Entries 69
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Early Resolutions
Well, it’s the end of the year again. I’ve really neglected both my online and real world journals this year because of one thing or another. However, next year I intend to try and re-do my 52 b...
Struggling
It’s been ages since I wrote last, and to be honest I had forgotten about this site. The 52 books in 52 weeks thing I started at the beginning of the year kind of fell by the way side as I had m...
A Cup of Sake Beneath the Cherry Trees by Kenko (51 pages) is a short collection of musings by an Japanese monk who lived in the late 1200s/early 1300s. This has some fantastic little gems - one ...
Three more mini reviews (17 - 19 out of 52)
The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe (48 pages) contains three short stories - The Fall of the House of Usher, The Cask of Amontillado and the title story. In the title story, a man tries to co...
Hosting
So I’ve been “hosting” people recently - basically, there are websites out there who allow for travellers/backpackers (“surfers”) to stay at people’s homes as opposed to hostels. The general idea...
Another Flashman novel, plus quick reads (12 - 16 out of 52)
Flashman and the Tiger by George MacDonald Fraser (347 pages, including notes) is a trio of shorter stories detailing Flashman’s adventures towards the latter part of the 1800s. He discusses his ...
Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke (252 pages) is a re-read for me. People are watching the skies a little more closely when a series of meteorites hit the Earth, causing cities such as Ver...
Three short books to review this entry. Benefits of a change of shift at work. Anne of Cleves (Henry VIII’s Discarded Bride) by Elizabeth Norton (191 pages, including Notes, Bibliography, List of...
The Crimson Ribbon (6 out of 52)
The Crimson Ribbon by Katherine Clements (355 pages, including Acknowledgements, Author’s Note and Bonus Material) tells the story of Ruth Flowers. The year is 1646, and May Day brings in tragedy...
Flashman and the Mountain of Light/Slaughterhouse 5(4 and 5 out of 52)
Flashman and the Mountain of Light (399 pages; including three appendices, glossary and notes) by George McDonald Fraser is volume nine in the Flashman series. Set in the mid 1800s, Flashman find...
Watson, Levin and Petrushevskaya (3 out of 52)
Book 1: Before I Go To Sleep by S.J. Watson (366 pages) is about a woman who wakes up every morning with no memory of her life. Every morning seems to be the same routine of rediscovery - but whe...
Reading Challenge
I’ve been working nights recently, and I’m trying to get my system back to “normal” in the short time I have between my last night shift and my next morning shift. My last night shift was last ni...
An incomplete list of what I read in 2014 (Long)
Not a complete list of everything I read last year, just the ones I had time to review on here. I did actually restart writing in my book journal last year, and I plan on keeping up that habit th...
Tau Zero/The Thirteenth Tale
Tau Zero by Poul Anderson (190 pages) is about the crew of the space ship Leonora Christine, who are on their way to a planet thirty light years away. When an accident leaves the ship hurtling in...
You Never Said A Word (Book Reviews)
Just a bit of a catch up on book reviews… The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury (294 pages) was one of four books I picked up recently from my favourite bookshop. They have a “blind date with a boo...
Permanent job for a year
Not a great deal to write about really. I was going to do a couple of book reviews, but I can’t be bothered right now. I have been working at my new job (at a hospital) for nearly two months now,...
How To Be A Victorian/Tuesdays With Morrie
How To Be A Victorian by Ruth Goodman (Pages: 458, including Acknowledgements and Index) was an interesting read - although I thought it was a little dry in parts. Every chapter details how the V...
Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb
This is the first volume in the Farseer Trilogy, set in the Kingdom of the Six Duchies. Fitz is the illegitimate son of the Crown Prince, who abdicates his position when Fitz’s existence becomes ...
Generals Die In Bed
This is probably going to be a shorter entry than I normally do for book reviews. Got a busy day ahead of me. Generals Die In Bed (208 pages) is the first person narrative about a young solder s...
The World Wars and other things *Edit/addit*
Edits are in italics, the addit is the "lastly" section. The World Wars I seem to be going through a War theme at the moment. Someone I know asked a while back on FB for submissions for a blog h...
Inverted World/Tulip Fever/Fast Food Nation (Reviews)
Finally managed to catch up on reviews of what I’ve read over the past few weeks. :) In Inverted World by Christopher Priest (303 pages), Earth City citizen Helward Mann is apprenticed to the gui...
Selected Short Stories/No One Writes To The Colonel (Reviews)
A couple of weeks ago, I managed to track down a copy of Guy de Maupassant’s Selected Short Stories (368 pages, introduction and translation by Roger Colet). I’d picked up a copy about eleven yea...
The Heretic’s Daughter by Kathleen Kent (332 pages) tells the story of the Carrier family, through the eyes of the daughter (Sarah). Sarah recounts their lives in Andover, near Salem, and the pro...
A Room Of One's Own/House Made of Dawn
A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf (112 pages) was interesting - it came from a lecture that Woolf presented at Girton College, Cambridge on creativity, and women’s writing. Mum sent me one of...
Topless London
Last night, I dreamt that I was sitting at a table with a few people. To my immediate left is my brother. I then look over to one of the corners and I see an acquaintance of mine, sitting with h...
Book Description
Old entries.
