~Andrea~

Last night I finished The Great Turning Points in British History. It was quite an interesting read and one I'll keep on my bookshelf for reference. I started it (got about a third in) last year, so I was pleased to have finished this off. I'm also currently finishing off another read from last year, God of Surprises, and I'm part way through a philosophy book, but I just wasn't in the mood to go from non-fiction to non-fiction so I picked up one of OH's books which is earmarked for the charity shop: a Futurama graphic novel: The Time Bender Trilogy. Reading doesn't get much lighter than this

I hated The Twits. Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, George's Marvelous Medicine, James and the Giant Peach however, all classics.

That's fantastic bookgeek! Also good luck in finding a gym

It's fantastic Chrissy. I'm so glad I was persuaded to give it a go after hearing all the praise on this forum.

Hi welcome back

Well I finished To Kill a Mockingbird yesterday. It was a wonderful wonderful listen. A great book, read in the gorgeous lilting southern accent of Sissy Spacek. It was different than I imagined. I know a lot of people loved it, but I expected it to be a little dry and a little worthy for some reason. It wasn't. It was full of heart and full of quirky characters. I just loved Jean Louise the child narrator and all the observances of small-town American life. Brilliant. In fact perhaps now one of my all-time favourite books. This morning I started listening to 'I, Partridge' in the car, and was laughing out loud all the way to work. I think I'm going to enjoy this one

Hehe - thanks guys. I'm glad my review has been such a hit lol! The most enjoyable bit of the book was getting to write that review! To be fair Noll, the book isn't totally without merit, but I just found it so amateurish coming from a writer such as James Herbert that I found I couldn't be in any way forgiving.

What channel is it on in the UK?

In between chapters of 'Think' I've been reading chapters from 'Turning Points in British History' which I started last year and really want to get finished soon. However, between the two books my brain is suffering from information overload, so I have also picked up 'God of Surprises' by Gerard Hughes which again I started but didn't finish last year (can you see a pattern emerging? ) which is slightly lighter. I'm really looking forward to getting to some light fiction once I'm done with those three.

Poppy, are you Ruth's long lost sister?

Hi everyone. I thought I'd pop in as I am trying to lose a bit of weight and improve my general fitness and body shape. I don't need to lose much. Maybe half a stone to a stone. The last time I weighed I was about 10 stone and I'd really like to get down to 9 stone. However I haven't weighed in ages and I think I've got a little smaller in the waist: last Saturday I went to replace a certain pair of jeans (same store, same cut etc) and found I'd dropped a waist size - woot woot! I've also got back into a favourite pair of trousers I haven't worn in years - just. I'm wearing them now and they are a little snug at the waist lol. So I'm trying to eat sensibly and cut out the naughty things and introduce a bit more portion control. I generally eat quite healthily, plenty of wholegrains, fruit and veg etc. I've been exercising roughly twice a week for some time now, a zumba class and a gym session (a little inconsistently, and in December it all took a nose dive lol) but I'd like to get back into that and add in one swim per week on top. One thing I'd love to achieve is toned arms - but I fear at my age flabby upper arms is inevitable! . Anyways that's me. Good luck everyone.

It's one of those books that stays with you for a while afterwards isn't it?

I really ought to add that I usually like James Herbert (well the 2 others I have read) so I was pretty surprised and disappointed with the quality of this one.

I had a load of audio short stories for Chrimbo so I might pop in to discuss when I get to them.

The Curse of the Black Comet? http://www.amazon.co.uk/Scarifyers-Curse-Black-Comet/dp/095551584X

Lovely photos everyone. What a gorgeous bunch we are Noll I love the red hair!

Haha - thanks everyone. You got that I didn't like it, right?

So I finally finished The Secret of Crickley Hall. What a load of utter tosh. This book is the worst written, most cliche-riddled pile of rubbish I have read in a long time. Right from the start I found the writing awful. I hoped it would pick up, but no. It's almost as if James Herbert deliberately tried to drop every writing clanger in the book, just to see if he could get away with it. It has it all: cliched themes, boring characters, badly written local dialect, info-dumping, outrageously villainous villains with no redeeming qualities at all, to name a few. The writing is amateurish and repetetive, the story predictable and it's not even scary. I even spotted a couple of continuity errors. It fails on all counts. The atrocious writing aside, the story itself is predictable (did I mention that?) and downright unpleasant in parts. The child abuse aspects are written without a scrap of sensetivity and are pure sensationalism, which is unforgiveable. A horrible book, badly written. A total waste of time. I have now picked up Think by Simon Blackburn, which is an introduction to philosophy. So far so good.

Good luck with your challenge too Inver

My favourite sci-fi reads are: End of Eternity - Isaac Asimov Childhood's End - Arthur C Clarke Rendezvous with Rama - Arthur C Clarke

Thanks Julie. Well I knocked a couple of books off of the TBR - I took them to a charity shop. The Tess Gerritson I had picked up second-hand but discovered it was the sequel (or second part in a series) that came after a rather gruesome book, which I decided was not for me after all so I got rid of it. The Arthur C Clarke I felt I was just never going to get around to reading as it just didn't excite me enough. It was a second-hand freebie so it's no drama

I'd second The Truman Show - one of my all-time faves. And also add "The Time Bandits" and "Being John Malkovich" (I do like the quirky )

That's interesting. I loved both Tess and Far from the Madding Crowd but had avoided this one because I was under the impression it was a more depressing read (yes I know this is Hardy we're talking about ) I think I'll give it a go now.

Thanks both