia H."

Penelope Lively's Moon Tiger is Claudia's story, primarily narrated by Claudia herself, warts and all.

People like us don't go to plays, let alone act in them

An Awfully Big Adventure opens with a mystery. A girl, who we soon discover is Stella Bradshaw, insists she's "not the only one at fault" whilst an adult, Rose, declares "God forgive us, but it'll be good for business." Beryl Bainbridge then slowly reveals the events that have led to this tragic occurrence, and explains what Stella's role has been.

The story is set in a Liverpool repertory theatre company shortly after WW2, inspired by Bainbridge's own experiences working at the Liverpool Playhouse.

The past is a foreign country

In The Go-Between, Leo Colston, aged 60, finds his childhood diary and through its pages relives a traumatic event that impacted the course of his life. It was during the hot summer of 1900, when, approaching his 13th birthday, Leo spent three weeks in Norfolk with his schoolfriend, Marcus. He is eager to please Marcus's sister Marian, admires the rough masculinity of the farmer Ted, and is deferential to the aristocrat, Hugh.

Fast-paced page-turner for horror aficionados

A creepy castle, a woman in distress, disturbing dreams and much, much more. Rosemary's Baby is a classic gothic horror story that takes place, not in the middle of nowhere, but right in the heart of New York City.

It starts with a young, married couple, the Woodhouses, moving into The Bramford apartment building, much in demand for its period features, "weird, gargoyles and creatures climbing up and down between the windows."

What happens when the ones we love are enemies of the state

The ones we love ... are enemies of the state, writes Kamila Shamsie in the epigraph to her book Home Fire. The story is about what happens when a family member joins a group of people whose actions are seen to be dangerous to society. It is also a contemporary telling of the ancient Greek tale of Antigone.

In the opening pages, Isma, a young woman, is stopped at the airport on her way to America on a student visa. We find out that when her parents died she had to abandon her studies in order to raise her sibling twins, a brother and sister.