30 November 2010
2 Comments
Twenty, wow, and we’re in what week 40-summat. Well, better than last year I suppose :) This is one of the swans on the canal near where I live, went down to feed them in the cold weather yesterday and … Continue reading
29 November 2010
Call no: 800
Genre: sff
Setting: Randland
9 Stars
4 Comments
9781841498676 Wheel of Time #13 Okay, so if you haven’t read the other 12 books in this series then you have no business going anywhere near this one. And if you have, then nothing I can say one way or … Continue reading
26 November 2010
Genre: detective & mystery, romance
Setting: Washington State
4 Comments
ISBN: 9780749941796 On a chilly morning in February with a misty tain shuttering the windows, Devin and Rosie Cauldwell made slow, sleepy love. Fiona Bristow lives on Orcas Island, a close-knit community, where she runs a dog training centre. She … Continue reading
26 November 2010
Genre: historical fiction, romance
Setting: Bath, Britain - Victorian
8 Comments
Miss Annis Wychwood is in her late twenties, and as she is still unmarried, she believes her future to hold nothing but remaining single. However she is not about to retreat into the clutches of her brother’s family and become “the spinster aunt”, as much as she loves her sister-in-law, there are some things which simply can not be allowed to happen. So she has set up home in Bath, with an elderly cousin to live with her, for propriety’s sake. On a journey from her brother’s establishment to her own, she comes across a broken down chaise and offers her assistance. The young woman she rescues is most thankful for not being left at the side of the road, but things are about to change in Miss Wychwood’s life, for she is the ward of Mr. Oliver Carleton, and she has run away.
Okay, anyone who has ever read any Georgette Heyer will probably already know that Miss Wychwood shall not remain single. And that she will end up falling madly in love with Carleton, and that they will live happily ever after. But speculation about that aspect of the plot is not why anyone reads Heyer. Instead you read her to enjoy her writing, her characters, and her dialogue. And in all those aspects this book is a success.
25 November 2010
9 Comments
Although possibly you never even noticed I was gone. Server & bandwidth issues meant the site was nae working for the past week or so, she dinnae have the power. But the lovely people are Blacknight got me all transferred and back in business and I don’t think I’m missing anything. I did lose my header image, but I’ve been thinking about changing that anyway, so will have a new one soon enough.
How’s everyone been? Have you American being enjoying your Thanksgiving and turkey?
17 November 2010
Genre: historical fiction, sff
Setting: Britain - Victorian, C19th, London
10 Comments
by Dan Simmons
On the 9th of June, 1865, ten passengers were killed when a train crashed at Staplehurst. Among the passengers who survived the disaster was the novelist Charles Dickens. Meeting his friend, Wilkie Collins, soon afterwards Dickens describes a strange individual he came across at the site of the crash. This man, Drood, is to drag both Dickens and Collins into the depths of Victorian London’s criminal and poverty stricken underbelly. Will he also lead to murder and insanity?
11 November 2010
Call no: 800
Genre: Juv/YA, sff
Setting: future
4 Comments
Tally Youngblood is an Ugly. All her friends have gone off and become Pretties, but she is the youngest, and eagerly awaiting her 16th birthday so that she can join them. But before she reaches that magical age she meets a new friend, Shay, who tells her about a mysterious boy called David, and the notion that some people don’t want to be made Pretty. To Tally this is insane. Science and evolution prove that people like beauty. And back in the “Rusties” day, when they weren’t able to make people pretty there was so much discrimination just over the way people lived. She’ll never go off looking for the Smoke. She’ll stay in the city, and become Pretty, just like all her friends.
Of course, if she did then this book wouldn’t have much of a plot now would it?
1 November 2010
Call no: 800
Genre: general fiction, Juv/YA
Setting: 1980s, London
6 Comments
This is the sort of book I don’t usually read. You know the ones, from the “sad story” section of the bookshop. The misery-books as I call them. But a few years ago I’d heard of Melvin Burgess as an author to look out for. I’ve read his Lady : My life as a Bitch and to be honest I wasn’t all that impressed, but I’ll always give an author a second go. So I tried this one.
In the 1980′s Nick Dane is growing up as an average, if bright kid. He comes from a single parent family, and his mother has a secret. She never got off the drugs, not completely. And in the course of having a “taste” she accidentally overdoses and Nick is left all alone in the world. Soon he finds himself carted off to a “home” for boys, and soon learns that the violence and random beatings are not the worse this place has to offer.