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Reading date - November 2020 This is a book that I saw all the time when I was growing up and it always seemed like it was too mature for me, like I wouldn't be able to appreciate it.  I feel the same way about Chanel bags, like I'm too young to pull them off yet..but in time, it will come..as did the time come for me to read The Secret History. I had no clue what this book was about and the blurb also doesn't give much away.  In my head, it is the kind of book I can imagine Lilith from Fraser reading, dressed all in black, jet black hair with a stern look on her face and pearls around her neck.   See what I mean? The cover of the book is one of my favourite covers of any book ever, the font and design is totally my style.  I love Georgian houses, I have one of my own and this book is made for the house.  It's mature, classy and cool..I am two of these things but I guess the maturity will come with age. The book is about five weird students (Henry, Francis,...

Reading date - November 2020  This book was very weird.  I have never read anything like this and I don't think I will read it again.   It is the story about a lady who becomes a vegetarian after a dream where she is an animal getting slaughtered.  Her life gets worse and worse and at the end she is hospitalised as she has lost so much weight. Her brother in law is a predator who sleeps with her and films it for some reason. It is a very strange book and it left me feeling weird.  Parts of the book read like propaganda, like you cannot live a proper life if you stop eating meat.

Reading date - November 2020 This book is one that always escaped me as I was growing up. I was aware of it but I never read it.  I read the other two that people always refer to in the same breath as this, one being a Confederacy of Dunces (very funny) and Catcher in the Rye (also enjoyable).  I just never ever got around to reading this for some reason. Boy, am I glad I didn't.  I have read it now and I found it a total bore.  Now, it may be that it was popular in America because at the time it showed a glitzy life that some people in small towns didn't have, or it showed a descent into mental health issues (depression) that was not shown in books but I found it so boring. A girl goes from a small town to NY where she feels like she sticks out like a sore thumb, then she goes back home, fails to get on her writing course (whilst all the time thinking that shorthand is below her) and then falls into the depths of depression. I am glad that younger me didn't read it....

Reading date - November 2020 This book is sheer escapism and total fiction. It is a glossy view of servitude, it's a feel good book which would have been seen as nice read if you hadn't read books about the reality of slavery. It is basically the story of a slave who has to leave her child and become the wet nurse for a white girl.  The story follows both their lives, the girl having to marry someone she doesn't want to and the maid escaping and running away to be with her own family. I liked it, simply because it was a feel good story.  I don't think I'll read more by this author as it's basically just chick-lit, lacking the depth of a true connection between two people.  Everything works out for the best in the end and we know that's not how it worked out.  I am of the mindset that someone who has no heritage in something, nor has any experience can never write anything which will do it any justice.  However, I also know that the author has just written ch...

Reading date - November 2020 This was a strange book.  I can't describe it more than that, it seems to gloss over very serious mental health issues for the sake of making a story up. It starts with the therapist speaking to a boy at the school where he works, the boy goes on a rampage with another boy but is stopped by the therapist before he manages to do any damage..and then we find that the girl he likes has shot both him and his friend. Then it lurches to a story of a boy who is burning his own groin with fags because he is gay and doesn't know how the process the thoughts he is having about another boy at his choir practice.  We find out that the burner boy (eh? eh?) is actually the therapist. There are a few other stories which are so strange that you know they're made up. It fucks with your head which isn't what you need when you've been forced into a second lockdown, even though I read this the week before the second lockdown was enforced (November 5 2020). ...

Reading date - October 2020 This book started out very interesting, giving me an idea of what happened in the West household before the horrors of what they did to those poor women was revealed. However, the more I read, the more I got annoyed with the two kids who write this book.   The book is written by Mae and Stephen West, both of whom are totally products of their feckless parents.  Mae seems equally hyper aware yet also hyper in denial about what her mum did whilst Stephen is a certified nonce.  Check it, he has been working on the building sites and erecting his scaffolding on sites that haven't yet come of age. The book is very eye-opening, it goes through how the family grew up, with Rose getting on the game and working from home and Fred being really weird towards his female kids.   When suspicion was first aroused and the police came to the house to check the garden, for some reason, Fred came home late..it's my belief that Stephen knew more abo...

Reading date - October 2020 I read the Lonely Londoners a few years ago and I loved it.  I am the product of refugees and my understanding of the world is based always from that perspective.  Sam Selvon writes books about the Windrush generation and he writes it so well that I manage to find myself sharing their joys and their pains.  His works always makes me think how I would cope if I had to leave everything I knew and had to start life in a new country..and how hard it would be, and that is with me being able to speak English.  Imagine how hard it must be to do this in a country where you don't know anyone, you don't speak the language and the natives don't like you just because your skin is a different colour. This book is a bit more cheerful than the Lonely Londoners, it is about a group of friends who are fed up of renting and decide to pool together to buy their own place. I loved it, it describes them as normal people, trying to get money, trying to save and...