France

I felt like that about the last chapter in War and Peace. Nearly 50 years later and I'm still furious about how Tolstoy thought Natasha would turn out.

About 10 days ago About 10 days ago. I've been having a lovely time binge listening! The catalogue is quite difficult to wade through as typical Audible, the categorising of books seems to be quite erratic, finding a classic in Sci Fi and Mystery for instance. The classic section is very good (I already had quite a few in my library) and they have most of Bryson's books too.

I also have a first edition of The Silmarillion and it's worth only slightly more than any other second hand hardback because the print run was huge.

Or listen to Victorian literature on Audible or any of the other talking book sites. As someone said elsewhere Victorian literature was made for reading aloud, I didn't like Trollope at all before I discovered him on Audible now I'm addicted. I'll be moving on to Dickens soon (I still have a hang up about reading him from having being made to plough through David Copperfield when I was 8).

The Perfect Lie by Jo Spain is 99p/cents on Amazon Uk and France and Kobo UK. It's a real page turner, one of her best.

There's an art to translation, one which I don't have at all. The translator can either translate literally or try to give a flavour of the original. A few years ago my book group read Phillipe Claudel's Les Ames Grises (Grey Souls) which has two different translators, one English, one American. One stuck very closely to the original which is written in a rather jerky, colloquial style, the other was far more poetic in its phrasing and depending on which version we'd read we had very different reactions. The same book group also read Anna Karenina and I think that among 10 of us there were 7 different translations (mine was awful!) and goodness some were leaden, usually the ones that tried to stick too closely to the original Russian phrasing.

Jodie is a wonderful actor but she hasn't nailed the doctor imo. I have no idea if it's her interpretation or the script but she's come over as ditsy and infuriatingly girly - just what you don't want for the doctor. Add that to generally dull story lines and I lost interest. ( Writing as someone who is old enough to have been watching when the Daleks first invaded London - from behind the safety of the sofa - and has been an avid watcher ever since.)

The Widows of Malabar Hill - Sujata Massey It's 1921, Perveen Mistry is Bombay's only female lawyer. Although she isn't officially allowed to practice she assists her father, and works on cases where a woman is needed, such as this one involving the inheritance of three Muslim widows who keep purdah. This book really works on several levels, it's a good mystery, it has an engaging heroine, it paints an evocative picture of Bombay at the time and it gently but persistently shines a light on how difficult life could be for women in those days. And as Perveen comes from a Zoroastrian family there's lots of fascinating information about that too. It's a light breezy read, great fun and I thoroughly recommend it V2 - Robert Harris Like Munich, Robert Harris has taken real life events, added a dollop of fictional characters, put them into a tight time frame and crafted them all into a thriller. This time it's about the efforts to destroy the launching pads for the V2 rockets which were deadly, disastrous for morale and impossible to shoot down in the air, unlike the V1s. Funnily enough though there are books and programmes made about the V1s or doodlebugs and the raids on Pennemunde to bomb the launch pads there isn't much about V2s. I found it absolutely fascinating and read it straight through, it doesn't have a strictly linear plot line which might annoy some people and follows the fictional Dr Rudi Graf near the Hague, chief engineer at the launch site and friend of von Braun who actually developed the V2, from the early 1930s and the beginning of the rocket's developement and Kay Caton-Walsh, a WAAF officer, one of a team of female mathematicians who are trying to plot where the rockets are being launched from so the RAF can launch a raid. The two don't meet though their stories intertwine. Robert Harris wrote this in 14 weeks during lockdown and I feel that the speed of his writing shows in places, this book lacks the richness of detail and character that made Conclave, Munich and especially An Officer and A Spy such exceptional reads but even so it's still very good indeed.

I'll be reading Mary Lawson, she was already on my wish list.

I may break a long standing habit and actually watch some of the tour this afternoon as it's going through our town. As it's the first properly sunny day for ages and everyone is pulling out all the stops with places to eat and drink, entertainments and fireworks later the place will be packed so I'll get the bird's eye view on the telly.

