Book of the Week: ‘How to be a Tudor’
How to be a Tudor: A dawn-to-dusk guide to Tudor life Ruth Goodman 2016, 336 pages Setting: Tudor England Ruth Goodman is back, and living life as a Tudor. After a previous stint living like a Victorian (How to be a Victorian), she goes back further in time to explore how the English people of the 1500s lived. Recreating the conditions of the period (from how beds were constructed to the different type of wheat that they ate), she...
Book of the Week: ‘A Court of Thorns and Roses’
A Court of Thorns and RosesSarah J Maas2015, 419 pagesFantasyThe youngest daughter of a very poor family, Feyre is solely responsible for keeping her sisters and her father fed. She will do anything to keep them alive, including kill a wolf who may not be just a wolf.When she is stolen from her family by the wolf’s friend, by a monster, they don’t fight to keep her. Trapped in luxury, Feyre is plunged into a new world she doesn’t...
Book of the Week: ‘In a Dark, Dark Wood’
In a Dark, Dark WoodRuth Ware2015, 352 pagesEnglish Thriller What could be more fun than a bachelorette party? Anything, as it turns out. Introverted Lee, a writer who has lived in self-imposed isolation since a traumatic high school event, is invited to her former best friend’s bachelorette party. Although Lee hasn’t spoken to Clare in years, she reluctantly decides to attend. The party, which is taking place in an isolated glass...
Book of the Week: ‘Orphan Train’
Orphan Train Christina Baker Kline 2013, 273 pages Fiction Molly Ayer, a Penobscot Indian, is 17 and is very glad to almost be done with the foster care system, being bounced from home to home. She steals a book and has to do community service to stay out of juvenile hall; 50 hours of helping an elderly woman named Vivian clean out her attic.In 1929, when she is 9 years old, Vivian comes to New York City from Ireland, and soon finds...
Book of the Week: ‘Penguin Lessons’
The Penguin Lessons: What I Learned from a Remarkable BirdTom Michell2015, 219 pagesNonfiction In 1975 Englishman Tom Michell travels to take a job at a boy’s school in Argentina. During his trip he walks along a beach in Uruguay and is horrified to find hundreds of penguins who have died in an oil spill. There is one penguin still alive and looking at him fiercely. Michell captures the angry penguin in a string bag and takes it back...
