Keepsakes and treasures (Fragile things week 3) by Neil Gaiman
Spoilers The narrator starts this story by telling us that we can call him a bastard if we like, well I do like. And I don’t mean bastard in the parentage...
25 September 2011
A study in emerald (Fragile things group read – week 1) by Neil Gaiman
Carl is hosting another group read. This time of Neil Gaiman’s Fragile Things. A collection of 32 stories, so that is 4 stories over 8 weeks. Not too intense. But it...
11 September 2011
The Radleys by Matt Haig
17 Orchard Lane, in Bishopthorpe is a quiet, residential spot. Home to the respectable types; doctors and architects. You know that sort of *respectable* English street. But one of the families...
29 August 2011
Wolf by Gillian Cross
Cassy lives with her grandmother. Her practical, sensible, responsible grandmother. Her mother is a dreamer, unable to look after herself let alone her daughter. And her father, well, no one ever...
21 August 2011
I capture the castle by Dodie Smith
Cassandra Mortmain’s father is a famous writer; unfortunatley he has been suffering from writer’s block for years. Her mother is dead, but she has a lovely stepmother now in Topaz. She also has a younger brother Thomas, and and older sister, Rose. And then there is Stephen, who has grown up with them, not forgetting the dog Heloise and the cat Abelard. They live in a ruin of a castle in England, and have no income. Which means no money for clothes, repairs, rent, or food. They have sold everything worth selling. And then the two Cotton brothers arrive on the scene.
18 June 2011
Son of heaven by David Wingrove
9781848875258 #1 in the Chung Kuoseries A thin layer of mist wreathed the meadows all the way to reeds that traced the meandering path of the river. It is the year...
10 April 2011
The woman in black by Susan Hill
ISBN: 9780099511649 It was nine-thirty on Christmas eve. Arthur Kipps is a mature and responsible individual. His first wife & child died many years ago, but he has since found happiness...
4 February 2011
Kraken by China Mieville
ISBN: 9780330531627 ; Bits I especially liked The sea is full of saints. Billy works in the Natural History Museum in London. The book opens with him running through his usual...
28 January 2011
The King’s Speech dir. by Tom Hooper
The wireless changed a great many things. Before, all that was required of a monarch was that he look the part, and not fall off his horse. After the king would...
14 January 2011
Lady of Quality by Georgette Heyer
ISBN: 033236490 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...
26 November 2010
Drood by Dan Simmons
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?
17 November 2010
Nicholas Dane by Melvin Burgess
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.
1 November 2010
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