Cramlington Book Club

Looking back over the books we have reviewed this year there seems to have been a lot of low scores. We usually have a plethora of 7's but so many books seems to have fallen below this 'average' score. Our chosen books have certainly been wide ranging, from golden oldies such as Agnes Grey and The Thirty Nine Steps to our first ever hard back, Eleanor Oliphant. We've had the true story of a doctor tragically dying from cancer to the filming of a (fake) true story in 1940's England. We've been bang on trend with Thirteen Reasons Why and Big Little Lies airing at the same time as we were reading them yet nothing really hit the spot. That was until Eleanor. It's time once again for the Big Review and this time its of 2017!!!!!!! January started with Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte. A slim read to lead us into 2017 which scored a 6.8 by the group. The blog also features the book that wasn't actually reviewed - Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. February was...

I thought this was going to be the first inbetweeny of 2018 however The Kingmaker's Daughter was one of those books where you find yourself 'just reading one more chapter' and before you know it another hour has gone by. I don’t know why this book had hung round on my bookshelf for so long as I had really enjoyed the previous books in the Cousins' War series ( The Lady of the Rivers , The White Queen and The Red Queen). I didn’t suffer for the break in reading though and can easily recommend it as a standalone to anyone who hasn’t read the other books previously (do read The White Queen though it is rather good). I remember really disliking the Nevilles in the previous books yet I easily found myself liking Anne the central character this time round. Similarly Gregory never dipped beneath the surface of Elizabeth's icy exterior in this book (as Anne never really got to know her) whereas in The White Queen Elizabeth was central and her inner turmoil was c...

I'm finishing off this year with quite possibly the worst book I have read in a long time. Bought last Christmas as a present (sorry Jacqui!) I didn't squeeze it in before January and it felt wrong to read a book based around Christmas at any other time of the year. The premise of Mystery in White  was perfect, a snowed in train, a 1930s house where tea is laid on the table yet no one is at home, a handful of strangers forced together on Christmas Eve, classic Christie combination if you ask me. Yet about a quarter of the way through (still grasping to recall characters names) I realised Agatha Christie J Jefferson Farjeon was not. I found Maltby's character (the would be detective) most annoying. He knew everything before it had happened "You're going to tell us there was a body in the carriage next to you" "how did you know that" "you said you were escaping the train, you left in the snow and you are breathless" I'm paraph...

I suggested this book last year as our #OneRuleOfBookClub whereby we must read a Christmas book in December. I was outvoted that time for The Santa Klaus Murder but suggested it again this year and was thrilled when it met with little resistance. It intrigued me having heard about Matt Haig via his book about depression and then his very commercially successful How to Stop Time (not that Reasons to Stay Alive wasn't successful) why then would an author at the beginning of his career (or at least at the beginning of his career in the public eye) dip into children's books and not just any old children's books but Christmas children's books. Very risky. The book is very much a children's book, I actually read it straight through in no time at all. Yet where children's books have sometimes floundered when put in front of the group in the past this one didn't. Was this because it was a Christmas children's book as opposed to just a children's book...

I first heard about this when someone suggested it as a Book of the Month for book club. It didn't make the cut for the group however hearing a faint sniff of zombie I went and bought it from the Internet.  I have to confess reading this straight after the excellent World War Z was probably not the best thing to do. However whilst the two were both about zombies they were extremely different. ' The Girl ' was more of your typical 'it's the end of the world and we need to get to a safe haven' kind of book. In this respect it was more similar to the recently reviewed The End of The World Running Club than World War Z.  Like with 'Running Club' humankind had gone to sh!t with people turning on each other left right and centre despite the main characters trying to put differences aside to reach a common goal. Like with Running Club there was the inevitable betrayal with a few characters lost along the way and also a surprise repeat occurrence of Jaf...

My husband I have this thing about zombie films, we love them and so in an attempt to get my husband to read more I bought him World War Z a couple of birthdays ago. On the bookshelf it went, unread. I didn't feel like I could just pick it up and read it given that I had bought it for him but I hated the fact it was just sat there, unread. And I quite like zombies, and it was unread, and my husband was unlikely to read it............... so I picked it up and read it, in 3 days. It wasn't that I was trying to be all stealth like (read and replace before he notices) it was just really easy to read. The book was a series of peoples recollections of their experiences during the 'zombie war' that had taken place 10 years ago and had devastated the world and I loved how Brooks never slipped from this premise - from the forward to the dedication at the end of the book the reader was totally submersed in the fact that the war had taken place. Even the blurb at the back of th...

This hardback was given to me by my mum one Christmas as it featured the 8th Army of which my grandad was a part. I'm not sure to what extent he was involved with El Alamein but he was definitely in Africa and served under Monty. Band of Brothers is one of my favourite box sets, I love reading about history, particularly World War II and so this for many reasons was a book with my name stamped all over it It's obviously factual and is quite lengthy and so I wasn't expecting it to be sunlounger reading. I wasn't however expecting to need a dictionary to decode some of the pages. I have a degree, I am a solicitor, I read anything and everything constantly and consider myself to have reasonable intelligence yet even I had never come across words like sybaritic or grangiliquence. It alienated me as I'm sure it would do a lot of people and I really found myself frustrated by Dimbleby for writing in such a way as to make it so inaccessible. The soldiers he wrote abou...

