Skip to main content

January Round Up #RoundUp

Yey! The longest month of the year (it's about 150 days right?) has ended.

During those 179 days I was lucky enough to read The True Story of Hansel and Gretel by Louise Murphy. A retelling of the classic fairy tale set against the backdrop of occupied Poland during World War Two. It had all the elements of the fairy tale and then some. What a blinder to start the year with!

198 days in and I was reading (devouring) The Sixth Wife by Suzannah Dunn. A historical fiction book about Henry VII's sixth wife that surprisingly didn't include Henry. I really enjoyed it, as I do with most books in this genre.

My socks were blown off by the fantastic ending of Changeling by Matt Wesolowski on day 222. My first Blog Tour of the year and book number three in the Six Stories series. Wesolowski just gets better and better.

Cull by Tanvir Bush was my last Blog Tour for the month taking me to day 356. This disturbingly believable book featured a blind protagonist, a fabulous guide dog and a villain brilliantly named, The Good Doctor Binding. An interesting read.

By day 483 I had read and fallen in love with The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield. The Book Club's #BookOfTheMonth it was awarded a solid 8 and I could practically quote the whole book the writing was so good.

Read of the Month.

It has been an absolute brilliant start to 2019 (best ever?) making it difficult to choose a #ReadOfTheMonth. Changeling comes close, The Thirteenth Tale stole a special place in my heart but The True Story of Hansel and Gretel for blending fairy tale and war drama seamlessly whilst still being true to both just edges it. It's also probably not on a lot of peoples radars and I love shining a spotlight on books that might otherwise have passed you by.

Added to my shelf

Dear Husband,

It really isn't my fault when I head out to Book Club with one book and return home with 9 more. Blame my lovely friends at Book Club, and our daughter for whom 8 of them are for, and Matt Wesolowski for mentioning The Cliff House has a Tamzin in it (spelt differently BUT a Tamzin non the less) and our book shelves for not being big enough to keep them all on, and...........

Love Your Wife. 



Comments

Post a Comment

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

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 ...
Post a Comment
Read more

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...
2 comments
Read more