The Content Reader

Christmas is over for this year. We had a quite Christmas here in Mallorca. Beautiful Christmas mass in the Cathedral of Palma to get a little bit of tradition to an otherwise rather untraditional Christmas. At least for a Swede. No snow here, just lovely sunshine, blue sky and around 20 degrees C. As you see from my December reading I have managed quite a few books this month. I also got two books for Christmas; Blå stjärnan by Jan Guillou - the fifth instalment in Guillou's family saga of the 20th century and from my geology studying son, Fossiljägarna  (The Fossil Hunters) by Björn Hagberg and Martin Widman. One of the big mysteries of evolution when and how 'the fish went ashore'. I love these kind of books and have already started reading it. Have a look at the wonderful book marks, also a present from my son. I see many of you have already done a summary of your 2015 reading. Since I expect to read at least one more book before the end of the year, I will p...

Having just read Brian Wilks book about Jane Austen , it was with great pleasure that I opened his book about the Brontës. Being part of the Brussels Brontë Group and, as such, a fan of the Brontës, I have read quite a few biographies about them. However, as with the Jane Austen biography, I like the way Brian Wilks approach his subjects. He manages to extract the most important things on the lives he is writing about. It does not mean that you feel that he has left anything out. Not at all. It is all in there, and all verified by his own interpretation of actions and happenings. I actually felt that I have learned more about the Brontës, although I thought I knew it all, by reading Wilks’ biography and his way of making us acquainted with the Brontës.  Being such a unique family they have managed to keep us spellbound almost 200 years later. They were a tightly knit group of people all sharing exceptional gifts, interests and ambitions. As Charlotte tells us:   My home ...

Yet, another biography of Jane Austen. This time published as an e-book by Endeavour Press . The book was originally published in 1978, but still feels very fresh. I have recently read three books about Austen, related to food and names in; Jane Austen and Food , Jane Austen and Names by Maggie Lane, as well as Only a Novel: The Double Life of Jane Austen by Jane Aiken Hodge. Although, after reading the books above and thinking I know Jane Austen by now, I was quite captivated by Brian Wilks version of her life. It does not go into too much details, but keeps it on a track which can be compared to a novel in itself. Beautifully written and approaching Jane Austen with a wonderful insight into the person she might have been. It is a personal story of her life and deeds. Like Brian Wilks says in the Foreword: "’It is a truth universally acknowledged that,’ writers are congenitally wired for communication. The evidence in Austen’s novels of her use of gossip, malicious and othe...

End of the year and I have treated myself to some very easy going reading. Allison Brennan is really a little bit addictive! Finishing Best Laid Plans  and continuing with the latest in the Lucy Kincaid series No Good Deed, I realised that there will not be another one for at least half a year. I therefore looked into her Max Revere series and hit another interesting series, of which there is a novella and two novels already out. Next one in the series will be out in April next year. No Good Deed is the ending of the story starting in Best Laid Plans. There is suspense on every page, and when you think there can't be any more...she speeds up the action to another level before the end of the affair. It is really amazing. You just can't let the book down until you have finished. At least me. Her stories are so complex, with many characters, but she manages to keep it all together until the very end. Starting on the Max Revere series was another hit. The first one is a novella...

Add caption Just found book #9 in the Lucy Kincaid/Sean Rogan series, which I just love. When checking which number in the series it is,  I just realise that there is already a #10. Aren't we lucky! Allison Brennan has written books about other characters as well, and I like them too, but this series is special. There is always a very interesting, quite intricate  story and the suspense is great, sometimes almost too much. Lucy is a FBI agent and her boyfriend Sean is a private consultant in computer technology. The system that he cannot hack into does not exist. They often work together on Lucy's assignments. Both of them have a lot of siblings and they all seem to work in the same business. A family affair one could say. In this story Lucy and her FBI partner Barry work on a case where the husband of a congress woman is found dead in a hotel room, in a town he supposedly should not be in. He is naked and it looks like he has been with a prostitute. Not everything is ...

I first came into contact with Margaret Forster reading her biography of Daphne du Maurier . So when I ran into this book, which is a story about her own family secrets, I was thrilled. And she does not disappoint. When Margaret Forster’s grandmother died in 1936, she took secrets with her to her grave. Just before she died there was a mysterious woman in black who visited her. She never revealed to her daughters what it was all about. At her funeral, when the daughters gather and discuss this mysterious event there is another knock on the door. Outside is an unknown woman claiming to be her daughter and asking if she left anything for her. After Margaret Forster’s mother died in 1981, she started to look into the history of her family. She discovered that her grandmother was born out of wedlock. But what was disturbing was the fact that she found her birth certificate and then there are no traces of her life until she reappears in the official records at the age of twenty-three! ...