Spell the Month in Books: March 2025
This month’s prompt for Spell the Month in Books is an impossible one for me. Janna who hosts this meme on Reviews From the Stacks wants us to use the titles of sci fi novels. That’s a genre I don’t read so I’m going with my own topic once more. Since it’s ReadingWalesMonth I’m taking a very obvious path and spelling March using the titles of books by Welsh authors.
Links are to my reviews unless I read the book well before this blog was born.
M
One Moonlit Night by Caradog Prichard
This tale of life in a small slate quarrying community was described by The Oxford Companion to the Literature of Wales “one of the most impressive novels to be published in Wales since the Second World War.” Events are seen through the eyes of a young boy, enabling us to witness both the hardship and the joys of his village. See my review here.
The Alone to the Alone by Gwyn Thomas
We’re moving south to the mining communities of the Rhondda Valleys for a taste of Thomas’s trademark dark humour. Life in these communities is seen this time through the eyes of The Dark Philosophers – four unemployed men who have nothing else to do but to sit on a wall each day and observe. See my review here.
R
The Redemption of Galen Pike by Carys Davies
This collection of short stories was my first encounter with Carys Davies, an author I’ve gone on to love. Her stories here takes readers from the wilds of Siberia to a remote farm in the Australian outback and a to a prison in a small Oklahoma community. Read my review here.
C
The Cove by Cynan Jones
i was tempted to go with Charlie and The Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl which would please the politicos in Cardiff since they love to push his connection with the city. They always skirt around the issue that he and his family left Wales when he was thirteen years old; long before he became a writer.
So I’ll go instead with an author who grew up in Wales and still lives here, working on his family’s farm in West Wales. The Cove was my first taste of Cynan Jones’s work and remains my favourite. It’s a quiet, lyrical and highly atmospheric novel of a man adrift and injured in a kayak, trying to hold onto life by thinking of his wife and unborn child back on land.
H
The Hiding Place by Trezza Azzorpardi
Shortlisted for the 20000 Man Booker Prize, this is a deeply immersive saga about life in the multi-ethnic community of Tiger Bay, Cardiff. Azzorpardi’s story follows Maltese-born Frankie Gauchi and his family, showing the poverty and difficulties faced by many immigrant families in the post-war decades. My review can be found here.
.If you fancy having a go at Spell the Month, you’ll find all the info you need on the website of the host, Reviews From the Stacks. The April theme is “Animal on the Cover or in the Title”
BuriedInPrint
I’ve had The Hiding Place on my TBR for ages. It still appeals…but when? 🙂
BookerTalk
I hear you! The number of books I want to read far exceeds any lifetime I can expect to be on this planet
Calmgrove
I do.read SF so this wasn’t so hard for me, but I might have rather struggled using just titles of Wales-related books!
Here’s my attempt, in which I managed to include two authors whose centenaries are this year, Brian Aldiss and Arkady Strugatsky:
Minority Report (Philip K Dick)
Argonauts of the Air, The (H G Wells)
Roadside Picnic (A & B Strugatsky)
City of Illusions (U K Le Guin)
Helliconia (Brian Aldiss)
BookerTalk
I’ve heard of these authors with the exception of Strugatsky but confess that I’ve never read any of their books…..
Calmgrove
No confession needed, Karen, I know the genre has failed to win you over! 😊
The Longest Chapter
I’m also a fan of Carys Davies, and I loved The Redemption of Galen Pike. Truly a favorite story collection of mine. The Cove sounds tempting!
BookerTalk
It’s such a beautiful tale. Well worth trying
Margaret
A good idea to spell March using the titles of books by Welsh authors. Currently I’m reading Resistance by Owen Sheers, which has beautiful descriptions of the Welsh countryside and farming life. I’m enjoying it but finding it slow reading.
BookerTalk
I wasn’t blown away by Resistance. The rural descriptions were by far the best element
Lisa Hill
A very good segue!
I broadened the category to speculative fiction and was able to make mine all Australian.
https://anzlitlovers.com/2025/03/09/spell-the-month-in-books-march-2025/
BookerTalk
I confess I am not entirely sure what is meant by speculative fiction.
Lisa Hill
Nor am I. The ones I’ve read are not SF in the sense of new inventions and imaginary worlds in space, they speculate on what a familiar place might be like under some new scenario, e.g. climate or political change.
BookerTalk
In that case I think I’ve read one – Dominion by C J Sansom.
How speculative fiction differs from dystopian fiction is now another question I shall have to dig into
Lisa Hill
LOL, that, my friend, is a question for the experts, not me!
FictionFan
I love the sound of The Alone to the Alone – maybe one for next year’s Reading Wales!
BookerTalk
See if you can download a sample so you can judge if the writing style suits you
FictionFan
Good idea!
WordsAndPeace
Nice way of hughlighting Welsh authors.
https://wordsandpeace.com/2025/03/05/spell-the-month-in-books-march-2025/
BookerTalk
Thanks, it was easy once I’d decided on a theme
margaret21
Oooh, a Carys Davies to look forward to. Hooray!