I enjoy these too, I've read all of them and I'm beginning to wonder where she can go from there. Each one os set on a different island and surely she's going to run out of them soon.

That's two more on the wish list! Have you read Paula Byrne's book on Evelyn Waugh and the Lygons, Mad World? That's exceptional too.

I only discovered Barbara Pym a few years ago and she now one of my favourite authors. I want to read the new biography about her by Paula Byrne whom I enjoy a lot, her book about Jane Austen was brilliant and looked at her in an entirely different way.

I love the Cazelet chronicles too but honestly don't bother with number 5 which she wrote quite some time after the others and is set in the 50s. It's perfectly readable but doesn't have the magic of the previous ones and slightly took the shine off them for me.

The Water Clock by Jim Kelly Published in about 2002 this is the beginning of a series set near Ely featuring a local journalist, Philip Dryden who has a wife in a coma following a car accident two years previously. It’s the depth of winter and freezing cold. A car is found dumped in a drainage ditch and there is a body in the boot which appears to be linked to a violent robbery on World Cup day in 1966. Shortly afterwards a corpse that has been there for at least thirty years is found on the roof of Ely cathedral. Philip believes the two might be connected and is soon being warned off investigating any further but his real obsession is finding out who caused the accident that immobilized his wife. The investigative part of the story is competent but not outstanding, what really makes this book stand out is the sense of place, he makes them evocative, beguiling and very cold! I barely know the Fens but I almost feel that I’ve been there. I’m really looking forward to reading more in the series and the only really annoying thing is that I got this at a local twice yearly charity book sale and could have got the first five, I only bought two. Oh well, he’s written another series too so I’ve got loads to look forward to. I have no idea who suggested that I should look out for Jim Kelly, but whoever they are, thank you. Behind Closed Doors – B A Paris From the back: "Everyone knows a couple like Jack and Grace." Given the title you can get the gist of the plot. Oh goodness this was bad. It claims to be a gripping, shocking, million copy best seller, ok it was a best seller but unless you’re gripped by juvenile writing and cardboard characters it’s neither gripping nor shocking. I gather the end made up for quite a bit but I didn’t get that far. Wild Strawberries – Angela Thirkell. Angela Thirkell wrote pleasant romantic comedies in the 1930s set in big houses among the comfortably well off. I’ve read a couple and though they are very dated they were nice enough to keep an eye out for any of her other books. Unfortunately Wild Strawberries, one of her early ones, is a bore. It’s populated with single-characteristic characters so lady Emily is vague and constantly losing her glasses while accusing her maid of misplacing them, her daughter is kind and obsessed with her children and keeps on saying fondly ‘Oh wicked ones’. I did finish it but it was an effort.

Reviews are by their very nature highly subjective so what's wrong with giving it one star if you really didn't like it? If you didn't like it but thought it had a few good things in it then give it two stars.

Try coming to rural France, Timebug! I've lived in 3 different places here and mobile signal has been poor in all of them, we've finally got decent internet (most of the time) but I often have to go out in the garden to be able to hear what people are saying. Better than our last house where you had to stand on the well to get a signal! Rosamund Lupton's Three Hours is about a school shooting and nearly all the besieged seniors had forgotten to charge their phones. I have never met a 17 year old who didn't have a charged phone. Fortunately it's a good enough book to be able to suspend disbelief.

I very rarely give one star reviews but I have doled them out to books I haven't finished because I loathed them or were horribly violent.

Yes, it's all explained in the end.

I was given The Kingdoms by Natasha Pulley for my birthday which I absolutely loved. It's strange, stranger than her previous books and definitely not for anyone who can't cope with multiple time lines, shifting alternate realities and not having a clue what's really going on (quite a few of the members of my real life book group!) but I was totally gripped. I really don't know what to think about The Summer Book. I'd heard so much about it, that it's an absolute masterpiece etc and I have to say that it didn't grip me. It didn't bore me either and I have a feeling that I need to read it again. It's very short so that won't be a problem.

