All the nice people were poor

If your reading preference is for door-stop sized sagas featuring families or fantasies, Muriel Sparks's 134-page The Girls of Slender Means may not appeal. The girls in question are aged under thirty, living away from home at the May of Teck Club, and starting out on their working lives. It reminded me of all-female halls of residence at university.

The opening chapters set the scene in London at the end of WW2, between VE Day and VJ Day, and introduce the shocking news that Nicholas Farringdon, the "one that got on to the roof to sleep out with Selina", has been "martyred". The middle of the book recounts how Nicholas came to be introduced to the Club, and establishes the characters of several of the girls: Jane Wright, my favourite, who hopes to become a writer; Joanna Childe, training to be an elocution teacher; and at 'the top of the house, on the fourth floor, the most attractive, sophisticated and lively girls', including the beautiful Selina, and Anne, who loans her 'Schiaparelli taffeta evening dress' in return for ration coupons and other items.

For logophiles there are lots of poetry quotes to follow up, and the description of life at the end of WW2 is well drawn. In the last two chapters many seemingly trivial previous scenes are revealed to be important, and life turns very alarming. Everything comes together in the most clever and satisfying way, and you're left wondering why Muriel Spark isn't as feted as other writers.

Don't call me Fanny

I have no idea how Anita Brookner's 1983 book Look At Me came into my possession. It's an old paperback copy with yellowed pages and the back cover missing. I'd been told that the author's output was melancholy, which suits me fine, so when I spotted it on the shelf I thought I'd give it a go. And I'm glad I did.

The story's narrated by Frances Hinton a medical librarian and aspiring writer who yearns to be noticed. She fears that she will "grow into the most awful old battle-axe" and says she writes in order to become visible, to be heard, "to make people laugh". In other words, she says she wants people to "look at me".

Theirs not to reason what the fuck, Theirs but to shoot and duck.

I might have been half listening to one of those BBC Sounds programs whilst preparing lunch, or reading an end of year best books list in The Guardian. Whatever, someone recommended Paul Beatty's The Sellout and said it was about a black man who re-introduces slavery and segregation to the USA. What?!

Rose-tinted memories, mis-remembered by some, forgotten by others

A few years ago a university friend attempted to reunite our old gang. The response was somewhat unenthusiastic. Rose-tinted memories resurfaced, mis-remembered by some, forgotten by others. Thank goodness it didn't go ahead, unlike the reunion of The Old Devils in Kingsley Amis's novel.

Cheating at cards... it's about the only crime that can still finish you

Last year the screen persona of James Bond turned 60. He made his debut in 1962 with Dr. No. I must have seen all the movies. I groaned at the awful punned names of heroines like Pussy Galore and cringed when Sean Connery forcibly kissed her. I rolled my eyes at Roger Moore's cheesy humour and cheered when Piers Brosnan met his match with Onatop. But in all this time I've never, up to now, read a single one of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels.

Virginity: the sum of a girl's worth

In the early 1970s Mum's American pen friend and family paid us a visit on their way home from Iran; the husband was something in US diplomacy. We wore our best clothes and had to be on our best behaviour. Our visitors had straight teeth and spoke with movie-star accents. They brought with them a small souvenir for each of us from the faraway, fairytale country about which I knew nothing. I still have my gift, a little mirror mounted behind small doors in a hand-made, hand-painted frame. I'd never owned anything so exotic, and for many years this was my only image of Iran. So when I picked up Jasmin Darznik's Song Of A Captive Bird I thought it might give me some insight into the country.

It wouldn't be long before people lost interest.

I was intrigued by the premise of Yun Ko-eun's The Disaster Tourist. It's about a South Korean woman named Yona, who works for a travel company called Jungle that organizes holidays based around disaster zones. After being assaulted by her boss, and knowing that if she makes a fuss she'll lose her job, Yona accepts the offer of a business trip to assess one of Jungle's destinations: the fictional island of Mui.

Fish, felines, and fowl

In the run up to Christmas I read three more of the books that have been sitting on my shelf for years. They're all novella length and each one features a creature alongside a human. Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea (1952) recounts a lone man's struggle to land a fish, George Mikes's Tsi-Tsa (1978) charts the writer's relationship with a cat, and Barry Hines's A Kestrel for a Knave (1968) relates how a bird of prey lifts a boy out of misery.

Oh, poppycock! Who wrote this rubbish?

If I hadn't just read Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland I wouldn't have got much further than the first couple of chapters of Automated Alice. But then I wouldn't have got much further than the first couple of chapters of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland if a pristine copy of Jeff Noon's book weren't sitting on my shelf, unopened since buying it twenty years ago. The two were inextricably linked, just like Alice and her 'twin twister' Celia.

Mis-sold by the marketers

In 2019 there was a lot of buzz around Candice Carty-Williams's debut novel Queenie. The marketing bods, of which Carty-Williams is one herself, did a sterling job. I was sold on the idea of a "smart and breezy comic debut", "astutely political, an essential commentary on everyday racism" in Black British life.

It starts when Queenie's boyfriend of three years, Tom, has just told her he wants a break. She interprets this to mean and then we'll get back together. However what he really means is that he wants to break up permanently.

I'm rich. Who the hell wants to be happy?

