Julie
This story has two parallel threads, one concerns the evil deeds of the Countess of Bathory in the 17th century, the other concerns the desperate search by a psychoanalyst for her mother who disappeared under suspicious circumstances in Slovakia (or was it Hungary? or maybe Poland? This border hopping is quite hard to follow) and who just happens to be an historian researching her next book on the bloodthirsty Elizabeth Bathory. Add to that a mysterious old geezer with a silver tipped walking stick, a Goth teenager, Daisy, suffering from bloody dreams who follows her psychoanalyst, Betsy (Elizabeth - what a coincidence) Path into danger and her sister, Morgan, who looks remarkably like the Countess, and what have you got? A remarkably average and predictable book.
It is a pity, the book could have been so much more. However, the formula, the predictability and the dialogue, particularly in the 17th century, let it down. Having said that, it isn't a bad way to while away a wet Sunday afternoon as it is an easy read and if you haven't read many books of a similar formula, it could be quite gripping. For me personally, it was a disappointment.
Can't See the Wood for the Trees Once I made up my mind to finish this book, I found it easier to read. That doesn't really make any sense, I know but I think I was just getting so hung up on the detail that I wasn't enjoying it. It's well written but kind of dry compared to today's standards of pop history. However, I did eventually get lost in the fascinating worlds of Dark Age and Early Medieval history even if I found Michael Wood's conclusions about pre-Domesday society hard to follow. There was a lot of conjecture which was all backed up by detailed scraps of transliterated original documents but this is where I got lost because most read like lists. I would read this again but for now it only gets 3 stars.
Avoided for too long! Elizabeth Chadwick has long been on my radar for historical fiction but when I stumbled across her website, I was put off by her somewhat unorthodox methods of research and her rather kitschy book titles. This really didn't sound like someone who took her historical accuracy all too seriously. So what made me download the preview of this book, I can't really say, but I am so glad I did. I was riveted. My only gripe is that the language used to describe some of the sex scenes sounded so old-fashioned that it could have come straight out of a D H Lawrence story. It just wasn't in keeping with the tone of the book or the times. Thankfully, such scenes were few and far between and mercifully short.. Other than that, I really enjoyed it and will be looking at some of her other books.
This was a reread. The last time I read it was about 20 years ago so it wasn't exactly fresh in my mind but it was surprising how familiar some parts of it were after all these years.
The story is set in the mid 1970s and is about 18 year old Eva Martin who gives up her family and her childhood to train for her dream of becoming a prima ballerina. Just as she reaches her goal she collapses and is diagnosed with cancer. She shares her room in the clinic with Claudia, a 26 year old loud mouth who has been in and out of remission for years. The young women seem to be opposites in every way but they strike up a friendship that helps them through the trials ahead.
From the summary of the story the book sounds like sentimental twaddle but in fact it is raw depiction of a cancer patient who is given only months to live. The story is based on experiences in the author's own life and is written as a kind of memoir. I don't know if the book was ever translated into English.
Although a bit outdated now, I found this book incredibly useful. It covers so many kinds of needlework that if you have a problem, chances are that you will find a solution in this book. Invaluable!
Hmmm... An entertaining action adventure without much depth. Good enough to while away a rainy afternoon.
The King???s Daughter is a story about the ???First Daughter of England??? Elizabeth Stuart. The only surviving daughter of James I of England and VI of Scotland, Elizabeth was third in line to the throne and seen by her father as a potential threat. At the age of 9 she foiled a kidnap attempt by the ???Gunpowder Plotters??? who intended to murder her father and elder brother and put her on the throne in their place. Unfortunately, that did nothing for her relationship with her father who suspected her of collusion with the traitors. From then on he kept a close eye on her and made sure she knew nothing of his plans for her, except, as with so many other princesses of times past, that he wanted simply to marry her off to the most advantageous suitor without compassion for her feelings. He kept her in uncertainty for years so that finally she wondered whether in fact her wouldn???t marry her off at all but just wait until she was desperate enough to marry secretly so that he could lock her up in The Tower for treason.
Having had my (temporary) fill of the Wars of the Roses and The Tudors, I picked up this book about the Stuarts, of whom I knew next to nothing. The character of Elizabeth was completely new to me and I found her to be quite sympathetic, she wasn???t overly ferocious nor excessively timid. And despite her father???s aversion to educating females, she wasn???t empty headed either. I can???t vouch for the accuracy of the events in the book but I enjoyed (if that is the right word) the author???s portrayal of a lewd, hedonistic King James and the lovable baby Charles, who wasn???t expected to reach adulthood, turning into a spoilt brat when he became first in line to the throne.
I found The King???s Daughter to be a light, easy and entertaining read and a good opener to the reign of the Stuarts, leaving me eager to read more.
This is a well constructed book on patchwork and quilting. It covers the basics of the different types of quilting patchwork and applique. There is also a section at the end showing some amazing finished quilts that should make you either want to cry or get your sewing machine out.
