Julie

Interesting rather than entertaining (if that distinction can be made). The story contains a lot of speculation about what can be done about climate change, it's a bit like reading an idiots guide interspersed with the odd news report about a catastrophe happening somewhere in the world. I missed the urgency and the human factor of the crisis that a little first hand action would have given. In fact, I felt that the whole thing was romanticised - a scientist getting in touch with his inner caveman, candles and quality time with the family during power outages and parties on the frozen river. I didn't feel the danger to me and my loved ones at all. Maybe a reread in the future would change my mind but for now I like the book but didn't find it anything special.

Fourteen year old Evie has got a long summer ahead of her before she is shipped off to boarding school. She falls out with her best friend, her mum spends her time with her new boyfriend and her dad lives elsewhere with his new wife. Evie finds herself alone and desperate for attention. Then one day in a park, she notices a couple of strange girls and follows them to a dumpster where they collect dinner. She meets them again when her bike slips its chain and they offer her a lift to their ranch. There she finds the attention she has been craving. Everyone is chilled out and interested in her. And everyone is in awe of Russell. He is the manipulative head of the cult and he welcomes Evie with open arms. She spends the summer at the ranch, doing drugs and learning about sex, only returning home to keep up appearances (and steal money from her mum). But when Russell doesn't get the record deal he thinks he is due, things go very bad and Evie has a narrow escape.
 
This is not the kind of book I would normally read. It is a kind of coming of age story which is not my preferred genre. Evie is a lonely, bored and vulnerable teenage girl with low self-esteem, just crying out to be noticed - one of thousands in every generation. It is easy to see how some can be in thrall to sick men like Russell. Her gradual integration into the ranch community was chilling. I liked the end, proving that you can find friends and a sense of belonging in less dangerous surroundings.The writing was great, descriptive enough to let you see the details but it didn't get bogged down.
 
I loved this book. It is a must read for every parent with a teenage daughter. Or maybe not, I don't think I could have stomached it when my daughter was that age.
 
 

The first in the Roy Grace series of books and for me it won't be the last. Aside from the fact that everyone in this book was good looking and as soon as anyone was introduced we immediately got a list of their physical attributes, which I found irritating and interrupted the flow if several people turned up for the first time all together, I enjoyed the book a lot.

Audible Edition
Very good introduction to the Wars of the Roses. Dan Jones narrates his own book very well.

The premise of this book is that an historian is sent back to the Middle Ages to do some research. As the Middle Ages are a ‘10' (presumably meaning they haven't been declared safe) the project is rushed through while the head of faculty is away. This of course leads to mistakes being made. So instead of sending our heroine back to the relatively safe 1320s, they miss by 20 years and send her to the outbreak of the Black Death (a far more interesting time from an historical standpoint, I would have thought).

So, I liked the book because

??? it was an interesting idea for a story
??? Kivrin was a person and not a cardboard cut out, she had her compassion and her fear
??? I enjoyed her acceptance of her situation and her attempt to save the village in the foreknowledge of what was about to happen

What I didn't like so much

??? the events in the future seemed rather contrived
??? the author hadn't done enough research: the descriptions of Oxford seemed like they had been taken from a 1950s movie, and cholera did not exist in the Middle Ages (I wouldn't have picked that up myself had I not read the introduction but the slip is unforgiveable given the amount of times the author mentions it during the story)
??? the 12 year old boy (I forget his name) seemed much older.

Despite my criticisms, I really enjoyed the book. It was well paced and the scenes in the Middle Ages were quite involving. However, I don't think it deserves its awards. I've given it a four star rating for pure entertainment value and I will be looking into reading more from Connie Willis.

A sect living on a rooftop garden. Violence and decadence on the streets. Gene spliced animals and plants. This is the grim future in Margaret Atwood???s ???The Year of the Flood???.
The book jumps backwards and forwards in time, some chapters cover the years leading up to ???The Dry Flood??? while others follow the few survivors in the months after.

I find that I have a love/hate relationship with this book, which is why it has taken me so long to write the review. The writing is excellent, the worlds well thought through, the characters believable, and still I couldn???t really enjoy it until the end. I have an aversion to sects of any kind, even ???nice??? groups like the one portrayed in this story. At first I found it confusing because a chapter describes Year 1 which I assumed to be Year 1 after The Flood. It took me several chapters to work out that it was actually Year 1 of the Sect and that the Flood didn???t happen until Year 25. Over the course of the 25 years not much seemed to happen, we had descriptions of everyday life and of how the main protagonists came to be there (and then left again) but not much else. The pace was too slow to hold my interest so I kept putting it down and reading something else. It wasn???t until the last few chapters that the pace picked up again and I became immersed in the story.
???
Although well thought through, the story was just too slow for my taste. However, the premise is interesting enough to make me want to read the previous book in the trilogy ???Oryx and Crake???. This may make me want revise my opinion of ???The Year of the Flood???.

