Luna's Book Blog 2024

[lunababymoonchild]

1 Ann Cleeves, Burial of Ghosts - completed (paperback)

2 Shauna Lawless, The Children of Gods and Fighting Men - completed (e-book)

3 Winston Graham, The Millar's Dance - completed (paperback)

4 Ian Rankin, Witch Hunt - completed (paperback)

5 Various, The Winter Spirits - completed (e-book)

6 Sara Sheridan, The Secrets of Blythswood Square - completed (e-book)

7 Shauna Lawless, The Words of Kings and Prophets - completed (e-book) 

8 Ann Cleeves, A Bird in the Hand - completed, (paperback)

9 Wilkie Collins, The Frozen Deep - completed (e-book)

10 Nicola Cornick, The Winter Garden - completed (e-book)

11 C S Robertson, The Trials of Marjorie Crowe - completed (e-book)

12 Katherine Arden, The Warm Hands of Ghosts - completed (e-book)

13 Shauna Lawless, Dreams of Fire - completed (e-book)

14 Kate Griffen, Fyneshade - completed (e-book)

15 Henry James, The Turn of the Screw - completed (e-book)

16 Arden Powell, The Hounds of York - completed (e-book)

17 Cormac McCarthy, Child of God - completed (e-book)

18 Nathan Dylan Goodwin, The Lost Ancestor - completed (e-book)

19 Jeannette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal - completed (e-book)

20 Hourly History, Celtic Mythology - completed (e-book)

21 The Frankenstein Monster, Lynn Shepherd - completed (e-book)

22 Constance Sayers, A Witch in Time - completed (e-book)

23 Herman Melville, Bartelby the Scrivener - completed (short story (e-book))

24 Stacy Halls, The Household - completed (e-book)

25 Ann Cleeves, The Woman On the Island - completed (short story (e-book))

26 Stephen King, Salem's Lot - completed (paperback)

27 Stephen King, One For the Road - completed (short story (paperback))

28 Stephen King, Jerusalem's Lot - completed (short story (paperback)

29 Andre Agassi, Open - completed (e-book)

30 Bridget Collins, The Silence Factory - completed (e-book)

31 Steve Morris, Wolf Blood - completed (e-book)

32 John William Polidori, The Vampyre - completed (e-book)

33 Thomas Bernhard, Correction - completed (paperback)

34 Lee Child, Worth Dying for - completed (paperback)

35 Anne Cleeves, Silent Voices - completed (re-read, paperback)

36 Lee Child, Personal - completed (paperback)

37 Hannah Bowstead, Little Book of World Mythology - completed (e-book)

38 Shauna Lawless, Dreams of Sorrow - completed (e-book)

39 Charles Dickens, Great Expectations - completed (paperback)

40 Julie Peters, The Full Moon Yearbook: A year of ritual and healing under the light of the full moon -completed (paperback)

