Peter's bookshelf: all en-US Sat, 26 Apr 2025 05:36:07 -0700 60 Peter's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Someone is Lying 217498058 Claire Douglas
'Just brilliant!' Lucy Clarke
_________________________________________________

How do you find your daughter when no one believes she is missing?

Single mother Jess and her daughter Issie have always shared an unbreakable bond. For the last seven years, it's been just the two of them.

That is, until Issie meets Dylan.

When the pair announce their plans to go travelling, Jess is devastated - Issie is only seventeen after all, and Jess doesn’t trust her daughter’s new boyfriend.

And when she stops hearing from her altogether, she's terrified.

With Dylan refusing to talk, and the police unwilling to help, Jess is faced with a mother's worst nightmare.

Can she find her daughter before it's too late?

_________________________________________________

Praise for Someone is Lying:

'Unexpected twists galore' Alice Clark Platts

'Pulse-racing. Clever. Aims at your deepest fears' Jane Corry

'Perks, as ever, knows how to cannily wrongfoot the reader. A winner' Crime Time

‘This pulse quickening read is impossible to put downâ€� Woman Magazine

Praise for Heidi

'A fun, compelling thriller - perfect to read beside the pool, or at home, dreaming of warmer times to come' The Observer

'Heidi Perks has a gift for ratcheting up tension and suspense in her books, leaving this reader gasping for breath with the lights on in the middle of the night. Bravo!' Liz Nugent

'The Other Guest is a fantastic sun-soaked thriller with a gripping mystery at its heart. It's the perfect read to take on holiday - but just keep one eye on those other guests!' Lucy Clarke

'A twisty hot summer read in a location to die for. Literally!' Jane Corry

'I raced through this in a weekend. A taut, clever whodunnit, masterfully structured, beautifully written, with an intriguing cast and some heart-wrenching moral dilemmas. Brilliant.' Gilly Macmillan

'Pure, thrilling escapism. Whip-smart twists make this summer sizzler impossible to put down. The Other Guest is unforgettable' Chris Whitaker

'An outstanding novel. Someone is Lying is incredibly clever, disturbing and never less than page-turning. A real treat for fans of tense, up-all-night thrillers' BP Walter]]> 371 Heidi Perks 1804946478 Peter 5 4.14 Someone is Lying
author: Heidi Perks
name: Peter
average rating: 4.14
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/26
date added: 2025/04/26
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]]> The Book Thief 19063 Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will be busier still.

By her brother's graveside, Liesel's life is changed when she picks up a single object, partially hidden in the snow. It is The Gravedigger's Handbook, left behind there by accident, and it is her first act of book thievery. So begins a love affair with books and words, as Liesel, with the help of her accordian-playing foster father, learns to read. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor's wife's library, wherever there are books to be found.

But these are dangerous times. When Liesel's foster family hides a Jew in their basement, Liesel's world is both opened up, and closed down.

In superbly crafted writing that burns with intensity, award-winning author Markus Zusak has given us one of the most enduring stories of our time.

(Note: this title was not published as YA fiction)]]> 592 Markus Zusak Peter 0 currently-reading 4.38 2005 The Book Thief
author: Markus Zusak
name: Peter
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/21
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Narziss and Goldmund 328023 301 Hermann Hesse 0140032606 Peter 3
Hesse believed that all the most important values in one’s existence (like art, love, dreaming, spiritual achievement and death) belong to the feminine part of the self. Hesse believed that being born gave a right of entry to the basic platform of life, but struggle is necessary to gain access to the essential qualities of existence, like art, love, dreaming, or death.

Goldmund experiences a lot of sexual pleasure and for a few years becomes a wood-carver i.e. achieves artistic skill. He sees a lot of suffering associated with the plague. Eventually he reaches an age when, despite looking a young woman directly in the eye, he can no longer have instantaneous intercourse with them, which comes as a mighty blow, obvs.

I enjoyed this book as a teenager, less so as a septuagenarian. Narcissist art often lacks empathy or connection with the audience. While all art is, to some degree, a form of self-expression, narcissist art seems uninterested in creating a dialogue with the viewer. It’s a monologue, a one-way conversation where the artist speaks, and the audience is expected to listen in awe. Wagner, Picasso, Dali, Warhol and Hirst are all artists I detest for this very reason. Narcissists have a devastating effect on the world, as Trump and Putin are currently illustrating.]]> 4.27 1930 Narziss and Goldmund
author: Hermann Hesse
name: Peter
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1930
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/21
date added: 2025/04/21
shelves:
review:
This book was written in 1930 and is showing its age to some extent. The story revolves around two men, Narziss living a life of the intellect in a monastery and his friend, Goldmund, the life of the wider world as a vagabond admiring the natural world and having one-night stands with any woman that he gazes at. Goldmund murders and scrounges food, presumably fathers endless children and does a bit of wood-carving. I think Hess had a theory that the feminine side of our personality (gained from our mother's love) stimulates love and art, while our masculine side (gained from our fathers) stimulates the intellect. Although Goldmund is nominally exploring love, his relationships rarely last more than a night. Some argue that Goldmund is a Dionysus and Narziss an Apollo.

Hesse believed that all the most important values in one’s existence (like art, love, dreaming, spiritual achievement and death) belong to the feminine part of the self. Hesse believed that being born gave a right of entry to the basic platform of life, but struggle is necessary to gain access to the essential qualities of existence, like art, love, dreaming, or death.

Goldmund experiences a lot of sexual pleasure and for a few years becomes a wood-carver i.e. achieves artistic skill. He sees a lot of suffering associated with the plague. Eventually he reaches an age when, despite looking a young woman directly in the eye, he can no longer have instantaneous intercourse with them, which comes as a mighty blow, obvs.

I enjoyed this book as a teenager, less so as a septuagenarian. Narcissist art often lacks empathy or connection with the audience. While all art is, to some degree, a form of self-expression, narcissist art seems uninterested in creating a dialogue with the viewer. It’s a monologue, a one-way conversation where the artist speaks, and the audience is expected to listen in awe. Wagner, Picasso, Dali, Warhol and Hirst are all artists I detest for this very reason. Narcissists have a devastating effect on the world, as Trump and Putin are currently illustrating.
]]> Lady Tan’s Circle of Women 62919732
According to Confucius, “an educated woman is a worthless woman,â€� but Tan Yunxian—born into an elite family, yet haunted by death, separations, and loneliness—is being raised by her grandparents to be of use. Her grandmother is one of only a handful of female doctors in China, and she teaches Yunxian the pillars of Chinese medicine, the Four Examinations—looking, listening, touching, and asking—something a man can never do with a female patient.

From a young age, Yunxian learns about women’s illnesses, many of which relate to childbearing, alongside a young midwife-in-training, Meiling. The two girls find fast friendship and a mutual purpose—despite the prohibition that a doctor should never touch blood while a midwife comes in frequent contact with it—and they vow to be forever friends, sharing in each other’s joys and struggles. No mud, no lotus , they tell from adversity beauty can bloom.

But when Yunxian is sent into an arranged marriage, her mother-in-law forbids her from seeing Meiling and from helping the women and girls in the household. Yunxian is to act like a proper wife—embroider bound-foot slippers, recite poetry, give birth to sons, and stay forever within the walls of the family compound, the Garden of Fragrant Delights.

How might a woman like Yunxian break free of these traditions and lead a life of such importance that many of her remedies are still used five centuries later? How might the power of friendship support or complicate these efforts? A captivating story of women helping each other, Lady Tan’s Circle of Women is a triumphant reimagining of the life of one person who was remarkable in the Ming dynasty and would be considered remarkable today.]]> 352 Lisa See 1982117087 Peter 3
Like some other reviewers, I found the novel itself didn't flow as well as The Island of Sea Women, for example. Ancient Chinese society seems very strange, almost bizarre. I felt the same when I read Wild Swans. The early days of communism must have seemed like Nirvana to many who had come from such an oppressive, structured and misogynistic society. ]]> 4.31 2023 Lady Tan’s Circle of Women
author: Lisa See
name: Peter
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/29
date added: 2025/03/29
shelves:
review:
Lisa See does her research when writing her historical novels, and this book is no exception. Based on a real lady doctor who wrote a book about her clinical experiences in 15th century China, it gives an amazing insight into the life of women in a male-dominated culture. Foot-binding, arranged marriage, concubines, eunuchs and the need to show absolute obedience to their husbands made life for Chinese women a harrowing experience. As a doctor myself, the success of Lady Tan's traditional remedies seems far-fetched. Traditional Chinese medicine relies heavily on herbal extracts and poached wild animal parts, indeed many species such as the pangolin face extinction as a result. There are some natural remedies that have been proven to be scientifically effective, such as foxglove, colchicine, magic mushrooms and so on, but they are tiny in number compared to the proven life-saving drugs invented by western medicine. Acupuncture and variolation (an ancient form of vaccination against smallpox) are remarkable successes of traditional Chinese medicine.

Like some other reviewers, I found the novel itself didn't flow as well as The Island of Sea Women, for example. Ancient Chinese society seems very strange, almost bizarre. I felt the same when I read Wild Swans. The early days of communism must have seemed like Nirvana to many who had come from such an oppressive, structured and misogynistic society.
]]> The Last Shaman 15782036
Mark learns from a wonderful array of colorful characters, from a doctor of philosophy hiding out in the swamps and a shapeshifting sorceress to the bereaved widow of a tribal scout, and through incredible experiences such as taking sacred medicine and soul retrieval rituals, he discovers the inner wisdom necessary to drive his magical life creations.

Author William Whitecloud brings a dazzling range of knowledge and experience � from a childhood in Swaziland immersed in supernatural worldviews to Hermetic Philosophy and a life dedicated to intuitive mastery � to bear on this highly imaginative and illuminating look at how we can open up to being guided along the path of our highest destiny.]]> 350 William Whitecloud Peter 3 4.16 2012 The Last Shaman
author: William Whitecloud
name: Peter
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/04
date added: 2025/03/20
shelves:
review:
This is a book I read for book club. I found it interesting, having spent time in Africa and read a book on Shamanism in different cultures. It is a leap of imagination and may leave many readers cold. The experience of people entering spiritual states via meditation, prolonged overstimulation, taking hallucinating drugs or being sensorially deprived for an extended period are well described. Whether they offer a unique understanding of life during these states is a substantial debate.
]]> <![CDATA[Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling]]> 737957
Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling recounts the four extraordinary years Michelangelo spent laboring over the vast ceiling while the power politics and personal rivalries that abounded in Rome swirled around him. Battling against ill health, financial difficulties, domestic problems, the pope's impatience, and a bitter rivalry with the brilliant young painter Raphael, Michelangelo created scenes so beautiful that they are considered one of the greatest masterpieces of all time. A panorama of illustrious figures converged around the creation of this great work-from the great Dutch scholar Desiderius Erasmus to the young Martin Luther-and Ross King skillfully weaves them through his compelling historical narrative, offering uncommon insight into the intersection of art and history.]]> 373 Ross King 0142003697 Peter 4 3.83 2002 Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling
author: Ross King
name: Peter
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2002
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/17
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves:
review:
Well researched and authoritative account of the four years and four days that Michelangelo took to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Dispels some of the myths and gives a vivid picture of the awkward personality of Michelangelo's genius. The book also concentrates on the rivalry with Raphael and the military adventures of the Pope of the day.
]]> Wilding 38891828
Once-common species, including turtle doves, nightingales, peregrine falcons, lesser spotted woodpeckers and purple emperor butterflies, are now breeding at Knepp, and populations of other species are rocketing. The Burrells� degraded agricultural land has become a functioning ecosystem again, heaving with life � all by itself.

This recovery has taken place against a backdrop of catastrophic loss elsewhere. According to the 2016 ‘State of Natureâ€� report, the UK is ranked 29th in the world for biodiversity loss: 56% of species in the UK are in decline and 15% are threatened with extinction. We are living in a desert, compared with our gloriously wild past.

In Wilding, Isabella Tree tells the story of the ‘Knepp experimentâ€� and what it reveals of the ways in which we might regain that wilder, richer country. It shows how rewilding works across Europe; that it has multiple benefits for the land; that it can generate economic activity and employment; how it can benefit both nature and us â€� and that all of this can happen astonishingly quickly. Part gripping memoir, part fascinating account of the ecology of our countryside, Wilding is, above all, an inspiring story of hope.]]> 384 Isabella Tree 1509805095 Peter 5 4.45 2018 Wilding
author: Isabella Tree
name: Peter
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/11
date added: 2025/03/11
shelves:
review:
What a fantastic book. Brilliantly written, this is the New Testament for European Conservation. The Knepp experiment in Sussex where unproductive farmland is left to re-wild in the presence of long-horned cows, Exmoor ponies and Tamworth pigs for 25 years is an astonishing account of the recovery of soil, insect life and birdlife leaving nature to repair the damage of modern agriculture. The book is optimistic and covers scientific evidence from around the globe in repairing damaged ecosystems. Predictably, Isabella and her husband had to survive years of scepticism and abuse with their experiment challenging official dogma in the local community and in government. There is so much in this book that is heartening and important. Let us just hope that the powers that be, particularly in government, learn the lessons that are so crucial to resolving global warming, biodiversity and the happiness of human beings.
]]> <![CDATA[The Dalai Lama's Book of Daily Meditations: The Path To Tranquility]]> 6041441
December 29. "The essence of all spiritual life is your emotion, your attitude toward others. Once you have pure and sincere motivation, all the rest follows."

