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Poppyshake's Reading Year 2015


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I've got the Dutch translation of Claudine at St. Clare's & Fifth Formers of St. Clare's (named De Dolle Tweeling: In Spanning & Overwint), so if you do a group read I might try to read the book, though I don't know if I'll be able to understand it seeing as it's not the first books in the series.

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I'm pretty sure .. unless you have Prime .. that they all go out at the same time. They pretend otherwise so that you'll cough up the extra if you're in a hurry. I seldom am in an absolute hurry so don't mind waiting but have found the delivery time to be the same anyway. Yes .. they're pretty good now at telling you when it's coming. I had an email on Saturday proclaiming that 'we're going to deliver your package today' .. so I stayed in and then inexplicably (because I didn't even have the TV on .. I was reading) the parcel went to a neighbour's house and I had to get my coat on and go fetch it. I wouldn't do this for anything other than books .. I'd wait and send Alan :D To come back after such an ordeal ( :D) and find .. after tearing it open .. the wrong cover .. well .. it was more than flesh and blood could stand. I ate a fried egg sandwich out of sheer disappointment  :blush2: 

 

The only time I use Prime is when they offer me a free trial  :giggle2:   And then it annoys me because, even if I ask them to send it by First Class they usually send it by courier and there'll be nobody at home to sign for it :rolleyes:

 

I don't think I've ever had a fried egg sandwich :lol:

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I'm pretty sure .. unless you have Prime .. that they all go out at the same time. They pretend otherwise so that you'll cough up the extra if you're in a hurry. 

I've had Prime membership for some time. We use Amazon quite a bit, and it actually proved to save money, especially with the £10 limit on Super Saver. Delivery speeds have been outstanding, with items ordered one evening being delivered early next day quite regularly, which has proved a godsend on occasions (especially when one has run out of toner cartridges!). Fortunately, there is no issue with deliveries at work. I'm not so sure about the value since they bumped the subscription up and included the video service, which I only very rarely use, but we have retained it for the present.

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You will see so many similarities Claire. I'll be interested to see if these girls are just as fond of sitting on people and giving out slaps as the MT girls .. I expect they are :D If you can hang on though you can borrow mine, I've put a bid in on a set already  :blush2:  :D 

Awesome! :D

 

Yes, please, that would be great.  :friends3: 

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I've got the Dutch translation of Claudine at St. Clare's & Fifth Formers of St. Clare's (named De Dolle Tweeling: In Spanning & Overwint), so if you do a group read I might try to read the book, though I don't know if I'll be able to understand it seeing as it's not the first books in the series.

I think you'll be fine, she always gives a bit of background history and the books are pretty easy to follow. I remember Claudine at St Clare's was one of my favourites :)

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The only time I use Prime is when they offer me a free trial  :giggle2:   And then it annoys me because, even if I ask them to send it by First Class they usually send it by courier and there'll be nobody at home to sign for it :rolleyes:

I keep meaning to take them up on the trial .. my sister has it (Prime) and says it's well worth it.

I don't think I've ever had a fried egg sandwich :lol:

What!?! :o You should put that right straight away  :D

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I've had Prime membership for some time. We use Amazon quite a bit, and it actually proved to save money, especially with the £10 limit on Super Saver. Delivery speeds have been outstanding, with items ordered one evening being delivered early next day quite regularly, which has proved a godsend on occasions (especially when one has run out of toner cartridges!). Fortunately, there is no issue with deliveries at work. I'm not so sure about the value since they bumped the subscription up and included the video service, which I only very rarely use, but we have retained it for the present.

Does it include audios? .. I'm sure my sister mentioned them when she was telling me (or perhaps she meant the Whispersync?.) I would definitely go for it if it was a monthly subscription .. but the hefty annual fee of £80 or whatever puts me off .. especially as I do usually use their Super Saver. I'm rarely in a hurry but I can see it would come into its own at Christmas time etc. I like the idea of borrowing books from the Kindle library .. but then I rarely read on Kindle so would I use it?  :shrug:

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Brilliant!  Well, you'd better hurry up and read them while your mojo is still going strong  :theboss::D

I promise I won't be long Claire :D Once they get here I'm sure I'll want to dive in straight away :) Hope I don't have to wait long before those fried sausages turn up :D 

