feather_ghyll

A Most Uncommon Degree of Popularity: Kathleen Gilles Seidel St Martin’s Griffin, 2007

The title comes from ‘Emma’, and in some ways this is a comedy of manners, a different look at school life, friendship, working out what you want and need. The different perspective is because ( Read more... )

The Secret Country: Pamela Dean, Firebird (Penguin), 2003

This is Volume One of the Secret Country trilogy, first published in the 80s, and as it ends at a satisfying resting point, but with much left unresolved, I’m looking forward to finding out what happens next. Dean is the author of ‘Tam Lin’, which adapted and updated the ballad, setting the story at an American college in the 1970s, and which I rated very highly. (I’ve also read ‘The Dubious Hills’ by her, but not posted about it.)

Readers of children’s fantasy books will be familiar with the concept ( Read more... )

It’s been a strange summer for tennis, mainly because of the Olympics, which meant changing surface from clay to grass, back to clay and then to (American) hard courts, with the latter season being curtailed for the players who’d competed and done well in the Olympics. ( Build up and predictions )

( The US Open proper, followed by news reports and highlights reels. )

Perfect Scoundrels: Ally Carter Orchard Books 2013

First an admission and a note to myself, it was probably too long since I’d read the previous book in the ‘Heist Society’ series, so there were a few references to the preceding two books that I knew I wasn’t appreciating properly. (I checked and it was almost four and a half years ago! Definitely too long!) Still, I enjoyed this book overall, so it’s just up to me to get the next book more swiftly and read it more promptly.

I’ve pretty much said before that this series reminds me of Ocean’s Eleven, if Danny Ocean were a teenage girl. Katarina ‘Kat’ Bishop ( Read more... )

Continuing/completing the uncharacteristic run of sporty posts, I mostly followed the US Open via headlines. ( Read more... )

Bright Island: Mabel L. Robinson, Hutchinson

You make assumptions when you pick up the next book on your ‘to be read’ pile, some of them encouraged by its design and age. In my defence, Hutchinson boasts that this is published in the same series as ‘Christine, Air Hostess’ and ‘The Intelligence Corps Saves The Island’, which I’ve read, although I haven’t reviewed them here. I don’t remember being impressed by either. So, I prepared myself for some children, probably girls, having not entirely credible adventures on an island. Well, it’s always salutary and a pleasure to have assumptions smashed to smithereens by something far better.

( Read more... )

Strawberry Girls: Helen Milecete Duffus Jarrold’s

I’m always interested to read an American Girls Own book. This is set when ( Read more... )

Rose in Bloom – A Sequel to “Eight Cousins”: Louisa M. Alcott, Sampson Low

There’s a picture on the front of my copy of an anachronistic girl (dressed for the period in which this book was published, and one period appropriate illustration before the story begins, which is of an event from the last chapter. I disapprove of both.

In between this sequel and ‘Eight Cousins’ (reviewed here), Rose, her uncle and Phebe, ( Read more... )

It's well over a month and a half since I posted last, but in that time, I haven't read much of the type of thing I'd post about here. In fact, one of the things about these holidays I was most excited about was the opportunity to read books from beginning to end, so there ought to be more posts to come!

For now, I have an actual review:

The Returning Tide: Liz Fenwick. Orion, 2017

This is the fifth novel in Fenwick’s ‘Cornwall’ series. ( Read more... )

(Lightly edited 6/8/19.)

Campfire Girls in the Country (or The Secret Aunt Hannah Forgot): Stella M. Francis

( Read more... )

Doctor Noreen: E.E. Ellsworth

( Read more... )

The Mascotte of Sunnydale: E.L. Haverfield

( Read more... )


Of the three, I preferred the latter.

There was another book that I read over my Easter holidays that I want to review, but it deserves a post of its own.