The Dalai Lama, a living symbol of holiness and selfless triumph over tribulation, has shared his philosophy of peace with today's turbulent world. Yet rarely do we hear him speak with such directness, intimacy, and immediacy as in this collection of daily quotations drawn from his own writings, teachings, and interviews. The Path to Tranquillity, a fresh, wonderfully accessible introduction to his inspirational wisdom, offers words of guidance, compassion, and peace. It covers almost every aspect of human life, secular and religious--happiness, loneliness, enlightenment, suffering, and anger--with endearing informality, warmth, and practicality. How can we resolve painful memories? Awaken our minds with meditation? Heal by expressing our inner conflicts? Overcome ignorance, self-delusion, and excessive attachments? Here, day by day, are answers as down to earth as they are rich in spirit.

Elegantly designed and hand-sized, The Path to Tranquillity includes a special foreword by His Holiness on the power of compassion, meditation, and personal responsibility. It is a gift to be treasured by the novice and seasoned practitioner alike.]]> 432 Renuka Singh Peter 4 4.17 1988 The Dalai Lama's Book of Daily Meditations: The Path To Tranquility
author: Renuka Singh
name: Peter
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1988
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/07
date added: 2025/03/07
shelves:
review:
A meditation per day for the whole year from the Dalai Lama. This is the second time of reading. Helps to put your mind straight in difficult times. Full of wise advice.
]]> A Thousand Acres 41193 371 Jane Smiley 1400033837 Peter 5 3.82 1991 A Thousand Acres
author: Jane Smiley
name: Peter
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1991
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/28
date added: 2025/02/28
shelves:
review:
I thought this book was an absolute masterpiece. I found it completely gripping. Maybe helped that I don't know King Lear, so the plot was full of unexpected twists and turns. It seemed to seethe with the absurd complexities of human beings, particularly of the narcissism of the main protagonist. Having come from a family of four sisters and a narcissistic father, I found it penetratingly accurate.
]]> The Lantern of Lost Memories 204593511 From acclaimed Japanese author Sanaka Hiigari comes a heartwarming, life-affirming novel about a magical photo studio, where people go after they die to view key moments from their life—and relive one precious memory before they pass into the afterlife.

The hands and pendulum of the old wooden clock on the wall were motionless. Hirasaka cocked his head to listen, but the silence inside the photo studio was almost deafening. His leather shoes sank softly into the aging red carpet as he strode over to the arrangement of flowers on the counter and carefully adjusted the angle of the petals...

This is the story of the peculiar and magical photo studio owned by Mr. Hirasaki, a collector of antique cameras. In the dimly lit interior, a paper background is pulled down in front of a wall, and in front of it stands a single, luxurious chair with an armrest on one side. On a stand is a large bellows camera. On the left is the main studio; photos can also be taken in the courtyard.

Beyond its straightforward interior, however, is a secret. The studio is, in fact, the door to the afterlife, the place between life and death where those who have departed have a chance—one last time—to see their entire life flash before their eyes via Mr. Hirasaki's "spinning lantern of memories."

We meet Hatsue, a ninety-two year old woman who worked as a nursery teacher, the rowdy Waniguchi, a yakuza overseer in his life who is also capable of great compassion, and finally Mitsuru, a young girl who has died tragically young at the hands of abusive parents.Ìę

Sorting through the many photos of their lives, Mr. Hirasaki also offers guests one guests a second a chance to travel back in time to take a photo of one particular moment in their lives that they wish to cherish in a special way.

Full of charm and whimsy, The Lantern of Lost Memories will sweep you away to a world of nostalgia, laughter, and love.]]> 208 Sanaka Hiiragi 1538757435 Peter 3 4.12 2019 The Lantern of Lost Memories
author: Sanaka Hiiragi
name: Peter
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/24
date added: 2025/02/24
shelves:
review:
Rather an odd book about what happens when people die, based on ancient Japanese beliefs. Same type of novel as Midnight Library, but not as accomplished. Quite a sad little book.
]]> The Snow Leopard 764165 338 Peter Matthiessen 0140255087 Peter 4 4.08 1978 The Snow Leopard
author: Peter Matthiessen
name: Peter
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1978
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/21
date added: 2025/02/21
shelves:
review:
This is a very special book, particularly for people who have visited and love Nepal. Matthiessen writes like a poet, although it is in diary form, written daily on his expedition. The beauty of the country, the character of Nepali people and the array of wildlife is brilliantly captured. The historic nature of religions encountered is detailed and the aims of Buddhism extensively explored. Having trekked extensively in Nepal and undertaken long white-water rafting trips, his observations of the good humour and stoicism of people enduring hard lives is accurate and moving. The author's perception and compassion shines through, so there is no superficial sentimentality of lives lived in remote wilderness.
]]> <![CDATA[In the Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette]]> 20897517
Two years into the voyage, the Jeannette's hull was breached by an impassable stretch of pack ice, forcing the crew to abandon ship amid torrents of rushing of water. Hours later, the ship had sunk below the surface, marooning the men a thousand miles north of Siberia, where they faced a terrifying march with minimal supplies across the endless ice pack.

Enduring everything from snow blindness and polar bears to ferocious storms and labyrinths of ice, the crew battled madness and starvation as they struggled desperately to survive. With thrilling twists and turns, In The Kingdom of Ice is a tale of heroism and determination in the most brutal place on Earth.]]> 454 Hampton Sides 0385535376 Peter 4 ]]> 4.24 2014 In the Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette
author: Hampton Sides
name: Peter
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/19
date added: 2025/02/19
shelves:
review:
Interesting book on an American attempt to sail to the North Pole in 1879-1881, where there was supposed to be a warm open ocean once you penetrated an icy ring just North of the Bering Straits. Amazing and well-documented tale of human fortitude and bravery in the days when America was finding its feet as an emerging world power. It is a touching story of enduring love and bravery.

]]> <![CDATA[Mozart's Women: His Family, His Friends, His Music]]> 1091724 416 Jane Glover 0060563508 Peter 4 ]]> 3.88 2005 Mozart's Women: His Family, His Friends, His Music
author: Jane Glover
name: Peter
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/14
date added: 2025/02/14
shelves:
review:
Interesting and well researched book about the women who played a crucial role in Mozart's life and legacy. It is a well-balanced view of Mozart's wife Constance, showing how her caring nature enabled and enriched his short life. I found it interesting how closely Mozart co-operated with the librettists and singers when he was composing his operas, writing music depending on the strengths and vocal range of the particular singers engaged for each role. For many of us, the film Amadeus has captured the spirit of the times, but it is wide of the mark in important areas. For those interested in the truth, this is an excellent account. The middle section can easily be skipped.

]]> <![CDATA[Great-Uncle Harry: A Tale of War and Empire]]> 123202712
The quest that followed involved hundreds of hours of painstaking detective work. Michael dug out every bit of family gossip and correspondence he could. He studied every relevant official document. He tracked down what remained of his great-uncle Harry's diaries and letters, and pored over photographs of First World War battle scenes to see whether Harry appeared in any of them. He walked the route Harry took on that fatal, final day of his life amid the mud of northern France. And as he did so, a life that had previously existed in the shadows was revealed to him.

Great-Uncle Harry is an utterly compelling account of an ordinary man who led an extraordinary life. A blend of biography, history, travelogue and personal memoir this is Michael Palin at his very finest.
]]> 320 Michael Palin 1529152623 Peter 3 4.19 Great-Uncle Harry: A Tale of War and Empire
author: Michael Palin
name: Peter
average rating: 4.19
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/06
date added: 2025/02/06
shelves:
review:
The sort of book that would have been unlikely to have been published without Michael Palin's fame. So much supposition based on the sparse diary entries of Palin's great uncle. Nonetheless, it is an interesting insight into the dying days of the British Empire and the general futility of the First World War. It gives an account of an ordinary soldier's experience and the rigours of daily life in the trenches.
]]> <![CDATA[Here Be Dragons (Welsh Princes, #1)]]> 77449
A sweeping novel of power and passion, loyalty and lives, this is the book that began the trilogy that includes FALLS THE SHADOW and THE RECKONING.]]> 704 Sharon Kay Penman 0345382846 Peter 4 4.29 1985 Here Be Dragons (Welsh Princes, #1)
author: Sharon Kay Penman
name: Peter
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1985
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/03
date added: 2025/02/03
shelves:
review:
As with Penman's other historical fiction, this book is well researched and has a compelling and realistic love story at its heart. I really enjoyed it and learnt much history of which I was unaware. Having lived in Shrewsbury for 45 years, made the novel very relevant and fascinating. It helped to read another review that mentioned that it took 185 pages before the story came to life, and I would agree with that. I like my historical fiction to be as accurate to real events as possible, and Penman has a great ability to imbue the history with interesting and believable characters.
]]> <![CDATA[World Without End (Kingsbridge, #2)]]> 5064 Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

World Without End takes place in the same town of Kingsbridge, two centuries after the townspeople finished building the exquisite Gothic cathedral that was at the heart of The Pillars of the Earth. The cathedral and the priory are again at the center of a web of love and hate, greed and pride, ambition and revenge, but this sequel stands on its own. This time the men and women of an extraordinary cast of characters find themselves at a crossroads of new ideas—about medicine, commerce, architecture, and justice. In a world where proponents of the old ways fiercely battle those with progressive minds, the intrigue and tension quickly reach a boiling point against the devastating backdrop of the greatest natural disaster ever to strike the human race—the Black Death.]]> 1237 Ken Follett Peter 4 4.30 2007 World Without End (Kingsbridge, #2)
author: Ken Follett
name: Peter
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/09
date added: 2025/01/09
shelves:
review:
This was a fun read and a good page-turner. The times seemed to be captured authentically and there was always a strong plot. I found the arrival of the plague was handled well, and must have felt both never-ending and possibly able to wipe out humanity altogether. The other striking feature which seemed apposite was the way that cruel, self-centred and ruthless men seem to thrive in life. The contrasting life of peasants and nobility was well portrayed, and the small progress made when labour became short after the plague.
]]> The Agony and the Ecstasy 321552 776 Irving Stone 0451171357 Peter 5 4.08 1961 The Agony and the Ecstasy
author: Irving Stone
name: Peter
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1961
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/12/31
shelves:
review:

]]> A Tale of Two Cities 1953 A Tale of Two Cities is Charles Dickens’s great historical novel, set against the violent upheaval of the French Revolution. The most famous and perhaps the most popular of his works, it compresses an event of immense complexity to the scale of a family history, with a cast of characters that includes a bloodthirsty ogress and an antihero as believably flawed as any in modern fiction. Though the least typical of the author’s novels, A Tale of Two Cities still underscores many of his enduring themes—imprisonment, injustice, social anarchy, resurrection, and the renunciation that fosters renewal.]]> 489 Charles Dickens 0141439602 Peter 5 3.86 1859 A Tale of Two Cities
author: Charles Dickens
name: Peter
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1859
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/12/27
shelves:
review:

]]> Girl with a Pearl Earring 2865
Girl with a Pearl Earring centers on Vermeer's prosperous Delft household during the 1660s. When Griet, the novel's quietly perceptive heroine, is hired as a servant, turmoil follows. First, the 16-year-old narrator becomes increasingly intimate with her master. Then Vermeer employs her as his assistant—and ultimately has Griet sit for him as a model.]]> 233 Tracy Chevalier 0452287022 Peter 3 3.93 1999 Girl with a Pearl Earring
author: Tracy Chevalier
name: Peter
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1999
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/21
date added: 2024/12/21
shelves:
review:
Interesting that latest research makes it almost certain that this portrait was of a model and not one invented from imagination, i.e. a tronie. It is a comforting and easy novel to read and gives some idea of life in the Dutch Golden Age. Likely that the girl was not wearing a pearl earring, but one made of polished metal. Vermeer is such an enigma, painting so slowly that he only left 36 paintings for us to treasure. In life, they are hypnotic and profoundly beautiful. The Girl with a Pearl Earring is hauntingly different to all his other paintings. It would be so interesting to know the true story behind it. Visit The Hague and enjoy the superb Mauritshuis, a gem of an art museum with friendly staff and a small but ravishing permanent collection.
]]> Shrewsbury: a Biography 24550799 136 Jrschina Williams-Karesch 0948579137 Peter 4 3.67 2003 Shrewsbury: a Biography
author: Jrschina Williams-Karesch
name: Peter
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/11
date added: 2024/12/11
shelves:
review:
Really enjoyed this book about the history of Shrewsbury, where I have lived for the past 43 years. It is written by a friend who comes from Switzerland. Beautifully written.
]]> Strange Sally Diamond 62322008
Now Sally is the centre of attention, not only from the hungry media and worried police, but also a sinister voice from a past she has no memory of. As she begins to discover the horrors of her childhood, recluse Sally steps into the world for the first time, making new friends, finding independence, and learning that people don't always mean what they say.

But when messages start arriving from a stranger who knows far more about her past than she knows herself, Sally's life will be thrown into chaos once again . . .]]> 384 Liz Nugent 1844885968 Peter 3 4.14 2023 Strange Sally Diamond
author: Liz Nugent
name: Peter
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/11
date added: 2024/12/11
shelves:
review:
This is a well-written book, but why somebody would want to spend two years of their life writing about a cruel and abusive paedophile mystifies me. Is the intention to provide entertainment? Weird and disturbing.
]]> Pachinko 34051011
Richly told and profoundly moving, Pachinko is a story of love, sacrifice, ambition, and loyalty. From bustling street markets to the halls of Japan's finest universities to the pachinko parlors of the criminal underworld, Lee's complex and passionate characters—strong, stubborn women, devoted sisters and sons, fathers shaken by moral crisis—survive and thrive against the indifferent arc of history.]]> 496 Min Jin Lee Peter 5 Superb 4.35 2017 Pachinko
author: Min Jin Lee
name: Peter
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/01
date added: 2024/11/01
shelves:
review:
Superb
]]> Rules of Civility 10054335 335 Amor Towles Peter 1 ]]> 4.06 2011 Rules of Civility
author: Amor Towles
name: Peter
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2011
rating: 1
read at: 2024/10/29
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves:
review:
This was a book group read, and so I felt duty bound to finish it. In my last book group, I had to read A Gentleman in Moscow, which I thought to be trivial nonsense about a monumental period in Russia's history. At least Rules of Civility is about the USA, which Amor Towles presumably actually knows something about. I assume Amor read The Great Gatsby and never got over it. I am completely baffled why his writing is so widely admired. I find his characters totally unconvincing and his books full of meaningless platitudes.

