Tag Archives: Book review

Review: ‘Victoria’, by Daisy Goodwin

Published By: St. Martins Press

Publication Date: 22nd November 2016

I.S.B.N.: 9781250045461

Blurb

“They think I am still a little girl who is not capable of being a Queen.”

Lord Melbourne turned to look at Victoria. “They are mistaken. I have not known you long, but I observe in you a natural dignity that cannot be learnt. To me, ma’am, you are every inch a Queen.”

 

In 1837, less than a month after her eighteenth birthday, Alexandrina Victoria – sheltered, small in stature, and female – became Queen of Great Britain and Ireland. Many thought it was preposterous: Alexandrina — Drina to her family — had always been tightly controlled by her mother and her household, and was surely too unprepossessing to hold the throne. Yet from the moment William IV died, the young Queen startled everyone: abandoning her hated first name in favor of Victoria; insisting, for the first time in her life, on sleeping in a room apart from her mother; resolute about meeting with her ministers alone.

One of those ministers, Lord Melbourne, became Victoria’s private secretary. Perhaps he might have become more than that, except everyone argued she was destined to marry her cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. But Victoria had met Albert as a child and found him stiff and critical: surely the last man she would want for a husband….

Drawing on Victoria’s diaries as well as her own brilliant gifts for history and drama, Daisy Goodwin, author of the bestselling novels The American Heiress and The Fortune Hunter as well as creator and writer of the new PBS/Masterpiece drama Victoria, brings the young queen even more richly to life in this magnificent novel.

My Review

Biography in novel form. Not half bad either. The development of Victoria during her first few years as queen is developed and explored in a sympathetic manner and with skillful storytelling. Occasionally the biography breaks through the novelisation and it becomes very obvious that the author is dumping information rather than telling the story, but it only happens three or four times and barely detracts from the flow at all.

Definitely one for fans of Victorian history and Queen Vicky herself.

3/5

Review: ‘A Life Discarded’ by Alexander Masters

Published by: Fourth Estate

Publication Date: 5th May 2016

I.S.B.N.: 9780008130770

Format: Hardback

Price: £16.99

Blurb

Unique, transgressive and as funny as its subject, A Life Discarded has all the suspense of a murder mystery. Written with his characteristic warmth, respect and humour, Masters asks you to join him in celebrating an unknown and important life left on the scrap heap.

A Life Discarded is a biographical detective story. In 2001, 148 tattered and mould-covered notebooks were discovered lying among broken bricks in a skip on a building site in Cambridge. Tens of thousands of pages were filled to the edges with urgent handwriting. They were a small part of an intimate, anonymous diary, starting in 1952 and ending half a century later, a few weeks before the books were thrown out. Over five years, the award-winning biographer Alexander Masters uncovers the identity and real history of their author, with an astounding final revelation.

A Life Discarded is a true, shocking, poignant, often hilarious story of an ordinary life. The author of the diaries, known only as ‘I’, is the tragicomic patron saint of everyone who feels their life should have been more successful. Part thrilling detective story, part love story, part social history, A Life Discarded is also an account of two writers’ obsessions: of ‘I’s need to record every second of life and of Masters’ pursuit of this mysterious yet universal diarist.

My Review

I really enjoyed this book, as much a biography of the mysterious diarist as an autobiography of Masters and his friends during the five years he worked on the diaries and writing this book. I sped through it in a matter of hours, the writing kept me transfixed.

Masters is a sensitive biographer, disclosing new information as he learns it, and dealing honestly with his qualms when he learns that the diarist, Laura Francis is still alive. The writing is fluid and engaging, humorous at times and honest.

5/5

I’ve just started studying the life-writing component of my MA Creative Writing. My tutor suggested we should start reading biographies if we didn’t already to get an idea of the diversity of the form. I’ve read biographies in the past, but this was a refreshing change. It only took me four hours to read this book, so I started another one, before I decided to write this review. The book I’m reading at the moment is a biography of Queen Victoria, in the form of fiction. They’re different ways of writing biography but they both work well.

 

Review: ‘Body in The Box’, by E.R. Fallon

Published By: Joffe Books

Publication Date: 19th December 2017

I.S.B.N.: 9781912106004

BLURB

The frail body of a young boy is found discarded in an old cardboard box. Even in a hard-edged town used to deadly crimes, this touches a nerve.

BODY IN THE BOX is the first book in the Stygian Town mystery series featuring three very different homicide detectives.

Detectives Dino Copper and Terry Jackson have been partners and friends for years. Now a new detective is drafted in to join them: Rebecca Everhart. They must quickly learn to work together on the biggest case of their careers, the disturbing discovery of the ‘Body in the Box’, as it’s known by the captivated media and the city’s worried citizens.

The case takes the three detectives deep inside the lives of the insular Eastern European immigrant community and the world of unlawful medical practices. The case also evokes an eerie childhood memory of Dino’s, where a boy from his neighborhood vanished and was never seen again.

What appears to be a straightforward, modern-day murder case has more to do with the past than the present, and the detectives come to a genuinely unnerving — and life-threatening — conclusion.

