365 days to be greener

Puffin have brought out a small range of limited edition designer classics. The covers have been thought up by famous designers from various disciplines from Anthony Gormley to Lauren Child to Orla Kiely…
They are beautiful to behold and for once in the world of book covers, well reflect the joys within. (Although I am a bit partial to the [...]

David Foster Wallace apparently….
Found this on gullrock’s lovely blog. Paste in some of your bloggage and it will tell you who you do write like…..I write like…

Whether I write like him or not, I certainly look like him – although my beard is more impressive.
Have just finished reading his biog and it turns out he [...]

I just finished The Reckoning by Sue Walker. It is not a title I would normally have chosen but one of our book club regulars happens to know the author and is going to ask her to come along to our next meeting.

Thankfully I really enjoyed it. It was just on the right side of [...]

Just finished reading a brilliant Neil Gaiman book called “Anansi Boys”

Its a brilliant fable where the hero tries to lead a monotonous and un-remarkable life and then when his father dies discovers there is a lot more to his blood line than he ever appreciated. It combines myth, folk tales, fantasy, hilarity and good-old-fashioned sturdy characters. I enjoyed every minute of it [...]

I stuck with it and read the second and third parts of the Millennium Trilogy.
Someone described them to me as an excellent holiday read. I wouldn’t go that for unless you like holidaying in abattoirs or prisons, but they were compelling and exciting to the last.
I have to take back some part of the misogynist rant I applied to the first one. There still [...]

Jensen is due to start school in September.
To prepare him (me) for the change we are sending him there one day a week until the Summer holidays so he (I) can get used to the uniform (he looks SO grown up), the routine (“I like school mummy, but the lessons are hot and boring…”) and [...]

Safely back from Disneyland, I am back to squeezing in half an hour of reading, while I supervise the children falling asleep. It has taken a while, but I am using this time to re-read The Time Travellers Wife by Audrey Niffenegger.
It was suggested by someone who hadn’t read it and I was only too pleased to [...]

The other good thing about holidays – no work and lots of reading!
I started and finished the latest book club selection over two nights. It was the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows.
It is described as “charming” by a reviewer from the Times and I can’t think of a better word for it.
Set at the [...]

This month’s tome was A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

Covering a few main characters lives’ from the start of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 80’s, to the current “war on terror”, it is largely an incredibly detailed and moving portrait of what life is like for women living there through these times. The main [...]

I had a lovely time at Book Club and we agreed the next title, but during the course of our discussions another book got special mention. “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” by Stieg Larsson. I decided to give it a try based on several people saying it was a great thriller but I have [...]