Facebook – Julia's books

Facebook Reading Challenge – May’s title

The twists and turns of life are unexpected and as I sit down to write this blog, having not opened WordPress for about two weeks, I was presented with my last post and the photo of our lovely cat who, I’m afraid, has not returned. Seeing him there set me off again. We have no idea what has happened to him and, since it is now almost three weeks since he went missing, we are pretty resigned to his disappearance. The worst thing is the not knowing.

*Kazuo Ishiguro was interviewed about his new novel,* Klara and the Sun, by Jackie Kay for the Manchester Literature Festival

Alas, it happens and we must move on. It is already May 5th and not only have I still not completed last month’s book (Emily Bain Murphy’s Splinters of Scarlet), which is fairly par for the course, I haven’t even posted May’s choice! Just as well it’s a thirty-one day month. I must admit that Splinters of Scarlet is not grabbing me as much as I’d hoped. I’m only about halfway through and my daughter assures me it gets better, so I will post a review next week, by when, I hope, I will have finished it. I need to because I’ve got so many books to read at the moment – I need to get my book club book finished and read Kazuo Ishiguro’s new novel Klara and the Sun by the 17th – I bought a ticket to the online talk between him and Jackie Kay, which was part of the virtual Manchester Literature Festival. I was unable to watch it on the night it took place, but I can still access the recording, but only for another twelve days! I prefer to read a book before attending a talk about it, don’t you?

Anyway, back to my Facebook Reading Challenge – what was I thinking when I chose May’s theme?! ‘Something with ‘may’ in the title?!’ I thought there would be loads of books to choose from, but, guess what, there aren’t! There are a few though and there is one I have stumbled across which could actually be really fascinating. So, I have chosen Seven Days in May by Kim Izzo, and I’m pretty sure this would not have crossed my radar had it not been for my rather randomly selected theme, but isn’t that what reading challenges are all about?

Seven Days in May is a fictionalised re-telling of the story of the luxury cruise ship the RMS Lusitania, which was sunk by a German U-boat in 1915, just a few miles short of her destination following a transatlantic crossing from America. Almost 1,200 passengers and crew were killed. I have of course heard of the Lusitania, but I could not have told you anything about it, so I have learned a lot just by reading the blurb. This is author Kim Izzo’s third book, and her first (The Jane Austen Marriage Manual) was a bestseller.

So, having initially despaired that I would find anything decent to fit my theme, I now feel quite excited and I would love for you to join me.

Happy reading!

PS There is another book of the same name, a political thriller written by Fletcher Knebel and Charles Bailey II in 1962, which was made into a film.

Facebook Reading Challenge – November choice

I thoroughly enjoyed October’s choice for the Facebook Reading Challenge, the theme of which was children’s fiction. I chose Michelle Magorian’s prize-winning 1981 novel Goodnight Mister Tom which had me in tears in more than one place. Beautifully written, dealing with difficult subjects for children, in a sensitive and straightforward way. I’ll post a more detailed review later in the week in the concluding posts in my #KeepKidsReading themed series.

As it’s already 5th November, however, I wanted to post this month’s choice for the Facebook Reading Challenge. Our theme is a book from the new decade; you may recall that back in January my theme was something from the last decade. I chose Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl which I absolutely loved. There seem to have been some truly landmark books published this year, some of which I have already read, for example Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror and the Light, Maggie O’Farell’s Hamnet (look out for my review of that one soon), and some that are on my TBR list, such as the final part in Ali Smith’s seasonal quartet Summer and Elena Ferrante’s The Lying Life of Adults. There have also been a clutch of very exciting first novels, and it is one of these that I have chosen for this month on the reading challenge.

Abi Daré’s The Girl with the Louding Voice was published at the beginning of October, so it’s pretty hot off the presses (but happily already available in paperback). It has had some fantastic reviews and keeps popping up on my suggested reads from various bookseller’s newsletters I subscribe to. I normally eschew these as intensive sales pitches, but I think this one will be worth it. The main character is Adunni, a 14 year old Nigerian girl living in a small village, who dreams of getting an education and creating the life she wants for herself. As a young girl, however, she is considered little more than property to be traded in this patriarchal society, and is sold by her father to an older man in Lagos who abuses her sexually and where she is enslaved in his household. It is a story of how she escapes from this seemingly impossible situation through courage and tenacity.

