Amazon.co.uk Review
“Elizabeth Peters’ unforgettable heroine Amelia Peabody makes her first appearance in this clever mystery. Amelia receives a rather large inheritance and decides to use it for travel. On her way through Rome to Egypt, she meets Evelyn Barton-Forbes, a young woman abandoned by her lover and left with no means of support. Amelia promptly takes Evelyn under her wing, insisting that the young lady accompany her to Egypt, where Amelia plans to indulge her passion for Egyptology. When Evelyn becomes the target of an aborted kidnapping and the focus of a series of suspicious accidents and mysterious visitations, Amelia becomes convinced of a plot to harm her young friend. Like any self-respecting sleuth, Amelia sets out to discover who is behind it all”
Am re-reading the classic 1991 Australian novel
“Cloudstreet a broken down house of former glories on the wrong side of the tracks, a place teeming with memories of its own, a place of shudders, shadows and spirits.
From separate catastrophes, two rural families flee to the city and find themselves sharing this great breathing, sighing, muttering structure and begin their lives again from scratch.
There are the industrious Lambs, who wait and wait on the God of Miracles who seems to have foresaken them, and the gambling Pickleses, who prefer to deal with the mysteries of Lady Luck and her henchmen. Both aghast at the fates which have delivered them to Cloudstreet, and the baffling realisation that they will always remain there.
Together they roister and rankle in a divided house that begins as a roof over their heads and becomes a home for their hearts.
In this fresh, funny novel, full of wonder and dreams, brilliant young Australian author, Tim Winton, weaves the threads of lifetimes, of 20 years of shouting and fighting, laughing and grafting, into a story about acceptance and belonging.”
Source
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Re-reading it for 3 reasons:
- The TV show First Tuesday Book Club is discussing it early 2010
- A new 6-hour mini TV series is about to be made
- I wanted to (well, after I heard about the first 2)
Current book is the Vietnam War account that is
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The cover says: “The best book I have ever read on men and war in our time – John le Carre”
To quote from Amazon: “Michael Herr, who wrote about the Vietnam War for Esquire magazine, gathered his years of notes from his front-line reporting and turned them into what many people consider the best account of the war to date, when published in 1977. He captured the feel of the war and how it differed from any theater of combat ever fought, as well as the flavor of the time and the essence of the people who were there”
Purchased online from BetterWorld Books
Reading the WWII history book
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I understand this was one of the two main books used as the source for the excellent "Downfall" film. The other one, I have also recently read.
Purchased online from BetterWorld Books
Currently Reading the 1962 SciFi book
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Borrowed from the local library
Finished this book
Was one of the books used in the creation of the brilliant movie Downfall. Book borrowed from the local library
Currently reading the somewhat forgotten 1939 (!) masterpiece
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Borrowed from the local library. Thanks to Marieke et al on the First Tuesday Book Club for pointing out this wonderful book
Currently reading the recent ghost story book. Set in post-WWII England.
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Borrowed from the local library. Thanks to the First Tuesday Book Club gang for this one too
Read the science book
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Overall, disappointed. Could do with a decent bit of editing. It’s a difficult enough topic to get across, but to have Illustrations without explanations nor being referred to in the text… unforgivable.
I do like a good post-disaster tale and so when Cormac McCarthy’s book The Road was recommended to me, I reserved it at my local library.
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A week later and it’s here. Just started and intrigued so far. To quote Amazon:
A searing, postapocalyptic novel destined to become Cormac McCarthy’s masterpiece. A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don’t know what, if anything, awaits them there…
He, as you may know, wrote the book No Country For Old Men, itself turned into a searing and award-winning movie in 2007. The film of The Road is currently in post-production and due out around October 2009. What bodes well is that it’s directed by John Hillcoat, of the stunning and masterful The Proposition fame.
Yes I am reading two books at once. Or that’s the plan at least.
