Reviews of Books
Posted in Fiction - Light, Recommended on Oct 4th, 2010
My mother picked this book – based on the cover and truth be told I would have picked it too. It’s been sitting in my pile for a while and I’ve overlooked it several times. However, once I started I was hooked. It’s a gentle story about loss, grief, guilt and redemption. Here’s the blurb [...]
Posted in Fiction - Light, Recommended on Sep 29th, 2010
Janet Evanovich can certainly write an entertaining (and compelling) read. I’m not saying she’s an Austen or Bronte, but her novels are full of laugh-out-loud moments – racy and pacy as a friend says. Here’s the blurb … Seven Stones of Power No one knows when they were created or by whom, each said to [...]
Posted in Fiction - Light, Recommended on Sep 28th, 2010
I’ve always liked Kate Atkinson’s novels. Whenever I see a new one I have to grab it straight away. This one was no exception – I really enjoyed it. Here’s the blurb … A day like any other for security chief Tracy Waterhouse, until she makes a purchase she hadn’t bargained for. One moment of [...]
Posted in Fiction - Light on Sep 23rd, 2010
I selected this book for my book club. I went to the book shop and asked for something that wasn’t depressing and this was what they suggested. I didn’t really like it, but I didn’t hate it either. I didn’t care about the characters at all – the dialogue (particularly between Vivian and Gabriel) was [...]
Posted in Fiction - Light, Recommended on Aug 16th, 2010
I’m still on my Persephone marathon (and I just bought another three). I think I bought this one because Jane Brocket wrote the preface. Here’s the blurb from Persephone … It is about a girl called Jane who gets a badly-paid job in a draper’s shop in the early years of the last century. Yet [...]
Posted in Fiction - Light, Recommended on Aug 9th, 2010
I’ve been continuing my Persephone reading feast. Someone at a Distance was my free classic. Here’s the blurb … ‘A very good novel indeed about the fragility and also the tenacity of love’ commented the Spectator recently about this 1953 novel by Dorothy Whipple, which was ignored fifty years ago because ‘editors are going [...]
Posted in Fiction - Light on Aug 6th, 2010
This is another of my Persephone purchases. Here’s the blurb … Making Conversation(1931) by Christine Longford (1900-80) was first reprinted in 1970 after the novelist Pamela Hansford Johnson reassessed it in the Times Literary Supplement. She wrote: ‘This ought to be regarded as an English comic classic, which I suppose, unlike the ravishing Cold Comfort [...]
Posted in Fiction - Light, Recommended on Aug 4th, 2010
I bought this book from Persephone press when they had their free classic give away (I received Someone at a Distance). The image above is from the endpaper. Persephone books have the most beautiful endpapers. The book was delightful – light, entertaining and very quick to read. The period detail is fantastic – I love [...]
Posted in Fiction - Light, Recommended on Aug 3rd, 2010
In one of those strange bits of concurrency I read this book right after Richard Dawkins The Greatest Show On Earth. One thing I really noticed was the conflict with the religion. Living in quite secular times it is hard to imagine being concerned that a creature existed that was now extinct and what did [...]
Posted in Fiction - Light, Recommended on Jul 24th, 2010
I know it’s July because the Tour De France is on and Janet Evanovich has another Stephanie Plum novel out. I was a late arrival to the Stephanie Plum novels a member at my book club recommended them as ‘racy and pacy’. I’ve been addicted since I read the first one. These are light [...]