My Bookish Weekly Wrap Up – Week 8 2018

Hello!!!! How are we all?! Well I hope! Had a couple of dodgy days here on the health front but feeling brighter today despite all of 3 hours sleep last night! Why does Insomnia strike when you’re the most tired??!!  

Been another fabulous bookish week, especially as it was Cosy Reading Night on Wednesday night which I loved taking part in and the box of After Eight Mints were a very handy snack to have by my side!!  And with TV still not being top quality that has meant extra reading time of an evening for me, so this week I managed to get another 5 books read and off  the reading pile!! Not that seems to have made much of an impact as I sit looking at the TBR mountain, but it’s a start at least!!

And I’ve been very well behaved on the acquiring new books front and restricted my ‘searching’ options, and even the postman has given our house a wide berth until today with 2 books popping through the letterbox!

Here’s a look then at what I’ve read this week, the new books I’ve acquired and those that I’m currently reading!

BOOKS FINISHED

Where’s My F**king Unicorn? by Michele Gordon – 4 stars

Funny and practical self help book that doesn’t take itself too seriously!

THE LAST WILDERNESS by NEIL ANSELL  –  5 stars

stunning non fiction book as Neil Ansell discovers the remote Scottish Highlands and reflects on losing his hearing

 

 

FINDING THE SNOWDON LILY by HEATHER PARDOE –  4 stars

This was an enjoyable and quick read on my Kindle, set in the stunning scenery of Wales and at the heart of the story is 17 year old Catrin.

ONLY CHILD by RHIANNON  NAVIN  –  5 stars

Stunning, heartbreaking and extremely poignant read considering the awful recent school shootings in America.  Told from the POV of a 6 year old boy as he witnesses such a tragedy, this had me in tears!

MEAL OF FORTUNE by PHILIP BRADY – 4 stars

Read this ahead of a Blog Tour in March, and thoroughly enjoyed the adventure! Thrilling, funny, mad and sweary – my kind of book!!

BOOK POST

Just the two through the letterbox this week but they both look fab!

THE INDUSTRY OF HUMAN HAPPINESS by JAMES HALL

published by Lightning Books    Publication Date May 2018

A tale of love, murder and obsession in the early days of the gramophone

Set in the murky backstage world of late Victorian theatreland, The Industry of Human Happiness is about the obsessive characters who dreamed of bringing recorded music to the masses.

Max and his younger cousin Rusty have a vision of launching the gramophone industry from a Covent Garden basement. But a renowned opera singer is brutally murdered in his hotel bed and they are thrust into the underworld of opium dens, brothels and extortion.

Ghosts from the past and a contested inheritance turn the cousins against each other, and they go head-to-head to launch rival ‘talking machines’. With Max’s sweetheart, the ambitious singer Delilah Green, caught in the middle, the pair battle rival manufacturers, London theatre owners and, ultimately, each other, for their very futures.

This is a story of obsession, the pursuit of love and the enduring magic of music.

♯♯♯

And then this months offering from the Random Book Club is this book that I have to confess knowing nothing about but the blurb has me intrigued!

‍Set in 1968 in the Parisian suburbs, No Telling is narrated by twelve-year-old Gilles as he approaches his Solemn Communion, puberty, and some sense of the chaos around him. His home is deeply dysfunctional: a dithering mother, a hard-drinking, womanising uncle who becomes his stepfather, and an older sister, Carole – an unbalanced revolutionary who hasn’t danced her ballet steps since the death of their real father. Gilles is blithely unaware that any of this is out of the ordinary, as he and his friend Christophe try and piece together a world from fragments of rumour and hushed adult conversation. There is a deeper trauma here, however, far more shocking than anything Gilles could have dreamt of – a mystery it will take the events of the novel and eight years to resolve.

😃😃😃

CURRENTLY READING

Jane Austen At Home by Lucy Worsley

Started reading this on Cosy Reading Night and am loving finding out so much about the woman behind the classic books!

THE THINGS WE LEARN WHEN WE’RE DEAD by CHARLIE LAIDLAW

Looking to read something a little different this weekend and this one appeals – and the cover is rather cool!

With elements of The Wizard of Oz, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and The Lovely Bones, The Things We Learn When We’re Dead shows how small decisions can have profound and unintended consequences, and how sometimes we can get a second chance.

On the way home from a dinner party, Lorna Love steps into the path of an oncoming car. When she wakes up she is in what appears to be a hospital – but a hospital in which her nurse looks like a young Sean Connery, she is served wine for supper, and everyone avoids her questions. It soon transpires that she is in Heaven, or on HVN. Because HVN is a lost, dysfunctional spaceship, and God the aging hippy captain. She seems to be there by accident… Or does God have a higher purpose after all?

At first Lorna can remember nothing. As her memories return – some good, some bad – she realises that she has decision to make and that maybe she needs to find a way home.

So that is my week all wrapped up! How has yours looked? Any new reads I should look out for.. or avoid?!

HAPPY READING!!

Advertisement