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Your Book Activity - December 2016


Athena

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I've read The Beach Café novel by Lucy Diamond and really liked those.

 

I have been reading the Beach Café novels by Lucy Diamond, read over the weekend A Baby at the Beach Café which was an easy read.

 

Also reading on my phone The Blackmore sisters three novels by Leighann Dobbs read Dead Wrong and half way through Dead and Buried with Dead Tide to follow.

 

Brought into read at work Cold Feet at Christmas by Debbie Johnson.

 

I have got that many Christmas books still to go through think I will be reading them well into January.

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Me too :) hehe

 

Nice :)! I've since finished the book and liked it. A couple of things I was disappointed by, but overall I enjoyed reading the book :).

 

It's good so far. I'm only 70 pages in, so early days, but it's interesting and easy to read.

 

That's good to hear :).

 

I have been reading the Beach Café novels by Lucy Diamond, read over the weekend A Baby at the Beach Café which was an easy read.

That's nice, glad you liked it :).

 

I'm currently reading A.S. King - I Crawl Through It. It's definitely the weirdest book I've read by the author, but I'm enjoying it a lot.

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Finished reading my next English Counties Challenge book, Swallows and Amazons. This is a book that was a part of the fabric of my childhood, the first set of books that I can recall buying for myself, mostly second-hand, dust-cover free, hardbacks, at 2/6d at time (IIRC)! Loved them then, and love them perhaps even more now. Rereading S&A made me appreciate even more (a) how good these books were and are, and (b) quite how far backwards we have travelled in bringing children up in the past few decades.

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Whipped through PD James's The Mistletoe Murders this morning, a very entertaining set of 4 short stories, two of them with a strong Christmas theme, and two of them (including one of the Christmas ones) Dalgleish stories. One in particular stood out (but I won't say which as even that might be a spoiler!) and would have almost been worth reading on its own.  I haven't read much PD James, but I really ought to do so more!  Certainly a vast improvement over the disappointing Mystery in White.

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Re-reading A Christmas Carol. Excellent holiday reading.

 

I listened to the Tim Curry version while wrapping presents- a tradition that started a few years ago.

 

I finished Millennium (how civilization has changed in a thousand years) and have taken up The Life of Elizabeth I by Alison Weir (re read) and The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware. I kinda like having multiple books going. Millennium was sooo good!

 

Edit: And The Woman in Cabin 10 is pretty scary.

Edited by Anna Begins
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I'm still reading 1Q84 which I am enjoying a lot.

 

It looks like Amazon's Kindle Christmas sale has started, so last night I bought:

 

IT - Stephen King (only £0.99 - such a bargain!!)

Us - David Nicholls

The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World's Most Wanted Man - Luke Harding

The Last Runaway - Tracy Chevalier

The Little Book of Big History: The Story of Life, The Universe and Everything - Ian Crofton, Jeremy Black

 

They are adding new books every day, so no doubt this isn't the last of my purchases. :D

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Two more crime fiction completed in the past couple of days.  Firstly, the next in the Maigret series, The Saint-Fiacre AffairNot the strongest Simenon I've read - indeed, the weakest in a while.  A bit overloaded with dialogue, and rather unengaging for a Maigret.  Things picked up somewhat with David Williams's Murder in Advent, a neatly written, not overly complex, ecclesiastical mystery that proved light and involving.  Would like to try more of his work, although most of it is out of print, so may have to trawl the second-hand market. 

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The real Christmas miracle: I've finally finished The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens. He's amazing, but damn it just felt LONG. Plus he doesn't go easy on the feelings with this one, does he? Blimey.

 

Bought a collection of vintage crime 'winter mysteries' called Crimson Snow (edited by Mark Edwards) t'other day in Smiths, so will probably flick through that tomorrow when the rest of the family falls asleep sometime in the early PM.

 

Nothing too taxing from me 'till 2017 now I reckon.

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I have bought another 8 books this morning :o :

 

The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot - Robert McFarlane

Introducing Psychology - Nigel Benson

As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride - Cary Elwes

The Girl You Left Behind - JoJo Moyes

The Painted Bridge - Wendy Wallace

We Were Liars - E Lockhart

When God Was A Rabbit - Sarah Winman

Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Secrethood - Rebecca Wells

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I hope you enjoy all of your new books, BB :). I liked We Were Liars.

 

I'm currently re-reading Blake Charlton - Spellwright 1: Spellwright. I plan on reading the rest of the trilogy soon after I finish book 1, depending on my mood (I might read one or a few other books in between). The final book in this trilogy was released in August and I'd been waiting for it for 5 years (since book 2). A few days ago I suddenly found myself in the mood to read this trilogy, so I started re-reading book 1. Many years after reading it, I couldn't remember exactly what happened in book 1, so I have to re-read it. The 3 books are written by a surgeon, so he has a busy job aside from writing. So I do get it took 5 years. But now I can read it :). So far I'm enjoying re-reading book 1.

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@Athena I have that too with some series. There's so much time in between that you have to re-read from the start. There is one series of books in particular, the Stravaganza books by Mary Hoffman, which I really liked but at some point had to decide to wait until they were all published because I kept having to re-read them all.

 

I went to the library yesterday. I've been binge-watching The Crown and I wanted to see what books the library had on the British monarchy. Sadly, nearly all of them were in Dutch and I wanted to read an English one. I did end up taking two books home, which I didn't mean to.