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divingbelles.jpg
Diving Belles by Lucy Wood
 

Synopsis: Along Cornwall's ancient coast, from time to time, the flotsam and jetsam of the past can become caught in the cross-currents of the present and a certain kind of magic floats to the surface... Straying husbands lured into the sea can be fetched back, for a fee. Houses creak, fill with water and keep a fretful watch on their inhabitants. And, on a windy beach, a small boy and his grandmother keep despair at bay with an old white door. In these stories, hopes, regrets and memories are entangled with catfish, wreckers' lamps and baying hounds as Cornish folklore slips into everyday life.

Review: I loved these short stories, so magical and inventive. Though very complete stories there wasn't a single one where I didn't want to stay with the characters afterwards .. find out where they were going and what happened next. Very Cornish, very elemental and quite surreal .. modern day folklore. Some of the tales are quite disturbing .. the comparisons to Angela Carter for once are well deserved.

My favourites were the title story which was about a woman who runs a business re-connecting wives with their lost husbands (now turned merman) via the aid of a diving bell ..

'Then she relived the morning when she had woken to the smell of salt and damp and found a tiny fish in its death throes on the pillow next to her. There was only a lukewarm indent in the mattress where her husband should have been. She swung her legs out of bed and followed a trail of sand down the stairs, through the kitchen and towards the door. Her heart thumped in the soles of her bare feet. The door was open. Two green crabs high stepped across the slates. Bladderwrack festooned the kitchen, and here and there, on the fridge, on the kettle, anemones bloomed, fat and dark as hearts. It took her all day to scrub and bleach and mop the house back into shape. By the time she'd finished he could have been anywhere. She didn't phone the police; no one ever phoned the police. No one was reported missing.
Despite the bleach, the smell lingered in cupboards and corners. Every so often, an anemone would appear overnight; she would find a translucent shrimp darting around inside an empty milk bottle. Sometimes all the water in the house turned into brine and she lugged huge bottles of water home from the supermarket. The silence waxed and waned. Life bedded itself down again like a hermit crab in a bigger, emptier shell.
'

.. along with a story called Beachcombing which was a set of vignettes within a short story telling of Oscar and his Grandma. Grandma lives in a cave on the beach (you eventually find out why later) and Oscar visits most days. He's her only visitor really apart from Mr Jenkins who eats a lot of marshmallows .. 'because he said they kept him glued together on the inside.' :D Oscar and Grandma love to beachcomb, finding all sorts of treasures washed up by the tide. They have an innate understanding of each other which was so reminiscent of the lovely relationship between Sophia and her Grandmother in Tove Jansson's wonderful The Summer Book.

Mesmerising stories to get lost in full of ghosts, spirits, superstitions, memories, spells, the sea, the earth and the sky. The author has her first novel coming out soon .. Weathering .. which I'm really excited about (more excited than anyone with too many books and not enough money has a right to be  :blush2:)
 Just from the title I can tell (or I hope) that it'll be along the same lines :) Many thanks AGAIN to Claire for lending it to me :hug: It's a gem. Loved it!

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Does it include audios? .. I'm sure my sister mentioned them when she was telling me (or perhaps she meant the Whispersync?.) I would definitely go for it if it was a monthly subscription .. but the hefty annual fee of £80 or whatever puts me off .. especially as I do usually use their Super Saver. I'm rarely in a hurry but I can see it would come into its own at Christmas time etc. I like the idea of borrowing books from the Kindle library .. but then I rarely read on Kindle so would I use it?  :shrug:

 

I wouldn't know about audios as part of Prime: I wasn't aware of them.  There is a separate subscription service (Audible) for audio books which is good value, but I cancelled membership as I wasn't getting through books at sufficiently fast speed to keep up with monthly choices.  I can always go back when the ones I've got are completed.

 

I use the Kindle a lot, but don't use the Kindle library at all, but am content as read mostly classics, which are free/dirt cheap, whilst gradually building up rest of library through Daily Deals, sales etc. as and when.

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Jar 

 

I wouldn't know about audios as part of Prime: I wasn't aware of them.  There is a separate subscription service (Audible) for audio books which is good value, but I cancelled membership as I wasn't getting through books at sufficiently fast speed to keep up with monthly choices.  I can always go back when the ones I've got are completed.

