What I bought and read in July #RoundUp

A big month for me personally as I have officially given up work as a solicitor!!!!! Slightly daunting but I have signed up to the School's PTA, have a list as long as your arm of summer holiday activities and pledge to immerse myself in all things book!

First to be read this month was our #BookOfTheMonth This is Going to Hurt by Adam Kay. A true account of a doctor working for the NHS. It was equally hilarious and heartbreaking and scored highly with the group.

A football related read followed next with Kane and Abel by Jeffrey Archer (well it featured a man named Kane!) Following the lives of two men (one called Kane and one called, yes you guessed it, Abel) born to very different fortunes shortly after the turn of the 20th century. The classic saga was gripping from the get go although the hatred between the two was weak and the ending sad.

One I had been waiting to read for a while was Room by Emma Donoghue about a woman and her son living inside a small room following the kidnapping of the woman several years earlier. The main character Jack was the star of this book and Donoghue made the two parts of the book work equally as well.

Continuing with my mission to slowly work my way through the classics next up was Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. A penguin classic set in the 1860's following a Russian student who commits murder and then suffers mental torture in the aftermath. I set a page count per day in order to complete it and struggled at times with the writing. One perhaps best read in the classroom.

Reads over with what did I buy?

As aforementioned (still tying to sound legal) I left work this month and was very kindly bought Little Miss Busy Surviving Motherhood. It made me giggle and put me very much in mind of The Unmumsy Mum by Sarah Turner.

I've also managed to get on a couple of Blog Tours(!) which I'm so excited about. The first one to arrive was the very summery looking How We Remember by J M Monaco (look out for post on that one on 7 September)

The only actual book I purchased (other than our #BookOfTheMonth) was Little Riddlers featuring a poem written by my daughter! So proud! Go buy it!

I'm now in hard core what do I read on holiday mode? Suggestions in the comments please.

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Lock down book club - books from a different country

So we continued with the Zoom version of book club this month and it was lovely to see so many of us tackle it. The theme was books set in a different country (if you can't travel, let a book take you). I read The Accident on the A35 by Graeme Macrae Burnet, a detective story with an element of tricksy fiction set in France. I really enjoyed it and you can read my full review here. We travelled to America a couple of times most interestingly to see whether Hilary Clinton (or Bill for that fact) would have made President if they had not got married. Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld is out in hardback now. Norway was a popular spot - Norwegian Nights by Derek B Miller about a retired american marine who moves to Norway and intervenes to save a young boys life sounded interesting. So much so that at least one member of the group has gone on to buy the first in the series, American By Day. We even made it as far as Japan and Botswana (and discovered a Scottish connection for Alexander McCa

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanthi

I expected to be emotionally drained after reading this one and to be honest (in a weird kind of way) I didn’t mind the thought that I would be. This was backed up by the introduction describing a brilliant young man whose writing was breath taking and whose story was devastating. Emotional rollercoaster of epic proportions was surely in store. I didn’t mind the beginning of the book although I was slightly surprised when we delved so deeply into Kalanthi's past in what was only a slim book. I was willing to gloss over the large number of references to his search as a youth to finding the meaning of life and what makes us, us as after all this was written by someone forced to ponder that very question. I also found the medical training he did vaguely interesting, I appreciated the reverence he placed in relation to the cadaver he was required to cut open as part of his medical training. However when it became apparent the actual portion of the book to do with him receiving hi

Mount by Jilly Cooper #inbetweeny

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

Cramlington Book Club

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