I've looked forward to this book since finishing “The Twelve” the first time around. It didn't disappoint, at least not until about three quarters of the way through - it had the familiar mix of horror, humanity, love and tragedy I've come to enjoy from the two previous books in the series.There was even an undertone of ecological warning at the end of the book making it more than just an entertaining romp through some post-apocalyptic nighmare landscape. But then Cronin uses one of the worst cliches to get his heroes out of a tight spot: the old I've-tried-everything-I-can-think-of-to-get-this-machine-to-go-now-I'll-just-have-a-fit-with-a-wrench-and-hit-everything-in-sight-because-I'm-so-useless-oh-it-works-now-hooray! Really? I've waited this long for the book, I would have waited another few weeks for you to come up with something less corny. I have taken away one star for your lack of ingenuity, Mr. Cronin (although really I enjoyed it enough for it to be a four star read). And once again I would say stay away from pregnancy and birth, describing it is really not your forte.

Edit 24/08/2018
Don't know what my problem was, I couldn't put it down and I didn't have the same problems this time round - except with the wrench, it made me cringe again. I would give it five stars now.

I was disappointed with this book. The only thing that made me finish it was curiosity but you know what they say about that! The author was out to shock and nothing more. I didn't feel any tension or fear whilst reading it and I certainly won't be in a hurry to read it again, or buy any more books of his. I read The Ritual a while back and enjoyed it which made this one that much more disappointing. Pity.

Loved it. Yes, the story could probably have been told in half the pages but Dan Simmons loves to revel in the detail and so do I. Consequently the story can get bogged down in places but on the whole, I found it really interesting and thoroughly enjoyable.

Was in a bit of a reading slump.

Not the right time. Will return to it later.

I was disappointed with this book. The only thing that made me finish it was curiosity but you know what they say about that! The author was out to shock and nothing more. I didn't feel any tension or fear whilst reading it and I certainly won't be in a hurry to read it again, or buy any more books of his. I read The Ritual a while back and enjoyed it which made this one that much more disappointing. Pity.

I was looking forward to reading this book with some trepidation which is silly really because I am reading to relax and it shouldn't be work. I was pleasantly surprised that it didn't actually turn out to be work but rather an enjoyable, enlightening experience. It was a little confusing in places and seemed quite disjointed in the dialogue but that was the style of the story. I have to say however, that I would like to read a different translation at some point because some of the sentences felt rather literally translated and just didn't seem right. I don't know if this is really the case or whether it was how the story was written in the first place but it would be interesting to see how other translators interpret certain parts of the story.
 
The beautiful Vintage Russian Classics edition of the book was a bit of a pain to read. I don't like breaking spines and so I had terrible cramp in my hands. Thick pages and a thick cover made it difficult to bend the book far enough to be able to hold it comfortably. Maybe I shouldn't be quite so fastidious but we all have our little quirks don't we?

A Container Full of Naked Vikings, What's Not to Love? After discovering why magic died out in 1951, governments all over the world are trying to bring it back to their own advantage. Not to be left behind, the American government gets together a rag tag bunch of people to work on the problem. They succeed but find out that manipulating time isn't as easy as they thought...
 
This book was just fun. Yes, it has obvious flaws (in detail as much as in pc) but looking past those it is just a fun romp through history with lots of interesting characters. Not to be taken seriously.

I really don't know what I think of this book. I liked it, when I was reading it, but as soon as I put it down I had to force myself to pick it up again. If the protagonists had been people instead of bees you would have an average dystopian adventure. Using bees as the characters gave it more of a flavour of a children's book but with decidedly adult content. So here we are with a children's/coming of age/ dystopian/ecological themed book. Three stars for the content and a fourth because I love bees.

I should just say once again that despite what I have written this is NOT a book for children.

This is a book of its time and pulls some punches I feel. It's far too soft in my opinion not really exploring the horrors that a nuclear war world bring with it. I can see how it would have made an impact at the time it was written but by today's standards it seems almost superficial. I enjoyed reading it, if enjoyed is the right word for it, but having been written in the 1950s it has it's issues. It tackles attitudes towards race in the south but not so much a woman's place! Books like this always make me wonder how much worse-off we'd be nowadays in the same situation given our total dependence on technology. Worth the read but not a page-turner.

