Sue Fairhead's Blog, page 51

A Rebel at the Chalet School (by Elinor M Brent-Dyer)

I finished reading my Armada edition of Elinor M Brent-Dyer's ‘The Chalet School and the Lintons’ at the end of last year, and was quite tempted to move straight on to ‘A Rebel at the Chalet School’ as it’s the second half, in Armada, of the original hardback.  However I didn’t remember it with any great fondness - I last read ‘Rebel’ just over ten years ago, and it wasn’t one of my favourites.

I’ve just finished reading it now; it didn’t take long as it’s a short book, only 126 pages. And ...

The Reluctant Widow (by Georgette Heyer)

Georgette Heyer is - and has been for decades - my favourite ‘comfort’ reading. It would be easy for me to read my way through all her Regency Romance books in a year… but I prefer to space them out, so as to give a gap of at least eight or nine years between each re-read of any book.  I’ve just finished ‘The Reluctant Widow’, a book I’ve read at least six times before. The last time was towards the end of 2011, and I’d forgotten quite a bit of the plot.

The basic outline - which I recalled ...

Happy Days of the Grump (by Tuomas Kyrö)

I had never heard of Tuomas Kyrö, who is a Finnish writer. I doubt if I would have come across his writing, but I spotted his book ‘Happy Days of the Grump’ at a church  book stall nearly a year ago. The title intrigued me, and as I’ve been trying to read outside my usual preferred genres, I forked out fifty cents to buy it. It sat on my to-read shelf for all this time, and I finally picked it up to read a few days ago.

The narrator - whose name we don’t discover; or if it’s revealed, I don’...

The Elusive Grasshopper (by Malcolm Saville)

In slowly re-reading Malcolm Saville’s ‘Lone Pine’ series, I reached the sixth, ‘The Elusive Grasshopper’, which I had not read since 2009. It follows on directly from ‘Lone Pine Five’, which I read towards the end of last year. Not that it’s necessary to have read that one first; but there are a few links that make more sense if they’re read in order. 

This book opens, unusually, in Paris.  Jon and Penny Warrender have been in France for a couple of weeks to improve their language. It’s wor...

The Way We Were (by Marcia Willett)

I have very much enjoyed Marcia Willett’s novels over the past twenty or so years since I first discovered her writing. I’ve gradually acquired her books over the years, and am currently re-reading those which I haven’t read for a while. It’s almost ten years since I read ‘The Way we Were’, and I had entirely forgotten what it was about, so it was definitely time to re-read.

It’s a dual time-line story, as many of the author’s novels are. It opens in February 1976, A young woman known as Tig...

How to Fall in Love (by Cecelia Ahern)

I’ve liked the other books I’ve read by Cecelia Ahern, so when I saw her novel  ‘How to Fall in Love’ at a church book sale, it was an easy decision to fork out fifty cents to buy a second-hand copy.  It sat on my to-read shelf for a few months, and I finally picked it up a few days ago.

The story is told from the point of view of a woman called Christine, who is in her early thirties. She runs a recruitment agency, where it’s clear that she goes well beyond the call of duty in her care and ...

Interesting Times (by Terry Pratchett)

It’s over twenty years since I last read ‘Interesting Times’, which is seventeenth in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. I recalled finding it somewhat bland - well-written, and with some amusing references, but really  not one of my favourites. I nearly skipped it this time, as my edition is falling to pieces and I didn’t expect to enjoy it much. However I’m very glad I decided to re read it, as I liked it much better this time.

The bulk of the story, as I vaguely remembered, is set in the...

Blue Like Jazz (by Donald Miller)

It was over twelve years ago that I read ‘Blue like Jazz’ by Donald Miller, and liked it very much. So it was more than time to re-read. I hadn’t remembered anything about it, other than that it was a fairly informal book written from an American Christian perspective.

The informal style is what struck me immediately when I started reading again. It’s unusually written, almost as if spoken rather than written language, yet somehow it works. There’s less punctuation than I’d like, and sentenc...

Ten Years On (by Alice Peterson)

I very much liked the novels by Alice Peterson when I first read them, and am enjoying re-reading them nearly a decade later. In fact, a tad ironically,  it’s less than nine years since I first read ‘Ten Years On’ but I had entirely forgotten the storyline. 

Becca is the main character. We meet her first in a prologue, in her university years with her boyfriend Ollie and his best friend Joe. They’ve been out for New Year’s Eve, and are somewhat inebriated. After celebrating with friends, the...

My Brother Michael (by Mary Stewart)

I have read and liked novels by Mary Stewart for over forty years. I discovered some of her books in the ‘senior library’ at my secondary school, and loved her writing style. She was one of the first writers of ‘romantic thrillers’, and while as a teenager I liked the romance (always very low-key) better than the thrills, I knew too that she was a good story-teller.

In recent years, many of her lesser-known novels have been published. When I like an author, I like to collect all their works,...