The Next Best Book Club discussion

About to start an How Far She's Come by Holly Brown. New author for me.

The Forgotten Garden – Kate Morton – 4****
In 1913 a 4-year-old girl is found alone on the wharf in Australia. In 2005, her granddaughter inherits a cottage in Cornwall from her grandmother, and sets out to solve the mystery of her grandmother’s origins. What a magical story. The action moves back and forth in time, from the late 1800s to 1913 to 1975 to 2005, and changes perspective from chapter to chapter. I was engaged and interested from beginning to end.
LINK to my review

Lilac Girls – Martha Hall Kelly – 3.5***
Using three different narrators, the novel tells the WW2 story of the women prisoners held at the notorious Nazi prison camp Ravensbrück. Kelly used two real-life women: Caroline Ferriday, a New York socialite and Broadway actress, and Dr. Herta Oberheuser, a German physician who became the only female surgeon operating at the prison camp. The third narrator is Kasia Kuzmerick, a Polish teenager who is sent to the camp along with her sister, whose story is loosely based on that of a pair of sisters who survived the operations they underwent at Ravensbrück. It’s good historical fiction and a decent debut. I look forward to reading Kelly’s next book.
LINK to my review

I'm celebrating Nelson Mandela's 100th birthday by reviewing a picture book about his life. Grandad Mandela by his daughter, Zindzi Mandela, (and two of her grandchildren). History made really easy!
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I finished Sold on a Monday. 3.5 stars . My review:https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I just finished Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate. Highly recommended!
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Left Neglected – Lisa Genova – 3***
As she has done for other neurological disorders, Genova crafts a compelling story that educates and entertains. I felt Sarah’s frustrations as she worked with occupational therapists to try to regain some of her lost functionality. I empathized with her inability to let go of the high expectations she set for herself. I thought the book was interesting and informative, but not as compelling as some of her other works.
LINK to my review

Crumb wrote: "I just finished Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate. Highly recommended!
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show..."

Another group is doing this one as their group read in October. I doubt I'll be able to wait that long ....

I just read Lauren Groff's new book - short stories about hot, sticky, dangerous Florida.
Link to my review

I'm just getting into:

Gorgeous, tropical 5★ illustrations of a simple fable.
Tug of War by Naomi Howarth
4★ Link to my review including some illustrations

I read Gods of Wood and Stone: A Novel. 3.5 stars. My review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I'm currently reading And I Darken by Kiersten White. I just love how she changed Vlad the Impaler to Lada the Impaler.

I recently read the debut of Aussie author Holly Ringland, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, which has the best cover ever!
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I'm reading "My Brilliant Friend" by Elena Ferrante. It is the first of a series of four novels set in Naples, Italy. It's terrific!

Yesterday I started reading I Was Anastasia. In 1956 the original movie version of Anastasia was released. I was 8 years old (yes I am old) and my 12 year old cousin was supposed to take me to see some Disney movie. Well, she wanted to see Anastasia and swore me to secrecy and we saw Anastasia. I fell in love with that movie even though I was only 8 years old so, of course, I just had to read this book. Very similar so far to the movie and the actual story of Anna Anderson who claimed to be the daughter of the last Russian Tsar.

Mrs Poe – Lynn Cullen – 2**
Historical fiction that focuses on the relationship between Frances Osgood, a poetess, and Edgar Allan Poe, and complicated by the attempts at friendship between Poe’s wife and Frances. Well, I wanted to like this. I just never really felt any love between them. I got tired of the longing and yearning and attempts to stay apart, only to be inextricably drawn together. I found the author’s notes at the end of the novel more interesting than from the novel itself.
LINK to my review

Karen M wrote: "Yesterday I started reading I Was Anastasia. In 1956 the original movie version of Anastasia was released. I was 8 years old (yes I am old) and my 12 year old cousin was supposed to..."

I'm looking forward to reading this one. It's always fascinated me.

I finished My Real Name Is Hanna. 5 stars. My review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I recently finished The Outsider and A Head Full of Ghosts. I liked them both.

Now I'm reading Dolores Claiborne.

The Road – Cormac McCarthy – 3***
A man and his son wander a desolate and destroyed American landscape after some unnamed world-wide disaster has pretty much killed off most of the earth’s population and destroyed the environment. I don’t need a happy ending in order to appreciate and like a book. But I do need to feel some sense of purpose to the story, and I couldn’t figure out what McCarthy was trying to impart. Still, there is something about McCarthy’s writing that captivates me. I like his spare style. I like the way he paints the landscape so that I feel I am living in the novel (even if it’s a horrible place to be). I think he’s one of those author’s whose works I appreciate, even when I don’t particularly like them.
LINK to my review

Oliver Twist meets The Godfather in my new favourite book! Boy Swallows Universe is acclaimed Aussie journalist and writer Trent Dalton’s debut novel.
5★ https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Review for by Robyn Harding
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I finished The Distance Home. 4 stars. My review:https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Paula wrote: "Karen M wrote: "Yesterday I started reading I Was Anastasia. In 1956 the original movie version of Anastasia was released. I was 8 years old (yes I am old) and my 12 year old cousin..."

