France
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Posts posted by France
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3 hours ago, muggle not said:
I will have to read more of her work. She has quite a history in the SF field of writing, a few of her awards:
She was inducted by the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2009[6][7] and the Science Fiction Writers of America named her its 28th SFWA Grand Master in 2011.[8]
If you haven't read To Say Nothing of the Dog yet you've got a treat in store!
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I agree with you, this book is such a pleasure. But then I love nearly all of Connie Willis's books.
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20 hours ago, Hux said:
I now know the generation whose mind it most attracts, and that it must always substantially remain a novel of adolescence written by a retarded adolescent.
9/10
What a perceptive remark. I read this when I was about 17, and yes, I adored it. It's not a book I've ever wanted to revisit though.
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3 hours ago, muggle not said:
. Yarrros though continues to spend way too much writing of sex in the book. I find myself skipping over those lengthy pages.
Me too!
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Hope I Get Old Before I Die by David Hepworth is definitely one for the older generation who can actually remember Roger Daltrey singing about how he hoped to die before he got old or their children who discovered that their parents' tastes weren't too bad in some respect. For those who aren't already familiar with music from the 60s and 70s this story of the remarkable longevity of some of the groups and artists (and we aren't just talking of the Rolling Stones) will not mean much.
David Hepworth is a music journalist who has written several other books on the music of the same period and is a funny and clever author who obviously loves his subject without being too dazzled by it. I've read other books by him and think he stretched out his material a bit too much in this book but even so his style made it a good read and a lot of what he wrote about was fascinating - especially if you already like the music. And I'd never realised what an all round nice guy Bruce Springsteen is.
Death at the Sign of the Rook by Kate Atkinson , the sixth in her series with private detective Jackson Brodie, seems to be a bit f a Marmite book. People either loathe it because it isn't a conventional detective novel and think it's too slow or love it. I'm in camp no 2. It does start slowly with a murder mystery weekend at a decaying country house, then going back in time a little to when Brodie is called in by the children of a recently deceased woman to trace the disappearance of a picture from her bedroom, but Atkinson is such an entertaining writer that for me the lack of initial pace didn't matter. She juggles a lot of themes, some of them preposterous but all in all this was huge fun.
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I went off David Lodge entirely (though he was an excellent author)after one of his articles in a series he wrote for the Independent in the early 90s on the art of Fiction in which he said that a Mills and Boon author had plagariazed one of his books, turning a serious story into a romance. Her career was wrecked. Mills and Boon cancelled her contract (4 more books) and she sued on the basis that a) she had never read David Lodge's book and b)her story was based on Mrs Gaskall's North and South. He was forced to admit in court that his book was based on North and South too and had to pay substantial damages, but the M&B author's career was shot. Mud sticks.
I remember the original article and even while I still thought it was based on fact I was struck by the unpleasant superiority of his tone, how dare a lowly romance author use a similar plot line to a proper intellectual like himself.
I haven't been able to stomach him since.
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Conratulations! He's gorgeous!
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23 hours ago, muggle not said:
I cannot find "All the Colors of the Dark" on your reading list??
I rad it in October last year.
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It's been too long since I did a catch up!
I probably wouldn't have bothered with The Wedding People by Alison Espach which is described as Romance by the publisher if it hadn't been for the Guardian saying it was a book to read in 2025. Yes, there is romance but basically it's a whip-smart social comedy and very funny in places. Phoebe arrives at a luxury hotel intending to spend her last evening looking at the view, eating oysters and drinking champagne before ending it and finds out she's the only guest in the place not there for a week long wedding. Without meaning to she gets involved with the bride and the rest of the party and everything gets busy. Clever, well written and charming.
Long Island by Colm Toibin is a follow up to Brooklyn which I absolutely loved. It's 1976 and Eillis, is in a marital crisis and goes back to Ireland with her two children for her mother's 80th birthday while her husband decides what to do. And there's still a lot of unfinished business from when she made her sudden return to the States 20 years before. As ever Toibin's writing is sublime and Eilis is a fascinating character but this book lacks some of the punch of Brooklyn, possibly because it's revisiting some of the same ground. Even so it's still one of the best books I've read this year.
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To be honest I find this series dull and I love Vera and Jimmy Perez.
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I read this about 20 year ago and remember it as being long and a bit of a slog. Ian Pears is much admired for his historical fiction and I'm not sure why, there are loads of authors who are better than him in the ability to draw you into a different time and a different mind set, above all are better story tellers.
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5 hours ago, Madeleine said:
I actually think the first book was better. And don't worry, the puppies are fine!
Glad to hear it!
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This doesn't sound any better than his first book which I gave up on eventually. But I would probably have gone on reading if there had been uncertainty about puppies!
