vodkafan

You are doing much better on the "not-buying-books" front than I am

Wow no that slipped by me thanks!

The Judith Flanders one has mixed reviews in Amazon, but I liked her The Victorian House so I thought I would risk it. I still have Girl Meets Boy by the way so I will PM you about that.

Ok I got: Up The Line Robert Silverberg (time travel ) More Victorian social history: Consuming Passions: Leisure and Pleasure In Victorian Britain Judith Flanders Inventing The Victorians Enquire Within Upon Everything 1890 For the kindle I got a whole bunch of either very cheap or free Victorian steampunk titles : The Steampunk megapack (26 stories) Viridis Lady Of Devices A Steampunk Adventure Steampunk Erotica The Monster In The Mist (Chronological Man) I am expecting some of these to be dire.....

OK you sold me on this one

I have been very good lately hardly spending any money and I had £30 sitting in my hobbies account for a couple of months didn't touch it...then saturday night got bored at work and went onto Amazon.....you can guess the rest

Your plan seems to be going more or less according to ..er..plan. Leviathan Wakes sounds a good story. How is the science in it? Mostly ignored or what? The main real life problem with having the Solar System colonized is communications...the time delays between one end of the Solar System and the other could in theory generate plenty of Jane Austen type plot lines with most of the action found out after the fact in communiques...

Anything with the word Salem in it reminds me of both witches and vampires running amok so I certainly would have noticed if that one was there; thanks for the tip. Is it you Kidsmum who collects the Sharpe books? Odd juxtaposition of fave authors there. Which is great!

So glad you liked Genesis Of The Daleks Michelle- this one left an indelible impression on me as a kid and is the best Dalek story to me. Other must haves are The Ark In Space, The Green Death and The Face Of Evil. All great stories.

The Lost Continent 4/6 Bill Bryson. Very funny book, and the first "travel Bryson" I have read, which was different to his sciencey books. It really did show an interesting side to America . I had no idea how truly vast America is and how (to us) underpopulated and empty most of it is especially in the middle. I have seen it in films of course but it doesn't really register; can you imagine living in a town with only a hundred or so people in it and the next town in any direction is 50 or a hundred miles away? My mind boggles! This must also happen the other way around. I understand now something that happened about 10 years ago when I was a delivery postman. An agency girl of about 19 or 20 came into our depot to work . She was a student from rural Canada and had only been in the country a couple of days . She was going to do part of a postal delivery. I helped her sort her round out into streets, the letters into bundles etc. She asked if every house had a mailbox outside it so I had to explain that no, even though we call them letter boxes , in this country they are just a flap in the front door and the postman has to walk right up to each door to put the letters through the flap. She got that and got taken away in a van to be dropped off in the street where her round started. (it was only a small round of a few streets ) About an hour later I was still in the depot when the girl came back completely distraught, crying and in a complete funk. She couldn't do it. Not because she was stupid (many postmen are completely stupid. It helps) but because she had been completely overwhelmed by culture shock . So many small houses all touching each other , hundreds just in one street...she couldn't handle the close packed enormity of it even though it is nothing to us.. Anyway back to the book, I liked it and would read any other Bryson which came through my hands.

No Nice Girl Swears 2/6 Alice Leon Moats This is a reprint of a 1930s book. The author was a journalist and the book was originally a humorous weekly newspaper column about ettiquette for society girls which ran for many years in the '20s and '30s. I could see the humour in it, and many young girls of today could pick up a few points about better manners, but that world no longer exists so not greatly relevant. My main purpose in reading was to compare to the manners of the previous Victorian era and note how it had changed in a few short years. I picked this one up for 20p which was a bargain but I would not go out my way to get hold of this at any price.

I will watch the film myself again too. Then we can both compare what we think of both versions!

Pemberley 3/6 Anne Tennant While I did find this book much better than Death At Pemberley (and therefore, I now realise, rated Death at Pemberley far too highly) it highlighted the same fact that now Lizzie Bennet is married she more or less ceases to be an interesting character. It's all about what her husband wants and does and she follows him about worrying and having her own negative thoughts, most of which Darcy is completely oblivious of anyway. The author has injected quite a lot of humour into the plot, contriving a situation where every character is in the same place at the same time despite their differences, and the result is genuinely funny, like a situation comedy. But the subtlety of the original story is lost.

Girl , Interrupted 6/6 Susanna Kayson I had to give this book top marks without quite knowing why. I think it is because I am reading a quantum theory book at the same time and I was captivated by the similarities; for instance the way Kayson describes mental illness as being in a parallel world alongside this one. That no one reality is true, it is just most of the time a majority vote. This whole concept was exciting in the same way that Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas was. I read the book in a couple of hours and then went back to re-read certain parts. The book is completely different to the film, which bears almost no relation and is more about Angelina Jolie's character. I was never a particular fan of the film and now I dislike it intensely because they have missed the whole point. I passed this book straight on to Thoughtful Daughter and she was hooked from page 1. Kayson has some things to say at the end as to the new "catch-all " diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder. In the 19th century it was diagnosed as "Hysteria" and Victorian men used to lock up their wives and daughters according to this doctrine....it is almost always women that are diagnosed thus, so can be viewed as another of society's methods of control.

Haha that's par for the course of watching Prometheus. I was not even quite sure WHAT I had watched.

OK will do

I would most definitely go for the paperback one if it is cheaper. And I will be first to admit this sort of book is one that doesn't really work on kindle; you have to have it in your hands to be able to flick backwards and forwards.

Kidsmum, the Mrs Oliphant book I found is The Perpetual Curate. It is a good thick one about 540 pages. I have no idea what to expect. Extraordinary that I have not heard of her before; apparently she wrote 100 books. I have to go back to the recycling plant soon; there were many original Victorian books there. The place is one of the best hunting grounds for books I have ever been in. Athena, I have just finished Girl, Interrupted. I will write a review soon. I enjoyed it.

I will use the book as my list and cross them off as I go.

Hi chaliepud it has got me hooked. I like reading the synopses. I can't decide whether Girl, Interrupted is fiction or autobiography or where it falls in between. I like it though.

Book shelf space is becoming an issue again. I am reading at a good rate but I am buying at the same rate. And the problem is that all the historical books I am reading are all keepers. I now have more in my TBR pile than I can possibly read this year.

Finished a couple more books and started some more. A recent second-hand purchase (20p) was The Book Club Bible. ( Has anybody else read this?) I have read most of it already last night sitting in the pub. It has a non spoiler review of all the books mentioned . I now want to read every book in there that I have not already read (about 60%) Here is the whole haul from yesterday plus one I picked up at work: The Book Club Bible £0.20 Girl, Interrupted £0.20 The Northamptonshire Village Book £0.20 Shout At The Devil £0.20 Thieves' Kitchen £0.20 The Lost Continent £0.20 The Crowded Street £0.20 Mrs Oliphant £0.20 Round the Bend £0.20 Sophies' World £0.20 (for daughter for the philosophy) A Special Relationship £00 (picked up at work)

FAQ about Time Travel. Lots of fun!

Night Circus sounds very interesting. Just going over to amazon to dig up some reviews

I watched about half the first episode of The Politician's Husband. Excellent acting from Emily Watson and David Tennant. You can just tell bad things are going to happen to their relationship now he is a house husband. And he can't connect with his autistic kid.