December books
Categories: uncategorized
Date: 31 December 2010 14:55:31
I only read Tickling the English by Dara O'Briain because The Mister had got it out of the library. It is quite a funny book, although it didn't make me laugh out loud as much as I hoped! It is kind of Dara's reflections on his tour around Britain and his thoughts on the characteristics of different British towns. Some of the stories he recounts of banters with his audience are pretty funny and he also gives mini-history lessons on different towns as you go through the book. It's a clever book which looks at stereotypes and assumptions and there were definitely a few laugh out loud moments - especially when he was talking about Jersey!
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Back on Blossom Street by Debbie Macomber is quite a gentle read which I really enjoyed. I think it is the second or third book in a series so some of the characters have been in other books, and I might have to go back and see how they got to this book. There are lots of sub-stories, so there's not much point going over each one. Suffice to say, this book is about the lives of the women who run and work in shops on Blossom Street and about their relationships. A nice book to read on a snowy commute.
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Wife in the The North by Judith O'Reilly is about a woman who agreed to move from London to Northumberland. She blogged about this experience and this book is the result. When she moved she had two young children and was pregnant and when they moved her husband kept zipping back to Londin for a couple of weeks at a time for his work. I enjoyed this book and there were some genuinely funny moments, but there were also a few things I found particularly annoying. The thing that annoyed me most was the fact that she kept running out of petrol, and she kept saying that it was because her husband should have put petrol in the car. Was she not capable of doing it herself? Ridiculous!!
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The Cold Moon by Jeffrey Deaver is an exciting read. Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs are presented with a series of murders, all characterised by antique clocks which are left at the scene. Rhyme and Sachs are working hard to find out who the killer is, tracking through the evidence to work out who is committing such murders. Filled with twists and turns this book is a cracking read. I do think Jeffrey Deaver is an absolute master of this genre and this is a good example.
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The Scarpetta Factor by Patricia Cornwall is a bloody confusing book. Having read it, I still can't tell you what it is actually about! I never really got to grips with what the plot was about and it seemed to meander without any purpose. I thought that it was just me and that I was a bit distracted, but having read the Amazon reviews it would seem that it just isn't me who didn't get it. What a relief!
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The Life You Want by Emily Barr is a story about a woman called Tansy Harris who seems to have a bit of a mid-life crisis and ends up leaving her two children and her husband for a few weeks and going back to relive her youth in India. She goes and stays with an old friend on an ashram to help out in the children's home there and ends up getting embroiled in a child trafficking saga. Not a bad book but so generally unrealistic. Passed the time but wouldn't read it again.
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Heart of the Sea by Nora Roberts is the final book in the Gallagher series and is about the sister Darcy. She wants a rich man and conveniently a wealthy American arrives to build a theatre in their little town, and she falls in lobe with him.
It is a fairly predictable storyline, as were the last two and is a tale of love and magic. It was a sweet book and a nice read but I found it even more predictable than the last two and it dragged a little because of this.
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Down to Earth by Melanie Rose is a really stupid book (and I have read some that already come quite high up my list!) Michaela agrees to do a charity sky dive and on her way down she gets caught up in a gust of wind and ends up miles of course. When she gathers herself and her parachute together and makes her way home she discovers that she has been "missing" for 6 1/2 years and life has moved on without her. I am still not sure whether she was abducted by some pervy old man or whether there was allegedly some weird time and space switch. I don't really care either!
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The Christmas Mystery by Jostein Gaarder is becoming my traditional Christmas read throughout Advent. It is a glorious tale of a little boy who buys a magical Advent calender that takes him through the story of the Nativity. It is lovely and gentle and tells the story through the experiences of the different people who feature in the well-known Christmas story.
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