Didsbury book group

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Based very firmly on a true story, the Surgeon of Crowthorne concerns the inestimable assistance one Dr W.C. Minor gave in assembling the first concise Oxford English Dictionary.
He was deeply interested in language as well as being a keen painter and a man of science.

Oh, and he was a paranoid, delusional, sex-obsessed, xenophobic murderer as well.

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Set in the infamous Salem, The Lace Reader concerns an admittedly insane protagonist and her return to her childhood home.

Amidst a tale of death, magic, lies and, for some reason, lace, she tells the reader about her past and why she’s been damaged so badly. (continue reading…)

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Ok, number two of two. I’ll try and get the next book up pretty smartest.

I’ve always wanted to read Ernest Hemingway’s books. I have a copy of ‘For whom the bell tolls’ glaring at me from my bookshelf. Must get round to reading that. Still, although this is a short book, it’s considered one of his best so a good start.
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I have vague recollections of seeing one of the many dramatisations inspired by this novel. I think I found it quite dry and pointless, as well as far from the ‘Horror’ it poported to be. I thought I’d give the book a chance though as, with very few exceptions, ‘the book’ is generally better than ‘the film’.

Blimey.
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I actually joked with someone the other day that this review could be called ‘Enduring this book’. Now that I think about it, that’s not too far off the mark.
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Wonderful, dazzling, amazing, breathtaking…. These are just a few of the words that I really can’t use when describing this book. We can add ‘sane’ and ‘coherent’ to that list as well while we’re at it.
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