Review:- Meg ROSOFF – “How I live now”

Publ: 2004
My own copy
ISBN: 9780141380759
Genre: Young adult
Pages: 186p
Found by Serendipity
Rating: ***** ***

What led you to pick up this book?
It was in the library book sale and the p[lot sounded interesting.

Describe the plot without giving anything away.
“It would be much easier to tell this story if it were all about a chaste and perfect love between Two Children Against the World at an Extreme Time in History. But let's face it, that would be crap.” Daisy is sent from New York to England to spend a summer with cousins she has never met. They are Isaac, Edmond, Osbert and Piper. And two dogs and a goat. She's never met anyone quite like them before - and, as a dreamy English summer progresses, Daisy finds herself caught in a timeless bubble. It seems like the perfect summer. But their lives are about to explode. Falling in love is just the start of it. War breaks out - a war none of them understands, or really cares about, until it lands on their doorstep. The family is separated. The perfect summer is blown apart. Daisy's life is changed forever - and the world is too.

What did you think of the characters and style?
Amazingly good for a first novel – the characters are all so believable and vibrant and within a couple of pages one is hooked. It is advertised as being a novel for young adults but I have never been sure where the borderline comes. The vocabulary never stretches one; the number of pages is not extensive and the hero is a young adult but I don’t think that really affects who the audience is. For me it is a novel for all readers.

What did you like most about the book?
The originality of the plot.

Was there anything you didn't like about the book?
no

Thoughts on the book jacket / cover.
Didn’t do it justice.

Would I recommend it?
Yes.

Meg Rosoff was born in Boston, USA. She has worked in publishing, public relations and most recently advertising, but thinks the best job in the world would be head gardener for Regents Park. Meg lives in Highbury, North London.

Quotation

All books are divisible into two classes: the books of the hour, and the books of all time. - John Ruskin (1819-1900), British art critic and writer

Review – Alys CLARE – “Ashes of the Elements”

Publ: 2000
My own copy
ISBN: 0312261241
Genre: Cosy historical Crime
Pages: 244p
I’ve read and enjoyed Hawkenlye mysteries before
Rating: ***** **

What led you to pick up this book?
I’ve read and enjoyed Hawkenlye mysteries before

Describe the plot without giving anything away.
In this second Hawkenlye mystery, a grove of huge oak trees in the Wealden forest is felled. Then the man who wielded the axe meets with a violent end. Abbess Helewise teams up with Josse d'Acquin to discover what really lies inside the darkness of the ancient forest.

What did you think of the characters and style?
Cosy historical crime set in the twelfth century during the reign of Richard the Lionheart.

This is a list of the Hawkenlye mysteries. I have read the two with asterisks and at least another one but I'm not sure which.
1. Fortune Like the Moon (1999)
2. Ashes of the Elements (2000) *
3. The Tavern in the Morning (2000)
4. The Chatter of the Maidens (2001)
5. The Faithful Dead (2002)
6. A Dark Night Hidden (2003)
7. Whiter Than the Lily (2004)
8. Girl in a Red Tunic (2005)
9. Heart of Ice (2006)
10. The Enchanter's Forest (2007)
11. The Paths of the Air (2008)
12. Joys of My Life (2008) *

Thoughts on the book jacket / cover.
Nothing special though as a series they look quite good together.

Would I recommend it?
yes.

Alys Clare – see Joys of my Life

Review:- Sara FRASER – “The Drowned Ones”

Publ: 2009
Pensby Library
ISBN: 978-0-7278-6854-1
Genre: Cosy historical crime
Pages: 216p
Found by Serendipity
Rating: ***** ***

What led you to pick up this book?
It was on the new crime books shelf in the library

Describe the plot without giving anything away.
This is the third 'Constable Thomas Potts' historical mystery. It is 1827 in the town of Redditch in Worcestershire and Thomas Potts is still reluctantly battling to keep the peace, whilst living in penury in the town Lock-Up with his battle-axe of a mother. Thomas is depressed at the slow progress of his courtship of local beauty Amy Danks: without any money nor prospects, he cannot hope to marry her, and he fears that she will soon look elsewhere. Then the body of a young serving-girl is found drowned in the Tardebigge Canal, and Potts is drawn into the investigation, forced to confront the notorious 'Leggers', town outcasts who work on the barges and who, he suspects, may know something. Tom will risk his own life and reputation several times over as he carries out his reluctant role as constable.

