My TBR Book Jar has enjoyed an extended holiday over the past few months while I concentrated on books I already knew I was going to read.
Now that Reading Wales, Reading Ireland and the 1961 club are behind me, I finally have an opportunity to use the jar to elp guide my decision on what to read next.
For the benefit of anyone new to this blog, the idea of my TBR book jar is to select three titles on the first of each month and committ to reading one of those titles within two months.
I do have a real jar but haven’t maintained it so I’m relying on my spreadsheet of titles owned but unread. From these I’ve used a random number generator to pick three options. From those I’ll pick one to read in the next two months.
This time I narrowed my options to books acquired via Netgalley. I feel guilty that I requested them but have been very, very slow in actually reading them. Some on my Netgalley shelf date back to 2022.
So here are the three titles that came from the random generator this month.
The Best of Friends by Kamila Shamshie
Added to my shelves in 2022 (oh dear), Shamshie’s novel concerns a friendship forged between two girls from markedly different backgrounds in Karachi. Thirty years after they met, when both are successful career women, their friendship is put to the test. An incident from the teenage years rears its head, forcing the women to confront their past and question if their friendship has a solid enough foundation to survive.
Midwinter by Fiona Melrose
Another narrative split between two locations and two periods in time. In the present day Landyn and Vale Midwinter are farmers in Suffolk. They struggle to maintain the farm and their livelihood in the face of competition from big business and a severe winter.
Both men are struggling also with grief and guilt because of an incident in Zambia ten years earlier which resulted in the death of their mother and wife.
Communion by Jon Doyle
This is one of my most recent Net Galley acquisitions, requested purely because it has a Welsh connection. Doyle’s home town of Port Talbot, South Wales is the setting for his debut novel Communion. This is a town dominated by huge steelworks, providing employment for hundreds of families and shaping their community.
The plot follows Mack O’Brien who has returned to the town having failed to become a priest. He gets a job as a security officer at the steelworks where a strike is looming that will test his loyalties.
Decision Time
This is a tough decision because all three books sound so good. I’ve read and enjoyed both Melrose and Shamsie in the past (Johannesburg and Home Fire respectively).
Reviews of Johannesburg have generally been very positive while Shamie’s novel received very mixed reactions.
As a debut author Jon Doyle is an unknown quantity but I see that he was named by The Observer as one of the best debut novelists of 2026. The New Statesman also selected Communion in their list of best fiction to read in 2026.
So I’m marginally more inclined to give my support to a Welsh author and opt for Communion. Second choice would be Johannesburg.
I’m certain I’ll enjoy Olive Again since I’ve enjoyed everything else I’ve read by Strout. It’s tempting to revisit an old friend but I think I’m going to go with Human Acts. It sounds like a novel I can get really engrossed in and it’s about a period in history I know nothing about.
Let me know if you agree/disagree with my choice. If you’ve read the Kamila Shamsie do let me know what you thought.
We're all friends here. Come and join the conversation