dittybox

  Published: October 1999, Alfred A. Knopf Genre: Fiction Themes: American lifestyle, broken relationships, mental health, teenagers, kindness My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤❤❤ While the library is closed, I'm re-reading some of the books from my shelves, and the advantage of this is that they are guaranteed to be good.  I used to buy all my books from charity shops and generally I re-cycled them back to the shop, but if I really enjoyed something, I kept it. Plainsong is set in Colorado, America, in the 1980s, and the writing is so vivid and powerful that the story dragged me away from reality for hours at a time.  Roddy Doyle's quote on the cover states that he read it in one sitting. 'I had no choice; it wouldn't let me go.'  That's exactly how it is. There are no heroes and heroines in this book as a whole spectrum of good and bad behaviours are laid out in a raw and honest way.  There is Guthrie the school teacher, who also works with livestock, and he is clearly...

  Published: 2008, Faber and Faber Genre: fiction Themes: Ireland, family, psychiatric care,  social injustice My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤❤❤ With the library closed, and all my lockdown loans returned via the library letter box, I am back to reading books from our own bookshelves.  This turned out to be a good thing as I had completely forgotten the story in this book and therefore the ending came as a complete surprise to me. I have read loads of books over the years and I seem to have a talent for mentally discarding what I read, even if I really enjoyed the book.  Yesterday I was looking at a huge list of books that were collected together as a collection that everyone should read in their lifetime.  As I looked down the 1001 titles, I thought I had read about 60 of them, but it could be more, because there were plenty of titles that looked familiar, but I really couldn't say for sure that I had read them.  So, back to the book in hand.  The Secret Sc...

  Published: November 2016, Head of Zeus Genre: Fiction Themes: history, the orient, romance, travel, horses, revenge My rating: ❤❤❤❤ This is a lump of a book that turns out to be three books joined together once you start reading.  There are 699 pages to navigate, and the story takes you through the years 1298 to 1327, moving steadily across half the world as you join the main characters on their epic journey from Cambaluc in the far east, right round to Cornwall in England. It turns out to be quite a history lesson and I felt that Dana Stabenow had done all sorts of research before putting this together.  On the flip side of that, I also felt that she wanted to leave no piece of researched knowledge behind, and the story is a bit like Forrest Gump in the way the characters brush up against all the important elements of history as they continue their journey. The heroine is Johanna, who we meet as a child but she quickly grows into a beautiful woman who seems to exc...

  Published: October 2016, Hodder and Stoughton Genre: fiction Themes: Ireland, crime, secrets, relationships, family My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤ I went into the library looking for a book by Graham Norton as I keep seeing positive comments about his books on Twitter, and I felt I might be missing something. Holding seems to be his first book, and the library copy has a Radio 2 Book Club sticker on it, and I think it's fair to say that it's a perfect book for that reading group.  It's a chatty style of writing that I could imagine would be how Graham would recount a tale if he was in conversation with someone, and there are sufficient strong elements to the plot-line to keep it interesting to the end.  When I first started reading I thought it was going to be a bit thin on plot, as much of the story involved character descriptions, and I was starting to wonder how it was going to pull together.  Then the dramatic events began to unfold and, once I could see how everyon...

  Published: 2014, penguin Genre: fiction Themes: adventure, old age, romance, walking, companionship My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤❤ With another COVID lockdown looming, I made it my business to get down to the library and pick up enough books to get me over Christmas and then a few weeks into the New Year.  I wanted to get something fairly easy going, that didn't require too much concentration and that I could pick up and put down without loosing track of the plot.  Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Emma Hooper fitted the bill perfectly. Don't get me wrong, this book is not fluff and nonsense, but it does read easily and I liked the characters described in the story.  The principal character is Etta who is a lady of 82 who has started to become forgetful and suddenly decides she would like to see the ocean, just once, before it is too late.  This may seem like a simple thing to do, but Etta lives in Canada, and the route she wants to take is 3,232 km and she i...

  Published: October 2019, St Martin's Press Genre: fiction Themes: imprisonment, siberia, gulag, endurance My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤❤  Cilka's Journey by Heather Morris is one of those books you pick up with trepidation for fear of what horror may be contained within the pages.  Novels based on true stories of unimaginable cruelty are always going to be difficult to read, but it is still important that the truth is told in the hope that we can prevent such things happening again. The book follows the true story of Cilka Klein as she is moved from Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp into post-war imprisonment in Vorkuta Gulag, Siberia, at the age of eighteen.  She has already spent three years in Auschwitz and has survived by working as a guard in one of the huts where women spend their final hours before entering the gas chambers.  At the end of the war, when the Russians liberate the camp, she is sentenced to fifteen years in the gulag for assisting and slee...

  Published: November 2020, Hodder and Stoughton Genre: Autobiography and biography Themes: family relationships, yorkshire, cricket, television My rating (out of 5): ❤❤ Like Father, Like Son by Michael Parkinson is a new book that feels as though it has been pulled together in haste after an emotional interview on television with Piers Morgan for 'Life Stories'.  During the interview, a now octogenarian Michael Parkinson, was reduced to tears as he recalled his relationship with his father and the strength of emotion that burst forth surprised him as his father has been dead for over thirty years. Michael Parkinson's son Andrew had been pushing for a book about the strong bond between Michael and his father, John William, since the publication of Michael's autobiography, Parky, in 2008 but Michael had always resisted writing such a book.  He felt he had already covered all there was to say about his father in various short pieces previously published, and he wanted ...