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Post by don on Jul 25, 2023 16:46:30 GMT
I have just finished rereading The King of Torts by John Grisham but I’m on an economy drive and a new Grisham novel is at least a fiver on my Kindle I have delved into the world 🌍 of Free Kindle books and am reading Cold Comfort by Trevor Douglas. It’s okay well better than okay and it’s free.
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Post by Kath on Jul 26, 2023 9:52:18 GMT
I've binge-read a load of Clare Chambers' books over my summer holiday. (A Dry Spell, The Editor's Wife, Back Trouble, Small Pleasures, In A Good Light, Learning To Swim) Mostly good but sometimes a bit too contrived at the end. Finished reading The Help by Kathryn Stockett for my book club. Enjoyed it very much although because it had a point to make about black maids in 1960s Mississippi I felt the Maids were a tad idealised. They can't all have been paragons of virtue. Also read What July Knew by Emily Koch - domestic abuse as seen through a child's eyes. Made better reading than that sounds.
At the moment I have the latest Kate Atkinson (Shrines of Gaiety) on the go along with Brit(ish) On Race, Identity & Belonging by Afua Hirsch as well as Lessons In Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus.
There is also a pile of about 15 books waiting to be read and just not enough hours in the day.
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Post by don on Jul 28, 2023 15:53:41 GMT
One of the carers here just bought me in a copy of Lee Child’s the Killing Floor. I’m on an economy drive so instead of paying for books on Kindle I have been reading Free Kindle books 📚 but you can’t beat a good mainstream bestseller from John Grisham or Lee Child’s . The free kindle books are great but often not worth it at free , I’ve lost many hours reading crap free books before giving up Attachments:
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Post by Kath on Jul 28, 2023 18:02:42 GMT
One of the carers here just bought me in a copy of Lee Child’s the Killing Floor. I’m on an economy drive so instead of paying for books on Kindle I have been reading Free Kindle books 📚 but you can’t beat a good mainstream bestseller from John Grisham or Lee Child’s . The free kindle books are great but often not worth it at free , I’ve lost many hours reading crap free books before giving up I would agree. I also must stop buying books by people I've met who have claimed to be authors but who have self-published utter tripe. And I'm not even talking about the book previously referred to on another thread in here. |
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Post by don on Jul 28, 2023 22:06:45 GMT
I agree Kath some of these self published books are more dire than the free kindle books. By supporting them we give them the opportunity for it to happen again.
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Post by don on Aug 1, 2023 7:47:24 GMT
One of the carers here just bought me in a copy of Lee Child’s the Killing Floor. I’m on an economy drive so instead of paying for books on Kindle I have been reading Free Kindle books 📚 but you can’t beat a good mainstream bestseller from John Grisham or Lee Child’s . The free kindle books are great but often not worth it at free , I’ve lost many hours reading crap free books before giving up I would agree. I also must stop buying books by people I've met who have claimed to be authors but who have self-published utter tripe. And I'm not even talking about the book previously referred to on another thread in here. Kath I have just spent a delightful ten minutes looking up who wrote your bio quote Sharpness is a bourgeois concept”(HCB) I never knew it was Henri Cartier-Bresson who said that! 😀 |
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Post by Kath on Aug 1, 2023 7:50:14 GMT
I would agree. I also must stop buying books by people I've met who have claimed to be authors but who have self-published utter tripe. And I'm not even talking about the book previously referred to on another thread in here. Kath I have just spent a delightful ten minutes looking up who wrote your bio quote Sharpness is a bourgeois concept”(HCB) I never knew it was Henri Cartier-Bresson who said that! 😀 Ah yes. I no longer recall where or when I read that but let's just say it struck a chord! |
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Post by don on Aug 1, 2023 10:15:36 GMT
Yep with me as well ❤️👍
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Post by aitch on Aug 1, 2023 10:48:17 GMT
Kath I have just spent a delightful ten minutes looking up who wrote your bio quote Sharpness is a bourgeois concept”(HCB) I never knew it was Henri Cartier-Bresson who said that! 😀 Ah yes. I no longer recall where or when I read that but let's just say it struck a chord! ?  |
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Post by Kath on Aug 1, 2023 11:01:21 GMT
Ah yes. I no longer recall where or when I read that but let's just say it struck a chord! ? Sounds right! |
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Post by don on Aug 6, 2023 23:23:18 GMT
 Just finished heart full of headstones by ian rankin |
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Post by Kath on Aug 8, 2023 10:47:42 GMT
Finished Lessons In Chemistry. Started off thinking it was really a very stereotypical portrait of someone on the spectrum but gradually the main character rounded out a lot and I really 'enjoyed' it. The inverted commas are because so much of it was about the way women were treated so badly in the 1960s. This book was pretty much set in the same time period as The Help, just before I was born. It felt more modern because it wasn't set in rural Mississipi (is there any other kind?) and there was no mention of segregation by colour, but we still read about a woman not being able to complete her post grad because when she was sexually abused by a male member of staff she was the one who was shamed out of the establishment, not him, of men belittling her intelligence, stealing her intellectual property and shaming her for being pregnant and not married. Once agian the end of this book felt a bit like 'and then the rescuer swept in at the last to make everything alright' which is a bit of a let down but all in all a decent read.
