General Chat

I am currently reading the new Val McDermid thriller, The Grave Tattoo. It is excellent (as is to be expected) BUT BUT BUT I am FURIOUS with her and her publishers at the appalling lack of research on family history, which is a major aspect of this story! Our heroine consults a local expert in family history who looks at parish records on-line, but no censuses, and she tells this 'expert' that she will have to check the records at St Catherine's house!!! The expert does NOT contradict her. Then she contacts a friend in London who spends the day 'in the bowels of St Catherine's House' !!!! You can imagine I am virtually SCREAMING at the book lol lol !!! I am sorely tempted to write to her and point out the error of her ways!! Maz. XX

ok will add this one Vanish by Tess Gerritsen Crime/Forensic Thriller in the Jane Rizzoli/Maura Isles series - although I think they pretty much stand by themselves. A very fast and unputdownable (new word lol) read. Good story, not too complicated. Only criticism I would make would be that she really does labour the point of Jane's 'independent' character sometimes. Maz. XX

The House on Lonely Street – Lyn Andrews For Katherine Donovan the slums of Dublin are a lonely place. Her father, a pawnbroker, is the most hated man in the district, and Katherine an outcast. Her only friend is tiny Ceppi Healy, underfed, irrepressible and, the youngest in a neglected family of eight, as much as an emotional orphan as eighteen-year-old Katherine. Then, one night, the unspeakable happens. Katherine’s father is murdered, a victim of local revenge for an act of cruelty even she couldn’t have anticipated. Fearing for her life, Katherine flees, taking with her the desperate young Ceppi. Liverpool is her longed-for haven and, with the last of her father’s money, she rents a lodging house in a street decimated by the sinking of the Titanic. But, far from finding a refuge for herself and the little girl she promised to protect, she realises she has put them into the path of terrible danger Yet another brilliant book that Mike Chambers brought to my attention, he certainly had my reading tastes sussed!! Lyn Andrews has written a lot of books about Liverpool and this one was set in the period just after the sinking of the Titanic. I love anything that gives a sense of the social history of a place and this book certainly does that. I shall be looking out for more books by her

Douglas Kennedy A special Relationship. sally Goodchild, a 37 year old American journalist suddenly finds herself pregnant and married to an English foreign correspondent, tony Hobbs, whom she met while they were both on assignment in cairo. From the outset the relationship both with tony and London is an uneasy one as she finds her husband and his city to be far more foreign than she imagined. But her problems soon turn to nightmares whe she discovers that everything can be taken down and uses against you. I found this to be a compulsive, emotional and disturbing book. I read all500 pages in two days flat out, i couldn't put it down. I don't know how a man can get inside the head of a woman with PN depression for one thing. excellently written, and an excellent read. Ann Glos

contrasting slightly to C S Lewis lol Predator by Patricia Cornwell Usual fast-paced forensic thriller featuring Scarpetta, Marino and Benton Wesley and various psychopathic killers!! This was a good read - I do think you need to know a certain amount of the background though - new readers should start from the beginning, although that could take a while! One thing - I find Lucy and everything surrounding her increasingly beyond belief. I wonder really how long Cornwell can keep this series going - the only difference between the books is the bizarreness (is that a word?!) of the crimes and the twists that enable them to be solved. I am looking forward to the 'S is for ... ' Sue Grafton (which I seem to have been waiting for ages for!) - as her feet seem to be much more firmly on the ground! Maz. XX

Mere Christianity – C S Lewis A complete departure from the sort of books I normally read, and I only found out about this book when another board member mentioned it Better known for his Narnia books, C S Lewis wrote this book over half a century ago, but it is still one of the most popular and beloved introductions to the Christian Faith ever written I must confess to having only read the first three parts of the four part book, having started the fourth part I found it a little too ‘deep’ for me Some thoughts from the book I would like to share God is well aware of what a wretched machine we are trying to drive and asks that we keep on doing the best we can Have you ever noticed how monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been: how gloriously different the saints In a Christian society there would be no passengers or parasites – if a man does not work, he ought not to eat. There will be no manufacture of silly luxuries and then of sillier advertisements to persuade us to buy them. I must hate a bad man’s actions, but not hate the bad man: or put another way, hate the sin but not the sinner. I found it a fascinating book, and it has given me considerable food for thought.

I've tried the Ladies Detective things and just can't get into them at all. Read the books for Febs reviews and will save until then. In between read these ............. The Kid by Kevin Lewis......... my friend a social worker gave it to me and what a condemnation of social workers it is! A must read for those who want to know what goes on. Not for the faint-hearted.The abuse given to the child is evil -- a true story though and heart warming to see how he rose above it all. The Snapper --- Roddy Doyle Don't read if you dislike the F word! Some reviews have put it as laugh out loud funny -- I found it not funny but sad -- a young girl pregnant and she didn't even know why or how? Read at your peril! :)

Phyllis Bentley - Inheritance (1932) A great saga about a fictional West Riding mill owning family (a version was on the Telly in the 60's with John Thaw- didn't see that as I wasn't born then). Very good!

