The Content Reader

This is a wonderful book set in England in the beginning of the 20th century. It is about a midwife, Violet  Dimond, who lives in a small town. Her husband is dead and her son has emigrated to America. Her twin sister Bea,  with which she has never been of equal terms lives nearby and is running a home for orphans. On one visit Bea shows her a black girl of 2 years that has been found on the street. Violet is connecting to the girl since she reminds her of her dead daughter and decides to adopt her. She names her Grace. The story tells of the difficulty to grow up in a small community being black at the time when people had hardly seen a black person in their lives. But also how difficult it is to be different. Prejudices and narrow mindedness is part of the life. But it is also a story about the changing times coming up towards the first world war. The poverty and the strife to survive the day. The story follows Grace, Violet's and Bea's lives. Things are not always wh...

I recently reviewed the book 'Love Me to Death' by Allison Brennan. I liked it so much so I threw myself over the rest of the books in the series (Kiss Me Kill Me, If I Should Die, Silenced, Stalked, Reckless and Stolen). The books are just soooo good I can't stop reading. The stories are absolutely fantastic, so thrilling with many different layers and I can't remember when I read such suspense novels last. Maybe the books of Henning Mankell can match. There you also have a story and a suspense that makes it difficult to put down the book. This is a series of books and like with the Sookie Stackhouse novels it is a continuing story that covers a shorter period. Where one book ends the next one takes up. That makes you feel like part of the family and you follow the development of the relationship between Lucy and Sean and their relationship with their respective families and jobs. It seems there is a new trend in writing series with characters that belong to a ti...

When finding this title on the Kobo site I got intrigued. This is for someone like me who can hardly do anything before breakfast... even when breakfast comes at 10 a.m.! However, just having gone into early retirement and finding that on the contrary to what I believed, my days have become shorter and I am achieving less then when I was working, I thought this was a good hint. And so it is. It turns out that a lot of the most successful people in the world (at least on the American continent) go up at 5-6 a.m., go for a jogging run, reading the papers, spending time with their family and in this way manage to spend some valuable time by themselves and with their family before heading for a stressful work. It sounds really good and I got a little bit inspired.  I do realise that the reason I don't get anything done is because I start the day too late and I spend around 1,5 hours breakfasting, reading the papers and e-mails etc. By the time I have dressed it is already mid-da...

It seems that every time I now go into the Kobo books web-site I find another book to purchase. Perfect with the E-Reader, then you can start reading right away. The summary of the latest book in the series of Lucy Kincaid 'Stolen' by Allison Brennan drew my attention. I realised quickly that this is a series so looked for the first book. I downloaded 'Love Me To Death' and finished it over two days. This was really a surprisingly good suspense book. It tells the story of Lucy Kincaid, her PI boyfriend to be Sean Rogan, FBI agent Noah Armstrong, other family members and agents. Such a book could easily become a cliché but Allison Brennan manages to keep the whole book within all limits. While reading I was thinking of good old fashioned thriller books 'noir' like the books of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Mike Hammer and filmed versions like 'The Maltese Falcon' and 'The Big Sleep'.  The story is really exciting and is moving forward...

Some years ago I read a book which has become one of my favourite ones. It is a biographical novel on Henry James called 'The Master' by Colm Tóibín. It is an absolute masterpiece and has to be read if you are in to both Henry James and Colm Tóibín. Since then I have read several books by him and 'The Master' really made me want to read something of Henry James. I can remember having read 'Washington Square' but not remember it (have to read it again). I was therefore quite eager to read 'The Turn of the Screw' when my Brontë reading group put this on the list. Since 'The Aspern Papers' is in the same Penguin book I finished both of them within a couple of days. The 'Turn of the Screw is a ghost story. A group of people are gathered in an old house around Christmas. They amuse themselves by telling ghost stories. One of the guests, Douglas, says he has the most dreadful story to tell, but it is written down, placed in a safe and he has t...