Apologies for a very brief post this month. I did have a post ready with comments on the two books I read this month but for some reason it disappeared into the ether when I pasted it to the forum . Nothing has enabled me to recover it so I have decided to cut my losses and keep the books for a future thread as to be honest I can’t face rewriting the post at the moment. The books were ‘ The Windermere Witness’ by Rebecca Tope and ‘ Spider Bones’ by Kathy Reichs.
For those new the Reading the 2 monthly editions are posted on the 1st and the 16th of the month and I tag a selection of random contributors.
It just remains for me to thank you all for your responses. They make it so worth while. Every contribution is valued and plays it’s part in keeping our thread alive so please take a few minutes to tell us what you’ve enjoyed or otherwise this month. A special thank you to those stalwarts who check in every month without fail. You are the bedrock of the thread. That is always clear when I am tagging. Your contributions are there every month without fail.
Apologies again and happy reading!
Stay safe, dear friends💕
Written by
wa2un7
Maintainer
To view profiles and participate in discussions please or .
The ability to reply to this post has been turned off.
I’ve finished ‘Fast. Feast. Repeat’ by Gin Stephens. A lot of interesting information and very clearly presented.
Now I’ve started ‘The Complete Guide to Fasting’ by Jimmy Moore and Dr. Jason Fung. So far it sounds slightly crazy to me with the ideas like ‘I decided to see if I can do 40 day fast’ or ‘I wanted to find out how long I can go without food’. It can be too much even of a good thing in my opinion 😊
As you can see there is a certain theme in my book choices 😊 I want to find out more about fasting, because I believe it may be the right thing for me as a life style, aiming to maintain the weight loss. I’ve always said that I can either eat too much or not eat at all, but I struggle to eat in moderation. It seems therefore possible to control weight by either expanding or shortening my eating window, depending on how I’m doing. I don’t think I would ever go crazy enough to fast for days on end, but I have to admit there’s a thought in my head that some time in the future I might consider a prolonged fast now and again for health benefits. But not just yet, now it’s time to figure out the best daily rhythm for me 😊
No, the will of iron is required to stop eating - I definitely don’t have that. Not to start was always ok for me 😊 I guess it’s a bit all or nothing... This was always my problem with breakfast - if I eat breakfast, it’s as if I wake ‘the beast’ and I’m then hungry all day - that’s when the iron will would be required but it was never there. If I don’t eat in the morning, I’m completely ok until mid-afternoon at least 😊
I can identify with that, eat breakfast and I want to eat all day long. No breakfast and I am fine until 2pm As for fasting for 40 days, there is no way I could or would want to.
Those books sound really interesting. I've always considered fasting too, so maybe I'll check those books out - I don't really a lot of non-fiction to be honest but I should branch out.
My forays into non-fiction are usually biographies, but I also live to dip into “coffee table books”. My current favourite is Brigid Benson’s North Coast Journey, which is a beautifully photographed and descriptive travelogue, doing the North Coast 500 miles round the coast of Scotland. Wonderful!
I fully understand what you mean. I’m never hungry in the morning, so I eat no earlier than 12 noon, most often some time between 1 and 3 and then finish dinner by 8. I bet some people would find that not suitable for them, but for me it really is a relief and it works well.
Oh how annoying that your post vanished! I don't blame you for not wanting to rewrite your reviews.
I recently read All The Lonely People which to be honest has already cemented itself as one of my new favourite books. Essentially, the main character Hubert Bird is a Jamaican man who came to England during the Windrush generation. He speaks to his daughter Rose via the phone each week as she lives in Australia, and has been telling her lies about his social life in order to not worry her - but in reality, he's incredibly lonely. One day though she surprises him by saying she will be visiting in a few months, and so Hubert must race to realise the lies he has been telling her for so long. It was a heartbreaking book about loss, loneliness and how important community is. I highly recommend it. It goes between the past and the present which made it even more compelling as we get to see what life was like as a black man in England years ago.