This book is an international bestseller already and has had some amazing reviews, so it is one I cannot overlook. In these challenging times, when people of colour are having to fight for their rights and are doing so under the banner of the #BlackLivesMatter movement and where women cannot rest on their laurels, assuming equality has been won, this feels like an important book. Globally (according to the UN), little more than a third of girls receive a secondary education, one of the key drivers of public health and economic growth. This cause has been somewhat forgotten in the high-octane news environment we are living in right now, but the problem has by no means gone away. Perhaps stories can keep it at the top of the agenda.

So, I will step down from my soapbox now and go back to some quiet reading.

Do join me in this month’s challenge – I think it’s going to be another good one!

June choice for my Facebook Reading Challenge

My usual routines, including my reading habits, are all over the place right now! What about you? I have both my daughters at home from school and my son home from university, plus my husband working from home. Although we are fortunate to have enough space and enough technology to enable everyone to do what they need to do, there are times when we get in each other’s way. I am also a creature of habit and do not always find it easy to adjust my rhythms to fit with other people’s. So, other commitments permitting, I like sit down with a cup of tea to read at around 3pm most afternoons, just before the return home from school. But, now, that is actually the busiest time of the day in our household – everyone seems to be ‘clocking off’ and wanting interaction! First world problems, as they say. We are all well, work is plentiful; we are among the more fortunate.

At times like this, I find it’s the little things that are important, so I try to find some time every day, no matter how small, to do some reading. I have several books on the go at the moment – Ulysses (which I promised myself I’d re-read this year and which I spent a glorious couple of hours simultaneously reading and listening to on Tuesday, 16th June, Bloomsday), Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror and the Light, The Beekeeper of Aleppo, which I’m listening to on audiobook, for my book club, and which is amazing, and my Facebook Reading Challenge choice for this month – The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives.

This book by Nigerian writer Lola Shoneyin, was published in 2010 and longlisted for the then Orange Prize for fiction the following year. Shoneyin writes beautifully. I have only just started it but I already love the characterisation and the humour, although a more melancholic note is now beginning to enter. It is described in the publisher’s blurb as at once funny and moving and I can definitely see that. Baba Segi is a traditional Nigerian male, still following the practice of polygamy in modern-day Nigeria. He has seven children by his first three wives, but desires more and when he meets Bolanle, a young graduate from a more enlightened family, who are against the marriage, he thinks his wish has been granted. Not all goes to plan, however.

I am enjoying the exploration of the family dynamics – a polygamous household will be outside the experience of most Western readers – and how the relationships between the four wives are beginning to evolve.

If you would like to join me in my reading challenge this month, hop on over to the Facebook Group– there is still time! It’s a fairly short book and we are only just over halfway through the month; I might even finish on time this month!

How have your reading habits changed in these last few months?

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Facebook Reading Challenge – March choice

Has another 1st of the month come and gone already? It certainly has! Meteorological spring has sprung, though I’m struggling to believe it here in my very damp corner of north west England. It must be time for a new book in my Facebook Reading Challenge 2020. Last month’s choice was a non-fiction title, and I chose Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E Frankl, a short book for a short month (though we had Leap Day of course), but one which I read slowly and deliberately, such was the importance and impact of the subject matter. I’ll be posting my review of this very powerful little book next week, so look out for that.

This year, I am scanning the globe with my reading themes, conscious that my reading is generally quite western and written in English, so this month’s choice is “Something from Asia”. In truth, it’s hard to quite know what that means these days – must the author live in Asia? Should the book be first published in an Asian language? Asia is also pretty big and covers a vast range of cultures and languages, so it is, I admit, a massive generalisation. However, choices must be made.

I was tempted to go for Haruki Murakami – after reading Norwegian Wood a couple of years ago, I am really keen to discover more of his work – but that would be a but too easy. So, I have put a pin in the haystack also known as the internet and come up with Please Look After Mother by Korean author Kyung-Sook Shin. This book won the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2011.

Its central character is So-nyo, an ageing matriarch who has lived a life of nurturing and self-sacrifice, caring for her husband and children. She becomes separated from her husband on a train journey. So-nyo’s family undertake a desperate search for her and as they do so, they recall the influence she has had on them all. It is said to be about family, about mothering in particular, and about what it means to love.

This book has been an international bestseller, though I’m ashamed to say I had not heard of it, or its author.

Please feel free to join me on my reading challenge this month.

