After work tonight I met up with three friends at a bar next to the Thames. This was three women that I used to work with at former employer. I see two of them quite regularly, the third only every so often. This was the first time in three years that all four of us had managed to get together. It was fantastic! Catching up with and making time for people is so important. No one is going to write on our gravestone about how many hours we spent at work, or our dedication to our job, yet sometimes taking time out from work to do things like this can be more difficult than it should. One thing ... read more
Debs at war
I've mentioned a few time my interest in how Britain was through the Second World War, especially in terms of the women who remained here and kept the country running while the majority of men were serving in the forces overseas. After reading Nella Last's War someone suggested that I also try reading this book. Debs at War by Anne de Courcy tells the story of the women who were destined to become debutantes before the war but whose lives took very different paths after war was declared. The book is based on a series of interviews with women who were greatly affected by the war in the fact ... read more
Eye for a bargain!
This lunchtime I popped out from work to go to the Post Office to post a parcel. As usual at lunchtime there were queues stretching around and past all the shelves that hold all the standard stationery that Post Offices sell: the boring stationery with plain envelopes, brown paper and parcel tape. Just as I was leaving another shelf full of goodies caught my eye and I found that this Post Office was a step above the others as it was selling books! I was delighted to find that they had a whole section of cookery books, all at very cheap prices! The first book I picked up was James Martin's ... read more
No! I don’t want to join a bookclub
Virginia Ironside's No! I Don't Want to Join a Bookclub is a paperback that I picked up from a local charity shop whilst I was off work ill. It looked quite light and jolly and so I though that it would be ideal light reading. The book is written as the diary of Marie Sharp, starting a few months before her sixtieth birthday. Marie is a woman who is (slightly unusually) looking forward to turning sixty. She's due to become a grandmother for the first time and is thrilled at being able to embrace the time spent with grandson Gene. The book follows her life, along with those of her close friends ... read more
Arthur & George – Julian Barnes
Arthur and George by Julian Barnes is another book that I chose to read after seeing that it had been on the Nightingale House Book Group reading list. The blurb that I found about the book at the time of buying simply suggested that Arthur and George were two individuals who lived in Britain in the late nineteenth-century. A series of events that made sensational headlines would then bring the two gentlemen together. That was all I knew at the start. A book about two gentlemen at a time in British history that I enjoy reading about. I didn't think much more of it at the time and just looked ... read more
The Kite Runner
I'm currently off work with a chest infection, so on my way home from the Doctors yesterday I decided to call into my local branch of Blockbuster to pick up a DVD to watch. I'm not a big fan of daytime TV (a government ploy to keep unemployment levels down, I'm sure of it) or Wimbledon (which is all the BBC seem to be showing) so thought a film might be an alternative to reading (which I'm also doing a huge amount of at the moment). Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner is a book that has been on my reading list for a fair while. I had heard that a film version had been made, but was pleasantly ... read more
Three men in a boat: to say nothing of the dog
Ever since watching the BBC version of Three Men in a Boat, featuring Griff Rhys Jones, Dara Ó Briain, and Rory McGrath, I have been meaning to pick up a copy to read. I was therefore delighted to find a copy in the local charity shop last week for just 80p. In this book Jerome K. Jermone tells the story of a boat trip along the river Thames with his two friends George and Harris and Montmorency, the dog. It's a delightful old fashioned tale of the time, which in numerous parts diverts off into some other event that JKJ has been reminded of. The style of writing pulls you very much into the ... read more
The Penultimate Chance Saloon – a TOG story!
A couple of weeks ago I read an article in the Guardian which told of a book group chaired by Edwina Curry and held at Nightingale House, a care home in South London. As someone that has never attended a book group the article intrigued me, especially when reading about the views of some elderly women (all the ones in the article seem to be 90+!) on contemporary fiction. In the featured book group meeting the author Simon Brett was present to hear the group discussing his novel The Penultimate Chance Saloon. The article finished with a list of books that the group had recently discussed and ... read more
An Australian Tale
This book was passed to me by my Mum, and I have to admit to not really knowing what to expect from it. Andrew McGahan's The White Earth is a complex story, told by two of the book's main characters, John McIvor and his nephew William. Following the death of William's father, he and his mother go and live with his Uncle at Kuran Station, a once grand typical Australian station in the plains. Here the history of Kuran Station and of the areas previous Aboriginal residents comes to light. The book certainly taught me a fair amount about what happened in Australia to the Aborigines, something ... read more
Tears of the Giraffe
When the first No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency books were released here in the UK there was quite a hum surrounding their release. At the time I had one of those Borders' books of the first chapters of numerous summer releases and the first chapter of No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency was included. At the time I wasn't really taken by it and have since avoided any other books from the Alexander McCall Smith series, until now... Tears of the Giraffe was in a pile of charity shop books that my Mother-in-law S recently passed on to me and earlier this week it ended up at the top of my to-read pile. I ... read more