This is a reference book for anyone looking for crochet embellishments, there are no instructions for blocks to make up an afghan. I think I have only tried the star so far and I found the instructions to be clearly written and charted. The best thing about the book though, is that the stitches in my edition are given in UK English and not US which thankfully means no confusion when it come to dc and tr etc. There is also a tutorial on crochet at the start of the book making it ideal for beginners or occasional crocheters.
This books contains excellent instructions on the illustrated patterned blocks as well as advice on colour matching, how to knit (although you should probably know the basics before starting)and finishing off an afghan. There are some beautiful examples of assembled blankets too. In fact, there is so much choice that I find myself quite overwhelmed when I'm looking through it - I want to do them all, right now! There are enough examples in here to keep an avid knitter going for quite some time. You don't have to worry about your level of experience either, skill level is given for each block.
A bunch of ordinary people stuck in a tin can below the surface of the moon, battling one catastrophe after another, what is not to love? This is one of my favourite books and I can read it time and again, as indeed I have. So it seems a little dated? That is ok, after all it was written 53 years ago. If you ask me, it has stood the test of time pretty well. I read a review in which the reviewer considered it to be sexist - well, I don't agree. Put it in the context of the time it was written, it is remarkably forward thinking. There may not be any female scientists in the story but I can live with that, there still aren't as many as there should be in real life today. There are no aliens, monsters or zombies - just fine dust, trying to overcome them at every corner. Great fun.
Pink Bear
Our young heroine is snatched off the street on her way to school and kept in captivity to await the birth of her baby. She's sixteen and seven months pregnant. Once the baby is born it will be sold on and her body will be dumped in a disused quarry full of water. That would be enough to terrify the wits out of anybody else but this girl is different. This girl is highly intelligent with an in-depth knowledge of the sciences. She has an analytical mind and uniquely (and usefully) can turn her emotions on and off at will. This means she spends her 33 days of captivity weighing up her assets and planning her escape and revenge on her captors. It won't be pretty...
I wasn't sure what to expect from this one, reviews were ambivalent. I thought it was going to be a straight forward thriller, which, in a way, I suppose it was, but the victim was unusual. I admit the story is pretty far-fetched but it acknowledges that - all I can say is pink bear. It is fun though so why not? The idea of a cool and calculating 16 year old girl who doesn't desperately scream for rescue or quail at the presence of her captors is quite unnerving, as her abductors soon find out. And she doesn't just leave it at escaping, she is playing the long game. I really enjoyed it for the unusual up-beat writing style and the even more unusual victim. Revenge is sweet!
If you can suspend your disbelief for a moment and skip the ‘technical' bits, I found this to be a page turner.
Despite not feeling much sympathy for Harriet in the end, I had to give the book 5 stars. Harriet's life covers the second half of the 18th century and the first couple of decades of the 19th century, a timespan which covers a great deal of political turmoil in Europe and America. Harriet was closely involved in politics from quite a young age through her parents and her sister Georgiana, The Duchess of Devonshire. She was a prolific letter writer and many of her letters still survive forming the basis for this book. This gives the reader an excellent first hand insight into social and political customs of the day, all presented in a light and easily understandable manner by the author, no mean feat considering the material.
I, Jacqueline centres around the true story of a girl of 16 left to rule parts of what is now The Netherlands and Belgium when her father dies. It is set in the 15th century, a time when Europe seemed to run out of male heirs to their thrones but would not accept autonomous female rulers. The young lady of the title was left with few supporters, even fewer options and many enemies including her mother.
I didn't much like the book. The story itself is one that should have grabbed me as so many of the kind have (most recently C.W. Gortner's The Last Queen). Unfortunately, Jacqueline does not compare too well to Juana of Castille. Jacqueline comes across as a spoilt petulant young lady with no judgement when it comes to politics. She marries again and again contrary to her dead father's advice and reaps the dire consequences. This in itself could have made a cracking story but our ‘heroine' is rather dull. It seems she rode at the head of her armies but apart from a cursory mention of this we find out no more about it. I felt sorry for her hardships but in the end I couldn't like her. I can't help feeling that if more had been made of her forays into battle she would have been a more interesting character. On the plus side, I enjoyed the writing style. It was olde worlde enough to give you a feeling of antiquity without it sounding too forced.
All in all, it wasn't a waste of time to read it but I doubt it will make it to my reread list.
Mist Over Pendle by Robert Neill
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The Lancashire Witch trials of 1612 were the basis for this story. We have a young puritan girl, Margery, sent to her cousin Roger Nowell because her family doesn???t know what to do with her (she is distinctly un-puritan) and nobody can provide her with a dowry to marry her off. Roger???s way of life is more to Margery???s taste and, freed of the restrictions her upbringing had imposed on her, we see her blossom into an intelligent young woman. She accompanies her cousin, a Justice of the Peace, on his investigations into increasingly frequent accusations of witchcraft, soon becoming an integral part of the inquiries, her actions leading to at least one incidence of romance and several incidences of execution.
My opinion:
??? I loved the writing, you could tell at once that it wasn???t written in recent years, it was lighter and more tongue-in-cheek (in places) than novels written in recent decades.
