France

Oh I hope not! I do wonder where the series is going though.

I really enjoyed this one. Naomi Novik can genuinely write in different styles, I first came across her with the Temeraire novels which are adult fantasy and loved them - the first few in the series anyway. I liked Spinning Silver a lot too but I listened to it on Audible and it was beautifully read which of course adds so much.

"Antifan" - what a good word! I share your sentiments.

I wouldn't read War and Peace again and not because it's so long! I read it when I should have been revising for my mock O levels and was completely blown away by it, Natasha was the first heroine I really fell in love with, I'm still indignant about Tolstoy turning her into a nappy obsessed wifie at the end which shows how little he knew about women! I'd be afraid it wouldn't have that impact (and I couldn't hack the Masonic stuff again). Likewise I wouldn't re-read Margaret Irwin's novels again which kept me entirely enthralled for 3 weeks in hospital in Galway when I was 14. My mother would bring me a new one every day and I fell totally romantically in love with Prince Rupert and The marquis of Montrose and learnt a lot about the Civil War well. I have a horrid feeling I might find them overblown these days.

I agree with you totally about Lord of the Flies. It's the only book which was proposed for one of my book groups (the one that had quite a few challenging books) that several members said flatly that they not only refused to read it again but wouldn't come to the meeting either as they didn't even want to hear it discussed.

The Second Sleep was on a par with this one! And derivative too.

The Bandit Queen by Parini Shroff. Goodness this is fun! Geeta is living peacefully as a widow in a rural Indian village until other members of her loan group decide they'd like to be widows too... It's an adventure story, a revenge thriller, very funny in places and takes some extremely surprising turns. An absolute pleasure. Act of Oblivion by Robert Harris. And what a disappointment this was. Robert Harris is on my automatic buy list, this is a man who can make a book about a group of modern cardinals locked up in conclave to elect a pope exciting so how did he manage to make a cat and mouse story of the pursuit of two of the regicides who signed Charles I's death warrant so tedious? It was far too long, he kept drifting off into side stories that kept distracting from the plot and generally lacked pace. the one thing that was really interesting was his descriptions of the Puritan colonies in New England which make me very glad I didn't have to experience them.

Possibly the living belongs to the Martyrs Memorial Trust like the living of the church in the village where I grew up. They were closely allied to the Methodists and the services were very low indeed

Take a look at Femina the free mag that comes with our local newspaper, the Sud Ouest on Saturdays. As my daughter says even the problems on the problem page are dull. But then life in this part of rural France is so vibrant that when a traffic light was installed in the village we were living in (the first and on a small side road) it got a full quarter page write up with three pictures.

I read some rather more glowing reviews of this and was half of a mind to add it to the tbr pile. I won't bother now, thanks!

Dead Rich by G W Shaw (who also writes detective fiction as William Shaw) is about life on the open waves - in a Russian oligarch's super yacht in the Caribbean. Kai, a rootless, formerly reasonably successful rock person, is invited on her father's yacht by his girlfriend, having no idea that daddy is one of the richest men in the world. It's just the first of the things he's pretty clueless about, he makes one of those mistakes so stupid that leave you wondering if this person deserves to live even in the pages of a thriller, yet at other times he seems to have almost superhuman powers of observation and ability. It's billed as a page turning, heart stopping thriller and I suppose that if you read it quickly enough you might not notice some of the inconsistancies in the plot or how everything is far too neatly tied up at the end. It was all a bit too Jeffery Archer for me.

Isn't she pretty! We had a cat who wasn't a rescue as such - she had been living wild in the forest and was tempted to live with humans by three square a day and a comfy billet when she was about 8 months old who was probably the most affectionate thing we've ever had. She never forgot where she came from though, each summer she would disappear to live wild, come back for two or three days to stuff herself and then go off again. When it got colder she would revert to being a fireside cat.

Another of the books I read many years ago when I was living in Hong Kong. I agree, it is amazing!

Just seen that Ann Patchett has a new book out, Tom's Lake. Now to wait until it comes out in paperback, sigh! I'm also waiting for the paperback of Jane Haper's Exiles which is September I think.

My Brilliant Friend is exceptional as is the second one in the series so don't worry!

I listened to The Bookseller of Inverness on Audible and it was so good that I bought the book as part of my husband's birthday present. Then I can read it myself! I agree about The Seeker, it's excellent. I'd never heard of her until I picked it up at a second hand book sale last year.

I've just listened to this on Audible and it's a hoot!

I read that years ago when I was living in Hong King and loved it.

The problem is that authors often have to proof read their own books these days, even with the big publishers, and if you have written something your brain sees what it wanted to write and not what is actually on the page so it glides over mistakes unless they're glaring. That's especially true if you have to re-read twice in quick succession

A Game of Sorrows by SJ Maclean is the second in her series about Alexander Seaton. It's 1628, Alexander has made a new life in Aberdeen and is about to leave for a mission on the continent when a stranger arrives, proclaims himself to be his cousin and whisks him off to Ulster to help raise a curse that has been placed on his mother's family whom Alexander knows nothing about. This really is first class historical fiction, it feels utterly real and people behave as of their time, there isn't that sense of 21st century attitudes in 17th century heads that bedevils so much historical fiction and the characterisation is excellent. It was an absolute pleasure to read a novel set in a period I know very little too. Highly recommended but do read the first in the series The Redemption of Alexander Seaton which is set in Banff two years earlier. I was saying how much I was enjoying the book at my writing group and one of the other members said she was in Shona Maclean's class at school in Banff and at the same university too. Small world!

Absolutely! We have an old wine chai where they used to make wine attached to the house which basically houses the washing machine and junk. It's just too easy to let it fill up with stuff that's "too good to throw away" but which we have no use for. However I do repurpose my husband's walkers when they develop cracks - they're very useful for propping up half broken branches on fruit trees or supporting honeysuckle!

The Crown in Cris by Alexander Lerman is about the lead up to the abdication of Edward VIII. it's a superbly written, fluent and fascinating account of something I thought I knew a fair amount about and it turns out that I didn't. One of the things that comes across very clearly is how devastating most people, public and politicians alike, found even the idea that a monarch could voluntarily lay down his crown because of a woman of somewhat dubious reputation - and it was dubious, and how hard most of the inner circle tried to keep him on the throne even when they thought he would make a lousy and irresponsible king. I ended up feeling quite sorry for Wallis even though "hubris" comes to mind. There's a follow up to this about the Windsors during the war years which I'm very keen to read but will have to wait until it comes out in paperback.

I've been hearing a lot about this book. Thanks for the review, it's been added to the wishlist!

I agree I thoroughly enjoyed this though unlike you I didn't guess the main protagonist!

That's a wonderful colour Luna!