]]> <![CDATA[Catherine de Medici: Renaissance Queen of France]]> 255134 440 Leonie Frieda 0060744936 Peter 4 3.97 2003 Catherine de Medici: Renaissance Queen of France
author: Leonie Frieda
name: Peter
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/25
date added: 2024/10/07
shelves:
review:
This is a fascinating account of a turbulent period in French history based around the life of an italian queen who bore the French King Henri II an impressive 10 children before he died. She then became the Queen Mother and spent her life trying to defend and preserve her royal children. Anyone who thinks today's world is too violent and crazy can get a new perspective on "the good old days" reading this book. Endless civil religious wars between catholics and protestants in France, with marriages to obtain or preserve kingdoms arranged. The peasants live a miserable life to fund the wild extravagance of the ruling elite. This is scholarly and accurate biography of a great, if not very likeable, woman battling for survival in a renaissance man's world. The massive disparity between rich and poor a precursor to the French Revolution.
]]> A Single Swallow 7864487 327 Horatio Clare 009952631X Peter 4 3.76 2009 A Single Swallow
author: Horatio Clare
name: Peter
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/07
date added: 2024/10/07
shelves:
review:
Very interesting read, particularly for anyone who has visited and loves Africa. His overland journey follows the migration of swallows from South Africa to Wales in a spontaneous and slightly chaotic manner. He describes the characters he meets along the way, the kindness of strangers, the strange lives we humans live. He arrives home disorientated and changed, as those of us who have spent time in developing countries inevitably do. The writing is inspired at times, but the quality is variable.
]]> The House of the Spirits 9328
The House of the Spirits is an enthralling saga that spans decades and lives, twining the personal and the political into an epic novel of love, magic, and fate.]]> 448 Isabel Allende 0553383809 Peter 5 4.26 1982 The House of the Spirits
author: Isabel Allende
name: Peter
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1982
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/27
date added: 2024/09/28
shelves:
review:
Fantastic novel about three generations living in Chile, terminating in the days of the Pinochet regime, facilitated by the CIA. Allende's characters bounce off the pages and her prose is remarkable. How much trouble in the world has come from Western meddling in other countries democratically elected leaders. Kissinger has a lot to answer for. The description of the sudden descent into a totalitarian state is truly shocking. Brilliant. Read it.
]]> The Island of Sea Women 40538657 9781501154850

Set on the Korean island of Jeju, The Island of Sea Women follows Mi-ja and Young-sook, two girls from very different backgrounds, as they begin working in the sea with their village’s all-female diving collective. Over many decades—through the Japanese colonialism of the 1930s and 1940s, World War II, the Korean War, and the era of cellphones and wet suits for the women divers—Mi-ja and Young-sook develop the closest of bonds. Nevertheless, their differences are impossible to ignore: Mi-ja is the daughter of a Japanese collaborator, forever marking her, and Young-sook was born into a long line of haenyeo and will inherit her mother’s position leading the divers. After hundreds of dives and years of friendship, forces outside their control will push their relationship to the breaking point.

This beautiful, thoughtful novel illuminates a unique and unforgettable culture, one where the women are in charge, engaging in dangerous physical work, and the men take care of the children. A classic Lisa See story—one of women’s friendships and the larger forces that shape themâ€�The Island of Sea Women introduces readers to the fierce female divers of Jeju Island and the dramatic history that shaped their lives.]]> 374 Lisa See Peter 5 4.29 2019 The Island of Sea Women
author: Lisa See
name: Peter
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2024/07/28
date added: 2024/07/28
shelves:
review:
One of the best books I have ever read. I had never heard about this island in South Korea, nor about the women who dived there. Gripping reading, so well researched with great characters. A shocking history, particularly under US occupation, which was supressed for nearly 50 years. Truly shameful.
]]> The Gardener 56548366 The new novel from Salley Vickers, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Librarian and Grandmothers

Artist, Hassie Days, and her sister, Margot, buy a run down Jacobean house in Hope Wenlock on the Welsh Marches. While Margot continues her London life in high finance, Hassie is left alone to work the large, long-neglected garden. She is befriended by eccentric, sharp-tongued, Miss Foot, who recommends, Murat, an Albanian migrant, made to feel out of place among the locals, to help Hassie in the garden.

As she works the garden in Murat's peaceful company, Hassie ruminates on her past life: the sibling rivalry that tainted her childhood and the love affair that left her with painful, unanswered questions.

But as she begins to explore the history of the house and the mysterious nearby wood, old hurts begin to fade as she experiences the healing power of nature and discovers other worlds.

In her haunting new novel, Salley Vickers, the bestselling author of The Librarian and The Cleaner of Chartres, writes with the profound psychological insight and sense of the numinous power of place that is the hallmark of all her novels.

'Salley Vickers sees with a clear eye and writes with a light hand. She's a presence worth cherishing' Philip Pullman

'The Gardener is a novel of regrowth & regeneration, of sisters overcoming a toxic parental legacy & of the healing power of seed packets. The perfect fictional promise to draw us through a harsh winter' Patrick Gale

'Steeped in a sense of the redemptive power of place, Sally Vickers's 11th novel is a paean to green-fingered regeneration that is both rigorous and charming' Observer
]]> 296 Salley Vickers Peter 1 3.43 2021 The Gardener
author: Salley Vickers
name: Peter
average rating: 3.43
book published: 2021
rating: 1
read at: 2024/07/12
date added: 2024/07/12
shelves:
review:
Read this for book group, so felt I should finish it. One of the worst books I have ever read. Plastered with corny adjectives like a million brilliant stars sharply shining in an azure horizon of dazzling opacity. The main character was incredibly irritating, and the whole book read like an endless and pretentious episode of the Archers.
]]> A Long Petal of the Sea 46042377 From the author of The House of the Spirits, this epic novel spanning decades and crossing continents follows two young people as they flee the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War in search of a place to call home.

In the late 1930s, civil war grips Spain. When General Franco and his Fascists succeed in overthrowing the government, hundreds of thousands are forced to flee in a treacherous journey over the mountains to the French border. Among them is Roser, a pregnant young widow, who finds her life intertwined with that of Victor Dalmau, an army doctor and the brother of her deceased love. In order to survive, the two must unite in a marriage neither of them desires.

Together with two thousand other refugees, they embark on the SS Winnipeg, a ship chartered by the poet Pablo Neruda, to Chile: “the long petal of sea and wine and snow.â€� As unlikely partners, they embrace exile as the rest of Europe erupts in world war. Starting over on a new continent, their trials are just beginning, and over the course of their lives, they will face trial after trial. But they will also find joy as they patiently await the day when they will be exiles no more. Through it all, their hope of returning to Spain keeps them going. Destined to witness the battle between freedom and repression as it plays out across the world, Roser and Victor will find that home might have been closer than they thought all along.

A masterful work of historical fiction about hope, exile, and belonging, A Long Petal of the Sea shows Isabel Allende at the height of her powers. ]]> 325 Isabel Allende Peter 5 4.03 2019 A Long Petal of the Sea
author: Isabel Allende
name: Peter
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2024/05/23
date added: 2024/05/23
shelves:
review:
I loved this book. Helped me understand the Spanish Civil War and a good deal about the history of Chile and the autocratic rule of Pinochet. The characters were remarkable and memorable, surviving war, forced migration, concentration camps, love, separation and cruelty. A beautiful story written by a remarkable author.
]]> <![CDATA[In the Blink of An Eye (Kat and Lock, #1)]]> 62072146 Just gone. Vanished. In the blink of an eye.Ìę

DCS Kat Frank knows all about loss. A widowed single mother, Kat is a cop who trusts her instincts. Picked to lead a pilot programme that has her paired with AIDE (Artificially Intelligent Detective Entity) Lock, Kat's instincts come up against Lock's logic. But when the two missing person's cold cases they are reviewing suddenly become active, Lock is the only one who can help Kat when the case gets personal.Ìę

AI versus human experience.Ìę
Logic versus instinct.
With lives on the line can the pair work together before someone else becomes another statistic? 

In the Blink of an Eye is a dazzling debut from an exciting new voice and asks us what we think it means to be human.Ìę

]]> 416 Jo Callaghan 1398511161 Peter 2 ]]> 4.13 2023 In the Blink of An Eye (Kat and Lock, #1)
author: Jo Callaghan
name: Peter
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2023
rating: 2
read at: 2024/05/13
date added: 2024/05/13
shelves:
review:
I found this a laborious read for a book group I am in. The writing seemed very amateur and I guessed the plot halfway through the 400 pages. I don't read thrillers or detective stories much, but really enjoyed reading Stieg Larsson's trilogy. The characters seemed banal and the plot unconvincing.

]]> Demon Copperhead 60194162 "Anyone will tell you the born of this world are marked from the get-out, win or lose."

Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, this is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in his own unsparing voice, he braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities.

Many generations ago, Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damages to children in his society. Those problems have yet to be solved in ours. Dickens is not a prerequisite for readers of this novel, but he provided its inspiration. In transposing a Victorian epic novel to the contemporary American South, Barbara Kingsolver enlists Dickens' anger and compassion, and above all, his faith in the transformative powers of a good story. Demon Copperhead speaks for a new generation of lost boys, and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can't imagine leaving behind.]]> 560 Barbara Kingsolver 0063251922 Peter 5 4.46 2022 Demon Copperhead
author: Barbara Kingsolver
name: Peter
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2024/04/29
date added: 2024/04/29
shelves:
review:
What an incredible book. Written in the first person as a young boy living through the death of his family, experience in foster care and descending into drug addiction in the poor rural environment of the Appalachian mountains, where the opioid crisis is wrecking havoc, this is surely one of the greatest novels ever written. I think Dickens would have been proud that he inspired Barbara Kingsolver. I found the narrative harrowing but utterly convincing. As in Flight Behaviour, Kingsolver really seems to understand the life of poor Americans. Superb and unforgettable.
]]> The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter 37380 359 Carson McCullers 0618084746 Peter 5 3.99 1940 The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
author: Carson McCullers
name: Peter
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1940
rating: 5
read at: 2024/03/22
date added: 2024/03/22
shelves:
review:
This is a masterpiece about life in a small Southern town in the USA. How a 23-year-old white girl writes a book like this as a first novel is completely incomprehensible to me. The characters are unforgettable and varied. She writes of the inequity of the world, little better now than when she wrote the book in the early 1940's. It is not an easy read, but worth the effort. Profoundly deep, and not without hope.
]]> The Nightingale 21853621 In love we find out who we want to be.
In war we find out who we are.

FRANCE, 1939

In the quiet village of Carriveau, Vianne Mauriac says good-bye to her husband, Antoine, as he heads for the Front. She doesn’t believe that the Nazis will invade France
but invade they do, in droves of marching soldiers, in caravans of trucks and tanks, in planes that fill the skies and drop bombs upon the innocent. When a German captain requisitions Vianne’s home, she and her daughter must live with the enemy or lose everything. Without food or money or hope, as danger escalates all around them, she is forced to make one impossible choice after another to keep her family alive.

Vianne’s sister, Isabelle, is a rebellious eighteen-year-old, searching for purpose with all the reckless passion of youth. While thousands of Parisians march into the unknown terrors of war, she meets GaĂ«tan, a partisan who believes the French can fight the Nazis from within France, and she falls in love as only the young can
completely. But when he betrays her, Isabelle joins the Resistance and never looks back, risking her life time and again to save others.]]> 564 Kristin Hannah 0312577222 Peter 5 4.63 2015 The Nightingale
author: Kristin Hannah
name: Peter
average rating: 4.63
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at: 2020/01/01
date added: 2024/03/09
shelves:
review:
This book is largely based on the life of a Belgian woman in World War Two who worked for the resistance. The french resistance may have been small compared to other occupied countries but there were still some incredibly brave people within it. It is a gripping tale, full of rich description. Can thoroughly recommend it.
]]> Middlemarch 19089 "People are almost always better than their neighbours think they are"

George Eliot’s most ambitious novel is a masterly evocation of diverse lives and changing fortunes in a provincial community. Peopling its landscape are Dorothea Brooke, a young idealist whose search for intellectual fulfillment leads her into a disastrous marriage to the pedantic scholar Casaubon; the charming but tactless Dr Lydgate, whose pioneering medical methods, combined with an imprudent marriage to the spendthrift beauty Rosamond, threaten to undermine his career; and the religious hypocrite Bulstrode, hiding scandalous crimes from his past. As their stories interweave, George Eliot creates a richly nuanced and moving drama, hailed by Virginia Woolf as "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people".]]> 912 George Eliot 0451529170 Peter 0 currently-reading 4.00 1872 Middlemarch
author: George Eliot
name: Peter
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1872
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/26
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Still Life 57001545
As Ulysses returns home to London, reimmersing himself in his crew at The Stoat and Parrot -- a motley mix of pub crawlers and eccentrics -- he carries his time in Italy with him. And when an unexpected inheritance brings him back to where it all began, Ulysses knows better than to tempt fate, and returns to the Tuscan hills.