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Book Review: ‘Nowhere To Run’, by Jack Slater

As usual, book received in return for an honest review. I’m going to do something I wouldn’t normally bother with but in this case I think it’s necessary, and add a content warning because of the subject matter.

CW: Child abuse, abduction, paedophilia, murder, suicide

 

Publication Date: 6th January 2017

Published By: HQ Digital

Format: ebook

Price: £1.99

I.S.B.N.: 9780008223588

Blurb

A missing child. A dead body. A killer on the loose.

Returning to Exeter CID after his son’s unsolved disappearance Detective Sergeant Peter Gayle’s first day back was supposed to be gentle. Until a young girl is reported missing and the clock begins to tick.

Rosie Whitlock has been abducted from outside her school that morning. There are no clues, but Peter isn’t letting another child disappear.

When the body of another young victim appears, the hunt escalates. Someone is abducting young girls and now they have a murderer on their hands. Time is running out for Rosie, but when evidence case relating to his own son’s disappearance is discovered the stakes are even higher…

Continue reading “Book Review: ‘Nowhere To Run’, by Jack Slater”

Review: ‘Crucifixion’s a Doddle’ by Julian Doyle

See, I told you I’d get round to reviewing a book eventually. Took me all day to find the energy but at last I have!

Publication Date: 1st November 2016

Published by: Clink Street Publishing

Format: Paperback

I.S.B.N.: 978-1911110385

Price: £11.99 (paperback), £3.49 (kindle)

Continue reading “Review: ‘Crucifixion’s a Doddle’ by Julian Doyle”

Review: ‘South’, by Frank Owen

Published by: Corvus Books (Atlantic Books)

Publication Date: 7th July 2016

I.S.B.N.: (Paperback) 9781782399612, (Ebook) 978178239812

Price: £12.99 (Paperback)

Book received from publisher in return for an honest review.

Continue reading “Review: ‘South’, by Frank Owen”

Review: ‘Haters: Harassment, Abuse and Violence Online’ by Bailey Poland

Published by: Potomac Books, University of Nebraska Press

Publication Date: 1st November 2016

I.S.B.N.: 9781612347660

Price: £14.99 (via Amazon.co.uk)

Continue reading “Review: ‘Haters: Harassment, Abuse and Violence Online’ by Bailey Poland”

Review: ‘Between XX and XY: Intersexuality and the myth of two sexes’ by Gerald N.Callahan

Published by: Chicago Review Press

Publication Date: 1st November 2016

ISBN: 9781613736548

Continue reading “Review: ‘Between XX and XY: Intersexuality and the myth of two sexes’ by Gerald N.Callahan”

Review: Strange History, by Bathroom Reader’s Institute

Published by: Portable Press

Publication Date: 14th June 2016

Format: Paperback

Price: $15.99

I.S.B.N.: 9781626865839

Blurb

From the 20th century to the Old West, from the Age of Enlightenment to the Dark Ages, from ancient cultures all the way back to the dawn of time,Strange History is overflowing with mysterious artifacts, macabre legends, kooky inventions, reality-challenged rulers, boneheaded blunders, and mind-blowing facts. Read about…

*The curse of Macbeth
*Stupid history: Hollywood style
*The secret LSD experiments of the 1960s
*In search of the lost “Cloud People” of Peru
*The Swedish queen who declared war on fleas
*Unearthing the past with the Outhouse Detectives
*The Apollo astronaut who swears he saw a UFO
*How to brew a batch of 5,000-year-old beer
*The brutal bloodbaths at Rome’s Coliseum
*Ghostly soup from ancient China
*The bathroom of the 1970s

And much, much more


My Review

Honestly, if this was supposed to be a humorous look at history I was only mildly amused. I only laughed a couple of times in the whole book. It’s a book that is part of a series covering strange facts. I can’t say I’d buy any of them if this one was an example. 

There were errors, most obviously the whole section on Easter, which aggravated me particularly because every year someone spouts the bunnies and Eostre nonsense (there are no surviving myths) claiming it’s all ancient mythology and then I have to hit them with a copy of Ecclesiastical History (The Venerable Bede) and again with Teutonic Mythology  (The Grimms), until they shut up. A book claiming to be about (the funny side of) history needs to be better than rehashing debunked rubbish. I may be being picky, but referring to the English and Welshmen who made up the armies of the Hundred Year’s War as ‘British’ is a misnomer; until about 150 years ago ‘Britain’ and ‘British’ referred to pre-Roman  people or the island specifically. The British didn’t fight the French during the Hundred Year’s War, the English did, and the Welsh were recruited for their bows. There was some pretty complex politics involved. 

And Joan of Arc heard voices because she was eating rye bread infected with ergot.
*bashes head against wall*

I’m sorry, I hadn’t realised how much this book irritated me. I like funny history books, the world can be a funny place amd history more so because the past is so alien, but funny, accurate history is preferred, at least by me.

Not recommended, although if you want a mildly amusing time when you defecate, this might do the job. I can think of better bog reading though.