France

Ouch! Poor you, Luna. Hope you feel better soon.

The Hands of the Emperor by Victoria Goddard. Largely taken from the blurb as it's better than how I could give a taster: "An impulsive word can start a war. A timely word can stop one.A simple act of friendship can change the course of history. Cliopher Mdang is the personal secretary of the Last Emperor of Astandalas, the Lord of Rising Stars, the Lord Magus of Zunidh, the Sun-on-Earth, the god. He has spent more time with the Emperor than any other person. He has never once touched his lord, called him by name, never initiated a conversation. One day Cliopher suggests the Sun-on-Earth has a holiday. He could have been executed for blasphemy. The acceptance upends the world." I was Kobo diving among my to read collection and had no memory of buying this book, let alone what it was about so it was something of a surprise, the first one being how long it is - 2000 pages on the Kobo. The second is that though it is hardly action driven it doesn't get boring or flag despite the length even though the last part could have been wrapped up a little more quickly. It's a gentle story and thoroughly nice, managing at the same time to stay well clear of being sickly sweet. I really enjoyed it, much more so than A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet which is what's usually mentioned when talking of gentle fantasy or SF.

Couldn't that have been JK simply having her character getting it wrong?

You really don't like Natasha Pulley! I would say she goes further than magical realism into outright fantasy and they aren't historical so much as outright alternative reality. I love her books though the Bedlam Stacks isn't one of her best, imo. To really appreciate her books you ought to read the first four in the order in which they were published as the same characters pop up in minor or major roles.

37°C this afternoon and we're getting all of 0.1 mm of rain during the night. It will be cooler though.

In The Invisible Life of Addie La Rue Addie has a picnic near the church of Sacre Cour in Monmartre, making particular reference to the steps. The date is 1752 ish. At that date the only way of getting up there was by sheep track or ladders and the church wasn't built until the late 19th century.

Femina by Janina Ramirez is a fascinating feminist look at what women really did in Medieval times (medieval as in from the end of the Romans to the later Middle Ages, post Black Death). I've always considered myself reasonably knowledgeable about history but I had no idea how important women rulers were during the Dark Ages - for instance Alfred the Great's daughter was the one who consolidated the kingdom not him or that there were female Viking warriors, though admittedly neither did historians until DNA testing was done on the elaborately buried skeleton of a warrior of importance. It's very well written, a pleasure to read and quite an eye opener in several aspects. Highly recommended.

Granted it was written before he dumped poor Catherine but nothing I've read about her indicates that she had much in common with Dora, though she probably did suffer from post natal depression. He was a brilliant writer but he didn't do women very well, they tend to be stereotypes whereas his male characters leap off the page with their vitality.

I with you on this one Madelaine, I enjoyed it but it didn't really wow me, probably because of all the surfing. I far preferred Daisy Jones and the Six.

If they reflect anything in his marriage it would be what he wanted the public to think not anything approaching truth. He was absolutely foul to his wife, she had been married to him for over 20 years and had 10 children when he fell in love with an 18 year old actress and first of all publicly said that his wife was a bad mother and was mentally ill, then tried tried to have her institutionalised. That didn't work so he bullied her into a separation and took the children. None of the heroes in his books behave like that.

I read this due to a recommendation from someone on Bookgrouponline who often had surprisingly similar tastes to my own and approached it with some trepidation, cowboy stories and films are so not my thing and it's also a chunkster so looked like it was going to be a long haul. I think I read it in about 4 days, I was totally engrossed and it's one of those books I wholeheartedly suggest to others. A really terrific read, and no, I haven't read anything else about cowboys since.

Messalina being probably the greatest villaness of them all.

The Vanishing of Class 3B by Jackie Kabler is a Did Not Finish and a Do Not Bother. It sounded promising - a whole class of primary school children vanishes on a school trip but when chapter 3 or something introduces someone who praactically has "I"m a baddy" written on his forehead it's time to give up. What Abigail Did That Summer by Ben Aaronovitch What fun this was! Sheer pleasure for lovers of the series. The Bullet that Missed by Richard Osman This was slightly slower to get going that his previous books and even sillier in places but if you appreciate his writing and his humour (quite a few people don't) it's very enjoyable indeed. Black as He's Painted by Ngaio Marsh This is a strange one, written in the 70's it's apparently one of her most loved books but it's a bit of an eyeopener now. The plot revolves around the president of the newly independent African state of Ng'onbwana who went to school with detective Roderick Allen and a murder in the Ng'onbwanan embassy. It wasn't written that long ago but it's full of language and attitudes that you just wouldn't see in a book these days (I wonder if it'll get "edited" for modern sensibilities). It's the first Ngaio Marsh I've read and once I got past my surprise I rather enjoyed it. The Midnight House by Amanda Geard This was a Kindle cheapie I got for a weekend going to and from Paris anbd it's excellent travel reading. There's nothing very surprising in it, three story lines beginning of the war, mid fifties and present, set in Ireland, which slowly unravel a mystery but it's nicely written and ideal for the metro as you don't have to concentrate too hard.

I wouldn't describe Becky Sharp as a villaness, more of an absolute survivor, though I grant you she's thoroughly devious and always prepared to backstab but she does have redeeming points. Have you read 101 Dalmatians? My children loved me reading it to them, it's very funny, and Cruella was a much more rounded figure than in the film - she was expelled from school for drinking ink and all her food tastes of pepper but she was a real villaness, totally focused on what she wanted. I didn't enjoy Gone Girl but the wife, was she called Amy?, was a thoroughly nasty piece of work. Most stepmothers in fairy tales are cast as villanesses, Goneril and Regan from King Lear might qualify or are they just thoroughly greedy and unpleasant?

