May books

Categories: uncategorized

Tags: books, reading

Date: 29 May 2010 15:41:58

Tall Poppies by Louise Bradshawe is a cracking read if you like chick lit books. Nina is a poor Jewish girl who becomes a brilliant ball-breaking business woman. Her ondoing is sleeping with her boss who seeks to cut her down to size. Elizabeth is a privately educated little rich girl, and aforementioned daughter of the boss of Nina. Both get on his wrong side and both then have to deal with the consequences. Initially arch-enemies they soon join together to become a brilliant team. I really enjoyed this book and thought the characters were well thought out. Well worth a read.

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Can You Keep a Secret? by Sophie Kinsella was a bit of a disappointment as I loved her books in the Shopaholic series. The star of this book is Emma Corrigan, a somwehat insecure 25 year old. Whilst on a business trip she is on a plane that she things is going to crash and she spills all her secrets to one of her fellow passengers, including lots of information about her colleagues at work. She is pretty horrified when this passenger walks into her workplace and she finds out that he is the big boss. This was an OK book but I found it a bit of a non-story to be honest. It will go straight back to the charity shop for someone else to read!

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Exit Music by Ian Rankin is the final chapter in the Inspector John Rebus stories. It is the week before his retirement and he is presented with the murder of a Russian poet. Rather conveniently a delegation of high-level Russian businessmen is in town and the connections seem rather to clean. A great story with lots of twists and turns. Well worth a read, but then again, almost all the Rebus novels are worth a read!.

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The Lord God Made Them All by James Herriot is such a charming read. This book flits back and forth over his time as a vet in the Yorkshire Dales and also includes some recollections of boat trips he went on to accompany livestock to Russia. These stories in particular had me laughing out loud. My Mum tells the story that when she was pregnant with me she was reading a James Herriot book whilst she was waiting for one of her antenatal appointments. Apparently she was laughing so loudly that she was forced to read out the bit of the story to the entire waiting room! It is only now that I am living in Yorkshire that I feel like these stories have some read resonance. Driving across the Yorkshire Dales I can see how isolating it must have been when the weather was bad and how difficult treating animals would have been in these circumstances. I love these books and could read them time and time again.

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The Closers by Michael Connelley is a pretty good read. LAPD's Detective Harry Bosch is back after taking three years retirement. Returning to the unsolved cases team he and his partner Kiz Rider pick up the case of a teenagers who was murdered 18 years before. What looks like a fairly straightforward case turns into a nightmare of police corruption and race relations. A good book and I really like the way Michael Connelly writes. A little bit like Ian Rankin's Inspector Rebus novels I think.

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I seem to be on a bit of a murder-mystery killer-thriller trip this month. Next up is Violets are Blue by James Patterson. Detective Alex Cross is on a mission to capture the Mastermind, the evil genius who has been chasing him over the years. However, a minor interruption to this is a series of murders with rather bizarre overtones of vampires and tiger bites. An utterly unreal story but I did enjoy it even if it was slightly ridiculous!!

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The Island Walkers by John Bemrose is a book with a fab review on Amazon. However, I just didn't get it. To clarify The Island is a neighbourhood and the Walkers are a family who live on the island. Set in the 60's around the mill trade, the story (if you could call it that because there doesn't really seem to be much of a story) follows this family through unemployment, the birth of the union, affairs and a family in crisis. The eldest son Joe has a huge crush on the most unlikeable character ever put into a book and somehow I just didn't find any of it particularly enjoyable. I pushed on through reading it but I didn't enjoy it and I certainly didn't find it a good read.

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Flying With the Angels by Victor Pemberton is another WW2 based novel. Set just after the Second World War this story features the Angel family, born and brought up in London and having survived the bombing of their house and living in a prefab, the Angel family a facing a new challenge. How to rebuild their lives and find enough money to survive, especially as food and clothing is still being rationed. Lizzie is the eldest daughter and makes the decision, along with her new husband, to emigrate to Australia. A nice story about family ties and the difficulties faced dyrung the post-war period. I like these books. I know they are formulaic and probable written for the older reader, but I enjoy them, even if the story is almost the same in every one of Pemberton's novels!

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