What did you think of the characters and style?
An easy going style that keeps one interested without testing ones brain too much. Tom is a most attractive – if reluctant – hero though poor, gangly and the butt of everyone’s jokes.

What did you like most about the book?
Typical cosy historical crime with enough of an atmosphere of the 1820s to make it feel realistic.

Was there anything you didn't like about the book?
No. I shall be looking to find the previous two Thomas Potts adventures.

Thoughts on the book jacket / cover.
Average.

Would I recommend it?
Yes.

Sara Fraser is a pseudonym for Roy Clews. Clews, , Royal Marines Commander, Spanish Foreign Legionnaire, Paratrooper, Merchant Seaman, Actor, Stuntman, Kibbutznik, International Tramp and Down and Out... he has been all these things and more in a roving life as colourful as any of the characters he creates for his highly successful historical novels, published in England and America. He lives in Tregaron, Cornwall.

Review – Charles DICKENS – “Tom Tiddler’s Ground”

Publ: 1861
My own copy
ISBN: 1-4069-1083-X
Genre: General Fiction
Pages: 26p
Found by Serendipity
Rating: *****

What led you to pick up this book?
I ordered it from Amazon because I had never heard it as a Dickens’ title.

Describe the plot without giving anything away.
It turned out to be a strange short story – and disappointing. To start with, chapters 2-5 are missing on the basis that they weren’t written by Dickens. Not that they are really missed. The moral of this very short story is that man is by nature and obligation a gregarious animal. i think he could have led to the moral in a more Dickens-like way!

What did you think of the characters and style?
Typical Dickens style but lacking his usual skill at enthralling the reader in the plot.

Would I recommend it?
No.

Charles Dickens (1812-1870) has produced some of the most memorable writings in the English language, including such well known works as "A Christmas Carol", "Sketches by Boz", "A Tale of Two Cities", "Oliver Twist", "David Copperfield", "Great Expectations", and "The Pickwick Papers". This little tale doesn’t compare. Dickens is famous for the characters he created and his descriptions. A man of tremendous energy, he spent hours a day walking the London streets from which his characters and scenes came.

Leave Covers Alone, Please

I have complained before on a few occasions about those books which have silly stickers on their covers. I especially dislike it when the book jacket is a particularly attractive one.

All too often when you try to remove these stickers they either damage the cover or leave an unsightly circle on it.

Now I have found an even more ridiculous publishers’ trait. To print a simulated sticker directly onto the cover.  Not only did the Christine Aziz book have one but so did Audrey Niffenegger's latest.

Surely if they want to emphasise some award or other they could do the good old fashioned thing and simply print the information in small print at the bottom of the front cover. If I were a cover artist I would be so upset at having my work ruined by such silly tricks.

Review:- Audrey NIFFENEGGER – “Her Fearful Symmetry”

Publ: 2009
Pensby Library
ISBN: 9780224085618
Genre: General
Pages: 390p
Ordered from library because I loved the Time Traveller’s Wife
Rating: ***** *****

What led you to pick up this book?
The Time Traveller’s Wife was one of my favourite books of recent years so I had to read Niffenegger’s latest.

Describe the plot without giving anything away.
Six years after the phenomenal success of The Time Traveler's Wife, Audrey Niffenegger has returned with a spectacularly compelling and haunting second novel set in and around Highgate Cemetery in London.

