France

One reason why you might find Hornblower/Aubrey/Bolitho etc all a bit samey is because their authors have read the same memoires and biographies for research, Cochrane in particular. I think every one of those fictional captains has an encounter where he takes one or two much larger ships by sailing into attack and at the critical point calling below decks for the soldiers to come up and board. Thinking they are about to be overwhelmed the enemy surrenders. There are no soldiers. That was one of the first of Cochrane's noteworthy exploits when he was still only about 22. Edward Pellew is another whose adventures are often borrowed by fictional sailors.

It's 33°C (91°F) and still. All garden work has halted, I'm staying in the shade.

That's another one I read in my teens, I bought it because the Penguin edition of the time had the most evocative cover, a single ruined arch in a landscape (quite a well known painting I think). I know I enjoyed it but I'm sorry to admit that I can remember much more about the cover than I can about the content.

How are you getting on with it? I'm thinking that it might be time for a re-read.

I read W & P when I should have been revising for my mock O levels (which dates me!). I lay on my bunk and read obsessively for 10 days and did all my exams with practically no revision. My marks surprised all my teachers who started muttering about me perhaps not being so thick after all. I've never tried to reread it because I'm afraid I wouldn't capture that magical immersion I felt aged 15 but most of the plot is still very clear and I'm still furious about how Tolstoy portrayed Natasha in the last chapter.

This was the first of Michael Palin's books I listened to on Audible and now I seize them every time they come up on a two for one (I'm really mean about my credits). He reads his own books and he's a wonderful narrator: warm, funny, self deprecating.

I'm falling behind with comments on what I've read, so a very quick round up on some of them: Abide With Me - Elizabeth Strout, this story of a widowed minister in the late 1950's and his daughters just re-inforced my love of Elizabeth Strout's books. Moving and wonderfully written. Close to Home -Cara Hunter. Real page turner of a police proceedural. There are bits which you realise don't quite add up once you've finished but it's such a good read it doesn't matter. Also read The Whole Truth which is no 5 in the series. A Country Road, A Tree - Jo Baker. Biographical fiction about Samuel Beckett's life inFrance during the war. She has a dry style but it was an excellent read. The Darkest Evening -Ann Cleeves . A welcome return to form after the disppointing The Long View. She Lies in Wait - Gytha Lodge. Police proceedural. Don't bother. The Killing Season-Mason Cross. Not unlike Jack Reacher but very readable. The Midnight Queen - Sylvia Hunter Fantasy set in an alternative England in the 18th century. Very enjoyable. The Fifth Season - N K Jemisin. Can't think how I didn't know about her before this came up as a cheapie on Kindle. Winner of the Hugo prize and really, really good. The first of a trilogy, I'll be reading everything of hers I can lay my hands on, fortunately she's got quite a substantial backlist.. 4

A lot of them aren't chateau bottled and if it's labled as say 'Bordeaux rosé' some companies have no compunction about putting an entirely different wine into the second load of bottling to the first providing it's all Bordeaux rosé so two bottles bought at the same time can taste quite different. (Know this for a fact, my husband worked for one of those companies!) Marks do buy from chateaux and re-lable the bottle (or did) but even so I'd suggest going somewhere like Majestic and getting a bottle that you know comes directly from the chateau.

Really? I knew Anne had a sister who was Henry's mistress when I was about 14. OK, I was a history nut but I wasn't that clever and certainly not obsessed with the Tudors so didn't read an awful lot about them.

What a shame. To be honest, and it's not just prejudice because I live here, I think that French wines that cost about the same as Australian ones are often better, because transport costs play a major part. The French also usually go for blended wines rather than single grape varieties. I remember a wine merchant in the Uk telling me that all wine has a certain amount of fixed cost, taxes, duty, transport can vary a little which is approximately the same for bottles costing £5 and bottle costing £10 (or £500), so what the extra £5 reperesents is the quality of the product. If you want to give French wines a try look for chateau bottled wines "mis en bouteille au chateau" rather than ones produced by companies. It's not an abolute guarentee of good wine but given that most French chateaux sell a lot of their product locally it's usally quite drinkable.

