My Springcleaning Challenge – Reading 25 books in March, April and May

Last year I spent three months in the spring reading 25 books which had lingered long on my to-be-read piles – here is what I thought of my Springcleaning challenge. It was so successful that I did a similar thing in the Autumn. It will, however, come as no surprise to any of you reading this that these challenges have not eliminated the to-be-read piles which have, in fact, grown since then. What they did do though is prevent me from just reading the newest additions and meant that I got to some of the books which have been there for months, or even years.

So, I have compiled a new list and chosen 25 more books to read in March, April and May. They are divided more or less equally between fact and fiction, and I have tried to find standalone books and to choose a variety of different types of writing. I am aiming to get all 25 read in this period but am allowing for the fact that I might not achieve this goal.

I find this discipline helpful and I have uncovered some real gems in past challenges.

Below is the list. I may substitute another book if I really can’t get on with one.

I will be interested to hear from any of you in the comments if you know any of these books and have an opinion on them.

Let the reading commence…

Walking through Spring	Graham Hoyland	A good title to start with. A travel book following the author as they travel through England from the South Coast to the Scottish border, planting an acorn every mile.
Fire in the Blood	Irene Nemirovsky	The story of the relationships within a French family living in the country prior to WW2
Rivets, Trivets and Galvanised Buckets	Tom Fort	A memoir of a family who buy a hardware shop in a small community.
The Fountain Overflows	Rebecca West	A semi-autobiographical novel of a family in the late nineteenth century told through the eyes of a child
Blood on the Page	Thomas Harding	A true crime account of a murder which took place in London in 2006 where the trial was held in secret and the accused may have been innocent.
The Last Kind Words Saloon	Larry McMurty	A novel following the lives of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday and the events leading up to the shootout at the OK Corral
Once in a House on Fire	Andrea Ashworth	A memoir of growing up in Manchester in the 1970s
Last Orders	Graham Swift	A man asks for his ashes to be buried at sea and his friends seek to carry out his last wish
Thunderclap	Laura Cummings	A sort of biography of a seventeenth century Flemish painter but including a memoir of the author and her fathers’ lives
The Midnight Library	Matt Haig	A woman about to die finds herself in a library and with the opportunity to try out the other lives she might have had
The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit	Lucette Lagnado	A memoir of a Jewish Egyptian family forced to flee their home in the 1960s to exile in the USA.
A Desert in Bohemia	Jill Paton Walsh	A novel about a group of WW2 survivors connected by an ancient castle
Tide	Hugh Aldersey-Williams	A book about how tides work, their significance and important tides in history
The Grass is Singing	Doris Lessing	A modern classic about a woman living in South Africa and her experience of marriage and colonialism
Moonshine, Monster Catfish and other Southern Comforts	Burkhard Bilger	Travels in the Southern states of America
The Good Doctor	Damon Galgut	A novel about two very different doctors caught up in events around the ending of White Rule in South Africa
Eating an Elephant	Alice Wells	A memoir of a woman who discovers that her beloved husband is hiding a very nasty secret which endangers their daughter
Railsea	China Mieville	A fantasy novel about a train and those who hunt giant moles.
A Sort of Life	Graham Greene	An autobiography of the author
The Herb of Grace	Elizabeth Goudge	A novel about a family and forgiveness
Mail Obsession	Mark Mason	The author takes a journey around Britain by postcode, looking out for unusual place names as he goes
Mask of Betrayal	Maureen O’Brien	A woman finds a dead body in her bath and is forced to undertake some detective work when the police suspect her of murder
Landline	Rainbow Rowell	A romance about a woman trying to connect with her husband through a telephone that links her to the past
Insufficiently Welsh	Griff Rhys Jones	The actor seeks his Welsh heritage in a journey around the country
Brazzaville Beach	William Boyd	A woman considers her past while living on a beach in post-colonial Africa