Just finished reading three books I’d been looking forward to, and none of them wholly pleased me.
What I Was, Meg Rosoff – All about a boy called Hilary (bless) who goes to a British boarding school and becomes a bit obsessed with another young boy called Finn, who lives by himself in a little hut [...]
Archive for February, 2009
Three books about dumb kids
Posted in 3 Stars, tagged boarding schools, go off to live, Meg Rosoff, Michael Frayn, Michael Marshall Smith, Spies, The Servants, What I Was, World Wars on February 24, 2009 | 4 Comments »
The Fire Fighter, Francis Cottam
Posted in 2 Stars, Heard about from elsewhere, Picked up randomly, tagged early efforts, Francis Cottam, read the end, The Fire Fighter, World Wars on February 22, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
The Fire Fighter is about a guy who is good at putting out fires, so good in fact that he gets taken away from the front in Africa, and has to come back to London and protect these five buildings in London, during the Blitz. He is not best pleased about this as it’s not [...]
Joan Wyndham
Posted in Misc., tagged diaries, Joan Wyndham, World Wars on February 16, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Holy God, how have I lived my life without Joan Wyndham? I’m reading the first volume of her diaries that she kept during World War II, Love Lessons, and I am seriously thinking about stealing this book from the library and keeping it forever. (I won’t though of course.) She charms me.
Poor darling Jo, I [...]
Joy Street: A Wartime Romance in Letters, ed. Michael T. Wise
Posted in 3 Stars, Picked up randomly, tagged Joy Street, letters, Michael T. Wise, romance, World Wars on February 15, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I love reading other people’s letters. It is probably the fault of the Jolly Postman. (Incidentally, Allan and Janet Ahlberg rocked my world as a little kid, and I only wish I’d known their names so I could have investigated their other books that were not Jolly Postman or Each Peach Pear Plum.) I think [...]
Broadcasts from the Blitz: How Edward R. Murrow Helped Lead America Into War, Philip Seib
Posted in 4 Stars, Picked up randomly, tagged Broadcasts from the Blitz, Edward Murrow, people I, people I truly admire, Philip Seib, World Wars on February 12, 2009 | 3 Comments »
What a lovely book. I didn’t know Edward Murrow had had anything to do with Britain in the War at all, but evidently he and his wife moved there before the war started and stayed after it began. The Murrows came home to America in 1941, just in time for Pearl Harbor, and then they [...]
9 of 1: A Window to the World, Oliver Chin
Posted in 2 Stars, Heard about from the internets, tagged 9 of 1, graphic novels, nonfiction, Oliver Chin on February 9, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Meh. I saw this mentioned on Amazon when I was hunting for something else, so I got it out of the library and read it last night. I wish I had read my book about Edward Murrow instead when I was falling asleep. It wasn’t bad at all, I just never connected with it. There’s [...]
Just In Case, Meg Rosoff
Posted in 2 Stars, Heard about in a book, tagged for young people, Just in Case, Meg Rosoff, not aimed at me on February 8, 2009 | 3 Comments »
Meg Rosoff’s second book is about a boy called David Case who becomes obsessed with the idea that he is doomed. He changes his name to Justin as part of a general attempt to disguise himself so that his bad fate cannot find him; he makes friends with a boy called Peter; he has an [...]
The Children’s War, Monique Charlesworth
Posted in 3 Stars, Picked up randomly, tagged Monique Charlesworth, The Children's War, World Wars on February 7, 2009 | 2 Comments »
I feel rather smug that I enjoyed this book as much as I did. Nobody suggested it to me, I just got it on my own. Then I liked it. The Children’s War is all about two kids in Europe during the second World War – Ilse, living in Germany and Morocco and France, whose [...]
How I Live Now, Meg Rosoff
Posted in 4 Stars, Heard about from the internets, tagged dystopia, go off to live, How I Live Now, incest and rape, Meg Rosoff on February 5, 2009 | 4 Comments »
I will preface this by saying that I liked this book a lot. However, due to that habit I have of forming expectations when I read about things, it was also not at all what I thought it was going to be. Because I forgot about the whole second half of Nymeth’s review or something, [...]
