Thoughts on books and reading, book recommendations, writer profiles and litereary trivia
This has to be one of the best science fiction series that I've ever read. It features a protagonist who is fascinating and utterly unique, and it is this character, the murderbot in the title, that makes the books so worth reading. The Murderbot is an AI, what the people in this world of the …
Continue reading "Book Recommendation: The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells"
This is book three in the Follet Valley mystery series written by Ian Moore. This series is set in the fictional town of Saint-Sauver in the Loire region of France. It features Richard Ainsworth, a mild-mannered Englishman, and owner of a B&B as the amateur detective, along with Valerie D’Orsay, formerly of the French Secret …
Continue reading "Book Recommendation: Death at the Chateau by Ian Moore"
This is a play, and I don’t usually read those, but I saw The History Boys, the movie and I liked it so much, that I wanted to read the play that it was based on. This play got under my skin in a way that little else has done in all my years of …
Continue reading "Book Recommendation: The History Boys by Alan Bennett"
Antoine Laurain is one of my favourite writers. I pick up every one of his books expecting to love it, and he almost never disappoints. French Windows has all the elements that I associate with his writing. It's charming, quirky, and interesting. But this book has the added element of murder and mystery. You never …
Continue reading "Book Recommendation: French Windows by Antoine Laurain"
Terry Pratchett is one of my favourite writers. I have loved every book of his that I've read so far. They are all brilliant, and Unseen Academicals is right up there with the best of them. This is book 37 in the Discworld series and the seventh and final book that features characters from the …
Continue reading "Book Recommendation: Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett"
This is the story of a couple, a Mr and Mrs Ransome, who find their sedate and predictable lives disrupted by a completely unexpected event. They go to the opera one evening and they come back home to find that they have been robbed, or so Mrs Ransome says. "Burgled," Mr Ransome says, because people …
Continue reading "Book Recommendation: The Clothes They Stood Up In by Alan Bennett"
A few years ago, I discovered that Georgette Heyer, who I had long associated with regency romance, wrote murder mysteries as well. I came across a few of her books in the crime section of my local bookshop. I picked one up, read it and loved it. She’s an excellent writer. I’ve read a few …
Continue reading "Book recommendation: Behold Here’s Poison by Georgette Heyer"
This is an unassuming, but charming book. It’s about a middle-aged man, Tim Gandy, with grown children who’s just retired and is finding life rather flat. He and his wife have grown apart over the years. He finds that he has somehow, become a spectator in his own life and now that he no longer …
Continue reading "Book Recommendation: Mr Gandy’s Grand Tour by Alan Titchmarsh"
As detectives in fiction go, Lord Peter Wimsey is unique. He’s an aristocrat, a gentleman-scholar, and a lover of rare books. He’s a literary expert who can quote at will from Catullus, Shakespeare, Donne, Dickens, Lewis Carroll, and a host of others. He’s a fine musician who plays Bach, Scarlatti, and the Beggar’s Opera, among …
Continue reading "In Focus: Literary Detectives: Lord Peter Wimsey"
This is the second book in the Lord Peter Wimsey series and it is one of the best. Lord Peter is off on vacation with his manservant, Bunter when this story begins. They have just left Corsica after a month there, and landed in Paris when they learn that Lord Peter's older brother Gerald, the …
Continue reading "Book Recommendation: Clouds of Witness by Dorothy L Sayers"
“I came here eight years ago as a renter of this farm, of which I soon afterward, become the owner. The time before that, I like to forget. The chief impression it left, upon my memory, now happily growing indistinct, is of being hurried faster than I could well travel…” So begins this account of …
Continue reading "Book Recommendation: Adventures in Contentment by David Grayson"
between the pages 