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Book review – “Gone Girl” by Gillian Flynn

I am not a big fan of thrillers – they aren’t usually my reading of choice – which is the only way I can explain how this book passed me by when it was first published eight years ago. I have also, in the past, eschewed big bulky paperbacks in favour of something a little less…popular! When I launched my 2020 Facebook reading challenge a few weeks ago, January’s theme was a major title from the last decade and Gone Girl was undoubtedly that. It spent several weeks at number one on the New York Times bestseller list, and sold over two million copies in its first year of publication alone. If you read any reviews of the book, you will see how difficult it is to write about without spoilers and that is something I too am going to find challenging here. I will simply start by saying – OH MY GOODNESS, WHAT A BOOK!!!

This book grabbed me by the throat right from the outset; I listened to it on audio (fantastic performances from the actors Julia Whelan and Kirby Haborne, by the way) and simply could not ‘put it down’. I got a lot of exercise in January, because going for a walk became an excuse to listen to a few more minutes’ worth!

Our two main protagonists are Nick Dunne, an out of work writer from Missouri, and his wife Amy Elliot Dunne, from New York, the only child of two psychologists who made a fortune from a children’s book series, Amazing Amy, about a perfect little girl navigating her way in the world, making perfect decisions among imperfect other people. Amy, a psychology graduate like her parents, also chose a writing career though hers is more prosaic than Nick’s, she writes personality quizzes. They meet at a party, get together, get married and share an apartment in Brooklyn, bought for them by Amy’s parents. They have a seemingly perfect life until a number of events force them to move back to Nick’s hometown. First Nick and then Amy, lose their jobs, a result of the shake up in the publishing world brought about by the internet. Then, Nick’s mother becomes terminally ill with cancer and his twin sister Go (short for Margo), asks them to return to help take care of their mother and their father who suffers with Alzheimer’s and lives in a care home. Finally, Amy’s parents run into financial difficulty and ask Amy to give them the money from her Trust Fund. It also transpires that the house they had given the couple was heavily mortgaged and they can no longer afford the repayments, so it will have to be sold.

Nick and Amy have nothing to keep them in New York so they move back to Carthage, Missouri, rent a modern house on a ghost estate where most of the properties lie empty, unsold since the economic downturn of 2008. Nick invests most of the remaining money they have (Amy’s money) in a bar with his sister.

Although I have set the scene here, as readers we are not in fact given all this information from the outset; it is drip-fed to us throughout part one. One of the most astonishing elements of this book is its brilliant structure. Amy disappears from their home at the very start of the book, on the morning of their fifth wedding anniversary, in what at first seems to have been a violent bloody struggle. The chapters are narrated by Nick and Amy in turn; his chapters are reflections on the recent weeks, months and years of his life with Amy in the aftermath of her disappearance, and his dealings with the detectives investigating Amy’s disappearance, and her chapters are extracts from her diary, going back to the time the couple met. The police have not yet found the diary. In this first part we learn much about the couple’s history, but also about their respective feelings about their relationship and about each other. As a reader you get drawn into the complex workings of what was a difficult marriage for both of them, but in different ways, their respective efforts to make it better and how these fared. I found myself constantly torn between the two, first on her side, then his. It’s a roller-coaster! Towards the end of part one, the inconsistencies begin to emerge and it becomes clear that not everything is quite what it seems.

I can say little more than that without giving away the plot, and the twist is such a breathtaking thing that you really need to enjoy it! I thought the characters were brilliantly drawn, all the way from Nick and Amy down to the police officers involved in the case. The book is fantastic as a straight-up thriller, but also says a lot about sexual politics, both within relationships and in wider society. The author does not take sides, and no-one comes out of it particularly well.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and highly recommend it, although chances are you’ve already read it! I’m keen to watch the film now, although I’m told, and I’ve read, that it’s not as good. They rarely are!

I would love to know what you thought of Gone Girl, if you have read it.

Care to join me this month on my Reading Challenge?

Regular readers of this blog will know that I have an annual Facebook Reading Challenge, a little group where I try to push my reading boundaries. Each month I have a different theme; last month, in the spirit of the new decade, the theme was one of the biggest books from the last decade. I chose Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl – I’ll be posting about THAT in the next couple of days. Phew! What a page-turner!

This month the theme is non-fiction and I was planning to take up a suggestion from a fellow Group member, when I happened to be in the bookshop and this title jumped off the shelf at me – Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E Frankl. It is described on the blurb as one of the classics to emerge from the Holocaust, a tribute to the triumph of hope. If, like me, you were deeply moved by the speeches delivered by Holocaust survivors at the 75th anniversary commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz last week, this does seem like a fitting time to read such a book.