I enjoyed it but I have to warn you that the timeline jumps all over the place but it can be followed. The author seemed to think that was the best way to tell the story????

I'm reading something I don't have to concentrate on so hard, Dishing the Dirt.

I'm reading Ritz Harper goes to Hoolywood.

Karen M wrote: "Paula wrote: "Karen M wrote: "Yesterday I started reading I Was Anastasia. In 1956 the original movie version of Anastasia was released. I was 8 years old (yes I am old) and my 12 y..."

Thanks for the heads up.

My Cousin Rachel – Daphne du Maurier – 4****
Oh, what a tangled web we weave …. Wonderfully atmospheric, gothic psychological suspense. Rachel is flirtatious one moment, and standoffishly proper then next. She seems callously indifferent in one scene and then solicitous and concerned about Philip on the next page. She’s both captivating and infuriating!
LINK to my review

Finished Not Her Daughter by Rea Frey
My review:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I finished A Key to Treehouse Living. 4+ stars . My review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I finished The Shakespeare Requirement: A Novel. 3 stars. My review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I was fascinated by My World on Wheels: The Posthumous Autobiography of Russell Mockridge. A great Aussie story of a unique international champion who beat not only the amateurs in the Grand Prix of Paris, he beat the professionals as well - so they banned amateurs after that! Then he won a couple of Olympic gold medals.

It's an old book, so I summarised rather than review so people can enjoy some of the stories. He was a good writer, too.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
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A more recent biography of him is Russell Mockridge: The Man in Front by Martin Curtis
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I'm starting The Keeper of Lost Things by Ruth Hogan.

I'm reading . Almost 100 pages in and I'd like to just keep reading and forget I have other things to do!

Oooo it makes me so mad! Stone-age indeed! Bruce Pascoe’s slim book Dark Emu: Black seeds agriculture or accident? should be required reading in schools. Fix history books.
5★ Link to my review

The Yearling – Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings – 4****
Rawlings’s 1938 Pulitzer-winning novel focuses on the boy Jody, his parents Ora and Penny Baxter, their neighbors the Forresters, and their hard-scrabble lives in central Florida in about 1870. As the fawn AND the boy grow to “yearling” status, they face difficult decisions that affect the family’s very survival. I loved the poetic way Rawlings wrote about the natural world; it reminded me of the many times I went camping with my father and brothers, and the lessons he imparted about plants, animals, nature, survival, hunting and fishing. I highly recommend this classic of children’s literature.
LINK to my review

I read Across the Great Lake. 4 stars. My review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

The Professor and the Madman – Simon Winchester – 4****
The subtitle is all the synopsis you need: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary. James Murray is the professor, a learned man who became the editor of the OED. Dr William C Minor is the madman, an American Civil-War surgeon whose paranoid delusions result in his commitment to an asylum for the criminally insane. And yet … Simon Winchester crafts a compelling non-fiction narrative. He captured my attention on page one and held it throughout.
LINK to my review

I finished Where the Crawdads Sing. 4.5 stars rounded up . My review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Started reading for my ftf bc Goodbye, Vitamin which turns out to be a fast read so I have stopped reading because my bc doesn't meet for 3 weeks and I'd like to remember most of it for discussion so I've started another Agatha Raisin (almost totally up to date) Pushing up Daisies.

Angela M wrote: "I finished Where the Crawdads Sing. 4.5 stars rounded up . My review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show..."

Great review .... adding this to my tbr

Someone Knows My Name – Lawrence Hill – 5*****
Originally published in Canada as The Book of Negroes , Hill’s novel tells the story of Aminata Diallo from 1745 to 1802. What marvelous story telling! I was engaged and interested from beginning to end. It’s a thought-provoking, informative and inspiring tale.
LINK to my review

About to star Neil Gaimans Neverwhere. He never has let me down so I'm sure I'll enjoy this.

Book Concierge, thanks very much . It’s such a good story. I’m still thinking about it .

I just finished Bearskin by James McLaughlin. Really well-written story, set in southwest Virginia mountain. A man, hiding from cartel, becomes caretaker on a reserve. He takes on bear poachers. I liked it a lot more than I thought I would from the description.

I just read National Parks of the USA an illustrated non-fiction book for kids, but interesting for adults, too, by Kate Siber. I included some of the stylised art.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

This year's Pulitzer winner Less was 5 stars for me

My review :https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Lord Peter Wimsey: Whose Body. By Dorothy L. Sayers

Oprah Winfrey and Angelina Jolie, eat your hearts out! Josephine Baker was a fabulous, internationally famous dancer, spy, and civil rights activist. I enjoyed this lively introduction for kids by Mª Isabel Sánchez Vegara.
5★ https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...