I once knew a man who was an alcoholic. He was intellectually brilliant, literally a rocket scientist. When sober and not hungover he was charming, but under the influence of booze he became nasty, unreasonable and incapable of work. Why do I mention this? Well, I've just finished reading Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye in which there are at least three alcoholic characters.

Drinking and drunkenness pervade the book. Right at the beginning, Philip Marlowe meets Terry Lennox when the latter is "drunk in a Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith." Lennox is an ex-soldier, the unhappy husband of a wealthy wife; "I’m rich. Who the hell wants to be happy?".

A load of old nonsense

"Why are you reading a children's story, Cabbie?" Well, I'll tell you. I've found yet another unopened book on my shelf, bought over 20 years ago in an airport shop; Jeff Noonan's Automated Alice. The Wikipedia page says it "tells of the character of Alice from Lewis Carroll's books in a future version of Manchester, England". I've never read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, so research is my motive.

There can't be many who don't know the story. Disney's 1951 movie Alice in Wonderland introduced it to a wide audience, but I've never seen that either. If you're as ignorant as me then, here's a brief outline.

Waiting, interminably waiting, and then...

Dino Buzzati's The Tartar Steppe is one of those books where it pays to read something about it before you start. It's the sort of book they study in literature courses, the sort of book that you have to work at.

Fortunately the edition I have contains an introduction written by Tim Parks, but you could also check out the Wikipedia page before you buy. Buzzati originally titled it The Fortress, which is a better title. Most of us can visualise a fortress in reality as well as metaphorically, whereas The Tartar Steppe invokes a sauce I like to eat with fried fish. When the introduction tells you, "for an Italian, the northern mountains are the locus par excellence of military glory" it gives the title some meaning.

Abominable addiction

I'm always on the lookout for fiction that's set on the French Riviera and came across a reference to Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman in a local newspaper. The article said it's a story about loose women and gambling, and best of all, some of the scenes take place in Monte Carlo Casino. What's not to like?

A joke of the first water

Sometimes you just want to read a page-turner, and you can't beat Agatha Christie for that. I've been working through John Curran's 2009 list of the best 10 Christie mysteries, and have reached number four: The ABC Murders.

One of the pleasures in reading Agatha Christie is that of getting reacquainted with old friends. In this case it's Hercule Poirot, the indomitable Belgian detective, installed "in one of the newest type of service flats in London" and exercising his "little grey cells" in investigating "only the cream of crime."

Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't

Three books have coloured my view of French literature, all set texts for study. They each feature a miserable woman, living a depressing life and turning to adultery as an escape: Marguerite Duras's Moderato Cantabile and its metaphorical magnolia flowers is a book I never, ever want to read again; Emile Zola's seedy Thérèse Raquin, saved only by its Parisian setting; and worst of all, Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary and its intensely annoying eponymous protagonist.

Not my idea of fun

Will Self's My Idea of Fun had been sitting on my shelf for about 20 years. I'd started it, didn't warm to the first few pages, so set it aside for another few years and tried again.

Reader, I finished it, but it wasn't my idea of fun.

Definitely, absolutely and without a doubt, 'my sort of book'

Some of the books I read for Book Club are really not my sort of thing. I like to think I read them with good grace, and I really do try to find the best in them whilst admitting that I'm not the target readership for that sort of thing. Well, Claire Keegan's Small Things Like These is definitely, absolutely and without a doubt, my sort of book.

A historic record of xenophobia

I was drawn to Heart of Darkness by the praise of a few academic fans. The book often appears in the English literary canon and I can see why it continues to be set reading for literature courses; it doubtless provokes much discussion.

The story concerns Charles Marlow, who relates his experiences in the African Congo, where imperialist traders sent "manufactured goods, rubbishy cottons, beads, and brass-wire... into the depths of darkness, and in return came a precious trickle of ivory". The depths of darkness relate not only to the unknown, unexplored lands beyond the sea shore, but also to the inhumanity that late 19th century traders expected to find there, as well as that of the traders themselves.

As Marlow journeys upriver he hears of a Mr Kurtz, a trader who is both respected and despised, and about whom he says, "All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz". In order to reach this enigmatic man, Marlow suffers much misfortune, adventure and horror. For all the vivid descriptions of the journey, the most memorable scene takes place in England, near the end of the book, when Marlow visits Kurtz's fiancee.

Modern-day readers might find Conrad's language in relation to indigenous people shocking and problematic. The book plays on a stereotypical view of foreign cultures and races as primitive and barbaric, and while the author portrays white traders as savages too, they don't quite balance out. It stands as a historic record of the xenophobia that existed at the time of its writing.

The text is dense, and the language lush. Amazingly, Conrad was not a natural-born English speaker, and I dare say this is another reason his work continues to be read and analysed. TS Eliot was inspired by Heart of Darkness, and Francis Ford Coppola adapted it for his film Apocalypse Now. For myself, I was left with only my own thoughts and a few online critical reviews with which to compare them.

A book that starts with the ending

It's not often I read a book that starts at the end, tells the story, and then ends at the beginning, but this is exactly what VS Naipaul's A House for Mr Biswas does. The opening reads, "Ten weeks before he died, Mr Mohun Biswas, a journalist of Sikkim Street, St James, Port of Spain, was sacked. He had been ill for some time". No need to worry about revealing any spoilers then.