And at the moment I feel I need some encouragement that hope triumphs, given the problems we are all facing. I’m afraid the departure of the UK from the European Union, and in particular the division it has wrought upon this nation, troubles me. There does not seem to be anyone on the planet at the moment capable of leading the world out of the climate crisis, except Sir David Attenborough, and he is 93 years old. As for politics, well across the world the post-truth era seems to have well and truly embedded itself.

So, I’m hoping that Dr Frankl will help me to see the bigger picture and give me some hope back!

It’s a fairly short book, for a fairly short month, so if you’d care to join me, you would be very welcome!

Book review – “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” by Muriel Spark

Last week I launched my 2020 Facebook Reading Challenge and promised I would post this week, my thoughts on the final book of 2019 – The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark. The theme for December was a novella – I wanted something short as I know it is a busy time of year and I never get as much reading done as I think I’m going to! In some ways, though, this does not do full justice to what is a highly complex, multi-layered and thematically dense piece of work. You simply have to read every word on its 127 pages and read them at the measured pace of how you imagine Miss Brodie might speak.

Dame Muriel Spark is considered one of the finest writers in English and one of Scotland’s finest writers. She won many glittering international literary awards in her life, and was made a Dame in 1993. She was married briefly, just prior to the outbreak of the Second World War, during which time she gave birth to a son, from whom she later became bitterly estranged. In the 1960s she lived in New York and in Rome, where she met her long-term female partner. The couple settled in Italy, where Dame Muriel died in 2006 at the age of 88. Quite a life!

I think the author’s background makes this novella all the more interesting because it is such an ‘Edinburgh’ book – I say this as a non-Scot, so please forgive me if you disagree! – or at least, an Edinburgh of a certain time (pre-war). Spark left Scotland quite early in her adult life and her father was a Lithuanian Jew. Perhaps this makes her acute observation of Miss Brodie and her other characters even more profound.

You will probably know the basic plot of the book; the 1969 film starring Maggie Smith is widely considered a classic. There was also a television series made in the late ‘70s starring Geraldine McEwan, which I vaguely recall having seen, though I was very young at the time – I definitely would not have ‘got’ it; although the book is set in a girls’ school, Malory Towers it most definitely is not! Miss Brodie initially cuts a dominant and impressive figure – determined to influence a selected group of pre-pubescent girls about the broader aspects of life which she feels the school curriculum neglects, such as genuine appreciation of art, social and cultural awareness and matters of the heart (or, more accurately, matters of sex). The strictures of the girls’ school, with its emphasis on knowledge, facts required to pass the exam for the secondary level, and the protestant ethos are seen by Miss Brodie (so she tells us) as narrow and not a true preparation for life. She tells the girls:

“I have no doubt Miss Mackay [the headmistress] wishes to question my methods of instruction. It has happened before. It will happen again. Meanwhile, I follow my principles of education and give of my best in my prime. The word “education” comes from the root e from ex, out, and duco, I lead. It means a leading out. To me education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil’s soul. To Miss Mackay it is a putting in of something that is not there, and that is not what I call education, I call it intrusion, from the Latin root prefix in meaning and the stem trudo, I thrust. Miss Mackay’s method is to thrust a lot of information into the pupil’s head; mine is a leading out of knowledge, and that is true education as is proved by the root meaning.”

At first, we may see these girls as lucky to have such a dynamic, interesting and strong female personality in their young lives who, for example, is prepared to take them to the theatre off her own bat. What we gradually learn, however, is that the girls are merely Miss Brodie’s ‘project’, that it is not altruism and genuine care that drive her, rather it is her ego. She manipulates the girls, in some cases to their tragic detriment, and they become a vicarious extension of her own ambitions and disappointments, particularly in the matter of sex. Here, she acts as little more than a ‘pimp’, though I am aware this may be a 21^st century reading of what may have been regarded at the time as less shocking (a sexual relationship between one of the girls and the married one-armed art master with whom Miss Brodie is herself in love).

In the end we can only see Miss Brodie as disappointed, disappointing, manipulative and manipulated, a deceiver and ultimately deluded. She becomes increasingly troublesome morally, as she expresses her admiration for Mussolini and fascism, and the various fates of the girls she once sought to educate are laid out before us.

This is such a clever book which I would encourage anyone to read. And read again once you’ve got to the ending!

Recommended.

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Happy New Reading Challenge!

