Purple Coo Book Club - Autumn Read 2012

Hi Everyone
my apologies if your favourite didn't make it into the final seven, but so many excellent books were suggested this time I had to be quite brutal in whittling them down.
Please make your 1st and 2nd choices in the comments box below. As soon as everyone has voted, I'll collate the votes and announce the most popular book on the Purple Coo main site. That book then becomes the Purple Coo Autumn Read 2012 .
 

Bring up the Bodies by Hilary Mantell

Her much talked about sequel to Wolf Hall

Narrow Boat to Carcassonne by Terry Darlington

A book for armchair travellers with a sense of adventure, combined with a sense of humour, a love whippets and narrow boats. The first of a trilogy about Terry, his wife Monica, their whippet Jim and their retirement antics trip across the channel and down through France aboard their narrowboat, The Phyllis May.

Ring of Bright Water by Gavin Maxwell

Hailed as a lyrical masterpiece when first in print, it’s the true story of Gavin Maxwell’s relationship with an otter cub he brought back from Iraq, and his life with her in a magical place he called Camusfearna, in reality Sandaig on the West Coast of Scotland. (info courtesy of Fairy Nuff, who was lucky enough to be a visitor there just recently) 

The Heart Broke in by James Meek

The latest by James Meek. The main characters are a TV producer and his remarkable sister, but don’t let that fool you. This book is as wide ranging as of all Meek’s work. It starts off humorously enough when the married TV producer realises the mobile phone he uses to call his teenage girlfriend, has become lost in the long grass at the family home, and is likely to be found by his children.  

The Madonnas of Leningrad by Debra Dean

It’s all about a former curator of the Hermitage Museum who’s lived through the siege only to succumb to Alzheimer’s in old age. Apparently it’s a study of Alzheimer’s and the comfort of Art. 

The Postmistress by Sarah Blake

A Sunday Times Bestseller. An unforgettable, heart-wrenching, captivating, profoundly moving story of love, loss and life in wartime. 

The Shape of Water by Andrea Camilleri

The first of the Detective Montalbano series. He’s a Sicilian detective . Good characters and plots but this recommendation comes with the warning that once you’ve read the first one, there are 19 more to go. (I’m rather impressed with Luca Zingaretti, the guy who plays Montalbano in the TV series. Who cares if it’s subtitled, like Robert de Nero in the old Bananarama song, he’s ‘talking Italian.”)

The picture is a print by the wonderful Angie Lewin