review

Moondial – Helen Cresswell

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Moondial

I loved Helen Cresswell’s writing when I was younger. She writes in a non-patronising, matter-of-fact way and understands what children want. Her thrilling stories are so full of suspense and her characters are so refreshingly realistic. The protagonist in the Moondial is no exception.

Minty is staying with her aunt Mary for the summer. While she is there, her mother is in an accident, leaving her in intensive care. Minty struggles to come to terms with her mother’s condition and buries herself in the mysteries of the haunted Belton House opposite her aunt’s cottage.

The setting is based on the real Belton House in Lincolnshire. Minty, who has always had a sixth sense for ghosts, immediately begins to feel the prickle of something mysterious in the air surrounding the house. This feeling is especially apparent in the gardens, where she finds a sundial.  Continue reading →

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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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 Foxed: The Real Reader’s Quarterly

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Almost exactly two years ago, I quit a job that I hated and had the very good fortune to fall directly into a work experience position at Slightly Foxed. I wrote about it at the time, but for some reason never published the post! Seeing as it’s their tenth anniversary this year, I thought I’d finally share my experience…

In the last two weeks of February (2012) my reading habits changed drastically. This is because, instead of reading The Tiger’s Wife, I spent all of my reading time devouring as many back issues of Slightly Foxed: The Real Reader’s Quarterly as I possibly could.

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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 →