In all the years of book club I can't remember us ever having reviewed a book only out in hardback. It was recommended to me by a fellow train commuter who knew I love reading and whose wife had read it and loved it. So it was me who suggested it to the group without realising it hadn’t made its way to paperback yet. Oops! The local library had a waiting list 9 people long, Amazon wasn’t coming up trumps and none of my Facebook friends had a copy so I resorted to borrowing a copy from my Auntie but had to wait for my mum (also a member of the book club) to read it first before I could indulge. Lucky for me it was easy to read and so the fact that I hadn’t even set eyes on the book two weeks before the meeting wasn't a problem. Although I got in to the book really easily it instantly reminded me of The Rosie Project , (an excellent book) and so I found myself a little disappointed that I had read the concept previously.  A few of the other members of the group commented o...

This book, written by Lagercrantz, is the fourth in the Millennium Series originally written by Stieg Larsson who died suddenly in 2004 before any of his novels reached international fame. The Series first book, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Dragon) was the first book to be reviewed by Cramlington Book Club and so holds fond memories for me. I have since then read the other books in the series ( The Girl who played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest) and was looking forward to catching up with Salandar and Blomkvist. It had been some time since I read them and so a direct comparison with Larsson was going to be difficult but maybe that was a good thing. Initially ' Spider ' seemed to step in where 'Hornet' left off. There were the same internal/financial struggles with Millennium, Blomkvist was down and out as he was in Dragon and old faces popped up left right and centre.   Here memory comes in to play and whilst there was a useful  ca...

This month's book was one set locally. Whitley Bay to be precise complete with a front cover featuring a cafe I recognised (which quite excited me weirdly). When I say local I mean very local, almost a tick box exercise of every pub, tourist spot and police station in the area. I quite liked it, name checking places I had been to, however some found it off putting 'we get you know the area, don't keep trying to prove it to us' If I describe the book to you, you will probably appreciate the group's biggest criticism: 'Down and out cop, whose marriage has fallen apart, drinks too much, is hated by his superiors and still festers over his last case that went badly wrong has to restle with his demons to crack a brutal murder.' Pretty cliche ridden, huh? It was such a shame as we all found the book very readable. The actual detective story was interesting, the killer wasn't identified until very nearly the end and we all finished the book which ...

This has been sat on my bookshelf for aaaaages without me really wanting to read it. I can't remember how exactly it ended up on my shelf, perhaps a random book present from hubby (he's produced some good ones – The Testament Gideon Mack , The Giles Wareing Haters Club ) but I know I wouldn’t have picked it up and bought it if I happened to notice it in a bookshop, for no particular reason other than the blurb just didn’t hold my attention. The book was originally published in 2005 and I remember there being a lot of fuss around this book and White Teeth , also by Smith around that time.   Nevertheless they both passed me by and On Beauty in 2017 was to be my first experience of Smith. It was good to read a book about a family where the children were not too young to be proper characters and the adults not too old. So many times books set around families only focus on one generation, or differing generations but by skipping back in time. This was not the case here ...

I have watched this film every Christmas, in fact I think we actually have the DVD somewhere but I have never read the book. It was a Christmas present from my in laws which I was surprised and delighted to receive as it had never occurred to me that there was a Mary Poppins book yet now I had it to read! Not being aware of the book I researched (googled) Travers and discovered what an interesting life she has led. Books have been written about her (well at Least one – Mary Poppins She Wrote ) which I would read if it happened to pass my lap. Anyway the actual book – a pink candy striped hardback was slim with decent sized text so only took a couple of days train trips to work and back read. Included were the iconic parts of the film such as 'Tuppence A Bag' and Bert with his drawings that come to life but other parts were missed out, notably a spoonful of sugar and I missed the singing and dancing. Granted you can't really make a musical into a book but the spir...

I suggested this book to the group. I read it in a day or so whilst on holiday in Scotland (did I mention I have been to Scotland recently?) after which my hubby picked up the book and read it himself. This is a rare thing indeed. Not only did he read IT ALL he ENJOYED it. Well, if it's good enough for hubby its good enough for the group so suggest it I did! I think the general requirement for this book is to just go with it, don't question too thoroughly the premise for Hannay to go running off round the countryside, don't try to work out exactly how many miles he was supposed to have covered in a day or the convenience of him bumping in to an acquaintance in the middle of nowhere. If you do you are only going to be disappointed. I love this style of book - pre-war (first) full of gentlemen retreating to smoking rooms, having supper in 'the Club' and referring to everyone as 'old chap'. Each chapter almost read like a short story with its own set of ch...

