Y’all ready for a fun, chatty Book Buds Book Club post from this month’s hosts – Rosie, Mim and Kate?! This month we read The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar – a novel so rich and multi-faceted that we had an hour long discussion about the many marvellous characters and themes. And, of course, a lengthy delve into the history of mermaids (naturally). Hope you enjoy!
Warning: Thar be major spoilers for the book within
With the UK release of the film adaptation of ‘A Wrinkle in Time’ just around the corner, we thought it was about time we posted our Book Club round up of Madeleine L’Engle’s classic children’s book. A sci-fi adventure that has stood the test of time, being first published in 1962, the buds actually had pretty similar views on this month’s choice; it had a lot of potential, with it’s whimsical characters, imaginative setting and intriguing set-up, but unfortunately never quite packed the punches that it promised to deliver. Read on for our full discussion!
First thing first, Happy Galentine’s Day (and Happy Pancake Day – what a great combination)! You may remember that Mim picked out a few of her fave female friendship focused reads last year on this most blessed day of Galentine’s, so this year I thought I have a go too. Like Mim, I ended up finding this way more of a struggle than I thought it would be! Female friendship is really underrepresented in adult fiction, where female characters are more often surrounded by a cast of men, whether they’re romantic interests or not. Children’s and YA lit seem to be a little more populous with gal pals – probably because their characters are less occupied with romantic partners or their co-workers in a male dominated workplace – but as I’m not a wide reader of either I’m going to stick to what I know and the few gems I have found.
Hello friends! Today we’re trying out a new format called ‘Recommend to a Friend,’ where one Bud recommends something that they think another Bud will enjoy, and we see if it’s a match made in heaven or a hellish experience they’d rather forget (hopefully the former!) I lent my collection of ‘Ms Marvel’ comics (Volumes 1 – 5) to Elen and Kate, so let’s see how they fared with them!
For our extra spoopy Halloween Book Club special, we all read the first volume of ‘Spell on Wheels,’ a new comic book series about three young witches living and practising magic in America. In this story arc, their house is broken into, and various magical and sentimental items stolen, leading to a cross-country road trip to reclaim what is rightfully theirs and take down the thief before the thief takes THEM down. Let’s get crack-a-lackin!
Welcome to our latest book club so far! (We’re gonna work on it guys) For September we read a classic adventure story Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. We follow our intrepid protagonist Jim Hawkins on a treasure hunt to a desert island during which he encounters pirates, maroons and lots and lots of treasure. This high seas tale created many of the pirate tropes we all recognise today and is probably best remembered for its villain the legendary Long John Silver. But does this classic live up to our expectations? Let’s find out!
Happy August, friends! For this month’s book club we decided to read A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess. A nice, light summer read, wouldn’t you say?! This disturbing novel lead to some quite polarising views amongst the buds, so read on to see what we all thought!
Hi everyone! For this month’s book club we decided to read Agatha Christie’s classic ‘The Murder of Roger Ackroyd’. We have a good mix of Christie veterans and newbies amongst the Book Buds so we had quite the discussion! So settle in, make yourself a cuppa and maybe grab a finger sandwich or two or a nice scone, and let’s get stuck in, shall we?
WARNING, THERE BE MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD. Unavoidable with a murder mystery unfortunately. Read the novel then read on!
Da da daah! Tie In Tuesday is back!
I’ve been a little less than active on the blogging front lately, but super active active on the reading front, so I’ve built up a small backlog of tie ins for review. Thus, I’m pairing these two together, for, despite being written thirty years apart, they share many similarities.
by Kate
I read twelve books in January, which is a personal best, with an average rating of 4.5 stars – so it was an extremely good reading month for me. Below are mini reviews for each book (excluding book club picks and ones with longer reviews to come).
Rip Van Winkle and Other Stories by Washington Irving
This is a collection of short stories, each of which is supposedly based on an element of Dutch-American folklore. My least favourite story was actually the title one, I felt it was quite anecdotal and a little bit misogynist – we’re supposed to feel sorry for Rip because his wife is always mad at him, but if he could be bothered to help around the house she wouldn’t be! I enjoyed ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’ the most as this was the story that felt most true to the folkloric nature of the stories, whilst also providing a ‘rational’ explanation. The folklore aspect was definitely my favourite part as I haven’t read many American legends before.
Book Buds 