Sue Fairhead's Blog, page 34

Strangers at Witchend (by Malcolm Saville)

I am so pleased I decided to re-read the ‘Lone Pine’ series by Malcolm Saville over the past couple of years. They were some of my favourite books as a teenager, and I’m delighted to have managed to acquire some ‘Girls Gone By’ editions that have the full text, replacing my abridged Armada editions, many of which were falling to pieces due to having been read so many times.

‘Strangers at Witchend is 18th in the series, and it turns out that the Armada edition of this was not abridged, but the GG...

The Beginner's Goodbye (by Anne Tyler)

I discovered some of Anne Tyler’s books when we lived in the United States for a couple of years in the early 1990s. But I didn’t begin acquiring some of them for myself  - mostly secondhand - until the turn of the century. I always liked her style, so when I saw one of her books that I had not previously come across, ‘The Beginner’s Goodbye’, at a church book sale, it was an easy decision to buy it. 

The novel sat on my to-be-read shelf for some months - and I’ve just read it in the past couple...

Behold, Here's Poison (by Georgette Heyer)

I’m surprised at how much I’m liking re-reading Georgette Heyer’s detective novels, set in the early or middle of the 20th century. I recalled that her plots were not as clever as those of Agatha Christie, but that her characters were a great deal better developed. And that’s what I’m finding once again; but being aware of that fact means that I appreciate the character quirks all the more, including some rather dry humour here and there.

I first read ‘Behold, here’s poison’ about ten years ago,...

Hide and Secret (by Helen Parker)

I knew Helen Parker years ago when she lived in Cyprus, so when I heard that her first children’s novel had been published, I was keen to read it. It took a while to get hold of it, and then it sat on my shelves for many months before I finally picked it up to read. I had no idea what to expect.

The story is narrated by 12-year-old Ruth who has been living in Cairo with her widowed mother for as long as she can remember. But her mother is keen for Ruth to go to secondary school in her native Sco...

The Jetsetters (by Amanda Eyre Ward)

I hadn’t heard of Amanda Eyre Ward, and would probably not have come across her novel ‘The Jetsetters’, if it hadn’t been selected for this month’s local reading group. It was a Reese Witherspoon book club pick, and looked as if it would be a light-hearted family novel. Indeed, the blurb on the back claims that the novel is ‘hilarious and deliciously sun-scented’. 

It’s certainly an easy read, not something I had to think about much, and I finished it fairly quickly despite never really engaging...

To be where you are (by Jan Karon)

I fell in love with Jan Karon's ‘Mitford’ books more than two decades ago when my father gave me the first, ‘At Home in Mitford’ for Christmas after enjoying it himself. I liked it so much I gradually acquired the rest of the books about the Episcopalian priest in small town America, known as Father Tim. I watched him learn about being diabetic, was pleased when he adopted a huge dog called Barnabas, and rooted for him all the way when he started courting his next-door-neighbour Cynthia. 

There ...

A Chalet School Headmistress (by Helen Barber)

I’ve loved the lengthy Chalet School series by Elinor M Brent-Dyer for about five decades now, re-reading them regularly and gradually acquiring more copies of my own. So I was a tad dubious at first when I learned that there were ‘fill-in’ Chalet School books written much more recently by a variety of different authors. I tentatively tried one of them - ‘Deira joins the Chalet School’ early in 2020, and was surprised at how much I liked it, and the way that some of the book truly did seem to f...

An Ocean Apart (by Robin Pilcher)

I discovered Robin Pilcher over twenty years ago; his mother was the better-known late Rosamunde Pilcher, so I was intrigued - and absolutely loved his first novel ‘An Ocean Apart’.  I re-read it in 2017, and have just finished reading it for the third time. Happily I had forgotten most of the storyline (other than the bare bones of the plot) and quickly found myself engrossed once more.

It’s quite a long novel, and it features a man called David who must be around forty. He is quite depressed a...

Persuasion (by Jane Austen)

It's been a while since I read any books by Jane Austen, and not far off two decades since I last read ‘Persuasion’.  But it was chosen for this month’s local book group, after a request for a classic novel, and I read it on my Kindle.

I knew the story, more-or-less, helped by having seen a BBC film production of it in 2019. But as ever, I’d forgotten most of the detail. And, with Jane Austen, there’s a lot of detail! Indeed, I wondered what I had let myself in for as I read the first chapter; i...

When you went away (by Michael Baron or Lou Aronica)

I had never heard of Michael Baron, but his book ‘When you went away’ was offered free for the Kindle ten or eleven years ago, so as the reviews were good, I downloaded it. Today, at leas ton Amazon, the author of the book is shown as Lou Aronica, with no mention of Michael Baron - so perhaps it was a temporary pseudonym. 

I finally started reading the book a few days before returning home from six weeks away, and finished it on my flight. It’s a very readable book with quite engaging characters...