B the BookAddict > Recent Status Updates

The women standing in cotton dresses in the freezing sleet for five hours adds a new dimension to the word 'cold'.

"Rachel was woken by a painting, or, rather the idea of one. Her first response on waking was anguish such as one felt when torn from any dream rapture and she shut her eyes again, breathing deeply in an effort to return to sleep at once and recapture the dream where she had left off."

From those first few lines, I knew I would love this novel and that I would read Patrick Gale again.

This is a re-read for me; I'd previously rated it as a 4★. We'll see if it lives up to that rating second time around.

While I always enjoy Hoffman's magical realism, the sisters' belief in their 'otherworld' feels just a little juvenile for me. Perhaps I have just become old and cynical:(

Lawson has a talent for placing her reader directly into the life of the main character. Tragedy has already occurred but I can still feel tension brewing.

Just when I had abandoned hope of knowing who was narrating the story, I started to have fun reading it. Actually, it is making me laugh quite often, the oddly amusing and strange predicament that Irving puts Juan Diego into, are so out there; only Irving can do this to his characters. I had started to have 'review stress', wondering how on earth I was going to summarise the events...

see msg 11192

It's sometimes hard to decipher between Juan Diego's dreams/memories and what is actually happening. The story jumps back and forth between Juan Diego as a fourteen yr old and as a fifty-something adult but as always, John Irving does not fail to make his main character endearing.

Interestingly, Juan Diego's sister Lupe has a wrecked and strained voice.

How many of Irving's character's have ruined voices? Owen in A Prayer for Owen Meany, Garp after the accident in The World According to Garp... I wonder if this is a vehicle Irving uses in his novels. It reminds me also that quite a few of his main characters are writers...

"To be concealed, protected, guarded, that is all I have ever truly ever wanted, to burrow down into a place of womby warmth and cower there, hidden from the sky's indifferent gaze and the air's harsh damagings. That is why the past is just such a retreat for me, I go there eagerly, rubbing my hands and shaking off the cold present and the colder future. And yet, what existence, really, does it have, the past?"

Large print edition.

https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_i...

Anne Aksew steps into Kateryn's world. A Protestant who was condemned as a heretic. She is the only woman on record known to have been both tortured in the Tower of London and burnt at the stake. She is also one of the earliest-known female poets to compose in the English language.

I would have hated to be in the Henry VIII's court and sphere.

I am knee-deep in Into the Wilderness: 'knee-deep' means about halfway thru! I'm starting to fret that I won't have Book #2 ready at hand, as it's coming via inter-library loan:(

Upstate New York in 1790's with Elizabeth Middleton, Nathaniel Bonner and their assorted Anglo and Indian co-characters. There's even a nod to Diana Gabaldon with guest appearances ofOutlander characters.

[image error]

[image error]

Worn out from Christmas shopping.

[image error]

Worn out from Christmas shopping!

http://www.express.co.uk/news/nature/...

My beloved boxers will never know of the shocking conditions some dogs are forced to exist in.

my much loved boxers.