Hayley

Thank you! I will definitely be making this, I'll let you know how it goes! I love bread and honey so definitely copying this part too

Glad it’s not just me! I think I mentioned earlier in this thread I can’t bring myself to read black beauty for the same reason! I definitely think of it as a pigs name too but I suppose French bulldogs do have a bit of a pig-like face!? Did you find the YouTube video? I did search it but clicked the first thing and it definitely wasn’t the right one (it was impressive but it wasn’t a regency dining room with a ham!). There seems to be a few programmes about miniatures!

What is the weirdest book you ever read? One that made you think ‘what on Earth did I just read?’. And what made it weird? Was it a weird unexpected twist? Or was it strange from the very beginning? I’ve been thinking about this a lot for the past couple of days, since describing Piranesi by Susanna Clarke as ‘weird’ - it’s definitely not the weirdest I’ve read though. I think that award would have to go to The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. It was absolutely right from the opening too. After all, can it get much weirder than: ‘One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin.’ !?

Oh that is sad I’m sorry you lost all your notes! If it makes you feel any better about keeping a record here, we do have a daily backup of all our files. So, even if something did happen to the website your book log would be safe! Both of these but I do like the idea of keeping a physical list. I do love notebooks . I have considered a spreadsheet as well but they feel too much like work to me!

Yes, loved it! Spent quite a while at the beginning feeling very confused and then reached a point where I literally didn’t want to put it down! I definitely feel like I should reread it. Im sure I still have a copy of it but I’m not sure where! Another one of his short stories, A Sound of Thunder, is also available to read online . It’s very different to The Veldt but just as well written! Yes, my brain was basically in a cycle of ‘what!? … oh! … what, what!?’ (I think it would have made a really good group read actually!)

I think it’s the one with the son from Outnumbered I’m thinking of, I didn’t know Dennis Waterman played William too! Definitely going to find that on YouTube later, thank you! Have to see if the ham is as good as the one the Two Bad Mice tried to cut .

Ooh interested to hear your thoughts on this! I can’t decide what I want to read now after Piranesi!

I’m pretty sure I remember there being a TV series of these too? That’s it! I’ve just searched it and discovered that it’s available (with all the illustrations!) on project Gutenberg https://www.gutenberg.org/files/45264/45264-h/45264-h.htm I loved detailed tiny things as a child and so wished I had dolls house objects like the pictures in that book! I used to make my own tiny plates of food from play-dough

It’s that close!?!? Wow that time went fast!! Now I’m excited I stayed up way too late finishing Piranesi when I had to get up early for work. I was not expecting it to have that effect!

Ah, worth a try . That sounds like such a lovely idea! I can’t remember coming across any books about ponies but I did generally like anything with animals (as long as nothing bad happened to the animals!). The Beatrix Potter story where the mice try to live in the dolls house was another one of my favourites (can’t remember what it was called now though!)

Could it have been Mouse Tales by Arnold Lobel? (I came across it while trying to find something totally different - a cartoon I used to watch with my sister which I could have sworn was called something like Mouse Tales and loosely based on Canterbury Tales - fairly sure I didn't just dream it). It's lovely but it made me so sad as a child I never went back to it as an adult! (Please get a pig and name it Wilbur and send us pictures ). I'm not sure if I said this somewhere before but when I was very young I used to absolutely love a book I found in my local library called The Tailypo - even though in hindsight it was pretty scary! I would take it out pretty much every time we went. I found out many years later that it's a North American folk tale, which is funny because I love folktales now!

I didn’t know that either! I really enjoyed Lady Audley’s Secret when I read it last year. Agree that the narrator was a very annoying character at times but I didn’t actually want anything bad to happen to him. (Actually, thinking about it, most of the characters were annoying in some way!) I want to read this too but am aware that it’s probably going to be frustrating in the same way as Tess of the D’urbervilles…

That's brilliant (I'm surprised it's not worth much!) It is! Actually, I think examples of leadership are interesting in these books generally. Gandalf and Aragorn make an interesting comparison to Sauron and Saruman. More thoughts on this soon though, when I post notes on the next chapters .

I deactivated the clubs section a while ago because it wasn't being used for genuine reasons and ended up being targeted by some weird spam. It's something I'm hoping we can clear out and make use of in future though. (I don't actually know why it's still visible despite being deactivated - that might be a technical issue)

I really like this idea. I'm not sure how we would decide on the books though (and it doesn't look like anybody worked that out when it was raised as an idea before!). Would we have a selection of suggestions, by anybody who wanted to participate, and then narrow them down by voting?

Ah! That's very interesting! Thanks for sharing!

You’ve read more than me! I really want to re-read this. I had to read it really quickly to study it years ago and I definitely don’t feel like I got to appreciate it. Although I will always remember the student who was really confused half way through because they thought it was about horses (we had the vintage classics edition with a horse on the cover ). Which of the stories did you read?

(I’ve just remembered we may have spoken about him briefly before!?) I haven’t read any of his other books (it was actually the Victorian setting of Bloody Project that attracted me!) but I’d definitely try them. Adding to my list

Whaaaat!? That’s going straight on my list Chrissy thank you!!

I think this one deserves credit for making us picture a horrific concept before we've even opened the book! I thought The Woman in Black was very good. It was a lot less scary than I expected, but brilliantly atmospheric.

That's a pretty good summary of my weekend actually! Thank you. The only problem is I don't want them to be over now!

Oooh this one sounds intriguing, I might try it! Have you read His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnett? Not quite the same as this but it is also about piecing together clues to a murder and set in Scotland (I think the author has associations with Glasgow but I'm not sure if he's from there). It's quite intense and strange but I thought it was very good!

I got distracted while looking for something earlier and ended up reading all of the short story The Veldt by Ray Bradbury. It's very weird and pretty disturbing - but good!

Best to get it out of the way I suppose She really didn't do anything - she just walked out of the open front door! She prefers breaking in to things... like the bin . My foot is okay, thank you. I expected it to hurt for a lot longer but it's not even sore unless I push it today. I do feel very lucky that it was my heel and not the soft part of my foot! Thank you, I'm alright. The nice things did balance the rubbish bits out. Honestly, my heart when I realised all the doors were open... she got a lot of fusses and treats when she came back in for me!

I'm starting my latest update with an obvious cry for sympathy because I have had a run of bad luck this weekend and I've barely read anything. First, I had a really busy work day yesterday (working from home) and was supposed to have somebody come to replace a window during an hour break in the morning - did he come at the right time? No. Then he left every single door open and let my puppy escape (thankfully she didn't go far and came back when I called her - but beagles are not known for having great recall and she's not even 6 months old yet). Then I stepped on a rolled up mat and a sewing needle went straight into the heel of my foot (and it was really stuck - making me cringe just remembering it). In between time I had to deal with a customer being really rude to me and I managed to stub my toe - hard - on the same foot I stabbed with a needle. Looking on the bright side - I did get to meet my nephew for the first time today, I saw a butterfly for the first time this year and I had hot cross buns for dinner. So, it's not all bad. Now I've gotten that off my chest - review time Syren by Angie Sage 4.5/5 I feel like I'm probably being repetitive with my reviews of the books in this series, but they really are always great escapist adventures. Syren explores a completely new part of the world, a collection of islands which are very different from the settings we've seen so far. I was initially worried that the alternative setting might mean this felt like a side-story, but it's actually linked to the previous books and overall plot perfectly. This book (the fifth in the series) also introduced some interesting character development and I'm looking forward to seeing where Angie Sage is going with those ideas in the next books.