With beautiful prose, extraordinary tenderness, and bursts of humor and light, Still Life is a sweeping portrait of unforgettable individuals who come together to make a family, and a richly drawn celebration of beauty and love in all its forms.]]> 464 Sarah Winman 0593330757 Peter 4 4.08 2021 Still Life
author: Sarah Winman
name: Peter
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/20
date added: 2024/02/20
shelves:
review:
Interesting and imaginative book with loveable and fun characters. Based in my favourite Italian city of Florence, the plot hurtles along at a lively pace. There are many co-incidences in the book, and the group of friends seems to get along effortlessly. That doesn't mirror my experience of life or of family. The author writes with wit and conjures up memorable scenes. There is a plethora of gay romance. Enjoyable read, but not a life-changing novel for me.
]]> <![CDATA[Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China]]> 1848 9780743246989

The story of three generations in twentieth-century China that blends the intimacy of memoir and the panoramic sweep of eyewitness history—a bestselling classic in thirty languages with more than ten million copies sold around the world, now with a new introduction from the author.

An engrossing record of Mao’s impact on China, an unusual window on the female experience in the modern world, and an inspiring tale of courage and love, Jung Chang describes the extraordinary lives and experiences of her family members: her grandmother, a warlord’s concubine; her mother’s struggles as a young idealistic Communist; and her parentsâ€� experience as members of the Communist elite and their ordeal during the Cultural Revolution. Chang was a Red Guard briefly at the age of fourteen, then worked as a peasant, a “barefoot doctor,â€� a steelworker, and an electrician. As the story of each generation unfolds, Chang captures in gripping, moving—and ultimately uplifting—detail the cycles of violent drama visited on her own family and millions of others caught in the whirlwind of history.]]> 562 Jung Chang Peter 5 4.28 1991 Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China
author: Jung Chang
name: Peter
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1991
rating: 5
read at: 2024/02/13
date added: 2024/02/13
shelves:
review:
One of the best books I have ever read. Such a brilliant description of how the recent history of China creates havoc in the life of a family trying to improve the world. The depths that Chairman Mao sinks to in order to maintain absolute power involves crushing the human spirit. So helpful to understand the desperate measures he takes to dehumanise and terrorise the Chinese people. It must have been traumatic to revisit this experience for this author, with so many friends and relatives suffering or dying as a result of the cruelty and despotic degradation of everyday life. With Putin, Xi, Kim Jong Un and Trump on the warpath, there is no better book to read to understand what life is like under a totalitarian system run by a narcissistic psychopath.
]]> The Romantic 60049861
Moving from County Cork to London, from Waterloo to Zanzibar, Cashel seeks his fortune across continents in war and in peace. He faces a terrible moral choice in a village in Sri Lanka as part of the East Indian Army. He enters the world of the Romantic Poets in Pisa. In Ravenna he meets a woman who will live in his heart for the rest of his days. As he travels the world as a soldier, a farmer, a felon, a writer, a father, a lover, he experiences all the vicissitudes of life and, through the accelerating turbulence of the nineteenth century, he discovers who he truly is. This is the romance of life itself, and the beating heart of The Romantic.]]> 451 William Boyd 0241542030 Peter 3 4.03 2022 The Romantic
author: William Boyd
name: Peter
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2023/10/31
date added: 2023/10/31
shelves:
review:
I love William Boyd's earlier works, particularly Any Human Heart and The New Confessions, but I didn't rate Sweet Caress and found The Romantic pretty unremarkable. The central character was a bit like Forrest Gump, making brief appearances at the Battle of Wellington, discovering the source of the Nile etc. etc. Time to hang up his pen, maybe.
]]> Stalingrad 42194293 Life and Fate has been hailed as a twentieth-century War and Peace. However, Life and Fate is only the second half of a two-part work, the first half of which was published in 1952. Grossman wanted to call this earlier work Stalingrad—as it will be in this first English translation—but it was published as For a Just Cause. The characters in both novels are largely the same and so is the story line; Life and Fate picks up where Stalingrad ends, in late September 1942. The first novel is in no way inferior to Life and Fate; the chapters about the Shaposhnikov family are both tender and witty, and the battle scenes are vivid and moving. One of the most memorable chapters of Life and Fate is the last letter written from a Jewish ghetto by Viktor Shtrum’s mother—a powerful lament for East European Jewry. The words of this letter do not appear in Stalingrad, yet the letter’s presence makes itself powerfully felt and it is mentioned many times. We learn who carries it across the front lines, who passes it on to whom, and how it eventually reaches Viktor. Grossman describes the difficulty Viktor experiences in reading it and his inability to talk about it even to his family. The absence of the letter itself is eloquent—as if its contents are too awful for anyone to take in.]]> 1088 Vasily Grossman 1681373270 Peter 4 4.32 1952 Stalingrad
author: Vasily Grossman
name: Peter
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1952
rating: 4
read at: 2023/05/21
date added: 2023/10/20
shelves:
review:
It was great to learn about the most important battle of the 2nd World War, and written by a russian war correspondent who lived through the battle. Grossman is frequently described as "The Tolstoy of WW2", I found that far-fetched. I have read War and Peace twice and that is a gripping piece of fine literature with memorable characters and a cohesive plot. This book is more like a collection of short scenarios, each a brief chapter a few pages long. Characters emerge and disappear from the narrative at such speed that it is hard to keep track of them. It was worth reading to get a first-hand account of Russia during WW2 and how close Hitler came to victory in Europe. At this time, Hitler was winning the Battle of the Atlantic and had conquered Czechoslovakia, Austria, Poland, Belgium, France, Denmark, The Netherlands, Norway, and was allied with Spain, Italy, Finland and Japan. He came within a whisker of taking Stalingrad which would have given him access to the oilfields of the Caucasus, oil that Germany sorely needed. Hitler put 3 million soldiers from Germany, Italy, Romania and Hungary into the invasion of Russia. German casualties from the Battle of Stalingrad were around 800,000 men, 900 aircraft, 500 tanks and 6000 pieces of artillery. Russian casualties were even worse with around 1,200,000 soldiers killed, wounded or taken prisoner. To put this into perspective, the UK and Crown Colonies only suffered 450,000 casualties during the whole 0f the war. Russia won WW2 and their soldiers fought bravely and won the battle despite Germany having air superiority and way more arms and men. Makes D-Day look like a sideshow.
]]> <![CDATA[Letters of Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms, 1853-1896, Vol. 2]]> 38736732 Ready to ship. 310 Clara Schumann 0844300551 Peter 4 4.14 Letters of Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms, 1853-1896, Vol. 2
author: Clara Schumann
name: Peter
average rating: 4.14
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2023/10/10
date added: 2023/10/20
shelves:
review:
Interesting insight into the relationship between Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms. After her husband's death, Clara had six children to care for and a career as a famous classical pianist. Four of her children pre-deceased her. She was also a fine composer, but her commitments and her gender weighed against this aspect of her talent. She gave much encouragement to Brahms, who was 14 years her junior, and together they edited much of Robert Schumann's work prior to its publication.
]]> Absolutely and Forever 74951746
Marianne Clifford, 15, only child of a peppery army colonel and his vain wife, Lal, falls helplessly and absolutely for Simon Hurst, 18, whose cleverness and physical beauty suggest that he will go forward into a successful and monied future, helped on by doting parents. But fate intervenes. Simon's plans are blown off course, and Marianne is forced to bury her dreams of a future together.

Narrating her own story, characterising herself as ignorant and unworthy, Marianne's telling use of irony and smart thinking gradually suggest to us that she has underestimated her own worth. We begin to believe that - in the end, supported by her courageous Scottish friend, Petronella - she will find the life she never stops craving. But what we can't envisage is that beneath his blithe exterior, Simon Hurst has been nursing a secret which will alter everything.]]> 177 Rose Tremain Peter 5 to-read 3.87 2023 Absolutely and Forever
author: Rose Tremain
name: Peter
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2023/09/22
date added: 2023/10/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Inside Story of Viz: Rude Kids]]> 21287168
Chris was the creator of many of the characters and was responsible for all the magazine’s written content. Characters from the magazine, such as Sid the Sexist and the Fat Slags, are now household names.

This is an engaging tale told in Chris’s unique, wry way. Chris takes us from his train-spotting childhood in the â€�70s through to setting up the magazine with family and friends, and struggling to sell even a few copies of Viz in the local pub. The comic’s success swiftly grew, however, and remarkable events ensued, such as how Chris was invited to tea by Prince Charles, taken in for questioning by New Scotland Yard's Anti-Terrorist Branch and caught his wife up to no good with Keith Richards in Peter Cook's attic.

Chris includes many original drawings in this integrated book as well as some fascinating images of early Viz creations.]]> 402 Chris Donald 0007571836 Peter 4 4.20 2014 The Inside Story of Viz: Rude Kids
author: Chris Donald
name: Peter
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2023/10/06
date added: 2023/10/06
shelves:
review:
Interesting read of the evolution of one of the UK's funniest magazines, Viz. There are many laugh-out-loud anecdotes, but also an insight into the life of someone talented who becomes rich and famous beyond their wildest dreams. As the author notes, sometimes realising dreams is ultimately disappointing and not as much fun as dreaming itself can be. The world of celebrities in which the author is frequently thrown comes across as a rather cut-throat world of inflated egos. Chris Donald founded and set up Viz and has brought laughter to millions of folk. He should probably be as lauded as our other comedians who are widely admired, like John Cleese and Eric Morecambe. A great read for any fan of Viz.
]]> <![CDATA[The Crystal Desert: Summers in Antarctica]]> 433852 336 David G. Campbell 0618219218 Peter 5 4.02 1992 The Crystal Desert: Summers in Antarctica
author: David G. Campbell
name: Peter
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1992
rating: 5
read at: 2023/08/19
date added: 2023/08/19
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood]]> 24687 Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, Alexandra Fuller remembers her African childhood with candor and sensitivity. Though it is a diary of an unruly life in an often inhospitable place, it is suffused with Fuller’s endearing ability to find laughter, even when there is little to celebrate. Fuller’s debut is unsentimental and unflinching but always captivating. In wry and sometimes hilarious prose, she stares down disaster and looks back with rage and love at the life of an extraordinary family in an extraordinary time.]]> 315 Alexandra Fuller Peter 0 to-read 3.96 2001 Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood
author: Alexandra Fuller
name: Peter
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2001
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay (Neapolitan Novels, #3)]]> 23156040 418 Elena Ferrante Peter 0 currently-reading 4.38 2013 Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay (Neapolitan Novels, #3)
author: Elena Ferrante
name: Peter
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/06
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Shuggie Bain 52741293 Shuggie Bain is the unforgettable story of young Hugh "Shuggie" Bain, a sweet and lonely boy who spends his 1980s childhood in run-down public housing in Glasgow, Scotland. Thatcher's policies have put husbands and sons out of work, and the city's notorious drugs epidemic is waiting in the wings.

Shuggie's mother Agnes walks a wayward path: she is Shuggie's guiding light but a burden for him and his siblings. She dreams of a house with its own front door while she flicks through the pages of the Freemans catalogue, ordering a little happiness on credit, anything to brighten up her grey life. Married to a philandering taxi-driver husband, Agnes keeps her pride by looking good--her beehive, make-up, and pearly-white false teeth offer a glamourous image of a Glaswegian Elizabeth Taylor. But under the surface, Agnes finds increasing solace in drink, and she drains away the lion's share of each week's benefits--all the family has to live on--on cans of extra-strong lager hidden in handbags and poured into tea mugs.

Agnes's older children find their own ways to get a safe distance from their mother, abandoning Shuggie to care for her as she swings between alcoholic binges and sobriety. Shuggie is meanwhile struggling to somehow become the normal boy he desperately longs to be, but everyone has realized that he is "no right," a boy with a secret that all but him can see. Agnes is supportive of her son, but her addiction has the power to eclipse everyone close to her--even her beloved Shuggie.