41 Stuart Turton, The Last Murder at the End of the World - completed (e-book)

42 Anne Cleeves, A Lesson in Dying - completed (e-book)

43 O Henry, The Gift of the Magi - completed (short story e-book)

44 Sarah Pearse, The Wilds - completed (e-book)

45 Angela Chen, Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex - completed (e-book)

46 Rosie Andrew’s, The Puzzle Wood - completed (e-book)

47 Daphne Du Maurier, The Breakthrough - completed (short story, e-book)

48 Ellery Queen, The Dutch Shoe Mystery - completed (e-book)

49 William Faulkner, The Town (#2 in the Snopes Trilogy) - completed (hardback)

50 Rudyard Kipling, The Mark of The Beast - completed (short story, e-book)

51 Nick Clausen, Dead Meat, Day 0 -  completed (short story, e-book)

52 Justin Cronin, The Passage - completed (e-book)

53 Arthur Conan Doyle, The Case of Lady Shannon - completed (short story, e-book)

54 Lee Child, Tripwire, Jack Reacher 3 - completed (paperback)

55 Arthur Machen, The Great God Pan - completed (short story, e-book)

56 S G McLean, The Bookseller of Inverness - completed, (e-book)

57 Robert Louis Stevenson, The Body Snatcher - completed (short story, e-book)

58 Fyodor Dostoyevsky, White Nights - completed (short story, ebook)

59 Stephen King, The Breathing Method - completed (paperback, short story)

60 Ian Rankin, Midnight and Blue (Rebus 25) - completed (hardback)

61 Bram Stoker, Gibbet Hill - completed (e-book)

62 Leonard Low, Scotland’s Untold Stories - completed (e-book)

63 Shauna Lawless, The Last Pysker - completed (short story, e-book)

64 Laszlo Krasnahorkai, Herscht 07769 - completed (e-book)

65 Stephen L Peck, The Silence of the River - completed (short story, e-book) 

66 Shauna Lawless, The Land of the Living and the Dying (Gael Song 3) - completed (e-book)

67 Susanna Clarke, The Wood at Midwinter - completed (short story, e-book)

68 Lee Child, The Visitor - completed (paperback)

69 Daphne du Maurier, The Birds - completed (short story, e-book)

70 Ann Cleeves, Murder in my Backyard - completed (e-book)

71 Neil Oliver, Hauntings - completed (e-book)

72 Sarah Pinborough, Behind Her Eyes - completed (e-book)

73 Justin Cronin, The Twelve - completed (e-book)

74 Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol - completed (hardback)

75 Georges Simenon, The Hanged Couple (a Maigret mystery from The New Investigations of Maigret) - completed (e-book)

76 Allie Esiri, A Poem For Every Day of Christmas - completed (e-book)

77 Ursula Le Guin, The Tombs of Atuan, Earthsea 2 - completed (paperback)

Edited December 31, 2024 by lunababymoonchild

[lunababymoonchild]

The Secrets of Blythswood Square, Sara Sheridan.

 

I have to admit, I bought this because it was set in my home town of Glasgow. I'm very glad I did because it's sensational!

 

From Amazon :

 

You wouldn't suspect it, but scandalous secrets are being kept on Blythswood Square...

1846. Glasgow is a city on the cusp of great social change, but behind the curtains, neighbours are watching, and rumours of improper behaviour spread like wildfire on the respectable Blythswood Square.

When Charlotte Nicholl discovers that the fortune she has been bequeathed by her father is tied up in a secret collection of erotic art, she is faced with a terrible dilemma: sell it and risk shaming her family's good name or lose her home.

An encounter with Ellory McHale, a talented working-class photographer newly arrived in Glasgow, leads Charlotte to hope she has found not only someone who might help her, but also a friend. Yet Ellory is hiding secrets of her own - secrets that become harder to conceal as she finds herself drawn into Charlotte's world.

As the truth begins to catch up with both women, will it destroy everything they've fought to build - or set them both free?

 

I have discovered that Sara Sheridan is an accomplished author and she writes very well indeed. Her prose is good, her plotting is good and her research extensive (made clear at the back of the book) without detracting from the flow of the story. Some of the characters about whom she writes are people who actually lived and did what she had them doing in the story, which is another thing that I love. I got the very sense of what Glasgow was like in 1896 and what was considered shocking in 1896. 

 

All in all, a great story and worth, in my opinion, reading. Whether you know Glasgow or not.

Edited February 28, 2024 by lunababymoonchild

[lunababymoonchild]

The Words of Kings and Prophets, Shauna Lawless

 

The second instalment of the Gael Song series. The first is The Children of Gods and Fighting Men, reviewed by Books Do Furnish a Room (December 3 2023).

 

The story continues. Ireland in the first thousand years and onwards. Kings, battles, magic, witches, Descendants of the Tuatha De Danann a supernatural race in Irish mythology, Fomorians also a supernatural race in Irish mythology who are often portrayed as hostile and monstrous beings and enemies of the Tuatha De Danann, and the mortals caught in between.  As with us combative Scots, the Irish mortals spend a lot of time at war with each other in order to establish who is at the top of the pecking order.  Royal scandal abounds, too.

