Ramblings of a Bookworm
Posted in Book Reviews, Linda Grant on Oct 11th, 2008
Vivian, the only child of refugee parents, grows up at Benson Court in London during the 1960s and 1970s. Her parents are quiet, timid people, and they live a sheltered life, wanting to be inconspicuous. Vivian describes herself as
the child of old parents, a pair of cranky odd Europeans with wierd opinions. Oppressive ideas formed in the stale gloom.
As [...]
Posted in Book Reviews, John Wyndham, RIP Challenge on Oct 10th, 2008
Chocky by John Wyndham qualifies for the RIP Challenge in the Supernatural category. It seems at first as though Matthew has an invisible friend, just like his little sister’s Piff, who appeared when Polly was about five. Matthew at eleven seemed a little bit old for such a friend, and when his father overhears him having [...]
Posted in Book Reviews, Kate Summerscale, Non-fiction, Sunday Salon on Oct 5th, 2008
It’s raining and cold here for today’s Sunday Salon post. Summer wasn’t very long this year but then it often isn’t. It wasn’t in England in 1860 according to my reading today in Kate Summerscale’s remarkable book The Suspicions of Mr Whicher or The Murder at Road Hill House, when summer was brought to an [...]
Posted in Book Reviews, Joyce Carol Oates, RIP Challenge on Oct 3rd, 2008
I finished The Gravedigger’s Daughter by Joyce Carol Oates last week and parts of it have remained in my mind. Mainly I think it’s the general atmosphere of its world. It’s a grim, dark world, a violent and pessimistic world, gothic and grotesque. In some ways it reminds me of Hardy’s novels - you know something terrible will [...]
Posted in Book Reviews, Daphne Du Maurier, Linda Grant, RIP Challenge, Sunday Salon on Sep 28th, 2008
This last week has been yet another week away from home and reading has had to be slotted in. I read late at night when I nodded off with a book in my hand or early in the mornings when the time speeds up at an alarming rate so I hardly felt I’d read much at [...]
Posted in Book Reviews, Joyce Carol Oates, Sunday Salon on Sep 21st, 2008
Last Sunday I wrote that I’d started The Gravedigger’s Daughter by Joyce Carol Oates. I’m still reading it. I really shouldn’t write much about it as I haven’t finished it and I’m wondering how it is going to end. I thought I could predict the ending but then something happened which made me think, maybe [...]
Posted in Book Reviews, What's In a Name on Sep 6th, 2008
In August I read a beautiful little book- it was a birthday present - James Herriot’s Cat Stories. It was a great relief to read this book after some of the books (about war and disasters) I’d been reading lately and this book with its lovely illustrations by Lesley Holmes cheered me up immensely. That’s not to say it [...]
Posted in Book Reviews on Sep 2nd, 2008
Mathias Freese kindly sent me Down To a Sunless Sea to review a while ago. It has taken me some time to read it, mainly because it’s a collection of fifteen short stories, covering a number of difficult topics and I have found it quite painful to read. I don’t know if I can really do [...]
Posted in Book Reviews, Books, Sunday Salon on Aug 24th, 2008
I started to read Nefertiti by Michelle Moran a bit ago and just in the last few days have picked it up again. Nefertiti is most irritating - insufferably self-confident, arrogant, demanding, lusting after power, manipulative, superior, full of her own self-importance and well, beautiful; just as you would expect her to be, a jealous [...]
Posted in Book Reviews, Robert Harris on Aug 20th, 2008
Recently I’ve been going from book to book and not finishing any of them, apart from Pompeii by Richard Harris. If you’ve read my recent posts you’ll maybe understand why I’ve been unable to concentrate on reading, but even if the words have not been making much sense as I read them I find the [...]
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Ramblings of a Bookworm
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