A heartbreaking story of addiction, sexuality, and love, Shuggie Bain is an epic portrayal of a working-class family that is rarely seen in fiction. Recalling the work of Edouard Louis, Alan Hollinghurst, Frank McCourt, and Hanya Yanagihara, it is a blistering debut by a brilliant novelist who has a powerful and important story to tell.]]> 430 Douglas Stuart 0802148042 Peter 0 4.29 2020 Shuggie Bain
author: Douglas Stuart
name: Peter
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at: 2023/08/05
date added: 2023/08/05
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Wreath (Kristin Lavransdatter, #1)]]> 6220

From the Trade Paperback edition.]]> 305 Sigrid Undset 0141180412 Peter 3 4.09 1920 The Wreath (Kristin Lavransdatter, #1)
author: Sigrid Undset
name: Peter
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1920
rating: 3
read at: 2023/06/02
date added: 2023/08/02
shelves:
review:
This was on a list of the best 100 historical novels. Written about medieval Norway, I was surprised by the wealth of the aristocrats. Having spent some months in arctic Norway, I didn't find it a particularly good read. The author won the Nobel Prize for Literature in the 1920s.
]]> <![CDATA[The Innocent Anthropologist : Notes from a Mud Hut]]> 105161 Note: This book was originally published as Not a Hazardous Sport. When British anthropologist Nigel Barley set up home among the Dowayo people in northern Cameroon, he knew how fieldwork should be conducted. Unfortunately, nobody had told the Dowayo. His compulsive, witty account of first fieldwork offers a wonderfully inspiring introduction to the real life of a cultural anthropologist doing research in a Third World area. Both touching and hilarious, Barley's unconventional story—in which he survived boredom, hostility, disaster, and illness—addresses many critical issues in anthropology and in fieldwork.]]> 190 Nigel Barley 1577661567 Peter 3 4.17 1983 The Innocent Anthropologist : Notes from a Mud Hut
author: Nigel Barley
name: Peter
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1983
rating: 3
read at: 2023/07/24
date added: 2023/07/24
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius]]> 4953 A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is the moving memoir of a college senior who, in the space of five weeks, loses both of his parents to cancer and inherits his eight-year-old brother. Here is an exhilarating debut that manages to be simultaneously hilarious and wildly inventive as well as a deeply heartfelt story of the love that holds a family together.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is an instant classic that will be read for decades to come.]]> 530 Dave Eggers 0375725784 Peter 2 3.70 2000 A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
author: Dave Eggers
name: Peter
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2000
rating: 2
read at: 2023/07/14
date added: 2023/07/15
shelves:
review:
This 435 page book could have been 200 pages shorter if the author cut out the word "fuck". I paid 99p in a charity shop for this and consider it a total rip-off. I gave up after 250 pages. Maybe the author suffers from ADHD.
]]> Milkman 36047860
Milkman is a tale of gossip and hearsay, silence and deliberate deafness. It is the story of inaction with enormous consequences.]]> 352 Anna Burns 0571338763 Peter 5 3.51 2018 Milkman
author: Anna Burns
name: Peter
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2023/07/14
date added: 2023/07/14
shelves:
review:
I loved this book. I found it original and fun to read. It also gave a good insight into life in Northern Ireland. It illuminated the claustrophobic nature of sectarian life and random violence. The characters were totally convincing, particularly the narrators three small sisters and her mother. Superb read.
]]> Bach Cello Suites 56852365 Cello Suites are among the most cherished of all the works in the classical music literature. Shrouded in mystery - they were largely unknown for some two hundred years after their composition - they have acquired a magical aura which continues to attract and fascinate audiences the world over. To cellists they represent a musical bible, to listeners, scarcely less. Through what are on the surface simple dance suites, Bach takes us on a spiritual journey like no other, leading us from joy to tragedy, concluding in jubilation, even triumph.

Award-winning international cellist Steven Isserlis, whose recent recording of the Suites met with the highest critical acclaim goes deep into that emotional journey, bringing to bear all his many years' experience of performing the Suites. His book is intended as a rewarding companion for all music lovers, ranging from the casual listener to the performing musician. By offering his own very personal observations of the music, Isserlis's aim is to take the reader further into the world of the Suites in order to enhance the experience of hearing some of the greatest works ever composed.]]> 240 Steven Isserlis 0571366244 Peter 4 4.10 2021 Bach Cello Suites
author: Steven Isserlis
name: Peter
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2023/07/13
date added: 2023/07/13
shelves:
review:
Entertaining and thoughtful book about the Bach Cello Suites from the famous cellist. Easy to read, written for a general audience, he has an amusing turn of phrase and a deep love of Bach's music.
]]> Act of Oblivion 60141403
'From what is it they flee?'

He took a while to reply. By the time he spoke the men had gone inside. He said quietly, “They killed the King.â€�

1660 England. General Edward Whalley and his son-in law Colonel William Goffe board a ship bound for the New World. They are on the run, wanted for the murder of King Charles I—a brazen execution that marked the culmination of the English Civil War, in which parliamentarians successfully battled royalists for control.

But now, ten years after Charlesâ€� beheading, the royalists have returned to power. Under the provisions of the Act of Oblivion, the fifty-nine men who signed the king’s death warrant and participated in his execution have been found guilty in absentia of high treason. Some of the Roundheads, including Oliver Cromwell, are already dead. Others have been captured, hung, drawn, and quartered. A few are imprisoned for life. But two have escaped to America by boat.

In London, Richard Nayler, secretary of the regicide committee of the Privy Council, is charged with bringing the traitors to justice and he will stop at nothing to find them. A substantial bounty hangs over their heads for their capture—dead or alive. . . .

Robert Harris’s first historical novel set predominantly in America, Act of Oblivion is a novel with an urgent narrative, remarkable characters, and an epic true story to tell of religion, vengeance, and power—and the costs to those who wield it.]]> 463 Robert Harris 006324800X Peter 3 3.98 2022 Act of Oblivion
author: Robert Harris
name: Peter
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2023/06/25
date added: 2023/06/25
shelves:
review:
I found this a long and rather tedious read. There were some interesting insights about Crowell, but not enough to make the book worth reading. A violent period of history and a novel about obsessive revenge.
]]> <![CDATA[Wuthering Heights (Wordsworth Classics)]]> 24515503 Wuthering Heights is a wild, passionate story of the intense and almost demonic love between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, a foundling adopted by Catherine's father. After Mr Earnshaw's death, Heathcliff is bullied and humiliated by Catherine's brother Hindley and wrongly believing that his love for Catherine is not reciprocated, leaves Wuthering Heights, only to return years later as a wealthy and polished man. He proceeds to exact a terrible revenge for his former miseries.


The action of the story is chaotic and unremittingly violent, but the accomplished handling of a complex structure, the evocative descriptions of the lonely moorland setting and the poetic grandeur of vision combine to make this unique novel a masterpiece of English literature.

]]> 120 Emily Brontë Peter 4 4.01 1847 Wuthering Heights (Wordsworth Classics)
author: Emily Brontë
name: Peter
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1847
rating: 4
read at: 2023/06/25
date added: 2023/06/25
shelves:
review:
Unusual novel. Moody writing but I found the characters rather unconvincing. Nonetheless, the Bronte sisters were an outstanding family of writers.
]]> <![CDATA[All Quiet on the Western Front]]> 355697
In 1914 a room full of German schoolboys, fresh-faced and idealistic, are goaded by their schoolmaster to troop off to the ‘glorious warâ€�. With the fire and patriotism of youth they sign up. What follows is the moving story of a young ‘unknown soldierâ€� experiencing the horror and disillusionment of life in the trenches.]]> 296 Erich Maria Remarque 0449213943 Peter 4 4.04 1928 All Quiet on the Western Front
author: Erich Maria Remarque
name: Peter
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1928
rating: 4
read at: 2023/05/07
date added: 2023/05/07
shelves:
review:
This is close as I have been to understanding what life was like for the soldiers in World War 1. My grandfather fought in the trenches in the machine gun regiment and was wounded in the Battle of the Somme. Reading it from the German perspective somehow hammers home the barbarity of war. War is so easy to start, and so hard to stop. 110 years later, troops are digging trenches in Ukraine and getting blown to bits. What a stupid species Homo Sapiens can be.
]]> <![CDATA[Let Me Tell You About a Man I Knew]]> 29097803 272 Susan Fletcher 0349007616 Peter 5 4.01 2016 Let Me Tell You About a Man I Knew
author: Susan Fletcher
name: Peter
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2023/05/02
date added: 2023/05/02
shelves:
review:
What a fabulous book about Vincent van Gogh's time in Saint-Paul asylum in Saint-RĂ©my-de-Provence, where he stayed voluntarily for 12 months and painted much of his best work. The character of van Gogh is as I understand him, on the autistic spectrum, socially awkward but very intelligent and kind-hearted. Susan Fletcher writes poetic prose and her characters are totally convincing and remarkable. One of the finest novels I have ever read.
]]> The Elephant Whisperer 6375561
As Lawrence risked his life to create a bond with the troubled elephants and persuade them to stay on his reserve, he came to realize what a special family they were, from the wise matriarch Nana, who guided the herd, to her warrior sister Frankie, always ready to see off any threat, and their children who fought so hard to survive.

With unforgettable characters and exotic wildlife, this is an enthralling book that will appeal to animal lovers and adventurous souls everywhere.]]> 368 Lawrence Anthony 0283070870 Peter 4 4.46 2009 The Elephant Whisperer
author: Lawrence Anthony
name: Peter
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2023/04/28
date added: 2023/04/28
shelves:
review:
Book written by a conservationist who set up a game reserve in Zululand in South Africa, working within the Zulu community. Amazing stories of his close relationship and understanding of a herd of elephants whom he rescued from being shot as they were deemed "troublesome and dangerous". Fascinating stories of dedication, bravery and persistence and an incredible vision for trying to set up a cooperative venture with local Zulus to safeguard the magnificent natural world in Africa. Anyone with a heart for wildlife will love this book.
]]> <![CDATA[The Sixteen Trees of the Somme]]> 58667529 An engrossing literary novel about a family mystery, revenge, and forgiveness by the bestselling author of Norwegian Wood and The Bell in the Lake

The Sixteen Trees of the Somme is an intricately plotted and enthralling novel by the award-winning author of Norwegian Wood and The Bell in the Lake. An international bestseller and longlisted for the Dublin Literary Prize, it tells the story of Edvard and starts at his family’s tree farm in Norway, where he was raised by his grandfather.

The death of Edvard’s parents when he was three has always been a mystery but he knows that the fate of his grandfather’s brother, Einar, is somehow connected. One day a coffin is delivered to the farm for his grandfather, long before the grandfather’s death –â€� a meticulous, beautiful, and unique piece of craftsmanship with the hallmarks of a certain master craftsman –â€� raising the thought that Einar isn’t dead after all. Edvard is now driven to unravel the mystery of his parentsâ€� death. Following a trail of clues from Norway to the Shetland Islands to the battlefields of France and sixteen ancient walnut trees colored by poison gas in World War I, Edvard ultimately discovers a very unusual inheritance.

Spanning a century and masterfully navigating themes of revenge and forgiveness, love and loneliness, The Sixteen Trees of the Somme displays the rich talents of Lars Mytting –â€� whose novels have sold over a million copies worldwide –â€� in a story that is utterly compelling and unforgettable.]]> 416 Lars Mytting 1419762273 Peter 4 4.11 2014 The Sixteen Trees of the Somme
author: Lars Mytting
name: Peter
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2023/04/21
date added: 2023/04/21
shelves:
review:
Interesting book taking in a plot that moves sequentially from Norway to Shetland Isles to the French battlefields of World War 1. I didn't realise that there are areas in France and Belgium that are still out of bounds because of unexploded ordnance from battlegrounds like Verdun and the Somme, where my grandfather was in the Machine Gun Regiment and was invalided out with a shrapnel wound to his leg (the origin of the term "lucky blighter"). Well thought-out plot and characters.
]]> <![CDATA[The Story of a New Name (Neapolitan Novels, #2)]]> 17465515 My Brilliant Friend introduced readers to the unforgettable Elena and Lila, whose lifelong friendship provides the backbone for the Neapolitan Novels. The Story of a New Name is the second book in this series. With these books, which the New Yorker's James Wood described as "large, captivating, amiably peopled ... a beautiful and delicate tale of confluence and reversal," Ferrante proves herself to be one of Italy's most accomplished storytellers. She writes vividly about a specific neighborhood of Naples from the late-1950s through to the current day and about two remarkable young women who are very much the products of that place and time. Yet in doing so she has created a world in which readers will recognize themselves and has drawn a marvelously nuanced portrait of friendship.

In The Story of a New Name, Lila has recently married and made her entrée into the family business; Elena, meanwhile, continues her studies and her exploration of the world beyond the neighborhood that she so often finds stifling. Love, jealousy, family, freedom, commitment, and above all friendship: these are signs under which both women live out this phase in their stories. Marriage appears to have imprisoned Lila, and the pressure to excel is at times too much for Elena. Yet the two young women share a complex and evolving bond that is central to their emotional lives and is a source of strength in the face of life's challenges. In these Neapolitan Novels, Elena Ferrante, the acclaimed author of The Days of Abandonment, gives readers a poignant and universal story about friendship and belonging.]]> 471 Elena Ferrante Peter 4 4.47 2012 The Story of a New Name (Neapolitan Novels, #2)
author: Elena Ferrante
name: Peter
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2020/10/01
date added: 2023/04/17
shelves:
review:

]]> The Midnight Library 52578297
When Nora Seed finds herself in the Midnight Library, she has a chance to make things right. Up until now, her life has been full of misery and regret. She feels she has let everyone down, including herself. But things are about to change.

The books in the Midnight Library enable Nora to live as if she had done things differently. With the help of an old friend, she can now undo every one of her regrets as she tries to work out her perfect life. But things aren't always what she imagined they'd be, and soon her choices place the library and herself in extreme danger.

Before time runs out, she must answer the ultimate question: what is the best way to live?]]> 288 Matt Haig 0525559477 Peter 5 3.96 2020 The Midnight Library
author: Matt Haig
name: Peter
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2021/08/18
date added: 2023/04/17
shelves:
review:
I found this book deeply moving. The mixture of philosophy and theoretical physics worked for me. I am pretty old and have had a rich life with my fair share of traumas. I have always been fascinated by how our lives lived have so much to do with chance. Whom we meet, who we fall in love with, the luck in our genes and stars, where we are born and the defining quality of our upbringing. For those many people who have suffered an abusive childhood, this novel offers real hope.
]]> Educated 35133922
Her father forbade hospitals, so Tara never saw a doctor or nurse. Gashes and concussions, even burns from explosions, were all treated at home with herbalism. The family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education and no one to intervene when one of Tara's older brothers became violent.

Then, lacking any formal education, Tara began to educate herself. She taught herself enough mathematics and grammar to be admitted to Brigham Young University, where she studied history, learning for the first time about important world events like the Holocaust and the civil rights movement. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge. Only then would she wonder if she'd traveled too far, if there was still a way home.

