Cramlington Book Club

Back to school peeps!!!! We survived the summer, heatwave and all and now all we have left is pics on our phone never to be printed and an ever fading peeling tan line. Autumn rustles up images of snuggles with a good book and a crackling fire as the dark nights approach, I don't have a fire however so will have to make do with the rustling of washing drying over radiators. To compensate for this the books added to my shelf this month have been: The Rosie Effect by Graeme Simsion is the follow on to the very good The Rosie Project we reviewed in 2014. The Project prompted one of our Book Club Mugs but will the Effect be as good? The Most Beautiful Walk by John Baxter is only on loan to me (mental note to self must read it soon!) Another non fiction venture for me this time about the wanderings of Baxter around Paris. I am only sorry I didn't get chance to read whilst in France as I love a good location read. The Crow Road by Iain Banks was one I decided ...

Being Simon Haines was very kindly provided to me by Red Door Publishing who were aware of my recent decision to leave life as a solicitor behind and I approached it wondering what parallels would be drawn. After working for a decade to attain partnership at the esteemed city law firm Fiennes and Plunkett Simon Haines takes a well earned break to Havana to reflect on his life choices both professionally and personally. I was immediately familiar with the legal office setting although thankfully I never had to face whispering Rupert Plunkett the partner extraordinaire. Vaughan MacAulay clearly knew his stuff which I appreciated although I do question how much a legal outsider would absorb. There is plenty for the non legal professional however and anyone who has worked in an office, had a slave driver for a boss or just generally questioned their work life balance will take something from it. I thought initially there would be more about Havana Simon's holiday destination and...

I have a confession. I am an Agatha Christie virgin. Thinking that the age of 35 is way too old for this title I tried to suggest one (any) as a book of the month to the group. We ended up settling on Sophie Hannah who has written three Poirot novels in the style of Christie with The Monogram Murders being the first of the three and for that reason only our September book. Based around a classic locked door mystery, Poirot with the help of Catchpool (not Hastings!) must put his little grey cells to work to sift through a large cast of characters and red herrings before the inevitable 'gather round' reveal in the closing chapters.  Let me first caveat everything below with the fact that I very much had to force the time to read this one. A line or two here before school run, a paragraph before packing for brownie camp, two reads of the same sentence in between spelling tests. Can you tell the school year was once more upon me? I therefore wasn't surprised when I f...

Hello dear friend, oh how I have missed you! I have read some fantastic books recently, however a few chapters in to After He Died I realised how long it has been since I had read a gripping suspense thriller  - Gone Girl, Girl on A Train, Before I Go To Sleep, all released years ago now and I hadn't realised how much I had missed stonking examples of this genre until the beginning of After He Died awoke something in me. I relished the chance to read further. "When Paula Gadd’s husband of almost thirty years dies, just days away from the seventh anniversary of their son, Christopher’s death, her world falls apart. Grieving and bereft, she is stunned when a young woman approaches her at the funeral service, and slips something into her pocket. A note suggesting that Paula’s husband was not all that he seemed… When the two women eventually meet, a series of revelations challenges everything Paula thought they knew, and it becomes immediately clear that both women’s lives ...

You know when you read a book, and then you have to read other people's reviews to see what they made of it as you are left so undecided? This is how I was about Donna Tartt's  The Little Friend . Book club had read The Goldfinch  way back in 2014 and it feels as though The Little Friend has been waiting on my shelf since then to be read. The cover really unsettles me and perhaps for that reason I waited until now when I have tried to have a clear out of books that have been waiting too long to read. The book is the follow up to the hugely successful The Secret History, spoken with reverence in literary circles. So much so that many didn't like The Little Friend on first read due to it not matching up. I haven't read The Secret History so can't comment. But I have read The Little Friend (and various other reviews) so comment I will. It opened with a spectacular prologue - the murder(?) of a 9 year old boy in 1960's Mississippi before skipping to the view p...

Wow. I should just stop there really as it totally encompasses my thoughts for The Lion Tamer Who Lost,  Louise Beech 's fourth novel. It doesn't make for an exciting review however so I will endeavour to expand my three lettered summary. It's difficult to describe the book without giving too much away (you're thinking I should have stopped at wow now aren't you?) but without spoilers, the book skips between present day Africa (not just anywhere in Africa but a LION RESERVE) and Ben's first meeting with writer Andrew (in a library, love that). We then follow their developing relationship that for some reason leads to Ben's departure from England and to the LION RESERVE (why the caps? Well how often do you get to type about a LION RESERVE!?) The book was just so beautifully written. Not just the plot - an intensely beautiful love story with expertly interwoven 'then' and 'now' sections, but also its descriptions. Africa was magnificent, ...

"Every family has its secrets, and many have sibling rivalries. When Jo O'Brien returns home after her mother's death, she is forced to confront both. An unexpected inheritance fans the flames of existing tensions between Jo and her brother, and their mother's long-forgotten diary recalls the messy aftermath of an uncle's sexual advances towards Jo when she was a teenager.  Like the diary, Jo's memory of events is full of gaps, but one thing is certain - she will never regain what was lost. How We Remember traces the effects of alcoholism, mental illness and abuse on one Irish-Italian-American, working-class family." Jo O'Brien, an American living in London, returns home for her mothers funeral. Triggered by her mother's diary the trip stirs painful memories from her childhood. What follows is a snapshot of memories from her teenage days right up to her present mid 50s self and a savage look at family dynamic. How We Remember isn't a ...

When this little beauty arrived through my letterbox my 9 year old picked it up and said "Mummy it looks like an old strip of film but made to look like the Loch Ness Monster". That was the cover certainly nailed and being a previous media studies student that sort of thing appeals to me. The book was primarily set in the Highlands and being a frequent holiday-er to those parts I also appreciated the location. Set around the discovery of an uncut version of a real film ( The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes ) it flits between the 1969 film shoot and present day London. The concept reminded me of Beautiful Ruins  (one of my favourite reads of the year) and I of course had to immediately Google the film and now have developed an urge to read Conan Doyle's back catalogue. I really liked Jim the marine biologist looking for proof the Loch Ness Monster did(n't?) exist. The book is billed as a romantic comedy and it was different reading this type of book from a male...