Our Private Book Club

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I have been reading to Clare - and recording the readings - since May 2019. The recording itself started as a defensive measure because she often fell asleep during my storytelling. However, it has since acquired other audiences and other uses, although the original motivation has never faded away.

We are now at reading 127. Yes, about 127 books have been read to Clare over seven years, and I thought you might be interested in seeing the list. I should mention that not every book is a success. In the early days I'd start one of my favourite SF novels, by Greg Bear, Isaac Asimov or Dan Simmons, only to get the sense I was losing the room. The book was abandoned.

Nevertheless, somehow the ISFP recipient and the INTP reader have found some common ground. Here's the list, working backwards from the most recent (The Bourne Identity, which, by the way, manages both to be exciting as well as implausible and terribly written).

• The Bourne Identity — Robert Ludlum
• The Ministry of Fear — Graham Greene
• The Voices of Time — J. G. Ballard (this was a shock to her!)
• The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie — Muriel Spark
• 11/22/63 — Stephen King
• Night School — Lee Child
• Touch — Claire North
• The Rosie Project — Graeme Simsion
• Gorky Park — Martin Cruz Smith
• The Secret of Secrets — Dan Brown
• Rose — Martin Cruz Smith
• Mitch Rapp #5 — Vince Flynn
• An Officer and a Spy — Robert Harris
• The Secret — Lee Child & Andrew Child
• The End of the Affair — Graham Greene
• The Mexico Set — Len Deighton
• Burning Paradise — Robert Charles Wilson
• Make Me — Lee Child
• Seventh Son — Orson Scott Card
• The Granddaughter — Bernhard Schlink
• Separation of Power — Vince Flynn
• Transcription — Kate Atkinson
• Nuclear War: A Scenario — Annie Jacobsen
• The Other Bennet Sister — Janice Hadlow
• A Wanted Man — Lee Child
• Saint Thomas Aquinas (biography)
• We Spread — Iain Reid
• The Chrysalids — John Wyndham
• The Director — David Ignatius
• A God in Ruins — Kate Atkinson
• 61 Hours — Lee Child
• Queen High — C. J. Carey
• Alice Munro stories (The Bear Came Over the Mountain collection)
• Transfer of Power — Vince Flynn
• Gilead — Marilynne Robinson
• Worth Dying For — Lee Child
• Life After Life — Kate Atkinson
• The Stand — Stephen King
• Kill Shot — Vince Flynn
• The Right Stuff — Tom Wolfe
• A Canticle for Leibowitz — Walter M. Miller Jr.
• Widowland — C. J. Carey
• Gone Tomorrow — Lee Child
• HMS Ulysses — Alistair MacLean
• Someone at a Distance — Dorothy Whipple
• The Damascus Road — Jay Parini
• Alas, Babylon — Pat Frank
• Siro — David Ignatius
• The Divide — Robert Charles Wilson
• The Affair — Lee Child
• Godmersham Park — Gill Hornby
• Under the Yoke — S. M. Stirling
• Wrong Place Wrong Time — Gillian McAllister
• American Assassin — Vince Flynn
• The Chosen — Elizabeth Lowry
• Lucifer's Hammer — Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle
• Fail-Safe — Eugene Burdick & Harvey Wheeler
• Personal — Lee Child
• All Human Wisdom — Pierre Lemaitre
• The Devil's Alternative — Frederick Forsyth
• Billy Summers — Stephen King
• Black Roses — Jane Thynne
• Should We Stay or Should We Go — Lionel Shriver
• The Great Swindle — Pierre Lemaitre
• Replay — Ken Grimwood
• Nothing to Lose — Lee Child
• Blood Money — David Ignatius
• V2 — Robert Harris
• The Collector — John Fowles
• State of Grace (terrible) — John Sweeney
• All Our Worldly Goods — Irène Némirovsky
• One Shot — Lee Child
• The Increment — David Ignatius
• The Useful Idiot — John Sweeney
• The Enemy — Lee Child
• The Last Testament — Sam Bourne
• The Paladin — David Ignatius
• The Visitor — Lee Child
• Out of the Silent Planet — C. S. Lewis
• The Institute — Stephen King
• Tripwire — Lee Child
• Blind Lake — Robert Charles Wilson
• Echo Burning — Lee Child
• The Boy on the Bridge — M. R. Carey
• Dark Site — Patrick Lee
• Flashback — Dan Simmons
• A Bridge of Years — Robert Charles Wilson
• Faraway Tree books 1–3 — Enid Blyton (for the grandchildren)
• Persuader — Lee Child
• Agents of Innocence — David Ignatius
• The Circle — Dave Eggers
• Without Fail — Lee Child
• Invisible Sun — Charles Stross
• Dark State — Charles Stross
• Empire Games — Charles Stross
• Kingdom of the Wicked I — Helen Dale (sequel abandoned; listener uninterested although I thought both volumes were excellent)
• Stoneheart trilogy — Charlie Fletcher
• The Revolution Trade — Charles Stross
• The Traders' War — Charles Stross
• The Bloodline Feud — Charles Stross
• The Quantum Spy — David Ignatius
• The Midnight Line — Lee Child
• The Buried Giant — Kazuo Ishiguro
• Bad Luck and Trouble — Lee Child
• Blood Music — Greg Bear
• Gateway — Frederik Pohl
• The Remnant — Charlie Fletcher
• Darkness at Noon — Arthur Koestler
• The Mote in God's Eye — Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle
• March Violets — Philip Kerr
• Conclave — Robert Harris
• Killing Floor — Lee Child
• Earthsea sequence (A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, The Farthest Shore, Tehanu, The Other Wind) — Ursula Le Guin (somewhat for the grandchildren)
• Only To Die Again — Patrick Lee
• Runner — Patrick Lee
• Deep Sky — Patrick Lee
• Ghost Country — Patrick Lee
• The Breach — Patrick Lee