The Christmas period never really ends for me until twelfth night – I’m a bit attached to this concept and I’m not sure why. From a Christian perspective I believe it is when the Magi are said to have arrived in Bethlehem, but personally, I feel more in tune with pre-Christian rituals, to do with celebrations of the solstice and the importance of honouring the human instinct for quiet and a slower pace at this time of year, so I am very protective of the ‘downtime’ that follows the hectic Christmas preparations. For me it means time for reflection and, since I am fortunate to have a family, time together to relax and have fun.

So, I make no apology for launching my 2020 Reading Challenge one week into the new year, and here it is!

This is my fourth reading challenge and it has been hard to come up with new genres, so if my themes this year seem rather random, it’s because I was having to think outside the usual boxes.

I’m starting the year, the new decade, with a look back at the 2010s and have chosen what was one of the biggest selling books of the decade, and which became an international phenomenon – Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. It was also critically acclaimed, although being at the more ‘popular’ end of the market, it wasn’t nominated for the usual high-profile literary awards. Published in 2014, I’m afraid I never read it; I confess I got it mixed up with Paula Hawkins’s The Girl on the Train so for years I thought I had in fact read it! I’ve decided to do this one on an audiobook as it’s quite long and I have some car journeys coming up this month.

The book that closed off the 2019 Reading Challenge (a novella), The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark, was very short so I don’t feel too guilty about setting a long one for this month. Look out for my review of that book in the coming days.

I hope you will join me at some point on the Reading Challenge this year – why not start this month and pick up a copy of Gone Girl. I am sure there will be plenty of copies knocking around in charity shops – it sold 20 million after all! If you’d like to join us, why not hop over to the Facebook Reading Challenge Group now.

Enjoy your reading year – there are some exciting titles due to be published this year. More of that in another blog!

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Facebook reading challenge – catching up and November’s book

Recent events in my life, which I have posted about here, have played havoc with my reading – if I haven’t been driving up, down and across the country I’ve been dealing with my mother’s funeral and handling all the necessary administration (it has been enormously time-consuming even though my mother had a fairly straightforward situation. It has made me realise I need to get my own affairs well and truly in order!)

I’ve listened to a couple of audiobooks (historical thriller The Ashes of London by Andrew Taylor and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale as I wanted to refresh my memory before reading her Booker Prize-winning follow-up The Testaments), but sit-down reading has suffered. As some of you will know, I have been running a Facebook Reading Challenge for a couple of years now, choosing a book with a different theme each month. September’s theme was a memoir and I selected Gerald Durrell’s My Family and Other Animals inspired by my summer holiday in Jersey and visit to the Durrell Zoo there. October’s theme was a science fiction novel, a genre I have only dabbled in, and I selected Ursula K Le Guin’s The Lathe of Heaven. I have only just finished both books (the Le Guin at 11pm last night!) but enjoyed both. My thoughts on My Family and Other Animals follow and look out for my review of Le Guin soon.

So now it is time top get back on track and announce the book for November. Our theme is a children’s book; we are winding down towards the end of the year, but I am not going to make it too easy, because this book is a challenging one – John Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. I have been meaning to read this ever since it was published to great acclaim in 2006. My elder daughter read it recently and has been nagging me to follow suit. She found it very moving so I am looking forward to it.

Why not join the conversation by hopping over to the Facebook group.

My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell

Durrell zoo — The secondhand bookshop at the Durrell Zoo, Jersey

Our visit to the Durrell Conservation Trust (better known as Jersey Zoo) this summer was wonderful and inspiring. 2019 is also the 60th anniversary of the founding of the zoo so it was a fortuitous time to be there. I have always been ambivalent about zoos (although reading The Life of Pi altered my perspective somewhat) but there aren’t actually that many animals at the Durrell Zoo (considering its size) and mostly the focus there is on protecting vulnerable species, and involvement in breeding programmes, particularly for some lesser-known and perhaps less glamorous creatures, such as the endangered Livingstone’s fruit bat and the Sumatran orangutan. I was fully won-over when I discovered that the Zoo has an on-site secondhand bookshop! All contributions to the Trust.

