Books from 15th September, among other things!
Book Reviews from 15th September, among other things!
Well, firstly, I GOT THE JOB!!! :D :D Woooooooo...so now its all quite exciting and I get to look at lots of houses on the internet to find somewhere to live, haha! I might still have to work at my current job for a while though as they need to do a CRB check and that seems to take ages and ages! Its also a bit annoying as I need to get Katie to go and look at them as I can’t go to Huddersfield until 19th September…but hopefully she’ll enjoy it and find me something nice! Slight annoyance with the reactions of some of the people I know here, but oh well. The offer is always open for people to visit me, if they want to take it up or not!
So, on with book reviews, I’ve read some interesting things since I last updated on the books I’ve read. The book about Rasputin that I said I was reading in the last books post I gave up on after a couple of chapters as the translation was really quite bad! I was interested in the content, but the style was just awful, so I found it really hard to read. I have been mainly spending many many moneys on Chalet School books - with the excellent result that out of a series of 63 I only have 3 left to buy now…woo! :D I dread to think how much I’ve spent on them though!! Actually I think I’ll add that up and add it to this entry later…oh and I’ve forgotten what number book I’ve got up to anyway, so I’ll come back and edit that too!
Book Reviews
First, the Chalet School books I’ve read, I won’t review them individually, they’re all great! Most of them were ones which I’d never read before, so that was good too.
143. Tom Tackles the Chalet School / Bride Leads the Chalet School by Elinor M Brent-Dyer
145. The Chalet School Triplets / Redheads at the Chalet School
149. Two Sams at the Chalet School / Gerry Goes to School
157. Changes for the Chalet School / A Chalet Girl From Kenya
159. The New House Mistress / The Chalet School Does It Again
Gerry Goes To School and The New House Mistress aren’t Chalet School books, but they follow a similar school theme, Elinor was obviously good at a school story, although these don’t have the same kind of charm of the Chalet School, they’re just normal school stories.
Other Books
144. Distant Hours by Kate Morton - this book was ok, but it did follow the same structure of her two (or is it three?) other books in that it went back and forward in time, and I think I’m getting a bit tired of that now. The story was quite good though, it kept me interested.
146. The Chosen One by Sam Bourne - I really like this author, but I think this was my least favourite of his books. It was a nice thriller, but it was more politically orientated rather than religion which is what his other books are like, so I didn’t enjoy it as much.
147. Agnes Gray by Anne Bronte - this was a nice little book, about a woman who becomes a governess in the mid 19th Century. The characters were good and it went along at a good pace. Not as good as Jane Eyre, but far better than Wuthering Heights!
148. Sacred Treason by James Forrester - this was a nice historical thriller, set in Elizabethan times, about catholic plots against the crown. A bit silly, but I like this kind of thing!
150, 151, 152. Three books on interview questions and techniques! - I can’t remember exactly what books these were, but they must have worked in the end! They were helpful for looking up questions they might ask and thinking of how to structure answers. There were also some interesting tips about body language and first impressions and things like that, some things which I’d never really thought about before. One thing they all said was don’t smoke in the interview - which seems a little silly as people can’t even smoke at all inside, let alone in an interview! They were all published within about the last 5 or 6 years as well, so I thought that was a bit of a strange thing to include. Who would think of smoking in an interview anyway! (or is that just me thinking that as a non smoker, haha)
153. Room by Emma Donoghue - this was a re-read for my book club, and it was just as great as it was the first time! Perhaps even better as I noticed things earlier on as I knew the story, and saw how clever the book was in slowly revealing the story. I still highly recommend it - in my book club I gave it an 11 out of 10!
154. At Risk by Patricia Cornwell - I remember being on a train when I first started this, and I was incredibly tired (can’t remember why though!) so maybe I read half of it in my sleep, but I was totally confused about this book. The story was very confusing and I wasn’t sure why the characters were doing what they were doing, and just didn’t really care in the end! I see on Amazon that it has an average of 1 ½ stars and I think I agree with that!
155. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte - this book was good, but got a bit slow in the middle. I always thought the “Tenant” of the title was a man for some reason, so it was interesting to find it was a woman, and to have her story of her life with her drunken husband explained. I find that in many 19th century books the crimes, well maybe “misdemeanours” that are committed by the characters are pretty normal behaviour for modern readers (e.g. a man going for a walk with a woman without a chaperone, gasp! Haha), but this one did address some quite serious issues, e.g. drunkenness and adultery. Although there was one bit where the woman just wouldn’t tell the man she loved that she loved him, even though he was saying that he loved her too! But overall it was a good book, again not as good as Jane Eyre but better than Wuthering Heights!
156. Salt by Jeremy Page - I’m not sure if I enjoyed this or not. Set in Norfolk salt marshes, it tells the story of a woman who lives nearby and generations of her family, who all have problems which can be traced back to the first woman character. Sometimes it got a bit strange and drifted from the plot and that put me off a bit, but when the plot thread was strong it was quite good.
158. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel - This tells the story of Thomas Cromwell, Henry VII, Anne Boleyn and related people at that time. It was overall a good story, and it was interesting to see his life and how he interacted with people around him, and how he influenced and was influenced by historical events, but I just thought it was a bit long. I think out of the two Hilary Mantel books I’ve read I preferred the other one (Beyond Black), but out of the Booker Prize winning novels that I’ve read, this is one of the better ones!
I’m currently reading A Taste for Death by PD James, and then (probably after a couple more Chalet School books!) I’m going to read The Book of Dave by Will Self - I hope that’s good as it looks great!
