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vodkafan

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Everything posted by vodkafan

  1. Thanks Athena, I left Truth or Dare temporarily and read another whole book yesterday, but I will certainly have finished it before the weekend and will review it Saturday.
  2. Half way through Oryx and Crake. It is one of those stories where the reasons for the situation at the start are only revealed piecemeal through the novel one little nugget of information at a time. Also, not a happy story! But worth sticking with I think. At the same time I have also started reading a YA book, Truth or Dare by Celia Rees. It has an autistic character in it, Uncle Patrick, who died long ago , and there seems to be a mystery about him.
  3. Holes 4/5 Louis Sacher Holes was great! A quick read and a joy to read. It was very much a fairy tale book, with just enough elements of reality in it to make you think you are reading a plausible story, so long as you don't stop to wonder at all the miraculous coincidences of destiny. But surely only a complete Grinch would want to. The simple plot just sweeps the reader along, and every little detail is important in the end, even the onions....I was glad I never got to watch the film.
  4. Quick update. Had to give up on the Atlan saga, it was getting a bit stale for me. I read Holes by Louis Sacher instead in one day, that was very good, and have now started Oryx And Crake. Will catch up on my reviews tomorrow.
  5. There have been a few times lately I have wondered why I had children! If they could just go from 12 straight to 20 and miss out the teenage part.....
  6. Devoted Ladies 4/5 Molly Keane My first 4/5 book this year! Molly Keane (a pseudonym) was a name I kept hearing as a good author so ages ago I picked up a couple of her books. In the move, when most of my books got packed away in boxes, this one and a couple of random others (Oryx and Crake, Just Six Numbers) somehow didn't get in with the rest. So I decided it was fate and took these three to work to put in my locker. But I couldn't get into Devoted Ladies immediately. I had to try three times. I didn't initially like any of the characters, who seemed small minded and deliberately nasty, jaded and decadent. Almost gave up but then hit a part where one of the characters is trying to write a novel and is using every excuse not to actually do any writing. It was hilarious. From then on I was hooked and devoured the rest of the book. It is wicked observational writing . The characters are often vicious to each other for their own amusement, but despite I started to warm to some of them and felt sympathy for their sad lives. The ending is brilliant and unexpected.
  7. They are a weird blend. Both unexpectedly adult (the sexual content would not be allowed to be published now, I feel) and at the same time in some ways a childlike fantasy. Can't knock the writing, good descriptions of places and action.
  8. Might look out for those, then. Thanks Madeleine.
  9. Just finished The Dragon by Jane Gaskell. Second part of her Atlan series. I read the first last year but have not reviewed it yet, I will wait until I have completed all four. The most remarkable thing is she was only 16 when she wrote them.
  10. Nice! Hope you will get around to reading it soon and we can compare. What are the other Victoria Holt titles you have enjoyed? Are they set in Victorian times?
  11. Thanks yes It's all been a bit middling so far in....
  12. Hi Mostonian, welcome! I have only been to Manchester once, to see United play . I could recommend you some good Fi without too much Sci in it if you want.....
  13. Ha, great name! Welcome to the forum. You won't find a nicer place on the internet. Not read any Outlanders but someone here will have for sure...
  14. Welcome to BCF scarfacedude!
  15. Melmoth sounds good! I think...
  16. The Shivering Sands 3/5 Victoria Holt Another charity shop find, an old Gothic Romance from 1969. I was attracted by the cover art and the fact that it was set in the Victorian period. A young widow takes a position as a music teacher to a disparate group of young girls at a grand house in Cornwall. She takes the position mainly to try to discover the reason for the disappearance of her sister, who had a connection with the same house. I enjoyed this story, it was well written and the plot was full of clues and red herrings ( a couple of which had me looking in the wrong direction right till the end). The romance is slow burning and a bit predictable, but the mystery had more than enough interest to keep me reading.
  17. The Bloody Ground 3/5 Bernard Cornwell A friend passed me this paperback and said it was a good read. It is the fourth in a continuing series about a fictional character in the American Civil War, Nathanial Starbuck. He is very much like the Richard Sharpe character in the author's other more famous series of books; he is not a superman and has contradictory traits that make him interesting. I haven't read any of the previous books in the series but that didn't matter. In this novel Starbuck is taken away from the Southern Confederate Brigade he has been fighting with and placed in command of a Punishment battalion, the "Yellowlegs". This formation got it's unfortunate nickname because it ran away in it's first battle. This appointment is also a sort of punishment for Starbuck, who is not well liked by some senior officers (another parallel with the Sharpe books) . He finds the battalion depot is being run by officers that are corrupt, cowardly and in some cases criminal and the men's morale very low due to bullying and mistreatment. Even though this scenario is a familiar and well-trodden trope I didn't mind . It was a fun read. Later on The Yellowlegs get to fight in the Battle of Antietam (which I didn't know much about before) and the author skilfully blends the characters into the real events and brings it to life so that the reader really understands the sequence of the battle. The descriptions of the ground are a strong point; you can clearly see it in your mind's eye. The battle chapters are rip-roaring stuff and depict terrible slaughter. The author is not making anything up: 23,000 men killed on a single day within calling distance of each other and at times by desperate hand to hand fighting with bayonets.
