Hobbies and Crafts

Akaska is not a place I know all that much about, have watched Ice Truckers on various trips so found the whole thing believable but doubt that I could have driven a truck of that size like Yasmin did.. and as a mother I thought she certainly took some risks that I don't think I would have done. I don't even drive our horse truck.

If you ever have time have a go at A man called Ove.. it is really good and of course that one my husband reviewed on here ages ago " The 100 year old man who climbed out the window." I recommended it to Jonesy who was on GR (we used to correspond by e-mail) and back came " I have read it, I always knew you and I were kindred spirits" Not too sure about that as my reading is across the board where once I read little fiction and mostly the real thing.

I have seen on FB where a lot of people have been talking about "The Girl on the Train"

Persephone
1). I don't know what history you had to learnat school, as you live in The Southern Hemisphere. Here in the U.K. we had to learn about The Wars of the Roses". ( or The Cousins War" as G.P. calls them). We also had to "do" TheTudors, so putting flesh onto the bones of history we were gorcedtk learn is quite enlightening and interesting, as long as you remember that these novels are well researched piecesoffiction.
By the way I also learnt from a book called Great Men of the East". when I lived in Malaya. I just wish that I could remember more yhn the title of the book.!!


2). After writing my review about The Quality of Silence" I read your review. ( I like to start with a blank sheet, so that others opinions don't influence what I write.

This time I see that we very similar views, especially as we both felt that we were with Yasmin and Ruby during their nghgmare journey. And we both recommended, in strong terms that other people read it too.

I took my book back to the library this morning, and told the staff how good is. They are now thinking of recommending it go their readers group.

Will now be telling friends and family about it is FB. one of my cousins lived in Alaska for a while so am interested to hear if she had read this book.


Ann, my sister is a keen J.P. fan, will have to see if she has read "Leaving Time". It sounds intriguing.

Have now started reading. THe Stone Cutter. by Camila Lackberg.

It is over five hundred pages, so may take me a while o read. However, I is also a paperback cop, do not to bad to hold. Won't have to take a break yo rest my hand do often.
???

At last, I have read ,"The Quality of Silence ". by Rosamund Lipton. - and. WOW!!!

A real edge of your seat story. The blurb on the back cover says" 24th November, Yasmin and her ten year old daughter, Ruby, set off on a journey acrossNorthern Alaska. They are searchingforRuby's father mixing in the Arctic wilderness". What it DOESN'T say is that Ruby's father, (Matt), is believed to have died in a mysterious and catastrophic fire.
Despite evidence to the contrary, Yasmin believes that Matti's still alive and sets of to the Arctic Circle le go rescue him.

The story unfolds partly through the words of ten year old Ruby, who accompanies her mother every step of the way. Ruby is totally deaf and communicates by sign language (BSL), finger spelling and with the help of a magic voice app on her computer. She also has a blog. and updates it when she can. Ruby us able to lipread.

Rosamund manages to pack so much information into her story. while still keeping it a thrilling an nerve wracking story.

Her main characters, Yasmin and Ruby, got under my skin, so much so that I sometimes felt that I was in the cb with them, enduring hat they endured and feeling their fear. While hoping that they could defeat their foes, visible and invisible, human and non-human that were set against them.

I have only one more thing to say ..,,.....READ IT!!!

I have only read one of her books right through and felt she padded it out a bit much. I made myself stay with "The Lady of the Rivers" after failing miserably with either the Red Queen or the White Queen.. don't think I attempted both

I was just looking on Google at all the books she wrote and I see she also has written a lot of children's books.

I have a book of hers to read which is in a different genre away from Royalty etc I might recommend that next time it is getting on a bit though.

I've got to finish reading two library books. - The Book Thief. and. Excursion to Tindari. by Saturday. morning as they are both due back.

Have got The Stone Cutter and. The Quality of Silence in my "read these next" pile.

I'll be back with reviews when I've read them.

Now finished The Taming of the Queen.