Educated is an account of the struggle for self-invention. It is a tale of fierce family loyalty and of the grief that comes with severing the closest of ties. With the acute insight that distinguishes all great writers, Westover has crafted a universal coming-of-age story that gets to the heart of what an education is and what it offers: the perspective to see one's life through new eyes and the will to change it.]]> 352 Tara Westover 0399590501 Peter 5
Frightening but ultimately hopeful, I cannot recommend this book strongly enough. For outsiders, it helps to explain why children find it so hard to escape these oppressive and punishing environments. Not sure Tara will ever be a great author but this is a gripping story of real events. She is a remarkable survivor, saved perhaps by her great intelligence.]]> 4.46 2018 Educated
author: Tara Westover
name: Peter
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2021/02/27
date added: 2023/04/17
shelves:
review:
Loved this book. Having tried to help many adult survivors of damaging childhoods as a family physician, this book rang completely true to me. The combination of extremist religious faith, paranoia and control that parents can exert is frightening to behold and damaging both physically and emotionally. The combination of home schooling and a single faith circle of family and friends is often backed up by the reality of those who choose to escape being shunned by those that choose to remain in the controlling clutches of religious sects. This is the land of anti-vaxxers, deep state paranoia and relentless brainwashing.

Frightening but ultimately hopeful, I cannot recommend this book strongly enough. For outsiders, it helps to explain why children find it so hard to escape these oppressive and punishing environments. Not sure Tara will ever be a great author but this is a gripping story of real events. She is a remarkable survivor, saved perhaps by her great intelligence.
]]> The Sense of an Ending 10746542 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here

By an acclaimed writer at the height of his powers, The Sense of an Ending extends a streak of extraordinary books that began with the best-selling Arthur & George and continued with Nothing to Be Frightened Of and, most recently, Pulse.

This intense novel follows a middle-aged man as he contends with a past he has never much thought about - until his closest childhood friends return with a vengeance, one of them from the grave, another maddeningly present. Tony Webster thought he'd left all this behind as he built a life for himself, and by now his marriage and family and career have fallen into an amicable divorce and retirement. But he is then presented with a mysterious legacy that obliges him to reconsider a variety of things he thought he'd understood all along, and to revise his estimation of his own nature and place in the world.

A novel so compelling that it begs to be read in a single sitting, with stunning psychological and emotional depth and sophistication, The Sense of an Ending is a brilliant new chapter in Julian Barnes's oeuvre.]]> 150 Julian Barnes 0224094157 Peter 4 3.73 2011 The Sense of an Ending
author: Julian Barnes
name: Peter
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2020/09/29
date added: 2023/04/17
shelves:
review:

]]> Family Matters 19661
Nariman must now turn to his younger daughter, Roxana, her husband, Yezad, and their two sons, who share a small, crowded home. Their decision will test not only their material resources but, in surprising ways, all their tolerance, compassion, integrity, and faith. Sweeping and intimate, tragic and mirthful, Family Matters is a work of enormous emotional power.]]> 434 Rohinton Mistry 037570342X Peter 4 4.03 2002 Family Matters
author: Rohinton Mistry
name: Peter
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2002
rating: 4
read at: 2023/04/14
date added: 2023/04/14
shelves:
review:
Interesting view on life in a Parsi household in Mumbai and some idea of the ancient Zoroastrianism religion. It feels like a deeply personal novel, the characters are as odd and difficult as most real human beings. Ultimately rather a sad portrait of family love and strife in a sectarian religious world.
]]> <![CDATA[Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind]]> 23692271 512 Yuval Noah Harari Peter 4 4.33 2011 Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
author: Yuval Noah Harari
name: Peter
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2023/03/27
date added: 2023/04/14
shelves:
review:
Interesting read, sometimes a bit glib. Maybe tried to cover too much in one book. I preferred the history of mankind covered in Guns, Germs and Steel. More thoughtful, less arrogant somehow.
]]> The Tenth Muse 41952185
On her quest to conquer the Riemann Hypothesis, the greatest unsolved mathematical problem of her time, she turns to a theorem with a mysterious history that holds both the lock and key to her identity, and to secrets long buried during World War II in Germany. Forced to confront some of the most consequential events of the twentieth century and rethink everything she knows of herself, she strives to take her place in the world of higher mathematics and finds kinship in the stories of the women who came before her—their love of the language of numbers connecting them across generations.

In The Tenth Muse, Catherine Chung offers a gorgeous, sweeping tale about legacy, identity, and the beautiful ways the mind can make us free.]]> 291 Catherine Chung 006257406X Peter 3 ]]> 4.00 2019 The Tenth Muse
author: Catherine Chung
name: Peter
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2023/03/20
date added: 2023/03/20
shelves:
review:
Interesting book and an amazing feat of imagination. I know little about maths and am not sure if this was a help or a hindrance. The author has a degree in maths, so obviously she knows plenty enough to write of the women in that field who have excelled and been short-changed. The characters are convincing, and the horrors of war and its sequelae take their toll. The narrative was gripping, and I read the book in a day or two. For me, there were too many coincidences and some of the characters behaved in unlikely ways.

]]> The Sunne in Splendour 119829
In this beautifully rendered modern classic, Sharon Kay Penman redeems Richard III - vilified as the bitter, twisted, scheming hunchback who murdered his nephews, the princes in the Tower - from his maligned place in history with a dazzling combination of research and storytelling.Ìę

Born into the treacherous courts of fifteenth-century England, in the midst of what history has called The War of the Roses, Richard was raised in the shadow of his charismatic brother, King Edward IV. Loyal to his friends and passionately in love with the one woman who was denied him, Richard emerges as a gifted man far more sinned against than sinning.Ìę

This magnificent retelling of his life is filled with all of the sights and sounds of battle, the customs and lore of the fifteenth century, the rigors of court politics, and the passions and prejudices of royalty.]]> 936 Sharon Kay Penman 0345363132 Peter 5
The most astonishing thing is the violent ruthlessness endemic to the times and the short lives people lived in times gone past.

An excellent and mammoth undertaking from the author. Gripping and enlightening.]]> 4.39 1982 The Sunne in Splendour
author: Sharon Kay Penman
name: Peter
average rating: 4.39
book published: 1982
rating: 5
read at: 2023/03/13
date added: 2023/03/13
shelves:
review:
Sharon Penman became interested in Richard III as a student and wrote a 400-page novel, which was stolen from her car. After this, she wrote nothing at all for 5 years. While practising law, she started writing the novel again, and took 12 years to finish it! She tries to follow history as closely as possible, and certainly brings her characters to life. At nearly 900 pages, it is not a light read and can get slightly tricky to keep track of all the cast, many of whom seem to be Elisabeths or Richards. I love historical fiction as a way into the subject and found the War of the Roses unfolding before my eyes very interesting. I have also read her book, When Christ and His Saints Slept, about the anarchy.

The most astonishing thing is the violent ruthlessness endemic to the times and the short lives people lived in times gone past.

An excellent and mammoth undertaking from the author. Gripping and enlightening.
]]> A Place Called Winter 22882816
If you've never read a Patrick Gale, stop now and pick up this book. From the author of the bestselling NOTES FROM AN EXHIBITION comes an irresistible, searching and poignant historical novel of love, relationships, secrets and escape.]]> 352 Patrick Gale 1472205294 Peter 3 4.10 2015 A Place Called Winter
author: Patrick Gale
name: Peter
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at: 2023/02/19
date added: 2023/02/22
shelves:
review:
A rather sad little book based on a notebook of the author's grandmother about a gay gentleman husband in the 1900's who left to become a pioneer farmer in Canada. Tough life for gay men in that era.
]]> Lessons in Chemistry 58065033 390 Bonnie Garmus Peter 4 ]]> 4.23 2022 Lessons in Chemistry
author: Bonnie Garmus
name: Peter
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2023/02/22
date added: 2023/02/22
shelves:
review:
Very original and witty book about characters on the autistic spectrum in 1960's USA. One of the funniest books I have read in some years. The characters are great, loved the heroine and the dog.

]]> American Dirt 45046527
Lydia lives in Acapulco. She has a son, Luca, the love of her life, and a wonderful husband who is a journalist. And while cracks are beginning to show in Acapulco because of the cartels, Lydia’s life is, by and large, fairly comfortable. But after her husband’s tell-all profile of the newest drug lord is published, none of their lives will ever be the same.

Forced to flee, Lydia and Luca find themselves joining the countless people trying to reach the United States. Lydia soon sees that everyone is running from something. But what exactly are they running to?]]> 459 Jeanine Cummins Peter 4
I am surprised by the enormous grief that the author received for "cultural appropriation". Clearly, she made a considerable effort to talk to people involved in dealing with migrants, and tried to write an honest account of the suffering that drives people to migrate from their homes in the first place. ]]> 4.32 2020 American Dirt
author: Jeanine Cummins
name: Peter
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2023/02/16
date added: 2023/02/16
shelves:
review:
Book that raised my awareness of the life of illegal immigrants crossing from Mexico into the USA. Somehow ironic that USA consumes all the drugs that are the life-blood of the drug cartels that seem to ruin countries like Mexico and Colombia. Characters are generally convincing, although the platonic friendship between the married heroine of the book and the cartel leader seems rather unlikely. On the other hand, psychopaths can be very convincing and lack any remorse for their actions by definition.

I am surprised by the enormous grief that the author received for "cultural appropriation". Clearly, she made a considerable effort to talk to people involved in dealing with migrants, and tried to write an honest account of the suffering that drives people to migrate from their homes in the first place.
]]> And Quiet Flows the Don 78024 1408 Mikhail Sholokhov 0460878905 Peter 4 4.07 1928 And Quiet Flows the Don
author: Mikhail Sholokhov
name: Peter
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1928
rating: 4
read at: 2023/01/26
date added: 2023/01/26
shelves:
review:
This is a mammoth novel which took Shokolov 14 years to write. He was raised in Cossack country, but in a relative underclass. At 13, he joined the Bolshevik party and fought in the Russian Civil War. He therefore writes with absolute authority about the Cossack way of life, the horrors of war and the uncertainties of revolution. His description of nature around the Don is poetic and memorable. His novel smacks of real life, with encounters containing endless characters who may appear for the briefest of periods. Life is hard, but he draws a warm portrait of the Cossack way of life. Women in the novel are spirited and determined, often harshly treated. The Russian people have had endless centuries of ill-treatment and it is sad to see how dictators of various persuasions have failed to lead the people into happier and more equitable times. In Putin's Russia, 99% of wealth is owned by 1% of the population, and most of that wealth is kept abroad.
]]> The Elephants of Thula Thula 60664842 'Enthralling' Daily Mail

In 1998, Françoise Malby-Anthony founded a game reserve with her late husband, dedicating their lives to the protection of these beautiful, troubled animals. The Elephants of Thula Thula is the profound, compelling story of their life's work.

Françoise Malby-Anthony is the owner of a game reserve in South Africa with a remarkable family of elephants whose adventures have touched hearts around the world. The herd’s feisty matriarch Frankie knows who’s in charge at Thula Thula, and it’s not Françoise. But when Frankie becomes ill, and the authorities threaten to remove or cull some of the herd if the reserve doesn’t expand, Françoise is in a race against time to save her beloved elephants . . .

The joys and challenges of a life dedicated to conservation are vividly described in this charming and moving book. The search is on to get a girlfriend for orphaned rhino Thabo â€� and then, as his behaviour becomes increasingly boisterous, a big brother to teach him manners. Françoise realizes a dream with the arrival of Savannah the cheetah â€� an endangered species not seen in the area since the 1940s â€� and finds herself rescuing meerkats kept as pets. But will Thula Thula survive the pandemic, an invasion from poachers and the threat from a mining company wanting access to its land?

As Françoise faces her toughest years yet, she realizes once again that with their wisdom, resilience and communal bonds, the elephants have much to teach us.]]> 320 Françoise Malby-Anthony 1529087686 Peter 4 4.45 2022 The Elephants of Thula Thula
author: Françoise Malby-Anthony
name: Peter
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2023/01/11
date added: 2023/01/13
shelves:
review:
Second instalment of stories from a wildlife sanctuary in Zululand in South Africa. Lovely tales of the animals living there and the daily dangers to both wild animals and their protectors from poaching gangs and the vagaries of the natural world. Inspiring.
]]> <![CDATA[In the Name of the Family (Borgias #2)]]> 41021513
In the bear pit of renaissance politics, a young Florentine diplomat finds himself first hand observer on the history's most notorious family - the Borgias.

In the Name of the Family - as Blood and Beauty did before - holds up a mirror to a turbulent moment of history, sweeping aside the myths to bring alive the real Borgia family; complicated, brutal, passionate and glorious. Here is a thrilling exploration of the House of Borgia's doomed years, in the company of a young diplomat named Niccolo Machiavelli.

It is 1502 and Rodrigo Borgia, a self-confessed womaniser and master of political corruption is now on the Papal throne as Alexander VI. His daughter Lucrezia, aged twenty-two, already thrice married and a pawn in her father's plans, is discovering her own power. And then there is Cesare Borgia: brilliant, ruthless and increasingly unstable; it is his relationship with the diplomat Machiavelli which offers a master class on the dark arts of power and politics. What Machiavelli learns will go on to inform his great work of modern politics, The Prince.

But while the pope rails against old age and his son's increasing maverick behavior it is Lucrezia who will become the Borgia survivor: taking on her enemies and creating her own place in history.

