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 (e-book)

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

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

Edited Monday at 09:58 AM 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 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 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 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.