Tag Archives: Fiction

The Story of Dr Dolittle by Hugh Lofting – The 1920 Club

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Two People cover

The last book that I read for The 1920 Club week which finished yesterday was The Story of Dr Dolittle by Hugh Lofting. I’ve read a few of these books but this is the first one which explains that Dr Dolittle had been a doctor for humans, but he was far more interested in the many animals that he had in his house/surgery. Not surprisingly this upset his patients, one sat on a hedgehog and eventually he found he had only one patient left and no money was coming in. That one patient – the cat’s meat man – suggested that he should become an animal doctor. Dr Dolittle set about learning to speak with animals and in no time he was able to pay his bills again.

When a swallow brings news that all of the monkeys in Africa are dying of a strange disease (yes I know!) Dr Dolittle sails to Africa with lots of his animals including Chee Chee his monkey. So begins the adventure that sees them being locked up by a king when they travel through his land, but of course Polynesia the parrot helps them to escape.

Of course Dr Dolittle does manage to save the lives of the monkeys who haven’t already succumbed to the mystery disease that has killed thousands of them.

If only Covid-19 could be so easy to sort out.

This was an enjoyable read and it’s the first in a series of books which was turned into the film starring Rex Harrison in 1967 and more recently Robert Downey Jr. in 1998.

Dr Dolittle

My other Dolittle books are really nice old ones but this on is a modern one from 1998, published by the Daily Mail – of all things. The rather naive illustrations, also by Lofting, are charming.

The Century’s Daughter aka Liza’s England by Pat Barker

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The Century's Daughter cover

The Century’s Daughter by Pat Barker was published by Virago in 1986. The title seems to have been changed to Liza’s England later on and it is the third book that Barker wrote, not that it reads like an early book, it’s very well written.

Liza was born at the turn of the 20th century, in fact just as the new year was born. The setting is northern England, the Sunderland/Newcastle area I believe. In the first chapter Stephen visits Liza in her home. Her house is due to be demolished but Liza refuses to move and Stephen is a social worker tasked with persuading her to move elsewhere so that the whole area can be cleared. But Stephen quickly realises that he is really on Liza’s side. He loves hearing about her long life which has been hard, her family is scarred by the wars, but before that Liza was damaged by her mother Louise who is definitely not of the apple pie making variety.

The chapters mainly flip from Liza’s story to Stephen’s life as he is having a tough time in other areas of his work. Running a youth club for the youngsters of the disadvantaged area is turning into a nightmare, he just can’t cope and at the same time he’s having to deal with the imminent death of his terminally ill father. He hasn’t been close to his parents, his education and homosexuality seem to have thrown up insurmountable barriers between them.

There’s a lot going on in this book which features the 1930s Depression and the grim early 1980s when there were no jobs for so many young people in the UK and consequently many had no hopes for their future.

That makes it sound like the book will be a depressing read but it really isn’t, although it is sad at times I enjoyed the relationship between Liza and Stephen.

The book begins –

‘No point being eighty, is there?’ said Liza. ‘If you can’t be a bit outrageous?’

And certainly she looked it, Stephen thought, with her scarlet headsquare tilted crazily over one eye, giving her the look of a senile pirate.

She even has a parrot.

BBC Top 100 Books

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As I said in an earlier post, I am quite embarassed that I have only read 45 books on the list. The books which I have read are in bold print and I’m hoping to be able to change a few more to bold before the end of the year.

I’m never going to read any by Terry Pratchett and I won’t read Gone with the Wind as that was my mother-in-law’s comfort book and I don’t want to trespass.

Any suggestions for what else I should read from the list would be gratefully received.

1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
4. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
19. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
22. Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone, JK Rowling
23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling
24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling
25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
26. Tess Of The D’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
27. Middlemarch, George Eliot
28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
30. Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
38. Persuasion, Jane Austen
39. Dune, Frank Herbert
40. Emma, Jane Austen
41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
42. Watership Down, Richard Adams
43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
46. Animal Farm, George Orwell
47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
53. The Stand, Stephen King
54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
56. The BFG, Roald Dahl
57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
65. Mort, Terry Pratchett
66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
67. The Magus, John Fowles
68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
71. Perfume, Patrick Süskind
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
74. Matilda, Roald Dahl
75. Bridget Jones’s Diary, Helen Fielding
76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
78. Ulysses, James Joyce
79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
81. The Twits, Roald Dahl
82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
83. Holes, Louis Sachar
84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
89. Magician, Raymond E Feist
90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac
91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
95. Katherine, Anya Seton
96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
100. Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie