Simon
“If from infancy you treat children as gods they are liable in adulthood to act as devils.”
In this dystopian world no babies are born, and humanity is plodding towards extension. After a period of anarchy society becomes docile, attending lectures on history, baking flans, gardening, pushing cats around in prams, watching porn and generally just wandering around. But there is a dark side. Secret police, forced suicide, medieval prison islands and a bunch of last borns called Omegas who strut around and are generally unpleasant. All of this overseen by The Warden.
And then, a baby is born, and everything becomes a bit of malarkey involving a group called the 5 fishes and some bad pot holes. Yes pot holes not plot holes.
This was pretty good. Supremely written, quite dark, a bit boring in places. The thing with the cats kind of freaked me out. Overall, a good addition to the dystopian shelf.
Bit weird, bit rambley, but frighteningly accurate, especially when you consider it was written 72 years ago.
I think the most important part of this book is the afterword. It helps you understand how the book came about. Sure, I understand the themes and I get what the book is about. It's about censorship, the dumbing down of society into compliant plebs etc etc. via the removal of ideas and thinking which is mainly books and education. But understanding the genesis of the book help me understand why it was such a strange book to read.
The book came about via a few short stories, a heap load of ideas and a couple of personal incidents, one of which involved the police which were all thrown together over a period of time to form this novella. This kind of explains why some of it is page turningly brilliant and some of it is like being being inside a cheese induced coma.
Very good, but very pleased it wasn't 1oo pages longer.
Audrey flees a scandal in London to take up a job as a folklorist on the Isle of Skye with the mysterious Mrs Buchanan. Her job, to collect stories, songs & legends from the local crofters before they are forgotten and lost forever. What she discovers, however, is something much more sinister, something very very real.
I flew through this in 2 and half days and it's quite possibly my favourite book of the year so far. Wonderfully creepy & atmospheric, the prose is exquisite and ending just about perfect. Warmed my cockles it did, warmed my cockles.
This is the story of a cult. The leader convinces a young girl that he is the Archangel Gabriel, that she is also an angel and her baby is the Antichrist. They must protect the baby at all costs until the time is right to kill it. 🫨
All this happened in 2003, now 20 years later, a true crime author sets out to find out what really happened.
Wasn't totally bonkers about 500 pages of emails, WhatsApp messages, transcripts of meetings, phone calls, bits of books and tv scripts. But, kudos to the author for skilfully pulling all this together and keeping me guessing right up until the last 20 pages.
OMG Completely and utterly balls to the wall bonkers. This was so nearly a 5 just for the sheer entertainment value. The misdirection is superb and the characters are as fleshed out as they need to be in a story like this. But I did work out who the culprit was quite early on, and because of that the ending did fall a little flat so I knocked a star off. I will say that of these kind of books that have a twist you won't see coming, this is one of the best I've read.
Best read with a nice cup of tea and a biscuit.
“Nobody can love the stars and hurt people. They just can't.”
2 young girls, 800 years apart, set off on the same journey but under very different circumstances. For one of them it is a voyage of discovery, of maps and adventure. The other fleeing Syria, a country that is about to tear itself apart. The thing linking the two stories....... HOME.
I really enjoyed this. I would definitely recommend taking a few minutes every time the story switches between timelines, just to savour what you have just read. I think the only negative is that sometimes the grave nature of some of the situations, especially in the present day story, got a little bit lost in the magical prose, however, I guess that this is really seen through the eyes of children and they don't see misery and suffering the same way we do now we are older, more cynical and more miserable.
“My tabernacle is spoiled, and all my cords are broken.... There is none to stretch forth my tent anymore and to set up my curtains.”
Creepy, atmospheric, psychological, ripperish thriller about a series of gruesome murders in Victorian London, and an old couple who take in a strange Lodger to help ease their financial woes. This isn’t a whodunnit, it’s pretty obvious who the guilty man is, I mean the title gives it away, and everything is laid out for you at the start of the book. What really is works is the way the author moves the story on towards its conclusion, as Mrs Bunting (one of the landlords) suddenly realises with horror what is happening right under her nose.
There are some issues with this edition. There are some spelling mistakes, and I found some of the dialogue really difficult to follow, but let's just marvel at the fact that this was written in 1911 and was probably way way ahead of its time.
A story about unconventional love, music, drugs and cooking. I really liked the way the story makes you love a character one minute and dislike them the next. Pretty much everyone in this book is broken in some way, and searching for some kind of peace and contentment. I didn't like the ending. Usually I might complain when when a book neatly ties everything up, sometimes not knowing is better, but in this case I was so emotionally involved I wanted to know if Johnathan got sick, what happened to Clare & Rebecca and did they get the dishwasher fixed????
Probably doesn't give same punch as it did when it was first published, but definitely worth your time.
A disillusioned teen, a terminal cancer patient, a pregnant woman on the run from an abusive husband and a telepathic alien octopus called Sandy who has fled to earth after his home world (one of Saturn’s moons) was invaded by a bunch of terrifying crows.
Chased across Scotland by a shadowy organisation and a psycho husband, they end up in Ullapool where they find the rest of Sandy’s octopi friends hiding under Loch Broom. What does it all mean? I have no idea.
This was right up my street, full of wonderment, life affirming moments and of course completely and utterly bonkers. Definitely exciting enough to make me run for book 2.
Students, Henry, Francis, Bunny, Richard, and the aptly named Charles & Camilla. Six of the most unlikable, snobbish, entitled bunch of ****S ever to grace the page. An accidental murder during a trance fuelled rampage sends the group into a downward spiral of lies and paranoia, and when one of the group threatens to go rogue, there is only one course of action the rest of the group can take to keep their secret safe.
So, this was very good. It did drag on in a couple of places (the funeral part was especially squidgy), and I wasn’t sure I needed to know how some of the minor characters’ lives turned out when I got the epilogue at the end. The 2nd part is finitely more readable than the first and I did take a perverse pleasure seeing the lives of these entitled *******S fall apart. This probably means I am also a ***t.
My niece thinks that this is the greatest book ever written. I think it’s just about as good as The Little Friend and I gave that 4 stars so 4 it is.
Neither loved it or hated it. Very well written, but just a bit mid-range depressed pigeon staring at a semi deflated dirty paddling pool. Probably didn't help that my house has been invaded by a hyperactive builder called Andy who's entire medical history and love of heavy metal music is now engrained in my brain for all eternity. Although I will say, he does lay good felt.
There's a few of Stephen King's earlier books that I've never read so I'm going back and filling in some of the gaps. This was released in 1979 and is probably more eye-openingly unsettling now that it was back then.
Johnny can see the a persons future just by touching them, and when he shakes the hand of an up coming politician he sees a horrifying glance into the future. The big dilemma here is what do, and will what you do make a difference.
Probably up there with his best books, even at 460 pages (mass market edition) it felt like a quick read. I didn't give it 5 and that purely down to the fact that I already knew the story and outcome before hand.
Was that women’s cancer cured by prayer? Is that young man with asthma a killer or a victim? Was The Hound of the Baskervilles originally going to be set in border between England and Wales? Will an Arthur Conan Doyle appreciation society be able to contact the spirit of the author and find out? Is that women working in the struggling hotel really a teenage killer now grown up? Will Gomer be able to get his tractor through the snow? Who or what is killing the sheep? And for the love of God will you just marry Lol and get it over with!!!!
These are the kerfuffle's that Merrily Watkins (local vicar and chain smoking exorcist) must solve to bring peace and tranquillity back to the county of Herefordshire. This was pretty good, dragged in the middle a little and the ending was a little bit Scooby Doo, but I just love the characters so much any failings just seem to flutter away.
"Age might bring wisdom, but it also brought indigestion and elasticated pants.”
So, C.J.Tudor’s 6th novel is set in the small Alaskan town of Deadhart (pop. 673 alive). They share an uneasy peace with a colony of vampires who live in a disused, rundown mining settlement not far away. When a teenage boy is found murdered with vampire bite marks on his neck, it’s up detective and vampire expert Barbara to find out the facts and decide if a cull of the colony is needed.
OK so lots going on here, lots of characters, lots of small-town thinking, pretty much everyone has something to gain or lose by a cull being authorised, lots of secrets, plenty of surprises.. The whole setting and sense of place is really great. Some of the back stories are excellent, two that really stand out are the girl in the basement and the bone house, both utterly grim.
I suppose making the vampires everyday things, ala True Blood, takes some of the horror and threat away from the story, the vampires here have reason and even if they have desires for blood they don't generally act on them. Most the horror comes from the moments of cruelty some of the characters are subjected to and some of it is horrific.
Overall, this was great fun. All over the place with the rating. Probably if I was being mean it would I would give it a 3 but I went up to 4 just for the sheer enjoyment I had when reading. Not her best but her bar is very high. Might have been a 5 had it been set in Mansfield.
"People can do terrible things when they feel safe and powerful"
The two books I read before this one were full of hate and prejudice, so this was this perfect antidote to that. I guess three words to describe this book would be.
REALLY REALLY LOVELY
Everything is lovely, the crew are lovely (ok there’s a miserable one who works with algae but in the end even he’s quite lovely). the people they meet and the planets they visit are all really quite lovely. When the ship gets raided, the raiders do it in a lovely agreeable way. Even the ships computer is lovely and is actually called Lovelace (shortened to lovey).
Ok, so why I didn’t give this 5 stars. First off, I did love these great fables about morality and tolerance that are told by the characters, and I don’t think I've come across a sci-fi book, or any book for that matter, that is so easy to read. However, when I got towards the end, the cuddliness did start to wear a bit thin and that’s only because it makes the sci-fi elements feel a little superficial.
Overall, really enjoyed it, really really lovely. It's like being wrapped a huge blanket, and I’m ordering the next one right now, and I really hope its really really lovely like this one was.
This nation shouldn't exist, if there is any justice in the world, for its foundations are murder, theft, and cruelty. Yet here we are.”