I found this book informative and interesting. Yes, I knew that Katherine Parr was the sixth ifee of Henry VIII, that she curve him, and that she had previously been married twice.

However, I felt that this book got into the marrow of Katherine's life with Henry, and the terrifying time she lived through while bring Queen Katherine Parr.

It also introduced Ann Askew to me, as I have no memory of hearing about her before.

The confusion on a day to day basis of hat you were slowed to believe was quite dye opening. Things changed so rapidly that very few people could have felt safe.

It brings home now much things have changed. I'd realised that The Mass and other services were said" in Latin, but didn't know that prayers were never in English. ( unless it was okay that week!). That the English Bible was given to the populace by Henry, only go become illegal later.

So this novel both educated me and scared me in equal measure. Because I felt things from Katherine's point of view, I was scared for her a lot of the time. Even though I knew that she survived Henry, I found myself muttering. " hurry up and die". every time Henry and his cronies threatened Katherine, her hiusehold , family and friends.


Just like to add that I don't always like Philippa Gregory's novel. Recently attempted to read The White Princess, a story about Elizabeth of York, wife of Henry VII and mother of Henry VIII. I just couldn't get into the "essence of Elizabeth". Just felt that it reported the perceived facts, but no feelings or thoughts

Gosh, is it that time already?!!. Although I've got The Stone Cutter on my book shelf. haven't even started to read it yet. Have started The Among of the Queen, but only about a third of the way through. Don't know where the time has gone. Too many distractions maybe. Will review them one at a time as soon as I finish them. Sorry.
:-0 :-0

Greaders review The Taming of the queen by Philippa Gregory

As with all of her history novels I did at times feel I was reading a history text book, but sort of in a good way. Facts and events, easy to absorb and very readable and well researched.
What a truly horrible man Henry V111 was, how awful to have to be on your guard every minute of the day for fear of losing your life. He ruled by fear and he thought he was untouchable. Unfortunately for him none of us can escape dying eventually.
I always thought her name was Katherine but PG calls he Katerine (Kat) so I bow to her superior knowledge. She was basically a strong woman, in a later life she would no doubt have been a suffragette, and later still a member of Womens’ Lib. But she was intelligent and literate which is why she put her life in danger. Because too many people were aware of how clever she was she became a danger to ‘important’ men. Besides being clever, she was also courageous being prepared to risk her life to use her skills.
However we also see her as a woman who could love deeply and love just one man while pretending to be true to Henry and I have to admit to being pleased that she and Thomas Seymour were eventually reunited. Sadly as in many historical stories, no real happy ending though.
Yes, a bit hard going and long winded in places, but over all I enjoyed it and learned a bit more about the reign of Henry V111.


review Leaving Time by Jodi Piccoult

I love JP’s books, she is a great story teller. However, I have not read any of hers for a while as other authors got in the way.
This book, written in 2013 is a fantastic read. If you like Elephants and like to learn about them this is a book you will enjoy. Alice Metcalf and her husband Thomas run an elephant sanctuary in Tennessee. Alice is a scientist studying elephants in Botswana when she meets Thomas from Tennessee who visits to see the elephants there.
Jenna Metcalf is their daughter, she was with her mother the night she disappeared but she remembers nothing. Her father is in an asylum and she now lives with her grandmother who finds it too painful to talk about what happened.
Ten years on Jenna is the only one who still seems to care and she is determined to seek the truth.
To find her mother Jenna enlists the help of Serenity, a psychic with spirit guides, and Virgil an ex detective.
The whole book is well written, a page turner, full of suspense with a great twist at the end. The characters are beautifully crafted. I really, really enjoyed it.

