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Sounds interesting Karsa. Let us know what you think of it .

This is a link for the Across The Universe website : http://acrosstheuniversebook.com/ You can take a look around the spaceship as well as some other goodies about the book and author. Personally I think that ship design is way too small for a "generation" ship. What do others think?

Hi Steve it is a surprise to me too that I still have the capacity to read that fast. I haven't used that in years but I guess my two years on here have built me up to it. I have timed myself I can read at a rate of 50 pages in 35 minutes comfortably and retain all of it. So now I have been putting the bookmark in at 50 page intervals and reading it in chunks like that.

Yes just the race with Chesil. It's not serious though it does not matter who wins. It is really helping me clear my backlog of books .

Never read this fast since I was a kid. It is exhilarating. My mind is being pummelled by paragraphs like combinations of punches; my brain is reeling from the visions of word pictures from descriptions and the plots themselves. Loads of ideas for paintings.

Finished Across The Universe. OK for a YA book. 26 books to go. Next up is The Woman In Black.

Could be the start of a beautiful relationship.

Hi Raven it's great to see you back mate . Great avatar! (He's not the Messiah he's a very naughty boy)

Good for you Paula superb film. I like the film About A Boy whereas I really hated the book. I know most people are the opposite. It is the only film I like Hugh Grant in!

Oh man yeah been in that bad place a few times. Sudafed and Red Bull to stay awake and many trips to the toilet to rest when your legs can't stand up any more just to get through the shift...

I have finished Dunkirk - The Men They Left Behind and am now half way through Across The Universe. 27 books to go.

I can send it to you if you want Michelle I still have it. Do you like Angela Carter? Some of the stories are reminiscent of her stuff

I am on my last 50 pages of my Dunkirk doorstop and will finish that tonight at work and start the next, will make a quick decision on what that will be in the next five minutes as I fly out the door!

If someone is paid to give a "good " review then I would not trust that reviewer at all; why they are then just part of the marketing machine. It does not bother me though if the book is provided free for someone with an interest in books to review (like yourself), I think that is about right.

I would love to ride around on horses and chase buffalo and get plenty of sunshine. I feel sad for the uncle that came back and could not adjust to being white again.

Is it based on true people and events Claire ?

What's it about?

Sounds brilliant Claire I will look out for this next year too.

Beautiful Stranger A Memoir of an Obsession with Perfection Hope Donahue Hope is a girl who should have breezed through life, a California debutante of rich parents. But once outside of protection afforded by college life she has no self confidence or self esteem and becomes obsessed with her appearance. Despite , we assume (there are no photos ) having nothing wrong with her looks she opts for plastic surgery and soon is being talked into whatever surgery the surgeon wants her to have. Hope hits rock bottom before eventually finding the strength to realise her addiction. Although this story is about self obsession Hope did irritate me at first as in the beginning there are pages and pages of every sentence beginning with "I". Eventually I did begin to sympathise with her a little . Her father was a rather weak character and her mother was a nutcase. One of the things Hope did that I felt made her more of a real person to me, although it was a terrible thing to do, was her habit of going through her flatmates rooms looking at all their private things when they were out. She did this because she had no life of her own and in some way wanted to absorb theirs. This book was OK. She managed to save herself before she got totally messed up or dead or become a porn actress so kudos for that.

The Wench Is Dead Colin Dexter I was only vaguely aware that the TV series Inspector Morse was based on a character from a series of books. I picked this one up a while back from a charity shop. If this particular story had been made into an episode of the series then I had not seen it. Morse is laid up in a hospital due to a chronic illness brought about by his drinking habits. Of course I could only imagine John Thaw laying there as the grumpy patient. Quickly becoming bored fantasizing about the nurses and trying to sneakingly read a racy novel brought to him by his sidekick Sergeant Lewis, Morse stumbles across a documented murder case over 100 years old . Something about the case does not ring true with him and he decides to investigate it from his hospital bed with the aid of a woman visitor to another patient . This is a quite gentle story which I enjoyed. It was a quick read

I have read 314 pages of my doostop. Gonna give it a break to write a few quick reviews. The Nightmare Chronicles Douglas Clegg This author was not known to me. Also this is not a genre (horror) is not one I usually read. It is a book of a dozen short horror stories linked together by another at the beginning to give it a sort of theme, although this can be ignored; the stories are not really connected. I found them , for me, pitched perfectly between thrilling , creepy horror and gore ( I guess the perfect mix for me is about 70/30, as I don't like too much gore). All the stories were interesting, if I had to pick out a favourite it would be Only Connect, which had scifi elements, and was nicely surreal too. A bonus was the afterword, where the author tells briefly where the ideas came for each story. I think you have to have a special sort of strange mind to write this sort of story, because those same inspirations to someone else would have resulted in a romance or a comedy/ something else. If I was invited/forced to sleep over at this author's house I would probably stay awake all night just to be on the safe side.

If you start to develop special powers we will get a you a special new suit with a cape

Hi Julie I never even knew there was such a thing as Nuclear Medicine. Just imagine that stuff in you is zapping all the leftover bad bits as we speak. You will soon be as clean as a whistle and ready to eat cake again.

Oooh that's a four dayer

Bit of a theme showing through Poppyshake....you getting excited about going to France?