When Elspeth Noblin dies of cancer, she leaves her London apartment to her twin nieces, Julia and Valentina. These two American girls never met their English aunt, only knew that their mother, too, was a twin, and Elspeth her sister. Julia and Valentina are semi-normal American teenagers -- with seemingly little interest in college, finding jobs, or anything outside their cozy home in the suburbs of Chicago, and with an abnormally intense attachment to one another.

The girls move to Elspeth's flat, which borders Highgate Cemetery in London. They come to know the building's other residents. There is Martin, a brilliant and charming crossword puzzle setter suffering from crippling Obsessive Compulsive Disorder; Marjike, Martin's devoted but trapped wife; and Robert, Elspeth's elusive lover, a scholar of the cemetery. The girls become embroiled in the fraying lives of their aunt's neighbours and I musn’t tell you more...


What did you think of the characters and style?
The characters are all brilliantly described in vivid detail. They are so believable. The style –as I anticipated – was wonderful with constant interaction between the characters and plenty of thrills, excitement and romance.

What did you like most about the book?
Never knowing how it might end.

Was there anything you didn't like about the book?
No.

Thoughts on the book jacket / cover.
Very pleasant and appropriate but see my grump about stickers tomorrow...

Would I recommend it?
Yes.

Audrey Niffenegger was born in 1969 in the USA. debut novel sold nearly 5 million copies worldwide and has been translated into thirty-three languages to date. She is also a widely exhibited artist. She lives in Chicago.

Is it a phone box or is it a library?

When the mobile library stopped visiting, it was a blow for the villagers of Westbury-sub-Mendip. And when they found out they could lose their beloved red phone box, there was something of an outcry. Happily a bright spark in the Somerset village (population 800) hatched a clever plan to tackle both difficulties. Why not buy the phone box and use it to set up a mini-library?

The small but perfectly formed Westbury book box was doing a brisk trade. Parish councillor Bob Dolby, who cleans and polishes the phone box/library with his wife, Lyn, beamed with pride. "It has really taken off," he said. "Turnover is rapid and there's a good range of books, everything from reference books to biographies and blockbusters."

The inside of the converted phone box/library in Westbury-sub-Mendip.

The scheme was the brainchild of resident Janet Fisher, who lives opposite the phone box. She floated the idea at a village tea party in August and the concept was accepted on the spot. So the parish council bought the box, a Giles Gilbert Scott K6 design, for £1, and Dolby screwed the four shelves into place. A local business donated a sign and a wag added a "Silence please" notice. Residents donated books to get the project going and it became an instant hit, all for an outlay of just £30.

And unlike the nearest Council library in Wells, four miles away, the phone box library is open 365 days a year, 24 hours a day – and is lit at night. There is a regular check on it to see if some titles are not moving. These are then shipped on to a charity shop to keep the phone box collection fresh.

BT has received 770 applications for communities to "adopt a kiosk". So far 350 boxes have been handed to parish councils. Ideas for their afterlife have included a shower, art installations, even a toilet. Dolby said he was just pleased that a piece of street architecture in Westbury had been put to good use. "It's very pleasing that the phone box has been saved but is also being used to provide a service for the village."

Review:- Christine AZIZ – “The Olive Readers”

Publ: 2005
My own copy
ISBN: 978-0-330-43963-3
Genre: Science Fiction
Pages: 340p
Found by Serendipity
Rating: ***** ****

What led you to pick up this book?
I was attracted by the blurb which talked of an era in the future when books were banned. Anything that suggests that sort of future is of interest – and fear – to me.

Describe the plot without giving anything away.
Earth, the future, and the planet is ruled by a Federation of Countries (The Olive Country, the Water Country) run by companies that have evolved out of the multinational giants today, "their corporate tentacles reaching into your politicians' pockets and sending you into a deep trance with their cheap gadgets and entertaining propaganda". There are no books, no history. Populations are subservient to the relevant company, and the Water Country subjugates all others.

Sisters Jephzat and Hephzibah live with their parents in the Olive Country. Hephzibah disappears with Water soldiers and Jephzat's parents are sent away, leaving Jephzat in a big old house that is discovered to contain a secret room filled with forbidden artefacts of enormous power.