I thought this was gruesome, brilliant but gruesome. Treating humans like animals, humanity at its basest most disgusting form, and yet alongside all that hate there is kindness and hope for a better future for everyone. This is Cora's story; she escapes the plantation and begins her journey on the Underground Railroad towards what she believes will be freedom, however, each stop reveals a new nightmare, a different kind of hell, all the time being down by a posse of slave catchers.
I knew a little bit about the story before I read the book so I knew the Underground Railroad was a not a real railroad but a metaphorical term for a series of escape routes and safe houses that were used by escapees, helped along the way by people who disagreed with slavery laws often at great risk to themselves. I guess a bit like the escape lines that escaped prisoners used in WW2.
This is an unpleasant read but an essential one.
“The influenza pandemic of 1918 killed more people than the First World War—an estimated 3 to 6 per cent of the human race.”
This probably wasn't the best choice of book to read while I was nursing one of my dogs who's been quite ill over the last week. The story follows nurse Power and her inexperienced volunteer helper Birdie as they work on a maternity ward in an understaffed Dublin hospital during the flu pandemic of 1918 with WW1 raging on the continent.
Equal amounts of joyous uplifting and graphically harrowing moments. I had to stop reading on a couple of occasions, it really is that traumatic, then again I do tear up regularly while watching Call The Midwife. The ending really got me in the feels, I did see it coming, but still.
“It had been a matter of shadows and nuances, of things half seen, half heard and half understood.”
The year is 1786, and at Jerusalem college Cambridge, the ghost of murdered Syliva Whichcote has been sighted prowling the grounds by student Frank Oldershaw. When his anxious mother employs John Holdsworth, author of “The Anatomy of Ghosts”, a stinging account of why ghosts are a mere delusion, to investigate the sighting, the uneasy status quo at Jerusalem college is rapidly torn apart.
I did enjoy this. It's not really a ghost story, more of a mystery, a story of secret societies, grief, privilege, powdered faces, wigs and pies. I won't lie, I struggled with the start of the book, it really does take a while to get going but once it does, it's very satisfying with some truly despicable characters.
Definitely worth your time if you like historical mysteries.
Craig loses a testicle in a mugging (they use a hammer) so buys a rundown gothic mansion called Valhalla with a shady history in order to rediscover his masculinity. It's a bad call as the house contains the psychic vibrations of a heinous individual called Jack, and Jack is going to merge himself into Craig creating a mild version of Satan who wants to come back to life and win a few games of Baccarat by using time travel to cheat. In the end the world is saved by a twig, some herbs and match.
I suppose the main problem here is that even before the Valhalla gets its psychic mitts into Craig, he's such a despicable character I really didn't care about what happened to him. I think it would have worked better if Craig was a nice guy that turned into a horrible man rather than a horrible man turning into an even more horrible man.
The violence is violent, the deaths are gruesome, the sex is cringey, the whole thing is utterly bonkers and one thing is for certain, nobody writes sweat patches like Graham Masterton.
“My father's going to take everything you own and then break your life.”
Hugely entertaining cultish thriller mystery about a posh family, living in a posh house full of posh things, in a posh suburb of London and the people they invited into the house (one of which is the fiddler from Dexy's Midnight Runners) and the way those people slowly, but surely turned everything upside and changed their lives forever in the worst possible way.
As far as these sort of books go, it's right up there with the best, not without fault and as mad as a mad thing can be and oh lordy there's a sequel.
“I ignored the smaller ones - they might have moved over time - I only looked at the balls big enough to stand the test of time.”
I really enjoyed this, but I will admit that it isn't as good as the first one, and that's mainly down to the fact that although we move further forward in time, to the 70s 80s and 90s, we aren't really that much further forward with the story. There's no major revelations apart from the locating of the sphere and a coming together at the end that sets up book 3.
I loved the bits with Voyager 1&2. I was at middle school when they were launched and remember making our own voyager models out of bits of cardboard, plastic straws, washing up liquid bottles, wire coat hangers and tin foal.... Happy days.
Good but lacks the magic of the first book, can't wait to see how it all ends.
“I am battle-worn without lifting a weapon and scarred without a cut to my flesh. But still, I will lift up my head. Still, I will not give up the fight.”
Amsterdam WWII. This is the story of Josef, a lecturer at the university, whose life is turned upside down when one of his students turns up at his door seeking help. This is basically a story of love and hope during wartime. The author just about keeps it right side of being “a little bit too smushy”, the tension is gripping, and romantic bits are touching and not overblown. I grew to really love all the characters so when the ending came, I did get a little weepy, something that seems to be happening more and more lately.
Gods death this was exceedingly good!!!!
Murder, mutilation, burnings, hangings, bribery, blackmail, gossiping, codpieces, flirting, sword fights, and it was all exceedingly smelly. I mean seriously, what more do you want from a book?
My favourite bit is when Lady Mirfyn encounters a banana for the first time.......
“So this is what everyone is laughing about, such naughtiness”, she giggled.