Forster's first book wasn't what I expected it to be. I enjoyed it but much prefer the things she went on to write.

Borrowed.

Loved this on the whole. Found the end a bit too twee (maybe). But good stuff.

Borrowed.

13 copies of this book are available on BookMooch.

I was looking in the library for a Daphne du Maurier book to take on holiday to Fowey, as that's her home town and I remembered from a previous visit that I'd probably be overcome with the urge to read her work while I was there and thought I'd go prepared. None of the du Mauriers in the library appealed to me but I spotted this instead and decided it would fit the bill nicely. It's a sequel to du Maurier's most famous book Rebecca.

This book is narrated again by Maxim de Winter's second wife who manages not to use her own first name again and it is set a decade or so after the events at Manderley. It also covers "what happened next" to several other characters - the only one I recalled was Mrs Danvers.

Indeed I read Rebecca so long ago that I can only remember the vaguest details - but all the same I thought this was a good read and it seemed plausible enough. I'm going to go and have a look around the web and see what real du Maurier fans thought of it. I enjoyed it though which is all I want really!

Borrowed.

Jon McGregor's next book will very probably be on my "buy instantly in hardback the second it comes out" list.

I loved this - it took me a while to get with the flow of the language as it's written in a very poetic style and it can be hard to grasp what's going on. Except that is kind of the point. The only book in ages that I've immediately flipped back and started at page one again after reaching the last page. I didn't read it all again, and I don't think I entirely figured out the story - but it was magical all the same.

Borrowed.

I really feel like I'm just reading this series because it's there rather than because I enjoy it these days. But I seem to keep reading it any how and I'm pretty certain I'll still be here turning the pages when Z rolls around. This had a better plot than I was expecting and a less repetitive nature than some of the others that have come before it. Not bad really.

Borrowed.

2 copies of this book are available on BookMooch.

I've had this audiobook knocking around for so long and listened to it in such small segments that it feels like it's been more soap opera than novel. The Archers transplanted to middle class Oxford, the trials and tribulations over a few months of the Peppin's family life: mostly Ezra and Sheena and their relationship with the eldest of their three children, teenager Blaise. I think I spent longer getting through it than the timespan it covered. It's difficult to think of it as a whole novel with a coherent plot but the ending seemed out of kilter with the rest of it - maybe it wouldn't have been if I'd read it at a reasonable pace.

Point of interest: mentions of Ezra's childhood come up from time to time, he went to one of my almae matres: Devizes School. A most odd thing to find in a book!

Borrowed.

I heard Tim Harford on Start the Week a month or three back - I can't remember what he said now but it was interesting enough for me to order his book from the library. When the book turned up I wasn't convinced that I was going to find it that enthralling but I ended up loving it.

This is all about how the world is shaped by pretty much everyone making rational choices about the world around them and yet we end up with some things, like rough neighbourhoods or overpaid bosses, that don't appear to arise out of logic at all. The author is an economist applying the mix of mathematics and observation that's usually applied to finance to all kinds of other areas.

The book is nicely structured. It's one of those books where each time the subject changes I think the new subject won't be as interesting as the last one but each time I'm wrong.

I'll be looking out for Harford's first book "The Undercover Economist" now.

Borrowed.

Thoroughly entertaining.

I was a little bit worried about this book. I've been looking out for a new book by Gillian Linscott since I finished her last one in 2004 and have been rather disappointed as time have gone on and no book has appeared. A few months ago I searched the web looking for a reason why she hadn't published another book and found out that she was now publishing under another name. Although I wanted to read this new author I was worried that a book under a new name would be a complete change of style and approach. The new book looks a lot girlier than the old ones and the heroine is a 22 year old called Liberty.

I needn't have worried. This is undoubtedly the same author with a new series breathing firey life into new characters. This story is set in 1837 - old King William is dying and Princess Victoria is about the ascend to the throne - and I'm sure that Liberty Lane would approve of Linscott's suffragette character Nell Bray should her later life ever entwine with the young Nell. In this book Liberty learns that her father has been killed in a duel at Calais. She's certain this is a lie and gets into an investigation that takes her across several strata of life in early Victorian England.

Overall it's a really good read; interesting characters, entertaining plot, nice detail, historically elucidating without getting boring. Much the same things I liked Gillian Linscott for really. I hope she picks up a new readership and doesn't need to change names again!

Purchased on 2nd June 2008.

A right load of tosh.

Perhaps I'm being a bit mean. I generally like Anita Shreve, both the writing and the stories. Here the writing seemed to verge on the pretentious and the story was like a car crash in slow motion.

Charles gets back in touch with Siân who he knew briefly at the age of fourteen in 1960. It's now 1991 and they are both married with children. Will they still like each other? Will they wreck their lives for each other?

The dates are important as the plot details are mostly tied up with music of 1960 and the recession of the early 1990s. There's nothing wrong with this plot of course, it could produce a good book. And there's nothing wrong with having a couple of central characters that it's difficult to sympathise with. But taken altogether it was just too much to enjoy.

About the only thing going for this book is that it's short; had it been long I don't know if I would have finished it, but alternately, if it had been longer the peripheral characters might have had more page time which would have made for a better read. I appreciate that the close focus on Charles and Siân was supposed to mirror the intensity of the relationship between them but it just wasn't interesting enough for me.

Funny how sometimes it's easier to say what you dislike than what you like.

Borrowed.

4 copies of this book are available on BookMooch.

I picked this up at the library in preference to the "Kevin" book which falls into the category of books I think I might enjoy but have heard too much about from too many sources to bother with I'm talking slightly tongue in cheek but I've been disappointed by books with clouds of hype emanating from them before and so, well, I don't exactly steer clear of them or refuse to read them, but I tread carefully.

This proved to be an excellent read though. Well written on the whole. The odd sentence stopped me in my tracks with either a typo, a missing word, or some odd stressed word meaning that I couldn't make head nor tail of it.

It's the story of the relationship between two tennis players, both hoping to make it as professionals. Willy has been dreaming of playing at Wimbledon since she was five; Eric was an Ivy League mathematics major before he picked up a tennis racquet. From the title you can deduce that love's course, as ever, doesn't run smoothly.

Shriver does a great job of keeping the tension up and the plot tight. You want to keep reading because the story is so good. I was worrying about the end of the book because I was thinking back to other books which have carried me along on a wave of words and then beached me with an ending that doesn't really matter. That didn't happen here; the close of the book is as good as the rest of it, pitched at the right level.

Definitely an author to read more of.

Borrowed.

A copy of this book is available on BookMooch.