JeanW

I haven't but I'm glad you drew my attention to it. I'm a bit obsessed with Virginia and Vanessa and the while Bloomsbury thing and recently finished Angelica Bell's biography Deceived with Kindness after watching the TV series Living in Squares so I will look for this one. We come to the UK every year from Oz and always stay at the Tavistock in London and Virginia's house is just round the corner and there is a bust of her in the square across from the hotel. I find that era endlessly fascinating.

As an oldie on here my taste is probably rather different from many of you but for any other oldies, we went to see 45 Years, with Tom Courteney and Charlotte Rampling (who received an Oscar nomination for her role). Not a film for those who like action and fast moving plot but beautifully acted and very moving.

We watched A Walk in the Woods recently and after I adjusted to the fact that Robert Redford is much older than Bryson was when he did the walk, I quite enjoyed it. And Emma Thompson was as good as she always is.

I've heard a couple of people I know say the third one wasn't as good as the first. I've only read Cuckoo Calling and I enjoyed it so not sure whether to continue or not.

None of the detective series I read do that. I'm thinking of Wallander, Inspector Banks, Inspector Linley, P d James, John Harvey, Peter James and many others. In most of them, it probably helps to see how the characters and their relationships develop over time although it's not absolutely essential. But they certainly haven't given away the endings of their other books. In The Linley detective series Elizabeth George does sometimes refer to incidents in her previous novels such as the fact that Inspector Linley's wife was shot dead by an unknown murderer but it doesn't affect the plot.

The Killing - the original Danish version not the US adaptation - brilliant. I hate most of the American versions of UK and European TV.

You're very lucky in the UK being able to buy books from charity shops so easily. I know because we come to England every year now from Australia and one of the first things we do is find an Oxfam bookshop. Tasmania is a tiny island of half a million, widely dispersed, and our charity shops only carry a small number of books and usually fairly old ones. There are 2nd hand book shops but they tend to charge up to half the new price. So i buy most of my books 2nd hand from amzon.uk as even with the postage, it's cheaper than here. Also, the sort of books I read are often not available here at all so you have to order things in anyway.

No, sakura, it's not water under the bridge in this one. She's been told to smarten up her act...or else. I've read about 100 pages and am enjoying it. I agree totally that George went off at one stage but this seems more like her old form.

Having been born in West Yorkshire, and still having family there, that's nice to hear.

Hi. I'm an online friend of Sylvia and here for the same reason and should have introduced myself when I joined a couple of weeks ago. I'm a retired teacher and live in Tasmania although born and bred in Yorkshire. I like good crime novels, biographies of interesting people in the past and social history.

As George S Patton once said: If everyone is thinking alike, then someone is not thinking.

While the northern hemisphere has been battling floods and ice, here in Australia we've had more bushfires in several states and three people currently missing in WA and lots of property destroyed.

I read this quite a few years ago and a couple of years later we visited the village. It's a very moving experience and well worth the visit. I noticed she has just published a new novel called The Secret Chord, about King David set in 1000 BC. She won the Pulitzer prize for 'March' which is about John March, the father who has gone to fight in the Civil War in Little Women.

War and Peace starts here in Oz in a week or so and I will watch it but was interested to read that the scriptwriter added the sex scenes and the reference to incest from his own imagination. Why do they feel this is necessary - it's insulting to intelligent viewers who you would think would be the main audience for this. There is so little good stuff ( ie - programs that appeal to us) on free to air that we mainly watch either pay TV or old programs and movies via YouTube on our big TV.

I've read: Bill Bryson's The Road to Little Dribbling The Paying Guest Gone Girl Fifty Shades of Grey and have the Peter James on the shelf waiting to be read. Most of these authors are just not my cup of tea regardless of whether they are best sellers. Gone Girl and Fifty Shades of Grey have to be the two worst books I've ever not finished.

I look at wikipedia and goodreads too - depends what I'm looking for. Information on authors themselves is usually better on wikipedia but I like fantasticfiction because both my OH and I read a lot of crime and detective novels and when we come across an author we haven't read before, we want to read them in chronological order. Then i can go to amazon and buy them in the correct order. Also to find an author's latest book when thinking about gifts.

I'm in Australia and we're a b it behind the UK but I'm going to see Suffragettes next week and waiting for The Lady in the Van - based on the Allan Bennett play and with Maggie Smith. The last one I saw was mr Holmes with Ian McKenna which I enjoyed.

Favourite authors no longer writing: Penelope Lively Ruth Rendell aka Barbara Vine Anita Brookner P D James Henning Mankel Current authors who new book I would buy: Elizabeth George Laura Wilson Joanne Trollope Joanne Harris William Nicholson Hilary Mantel Just to name a few!

That's interesting. I read a lot of crime novels so might try them. I watch the TV series and like Gently but can't stand the assistant. Why do they do that sort of thing? I guess to jazz it up for modern viewers. My last book of 2015 was A Willing Victim, by Laura Wilson, the fourth in her DI Stratton series which are set in war and post-war London and I can highly recommend them. Not gory or forensic and very well researched historically and I'm hoping she'll go on writing them. She has written several other one-offs too which are equally good.

I belong for much the same reason - to read reviews of books I've read or might want to read because there is such a huge range covered. Do people here know about www.fantasticfiction? I use this site all the time as it lists alphabetically almost every author you can think of and gives their books in the order they were written with dates as well a synopsis. It's very useful for finding the order of books if you want to start reading a series or to see if a particular author has written anything new.

Thanks, Kylie. Yes, I've read quite a bit about the Mitford sisters - I have The Mitford Girls by Mary S Lovell and The Mitfords by Charlotte Mosely - and read quite a few others which have been partly about them. They tend to pop up in many other biographies! I recently read Darling Monster - letters of Lady Diana Cooper to her son - and they got several mentions in those.

I was given her new one (A Banquet of Consequences) for Christmas and will start it as soon as I've finished what I'm reading. I read and enjoyed all her books over many years up until about one in 2006 (What Happened Before he Shot Her) when I thought she'd gone off quite a bit. A lot of it written in Jamaican dialect. However, I did try again and they picked up after that.

I'm a biography fanatic but not of current people or film stars or celebrities or sportspeople etc. I have a fascination with the 1900-1940 era and especially of the Bloomsbury group and the other famous figures of that time. I've just finished Renishaw Hall - a history of the Sitwell Family, a fascinating account of a very eccentric family. Before that, I read If Love Were All, an account of the long secret affair (and child) David Lloyd George had with his secretary. Before that, The four Sisters, a bio of the four Romanov girls who were shot along with the ret of their family in the cellar in Russia.

I'm half way through reading the book and finding it just as funny as Notes from a Small Island. Keep laughing aloud every few sentences. yes, he's perceptive and rightly critical of lots of things about England but like for me, the good things outweigh the bad.