It's a good job this was free because it wouldn't be worth any money. Just a quick summary of some child criminals and the beginning of her next book. Disappointing.

This is a hard review to write because I was so emotionally involved in Mary Eleanor's plight. Like so many of her female contemporaries she spent her early years in luxury - protected, nurtured and formally educated. Unfortunately, it was exactly this kind of upbringing which would leave these girls so vulnerable and so completely unprepared for their fates.In Mary Eleanor's case this would be intellectual repression in her first marriage and abuse, poverty and at least one attempt on her life in her second. Unlike her sisters in misery, however, her case was so bad that even the courts were on her side - something virtually unheard of in Georgian society. She obtained a divorce, had her inheritance and even her children returned to her. I wish she could have known that one day her descendants would sit on the throne of England; it might have given her some comfort at least.
 
Despite the heavy contents, the book was well written and easy to read, with just the right amount of detail for the casual reader of biographies.

In Ireland in the latter half of the 19th. century Anna, an 11 year old girl, decides to stop eating. After four months of fasting she is still reasonably healthy, it seems. She is hailed as a miracle but is she truly a saint or is she just a delusional fraud? Sister Michael, a Roman Catholic nun, and Lib Wright, a nurse who served under Florence Nightingale, are employed over a two week period to observe the child and make sure that she isn't secretly being fed by someone. Everything seems to be going well during the first week of the vigil and Lib finds herself almost convinced of this wonder but then the girl starts a rapid decline. The nurses don't have much time to find out why the child stopped eating and why she is suddenly dying, the answers to both questions could be key to saving her.

I'm in two minds about this book but I'm not sure why. It was beautifully written, descriptive but not overly wordy (it couldn't afford to be at 210 pages) and the story was good. It is just that somehow I didn't quite connect. Having said that, I became invested in Annas fate towards the end. It's worth reading but I think it needs some mulling over.

The Ding an Sich... The three star rating is a temporary rating because this book will definitely need some pondering and possibly a reread or two.I have to admit to getting lost in the philosophical discussions and the several threads didn't help the flow of the novel for me personally. Everything tied up neatly at the end (I think) but this wasn't an easy book by any means.

The Horror Story Behind the Fairytale. Wow, what an amazing story! French history is every bit as rivetting as English history (at least at a distance of four hundred years). To be a royal female in Europe at this time you really needed to keep your head. A remarkable story, entertainingly told.

Having read quite a few post-apocalyptic stories I can say that there is nothing new here. A land ravaged by something devastating (we never really find out what), communities who mistrust strangers, disease, bandits, religious zeal and a promised land (but no cannibals). Sound familiar to anyone. The plot is like The Road and the scenery is borrowed from The Postman but the prose is all the author's own. That, for me, is what makes it stand out. Jim Crace knows how to turn a phrase. This is only the second book I have read by the author, the first was The Harvest where I found his way of writing more of a hindrance than a help - I decided after that, that I wouldn't rush to read any of his other books. I'm glad I did eventually pick this one up. I would recommend it to those who like a trip through post-apocalyptic America but for whom The Road was too bleak.

This was my third time reading ‘The Passage' and I still enjoyed it as much as the first time. I'm not quite sure why that is.I'm a sucker for survival stories, anyway (if you'll excuse the pun), so that is already a huge plus.
 
Blood-sucking vampire super-soldiers - virals - created by man, have made the human race all but extinct. There are just a few pockets of humanity trying to survive. After almost one hundred years of terror the virals' behaviour starts to change. They realise they have nearly exhausted their food supply and they have to reduce the attacks on the survivors giving them time to multiply but also giving them time to fight back.
 
On the surface this is a horror story about survival but it is more than that. It is a tale of love in all its forms: husband and wife, parent and child, brother and sister. Each time I read it I see more and that for me makes a cracking good story.

I started reading this a few days ago but put it down again in favour of my library books. I picked it up again yesterday because I didn't have another book right there and finished it in one sitting. I didn't expect to like it as much as I did. It follows the very different fates of several characters who all decide to take a DNA test to find ‘the One', their guaranteed partner for life.I just thought it was a brilliant idea although it was a little predictable in some places but that didn't detract from my enjoyment. 

Boats, Brutality and Bodily Functions. This book reminded me a lot of Terror by Dan Simmons albeit much shorter. It isn't however the same story by any means. Like Terror it is the story of a shipwreck in the Arctic. One man fights for his survival against starvation and freezing temperatures. He encounters polar bears and Inuit. What Terror doesn't have is the graphic description of gore and bodily emissions which this story has in spades. I'm not a squeamish reader but a few sentences really made me squirm. Not for the faint-hearted.