 

The first one is Miranda Carter's The Three Emperors: Three cousins, Three Empires and the Road to World War One. It's in Dutch, but it seemed so interesting I couldn't leave it there. 

 

The other one's John Irving's The Cider House Rules. I really enjoyed his novel In One Person and this one seemed very interesting as well. I also hope to read The World According to Garp, but the libraries I'm a member of seem to only have it in Dutch. I might order it through the library so they can have it sent over from a different one, or become member of another library where they do have it.

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Bobbly, I'm so happy you bought The Last Runaway!  I loved that book, as I love most Chevalier's works.  I'm looking forward to hearing what you think about it :D.  I've also read Wells' Ya-Ya books and really enjoyed them as well.

 

On Monday I finished In the Unlikely Event by Judy Blume.  It was fiction but centers around real events in 1951/52 when 3 different times commercial airplanes crashed in Elizabeth, New Jersey.  Talk about freaky!  It was very interesting.

 

Now I'm reading Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew'd by Alan Bradley :D.

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Another couple of books finished over Christmas and Boxing Days. First up was Elizabeth Taylor's The Soul of Kindness, the second of her novels I've read. I've previously compared her to Jane Austen, and the parallels continued to hold up, with the 'heroine', Flora, very much in the Emma mould, although I think Taylor is less forgiving! Just love her style of writing - she's turning into a favourite. 5 stars.

Also reread Julian Barnes's The Sense of an Ending, as I just couldn't remember it from reading five years ago, and was trying to follow an article about it. Gave it four stars again: flawed but very intriguing; I definitely wanted to keep reading to the end.  Not quite sure why the story didn't 'stick' in the first place.

Edited by willoyd
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I've bought a few books as well- on my Amazon gift card

 

Fellside by MR Carey

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

1984

 

2 graphic novels

Persepolis by Marjane Strapi (I owned this but lost it in a move)

Burma Chronicles by Guy Delisle

 

And Kristin Hannah's books were on deal today, so I picked up

 

Home Front

Winter Garden

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Two of Kristin Hannah's best books, in my opinion only bettered by Thr Nightingale and Night Road.

Fellside was excellent too, hopefully you'll agree when you read it! Happy New Year Anna. :)

Thank you :) Happy New Year to you too!

I went on your suggestion :)

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I finally finished Murder for Christmas.  I didn't much enjoy the writing style; the author used the same descriptive phrases over and over (and over) and over again.  Still, I didn't guess whodunnit, so the book had that much going for it, at least.  Two repetitive stars out of five.

 

I'm just about to begin Q's Legacy by Helene Hanff.  Beatific bliss shall no doubt ensue.  

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:)

 

I went ahead and got Night Road!

 

Fellside is hefty.

Yay, Night Road was my first KH and I think my favourite, bit of an emotional one though so be prepared!

 

Fellside is hefty but not huge and I read it quicker than many 300 page paperbacks as it was so compelling.

 

The two books couldn't be more different! :D

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I hope you enjoy all of your new books, BB :). I liked We Were Liars.

 

Thanks, Gaia. I'm sure I will. I've had We Were Liars on my wishlist for ages, so I was very happy to see it for only £0.99. :boogie:

 

Bobbly, I'm so happy you bought The Last Runaway!  I loved that book, as I love most Chevalier's works.  I'm looking forward to hearing what you think about it :D.  I've also read Wells' Ya-Ya books and really enjoyed them as well.

 

I'm sure I will enjoy it as I've enjoyed all the Chevalier's books that I have read. I've seen the Ya-Ya movie ages ago and liked it a lot, so I figured I may as well read the book (or at least one of them, as I'm guessing it's part of a series).

 

Haven't done a huge amount of reading over the last few days. We have a leaking water pipe, which is not what you want on Boxing Day! :motz: Refused to get a plumber in on an emergency call, but forgot that the day after (Tuesday) was also a public holiday. :motz: We ended up getting a plumber in yesterday, but it won't get repaired until 4th of January so we are keeping the mains water off where we can. Stressful, so haven't been able to relax enough to read! Oh, and I also ended up rescuing a dog that was running around the main road! Cars kept going by slowly, and I had to park up in the middle of a busy road to get hold of him (which was fun, as he was scared and barking at me, but thankfully I managed to slip a lead over his head).  He was all skinny but so affectionate once I got hold of him. Then a couple of people came out of the houses to say they had called the police in case he caused an accident....I think they were scared of him intially but I was a bit annoyed that no-one tried to get hold of him. Poor thing could have been hit.  :motz:   So that was more stress, ringing local kennels, being passed on to the council, and then finally finding a rescue centre a few villages away who could take him. And now, I have a cold...probably from the stress! :doh:

 

Anyway, back to reading....I've made only a small bit of progress with 1Q84, due to having all the above going through my mind. I did manage to finish A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson though, which I have been reading for months. Also, decided to do some decluttering to get my mind off the leaking water pipe, and bought The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying by Marie Kondo, which a few people on here have raved about. I'm pretty impressed with it, though some of it is a little bit "off with the pixies" for me, such as thanking your socks each day, for their hard work. :giggle2:  Nevertheless, she has helped me clear out two shelves, just by using her clothes folding method, so it's all good. :D

 

Hopefully I will get some more reading done before I have to go back to work.

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