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  Published: February 2020, Penguin Genre: fiction Themes: modern society, relationships, community My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤ The Authenticity Project by Clare Pooley is another book I was given for Mother's Day (the family know I enjoy reading!).  My son chose it for me because it was billed as 'uplifting', and that is certainly something we can all do with during the lockdown. The story is about an elderly artist called Julian, who finds himself bored and lonely after a lifetime of being the center of attention.  In an effort to give himself something to do, and also find a way of engaging with people again, he starts the Authenticity Project.  He has come to the conclusion that everyone goes to great lengths to hide their true selves from the outside world, and if they could start by being honest with themselves about who they really are, then they could have more meaningful lives and better relationships with others. Julian takes an ordinary school notebook and ...

  Published: November 2014, Penguin Genre: fiction Themes: family, world war two, childhood, relationships My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤❤ I was given Crooked Heart by Lissa Evans as one of my Mother's Day gifts, and as I have already finished it, you may guess that I found it a good read. Lissa Evans has created characters that are both believable and unusual and the storyline twists and turns in unexpected ways right up to the last page.  The story centres on ten year old Noel, who was orphaned before the start of the war, and, having no other family, is sent to live with his godmother Mattie in Hampstead Heath.   Mattie is an academic single woman who holds a doctorate, and Noel is a precocious child who has difficulty making friends of his own age, but the two bond together happily until Mattie's mind begins to unravel when dementia takes hold.  Her decline is captured with gentle humour, but also with real sensitivity, and Noel has to cope with doing more and mo...

  Published: November 2020, Crown Publishing Group Genre: Non-fiction Themes: biography, American politics My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤❤❤ I was given a copy of A Promised Land by Barack Obama for Christmas and finally finished it a few days ago.  It's a big book, with 700 pages of tightly packed text, so I couldn't easily read it in bed and had to work through a few pages at a time when I was sitting downstairs. I asked to have this book as I am a big fan of both Barack and Michelle Obama, and I already have other books they have written on our bookshelf.  I first became interested in Obama during his presidential campaign in 2007, when I read an extended article in the Sunday Times describing his aspirations, and how he was reaching out to ordinary people who had never voted before.  I was immediately struck by his caring attitude towards forgotten sections of the population and the way he conveyed his ideas without ever talking down to people. When he was el...

  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...