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Friday, 15 August 2025
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Thursday, 14 August 2025
#ThrowbackThursday. August-October 2014
An epic saga. The story of the Cleary family over two generations coming from New Zealand to Australia in the early Twenties of the last century and also moves to London and Rome. But the main story is told in New Zealand, how a family settles in a strange country and goes through all the hardships you can imagine.
An orphan girl is taken in by a childless couple and she really loves both her new parents as well as the school and the neighbours and everything but still gets into a lot of trouble all the time. The novel is both humorous as well as serious.
Wednesday, 13 August 2025
Top 5 Tuesday ~ Dinner Party
Well, I don't know Daniel Pool and this is the only book I read by him. But I guess you all know why this book is on this list. Exactly:
It's Jane Austen's 250th birthday on 16 December (see #Reading Austen project) and just would have loved to meet her. Of course, many many dinners in her books ("at least three courses" LOL).
Tuesday, 12 August 2025
Top Ten Tuesday ~ Cheer you up
Monday, 11 August 2025
Pierce, Patricia "Jurassic Mary"
Ever since I read "Remarkable Creatures" by Tracy Chevalier, I've been interested in the life of Mary Anning who lived from 1799 to 1847 and was the first person who discovered dinosaur bones.
And this was on my wishlist, so my son bought it for me. It was just as nice as I had hoped.
A thorough account of the life of a young girl who would become one of the most important figure in discovering dinosaurs. But, because she was only a woman, she didn't have a lot to say. Even though there were some men who acknowledged her, most of them only used her findings for their won. She didn't really get any recognition. What else is new?
From the back cover:
"Spinster Mary Anning, uneducated and poor, was of the wrong sex, wrong class and wrong religion, but fate decreed that she was exactly the right person in the right place and time to pioneer the emerging science of palaeontology, the study of fossils. Born in Lyme Regis in 1799, Mary learned to collect fossils with her cabinet-maker father. The unstable cliffs and stealthy sea made the task dangerous but after her father died the sale of fossils sustained her family. Mary’s fame started as an infant when she survived a lightning strike that killed the three adults around her. Then, aged twelve, she caught the public’s attention when she unearthed the skeleton of a ‘fish lizard’ or Ichthyosaurus. She later found the first Plesiosaurus giganteus, with its extraordinary long neck associated with the Loch Ness monster, and, dramatically, she unearthed the first, still rare, Dimorphodon macronyx, a frightening ‘flying dragon’ with hand claws and teeth.Yet her many discoveries were announced to the world by male geologists like the irrepressible William Buckland and Sir Henry De La Beche and they often received the credit. In Jurassic Mary Patricia Pierce redresses this imbalance, bringing to life the extraordinary, little-known story of this determined and pioneering woman."
Thursday, 7 August 2025
#ThrowbackThursday. June/July 2014
Palma, FΓ©lix J. "The Map of the Sky" (E: El mapa del cielo) - 2012
Sienkiewicz, Henryk "Quo Vadis" (PL: Quo Vadis) - 1895
This is a surprisingly easy book to read with an astonishing story and a lot of historical background. I have read other books about the early Christians in Rome and I have always been fascinated by them.
Wednesday, 6 August 2025
Barbery, Muriel "Une Rose Seule"
Barbery, Muriel "A Single Rose" (French: Une Rose Seule) - 2020
I read Muriel Barbery's "The Elegance of the Hedgehog" and found it truly beautiful.
This book was recommended to me as a lovely, light French book. Well, it was light, but perhaps a bit too long-winded for me. Asian thinking is foreign to me, I'm not a yoga or Zen fan, and I can't empathize with myself as much as is often desired.
The author and her protagonist certainly succeeded in doing this, but it wasn't really comprehensible to me. The first few chapters are all about landscapes, flowers, food and drink, temples, etc. I also couldn't warm to Rose, who only thawed out a bit towards the end.
And although I normally enjoy reading philosophical books, this was a bit too much of a good thing for me, too forced.
A Japanese story, a fairy tale, or a fable, was interspersed between the chapters. I found some of them interesting, while others made me wonder what they had to do with the book.
Well, it was nice to read a French book again, and also a good read for our "Paris in July" challenge, but that was about it.
From the back cover:
"From the bestselling author of The Elegance of the Hedgehog comes a story about a woman’s journey, in which she discovers the father she never knew and a love she never thought possible.
Rose has turned forty, but has barely begun to live. When her Japanese father dies and she finds herself an orphan, she leaves France for Kyoto to hear the reading of his will. Paul, her father’s assistant, takes Rose on a mysterious pilgrimage designed by her deceased father. Her bitterness is soothed by the temples, Zen gardens and teahouses, and by her encounters with her father’s friends. As she recognises what she has lost, and as secrets are divulged, Rose learns to accept a part of herself that she has never before acknowledged.
Through her father’s itinerary, he opens his heart posthumously to his daughter, and Rose finds love where she least expects it. This stunning fifth novel from international bestseller Muriel Barbery is a mesmerising story of second chances, of beauty born out of grief."