Luna's Book Log 2025

[lunababymoonchild]

1    Oor Wullie Annual - completed (paperback)

2   Corrag, Susan Fletcher - completed (e-book)

3   The Time Machine, H G Wells (Paperback)

4   The Loving Cup (Poldark 10), Winston Graham - completed (paperback)

5   The Broons Annual - completed (paperback)

6   If On A Winter’s Night, Italo Calvino - completed (paperback)

7   The Awakening, Kate Chopin - completed (e-book)

8   Notre Coeur or A Woman's Pastime, Guy de Maupassant - completed (e-book)

9   The Key, Sarah Sheridan - completed (e-book)

10 The Snow Was Dirty, Georges Simenon - completed (e-book)

11 The House on the Strand, Daphne Du Maurier - completed (e-book)

12 The Ministry of Fear, Graham Greene - completed (e-book)

13 The Glimpses of the Moon, Edith Wharton - completed (e-book)

14 Snow Country, Yasunari Kawabata - completed (e-book)

15 The Dark Wives (Vera Stanhope 11) Ann Cleeves - completed (e-book)

16 The Painted Veil, Somerset Maugham - completed (e-book)

17 The Winter List, S G MacLean - completed (e-book)

18 Windswept and Interesting, Billy Connolly - completed (paper-back)

19 Ollala, Robert Louis Stevenson - completed (e-book, short story)

20 Master Humphrey's Clock, Charles Dickens - completed (e-book)

21 The City of Mirrors, Justin Cronin - completed (e-book)

22 A Hunger Artist, Franz Kafka - completed (e-book, short story)

23 The Spectral Hand, Jean Lorrain - completed (e-book, short story)

24 The Godfather, Mario Puzo - completed (e-book)

 

[lunababymoonchild]

The Snow Was Dirty, Georges Simenon

 

This was weird and difficult to describe what happened. It is nothing like Maigret and felt very much like a totally different author, what a talent!

 

Frank is a teenage thug, petty criminal and son of a brothel owner (who was once a prostitute) - eerily reminiscent of Charles Manson,  published when Manson was 14.

 

It's a pyschological novel about the thoughts, actions and attitudes of Frank during what is clearly the military occupation of his home town. Descriptions of the snow being dirty and having black patches figures significantly in comparison to Frank's life.

 

Highly recommended.

Edited February 7 by lunababymoonchild

[lunababymoonchild]

The Painted Veil, W. Somerset Maugham.

 

Starts with a quote: “Lift not the painted veil which those who live call life”

 

From the sonnet Lift Not The Painted Veil Which Those Who Live by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Which is very beautiful and pretty much the story that Maugham wrote. 

 

Maugham states that his story was inspired by the lines that Dante wrote and then quotes and translates them but doesn’t say from which work.

 

This, as I expected, is very well written. It’s also extremely compelling. It’s the life story of the central character, a woman, who makes three life changing mistakes early on in her life, while she’s still very young and how she copes with them, learning as she goes. The book does not end at the end of her life but the reader gets the impression that she will fare well as she goes forward.

 

Maugham’s insights into her character and thought processes are stunning. It doesn’t give a time in history when it’s written but it does describe debutantes and the position of women (who are expected to make a ‘good marriage’ and have children and nothing more, amongst the wealthy). At the end, the main character realises what her parent’s marriage was like from their point of view and the constraints that they were under at the time, despite their wealth.

 

This isn’t a long book - 107 pages, my copy - but Maugham makes his point eloquently without being too brief. His insights into all of the characters at the time period they occupy are acute and, seem to me, to be accurate. 

 

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and highly recommended it.

[lunababymoonchild]

Windswept and Interesting, My Autobiography, Billy Connolly.

 

I grew up listening and watching Billy Connolly and I thought that I knew everything. Clearly not. I did not know, for example, that he didn't write things down before he went on. I knew he rambled a bit but I was too busy laughing to think about it.

He dictated this book into his phone and his daughters transcribed it for publication so it's Billy's voice that I heard as I read.

What a life he's had!

Recommended.