book review

Limbo Lodge – Joan Aiken

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Limbo LodgeOnce again Dido Twite’s journey back to her beloved England has been delayed (you must be wondering whether she will ever make it home!). This time it’s because of an order from the King to find Lord Herodsfoot, who is travelling the world in search of new and interesting games. He is much needed back home to help cure the King of a mysterious illness.

So we begin the book with poor Dido preparing for yet another adventure. Although not quite as creepy as The Stolen Lake, the setting of this book is also full of strangeness and magic. Dido learns which creatures to avoid, but the deadly pearl-snakes and killer sting-monkeys turn out to be the least of her worries in Aratu.  Continue reading →

Slightly Famous People’s Foxes – Oliver Pritchett

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This year it’s Slightly Foxed’s tenth birthday!

To celebrate, some (slightly) famous people have picked up their pens to draw their very own foxy characters in this delightful little book. (Quentin Blake, Carol Ann Duffy, Alan Garner, Kazuo Ishiguro, Michael Morpurgo and Alexander McCall Smith to name but a few).

Slightly Famous People's Foxes

It’s sweet and funny and all profits go to the Children’s Hospital School at Great Ormond Street. “The money will go to buy books to read for pleasure, which can mean so much to children who are away from home…” What a great cause!

Take a look at some of the foxes here and click here to buy a copy – it’s £5 for people in the UK.

A couple of years ago I did some work experience at Slightly Foxed. Keep an eye out on the blog tomorrow, there’ll be a post all about it!

The Stolen Lake – Joan Aiken

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The Stolen LakeNext in the Wolves of Willoughby Chase series, we have The Stolen Lake. It’s a wonderfully eerie book set in the strange country of New Cumbria, where Captain Hughes of the Thrush has mysteriously been sent for by their Queen. This is unfortunate for our heroine Dido Twite, whose journey back to England is interrupted once again.

Dido and a select few members of the crew, including the Captain, are immediately struck with the strangeness of New Cumbria. The people are distant and shifty and where are all the children? It’s clear that no one can be trusted!

Captain Hughes plans to see the Queen of the country as soon as possible and get the whole adventure over with, but things are never as easy as that in a Joan Aiken book!  Continue reading →

The Healing Hut – Neil Patrick (Interview)

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healing-hut-neil-patrick

A couple of years ago I started to work for a large allotment site. I don’t have the greenest of fingers, but do enjoy pottering about on my balcony with the odd plant. What I love about ‘my’ allotments is the history, the sense of community and the beauty of the site. Neil Patrick’s debut novel has similar topics at its heart.

The Healing Hut starts off as far from a cold, grey British allotment site as you can get, in sunny Australia where expat Kyff lives with his wife. His life comes tumbling down around him when he learns that his wife has had an affair. Shortly afterwards, he leaves Australia to attend his father’s funeral.  Continue reading →

The Moonstone – Wilkie Collins

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The_Moonstone

I was recently persuaded to re-read The Moonstone by a whole bunch of people on Twitter. They were participating in a read-a-long hosted by Lit Nerd and I kept wanting to join in! So I picked up my old and very battered copy (it no longer has a front or back cover!) on a cold November evening.

The Moonstone is the first real detective novel ever written, and indeed you can see elements of this story in many detective mysteries since; twists, red herrings, cliff hangers and seemingly impossible, unexplainable events. The writing is captivating, with a plot that digs deeper and deeper into mystery.

The story is told by a number of narrators; the endearing Gabriel Betteredge being my personal favourite. With his earnest, talkative manner, it’s hard to dislike him. Continue reading →

Night Birds on Nantucket – Joan Aiken

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$(KGrHqUOKpQE1qfIYeKuBNfvMuRyhw~~_35The third book in the Wolves of Willoughby Chase series follows one of my favourite childhood heroines, Dido Twite. This is the first book (of quite a few), where she takes over as the main protagonist and she is simply brilliant.

Dido wakes up after a long sleep to find herself on a whaling ship with an odd captain who has a strange obsession with a pink whale. Although longing to get home to England, she promises Captain Casket that she will look after his timid daughter, Dutiful Penitence (as Dido would say, “glad I wasn’t saddled with such a handle!”) on the island of Nantucket.

However all is not right on the island, and Dido once again finds herself at the centre of a Hanoverian plot to blow up the King in England. Continue reading →

Little Princes – Conor Grennan

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Little PrincesI often like to read books about places I have visited. So, after my amazing trip there last year, I was on the look out for a book set in Nepal. It was the colourful front cover that first attracted me to Little Princes, and the fact that the story sounded uplifting.

Finishing the final pages of Little Princes while sipping ‘milk tea’ which I bought on a souvenir shopping spree in Kathmandu, I felt a real craving to go back and explore more of Nepal. Closing my eyes, the spicy aroma from my mug made the dusty streets of Kathmandu seem not too far away.

I was never really out of my comfort zone in my brief two week visit to Nepal, but Conor Grennan certainly was. Little Princes is his story about how he came to be in Nepal in the first place and how it changed not only his life, but the lives of countless Nepali families.  Continue reading →

The Enchanted April – Elizabeth von Arnim

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cover162045Last June my friend and I took a much anticipated trip to Rome and Florence. We met as au-pairs in Milan about five years ago and try to get back to our favourite country as often as we can. The night I got back from our holiday, I felt the post Italian blues so strongly, that I desperately searched around for films, books, food, anything! that would transport me back to the wonderful country that I love so much. I was so lucky to find The Enchanted April. The dreary, grey and depressing London in the first part of the book expressed perfectly how I felt about being back.

Four women, all strangers, put their money together to escape their unsatisfying London lives for the month of April. They are all very different characters who are unhappy or unsatisfied in some way; excitable Mrs Wilkins, kindhearted Mrs Arbuthnot, grumpy Mrs Fisher and the beautiful Lady Catherine.  Continue reading →

Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief – Rick Riordan

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9780141346809I bought this for my younger brother as a present but was so intrigued to see how Riordan would bring the Greek Gods into the modern day, that I decided to give it a go myself.

At first I quite enjoyed the writing style and pace of Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief. Riordan gets straight to the point, with the first chapter being named “I accidentally vaporize my pre-algebra teacher” (who hasn’t wanted to do that at some point in their school lives?)

There’s no faffing about, it’s all in-your-face-action with an easy going, humorous narrative from Percy himself. With his natural way of speaking and everyday problems (on top of the extraordinary problems you get from having a God for a father), I imagine kids can relate to Percy.  Continue reading →

Desert Flower – Waris Dirie

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Desert Flower Waris DirieI first heard about Waris Dirie on Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour. From nomad to supermodel, Bond Girl to human rights campaigner, her story made me stop what I was doing, sit down and listen in disbelief.

The book opens in her home country, Somalia. Her upbringing there was about as different from mine as you can get. She lived a very simple, but hard life in the desert with her mother, father and siblings. Waris loved parts of her childhood, especially her family and the way of life; always on the move to find water, looking after the animals and caring for her younger siblings. However, there were certain things that she did not understand and her rebelliousness sometimes got her into trouble. The final straw came when, while still only a child, her father tried to force her into a marriage with a much older man. To escape this unwanted match, Waris decided to run away from home. She always had a feeling that she was destined to have a different life. And she was right. Continue reading →