I'm so pleased to see that the two founders of Slightly Foxed, the literary magazine and podcast, have been awarded MBE's in the King's first Birthday Honours list for services to literature. I wonder if Camilla had anything to do with it, she's said to be a keen reader. For those who haven't come across Slightly Foxed, it's a quarterly magazine with essays about books, books that have slipped under the radar, that are a bit quirky or different, have been unjustly forgotten or that the author of the article loves and wants to bring to everyone's attention. My daughters give me a subscription each year for my birthday and I love it, I'm not always very interested in all the books written about but there's always something that catches my fancy, I've found some really brilliant books thanks to SF and the editions are so nice to look at and dip into that they'll never find their way to the charity shop!

Hi there MM! Good to see you again!

Heresy by S J Parris treads much the same routes as CJ Samson's Shardlake series, though this one is set in Elizabethan England and Giordano Bruno, the protaganist, is based on a real person. He's "different" too, Shardlake was a hunchback, Bruno is an ex monk, nominally still catholic but would be accused of heresy should the Inquisition ever catch up with him. There are a spate of murders in a college in Oxford which Bruno sets out to solve. It's well written, pacy and interesting, not quite up to Shardlake but still very well worth reading. I have the secobnd in the series in my TBR pile Red Dirt Road by S R White and The Vanishing of Class 3B by Jackie Kabler were both DNF. There were undoubtedly good stories in there but sadly the story telling made them infinitely tedious. The Words I Never Wrote by Jane Thynne covers much of the same ground as her Clara Vine series, two sisters, one living in Nazi Germany, the other in the UK. Misunderstandings, gradual realisation of what the Nazi regime is up etc. As ever Jane Thynne's scene setting is impeccable and the story is good too, I prefer Clara Vine though. Ann Cleeves nearly always produces a winner and The Rising Tide which is the ninth in her Vera series and is a kind of locked room mystery on Lindisfarne is no exception. Thoroughly enjoyable. I galloped through it.

Where are you Poppy?! It's 25- 28, humid with rumbles of thunder in the background near Bordeaux. Going to be like that all week apparently.

I absolutely loathed Alice in Wonderland when I read it aged 8. I don't know why I just felt there was something "wrong" with it. Actually, I'm not sure I know anyone who liked it as a child. Is it like clowns, something that adults think children like?

It isn't a love story, as in romance, at all though how much the author loves Florence comes across very clearly. And the "will they, won't they meet again" is about Evelyn and Tremp (and she's both gay and 40 years older than him!).

Enjoy! I thought it was great fun.

Still Life by Sarah Winman is a real Marmite book, lots of people find it too inconsequential, too whimsical. I love Marmite and I adored it. The story kicks off in 1945 when Evelyn an elderly art historian helping the allies with looted artworks outside Florence meets Ulysses Temper, known as Temp, a young soldier and their chance meeting kicks off a series of events, including a whole series of 'will they, won't they?' ever meet agains. The blurb accurately describes it as a love letter to Florence, the writing is beautiful, and there are brilliant if frequently eccentric characters and a thoroughly engaging parrot. Yes it is whimsical but it's also wholly delightful. Playing Under the Piano by Hugh Bonneville was a Kobo cheapie, described as "comedy gold". It isn't though it's amusing in places and he comes over as a thoroughly nice chap. Pleasant and Undemanding. The It Girl by Ruth Ware is a pacey thriller which is an awful lot better than the only other one of her books I've read (called The Woman in Cabin 10 I think). The ending is a bit rushed but still worth reading.

We did study Frankenstein for A level English lit though it wasn't one of our set books as it was a continuation of 18thC gothic literature - we had 18th century literature for our set books as our teacher said we'd never read them again (with reason in most cases), Joseph Andrews, The Castle of Otranto, Vathek... Goodness they were dull! Frankenstein was good though and we'd have loved a bit of Jane Austen as light relief from Joseph flipping Andrews which was universally loathed.

Well I was watching the Arena programme about Brian Jones and the Stones and they showed footage from the Hyde Park concert in his memory, July 69. I was there! Didn't see myself though!

The Second Sight of Zachary Cloudsley by Sean Lock and Clara and Olivia by Lucy Ashe have quite a lot in common in then they've both been highly recommended by review sites, they're both very readable, very pleasant, charming and ultimately don't really lead anywhere. Nice reads but not memorable. Some of you may remember the notorious Hitler Dairies from the early 80's which were supposed to be the discovery of the century, Stern Magazine in Germany paid a fortune to acquire them, and which turned out to be very obvious fakes to those who took a close look. No one did for some time because they were all too excited about the "potential". Selling Hitler by Robert Harris was a bit too long and detailed in places, especially when reading on a Kobo, but wow what an eyeopener into to the mindset of those who so convince themselves that they about to make a fortune that they ignore all the glaring pointers that things are going very, very wrong. Instead in an effort to prove that they're right they just go on piling up the mistakes, or in this case, chucking more money the forger's way so he could produce even more 'proof' in the way of diaries chock full of errors, written in exercise books using a type of chemical on the paper that wasn't used until after the war and with letters stuck to the front that were supposed to be AH, and were in fact FH and made of plastic (also not invented when Hitler was "writing" these dairies). And then when everything does hit the fan there's a corporate rush to nail a couple of, usually lower ranking, scapegoats while the rest of the bigwigs get off scot free, or maybe even with a promotion. Just like bankers. As ever, Robert Harris is an excellent writer and this is an interesting read.