I can't believe I have left it so long since my last post! I have been reading, but where to start!
Well, I started reading PG Wodehouse and greatly enjoyed The Inimitable Jeeves. Just brilliant. So entertaining, and full of mischief. The characters and the dialogue are really easy to read and very relaxing. It was a lovely holiday read. I started reading Skipping Christmas by John Grisham and was so disappointed that I couldn't finish it. It was supposed to be funny, so maybe I just have a different sense of humour. Anyway, I got quite far, but it just seemed to get more miserable and just didn't have the spirit of Christmas.
While I was at my Mum's I picked up an old book that I used to read. Michelle Magorian has written many children's books, including Goodnight Mister Tom, one of my favourites. The book I read over Christmas was called Back Home, and it was about a young teenager, who five years previously had been sent to America as an evacuee during World War II. She comes back from a country without rations, with colour and promise, to a country that is still facing devastation, struggling with rations, with everyone and everything in dull, grey colours. She also finds that her mother has changed. She struggles to adapt, particularly as she has such a strong, American accent. It is a really brilliant insight into the adjustments, Rusty, her mother, and eventually her father, when he returns from the war, have to make. It is a story of bravery, friendship, and tolerance, and it is really good. It is also very believable and I highly recommend it. The descriptions of her life in New England compared to her life in Devon and then London were really interesting. The ending is just right. As I enjoyed that one so much, I decided to read another one of her books and downloaded Just Henry onto my Kindle. It was fantastic. I could not put it down. Again, it was set during World War II, and again it was focused around the views of the child growing up at the time. The story covered difficult stories including illegitimacy, bigamy, physical child abuse, but emphasised that no matter what the sins of the father were, the children should be treated as people in their own right. All the children were given hope and were encouraged to follow their dreams. It was fantastic and inspirational, and also very interesting as it focused around historical cinematography and photography, so from that aspect alone, it was an amazing book. It was quite a hard book to read as some of the issues were quite traumatic, but it was so well done, and again, I just couldn't put it down. I will definitely look out for more books by Michelle Magorian.
So, that's it for now. I am reading something else, but I will save it for another blog.
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