??? The descriptions were evocative of the time and place, I could feel the icy cold of the winter rains as they rode around the county and the warmth of a blazing fireplace afterwards. I could feel the threat emanating from the witches and feared for the young girls, Margery and Grace, in particular
??? The dialogue could be very amusing, the characters of both Roger and Margery made me smile on more than one occasion
??? The minor elements of romance (after all, she was there to find a dowry if not a husband) were handled delicately and left me smiling
??? The only negative aspect I found was that it was getting a little bogged down in the beginning with the descriptions of the area. I found that a little tedious but it was obviously meant to set the scene and introduce the different locations in the story.
I really enjoyed this book, it put a smile on my face in some places, made me anxious in others and entertained me throughout, The focus is more on the investigation and Margery???s ???coming of age??? than on the witchcraft side of it, so if that is what you are looking for then this probably isn???t the story for you. However, if you are interested in the psychological aspect on the populace in general, then you might find this interesting.
Thomas Howard, third Duke of Norfolk was a powerful, ambitious and unbelievably selfish man at the courts of the Tudor monarchs, most notably Henry VIII???s. He managed to put 2 of his nieces on the throne and condemned both of them to death. His daughter was married to King Henry???s bastard and might one day have been Queen of England had Henry Fitzroy lived past the age of 17. This is Thomas Howard???s story, as told from his point of view, that of his second wife, Elizabeth Stafford and of his mistress, Bess Holland.
???We see Thomas as a man with all his faults. He is turned into the megalomaniac we know from history by grief and power but he was a man with feelings.
???The characters and relationships were well developed. They each had their own journey to make through the book and you could believe at the end that despite the antagonism and maltreatment involved, Elizabeth would never leave her husband. Domestic violence hasn???t changed much in 500 years.
???The story itself is simply incredible. While reading it I kept having to look on the internet to find out if the events were made up. It seems they were not. The facts came to light when he held his wife captive and she appealed to Thomas Cromwell and again when Elizabeth Stafford, Bess Holland and Mary Fitzroy testified against him
???The pace was quick. I couldn???t put the book down.
???The title is simply awful. I expected some kind of cheap bodice ripper when I read the title. It put me off reading the book until I picked it up for next to nothing. I started to read the reviews then and decided to give the book a go based on these reviews. I was pleasantly surprised. This is not some kind of soppy romance but a hard core depiction of a man driven by grief and power. He took the idea of looking after no. 1 to new heights.
An easy straight forward read for fans of Tudor fiction. The title and some of the dialogue let it down but I think that you can learn something from this book and I saw Thomas Howard in a different light afterwards ??? he was still a nasty piece of work though ;)
Doctor Faraday is a physician called out to a patient in an old run-down Georgian house in the summer of 1947. The patient is a young servant girl with a wild imagination. The family is from another world, a world of glamour and money and condescension, a world which disappeared with WWII but the family are desperately trying to hold on to. The strain begins to show when a fire mysteriously starts in in one of the bedrooms, strange noises are heard through the walls and ceiling and the family discover marking scratched in the paintwork.
As a haunted house mystery I found this didn't work too well, there wasn't enough tension and spookiness. What did work was reading it as a psychological study of a disappearing class in a world they no longer recognised. After WWII the welfare state had a huge impact on Britain, touched on here by the building of council estates and the introduction of the NHS. At the same time nobody wanted a ‘lord of the manor' anymore and the gentry were being forced to sell off their land bit by bit just to keep their heads over water. The detail used in the story lets the reader feel the strain the family are under and I was totally engrossed although sometimes the story felt a little slow. I like the ambiguous ending and the question of how much Doctor Faraday himself was involved in the destruction of the Ayres family.
Worth the hype? Am I the only one who doesn't understand what all the hype was about? Yes, I enjoyed the story but really, was it that special? I think Rosamund Lupton's “Sister” was better and more original but that didn't get all this publicity.
Spiders in Space I bought the book based on the blurb thinking I had an idea of what the story was about. Well...I wasn't entirely wrong but had I known it was partly about a race of giant, intelligent spiders I probably wouldn't have picked it up because a) I really can't stand the beasts and b) it would have sounded too ridiculous for my taste. However, I started to read it and once I realised what was going on I somehow wanted to find it silly but I couldn't, I got entirely drawn in. The civilisation building was amazing - I'm always in awe of someone who can imagine something like that. It did drag a little in places but I think that was just because I wanted to find out what was going to happen. When it came to the show-down I couldn't decide who I wanted to win. It felt like a mixture of Doctor Who's Planet of the Spiders mixed with The Face of Evil episodes (yes, I am a Doctor Who fan) add some Rama to it and finish it all off with Kim Stanley Robinson's Aurora and still it had a flavour all of its own. Fantastic!
This wasn't what I expected it to be. I think there is a potential for a real psycho horror story here, which if I am honest, was what I was expecting. However, it turned out to be an interesting crime story with moral issues to think about even when the book is finished. So, although I had a completely different story in my head, I enjoyed this book immensely.