Conjuring up the past in all its complexity, horror and pleasures, In The Name of the Family confirms Sarah Dunant's place as the leading novelist of the Renaissance and one of the most acclaimed historical fiction writers of our age.]]> 426 Sarah Dunant 0812996984 Peter 4 3.79 2017 In the Name of the Family (Borgias #2)
author: Sarah Dunant
name: Peter
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2023/01/07
date added: 2023/01/07
shelves:
review:

]]> An Elephant in My Kitchen 38657978 The Elephant Whisperer, or just want to spend time with some remarkable animals, then you won’t want to miss this sparkling book.]]> 320 Françoise Malby-Anthony 150986489X Peter 5 4.29 2018 An Elephant in My Kitchen
author: Françoise Malby-Anthony
name: Peter
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2022/12/23
date added: 2022/12/23
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Pillars of the Earth (Kingsbridge, #1)]]> 5043 Ken Follett is known worldwide as the master of split-second suspense, but his most beloved and bestselling book tells the magnificent tale of a twelfth-century monk driven to do the seemingly impossible: build the greatest Gothic cathedral the world has ever known.

Everything readers expect from Follett is here: intrigue, fast-paced action, and passionate romance. But what makes The Pillars of the Earth extraordinary is the time the twelfth century; the place feudal England; and the subject the building of a glorious cathedral. Follett has re-created the crude, flamboyant England of the Middle Ages in every detail. The vast forests, the walled towns, the castles, and the monasteries become a familiar landscape.

Against this richly imagined and intricately interwoven backdrop, filled with the ravages of war and the rhythms of daily life, the master storyteller draws the reader irresistibly into the intertwined lives of his characters into their dreams, their labors, and their loves: Tom, the master builder; Aliena, the ravishingly beautiful noblewoman; Philip, the prior of Kingsbridge; Jack, the artist in stone; and Ellen, the woman of the forest who casts a terrifying curse. From humble stonemason to imperious monarch, each character is brought vividly to life.

The building of the cathedral, with the almost eerie artistry of the unschooled stonemasons, is the center of the drama. Around the site of the construction, Follett weaves a story of betrayal, revenge, and love, which begins with the public hanging of an innocent man and ends with the humiliation of a king.

For the TV tie-in edition with the same ISBN go to this Alternate Cover Edition
]]> 976 Ken Follett 045122213X Peter 4
In terms of learning about the history of the period, I found the book "When Christ and His Saints Slept" more informative. ]]> 4.34 1989 The Pillars of the Earth (Kingsbridge, #1)
author: Ken Follett
name: Peter
average rating: 4.34
book published: 1989
rating: 4
read at: 2022/11/06
date added: 2022/11/06
shelves:
review:
This is a good yarn and although it has nearly a thousand pages, reading it was interesting and enjoyable. Personally, I didn't find the writing stylish, but the characters were believable, and the story bounced along well. I love British cathedrals and the book gives an idea of how they were built. The background of power, money and sex as a determinant of outcome plays its usual role in the human condition.

In terms of learning about the history of the period, I found the book "When Christ and His Saints Slept" more informative.
]]> Crossroads 55881796 Jonathan Franzen's gift for wedding depth and vividness of character with breadth of social vision has never been more dazzlingly evident than in Crossroads.

It's December 23, 1971, and heavy weather is forecast for Chicago. Russ Hildebrandt, the associate pastor of a liberal suburban church, is on the brink of breaking free of a marriage he finds joyless--unless his wife, Marion, who has her own secret life, beats him to it. Their eldest child, Clem, is coming home from college on fire with moral absolutism, having taken an action that will shatter his father. Clem's sister, Becky, long the social queen of her high-school class, has sharply veered into the counterculture, while their brilliant younger brother Perry, who's been selling drugs to seventh graders, has resolved to be a better person. Each of the Hildebrandts seeks a freedom that each of the others threatens to complicate.

Jonathan Franzen's novels are celebrated for their unforgettably vivid characters and for their keen-eyed take on contemporary America. Now, in Crossroads, Franzen ventures back into the past and explores the history of two generations. With characteristic humor and complexity, and with even greater warmth, he conjures a world that resonates powerfully with our own.

A tour de force of interwoven perspectives and sustained suspense, its action largely unfolding on a single winter day, Crossroads is the story of a Midwestern family at a pivotal moment of moral crisis. Jonathan Franzen's gift for melding the small picture and the big picture has never been more dazzlingly evident.]]> 592 Jonathan Franzen 0374181179 Peter 3 4.05 2021 Crossroads
author: Jonathan Franzen
name: Peter
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2022/10/25
date added: 2022/10/25
shelves:
review:
I didn't find the characters in this book particularly agreeable or believable. I can't say I liked any of them, all very self-centred and selfish. It could have been edited in half quite easily. The best of the book was in the last 100 pages.
]]> Memoirs of a Geisha 929
In "Memoirs of a Geisha," we enter a world where appearances are paramount; where a girl's virginity is auctioned to the highest bidder; where women are trained to beguile the most powerful men; and where love is scorned as illusion. It is a unique and triumphant work of fiction - at once romantic, erotic, suspenseful - and completely unforgettable.]]> 503 Arthur Golden 1400096898 Peter 5
The book is easy to read and full of interesting characters and plots. Some have questioned its authenticity, I know too little about Japan to comment. ]]> 4.31 1997 Memoirs of a Geisha
author: Arthur Golden
name: Peter
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1997
rating: 5
read at: 2022/09/07
date added: 2022/09/07
shelves:
review:
I loved this book. I know little about Japan and it gave a flavour of its history. Like so much of the history of the world, its power structures, its religions...abuse of women and girls is central to the life of a geisha. I was sad to read that the author angered the geisha who helped him write the novel, naming her when she wished to be anonymous and specifying the price paid for taking her virginity. He settled out of court.

The book is easy to read and full of interesting characters and plots. Some have questioned its authenticity, I know too little about Japan to comment.
]]> Archangel 174685 Before Kelso can learn the location of the diary, Rapava disappears, and Kelso's search for the former bodyguard leads him to the man's daughter, a whore selling herself in the new Moscow of drugs, corruption, and the Russian mafia. With an unscrupulous American journalist hot on their heels, a major of the new KGB close behind, and the shadowy Mamantov following them all, the two follow a trail that leads from Moscow's seedy underbelly to the industrial city of Archangel, where Russia once built her fleets of submarines, to a remote camp on the edge of the Siberian nothingness, and finally to a shocking conclusion that bites like the wind blowing off the tundra. What Kelso sees as the coup of his career might turn out to be the catalyst for an actual coup in Russia. There is a legacy behind the diary, a legacy of evil and death, and Fluke Kelso is unwittingly about to unleash it on the world.

]]> 415 Robert Harris 0515127485 Peter 3 3.81 1998 Archangel
author: Robert Harris
name: Peter
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1998
rating: 3
read at: 2022/08/31
date added: 2022/09/02
shelves:
review:
Fairly lightweight thriller about Stalin with an unlikely plot.
]]> The Age of Innocence 53835 The Age of Innocence is Edith Wharton’s masterful portrait of desire and betrayal during the sumptuous Golden Age of Old New York, a time when society people “dreaded scandal more than disease.â€�

This is Newland Archer’s world as he prepares to marry the beautiful but conventional May Welland. But when the mysterious Countess Ellen Olenska returns to New York after a disastrous marriage, Archer falls deeply in love with her. Torn between duty and passion, Archer struggles to make a decision that will either courageously define his life—or mercilessly destroy it.]]> 293 Edith Wharton 159308143X Peter 3 3.96 1920 The Age of Innocence
author: Edith Wharton
name: Peter
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1920
rating: 3
read at: 2022/08/30
date added: 2022/08/30
shelves:
review:
This is a good description of a bizarre upper class society in New York, where rich socialites while away their lives following strict social protocols. A tale of unfulfilled love, bound by the pressures of society and a desire not to hurt others. Love affairs that fail to consummate have the potential to be idealised, as the practical reality of two humans having a long-term relationship never occurs. Wharton creates a strong atmosphere of a claustrophobic society, one that she eventually leaves forever after a failed marriage.
]]> This Thing of Darkness 142050 Beagle, surveying the wilds of Tierra del Fuego, aged just twenty-three. He takes a passenger: a young trainee cleric and amateur geologist named Charles Darwin. This is the story of a deep friendship between two men, and the twin obsessions that tore it apart, leading one to triumph and the other to disaster...]]> 626 Harry Thompson 0755327144 Peter 5

A brilliant 700 page novel that is both moving and enlightening.]]> 4.53 2005 This Thing of Darkness
author: Harry Thompson
name: Peter
average rating: 4.53
book published: 2005
rating: 5
read at: 2022/08/09
date added: 2022/08/30
shelves:
review:
This is an astounding book, fiction based closely on fact about Fitzroy who captained HMS Beagle while Charles Darwin was aboard. It gives a wonderful insight into the time of industrial and scientific revolution. Fitzroy is clearly an honest and brilliant man trying to do the right thing in an era of British Colonial expansion and decimation of indigenous peoples around the world. His efforts are continually thwarted by vested interests, powerful men, conservative institutions and cronyism. The author Harry Thompson died a few months after publication at the age of 45. Darwin's trip took 5 years to complete and he then spent the rest of his life unwell as a result, probably from Chagas Disease which is a tropical disease originating in South America caught from bug bites.


A brilliant 700 page novel that is both moving and enlightening.
]]> <![CDATA[Annapurna South Face: The Classic Account of Survival (Adrenaline)]]> 427333 424 Chris Bonington 1560253150 Peter 4 3.96 Annapurna South Face: The Classic Account of Survival (Adrenaline)
author: Chris Bonington
name: Peter
average rating: 3.96
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2022/06/05
date added: 2022/07/29
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Phosphorescence: On Awe, Wonder and Things That Sustain You When the World Goes Dark]]> 52541673 320 Julia Baird 1460710894 Peter 3 3.75 2020 Phosphorescence: On Awe, Wonder and Things That Sustain You When the World Goes Dark
author: Julia Baird
name: Peter
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2022/07/23
date added: 2022/07/23
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Girl with the Louding Voice]]> 50214741 All you have are your words.

Adunni is a fourteen-year-old Nigerian girl who knows what she wants: an education.

As the only daughter of a broke father, she is a valuable commodity. Removed from school and sold as a third wife to an old man, Adunni's life amounts to this: four goats, two bags of rice, some chickens and a new TV. When unspeakable tragedy swiftly strikes in her new home, she is secretly sold as a domestic servant to a household in the wealthy enclaves of Lagos, where no one will talk about the strange disappearance of her predecessor, Rebecca. No one but Adunni...

As a yielding daughter, a subservient wife, and a powerless servant, fourteen-year-old Adunni is repeatedly told that she is nothing. But Adunni won't be silenced. She is determined to find her voice - in a whisper, in song, in broken English - until she can speak for herself, for the girls like Rebecca who came before, and for all the girls who will follow.

]]> 371 Abi Daré 1524746029 Peter 5 4.40 2020 The Girl with the Louding Voice
author: Abi Daré
name: Peter
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2022/02/20
date added: 2022/02/20
shelves:
review:
What a beautiful book. I read it in 24 hours. Having spent a lot of time in Africa, (Ghana, in particular), the book seemed absolutely convincing. Africa is the most frustrating place to visit. The people are lovely, the countries beautiful beyond words, the potential ravishing but corruption and intertribal conflict is everywhere ruining the chance of people having an equitable life. The language used by our heroine was fascinating. Read it, feel the love, feel the pain and let the tears flow.
]]> Moby-Dick or, The Whale 153747 "It is the horrible texture of a fabric that should be woven of ships' cables and hawsers. A Polar wind blows through it, and birds of prey hover over it."

So Melville wrote of his masterpiece, one of the greatest works of imagination in literary history. In part, Moby-Dick is the story of an eerily compelling madman pursuing an unholy war against a creature as vast and dangerous and unknowable as the sea itself. But more than just a novel of adventure, more than an encyclopaedia of whaling lore and legend, the book can be seen as part of its author's lifelong meditation on America. Written with wonderfully redemptive humour, Moby-Dick is also a profound inquiry into character, faith, and the nature of perception.

This edition of Moby-Dick, which reproduces the definitive text of the novel, includes invaluable explanatory notes, along with maps, illustrations, and a glossary of nautical terms.]]> 720 Herman Melville 0142437247 Peter 3
I found reading it a labour of love rather than a pleasure. It was more interesting for me having visited various derelict whaling stations in desolate locations in Antarctica.

I am not surprised a lot of readers give up, so completing the book gives certain bragging rights. ]]> 3.53 1851 Moby-Dick or, The Whale
author: Herman Melville
name: Peter
average rating: 3.53
book published: 1851
rating: 3
read at: 2022/02/15
date added: 2022/02/15
shelves:
review:
This is a memorable book but broadly is a short story padded out with a lot of information about whales which is largely outdated. It gives a good idea of the rigours of whaing in the mid 19th century and the harshness of life at sea. The language is archaic, but the characters and times are described in a lively fashion.

I found reading it a labour of love rather than a pleasure. It was more interesting for me having visited various derelict whaling stations in desolate locations in Antarctica.

