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The Ruins Of Time 3/5 Ben Woolfendon A father is obsessed with revealing the mystery of his family history. When he gets ill and dies his grown up son, despite himself, gets drawn in to finish what his father started. That's more or less the whole plot. 3/5 is a bit generous if you have to dissect the storyline and pull the characters apart for a good look. So it's best not to. This moves along well enough but the motivations of some of the characters (notably Elias Crane) are very weak and inexplicable. Certain episodes and bits of dialogue kept me reading though and it was enjoyable, but nothing outstanding.

Secret Ceremonies 4/5 Deborah Laake I found this book mentioned somewhere so I searched out a second hand copy on Amazon. The autobiography of an American girl in the 1970s who grew up in the Mormon church and got married to a Mormon man. I guess when it was written it was quite an eye-opener as the religion was quite secretive; to be honest, it reads like being in a cult. It's not really about knocking the church though; the focus is really about the woman herself and how she was not prepared for marriage or relationships. She presents her story and lets the reader decide about the Mormon part for themselves, which I like. In the end internal conflicts led to a mental breakdown and she spent some time in a mental hospital. This part of the book for me brought very interesting comparisons with Girl: Interrupted by Suzannah Kayson. A quick read and the writing has a sort of honesty about it that I liked.

Singled Out 4/5 Virginia Nicholson This non-fiction book is an exploration of how a whole generation of women survived without men in Britain after the First World War. This was a slightly later period than my usual Victorian research but it had some cross-over relevance. There were already 1 million "surplus" women at the end of the Victorian period (as was brought to my attention by George Gissing's superb The Odd Women) who were sadly the butt of society ridicule and prejudice. A woman's purpose was accepted by all to get married. A woman who did not was a failure. The First World War in four years swelled this number of women to nearly 2 million. To put this in perspective, at the beginning of the book the author relates the true anecdote of a headmistress of a girl's school who assembles her pupils and tells them that all the men they would have married are dead, and that statistically only 1 in 10 of them will get married. When you think about that it is really shocking. Not only that, as it is always the young strong men who end up going to war, the best geneseed of a whole generation was destroyed. (I did some checking and found that France and Germany lost even more men than UK). So this book chases down the history of how these women got along, what they did instead and how they felt about it. As much as possible the author tries to get at their feelings through their diaries and journals. Some of them felt liberated by it and carved out careers which would have been impossible before while others bitterly missed the children they should have had. At the end of the book the author punches home the point that these women by their existence forced society to change.

This is great! I had a good objective study. I think I am Free-Range but I have some characteristics of the Situational and Compulsive readers too. I exhibit alarming behaviours of a Book Buster (I fold corners and have been known to read in the bath, and have also BURNED books I didn't want), Book Rescuer, Multi-Tasker and Re-Reader so I most definitely fall into the ABUSER catagory. A major enjoyable sub-activity of being a Book Rescuer for me is that of Book-HUNTING of old, weird and interesting books in charity or second hand shops. The list didn't really cover that.

Cube is a brilliant film. I remember my wife and I picking that up in blockbusters years ago not knowing what it was and we were just blown away by it. I watched one of the sequels but it was not worth watching.

Great film. One of the best werewolf changing scenes ever.

Ah that's great! A proper boy film.

Not heard of that one or the trilogy! I will hunt that out too.

I was in a film mood last night and watched a random mix of 3; Dark City Secrets And Lies Kissing Jessica Stein Decided I will watch the other Jennifer Westfeldt film Friends With Kids again first chance I get, and will probably pair that up with another Sci-Fi . I liked the way different films can pull your head and emotions one way and the next the complete opposite direction. Only good films can do this of course! The Mike Leigh film was excellent too, very emotional.

I have found that new DVDs generally half in retail price after 1 year. Then If they are not terrifically popular they can drop even further the year after. For instance £13.99 down to £7 then sometimes down to £3.

I never write notes and write the review after I have finished the book. I am undecided whether it is better to write it as soon as possible after finishing or to wait a week or so. My reviews lately have been very short which I feel bad about.

That's hard marking Anna! I haven't read the book or watched the film yet although they are both on my list. How did you think the film fell down then for you? Did they deviate from the book a lot? Was it too hollywoodized? I am very interested in this one.

I just looked up who Lizzie Borden was. Very interesting!

I watched half of Mirror Mirror but had to stop it was just too silly for words and even my kids were bored.

Ah, that's excellent that you managed to smuggle some extra books out! Any pictures? And a book list of your prizes?

I got my Nemi book through the post today. I was surprised it turned out to be a hardback. (so, not a bad deal for 1p plus postage) You can tell these are early ones, Nemi is a lot younger and more confrontational with people, she is also getting drunk and sleeping around a lot! The humour is still there though.

I watched Brave last night. One of my few favourite Disney kid's films.I like the animation and the story.

I liked American Gods. Apart from the fact I enjoyed the story, seeing as he is British, I think Gaiman did a great job writing a book that is slap bang typical of that American Gothic genre.

Thanks Dex I looked at some similar ones today but ended up buying some cheaper £3 ones from Asda because of temporary budget constraints lol

No good then?

Sunshine and Dances With Wooluffs with good old Kevin Costner. I had forgotten what a great uplifting film that was. The version I watched had loads of extra scenes in it I hadn't seen before that balanced the Sioux Indians out and didn't make them so boringly goody goody- for instance they killed some white hunters who had killed some buffalo and the whole village were dancing around the bodies celebrating. That got cut out of the cinema version.

I like to read both fiction and non-fiction.

Welcome Calexa! First of all I find it awesome that you are named after a character in a book...and you write too!

1888- London Murders In The Year Of The Ripper 5/5 Peter Stubley This was a great little book , I enjoyed reading it so much. Of course I am a sucker for anything in the 1880s but it was much more than that. For a book obviously a product of research through archives of the Illustrated Police Gazette and other similar newspapers and probably Court histories too, it was not dry at all. The author really evokes a feeling of the times, late Victorian London came alive every time I dipped into the book . As I only bought the book to research police procedures, I did not expect to relish it so much. I even liked the feel of the book itself, with its bendy shiny cover! One thing that surprised me very much over and over again was the leniency of the Victorian courts. Many people walked away scot free and even if convicted of murder they didn't always hang- only one murderer in the book ended his days swinging from a rope for his crime. The saddest stories in the book were the poor young servant girls who killed their newborn babies and hid the bodies to be able to keep their jobs. How desperate and wretched these tortured souls must have been! In every case in the book of this type the courts never charged them with murder but always changed it to a lesser crime. I guess they must have figured the memory of what they had done would forever be punishment enough. I recommend this book.

Oh wow. Memorize a poem? Like Claire, I would have to actually force myself to read one first! I did like one of Ben's poems. I don't remember the words but I remember the emotions it engendered.