So, when the memoir theme came up for September in the reading challenge My Family and Other Animals seemed an obvious choice. It is one of those books that I was sure I had read, but once I got into it, I realised I probably hadn’t, but it seemed to be part of my consciousness. I did watch, and enjoy, the television series The Durrells when it came out a couple of years ago. The TV series followed the book very closely – perhaps that is because it is hard to improve on. It’s not particularly challenging and tells the story of how young Gerald and his family (widowed mother, and three older siblings) move from England to Corfu at the behest of Gerald’s eldest brother, by then in his twenties, the writer Lawrence Durrell. This is the first volume of Durrell’s Corfu Trilogy, and tells of how young Gerald’s love of nature was inspired and nurtured on the Greek island. The book is an entertaining mix of family mishaps (the characters are all brilliantly drawn and leap off the page), a child’s-eye observation about life and culture on the island, plus accounts of the friends the family makes, the animals in the menagerie that Gerald creates and the various adventures they all have, which invariably end in slapstick catastrophe.

There were times when I felt the book was of its time and of its ‘class’ and I was uncomfortable with the slightly patronising portrayal of some of the locals, who were overly caricatured for a 21st century taste. But I can excuse the book these minor faults because it was light, it was entertaining and it lifted my slightly gloomy spirits.

So, recommended, especially as we find the nights drawing in and the temperatures dropping.

Would you like to join us this month for the Facebook Reading Challenge?

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Time for a September re-boot

It’s been a busy summer holiday in my household; we’ve been doing a lot of travelling, both individually and together, visiting family and friends, as well as taking our own family holiday in Jersey (more of that in a moment), and getting my eldest prepared to start his new life as a university student later this month. The weather has taken a distinctly autumnal turn this week here in north west England, and with the children back at school it’s a definite reminder of the change of season.

Booker Prize

With all the “excitement” in the British Parliament this week it was nearly possible to miss the announcement of this year’s Booker Prize shortlist and goodness what a list! As well as the serious literary heavyweights (arguably celebrities) Salman Rushdie and Margaret Atwood, you have a literally heavyweight book! – Lucy Ellman’s Ducks, Newburyport must surely be one of the longest shortlisted books ever at over 1,000 pages. With other entries from Bernardine Evaristo, Nigeria’s Chigozie Obioma and Turkey’s Elif Shafak it is one of the most exciting shortlists I have seen in years.

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As usual I will set out to read all the books on the shortlist, and will post about that in due course, but I don’t think I have any hope of getting all six read by 14 October, when the winner will be announced.

Beautiful Jersey

We booked our family holiday very late this year and ended up taking a last minute trip to Jersey in the Channel Islands. It is a location that has never before crossed my radar – we just needed an easy, low-key week together that did not involve too much preparation or travel hassle (it’s less than an hour’s flight from the UK. You can also go by boat but this would have been much longer for us.) We had a truly wonderful time. It’s not a particularly diverse place, but it’s extremely friendly and welcoming. The beaches are beautiful and the rural interior is charming. It’s small so very easy to get around – we cycled or walked everywhere (slightly offsetting our guilt about flying) or made use of the extensive and great value bus network. The weather was sunny and warm, without being too hot (for us pale rain-soaked Brits!) And, historically, it’s a fascinating place. It was the only part of the British Isles to be occupied during World War Two and the story of the Occupation is told in fascinating detail at the Jersey War Tunnels Museum – brilliantly done. You can see that the events of over 70 years ago have left an indelible mark on the islanders’ consciousness.

2019-08-27 12.41.12 — ***Beautiful beaches and clifftop walks in the north of Jersey***

We came back from Jersey relaxed and happy and grateful for the time we had together as a family. It’s a destination I recommend highly.

Facebook reading challenge

I’m thoroughly enjoying my Facebook Reading Challenge this year and getting some lovely comments from fellow participants – so glad you are enjoying the books. I think we’ve only had one dud so far this year? Whilst in Jersey we visited the island’s famous zoo, formally known as the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust. Founded by author and naturalist Gerald Durrell 60 years ago in 1959 it is a wonderful, open green space with a relatively small but fascinating collection of creatures, that campaigns for “a wilder, healthier, more colourful world”.

Our visit inspired my choice for September’s reading challenge, the theme being a memoir – I have of course chosen Gerald Durrell’s My Family and Other Animals. I read this book many years ago and thoroughly enjoyed the television series The Durrells, so I’m looking forward to reading it again. The first incarnation of this blog was in fact called My family and other books in honour of the man himself and his work (I changed the name as it felt a bit unwieldy after a while). So, if you would like to join us for this month’s challenge and read along, hop over to the Facebook group and leave your comments.

I’ll back on book reviewing duty in the coming weeks. It’s great to be back!

What have you been up to this summer?

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