Armistead Maupin

Further Tales of the City – Armistead Maupin

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The Tales of the City series makes for perfect summer reading, and my copy of the third installment got a lot of sun this year!

Further Tales takes us back to beloved 28 Barbary Lane and its inhabitants. Some time has passed since More Tales of the City, and there have been changes. The characters are moving on in their lives or careers. Most notably, Mary Ann, now a local shopping channel celebrity, is on a mission to become an investigative reporter. Loveable Michael is once again on the lookout for love and Brian is no longer flitting from girl to girl, but has ideas of settling down.

Of course, Barbary Lane would not be complete without the wonderful Mrs Madrigal who is ever the guardian angel looking out for her ‘children’. She has some brilliant scenes in this book, I only wish she could have featured a bit more! Continue reading →

Top Ten Tuesday – Places Books Have Made Me Want to Visit

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I’ve been a fan of the weekly Top Ten Tuesday feature over at The Broke and the Bookish ever since I started Bundle of Books and have been considering joining in for a while. I’ve been a bit too busy to blog a lot recently, so something like this will be a fun way to get back into the swing of things!

Today’s theme is: Places Books Have Made Me Want to Visit.
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More Tales of the City – Armistead Maupin

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More TalesEver since reading Tales of the City, I have been desperate to read the next in Maupin’s fantastic series set in San Francisco. I chose to read More Tales of the City on a hot and sunny weekend trip to a small town in the Czech Republic. From now on this book will forever remind me of lazing in the sun surrounded by blue skies and the lovely Czech countryside.

More Tales of the City steps a little further into the lives of some of my favourite people; Michael ‘Mouse’ Tolliver, Mona Ramsey, Mary Ann Singleton and of course Mrs Madrigal. I was also happy to see a reappearance of Mona’s ex, D’orothea and the pregnant DeDe, who form an unlikely, but heart-warming friendship.

The book opens with Mouse and Mary Ann’s valentine resolutions. Continue reading →

It’s Been Three Years!

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Wow! Today is my third blog-birthday (or blogoversary), and I hadn’t even noticed until this evening! But I’m always up for a celebration and would love you to join me. I’ve read some fantastic books since my second blog-birthday and have decided to spread the joy of reading by choosing three of my favourites to send to three lucky winners!

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Tales of the City – Armistead Maupin

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Tales of the City

My mum has been telling me for years to read Tales of the City. When I finally got round to it last year, I loved it just as much as she had promised!

The ‘city’ in Maupin’s tales is San Francisco, where we dip into the lives of a number of characters, starting with the naive Mary Ann Singleton. Her eight day holiday turns into her new life when she quits her job in Cleveland and finds herself an apartment at 28 Barbary Lane. It sounds like a dream come true, but as is often the case, this new and exciting life in the vibrant city is not all it’s cracked up to be.

The book was originally serialised for a local newspaper, so the short ‘chapters’ are often only a couple of pages or less. It’s extremely readable – you can read it in small chunks little and often or, like me, accidentally race through it without realising!

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My Top 5 Books from 2013

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Happy New Year

I was not the most consistent book blogger in 2013. I currently have a daunting ten books piled up ready to be written about, and some of them have been there since the spring! Hopefully I will manage to get on to them early in the New Year. My reading list, like my blog, has been a bit pathetic over the past year. I haven’t been racing through books like I usually would, apart from the odd couple. I’ve found comfort in old favourites such as The Hobbit, The Moonstone, The Little Friend and The Wolves of Willoughby Chase series, but not managed to pick up as many new books as I would have liked.

I’m afraid I can’t blame this lack of adventurous reading on being too busy at work or anything like that, but I have been busy. I’ve been busy having fun! In fact, for me, 2013 has been one of the best years for a long time! I’ve been on some great holidays, including a fantastic trip to Nepal in October, (Where I visited the amazing Pilgrims Book House in Kathmandu, and fought off tears in the airport when reading Sold by Patricia McCormick), and life has generally been quite good, with a job that I enjoy and living happily with my boyfriend in a lovely little flat in the centre of town.

Instead of doing ‘awards’ this year (like in 2011 and 2012), I thought I would simply share my Top 5 books from my reading list of 2013 (Some of which I haven’t reviewed yet – I’ll add the links as soon as I do!)

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