Madeleine

Merry Christmas everyone

Sad to hear that Chris Rea (Driving home for Christmas) has passed away.

The Curse of La Fontaine by M L Longworth - this is the 6th in the Verlaque and Bonnet series - he's a judge (though it has a different job spec in France) and she's a University professor and they live in Aix-en-Provence - and starts with the couple marrying, then back to work in Aix and soon they are confronted with a local mystery, when a skeleton is unearthed in the grounds of a local restaurant, whose owner had been planning to put some outside seating in the garden of the restaurant, much to the horror of neighbours, for apart from the inevitable noise from al fresco diners, they are convinced it would stop the fountain (hence the title) flowing - and indeed the fountain does stop when the body is discovered. It's soon identified as a local resident, the son of a wealthy family who have since moved, but the parents and brothers are all still alive, and Verlaque is soon questioning them, and opening the usual can of worms. This took a while to get going, but at least in this one there weren't endless pages about Verlaque's cigar club, and there are some lovely descriptions of food too, though sometimes these also slowed down the plot. But once the back story of various residents started to unfold it became more interesting, I wouldn't exactly say gripping but it was an easy read and quite enjoyable. 7/10

I also really like "The Power of Love" by Frankie goes to Hollywood.

I agree with you about the choir. We have a lovely boy in our choir, the son of one of the members, who guest sings occasionally and he sang O Holy Night this year - we were his backing singers - and also did Walking in the Air. He has a beautiful voice but he's 12 now and we can hear his voice is breaking, thankfully it lasted until our Xmas concert this week! Hopefully his new voice will be just as good.

If it's "pop" songs then it would be "I Believe in Father Christmas" by Greg Lake, of the more traditional/classical songs I would choose "O Holy Night", we've been singing it at my choir and it always brings me out in goosebumps!

Always on my mind - Pet Shop Boys (Xmas no 1 in 1987)

We don't need another Hero - Tina Turner

I do remember Stanley, I actually didn't realise he was still around, and made such a good age. Sadly more literary losses this week too, Sophie Kinsella at the too early age of 55, and yesterday Joanna Trollope at 82.

I'll be there for you - Bon Jovi

Here There and Everywhere - The Beatles

The boys are back in town - Thin Lizzy

Jolly Roger - Adam and the Ants

I Get Around - The Beach Boys

Always look on the bright side - Eric Idle

Amnesia by L J Ross - this is the 6th book in the series featuring criminal profiler and psychologist Dr Alex Gregory, and follows straight on from the events of the previous book Panic, which needs to be read first. At the end of this book, 2 women close to Gregory are left critically injured, and as he tries to piece together what happened and why, and deal with the fallout from one of his earlier cases, we get quite a bit of back story, to a brutal murder of a teenager on a grim London estate, which was handled badly by the police. Someone is out for revenge, but who? And that's all I can really say without giving away any spoilers. It was an OK read, but I think this is the weaker of her 2 series (the other series is set mainly in Northumberland and features DCI Ryan, who does appear briefly in the Gregory series too), and whilst I still have a couple of the earlier books in this series to read, I'm not that bothered about reading the next one, which hasn't been published yet. 6.5/10

Never gonna give you up - Rick Astley

No this guy is huge! but he has a sort of twinkle in his eye as well which is nice, and he's kind to animals too!

Every little thing she does is magic - The Police

I watched the first series on Amazon Prime, it was enjoyable but not sure if I'd want to watch any more, pretty violent but at least the guy playing Reacher is more convincing than Tom Cruise! He's built like the proverbial brick you know what.

Funnily enough this is the only Jack Reacher book I've read, or tried to read. Like you I was in a reading slump at the time and thought oh well a bit of escapism, and at first it was OK but after I got about halfway through and he spent 4 pages describing how to hot wire a car I started to lose the will to read and gave up on it!

Not sure if you know the background to how the book came to be written, but Mary Shelley was only 19 at the time and it was a challenge from a group of friends to write a story on a stormy night, I don't know how much of the story she came up with initially and then fleshed the rest out over time, but it's quite an achievement for someone so young, especially at a time when women writers weren't taken that seriously (and when her companions included the poets Keats and Shelley). It's been years since I read it but yes the Victorians did tend to over write things, and the letter format was very popular, Dracula is written entirely in this format too, though I think Frankenstein actually works better. Like most books it has it's flaws but it certainly throws up some interesting topics which are still important today, eg how far should science go, cloning, etc. And there are still lots of people who think Frankenstein is the monster not his creator, thanks to Hollywood who as usual pretty much re-wrote the story.

Alone - Heart

Me neither, readable and I know the area where it's set quite well so that helped.

Turn it on again- Genesis