A few summers ago, Hubby and I took in the capitals of Scandinavia and the Baltic: Vilnius, Riga and Tallinn with their medieval old towns; scenic Helsinki; compact, cultured Oslo; and wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen. I’d had it in my head to go to Copenhagen ever since I was a kid growing up in the 1970’s … More Music and Silence by Rose Tremain
When I was a child I remember my mum having a blue and white plate. It was in the style of Chinese willow pattern but the stamp on the back said ‘made in Japan’, and depicted a kimono clad figure of indeterminate sex standing on an arched bridge over a softly flowing river, dwarfed by … More An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro
My RE teacher relished moral dilemmas. She’d take a Commandment, thou shalt not kill, or thou shalt not bear false witness, say, and then question us to explore their outer limits. Would you murder one person to save the lives of many? Would you lie to hide a painful truth? Faith Sunderly, the teenage heroine … More The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge
Bring Up the Bodies won both the Man Booker prize and the Costa Book of the Year in 2012, and is the sequel to Wolf Hall, which itself carried off the Man Booker Prize in 2009. It continues the story of Thomas Cromwell, Secretary to King Henry VIII. Henry is tiring of Anne Boleyn and … More Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
This is an ambitious distillation of social history using the rooms of a Victorian vicarage, Bryson’s home, as the ‘hook’, crammed to the rafters with interesting facts. Who knew that the youngest chimney sweep apprentice was aged only three and a half? Or that the boating accident on the Thames with the highest number of … More At Home by Bill Bryson
My granddad liked a drink and a sing-song, and most of family stories about him have him indulging in one or the other or (more usually) both. Once, after a day on the ale during the Second World War – he’d fought in the First and was too old to be called up for the … More Small Island by Andrea Levy (what Cathy read when she broke her shoulder – part 2)
whatcathyread 