My book club's next choice was The Reading List by Sara NIsha Adams. Various people dealing with grief, anxiety, family problems, social exclusion etc come across a mysteriously placed reading list. The story jumps from person to person and from book to book on the reading list which makes it sound quite disjointed but it wasn't. If the mystery was who wrote the reading list, it wasn't much of a mystery but I found myself quite invested in the characters. I did have a couple of gripes. The author rather used the books on the reading list so that the various characters could compare their situations/problems with those of the characters in the books. This felt a bit forced at times. Also if you'd read the books there was a sense of 'I don't need you to summarise To Kill A Mockingbird for me, I know already. I guess if you haven't read it, that might have been helpful. Over the seven or so books on the list though it became a bit tiresome. At the same time, there were two books I hadn't read - although I'd seen the film of one - and I didn't feel there was enough info about them. I guess it was a tricky thing to get right. I loved reading about one character;s Punjabi background and the various foodstuffs and celebrations that they had. He was really brought to life very well. Some of the others were less richly drawn. There's a terrible event quite late in the book which we all should have seen coming but didn't, including the characters in the book. It acts as a catalyst for bringing people together and the book ends with a 'we'll all just carry on then but wiser' vibe which was fine. There were quite heavy topics here which were dealt with a bit too lightly I think, and some of it wasn't very realistic but overall I enjoyed it.
I discovered that if you have Amazon Prime you can 'borrow' books for free. Not all of them, but I didn't ahve to pay for The Reading List. So yesterday, being sick and off work I downloaded The Vanishing of Margaret Small to borrow. This was sad. This book started in 1947 when Margaret was 'vanished' to a hospital. It then mainly switches between 'present day' (2015, but close enough) and the late 60s. At 7, Margaret is removed from her grandmother's house and sent to St Mary's Hospital. We are told that her mother died in childbirth and we're not given the reason for her grandmother sending her off to the hospital but it becomes apparent that Margaret has some kind of learning difficulties and it was quite common for 'handicapped' children to be shunted off so that society as a whole didn't have to deal with them. Margaret doesn't have a lovely time at St Mary's - it's gruelling, there's abuse from the staff, bullying from other 'patients' and a lot of unpaid drudge work. She makes and loses various friends along the way and is oblivous to the way that they are manipulating her. She meets a boy, another patient, and although males and females are strictly segregated, they find a way to meet and of course she ends up pregnant. She is sent to a Mother and Baby home where, after giving birth, and staying with her baby just long enough for doctors to decide that the baby is 'normal', she's told that she must give the baby up for adoption as she's not capable of being a mother. In the present day, she is no longer at St Mary's (although she was there until she was in her forties), is living more or less independently with a support worker and is receiving letters from a stranger signing off as C. It seems she believes this is her long lost adopted daughter whom she'd called Cilla, but is in fact her half sister. I really liked this book and read it very quickly. There was a link at hte end to some research done on mothers who had been sent to Mother and Baby homes which I have now read too. I was adopted in 1968, the year 'Margaret' was sent to her mother and baby home. (I was also called Margaret!) I've never been able to fully get my head around what it must be like to have to give up your child and just how difficult it was for women, never mind women who had learning difficulties. Thought provoking!
I'm still part way through the other books I mentioned but too sick to read anything very 'heavy'. About to start soemthing called Winterset Hollow. Not sure what it's like yet!
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Post by don on Aug 10, 2023 15:35:18 GMT
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Post by kate on Aug 10, 2023 16:44:08 GMT
Just downloaded The Waiter by Ajay Chowdhury.
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Post by don on Aug 16, 2023 12:24:57 GMT
I have just done the Kindle thing and am a few pages into a FREE book 📖 I say free but it costs me about eight quid a month to enable me to get the books 📚 for nothing!
So my ‘free’ book is titled One Day With You by Sari Low
I would have put a photo of the cover but it’s proved difficult so tough 😃😃👍
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