What did you think of the characters and style?
It took me a few pages to get into this book but I am very glad I persisted. It reminded me of the futuristic novels of the middle of the twentieth century.
In terns of style, you only have to read the couple of quotations below to appreciate that Christine Aziz has a wonderful way with words.  This is a modern classixc.

What did you like most about the book?
At no stage did I feel it was unbelievable – which is really rather worrrying.

Was there anything you didn't like about the book?
No.

Thoughts on the book jacket / cover.
These will form a separate posting.!!!

Would I recommend it?
Yes.

Quotations:
It started with the war, but when was that? It wasn’t a war that passed us by with faint rumblings and the smell of smoke above the hills and olive groves. It walked into our house and seduced us all, even though its cause hardly mattered to us. It was the axis upon which our memories now turn and yet, as with all wars, it solved nothing, merely shifting a heavily guarded border thirty kilometres further south. The villagers have ceased weeping for those murdered by the bands of passing soldiers, but we are still mourning for the ancient olive trees that were blasted from the earth, their wood dissolving silently in the air.
(That phrase – “It was the axis upon which our memories now turn..” really sums up any time in which people live in the era following a war.)

I wanted to gorge myself on syntax, lick words curling from the paper into my mouth, nibble daintily on alphabets as if they were sweets.

I could already smell the books’ muskiness and in my mind turned over pages with as many differing textures as a forest; pages that were brittle and fragile which had to be coaxed to turn; pages that were soft and scented, presenting their words as if they were a gift in the palm of the hand, and pages that fell open heavily of their own accord as if weighted by the importance of their message.

CHRISTINE AZIZ In 2005 Christine Aziz was selected from 46,000 hopefuls and a long list of 26 titles to become winner of the Richard & Judy/C4 'How to Get Published' competition. Her debut, The Olive Readers, was published in October 2005. Among the jobs she has held have been teacher, cleaning lady, community worker, actress, factory packer, singer and receptionist. Christine lives in Bournemouth and works as a homeopath and freelance journalist.

Review:- Susanna GREGORY – “A Bone of Contention”

Publ: 1997
Pensby Library
ISBN: 0 7515 2022 5
Genre: Historical Crime
Pages: 506p
Found by Serendipity
Rating: ***** ***

What led you to pick up this book?
I have read some Matthew Bartholomew chronicles before and thoroughly enjoy this sort of cosy historical crime. This is the third book in the series (the ones I have read have asterisks):-

Matthew Bartholomew Series
1. A Plague On Both Your Houses (1996) *
2. An Unholy Alliance (1996)
3. A Bone of Contention (1997) *
4. A Deadly Brew (1998)
5. A Wicked Deed (1999)
6. A Masterly Murder (2000)
7. An Order for Death (2001)
8. A Summer of Discontent (2002)
9. A Killer in Winter (2003)
10. The Hand of Justice (2004)
11. The Mark of a Murderer (2005)
12. The Tarnished Chalice (2006) *
13. To Kill or Cure (2007)
14. The Devil's Disciples (2008) *
15. A Vein of Deceit (2009)
16. A Killer of Pilgrims (2010)

Describe the plot without giving anything away.
In 1352, not long after the Black Death has devastated Cambridge, Matthew Bartholomew, a teacher and doctor at Michaelhouse College gets involved in trying to solve the mysterious murder of a student. Riots between townsfolk and students cause further deaths bit how many of them are simply as a result of rioting and how many are the result of someone with a deeper agenda?


What did you think of the characters and style?
Easy going and whilst it is not madly instructive about the fourteenth century the story does take one back to the atmosphere of the Cambridge of that era.

What did you like most about the book?
Matthew’s character and that of his friend and colleague Michael.

Was there anything you didn't like about the book?
No.

Thoughts on the book jacket / cover.
Poor and hardly relevant to the plot.

Would I recommend it?
Yes – to any cosy historical crime enthusiast.

Susanna Gregory – see A Plague on Both Your Houses