Cramlington Book Club

It's been over a week since I finished this book and upon sitting down to write the review I find a lot of the names (and there were a few in the book) have escaped me so apologies if I refer to 'him who impersonated Bill Clinton' or 'the guy from Iraq who drove them to his village'! My mum bought the book for a pound following on from the book club reviewing Only Time Will Tell and me liking it. Let me start off by saying this is not Only Time Will Tell, it is nothing at all like Only Time Will Tell, but I do like variety from an author as opposed to feeling like you have read the same book again and again and again. This is one of the first books I have read that actually featured Sadam Hussein. Not just referring to him as this elusive figure but actually having him speak, being in his war room and witnessing those around him and how they acted towards him. Having just read One Night in Winter I found myself likening Hussein to Stalin (please don’t take th...

I was at first slightly daunted by this inbetweeny as it was quite a chunky book and the probability of me finishing it before the next book club was slim. However my daughter (upon being asked to choose a number between 1 – 44 replied with 'well number one of course what else do you start with') indirectly choose the book and wouldn’t have allowed me to swop. I had never heard of Eleanor of Aquitaine, the main character in the book nor her husband Henry Plantagenet. I had of course heard of Richard III (their son) and loving anything historical settled in for the long haul. I found it quite an easy read after initial doubts. Eleanor was a remarkable lady living to a remarkable age despite many pregnancies, imprisonment and many travels. Weir really captured how powerless women of that time were especially bearing in mind a Queen probably had far more opportunity than most other females of that time. I felt the frustration Eleanor experienced by having to adhere to her hu...

Surely everyone has heard of Judy Blume, the kids author who has been around forever (forever, get it?) But who in their adult life has read one of her books? Well quite a few in Cramlington after this month as our book of the month was her (fourth?) venture into the world of adult fiction. There were quite a few characters in the book and, particularly at the beginning, it jumped around between the many characters quite a bit. A few of the group struggled with this and to be fair I could see why. I however loved the book, right from the get go. I just really enjoyed it, I liked all the characters and couldn't believe it was based on real life events. I remember getting really tense when reading about the plane journeys and genuinely didn't know which way it was going to go when Miri got on the plane. Eek! The end was maybe the weakest part of the book. I thought it simply didn't need to go so far. I also didn't really agree with Rusty and the dentist - it was s...

Going to be a quick one this one as I am 3 books behind on the blog front (shame!) This was a random book my husband bought me as part of a random box of books one Christmas. I had never heard of it or Welsh but it sounded interesting and wasn't too thick. The book was basically two stories (Berlin with its bullet trick and Glasgow with its murder) featuring one man (a magician) who wove the stories together into one ending. It was unusual in that both stories (including the bullet trick) didn't resolve themselves until right at the end so the reader knew something bad had happened but wasn't sure what for quite a long time. I thought the murder element was weak - if the envelope implicated the copper and he was so desperate to recover the incriminating evidence then why try to blackmail someone with it in the first place? The women in the book were interesting, it would have been so easy to make the lawyer a stuck up bitch, yet she wasn't at all. Sylvie and her...