Cramlington Book Club

Another quick #inbetweeny for you before I review the book of the month for March. It’s The Buried Giant by the way and if you haven’t already started to read it yet there is still time. I’m only on page 5! The Unmumsy Mum is my first experience of following a blogger right through to their first book being published and I was really excited to read it. Although maybe slightly worried that I would have read most of it before via the blog. This wasn’t the case - Ruth and fake tanned breast fed babies were nowhere in sight. The book was really easy to read – nice short chapters (you can tell it’s been written by a mum right there) and made me laugh out loud on several occasions. I totally resonated with Turners true to life account of being a mum and recognised myself in so many pages. My only criticism would be that’s its very much a ‘you need to be experiencing it right now kind of book’. I’m not sure my mum would relate to references of baby sensory, Bubble Guppies and social med...

So I’ve been thinking one book a month equals only 12 posts a year (well 13 if you count the Big Review of the Year) which is good but I want to give you lovely people more reasons to come and read the blog. So I’ve decided to post about the books I read in-between the books of the months. These ones are read by only me and as at the moment I am reading The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry this seems like a good enough place to start. It was a random Christmas present a couple of years ago that I re-found when stocking my new book shelves (Handmade by hubby - thank you!) I wasn’t expecting much, to be honest I don’t think I would have bought it for myself and I simply wanted to get rid of all the ‘old’ new books I had that I didn’t expect to be staying on my bookshelves – only the best get to stay! I read it after Hemmingway and although I didn’t race through it reading something with normal size print was a delight. It was also beautifully written with quotes scattered left ...

I was really interested to read this as I was still buzzing about Ernest Hemmingway from Mrs Hemmingway a book we reviewed last year. It was also set during the Spanish civil war and war stories always interest me. I ended up buying the book on ebay as Amazon worked out more expensive than my usual budget and I certainly wasn’t going to find a book first published in 1941 from the best seller section in Sainsburys. The book was old and the print was small but I wasn’t put off and set about reading it straightaway. The language was difficult ‘I obscenity in the milk of your…’ being a particular phrase that the group had issue with. Characters were referred to as ‘the woman’, ‘the girl’, ‘the gypsy’ and I also found the use of Spanish throughout the book confusing. Yes I understand ‘hola’ and other basic words but odd phrases kept on appearing that I couldn’t translate without google and lets face it the average reader in the 1940s certainly didn’t have google nor had been to Spa...