Sunday 1 May 2016

Book Challenge Month two

My books for this month.
52 books in 52 weeks. 11 out of 52

By a coincidence all the authors this month have been female... I like that, maybe next month will be male month? Oh, and happy May 1st.

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
I used to love the film when I was younger and quite saw myself in Mary Lennox, I was never a smiling child and looked quite contrary both in appearance and behaviour I think. The book made a very vivid image of a growing garden and I quite enjoyed it. At times it was hard to read the dialect but it soon was no trouble at all.
A little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett
This was the second book I read and I knew nothing about it before I started. I liked this book too, but it was bit sad, more so than the other book. I will not spoil anything but I will still recommend both these books.
Next on the list is Little Lord Fauntleroy which I have never read either.
Night Time is My time by Mary Higgins Clark
I bought this book really cheep at a thrift store and I will return it when I go back, I like libraries but sometimes not having a deadline on a book makes it more enjoyable so I try to buy cheap books and borrow from friends instead. Anyway, my mother has almost all of Mary Higgins Clark's books and I have read them all, she did not have this one. It is a good book within it's genre, I had no idea who the killer was. In fact when i read it I had to re-read the first chapter because I had a hard time remembering exactly who the killer was. The book starts with a high school reunion (which I never attended) and someone is killed, later we learn that all the girls who sat at that lunch table have died, all but two and we try to find the killer within the group at the reunion...
A good book, but not one I would re-read or pay full price for, our shelving space are limited so this book is going back.
Vi er ikke alene by Margit Sandemo
This book might be cheating a bit, it is quite short and consists of letters from a woman's magazine who have written to the author to talk about their experience with invisible helpers or guardian angels and then the author tries to explain the experiences and talk about her own life with her helpers and how to get into contact with your own. Which she assures us we all have. I am on the fence about this. But it would be nice to think someone is watching out for every single person (and animal, she thinks her dog has a dog helper) I have read all of Margit's books and I really like them. She talks about ghosts and the paranormal and blends it with life up here in the North from a couple of hundred years ago. The books are easy to read but exiting and she is good at hitting her target audience, but after 100 books it does start to get repetitive, but I think that way about all authors after I have read some of their books in a row.
Call the midwife by Jennifer Worth
I saw the BBC series when it was on and I loved it. The book is the first in a trilogy and even though I have heard the stories before I have no idea how things will end because the book and series have gone down different roads and things the author just heard about later in the books is something she saw and experienced in the series, but I guess that is how series go, what works in a book might not work in a movie or series. But the good thing about having watched the series first is that I have all of the characters faces fresh in my mind and I don't confuse them with each other. All the characters are just as in the series, lively, lovable even in their grumpiness and crazy and hard working. In the book she talks a lot about the smells that were not talked about in the series and where waste went and so on and I must say I am quite pleased I do not have to give birth in England after the war (or here for that matter) It is hard to think about all those people still living with giving birth and living in general without water and medicine and nurses, I am so happy I am born here at this day and age. Even if I do like to read about how things were hundreds of years ago.

A bunny picture in honour of bunday
I think Call the Midwife is the book I can most recommend this month that you read if you can stomach it, it can be quite graphic and I don't think you should read it while pregnant. Luckily my family are all nurses and I have been hardened by nurse-talk all my life so the graphicness never bothered me.
If you can't stomach midwifery I will recommend the Frances Hodgson Burnett books, even if they were originally childrens-books I think adults will like them just as much.

1 comment:

Jenn said...

Little lord fauntleroy is good :) still have it in my book cases (I have 5 and all my books don't fit!!!). I spend my life giving old ones to charity shops and buying other 2nd hand ones. Very excited as a new mary balogh book arrives for me tomorrow (well today lol). She writes regency romances and I love them. They are always nice stories with happy endings