Hello! Happy Saturday!! Boy it’s chilly!! Finally we get blue skies and frosty gardens!! no snow… yet!!
And the cold seems to have slowed down my reading speed! Only 2 books finished this week and a slight lack of apathy about what to pick up next to read! There has been 1 new addition to my Netgalley shelves, and also a couple of real books thanks to book subscriptions I have!
Here’s my look back.
BOOKS FINISHED
THE SUMMER OF SERENDIPITY by ALI MCNAMARA – 4 STARS
BAD BLOOD by SADIE RYAN – 5 STARS
BOOKHAUL
To Netgalley we go…..
A SCOTTISH COUNTRY ESCAPE by JULIE SHACKMAN
publication date – March 2023
Determined to overcome a family tragedy, Elle Cassidy decides to reopen her late mother’s ailing newsagent as a stationery shop in the quiet Scottish town of Fir Haven.
But when the arrogant yet handsome crime writer Dexter Grayling almost runs over Elle in his beast of a sports car, the town is thrown into a tailspin – especially when Dexter claims that local resident Linda Carlucci has put a curse on him and he is no longer able to write.
Can Elle put aside her dislike for the self-absorbed writer and help Dexter uncover what is really going on with the Carlucci family? And in the process will Elle realise that there’s a lot more to her beloved Fir Haven than she first thought…
And on the Subscription Book front I have these….
HISTORY.A MESS by SIGRUN PALSDOTTIR
Peirene Press
publication date – 2023
A young PhD student has spent six long months transcribing the diary of the seventeenth-century artist ‘S.B.’. Then, hidden between mundane descriptions of the artists’ daily routine, she makes a profound discovery: a single passage revealing that S.B. is a woman. Believing she has identified the first professional female artist in Britain, she maps out her entire thesis, right down to the dedication. Fizzing with ideas she sees her career, and her life, blossoming in front of her. However, she has made a simple mistake – one that she won’t acknowledge until it’s far too late to turn back. As she goes to ever greater lengths to protect her work from the truth, she begins to lose her grip on her thesis, her life and then her sanity. What follows is a remarkable exploration of intellectual integrity and denial, and a poignant, funny portrait of academic ambition.
And from Renard Press..
INSIDE THE WHALE by GEORGE ORWELL
George Orwell set out ‘to make political writing into an art’, and to a wide extent this aim shaped the future of English literature – his descriptions of authoritarian regimes helped to form a new vocabulary that is fundamental to understanding totalitarianism. While 1984 and Animal Farm are amongst the most popular classic novels in the English language, this new series of Orwell’s essays seeks to bring a wider selection of his writing on politics and literature to a new readership.
Inside the Whale, the eighth in the Orwell’s Essays series, discusses Henry Miller’s controversial Tropic of Cancer, and considers the driving power behind the great books of the 1930s. Comparing Miller with other literary giants, Orwell lambasts the notion that all literature is good, forcing the reader to think for themselves, with his final words ringing in their ears: ‘five thousand novels are published in England every year and four thousand nine hundred of them are tripe.’
ON READING by GEORGE ORWELL
George Orwell set out ‘to make political writing into an art’, and to a wide extent this aim shaped the future of English literature – his descriptions of authoritarian regimes helped to form a new vocabulary that is fundamental to understanding totalitarianism. While 1984 and Animal Farm are amongst the most popular classic novels in the English language, this new series of Orwell’s essays seeks to bring a wider selection of his writing on politics and literature to a new readership.
On Reading, the seventh in the Orwell’s Essays series, collects together Orwell’s short essays on books – ‘Bookshop Memories’, ‘Good Bad Books’, ‘Nonsense Poetry’, ‘Books vs. Cigarettes’ and ‘Confessions of a Book Reviewer’ – giving a rounded view of the great writer’s opinions on the literature of his day, and the vessels in which it was sold.
CURRENTLY READING
A MIRACLE ON HOPE STREET by EMMA HEATHERINGTON
HAPPY READING!!
Books and Me! 
I might have skipped over HISTORY. A MESS just based on the cover as I assumed it was non-fiction however it sounds like an interesting book.
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Hopefully I can report back soon-ish on whether it lives up to the interesting blurb!
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It’s chilly here too, but no blue skies or snow, just clouds and a few wintry showers. Hope you manage to decide what you read next. May be a bit of shrugging will help you keep warm. 😂 xx
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we are avoiding any of the white stuff too… so far! The shrugging has begun haha!! xx
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