 

I use the Kindle a lot, but don't use the Kindle library at all, but am content as read mostly classics, which are free/dirt cheap, whilst gradually building up rest of library through Daily Deals, sales etc. as and when.

Yes .. I already have an Audible subscription. I'm the opposite though .. I get through my books too quickly and sit twiddling my thumbs waiting for my next credit  :D Too much time on my hands most probably :blush2: I like to listen when I'm out walking .. I hate it if left to my own thoughts *shudders* :D Possibly my sister gets an audio upgrade on some of her Kindle books. It can cost £3.00 plus but some are free (I've just downloaded a free audio upgrade for The Woman in White) .. professionally narrated too. I only half understood what she was telling me about Prime .. I'll have to quiz her more thoroughly :D

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All of my Audible downloads are also sent to my Kindle. That's a newish thing .. they haven't always done that (or maybe they have .. possibly I've ticked something along the way or forgotten to :D) I listen to them always on my iPod. My Kindle isn't portable .. it's the large Kindle Fire. You go on a long walk with that in your bag and you know about it :D Still, it's a good idea for when you're at home etc but then .. impossible to synchronize the two I would have thought. It's giving me knots just thinking about it  :blush2: 

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Are you talking to it now?!  :giggle:

:D :D :D

Oh my days!! I was just about to write down my next jar pick .. then it said 'new reply .. show me' or whatever and I looked and started replying to Will  :blush2: Forgot all about the jar  :D

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I cannot multi-task!  :blush2: 

 

With apologies to the jar .. this is its next pick .. 

 

The Hourglass Factory by Lucy Ribchester

 

Very happy about this .. I only got it last week :D Well done jar!

post-5612-0-31782700-1425414231_thumb.jpg

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Fabulous review of Diving BellesBeachcombing was my favourite. :)  I think we talked about it when we met up, but I saw her in a discussion panel at Shortstoryville a couple of years ago, and that was why I bought the book.  I really want to read Weathering but will wait for paperback or download on Kindle at some point.

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Aww, bless you - I'm sure you can really.  :hug:

 

I looked at that in Tesco recently - I do hope you enjoy it.  :)

I can't  :blush2:  :D 

Thanks Janet :) Alan saw it in Tesco's too .. he was gutted. He saw at least three of the books he bought for my birthday (on their 2 for £7 deal) .. only he didn't see them until after he'd paid a lot more for them elsewhere  :D I said he would have only bought chocolate with the savings so really it's a blessing in disguise :D

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Fabulous review of Diving BellesBeachcombing was my favourite. :)  I think we talked about it when we met up, but I saw her in a discussion panel at Shortstoryville a couple of years ago, and that was why I bought the book.  I really want to read Weathering but will wait for paperback or download on Kindle at some point.

Thanks Claire  :) Yes .. why is it we paperback lovers always have to wait!?! Why can't they release all formats at the same time? 

She's such an exciting author .. can't wait to see what she writes in future :) 

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Jar 

 

Are you talking to it now?!  :giggle:

 

I cannot multi-task!  :blush2: 

 

You two crack me up.  :rolol:

 

 

My word, you do manage to find the loveliest looking books, Kay! I'm sure I never see such beautiful covers when I'm out and about. With pretty much ever cover you post here, I think 'that's such a Kay cover' (if you know what I mean!) I'm starting to wonder whether publishers have started designing their covers with you in mind. ;) I wouldn't put it past you to be that influential!

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You two crack me up.  :rolol:

My word, you do manage to find the loveliest looking books, Kay! I'm sure I never see such beautiful covers when I'm out and about. With pretty much ever cover you post here, I think 'that's such a Kay cover' (if you know what I mean!) I'm starting to wonder whether publishers have started designing their covers with you in mind. ;) I wouldn't put it past you to be that influential!

 

:D It is weird that if I like the cover .. I usually like the book. I wish publishers would ask me for my opinion :D But then .. my purse says not! If the cover is good then the book has already impressed me favourably. Waterstone's lay a lot of their books out on tables ... especially for people like me :D I walk through the shop mentally tossing books behind me .. until I find a gem  :D

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