Well, firstly, I GOT THE JOB!!! :D :D Woooooooo...so now its all quite exciting and I get to look at lots of houses on the internet to find somewhere to live, haha! I might still have to work at my current job for a while though as they need to do a CRB check and that seems to take ages and ages! Its also a bit annoying as I need to get Katie to go and look at them as I can’t go to Huddersfield until 19th September…but hopefully she’ll enjoy it and find me something nice! Slight annoyance with the reactions of some of the people I know here, but oh well. The offer is always open for people to visit me, if they want to take it up or not!
So, on with book reviews, I’ve read some interesting things since I last updated on the books I’ve read. The book about Rasputin that I said I was reading in the last books post I gave up on after a couple of chapters as the translation was really quite bad! I was interested in the content, but the style was just awful, so I found it really hard to read. I have been mainly spending many many moneys on Chalet School books - with the excellent result that out of a series of 63 I only have 3 left to buy now…woo! :D I dread to think how much I’ve spent on them though!! Actually I think I’ll add that up and add it to this entry later…oh and I’ve forgotten what number book I’ve got up to anyway, so I’ll come back and edit that too!
Book Reviews
First, the Chalet School books I’ve read, I won’t review them individually, they’re all great! Most of them were ones which I’d never read before, so that was good too.
143. Tom Tackles the Chalet School / Bride Leads the Chalet School by Elinor M Brent-Dyer
145. The Chalet School Triplets / Redheads at the Chalet School
149. Two Sams at the Chalet School / Gerry Goes to School
157. Changes for the Chalet School / A Chalet Girl From Kenya
159. The New House Mistress / The Chalet School Does It Again
Gerry Goes To School and The New House Mistress aren’t Chalet School books, but they follow a similar school theme, Elinor was obviously good at a school story, although these don’t have the same kind of charm of the Chalet School, they’re just normal school stories.
Other Books
144. Distant Hours by Kate Morton - this book was ok, but it did follow the same structure of her two (or is it three?) other books in that it went back and forward in time, and I think I’m getting a bit tired of that now. The story was quite good though, it kept me interested.
146. The Chosen One by Sam Bourne - I really like this author, but I think this was my least favourite of his books. It was a nice thriller, but it was more politically orientated rather than religion which is what his other books are like, so I didn’t enjoy it as much.
147. Agnes Gray by Anne Bronte - this was a nice little book, about a woman who becomes a governess in the mid 19th Century. The characters were good and it went along at a good pace. Not as good as Jane Eyre, but far better than Wuthering Heights!
148. Sacred Treason by James Forrester - this was a nice historical thriller, set in Elizabethan times, about catholic plots against the crown. A bit silly, but I like this kind of thing!
150, 151, 152. Three books on interview questions and techniques! - I can’t remember exactly what books these were, but they must have worked in the end! They were helpful for looking up questions they might ask and thinking of how to structure answers. There were also some interesting tips about body language and first impressions and things like that, some things which I’d never really thought about before. One thing they all said was don’t smoke in the interview - which seems a little silly as people can’t even smoke at all inside, let alone in an interview! They were all published within about the last 5 or 6 years as well, so I thought that was a bit of a strange thing to include. Who would think of smoking in an interview anyway! (or is that just me thinking that as a non smoker, haha)
153. Room by Emma Donoghue - this was a re-read for my book club, and it was just as great as it was the first time! Perhaps even better as I noticed things earlier on as I knew the story, and saw how clever the book was in slowly revealing the story. I still highly recommend it - in my book club I gave it an 11 out of 10!
154. At Risk by Patricia Cornwell - I remember being on a train when I first started this, and I was incredibly tired (can’t remember why though!) so maybe I read half of it in my sleep, but I was totally confused about this book. The story was very confusing and I wasn’t sure why the characters were doing what they were doing, and just didn’t really care in the end! I see on Amazon that it has an average of 1 ½ stars and I think I agree with that!
155. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte - this book was good, but got a bit slow in the middle. I always thought the “Tenant” of the title was a man for some reason, so it was interesting to find it was a woman, and to have her story of her life with her drunken husband explained. I find that in many 19th century books the crimes, well maybe “misdemeanours” that are committed by the characters are pretty normal behaviour for modern readers (e.g. a man going for a walk with a woman without a chaperone, gasp! Haha), but this one did address some quite serious issues, e.g. drunkenness and adultery. Although there was one bit where the woman just wouldn’t tell the man she loved that she loved him, even though he was saying that he loved her too! But overall it was a good book, again not as good as Jane Eyre but better than Wuthering Heights!
156. Salt by Jeremy Page - I’m not sure if I enjoyed this or not. Set in Norfolk salt marshes, it tells the story of a woman who lives nearby and generations of her family, who all have problems which can be traced back to the first woman character. Sometimes it got a bit strange and drifted from the plot and that put me off a bit, but when the plot thread was strong it was quite good.
158. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel - This tells the story of Thomas Cromwell, Henry VII, Anne Boleyn and related people at that time. It was overall a good story, and it was interesting to see his life and how he interacted with people around him, and how he influenced and was influenced by historical events, but I just thought it was a bit long. I think out of the two Hilary Mantel books I’ve read I preferred the other one (Beyond Black), but out of the Booker Prize winning novels that I’ve read, this is one of the better ones!
I’m currently reading A Taste for Death by PD James, and then (probably after a couple more Chalet School books!) I’m going to read The Book of Dave by Will Self - I hope that’s good as it looks great!