Sample Saturday is when I wade through the eleventy billion samples I have downloaded on my Kindle. I’m slowly chipping away and deciding whether it’s buy or bye. This week, all three came via readers on Insta talking about their 2025 favourites. Continue reading
It’s time for #6degrees. Start at the same place as other wonderful readers, add six books, and see where you end up.
This month we begin with Shirley Jackson’s short story, The Lottery. Continue reading
Four elements in The Music Shop by Rachel Joyce stood out (and will leave me feeling fondly toward the story) –
01. It’s a book version of The Castle – local shop owners on Unity Street (somewhere in London) battle a property developer, who wants to demolish the existing buildings and replace them with apartments. Furthermore, Frank, who owns the music shop, only stocks vinyl. As CDs begin to take over the music market, Frank holds out.
“CDs aren’t music. They’re toys.” Continue reading
Cathy at 746 Books is hosting the 20 Books of Summer reading challenge again this year. As Cathy states, it’s the most relaxed reading challenge you’ll participate in (swap books out, change your target, do whatever). Continue reading
The problem with having a holiday that gives me plenty of time to read is the resulting backlog of reviews to write. With this review of Perfect by Rachel Joyce, I’m thankfully up-to-date.
Despite the title, Perfect is not a perfect book – it was however a perfect beach read. The blurb reads –
“In 1972, two seconds were added to time. It was in order to balance clock time with the movement of the earth. Byron Hemming knew this because James Lowe had told him and James was the cleverest boy at school. But how could time change? The steady movement of hands around a clock was as certain as their golden futures.
Then Byron’s mother, late for the school run, makes a devastating mistake. Byron’s perfect world is shattered. Were those two extra seconds to blame? Can what follows ever be set right?”
I was smitten from the opening paragraph which mentions both the year I was born* and the fabulous Eurovision contest – Continue reading
It’s supposed to be a Top Ten for The Broke and The Bookish’s Top Ten Tuesday but if I look back on my past Summer/ Autumn/ Winter/ Spring Top Ten TBR lists, I’ve never actually completed any.
So this time I’m going to be realistic. I’ve made a list of six. Continue reading
First Chapter, First Paragraph Tuesday is hosted by Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea – it’s is a weekly meme where you share the first paragraph (or two) from a book you are considering reading.
At the beginning of the year I made a resolution to every so often buy a book that I’ve never heard of before encountering it in the bookstore. Even though I’m currently on a self-imposed book-buying-ban, I did receive a book voucher for my birthday so yay, off I went to the bookshop. And I bought Perfect by Rachel Joyce. Continue reading