Book 80: "The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories" ed. Michael Cox & R.A. Gilbert

Although every word of this story is as true as despair, I do not expect people to believe it. Nowadays a 'rational explanation' is required before belief is possible. Let me then, at once, offer the 'rational explanation' which finds most favour among those who have heard the tale of my life's tragedy. It is held that we were 'under a delusion', Laura and I, on that 31st of October; and that this supposition places the whole matter on a satisfactory and believable basis. The reader can judge, when he, too, has heard my story, how far this is an 'explanation' and in what sense it is 'rational'. There were three who took part in this: Laura and I and another man. The other man still lives, and can speak to the truth of the least credible part of my story.

A very well-chosen selection of ghost stories, most of them written between 1890 and 1940, the golden era of English ghost stories.

I had read "The Monkey's Paw", "Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad!" and "The Roll-Call of the Reef" before, but the rest were new to me. Between the covers of this book you will find malevolent ghosts, lost and lonely ghosts, and ghosts who needed to make amends. Haunted landscapes and haunted houses, and in some cases it seems to be the house itself that is doing the haunting. Omens of death, murderers haunted by the ghosts of their victims, as well as a couple of ghosts who don't seem to have a grudge against their murderers, and one well-meaning ghost whose well-meaning actions are thwarted by changes that have happened since his death.

Nottingham Round the World Reading Challenge - UNITED KINGDOM

Book 81: "First Among Sequels" by Jasper Fforde

The doorbell rang.
'Ooooh!' said Polly, peering furtively out the window. 'What fun. It looks like a market researcher!'
'Right,' said my mother in a very military tone. 'Let's see how long we can keep him before he runs out screaming. I'll pretend to have mild dementia, and you can complain about your sciatica in German. We'll try to beat our personal Market-Researcher Containment record of two hours and twelve minutes.'

In the fifth Thursday Next novel, set fifteen years after book four, most of SpecOps has been disbanded, so Thursday and some of her former colleagues have set up a floor-coverings company, while continuing their SpecOps work unofficially. Thursday is also running a cheese smuggling operation with her stalker, Millon de Floss, and working as a Jurisfication agent in the Book World, while keeping her husband Landon in the dark about all her unorthodox activities, preferring that he should see her as a wife and mother of three who works as a carpet fitter.

With Aornis Hades jailed in a time loop and Goliath keeping very quiet, everything should be going well, but the inhabitants of Book World are worried because reading rates in the Outland are falling drastically, and the ChronoGuards are panicking because sixteen-year-old Friday Next is refusing to join the ChronoGuards and the secret of time travel still hasn't been invented.

Meanwhile, Thursday is assessing two troublesome Jurisfiction cadets; leather-clad, gun-toting Thursday1-4, protagonist of "The Eyre Affair" and its three sequels, and birkenstock-wearing hippy Thursday5, from the fifth novel "The Great Samuel Pepys Fiasco", which Thursday had insisted should not be full of sex and violence but went too far the other way, and was therefore a lot less popular than the other books in the series.

A very convoluted tale, which I definitely preferred to books three and four, so the title is rather apt.