Clik here to view.
Tuscan sun fuels the reading juices
After a week under cloudless blue skies and surrounded by Renaissance architecture, I returned to torrential rain and leaden skies on Saturday. With the forecast for even more of the same I expected...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Sunday Salon: Hey Ho the Wind and the Rain
It’s been a quiet month in this corner of South Wales – quiet that it is when the rain isn’t drumming down on the conservatory roof. Even the birds seem a bit subdued today. I can hardly blame them –...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Next on reading List: Mortal Engines
Following my new plan of rotating between a Booker prize winner; a novel from the reading list for my children’s course and one novel just for fun, the next novel to take its place on the bedside table...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Sunny Sunday Snippets
At last the sun has arrived in Wales so thought I would enjoy an afternoon reading in the garden and writing my Sunday Salon post under blue skies for once. Best laid plans etc etc – instead of peace...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Sunday Salon: A Week of Dilemmas
I seem to have spent most of the last week in one kind of dilemma or another. Dilemma 1 First on the agenda was a question posed by Kathy at Forever Book Lover - “Which author (dead or alive) would you...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Sunday Salon: Good Read vs Library Thing
I joined both Good Reads and Library Thing a few months ago, only because I kept seeing these on other people’s blogs so thought they would be good communities in which to get involved. But...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Adults and children – a different reading experience?
My Open University course on children’s literature started yesterday so I’ve been immersed in the pages of Northern Lights, Little Women and Harry Potter for the past week. The first part of the course...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Sunday Salon: A week of adventure and fantasy
I’ve never got the whole fantasy thing. I tried reading Tolkein in my younger days but didn’t get beyond the first 50 pages of Lord of the Rings. Somehow I struggled through Gormenghast (though...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Armchair BEA: Children’s Literature
Day 6 of Armchair BEA and the chosen topic is the problem world of children’s literature. I say ‘problem’ not because the world depicted in these works is one necessarily of danger or difficulty, but...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Little Women: Book Review
“Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,” grumbled Jo, lying on the rug. And with that opening line, the scene is set for one of the classics of children’s literature. Little Women has...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Weekend Bookends # 2
Farewell to Nobel giants This week saw the death of one Nobel literary award winner and the commemoration of another. Neither attracted anything like the media coverage as the death of Sue Townshend,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Reading Snapshot October 2016
I can pretend no longer. The tinges of red on bushes in my garden and the rate at which our copper beech is shedding leaves tells me that summer is over. Time for the season of mists and intermittent...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Time Harry Potter came off the banned list?
Last week was Banned Books Week, an annual even run by the American Library Association to highlight challenges to our freedom to read. As always this event comes with a reminder of which books groups...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Snapshot November 2016
Another chapter in my reading year in which I try to capture a picture of what I’m reading, thinking about reading, buying on Nov 1, 2016. Reading Most of my reading at the moment is for the course on...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Treasure Island: a troubling adventure
Half a century has passed since I first read Treasure Island by R. L Stevenson yet much of it is still fresh in my mind. I remember the menacing figure of Long John Silver and the quick witted child...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Snapshot December 2016
I can’t believe I let December 1, 2016 come and go without marking it with a snapshot of what I’m reading, thinking about reading, buying. It got to almost half way through the month before I even...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome [review]
Swallows and Amazons was the first title in Arthur Ransome’s classic series of 12 novels written between 1929 and 1934. It introduces the Walker children, John, Susan, Titty and Roger (the Swallows),...
View ArticleClik here to view.
3 thought-provoking novels not just for kids
One of the biggest trends in publishing in recent years has been the emergence of ‘cross-over fiction” – novels written for teen readers which can also be enjoyed by adults. J.K Rowling set the trend...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A Dream Of A Book: A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness
A Monster Calls is the only fictional book I’ve ever bought purely because I was interested in the illustrations. I first heard about the book in a Sunday newspaper supplement in which illustrator Jim...
View Article
