Cramlington Book Club

Not many non fiction books have passed by the eyes of Cramlington Book Club ( When Breath Becomes Air standing out as the only one) so when Names For The Sea was suggested I jumped at the chance and was thrilled when it was chosen as our March Book of the Month. Based on Sarah's experiences of living in Iceland for a year during the banking crisis and THE ash cloud I was curious as to how her family would cope with the decantment given it is something I would love to do, albeit in Scotland My first impressions were what a year to move! Whereas I don't really remember the Icelandic banking crisis, I do remember countless flights being grounded because of the ash cloud. To experience that first hand must have been something else. The book kept you guessing as to whether Sarah and her family would stay or not, the suspense was unexpected yet quite liked. I have to say I didn't really expect the book to cover issues such as Icelandic poverty and the possibility of elves

So I pushed for  Our Endless Numbered Days  to be a book of the month a couple of times but failed. Disgruntled I went off and bought it for myself only for it to take months to get to my 'next on the shelf'. The book is based on 8 year old Peggy/Punzel who is taken by her father to a hut in the woods and told by him that a disaster has happened resulting in only them left in the whole wide world. If I'm honest I didn't expect the book to take the turn that it did (trying to not give too much away to those of you who haven't read it already) and I struggled with where the book ended up. Parts of the book were difficult to read and I'm still struggling as to where I stand with the book nearly a week after finishing it. I'm not sure I liked it but I'm not sure I didn't. The beginning of the book confused me. Numerous subtext was hinted at that the reader wasn't entirely aware of and I'm not sure I got to the bottom of it all by the end. I

Minor confusion at the start of this book as I inadvertently mistook Lucrezia Borgia for Lucrezia de Medici and I couldn't understand when I began reading as to why Lucrezia's father was not the Pope. A quick reference to my book shelf later corrected my error and away I went with de Medici who was most definitely not a Popes daughter and was about to get married to the Duke of Ferrara. Now I'm no prude, I have read 50 Shades of Gray as one of the groups books of the month and believe sex does have a place in books ( Sarah Waters being an excellent example) however take out anything to do with sex in His Last Duchess and you have nothing left, even 50 Shades had a crazed man out for revenge sub story to keep us going inbetween. It wasn't even a 50 Shades esque book whereby its the sex that sells it. Kimm goes in to detail at the end of the book as to how it was inspired by a Robert Browning poem and was based on a real life story. However in this 'real life

I was a bit undecided as to whether to continue with this series. The first book in this Scandinavian series wasn't in Scandinavia, I accidently read the third before the second so went back to read the second, which also wasn't in Scandinavia. Nemesis is the 4th in the series and the deal breaker for me in terms of continuing or not. Firstly it was set in Norway, so off to a good start. The opening robbery and the way it was revealed was attention grabbing which was also a tick in the box. There are a lot of characters and like with the previous books I struggled to keep track of who was who. I've said before I do tend to struggle remembering foreign names however Weber and Hole aren't exactly difficult yet I still had to remind myself Weber good, Waaler not. There were way too many twists and turns for my liking, Time and time again the book would feel like everything was winding down only for it to veer off down another route leaving the reader peddling like m

Pompeii  had me gripped from the get go. You don't need to have visited Versuvius or Pompeii to know the tragic outcome, yet it didn't matter. I didn't understand the scientific forward to each chapter, but you don't really need to. At times the language was a bit off, for example, I can't imagine any Roman saying 'his stuff was good' but you went with it as the tension ramped higher with every page and the hours until the mighty Versuvius erupted ticked away. Whilst I liked the characters of Harris' tale it was the description of daily life, the inventions and the ingenuity of the Romans that had me. The banquet of fried mice, the sacrifices to Gods who were no longer believed in and the awesome Aquaduct. I found myself thinking more than once how brilliant the Romans were. The only thing I can liken it to today is Dubai - 'lets see what money and imagination can build' but even then that isn't giving the Romans enough credit for how