Skip to main content

September #RoundUp

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 I had to have after hearing too many people rating it too highly to not have it somewhere on my To Read Shelf. Duly added.




I also received a lovely little package from Urbane Publications containing two books, The Soldier's Home by George Costigan and Wyld Dreamers by Pamela Holmes. The internal artwork on both are particularly beautiful and if the writing is anywhere near as good I'm a lucky girl.





Last but not least was a Blog Tour book Paris in the Dark by Robert Olen Butler. Check out my review for it in November!




I kicked off September by reading The Continuity Girl by Patrick Kincaid for a Blog Tour. An excellent reverse take on the classic romantic comedy genre featuring the Loch Ness Monster, Sherlock Holmes and a pine martin.

How We Remember by J.M Monaco was also a Blog Tour book covering mental illness, grief, abuse and complex family dynamics. A brilliant one to review by a book club. Hint hint Cramlington Book Club members!

The Lion Tamer Who Lost by Louise Beech was next up. It was my favourite read of the month (think that might become a new thing!) and it's already been stolen off my shelf by my mum desperate to read it as well.

A break from Blog Tours saw me finally getting round to reading The Little Friend by Donna Tartt. It was brilliantly written (of course, it is Tartt) but for me it never really decided what it wanted to be. Who else finds the cover disturbing? And should I read The Secret History?

My last Blog Tour book in a month of Blog Tours was After He Died by Michael J Malone. A tense twisty thriller that reminded me just how much I had missed this genre.

The Book Club's Book of the Month was The Monogram Murders - Sophie Hannah's first take on Poirot. She nailed the character but did the group think she nail the book?

Finally I was left with just enough time to squeeze in Being Simon Haines by Tom Vaughan MacAulay. A timely read for me about a solicitor pondering his life choices. Reading it I can definitely say I made the right choice!

Happy autumn reading!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

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...

One Night In Winter - Simon Sebag Montefiore

A signed copy for 1p on Amazon (plus postage)! Sorry, had to get my little boast out of the way. Now that that's done I can talk about the book . I had never heard of Montefiore before although a few of the group had read Jerusalem that by all accounts is quite good. Book Club fact alert: Did you know Montefiore is the husband of author Santa Montefiore who is the sister of Tara Palmer Tomkinson? That’s a lot of surnames! The book was suggested by our Russian literature fan and is loosely based on the 'the Childrens Case' where children from higher ranking families are caught up in a murder in Stalin's Russia. I really enjoyed reading about how the seemingly untouchable upper class children who really were quite innocent were embroiled in a conspiracy to overthrow the government and how skilled the interrogators were at twisting words and skewering the truth. This is where the group split though as at least 3 of the group couldn’t get past violence inflicted on ...

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Stieg Larsson

When telling people which book I was reading for the book club I was surprised by the number of people who had already read it. Kind of like when you book a holiday to somewhere you have never heard of and suddenly everyone as been. Nobody had a bad word to say about it which is pretty rare so I was really looking forward to reading it. My auntie very kindly gave me a copy so I didn't need to buy it however it was widely available in Asda , Sainsburys (I told you we didn't buy food only books in Cramlington supermarkets) and Amazon stocked it quite cheaply. It was quite a large book - 500 odd pages but was a paperback, with short paragraphs and relatively short chapters. It was one of three, the others being The Girl who Played with Fire and The Girl who kicked the Hornets Nest known collectively as the Millennium Trilogy. I was intrigued to find out that Larsson died suddenly and unexpectedly in 2004. He lived an interesting life that can perhaps be said to be reflected...