I also read The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, which was also a great read. As you might tell, it follows the stories of famous actress Evelyn's seven husbands through an autobiographical type of writing. There's a brilliant plot turn at the end which I really enjoyed too.
I think she is such an interesting character and I almost want to re-read the book just to examine her in more detail. I really picture Rita Moreno playing her when she's older, and Ana de Armas playing a young Evelyn if they ever make a movie.
Absolutely. As a white woman I try to educate myself constantly about what people of colour have to endure, especially with that horrific hate crime that happened in America today. I think it's important to try to read books from all sorts of people not just the white male authors we read in school as well.
99p? I’m getting it now 😂 Just went to buy it and discovered there are three books with that title, fortunately only one at 99p. Then I saw it was by Mike Gayle, I read his Half a World Away a while back and it was a real feel-good story. So I know I will enjoy it.
Thank you for recommending All the Lonely People. I finished it last night and absolutely loved it. There were tears and I have to admit to falling in love with Hubert.
Oh I'm so pleased jd! Hubert is such a wonderful character because he's flawed and has this really deep rich life that we get to see - I think we all end up falling in love with him I'm going to check out some more of Mike Gayle's books soon as I really enjoyed this one.
Since the last edition I've had a week off work where I spent alot of time reading . I'm trying to read the books I already own on my kindle and not buy anymore so I'm reading through the alphabet.
I finished off Dark Pines by Will Dean. It's a Scandi thriller - dark and atmospheric with a great lead character Tuva a deaf journalist for a local paper. The writer is British but now lives in Sweden so the setting feels authentic. I'll definitely read more by this writer.
Next was my favourite book for a long time Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman. It's completely character driven and fabulous. Eleanor is socially awkward and endearing and I loved her and wanted to look after her.
Next book wasn't so great The Festival by Sarah J. Naughton. 4 women who have been friends since school revisit a music festival to celebrate their impending 40th birthdays. There's stalking, murders and arguments .Not that keen on any of the characters and it felt a bit like lots of books I've read recently. I finished it but wouldn't recommend it.
Then I read Girls of Brackenhill by Kate Moretti. A woman returns to the house she spent her summers when she was a child, and the place her older sister disappears from , following her aunt's death. A body is found. The story jumps back and for from present back to the summers leading up to her sister disappearing. I enjoyed it .
I've just started on Harbour Street by Ann Cleeves. It's number 6 in the Vera series and it feels like visiting a friend - I do love Vera and her team.
I love Eleanor Oliphant, one if my favourite books. I also like Ann Cleeves and am waiting for the next one in her new Devon series. I've watched Vera and Shetland on tv and loved them both.Thanks for recommending we seem to have similar taste in books. X
Hi wa2un7 thank you for hosting. I've just finished a book "Judith" by Brian Cleeve. Not an author by choice because he is male (I don't mean to be sexist). I find females write more sympathetically in Victorian saga's that I like. I found it on my book shelves dated 1976 from when I belonged to a book club but I really enjoyed it as his descriptions of London low-life and their Slums was compelling, and the love-life of Judith beautiful.
Sounds interesting . I enjoy historical fiction but funnily enough I don’t think I’ve read anything set in the Victorian era. It’s usually, Tudor, Medieval or Roman.. My son sent me two Roman ones by an author I haven’t read before so I’m looking forward to them. 😊
Thanks wa2un7. I've just lost an important email so know how frustrating it is. Love your banner picture and looking forward to your reviews next time.I have just finished a kindle offer, From Sand and Ash by Amy Harman. It is set in Italy just before and during the war. The main characters are a young priest and a young Jews violinist. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it and have recommended it already.
I have also read The Murder of Harriet Krohn by Karen Fossum. This is a Norwegian book also on my kindle. It was ok but not as good as the first one of hers that I read. Not gory Scandi but clever detective.
Now reading Starting Over by Tony Parsons. This is our book club book and a nice easy read for a change.