  18. Just Six Numbers 3/5 Martin Rees I picked this up ages ago in a charity shop without really knowing what it was about. When I finally got to reading it and found it was about physics I found it informative and quite unusual in it's approach. Everybody is familiar with the concept by now that we live in a "Goldilocks zone" in the Solar System; our orbit is not too close to the sun or too far away, everything is just right. Well this book shows that we also live in a "Goldilocks universe" . If the values of any one of the physical forces (for instance, Gravity, or the Nuclear Strong Force that holds atoms together) were even the tiniest degree different then we would not be here. This leads to the conclusion that there are (or in some cases were, because their lifespans would be short) other universes alongside our own that developed differently. The book is quite a bit out of date, (late 1990s) as I knew when reading that some things the author had theories on had already been proven or disproved. But it was still a good read.
  19. You read some edgy tough books! I have read some Winterson and found her great (I particularly like the way she chops and mixes up time), and the Dworkin book sounds like a must-read.
  20. Thanks Athena. The move was a horrible long day but went as smooth as can be expected. My reading is creeping up again . Just finished a physics book Just Six Numbers which was quite interesting, although a bit out of date as some of the things the author discusses have now been proved, and some others disproved since it was written. I will try to catch up on reviews this weekend . Haha yes I won't miss the other occupants of that place. I didn't tell anybody I was leaving, which was perhaps a little mean, but The Murderer saw me loading the van up and said goodbye.
  21. Hi Athena, thanks! I am just about to move in 3 days, but that's another story!
  22. Thanks Hayley. I need to get another kindle before I can read the Jasper Ffordes, and many of the more obscure Victorian ones on my TBR.
  23. The TBR Pile organised! Victorian authors, obscure works and classics The Poor Gentleman Hendrick Conscience Two On A Tower The Return Of The Native A Laodician A Pair Of Blue Eyes Jude The Obscure The Woodlanders Far From The Madding Crowd all above by The Mayor of Casterbridge Thomas Hardy Post Haste RM Ballantyne Autobiography Of Anthony Trollope Lady Anna Miss Mackenzie 4 above by The Way We Live Now Anthony Trollope Twelve Years A Slave Solomon Northup Letters Of Two Brides Balzac Birds Of Prey Charlotte's Inheritance Run To Earth A Novel The Doctor's Wife Lady Audley's Secret Mary Elizabeth Braddon Little Dorrit Charles Dickens The Mill On The Floss Madame Bovary Tess of The d'urbervilles Lady Susan Thoughts On The Education Of Daughters The Last Man Maria, Or The Wrongs Of Woman Vindication Of The Rights Of Woman The Perpetual Curate Equality Looking Backward 2000-1887 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes Sir Arthur Conan Doyle The Picture Of Dorian Grey Oscar Wilde Nicholas Nickleby Charles Dickens The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow Washington Irvine Shirley Bleak House The Strange Case Of Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde The Moonstone The Woman In White Ruth The Importance Of Being Earnest Basil Les Miserables Mrs Oliphant Confessions Of An English Opium Eater Thomas De Quincey Testament Of Youth Vera Brittain Books set in Victorian times by modern authors Under A Cloud-Soft Sky The Singing Winds Shelter From The Storm Snow Angels The Road To Samarcand Patrick O'Brian Reference works and 18th-19th century history, social history London The Biography Peter Ackroyd The Dictionary Of London Raj Lawrence James The Age of Revolution 1789-1848 The Age Of Capital 1848-1875 The Age Of Empire 1875-1914 Slavery A New Global History Jeremy Black Balti Britain - Ziauddin Sardar Asians In Britain 400 years of History Rozina Visram Random must reads Nice To See It To See It Nice Brian Viner It's A Small Medium And Outsize World John Taylor Connections Rules For Virgins The Life And Loves Of A She Devil The Passion Of New Eve The Haunted Hotel Ten Interesting Things About Human Behaviour Slave Girl Sarah Forsyth (autobiography) The Man Who Loved Only Numbers Paul Hoffman (biography of Paul Erdos) The White Mists Of Power Kristine Kathryn Rusch I Think I'm OK Undercover: The True Story Of Britain's Secret Police King Solomon's Carpet Barbara Vine Good Behaviour Molly Keane Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood One Day David Nichols Geisha Liza Dalby In The Heart Of The Sea Nathanial Philbrick Spycatcher Peter Wright The Horse Whisperer Nicholas Evans The German Invasion Of Norway Geirr H Haarr Accidents In The Home Tessa Hadley Devoted Ladies Molly Keane A Fine Balance Rohinton Mistry Lord Of The Flies William Golding Rebecca Daphne Du Maurier Untying The Knot Linda Gillard One of Our Thursdays Is Missing, Thursday Next First Among Sequels, Something Rotten, The Well Of Lost Plots, Lost In A Good Book, The Eyre Affair Jasper Fforde Life Of Pi - Yann Martel The Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out Of The Window And Disappeared - Jonas Jonasson The Terror Round the Bend Infidel Ayaan Hirsi Ali Nerd Do Well Simon Pegg The Voyage Out Virginia Woolf The Dragon Atlan The City all by Jane Gaskell Renoir My Father Jean Renoir Shopping, Seduction And Mr Selfridge Lindy Woodhead 7 Trips Through Time And Space anthology Night Watch Andrew m Stephenson SF Out Of Time-Five tales of Time Travel Strange Loops The Time Travel Megapack The Martian Way Isaac Asimov The Green Brain Frank Herbert The Steampunk megapack (26 stories) Viridis Lady Of Devices A Steampunk Adventure Steampunk Erotica Best New SF 25 Meeting At Infinity John Brunner
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