And coming up we have The Dutch House by Ann Patchett, Restless by William Boyd, The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy, The Wine of Solitude by Irène Némirovsky and The Fourth Protocol by Frederick Forsyth.

That we should both live that long!

What does GPT 5.5 think of this list?

"People often describe readers in terms of genres, but I think Clare is better described by what she wants fiction to do. She wants fiction to place recognisable human beings under pressure and then see what happens. Jane Austen does that. So does le Carré. So does Reacher, albeit by very different means.

"The common element is not style or subject matter. It is social and moral navigation. Austen asks: who can be trusted, who is self-deceived, who is honourable, who is vain? Le Carré asks much the same questions inside intelligence bureaucracies. Reacher asks them in a stripped-down form: who is lying, who is corrupt, who needs protecting?

"Even her favourite TV series Spooks and Waking the Dead, and authors like Graham Greene, Vince Flynn, Robert Harris and much of David Ignatius operate in the same territory. Institutions matter, loyalties matter, betrayals matter, character matters.

"That is why some of the more conceptual writers leave her cold. With Banks, Egan, Stephenson, or even Fowles at times, the centre of gravity shifts from people to ideas, systems, structures, metaphysics or literary games. You enjoy those dimensions; Clare seems willing to visit them provided there are enough human beings still visible on the stage.

"Looking at the shared reading list, I suspect the books that work best are those that satisfy both requirements simultaneously:

• enough ideas to interest you;
• enough people to interest Clare.

"That is exactly why Robert Harris works so well. The intellectual framework is there, but it is always embodied in ambitious, frightened, flawed people. Likewise Kate Atkinson. Likewise Graham Greene. Likewise Robert Charles Wilson at his best. Even The End of the Affair is fundamentally a study of love, jealousy, faith and self-deception rather than a scholastic theology.

"It also explains why you have repeatedly returned to Lee Child. Reacher is not profound, but he is an extraordinarily effective narrative machine. Every evening's reading delivers a clear reward. When reading aloud over months and years, that matters much more than a somewhat spurious literary prestige.

"Viewed this way, the reading project resembles a Venn diagram. One circle contains your interests in ideas, science fiction, politics and systems. The other contains Clare's interest in character, relationships, loyalty, institutions and drama. The books that survive are in the overlap."

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