You can find some real gems in the kindle store as well as a lot of rubbish. That sounds like one of the gems. Did you find your email? I was up till after midnight trying to sort things out before I decided on the abbreviated post😊
I really enjoyed Spider Bones by Kathy Reichs. I haven’t done much reading lately. I am still listening to Frankenstein but finding it slow going .I have read Notebook by Tom Cox , it’s a bit different as it’s a compilation of his notebook jottings . I am looking forward to his next book which will be fiction.
I have finished the latest book by Professor Noel Fitzpatrick which was very good & sad at the end . Luckily I knew the outcome was ok but even so I was still in tears at the end.
Funnily enough I didn’t like Spider Bones which really surprised me as I normally love her work. I found the multiplicity of acronyms and settings off putting. However all reading is subjective and what enthrals one reader can bore another. Perhaps I just wasn’t in the mood for it.😊
Agreed! Cornwall is a complete no, no for me nowadays. You wouldn’t know it was the same author who penned the early books which were great! I’ve seen a lot of publicity for a book by Anne Cleeves recently. I must check if that’s a new one.😊
PS. Have just done so. ‘ The Darkest Evening’. Published February this year.
Hi wa2un7 , thanks for hosting my favourite thread 😊 I don’t know either of the books you mention, I’m afraid. I have read a second book by Diane Chamberlain this month, Big Lies in a Small Town. I didn’t enjoy it as much as The Secret Marriage, although both books touched on racism and the powerless status of women in the period of the 40’s in America. Both books have likeable characters, and I was eager to know what would happen to them, so both books were page turners, but Big Lies took me longer to get into because it kept switching from Anna (then) to Morgan (now,) and if you read at night, you could forget who was speaking by the next day! Both books to be recommended if you like Jodi Picoult style moral dilemmas.
I have been listening on Audible to Louise Candlish’s The Other Passenger, which also took a while to get into as it jumps back and forth in time, (and I wasn’t very keen on the reader either,) but the story eventually gripped me, it’s an unusual thriller, kept me guessing to the end and I really enjoyed it.
I read The Other Passenger, it did take me a while to get into as well but I liked the change in times (I don't usually but it was done well here) and the ending was sort of Gone Girl-esque.
Hello fellow bibliophiles. Not much going on here. After mentioning him a while ago I've mainly been re-reading one of my favourite SF authors the late John Brunner. In the 1970s he wrote several prescient books about possible social and technological futures. Stand on Zanzibar is about over-population, Sheep Look Up about industry/agriculture poisoning the Earth, Shockwave Rider about the social effects of networking computers. All these written around 50 years ago remember.
Other than that I've read a book set in the Isle of Man by Rachel Bennett, an author new to me. Little Girls Tell Lies starts with a 10 year old who finds a skeleton when lost in the woods but since no-one can find it again she isn't believed. But 15 years later the story ends up on t'internet and someone turns up who thinks the skeleton may be her long lost sister. You can guess how things go from there. It is and the slightly surprising killer is eventually discovered. Not completely enthralling but I did keep going to the end and if I spot her other novel I'll give that a go too.
Just started on a Lisa Gardner, Detective DD Warren book "When You See Me". A bit gruesome as usual. I'll let you know how it goes.
John Brunner's books have more or less disappeared from libraries now but most are still in print. But I guess you had to have been an SF reader in the 70s and 80s to really know about him.
I'm with you on Lisa Gardner. An author I know but not one I really look for. I'll pick up her books if I see one in the library but I don't think I'd buy one. The interest is all in the plot so you're unlikely to want to re-read them.
Content on HealthUnlocked does not replace the relationship between you and doctors or other healthcare professionals nor the advice you receive from them.
Never delay seeking advice or dialling emergency services because of something that you have read on HealthUnlocked.
As for fasting for 40 days, there is no way I could or would want to.
Fit is Fun!! Monday 24/01/2022 to Sunday 30/01/2022
Tenderstem broccoli fettuccine - delightful 