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On 2/15/2025 at 1:07 PM, France said:
Just starting The Dead of Winter by Sally Clegg.
This isn't a quick read! It's a slim book about the rituals and creatures of wintertime , particularly those associated with Christmas, and while it's fascinating the author is a little po-faced!
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If you have Audible Plus (titles you can listen to for free) included in your subscription I strongly recommend The Wolf Den by Elodie Harper. It's about a brothel in Pompei and has both a great storyline and a pitch perfect narrator in Antonia Beamish.
Audible Plus can be quite difficult to find good books on but there are gems among the dross. A lot of books are up there for a limited time (you'll usually see a note) so the trick is to download it before. They don't then take the download back!
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Just starting The Dead of Winter by Sally Clegg.
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For me Liane Moriaty hasn't written a really good book since the compulsive Big Little Lies, but oh boy is she back on form with Here One Moment. On a flight from Hobert to Sydney an elderly woman stands up and predicts the age and kind of death for everyone on the plane. A psychic or a nutjob? Then the deaths start. The story arc follows the woman and what took her to that place and several on board as they either ignore her prediction or try to change fate. It's full of twists that keep you guessing all the way to the final page and isn't predictable.
Thoroughly enjoyable and highly recommended.
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The second one sounds like it could be one of Jane Fallon's.
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On 2/9/2025 at 12:54 AM, muggle not said:
4. All the Colors of the Dark - Chris Whitman - 4.5/5 - excellent book. The last 70 pages or so I could not put the book down and it was probably one of the better endings that I have read for many years.
I agree. It's rare to find a book with a genuinely unputdownable ending, that was ne of them.
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There's a lot of girls of my generation who first fell in love with historical fiction by reading Katherine by Anya Seton. Gosh that was a wonderful book and one I'd never go back to in case it fell short of my memories.
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Two distinctly curate's eggs here.
I had high hopes of High Vaultage by Chris Sugden which is apparently the novelisation of a very successful podcast he has ben running. It's a steam-punk world where Even Greater London stretches over the whole of the south of England, Queen Victoria is largely machine due to repairs done to moving parts after repeated assassination attempts and Clara Entwhistle and former Inspector Fleet (former because he was shot, declared dead and then repaired and it's going to take years to get his death revoked) are trying to get their detective agency going.
This looked great fun, it won the Wodehouse prize and Chris Sugden has been compared to both Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams. Sadly he isn't anywhere near either. Parts of the book were funny, but not funny enough and the non-funny bits dragged. It became an utter slog.
The Wicked Boy by Kate Summerscale was a lot better and the good bits far outweighed the slow parts. In June 1895 Robert and Nattie Coobles, brothers aged 13 and 11, told their neighbours their mother had gone to Liverpool to look after a sick relative and went to Lords to watch cricket. Their father was at sea and the boys asked a family acquaintance to stay with them for the time being. Then people started noticing the smell...
There isn't much mystery about the murder itself, not about who did it though the details of what really happened probably differ from the official line. The descriptions of police procedure, trials, the way the law operated, the behaviour of the press, the startlingly humane regime at Broadmoor were fascinating, the problem is that Kate Summerscale is in love with her own research and can't resist displaying it. For instance there's far too much detail about the cricket match and how many runs were made etc but the biggest problem was with Robert Coombes' later life which wasn't particularly relevant. Yes, as a boy he committed a heinous crime for whatever reason but he wasn't the first one to reform and a couple of chapters would have covered his afterlife, instead it stretched to over 60 pages. So brilliant on parts, saggy in others but still very interesting.
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The BBC 4 part adaptation of Gill Hornby's novel about Cassandra Austen has just started. It launches in May in the US.
I thoroughly enjoyed the book when it came out (far more than The Other Bennet Sister which came out at the same time and which, being somewhat melodramatic, overshadowed this quieter book).
Based on one episode this is back to what the Beeb does really well, polished drama, impeccable performances, no fancy tricks, stylish and very watchable. If you didn't catch last night's episode, look for it. You're in for a treat.
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40 minutes ago, Madeleine said:
I have this book as I'd heard good reviews.....I will try it, especially as I got it in a discount book shop and only paid about a third of the normal price for it!
I got it discounted on Kobo!
I hope you like it better than me.
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I was disappointed by The Ministry of Time, everything about it sounded so good yet though it was OK it didn't grab me in the way I was expecting.
Madeleine's Book Log 2025
in Book Blogs - Discuss your reading!
Posted
I feel Donna Leon rather ran out of steam in the teens of this series. I gobbled up the first ones then found I was getting less and involved to the point I was stopping searching out her books.