I like post apocalypse books and I'm a runner. Not a quick proper in your face runner but an average 4 miler twice a week kind of gal. So this book was right up my street. Walker was brief about the circumstances around the world coming to an end which I think worked, lets face it the end of the world has never come about so providing detailed science isn't needed when the book in question is about a running club after the end of the world has occurred. I had two major criticisms of this book the first (and it's a common theme at present) was that the main character was simply not likeable. There is argument that Walker deliberately made him unlikable. Lets face it, allowing your lead character to admit to not liking his children very much is an instant turn off, but I didn't understand Walker's decision because you then simply weren't rooting for him to reach Cornwall. Edgar's character didn't evolve enough for me to change my initial impression and...

A fresh take on Scottish history taking the reader from circa AD 80 to the late 1990s. In the introduction Goring (the books editor) states Scottish history is so much more than William Wallace, Mary Queen of Scots and Bonnie Prince Charlie and then spends 400 pages proving exactly that. The book covers everything from how the Scots make haggis to schooldays in 1560s right up to significant modern events such as the Lockerbie disaster and Princess Diana's death. Delivered in short sharp snippets with sometimes only the briefest of introductory sentence the book was easy to read unlike so many other historical nonfiction books. The diary entries, newspaper articles and interviews give unique insight into day to day life and despite their brevity I do feel like I have come out of the other side more knowledgeable. Unlike some books where I have trudged through 600 pages to be be none the wiser as I was so bogged down in names, dates and detail the book delivers the point then mov...

I can't believe I forgot to blog about a book, and not just any book but a book of the month! I don't even know why I forgot to blog about it, was it because I was on holiday? No that was Thirteen Reasons Why . Did I miss the meeting? No I remember discussing it so it can't be that. Was it because it was rubbish and it fell from memory altogether? Well not totally as I liked the start and although I cant remember anybodies name I do remember the story line. No excuse then, plain and simple I forgot. The book started brilliantly, a couple leave their baby next door (taking baby monitor and returning to check regularly) to celebrate a neighbours birthday. When they return home the little girl is missing, taken from her cot. The horror they must have felt, the blame, the anger. All of this Lapena portrayed really well. You found the parents initially sympathetic in a world where people are so quick to judge and Madeline McCann is still a name everyone remembers. I though...

When in the Outer Hebrides what can you do but read a book set in the Outer Hebrides? This one is and I purchased it from a fabulous independent book shop in Ullapool called Ceilidh Place . Such a remote town yet it has two independent bookshops and two nearby (particularly good is Hillbillies in Gairloch where the linked Mountain Coffee Shop sells the most amazing mountain scones). I digress. Anyway we had just arrived fresh off the boat from Harris and Lewis and I was eager to read how such remote places could carry a murder hunt. The book started off really well, I liked the main character of Neal Maclean and thought the amnesia aspect was really interesting. I really enjoyed reading how he observed himself in the mirror for the first time, how he questioned whether he was quick tempered, clever, selfish and how he remembered somethings such as his dogs name but yet not others. This was different to other books I had read involving people suffering from amnesia following trau...

Another book with a gender ambiguous author name (S. J Watson Before I Go To Sleep immediately springs to mind). Jay is in fact a male not a female. Yes I get that Jay can be a boys name but it can also be female and the presumption when reading a book set around a teenage girl is that the latter would be the case. I was reading an article the other day and apparently this is a trend right now with male authors in this genre being encouraged to create vagueness around their gender as to boldly state they were John, Dave or Rodger sells fewer books. Would you ever put a book down because it was written by a male (or female) author? Enough of us apparently would. This wasn’t the only name changing going on here, the main character in the book Hannah was originally supposed to be called Anna with Mr Asher wanting the book to be called Bakers Dozen (Thirteen reasons, bakers, get it?) which I think I actually preferred.    Be the lead called Anna or Hannah I didn’t like her....

So possibly the longest title ever for a book (and lets face it the title wasn't the only thing that was long about the book being quite a doorstop). I had deliberately waited to read this book until Game of Thrones resumed on tv. Yes I know I'm not up to date but I do find it easier to read alongside watching at least some of the characters who are still alive and in return I get more out of the tv series as I am reading what happened to a particular character three books ago and so straight away remember who Dondarrion is and where he fits into the story. This is the book that contains the red wedding (not to give too much away) which was an epic episode on tv and whilst the book didn't make me gasp out loud (as I knew what was going to happen) I did get really tense and went into my fast reading mode which I do when I really want to know what happens (so much that I often have to reread as I've read it too fast and missed stuff). It was interesting reading the d...

I'll start this blog with a warning, this post does contain spoilers. So if you haven't read the book then please don't read this blog, yet. Of course you should read this post just wait a little while until you've read the latest installment of Rupert Campbell Black (RCB). Warnings out of the way I'll begin. I was massively looking forward to reading this book having hugely enjoyed the previous ones. RCB is my (not so) secret trashy pleasure and has been for many years. This book had all the ingredients of a classic, pages of wonderfully named characters, a few tortured souls and of course RCB with all his horses, dogs and now grandchildren. The book got off to a good start full of characters from old but also plenty of new ones to mix it up a bit. The horse's really played a starring role in this book but I also really loved Gav and at first Gala. Yep only at first as she went strongly down hill and I bet you can guess why. RCB. Here is where I fell o...