Ooshie

I loved The Secret Scripture too, I think it was one of my favourite reads of last year (or the year before? time moves so fast now!)

You find them more memorable? Wow, I admire the way your brain works, Steve!

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith Synopsis - from Amazon 'I write this sitting in the kitchen sink' is the first line of this timeless, witty and enchanting novel about growing up. Cassandra Mortmain lives with her bohemian and impoverished family in a crumbling castle in the middle of nowhere. Her journal records her life with her beautiful, bored sister, Rose, her fadingly glamorous stepmother, Topaz, her little brother Thomas and her eccentric novelist father who suffers from a financially crippling writer's block. However, all their lives are turned upside down when the American heirs to the castle arrive and Cassandra finds herself falling in love for the first time. I seem to have been reading this book forever and am glad I finally finished it. I don't know why I have had such trouble getting through it, I would say I enjoyed it, but for some reason I could never read more than a few pages at a time before having to go and read something else instead. I probably enjoyed the parts which concentrated on the family and where they lived most, once it moved on to I definitely lost interest a bit.

I do like the names of the ships, they always give me a smile But do lots of the other names have to be just so different that there is no hope of me ever remembering them? How about Jimmm - slightly different but gives me a chance! Loved the book, so glad I decided to go on with it.

That's ok bree, I was just being oversensitive suddenly panicking that I had led folk down the wrong path! *hug* I want to reread the book before posting my thoughts, but should get the chance to read it in the next couple of days.

Also, could someone explain how it is a Victorian Gothic novel please? I felt it was set in a much more recent time, and I don't know what Gothic really is! I think I nominated the book, bree; I had thought it had a Victorian feel when I read it, and it was on the Librarything suggestions link on the nominations page, so I didn't go back to the book and look any more closely for clues. Sorry

Thanks, Athena. I'm glad it's not just me who was confused by the names!

Oh wow, good buy Timstar! I'm very envious.

The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks Synopsis - from Amazon The Culture - a human/machine symbiotic society - has thrown up many great Game Players, and one of the greatest is Gurgeh. Jernau Morat Gurgeh. The Player of Games. Master of every board, computer and strategy. Bored with success, Gurgeh travels to the Empire of Azad, cruel and incredibly wealthy, to try their fabulous game ... a game so complex, so like life itself, that the winner becomes Emperor. Mocked, blackmailed, almost murdered, Gurgeh accepts the game, and with it the challenge of his life - and very possibly his death. This is the second in Culture series of books, which I started immediately on finishing the first. If anyone has read the first book and not bothered going on to the second, think again! It really is much, much better. I was engaged from the start, and towards the end could hardly put the book down. Thoroughly enjoyable. I did get slightly led astray by That, and the fact that sometimes I wished (even more so with the first book, actually) that the protagonists could be called things like Bob and Jim so that I could keep a proper track of who was who, are my only quibbles! I'm not quite sure why I have only given this 4.5/5, I might go back later and change it to 5/5. Great book. I have the short story collection in which a couple of the stories relate to the Culture, so I will finish the books I have on the go, read The State of the Art, and then download the next in the series. Highly recommended. Really. Oh, you had got that already?

I read several of them but my OH had a massive brain haemorrhage when I was a bit of a way into the one that takes her to America I think, and for some reason I just couldn't pick up the book again. It has been 17 years though, so maybe I need to give it another try!

I did enjoy it enough to download The Player of Games, and got about 20% through that last night - liking it much better so far!

Paper Roses - Marie Osmond

nook

firm

Outlander (or Cross Stitch as I think it was called when I read it) is a wonderful book! I have read it twice, but I'm sure I will be back again for another read soon

Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks Synopsis - from Amazon The war raged across the galaxy. Billions had died, billions more were doomed. Moons, planets, the very stars themselves, faced destruction, cold-blooded, brutal, and worse, random. The Idirans fought for their Faith; the Culture for its moral right to exist. Principles were at stake. There could be no surrender. Within the cosmic conflict, an individual crusade. Deep within a fabled labyrinth on a barren world, a Planet of the Dead proscribed to mortals, lay a fugitive Mind. Both the Culture and the Idirans sought it. It was the fate of Horza, the Changer, and his motley crew of unpredictable mercenaries, human and machine, actually to find it, and with it their own destruction. Consider Phlebas - a space opera of stunning power and awesome imagination. I do enjoy science fiction, and have often vaguely thought about reading the Culture novels as I enjoy Iain Banks non-SF work a lot, but the reason I started this one was that I wanted to try and read something on a Kindle and this was the one on my son's Kindle that appealed to me most! I enjoyed the premise, and got to like quite a few of the characters, but for me there was a lot too much description in quite a few of the scenes. In a hard copy book it is quite easy to skim over excess description quickly while still following the storyline, but I couldn't seem to manage to do this in the same way on the Kindle and found myself longing for some bits to be over with. I also got a bit confused by something in the middle of the book which I kept waiting to be expanded on but wasn't. It's quite possible that I just got this wrong - again, it's something that I would have flicked back to easily in an actual book and skimmed forward to find out where I had gone wrong, but couldn't do it in the same way at all on the Kindle. Oh, and my patient wait to Consider Phlebas as instructed was sadly wasted In all, quite an enjoyable book, but I don't think I really like the Kindle. Although, it was so easy to read in bed that I think I will usually have a book on the go on it!

grandiose

character

Another One Bites The Dust - Queen

Thanks for the review of Disgrace, Brian. It has definitely made me more determined to get to it soon!

Hi Kate, I hope you enjoy BCF; I first read The Lord of the Rings when I was 11 or 12 too, it certainly makes an impact at that age!

I bought The Last of the Mohicans last year, but haven't read it yet; I did read it as a child but don't remember much about it.