Review : What Doesn't Kill Her by Carla Norton

Well it was not till after I had finished reading this book I found out there was another one preceding it. This did not matter as it was a well written stand alone mystery thriller. It was one of those books you found hard to put down and would think well I will just read a bit more before I do this or that or go to sleep. Hence it was read very quickly. You know who the killer is from the beginning of the story, but the theme of the story is how are they going to catch him. He is a real nasty bit of works and his mother is also a nasty character. Reeve the main character just does not give up she has been held captive by him for four years and she has thought up until now she was safe with Flint (a paedophile) being in custody. Flint is out to find her he wants her back, other victims he kills, but he has kept her alive, she was a child when he took her and did his utmost to damage her and she is now a young woman who knows how he thinks and she works with an understanding detective to try and find him before Flint finds her. It is very much a cat and mouse game, which keeps you wanting to know more.

Review of "A Man Called Ove"

I am so glad I read this book, it would make a wonderful television series, each chapter is a story of a happening in a day in the life of Ove. I started reading the book and thought, now what do we have here, he is such a grumpy old bloke with traits of both Percy Sugden and Norris in his way of going about life. I did not like him that much but each time he came up against something I thought it remarkable how he handled it. By the end of the book I found myself admiring him and his ways not the ways of everyone but he had principles and he stuck to them. For example he never returned to a bakery because it short changed him once and it was still remembered 8 years later. The last chapter left me in tears. When you think about it his mother died when he was young, and then his father had gone by the time he was 18. He found the love of his life Sonja who was colourful and kind and when they were expecting a child they were in a bus accident in Spain, she lost the child and ended up in a wheelchair. Ove fought the bus tour company, he fought the insurance company and others to no avail. Sonja wanted to return to her teaching job and he fought bureaucracy, or as he calls them the "white shirts" to get a ramp built for his wife at the school, and in the end he did it himself, in fact he is not unlike the little red hen in some ways as he fixes and does everything himself. He loses his job and his wife at age 59, she gets cancer, and all he wants to do his kill himself but he gets thwarted at every opportunity and even becomes a hero. What a wonderful man he was.

Thank you Pammy.

Review of The Quality of Silence

I loved Sister and Afterwards, while a good read I am not one to be enamoured with the supernatural appearing within a good story.

Quality of Silence takes the biscuit. Wonderful writing and an intriguing story. The places are real and the truckies that travel that area would probably tell stories about this cold area of almost nowhere.
Ruby is a delightful deaf girl who whilst she can sound words she is unsure of their sounds when they come out of her mouth so she prefers either sign language (some of which is made up by her and a friend and her father) She is also a blogger and is adept at computer knowledge and can turn on the voice when she types so others can hear what she has to say.
Ruby and her mother Yasmin are going to meet up with Ruby's father Matt in Alaska but when they get there they are told that he is dead, a result of an accident that happened to wipe out a whole village. Yasmin does not believe them and she manages to persuade a private truck driver (Turkish) to take her and Ruby so far, not all the way but Yasmin is hoping that will change. They are followed by an unknown truckie from a short distance away. The Turkish chap has a medical emergency on the way, so Yasmin takes his truck and also takes Ruby into the eye of the storm on the way. Yasmin makes some fairly wild decisions apart from never driving a truck before, and when they try to locate her by RT the truckie that is following her gives the wrong information and so choppers are looking for them in an area nowhere near them. It is harrowing, the description of Alaska is vivid and you are with them all the way (well I was warm) in the freezing conditions. Ruby gets messages on her computer but they don't know if these are from her father or the bloke following them as some of the pictures are fairly ghastly. Do they get to him, was he murdered, were all the people murdered and it was not a huge accident, what exactly is going on. Well you have to read it.

The taming of the queen by Philippa Gregory 11


The Quality of Silence by Rosamund Lupton 1
Leaving Time by Jodi Piccoult 1
The Stone Cutter. by Camilla Lackberg. 1
A Humble Companion by Laurie Graham 1
Her Sisters Gift - Isabel Jackson 1
The Girl With No Name - Diney Costeloe 1


Please read the taming of the Queen (I don't know if it is the same in all Waterstones but I bought it in there half price a couple of days ago. I think it is about £3.99 on Amazon for Kindle

After the winner, please read any of those that gained one vote that you fancy

Please review those from the list that you have read.