Book Loving Blog

 I have to say after seeing this book recommended in various magazines, it was initially the art work of tangerines on the cover that attracted me. When I saw this book in my little local library I couldn't believe my luck as usually I would have to order a novel in from other libraries. I snatched it up there and then and after two to three weeks of reading I have many thoughts...  The plot is at once cozy and sad. Set in 1950's suburban London it follows Jean, a 40 year old reporter for a local paper who leads a very simple life. Due to her elderly Mother not wishing to venture out of their house, it presents Jean missing social interactions with her work colleagues and corralled to a 5pm curfew in order to cook tea and help her Mother to wash her hair every day.  The monotony changes however, when a member of the public writes in as a response to a story claiming that they have had a 'virgin' birth. As Jean resolves to uncover the truth behind the statement she sees ...

I am writing this post after an unprecedented hot spell, with the sliding sash window open and cool air radiating in. I feel refreshed and finally ready to write what I think of A moveable Feast .  Having read A Farewell To Arms when I was about nineteen, I knew that I was inspired and enraptured by Hemmingway's long-sentenced street of consciousness style, consisting of very little dialogue and lots of description. The description Hemmingway uses is not translucent and unnecessary, but practical and the very basis upon which the narrative is so rich.  This wonderful novel is fictional but is based on the experiences and memories of Hemmingway in his twenties, whilst married to his first wife Hadley and living in Paris. It was a novel published in 1964 and published posthumously after Hemmingway's death three years earlier and is the culmination of his early diaries and memories he kept during this time. The book features real life people who encountered or was friends with, ...

 Whilst everyone and their dog became enchanted by the portrayal of Connell and Marianne when Normal People was realised as a TV adaptation at the start of lockdown, I remember hearing mixed reviews about the book. Some liked the medium, some just couldn't get on board with the writing style. As someone who watched the TV adaptation long before I picked up this book, I can remember wondering just how the narrative could have ever lent itself to book-form.  The story is so simple yet so brilliant and captures two teens on their journey's out of sixth-form into University and just beyond. It touches on class divide, modern love, miscommunication, lack of awareness, and how some souls seem to touch and change each other irrecoverably. This is the story of 'Normal People'. Whilst Connell is popular and well liked at school, Marianne is on the edges and guarded. Whilst Connell painstakingly cares about what other's think, Marianne doesn't see the benefits of social ...

 Having read a Helen Forrester autobiography aged seventeen, where upon reading Twopence To Cross the Mersey , I set off to find Lime Street, the Cavern and the Liver Building. Helen Forrester captivated me then with her profound, raw and beautiful descriptions of 1930's Liverpool with its poverty, its bustling docks and its strong sense of community. Whilst this book was written as an autobiography (one of four), A Cuppa Tea and An Aspirin is a fictional piece, yet includes much of the same spirit, much of the same sense of reality as Twopence- did for myself aged seventeen.  A Cuppa Tea and An Aspirin was published exactly 30 years after  Twopence To Cross the Mersey as a way of I suppose commemorating and celebrating the anniversary of a set of much loved historical autobiography. As far as I understand it before this time there were not many written accounts of what it was like to live in the poverty of the 1930's docklands in Liverpool. Of infested tenement blocks, ...

 Adults is a book that I had seen perched in Waterstones at the start of 2020, just perched on a stack of other books and its straight angle shot of a girl and her dog on the cover caught my eye. Since library's are now back open to browse, I picked a copy up as soon as I saw it and I'm glad I did.  If you like the writing style of Dolly Elderton or Nora Ephron, you will like this book written as a satirical, sarcastic and intimate presentation of the thoughts of a woman called Jenny, a thirty-something navigating life in London.  The book touches on themes of social media, mental health, progression at work, friendships (and how these can change as we age), relationships and the juxtaposition of reality, verses what is presented on social media - alongside the anxiety that comes with that.  I loved: - The writing style/form - This was sometimes broken and included gaps or interjections and this really allowed us as readers to be inside the mind of Jenny who was ofte...