T. Harford, The undercover economist
N. Hawthorne, The house of seven gables
W. Horwood, Duncton Wood*
C. Smith, The Rediscovery of man
D. Swann, Swann's way out
I meant to read Ellison's Invisible Man this month, but I moved house instead and didn't get round to it. I'm sure it's excellent. Many of the books on this list aren't. Swann's book is silly; Hawthorne and Harford slight and while I love the Duncton trilogy, it is ultimately a fantasy trilogy about moles with most of the plot drawn from the Bible. However, Run was a deserving BOTM. It's been sitting on our shelves for ages (it's Anna's, so not included in my reading all my books), and I read it solely because it was set in Boston. There are lots of things to like about it, not least the simplicity of the concept. You can certainly easily imagine the pitch for the novel. I suspect I'm currently pretty susceptible to novels about parenthood, but this was a great one, despite it's really obvious setup. Anyway, what I liked was that despite the really obvious setup, it was full of lovely byways and really well done other bits, around politics, religion and, indeed, fish (read: obsessions). Good end too.