I live near Bordeaux so there's loads of excellent wine made locally (our mayor makes a wonderful rosé and a sparkling pink which is our go-to party wine). Then if you want to up the game a little there are Graves wines just over the river (lovely, flinty dry white and reds) and a little further away there's St Emilion and the Medoc where bottles can get seriously expensive. I went to a wine tasting at Chateau Haut Brion (one of the top 4 Bordeaux chateaux) where they opened two bottles for a group of 15 - 2005 vintage, which retailed at £500-700 and £750- 950 respectively! They don't sell wine at the chateau either! I also love Sauternes and it's close cousin made on our side of the river, Loupiac, whch are vins liquoreux, sweet and aromatic, and are defintely not the same as most sweet wines (made quite differently) and drunk here with savory dishes, not sweet ones. I occasionally take tour groups of mostly Americans to a couple of the Sauternes chateaux and even those who go saying they hate sweet wines are usually totally converted by the end of the tasting.

French was used almost as much as Russian by the upper classes in Tolstoy's day (and in Natasha and Pierre's too). I adored war and Peace when I read it aged 15 (I did skim the battle scenes and masonic stuff though) and can still remember nearly all of the plot which shows how much impact it made. If you aren't getting on with the translation it's worth looking out for another, my book group read Anna Karenina (also read as a teenager and almost completely forgotton) and among 9 of us there were seven different translations in totally different styles.

The Penguin Lessons by Tom Mitchell is 99p on Kindle today. It's delightful true story and not to be confused with Away With the Penguins which is, I believe for I haven't read it and am going on the voews of people whose reading tastes I share, a sacharine novel about an older woman finding herself.

Lily James drove me mad, all that pouting as if she were trying to immitate a duck.

I'm sure he had an effect, just like Charlotte Bronte did apparently with Jane Eyre and her description of Lowood School (I think that's the name!) which highlighted the conditions for so-called charity cases and they were much improved.

It was Queen Charlotte (wife of George III ) who brought Christmas trees to England. Albert popularised them.

I've read 42 but have to admit that I can barely remember anything about several of them including Silas Marner and The Time Machine. I do wonder who wrote some of the blurbs, definitely not stylistically equal to the books being promoted - eg " This deeply personal and unforgettable account of a day in the life at a Soviet labour camp in the 1950s is highly considered to be one of the greats of contemporary literature." (I did read it when I was about 18 and I'm afraid the only thing I can remember about it is that the prisoners were made to sleep with their arms outside the covers. )

Connie Willis's To say Nothing of the Dog is a time shift novel that pays homage to Three Men in a Boat who make a fleeting appearance. It's about three historians from the twentyfirst century sent back to Victorian times to find out what the Bishop's Bord Stump, supposedly destroyed in the bombing of Coventry Cathedral looked like. It's very funny.

I enjoyed A Room of One's Own which I read for a book club but one of our members, Welsh from the valleys, was so enraged by it that he could barely say "Pheasant, we never got pheasant!".

Yes it does but it's not the same psychologically as judging by eye!

I hate reading long books on Kindle. It's something to do with not knowing how far in you are and how far you've got to go and also to do with the concentration, I don't absorb as much when reading on Kindle (Kobo in my case), I think it might have something to do with the smaller page area. I'm thinking of upgrading my Kobo to one of the bigger waterproof ones anyway, my current one is beginning to show its age, and will be interested to see if it changes my reading patterns.

It sounds a lot better than The Long Call which is the first in her new series. That one just didn't hit the mark.

The Old Curiousity Shop - Charles Dickens

Is there a prejudice against Glasweigian authors? I must admit that I can't think of any but I don't really register where authors are from.

The Watchmaker of Filagree Street, a slightly-alternative world fantasy set in London, was one of my favourite reads a couple of years ago. I'm happy to say that The Lost Future of Pepperharrow, the sequel and set in Japan is every bit as good, perhaps even a little better. Very highly recommended. The Penguin Lessons is totally different and an absolute joy. Tom Mitchell was a 23 year old paying for his travels in South America by teaching in a boarding school in Buenos Aires when he came across an oil covered penguin that he took back to the flat he was borrowing to wash clean and return to the sea. Except the penguin refused to leave so Tom ended up by smuggling the penguin, by then named Juan Salvador, back to his school where Juan rapidly became an unoffical mascot. I It's a short book, and not the best written stylistically speaking but that doesn't matter at all, I can't believe anyone reading it wouldn't fall for penguin charm! Very well worth searching out.