The Vanished Landscape – Paul Johnson Paul Johnson, the celebrated historian, grew up in Tunstall, one of the six towns around Stoke-on-Trent which made up ‘the Potteries’. From an early age he was fascinated by the strange beauty of it’s volcanic landscape of fiery furnaces belching out heat and smoke. As a child he often accompanied his father – headmaster of the local art school and desperate to find jobs for his students, for this was the Hungry Thirties – to the individual pottery firms and their coal-fired ovens Children made their own amusements to an extent unimaginable today, and his life was extraordinarily free and unsupervised. No door was locked – ‘Poverty was everywhere but so were the Ten Commandments. Just finished reading this, one of those gems that give an insight into life in the past. Anyone interested in reading it please pm me, as I am happy to pass it on. Dee xx

Dee, like you i read a couple and they were light enjoyable reading with an insight into life in Africa but I wouldn't rush to buy more, they became a sort of cult. i have got one of his (from my DiL who avidly reads them all) The two and a half pillars of wisdom, to read so I will see if I like that. Ann Glos

The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency Tears of the Giraffe Both by Alexander McGall Smith ‘Botswana’s only – and finest – female private detective may not be conventional but she’s got warmth, wit, and canny intuition on her side’ Having heard such a lot about these books I took the plunge and read the first two in the series, back to back Easy reading, they gave an insight into life in Botswana, and there were some unusual cases investigated. I couldn’t help feeling that he was writing to a formula and that I would soon get rather bored with him as an author. That said, I enjoyed them, and am glad I read them. The incident where she had a snake curl up in the engine of her van was rather scary, I have always been apprehensive when I have been travelling off road in Africa, and I will be even more so if I go again Dee xx

Nell, I read House on the Strand years ago, should re-read it really, love Daphne Du Mauriers books. And as Dee says please review any books you read any time on here. Ann Glos

Hi Nell We are always interested in reviews from other members of Genes, not just Greaders, if you feel like adding one anytime. It gives us all an idea of what is around, and what may be interesting, but different Dee xx

Very interesting thread for a bookworm like me. By coincidence I am reading Daphne du Maurier's 'The House on the Strand' at the moment, and I was thinking about 'The Loving Spirit' which I read yonks ago as a teenager. 'Rebecca' is a favourite which I have read and re-read and re-re-read. nell

We have, over the last few months, read several books about prostitutes Today in my local supermarket I came across the following book: - Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies – Sex in the City in Georgian Britain It was a best seller of the 18th century, shifting 250,000 copies in an age before mass consumerism. An annual ‘guide book’ and published at Christmas time, it detailed the names and ‘specialities’ of the capital’s prostitutes This book is a collection of the funniest, rudest and most bizarre entries I know it was mentioned in at least one of the books we have read recently. I found it fascinating, but would be embarrassed to quote from it on this thread. I also wonder how I would have felt if I had found one of my ancestors within its pages!! Dee x

nudge Ann Glos

Constance & Faith by Victoria Routledge. A really good read (484 pages). tangled love lives and dark family secrets. set on the Cumbrian coast, fictional town of Linton based on Whitehaven. Hannah Marshall had escaped to London after gaining her degree. 110 years later she is back home, for reasons she wont discuss, to find little has changed. It is still rainy, her Mother, fran is still fighting social injustice and her grandmother Dora is still ruling the circle of old ladies who dominate the town, especially at the book club. what is Dora's connection with the rich Musgrave sisters who brought her up in the big villa next door? Why does she refuse to discuss her childhood? And why is Fran desperate to know? As Hannah faces her own demons, she is forced to dig into the family's past and confront the hidden truths that haunt her family and Linton itself. A book full of atmosphere and intrigue. Ann Glos

Only just seen this dee, looks like another good read. i do like Lesley Pearse. Ann Glos

Rosie – Lesley Pearse Rosie Parker is no more than a child when her mother dies during the war. Left to the less then tender mercies of her father Cole and her brutish half brothers Seth and Norman, she sees the arrival of housekeeper Heather Farley as a possible replacement mother and her salvation But when Thomas Farley, comes looking for his sister several years later, he discovers Heather has left the Parkers in mysterious circumstances, abandoning her small son. As the terrible truth about Heather’s disappearance comes to light, Rosie is compelled to leave the farm and make her own way in the world. And if that means being exposed as the daughter of a murderer, that’s a risk she’ll have to take….. Another excellent book by Lesley Pearse, her research into the lives led by people in the asylums of the period is accurate, and very disturbing. It is period when girls of 14 were put into mental asylums for getting pregnant. And hysterical women were ‘plunged fully dressed into an ice cold bath and held there by force’. When simple minded people could be locked in a room for 24 hours a day, wearing no more than a coarse robe, were force fed, and often abused by those who were meant to be caring for them There is a lighter side to the story, and a happy ending. Dee xx

Acting up by Libby Purves. a good not too heavy read. very topical as it includes part of the story set in the Iraq war. Lieutenant Susie Anderson delays her wedding to her fellow officer Callum and joins her regiment in Kuwait. her brother Francis meanwhile continues to further his caree in cabaret as Madame Fanny Fantoni. as the neighbours agree it must be terrible for their poor parents, expecially the General. The real difficulties come when Callum is sent home injured, altered and bitter to set off a tangle of relationships which is resolved by the least likely angel of them all. very well written light entertainment. Ann Glos