Chateau de Sudiraut is one of the top class Sauternes chateaux and right next door to Chateau Y'quem, their second wines (the Castlenau de Sudiraut or Lions de Sudiraut) will both be very well made and lighter than their premium wine but probably the ones to go for. Sauternes is an intense drink and very few people drink more than one or two glasses at a time. It keeps brilliantly in the fridge with the cork put back in (because of the high sugar content, think of how long jam keeps). The purists say you can keep it for 10 days to 3 weeks, I've had an opened bottle in the fridge for over three months and it was still perfect when we finished it.

First thing to know is that Sauternes can be eye-wateringly expensive. The entry level price for Chateau d'Yquem, the top de la top of Sauternes is £250 a bottle! For a good bottle you'd pay 30 euros here, and upwards. There is a reason why it's so expensive; nearly all grapes whether picked by machine or by hand are picked by the bunch. The flavours in the Sauternes grapes come from a microclimate and the grapes ripen unevenly, so the pickers cut out individual ripe grapes, wait a few days for the grapes on the patch to ripen a bit more, go back and cut out the ripe grapes. All Sauternes chateaux have to send their pickers out at least three times before all the grapes are harvested, some like Chateau d'Yquem do it 11 times. Labour costs are huge and there are no shortcuts. Lecture finished! I take groups to Chateau Rayne Vigneau and their wine is delicious. They make 2, their second wine Madame de Vigneau (I think, could be Rayne) is lighter and there's their first wine Chatau de Rayne Vigneau, full bodied and more expensive. They are a premier cru but to be honest any decent Sauternes chateau which bottles at the chateau and isn't dirt cheap should be OK. The rcher the straw colour the more intense the flavour. Drink them chilled, as an aperatif, with snacks, salty food, (absolutely wonderful wth sardine pate!) and surprisingly, Indian food and curries. Not with sweet things, it's too much.

Two really disappointing books recently, frstly Dog Days by Ericka Waller which was highly recommended by a book blog I follow as being feel good and for all lovers of dogs. I love dogs and it was a Kindle cheapie, feel good it isn't (won't go into details for spoilers) but it left a nasty taste in the mouth. The main charecters are George, an extremely grumpy pensioner who has just lost his wife and is angry about it, a councellor to whom it has never occured that he might never have had a girlfriend because ...(not a spoiler it's obvious) - none of his family seem to have had a clue either, and mother with her child in a refuge who won't say what happened to her. The dogs don't really play much of a role ether. She can write though, I hope the next book has a better plot line. I only bought Kirsten Hannah because I was in our local English bookshop and thought I'd better get something and had heard that her descriptions of Alaska are wonderful. That's true, as a love letter to Alaska it really works, as an enthralling story it doesn't. Overblown, cardboard charecters, uneven plotting. Won't read anything by her again. The Miseducation of Evie Epworth by Matson Taylor is a coming of age story set in 1962 and is great fun. 16 year old Evie has to decide what she wants to do with her life while trying to free her farmer father from the clutches of his busty housekeeper Christine. I loved this, only two small quibbles. Firstly in the opening scene Evie catches sight of a neighbour with a cow. All I'd say is that either it was a minature cow or he was standing on a box. Nuff said. Secondly, Christine gets rid of the old friendly Aga and replaces it with a modern electric cooker and you can see wallpaper where the Aga used to be. The author can't ever have seen an Aga, they're built in and weigh a ton, there simply wouldn't be paper behind it. Never mind, still a thorougly enjoyable read.

Yes, it's utterly disgraceful. My youngest daughter was interviewed for a job at one of the big Amazon depots in the south of France as an h&s officer and lets put it this way, she was rather relieved not to be offered the job.

He undoubtedly had contacts - he was a Scottish earl albeit a very poor one which is why he went to sea. He was also very talented and very daring, I think he hadn't made post when he took the two ships and only had a 28 gunner. The ships he captured were fully sized warships (sorry don't have my biography of him to hand so can't give the full details). It's well worth getting hold of his biography, he was quite a character. He was so tall (very unusual for a sailor) that he had to shave with his head sticking out of the trap on the ceiling of his cabin with his mirror on the deck.