Book Review the Eighth

[smallhobbit]

And my last review for my first year of reading widely.

The Burglar Caught by a Skeleton by Jeremy Clay

& Other Singular Tales from the Victorian Press
Recommended by scfrankles this book took me a year to read.  Not I hasten to add because it was hard going, far from it.  But it is a book for dipping into, rather than reading straight through.  It's a record of some of the bizarre events recorded by the press in Victorian times - and hence of particular interest to me - if you thought some of the Ocelot's entries in Marylebone Monthly Illustrated were strange, you ain't seen nothing yet.  Many of the items were funny, some were tragic, but in their way they summed up a lot of daily life in the Victorian world.  Okay, the odder parts, but still.  An entertaining read.


Doomsday Book by Connie Willis

Recommended by blythechild A historian from the future gets sent back to the past to learn about life in Medieval England first hand.  Only the 'drop' goes wrong and she ends up near Oxford just as the Black Death also reaches there.  Because of the way I visualise my reading, I had a problem with Future Oxford, which felt too much like modern Oxford with bits added.  However, I enjoyed Medieval Oxford and the story as it unfolded there.  I think, had it been purely the Medieval side I'd have been happy.  And I found the ending a bit 'meh'.  A case of horses for courses, and this wasn't my horse.


Black Powder War by Naomi Novik

Third in the Temeraire series.  Once again I thoroughly enjoyed this.  Definitely my sort of horse.  Dragons, Napoleon in person, competency in the main characters.  I have ordered the fourth book.  Not much more to say, except my copy was an ex-library book, which came from Osidge Library in north London - which would have been my mother's local library when she was growing up, as well as mine had we not left before I was seven.


Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J K Rowling

I recently bought myself a new t-shirt which says "Fangirls love villains".  I'm not sure that's particularly relevant, but I am growing tired of cardboard heroes and villains.


So, one year over.  Now to tackle the 18 books on my shelf and in the basket.  Here's to the next 12 months.

Full list of the books I read in just over the last year:
Mar 2015   Red Dragon   Thomas Harris
April 2015   The Master and Margarita   Mikhail Bulgakov
May 2015   H is for Hawk   Helen Macdonald
May 2015   The Light Fantastic   Terry Pratchett
June 2015   Guards! Guards!  Terry Pratchett
July 2015   The Goldfinch   Donna Tartt
July 2015   The Silver Pigs   Lindsey Davis
Aug 2015   Moriarty   Anthony Horowitz
Sept 2015   Temeraire   Naomi Novik
Sept 2015   Life after Life   Kate Atkinson
Oct 2015   The Charioteer   Mary Renault
Nov 2015   The Age of Innocence   Edith Wharton
Nov 2015   Richard III: The Maligned King   Annette Carson
Nov 2015   My Animals and Other Family   Clare Balding
Dec 2015   An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Life on Earth   Chris Hadfield
Dec 2015   House-Keeping   Marilynne Robinson
Dec 2015   The Santa Klaus Murder   Mavis Doriel Hay
Dec 2015   Throne of Jade   Naomi Novik
Jan 2016   Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone   J K Rowling
Jan 2016   The Mermaids Singing   Val McDermid
Jan 2016   The Thief   Megan Whalen Turner
Feb 2016   Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets   J K Rowling
Feb 2016   Something Wicked This Way Comes   Ray Bradbury
Feb 2016   A Good Parcel of English Soil   Richard Mabey
Apr 2016   The Burglar Caught by a Skeleton   Jeremy Clay
Apr 2016   Doomsday Book   Connie Willis
Apr 2016   Black Powder War   Naomi Novik
Apr 2016   Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban   J K Rowling