 

I was totally immersed in this and read great swathes of it at a time. Shauna Lawless is Irish so all of this is familiar to her and she handles the material very well indeed. Some of the people she writes about really existed and so did the battles. The Tuatha De Danann and the Fomorians are real Irish myths and the story Shauna creates around all of this is fascinating. 

 

Highly recommended.

Edited February 28, 2024 by lunababymoonchild

[lunababymoonchild]

The Child of God, Cormac McCarthy

 

This is a short book or novella, only 190 pages long. It's worth reading, though. McCarthy's prose is superb, very lyrical and he is describing some horrific things in a way that makes it clear what is happening but not in a grotesque horror fiction way.  Fortunately fictional but they could be true because they are very possible. 

 

1960's Tennessee. Lester Ballard is a young backwoodsman who is very violent, introverted and voluntarily solitary. He is wrongly accused of rape and when released goes on to  commit some appalling crimes in the backwoods. He does not have a permanent home and there is no way of tracking him. He does get caught eventually and I won't spoil the ending but it's not what you'd predict. 

 

McCormac's prose is breathtaking in places and utterly sublime in others, despite some of the grotesque things that are described. I've never read anything like it. The characters are utterly real, the plot is believable and the story is of it's time (i.e. no mobile phones or for that matter, much in the way of land-lines). I also got the feeling that the fact that Ballard is capable of committing said crimes is also unheard of in the backwoods of 1960's Tennessee.

 

Very recommended. 

 

 

Edited March 29, 2024 by lunababymoonchild

[muggle not]

Cormac McCarthy was one of the great authors. I am really going to miss his writing, but I may go back and re-read some of his books.

[muggle not]

This is one of McCarthy's books that I am going to re-read as soon as I finish a "Rivers of London" book that I have just started.

 

Sutree - This isn't one of McCarthy's most talked about books but I recall that I really enjoyed it. 

 

A review from Amazon:

“All of McCarthy’s books present the reviewer with the same welcome difficulty. They are so good that one can hardly say how good they really are. . . . Suttree may be his magnum opus. Its protagonist, Cornelius Suttree, has forsaken his prominent family to live in a dilapidated houseboat among the inhabitants of the demimonde along the banks of the Tennessee River. His associates are mostly criminals of one sort or another, and Suttree is, to say the least, estranged from what might be called normal society. But he is so involved with life (and it with him) that when in the end he takes his leave, the reader’s heart goes with him. Suttree is probably the funniest and most unbearably sad of McCarthy’s books . . . which seem to me unsurpassed in American literature.” —Stanley Booth

[lunababymoonchild]

I bought The Passenger and Stella Maris (on e-book) and I have No Country For Old Men, The Road and The Border Trilogy (paperbacks) in the house. I will get to the other novels too, eventually.

[lunababymoonchild]

The Passage, Justin Cronin

 

This is a novel of epic proportions. At 963 pages long it requires a substantial time commitment, not just to get from beginning to end, it also requires a long session of reading every time it’s picked up and it requires to be picked up frequently, a bare minimum of every day. This is not a book that you can read one chapter of and put aside for a couple of days, pick up where you left off and remember where you were in the story. It does jump around a fair bit and it’s easy to get confused. However, if you stick with it it all becomes clear in the end and the book is worthy of the commitment. 

 

This is a dystopian novel. There is a smattering of horror in it but it deals with the end of civilisation as we know it and what happens after that. Civilisation ends as a result of a mistake made by the United States Army and the book is set in the United States. It also involves vampires but the word vampire isn’t mentioned until page 253 and, despite the fact that they are the ones causing the chaos, they don’t feature heavily. Nor do they exhibit the behaviour that we have all become familiar with and are not routinely referred to as vampires, although it's clear that that is what they are.

 

The book is wordy in a Stephen King way and I’m not sure that we really need to know the colour of the sky quite so frequently but it doesn’t detract from the overall feel of the story, which is a good one. The characters are well drawn, the plot is crafted well and the prose is very good. There are a few surprises which I did not see coming and overall, it had a happy ending.

