Already April, blink and I missed March but I did not miss any reading and it seems that whilst I may be a few books behind on my target for the year, I am up to date with reviews and the like. Of course as some of you know, I made the decision not to review all the books I am reading, so of course that helps but it also means that there is perhaps less blog content?
Nonetheless all of the books I have read in March bar one have been reviewed and without further ado here is a rundown of them all.
The gentleness of Esther Freud – Mr Mac and Me was really quite touching and is a book to take your time with, if you do it will so be worth it. This was probably where Natalia Sanmartin Fenollera – The Awakening of Miss Prim also fits, a quiet book, but quirky in its old fashioned way.
Reading can make me feel uplifted and is a lovely place to go when you are not quite feeling 100%. Transporting me to Italy was the latest from Nicky Pellegrino – Under Italian Skies. The heat, the warmth of the sunshine and the food you could almost taste makes it another successful novel for her in my eyes.
Being able to taste was a must when it came to Carole Matthews – The Chocolate Lovers’ Club, the first in a series of books featuring great friendships and a lot of chocolate! I am slowly working my way through Carole Matthews back catalogue so I can catch up on her most recent Chocolate Lovers novels.
Another author in the vein of Carole Matthews and one to look out for is Rachel Dove – The Chic Boutique on Baker Street, her debut novel. I am hoping that her next book takes up the story of those who work on Baker Street.
If I went back and looked through my records of books, I would find that I have read all or pretty much all of Maureen Lee’s novels. I started reading them probably about 20 years ago and as time has passed kept reading them, waiting for the latest to be available in paperback, reading at least one a year. I picked up The Kelly Sisters at the beginning of the year and have now just got round to reading it.
Another book I have had on my shelf for a while is William Boyd – Restless which I had bought after watching the television adaptation a couple of years ago. It goes against the grain to read the book after a visual adaptation, but time had passed enough for me to pick it up and I enjoyed the book.
I love fiction that takes you back to another time, to experience life then vicariously through the characters on the page and also those that feature real people – The Mr Mac of the novel above is in fact Charles Rennie Mackintosh. In Catherine Lowell – The Madwoman Upstairs I was not taken right back to the beginning of the nineteenth century, but the Brontes were in fact brought forward to now and feature heavily in this book. The book did not work for me, but it worked for many others.
As I ended March, I was reading another Rosie Goodwin which I will tell you about soon. In the meantime what have you been reading?
The Book Jotter 