I am not surprised a lot of readers give up, so completing the book gives certain bragging rights.
]]> <![CDATA[The Narrow Road to the Deep North]]> 17905709
Richard Flanagan's story � of Dorrigo Evans, an Australian doctor haunted by a love affair with his uncle's wife � journeys from the caves of Tasmanian trappers in the early twentieth century to a crumbling pre-war beachside hotel, from a Thai jungle prison to a Japanese snow festival, from the Changi gallows to a chance meeting of lovers on the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

Taking its title from 17th-century haiku poet Basho's travel journal, The Narrow Road to the Deep North is about the impossibility of love. At its heart is one day in a Japanese slave labour camp in August 1943. As the day builds to its horrific climax, Dorrigo Evans battles and fails in his quest to save the lives of his fellow POWs, a man is killed for no reason, and a love story unfolds.]]> 467 Richard Flanagan Peter 4
The main character of the book seems broken before he even entered the war. There has never been a more nightmarish picture of suffering and cruelty. Human beings who have been brainwashed since birth with an ideology exceed the average human's talent for savagery and torture. The book makes sense of sorts, but it is a completely bleak view of the world, of unremitting bewilderment and sadness. With The Deer Hunter, for example, there is normality before the war, followed by the madness of war, post-traumatic stress disorder and physical and emotional disability. In this book, the bleakness is unremitting before, during and after the war.

In real life, people may be permanently scarred by war, but many go on to live ordinary lives. As a doctor I looked after those who fought behind enemy lines in Burma, one who was a Japanese POW, and they often dealt with their memories by burying them and never speaking about them. Perhaps the reality of living in hell for a period of time cannot be conveyed to outsiders. The central problem for me about this book is Dorrigo Evans. He is a serial adulterer, yet he seems deeply empathic to his fellow prisoners and patients. The strongest personality type linked to recurrent infidelity is narcissism. Narcissists are characterized by grandiose sense of self-importance, a lack of empathy for others, a need for excessive admiration, and the belief that they are unique and deserving of special treatment. Dorrigo is bewildered by life both before and after the war. He suffers existential angst, a sense of dread, disorientation, and confusion, in the face of a meaningless world. To my mind, his character doesn't add up or seem likely.]]> 4.02 2013 The Narrow Road to the Deep North
author: Richard Flanagan
name: Peter
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2022/01/04
date added: 2022/01/04
shelves:
review:
This book is probably the most harrowing book I have ever read, worse even than Nausea by Jean Paul Sartre. The author's father was a Japanese prisoner of war on the Death Railway in Burma, and the book took him 12 years to write. For this reason, it has a shocking authenticity.

The main character of the book seems broken before he even entered the war. There has never been a more nightmarish picture of suffering and cruelty. Human beings who have been brainwashed since birth with an ideology exceed the average human's talent for savagery and torture. The book makes sense of sorts, but it is a completely bleak view of the world, of unremitting bewilderment and sadness. With The Deer Hunter, for example, there is normality before the war, followed by the madness of war, post-traumatic stress disorder and physical and emotional disability. In this book, the bleakness is unremitting before, during and after the war.

In real life, people may be permanently scarred by war, but many go on to live ordinary lives. As a doctor I looked after those who fought behind enemy lines in Burma, one who was a Japanese POW, and they often dealt with their memories by burying them and never speaking about them. Perhaps the reality of living in hell for a period of time cannot be conveyed to outsiders. The central problem for me about this book is Dorrigo Evans. He is a serial adulterer, yet he seems deeply empathic to his fellow prisoners and patients. The strongest personality type linked to recurrent infidelity is narcissism. Narcissists are characterized by grandiose sense of self-importance, a lack of empathy for others, a need for excessive admiration, and the belief that they are unique and deserving of special treatment. Dorrigo is bewildered by life both before and after the war. He suffers existential angst, a sense of dread, disorientation, and confusion, in the face of a meaningless world. To my mind, his character doesn't add up or seem likely.
]]> <![CDATA[When Christ and His Saints Slept (Plantagenets #1; Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, #1)]]> 43841
Sharon Kay Penman's magnificent fifth novel summons to life a spectacular medieval tragedy whose unfolding breaks the heart even as it prepares the way for splendors to come—the glorious age of Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Plantagenets that would soon illumine the world.]]> 784 Sharon Kay Penman 0345396685 Peter 3 4.25 1994 When Christ and His Saints Slept (Plantagenets #1; Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, #1)
author: Sharon Kay Penman
name: Peter
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1994
rating: 3
read at: 2021/12/28
date added: 2021/12/28
shelves:
review:
I found reading this book a major challenge. I'm glad to have finished it, but it took a lot of effort. There are hundreds of characters, and not many of them are fleshed out, or memorable. It is an interesting insight into medieval life. Living in Shrewsbury, with its Norman Castle and Abbey still standing and part of the story was interesting. I hadn't realised just how important castles were to survival. Sharon Penman is obviously a meticulous researcher, but seems loathe to leave out minute detail. I love historical fiction as a way into learning more about history, but this is easily the most difficult book of this genre I have read.
]]> The Cider House Rules 4687 1064 John Irving 0786226749 Peter 5 4.16 1985 The Cider House Rules
author: John Irving
name: Peter
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1985
rating: 5
read at: 2021/09/07
date added: 2021/09/08
shelves:
review:
I love John Irving. His characters are complex, his imagination amazing and his writing is laced with humour. There is an underlying sadness to his work and his endings seem real to life. Love is difficult, at times unrequited, at other times terminated by circumstance. He reveres Dickens. As a retired family doctor I was impressed by the accuracy and detail of medical work at the Orphanage. I am old enough to have cared for women dangerously ill after back-street abortions. I have cared longterm for girls who had to give up babies at birth
an event that haunted them for life. A Prayer for Owen Meany is one of my favourite books of all time, Cider House Rules is right up there too. I couldn't wait to see how all his characters ended up.
]]> Girl, Woman, Other 41081373
Girl, Woman, Other follows the lives and struggles of twelve very different characters. Mostly women, black and British, they tell the stories of their families, friends and lovers, across the country and through the years.

Joyfully polyphonic and vibrantly contemporary, this is a gloriously new kind of history, a novel of our times: celebratory, ever-dynamic and utterly irresistible.]]> 453 Bernardine Evaristo 0241364906 Peter 4 4.27 2019 Girl, Woman, Other
author: Bernardine Evaristo
name: Peter
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2021/08/30
date added: 2021/08/31
shelves:
review:
Stylishly written with memorable characters all vaguely interlinking. It was chastening to read all the insults and hassle black people have had to suffer in the UK. As an old straight white guy, it was an enlightening read. The book is almost a collection of short vignettes, so character development was a bit limited. She writes with a poetic style that reads beautifully. I enjoy books that grip me with a character-driven plot, which this book doesn't really feature.
]]> <![CDATA[Katherine of Aragon: The True Queen (Six Tudor Queens, #1)]]> 26236852
A princess of Spain, Catalina is only sixteen years old when she sets foot on the shores of England. The youngest daughter of the powerful monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella, Catalina is a coveted prize for a royal marriage - and Arthur, Prince of Wales, and heir to the English throne, has won her hand. But tragedy strikes and Catalina, now Princess Katherine, is betrothed to the future Henry VIII. She must wait for his coming-of-age, an ordeal that tests her resolve, casts doubt on her trusted confidantes, and turns her into a virtual prisoner.

Katherine's patience is rewarded when she becomes Queen of England. The affection between Katherine and Henry is genuine, but forces beyond her control threaten to rend her marriage, and indeed the nation, apart. Henry has fallen under the spell of Katherine's maid of honor, Anne Boleyn. Now Katherine must be prepared to fight, to the end if God wills it, for her faith, her legitimacy, and her heart.]]> 602 Alison Weir 1101966483 Peter 4 4.07 2016 Katherine of Aragon: The True Queen (Six Tudor Queens, #1)
author: Alison Weir
name: Peter
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2021/03/13
date added: 2021/04/01
shelves:
review:
This is a 600-page account of Henry VIIIth's first and longest serving wife. I watched the Spanish Princess on Starz and wanted to get a better handle on a lady who seemed inspirational and decent for her time. It took me a long while to read as I wouldn't describe it as a page-turner but I gather it is fairly accurate historically (as opposed to Philippa Gregory who plays loose and fast with her novels). It gives a great insight into the era, marked by catastrophic childbirths and early deaths from unhealthy medieval towns. Queen Katherine did indeed seem a very good person, popular with her ordinary English subjects, very devout as a catholic, highly intelligent and educated and plagued by miscarriages, stillbirths and early childhood deaths. In the book she remains devoted to the increasingly unhinged Henry VIII who treats her abominably, perhaps encouraged by Anne Boleyn or perhaps she was deluded by Henry's deep early love for her. More likely is the idea that Henry VIII was a narcissistic psychopath, and perhaps he passed this trait on to his only surviving daughter Mary who later became the first English Queen and a keen proponent of burning heretics at the stake.
]]> <![CDATA[Days Without End (Days Without End, #1)]]> 30212107
Moving from the plains of Wyoming to Tennessee, Sebastian Barry’s latest work is a masterpiece of atmosphere and language. An intensely poignant story of two men and the makeshift family they create with a young Sioux girl, Winona, Days Without End is a fresh and haunting portrait of the most fateful years in American history and is a novel never to be forgotten.]]> 259 Sebastian Barry 0525427368 Peter 4
Many people feel that americans have never really faced up to the issues of genocide of native americans and the massive loss of life resulting from the civil war which has never truly finished IMHO.]]> 3.93 2016 Days Without End (Days Without End, #1)
author: Sebastian Barry
name: Peter
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2020/01/01
date added: 2020/10/05
shelves:
review:
This is a gripping book about poor american boys who become friends and join the army to fight the wars against native americans and then in the american civil war. The slaughter and futility of war is graphically told and generates a real sense of life at the time where extreme hardship was commonplace. It's a memorable and interesting book, particularly how viciously native americans were slaughtered and betrayed.

Many people feel that americans have never really faced up to the issues of genocide of native americans and the massive loss of life resulting from the civil war which has never truly finished IMHO.
]]> The Beekeeper of Aleppo 43124137 The unforgettable love story of a mother blinded by loss and her husband who insists on their survival as they undertake the Syrian refugee trail to Europe.

Nuri is a beekeeper; his wife, Afra, an artist. They live a simple life, rich in family and friends, in the beautiful Syrian city of Aleppo--until the unthinkable happens. When all they care for is destroyed by war, they are forced to escape. But what Afra has seen is so terrible she has gone blind, and so they must embark on a perilous journey through Turkey and Greece towards an uncertain future in Britain. On the way, Nuri is sustained by the knowledge that waiting for them is Mustafa, his cousin and business partner, who has started an apiary and is teaching fellow refugees in Yorkshire to keep bees.

As Nuri and Afra travel through a broken world, they must confront not only the pain of their own unspeakable loss, but dangers that would overwhelm the bravest of souls. Above all, they must journey to find each other again.

Moving, powerful, compassionate, and beautifully written, The Beekeeper of Aleppo is a testament to the triumph of the human spirit. It is the kind of book that reminds us of the power of storytelling.]]> 317 Christy Lefteri 1984821210 Peter 5 4.14 2019 The Beekeeper of Aleppo
author: Christy Lefteri
name: Peter
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2020/08/06
date added: 2020/09/27
shelves:
review:
This is a fantastic book, moving and beautifully written. The journey of a refugee family from Syria making the hazardous journey to the UK. Based on fact, it makes you appreciate the impossible choices that people from war-torn areas are faced with. Deceptively easy to read but heart-rending in places. Strongly recommended.
]]> Where the Crawdads Sing 36809135
But Kya is not what they say. A born naturalist with just one day of school, she takes life's lessons from the land, learning the real ways of the world from the dishonest signals of fireflies. But while she has the skills to live in solitude forever, the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. Drawn to two young men from town, who are each intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new and startling world—until the unthinkable happens.

In Where the Crawdads Sing, Owens juxtaposes an exquisite ode to the natural world against a profound coming of age story and haunting mystery. Thought-provoking, wise, and deeply moving, Owens’s debut novel reminds us that we are forever shaped by the child within us, while also subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps.

The story asks how isolation influences the behavior of a young woman, who like all of us, has the genetic propensity to belong to a group. The clues to the mystery are brushed into the lush habitat and natural histories of its wild creatures.]]> 384 Delia Owens 0735219117 Peter 5 4.35 2018 Where the Crawdads Sing
author: Delia Owens
name: Peter
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2020/08/14
date added: 2020/09/27
shelves:
review:
I loved this book. The plot may be rather unlikely but a joy to read for anyone who loves the natural world. One of the most enjoyable books I have ever read.
]]> Mister Pip 543873
On a copper-rich tropical island shattered by war, where the teachers have fled with most everyone else, only one white man chooses to stay behind: the eccentric Mr. Watts, object of much curiosity and scorn, who sweeps out the ruined schoolhouse and begins to read to the children each day from Charles Dickens's classic Great Expectations.

So begins this rare, original story about the abiding strength that imagination, once ignited, can provide. As artillery echoes in the mountains, thirteen-year-old Matilda and her peers are riveted by the adventures of a young orphan named Pip in a city called London, a city whose contours soon become more real than their own blighted landscape. As Mr. Watts says, “A person entranced by a book simply forgets to breathe.â€� Soon come the rest of the villagers, initially threatened, finally inspired to share tales of their own that bring alive the rich mythology of their past. But in a ravaged place where even children are forced to live by their wits and daily survival is the only objective, imagination can be a dangerous thing.]]> 256 Lloyd Jones 0385341067 Peter 5 3.67 2006 Mister Pip
author: Lloyd Jones
name: Peter
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2006
rating: 5
read at: 2020/09/23
date added: 2020/09/23
shelves:
review:
I found this book an astonishing feat of imagination. It reminded me of The Life of Pi, which I also loved. This is a book that is both beautiful and haunting, full of human understanding and a lacerating description of the futility and savagery of war. One of the best books I have ever read.
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