 

This is the first part of a trilogy; the other books are longer than average but not as long as this one. 

 

Recommended.

[lunababymoonchild]

Herscht 07769 by László Krasznahorkai

 

This is the latest from Krasznahorkai to be published in this country. It’s 407 pages long and one continuous sentence. There are chapters though and I read it on Kindle which had very strange page numbers. For example, I got to page 406 and stayed on that page number for the last hundred or so pages. It does this throughout the book. So, it can be confusing.

 

The Herscht of the title is the surname of a man who is portrayed as special needs – to put it politely – or simple. The numbers refer to his postcode. His first name is Florian and we get to know him as the story progresses. He spends two years taking evening classes in Particle Physics which he completely misunderstands and as a result of this he engages in letter writing to Chancellor Angela Merkel to explain to her that he thinks that all physical matter will be destroyed. His teacher tries very hard to dissuade him of this to no avail. The story progresses from there and encapsulates neo-Nazis, and graffiti vandalism.

 

There are other, strong characters in the book and there is also a well-crafted plot, which ended unexpectedly but with a nice touch.

 

How Krasznahorkai managed to convey the whole book in one sentence is mind-boggling but not as confusing as I thought it would be. And why he would want to do that I don’t know. But, and it’s only my opinion, this is a towering work of genius and I highly recommend it.

[lunababymoonchild]

Hauntings, Neil Oliver

 

I don’t normally feel moved to write a review - if I like the book I finish it and if I don’t I don’t finish it. In a review I find it difficult to say much more than I liked the book.

 

However, I feel moved to review this one. I’ve given this book three stars because although I enjoyed it well enough, in my opinion it would have been much improved if there was much less in it about Neil Oliver’s personal life, and by much less I mean nothing at all. I wasn’t expecting to read about his personal life and found it surprising and distracting as well as wholly unnecessary. He wrote about his parents, childhood, childhood home, friends he used to have, where he filmed and for what programme, siblings, wife and children. Why?

 

A second star was knocked off for the amount of similes Neil insisted on using. He did, I will grant, come up with some very good ones but did he really need that many? I think not.

 

Other than that it was an informative and fairly interesting book, once I got past Neil himself. 

 

I really think that there should be a warning about his personal life being included to quite that extent, had I known I would not have bought it. 
 

 

 

[lunababymoonchild]

Sarah Pinborough, Behind Her Eyes

 

It's been decades since a book surprised me. So very long that I can't remember the last time. This one did.

 

Louise meets a man in a bar and astonished that he finds her attractive, sleeps with him. To her horror, when she next goes into work, she finds that he is the man that she will now be working for. Then she meets his wife, as if accidentally.

 

She becomes the wife's best friend, promising herself that a) she will end it with the husband, and b) she will end it with the wife. She doesn't and then BLAM! the denouement hits you like a ton of bricks. Totally unforseen and utterly brilliant. I'm not sure that what happened is possible in real life but it might be, which is where the cleverness is in the story (didn't Stephen King once say that he took things that were real and embellished them with his imagination to what they might be and that's what made his stories scary?).

 

Highly recommended.

[Madeleine]

This is a TV series on Netflix, I started to watch it but got bored and gave up.

[lunababymoonchild]

1 hour ago, Madeleine said:

This is a TV series on Netflix, I started to watch it but got bored and gave up.

Yes, I read that and I can understand why you would get bored, it comes across as a usual story at the start. I haven’t seen it so can’t comment but the book is definitely worth reading (unless you know the ending)

Edited December 17, 2024 by lunababymoonchild

[Madeleine]

Interesting, maybe I'll give it another go over the holidays!

[lunababymoonchild]

A Poem for Every Day of Christmas edited by Allie Esiri

 

I managed to read this one day at a time as was intended. The collection is just right for the festive season and at one poem a day is easily achievable.

 

Thoroughly enjoyed this and will be bringing it out every year. I might even buy the hardback, having read this on Kindle, there's just something more special about a paper book and this one justifies a place on my over-stocked shelves.

 

Highly recommended

Edited December 31, 2024 by lunababymoonchild