Hobbies and Crafts

Still haven't looked on their bookshelf, so don't worry ;-)

They have homes of their own, but we STILL end up as their storage warehouse! :-D

Hi all
at the moment im reading

this wicked man -- regency novel

i cant seem to find any free good books that i like on amazon to download on to the kindle

my trouble is i can not read just any think it has to be just before the time of cars
or just after. i can not read any modem stuff

i do some times read ww1/2 but not that often

I've been ploughing through "Music and Silence" by Rose Tremain and found it very hard going. The book is set mostly in Denmark in the 1600s where an English lutenist joins the orchestra at the court of King Christian IV. There are love stories, schemes and plots yet the narrative doesn't seem to go anywhere and the chapters dodge about over a 50 year time period and between Scandinavia, Ireland and England so I was forever having to remind myself that what I was reading about had happened before stuff I had already read. Does that make sense? Some characters were fictional, others had existed, but none of them seemed real to me and they all seemed to be touched by madness to a greater or lesser extent.

I feel almost guilty saying I did not like this book because I know the reviews of it have all been pretty good. Rose Tremain is a skilful writer who uses her words well but I don't think I am on her wavelength. (I have read 2 others of hers which were OK but I didn't really enjoy them much so I think I've given her a fair trial.)

I've only seen a couple of negative reviews about this book but one of them said exactly what I think "Skillful, elaborate and ultimately pointless".

Vera 'damning with faint praise'. I don't think that sounds like one for me, given that yous eem to be able to persevere with books that I can barely cope with. :-D

Ann, it goes against the grain with me not to finish a book. I don't know why. Perhaps it goes back to childhood when I devoured books because I didn't have much else to do at home but read.

I can only think of one book that I put aside after a few chapters and that was "The History of Love" by Nicole Krauss. I got it out of the library after someone whose tastes are much like mine recommended it to me but I could not get on with it at all. I still think from time to time that I ought to have another go at it.

I almost feel guilty if I don't finish a book. Idiot aren't I? :-D

I rarely give up but if I do it is because life is too short to waste it on books I don't like. Although I am more likely to skim through them.

Just downloaded Margaret The Queen by Nigel Tranter
priced £2.99

Margaret was a beautiful Saxon Princess and sister of the true King of England
Edgar of the house of Atheling.

Hi one and all ~~~~~~~ <3 <3

Emma I liked the sound of your book, taken alook and I have just downloaded it :-D

Dont know when i will read it, but its there and I am looking forward to reading it <3

Happy Reading Bookworms & kindle tarts <3 :-D

Hello Bookworms and Kindle Readers <3

Finally finished A Single Breath (slow reader and putter downer lol ) and thought it was a thoroughly good story.

Have just ordered Gone Girl as family say the film is very good...so surely must be a good story also. :-)

Mau XX

Glad you enjoyed it Mau. :-)

Thanks Ann

Is anyone watching 'The Casual Vacancy' on tv? I have the book but couldn't get into the story and Rowling wasn't given very good book reviews either.

However I'm now watching the serial and finding it quite good, even though it's a bit naughty :-0...good cast.

Yes I am watching it mau, good cast but not liking it very much.

Finished The King's Curse by P Gregory.

Very good read told through the voice of Margaret Pole
who was the oldest woman (67) Henry V111 sent to the
Tower and beheaded. The poor woman suffered a horrific
death as it took eleven hits with the axe before she died.
As a Plantaganent she was felt as a threat to Henry and
his heirs.

Now reading Anne's Song By Anne Nolan.

Finished Anne's Song by Anne Nolan.

Now reading Margaret The Queen by Nigel Tranter.

I decided I wanted something a bit lighter after some of my recent reading and grabbed a Mapp & Lucia book by E F Benson from the Quick Choice shelf at the library. I've never read any of these books before or seen the television programmes. I thought the volume was a bit thick and when I got home I found it was three books bound into one - Queen Lucia, Miss Mapp and Mapp and Lucia.

They are OK, quite funny in places but a bit wordy and very outdated. One would have been OK but by the time I got to the end of the third book I was bored with them.

Then I read The Geneva Trap by Stella Rimington. This was much more to my taste. As you would expect from the ex-head of MI5, this is a spy story revolving around a cyber attack on a joint British American experimental programme. Who has infiltrated British Security? Are the Russians involved or not? How do the various sub plots connect together? etc. etc. Well written and quite fast moving. I enjoyed it.

At the moment reading the Genes book for tis month Nora Webster, quite good.

Seems a while since anyone posted on here. Perhaps now spring is here we are all finding other things to do. :-D

I've been reading The Tutor by Andrea Chapin, Genes Book of the Month. My review (rather a long one I'm afraid) is on that thread so I won't repeat it here.

I've been reading Fallen Skies by Philippa Gregory. It's the story of an upper middle class war "hero" and the chorus girl he marries and it takes place in the 1920s. Stephen Winter is a lawyer haunted and damaged by his experiences in WW1. He believes marrying the young chorus girl Lily, who has seemingly been unaffected by the war, will make everything right again. It is clear from very early on in the book that it will end in tragedy - it's just a question of trying to guess how it will end.

This was different from any Philippa Gregory book I've read before but I have just discovered that she wrote The Little House which was on television a little while ago and Fallen Skies is similar in tone to that.

The characters are well rounded. Even though some of them are difficult to like and Stephen Winters is horrendous you can understand what has made them the way they are.

Well worth reading once though I don't think it is a book I would want to read again.

I read that one some time ago Vera, I think I still have it on the book shelf, seem to remember I enjoyed it.

I am reading Small Island by Andrea Levy (who wrote, amongst others) The Island about the Leper colony on an Island.
Small Island is a tragicomedy set in postwar Britain, with a flash back to wartime Britain and the joining of the RAF by Members of the Caribbean islands. It is about the first encounters between these people and white indigenous people and also it describes the apartheid that existed among American black and white troops and their reaction to the Caribbean servicemen mixing freely with white British. After the war one ex RAF man from Jamaica returns to make a new life in Britain and finds it is still run down after the war. He is joined by his wife who expects great things of life in Britain and is disappointed. A wellw ritten book and quite illuminating.

'The Story of the Irish Race' - by Seumas MacManus (1869-1960).

Published 1921.