I have just finished reading The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne and I must say it was a tragic but beautiful read. It is set in the Second World War in Germany during the holocaust. The story is told through a 9 year old boy, the son of a commander in Hitler's army, who makes friends with a Jewish boy over a fence. The story is truly unique. I would recommend this novel to anyone, and then the film after. It's a short read but in those few pages, you will be captivated by the story.

I've just finished reading "The Private Lives of Pippa Lee" by Rebecca Miller.

It starts in the present with her later years in life and goes back to her childhood and ends on the return to the present, the ending being open.

The main aim of the story seems to be to portray Pippa as having lived through many personalities in her life. I read the book with a "who cares" attitude: well, that 's how it made me feel. I was interested enough to keep turning the pages but only because I thought at any moment something exceptional was about to happen! Don't we all go through changes in personality as we get older? We start by being a daughter/son and sister/brother may be, and as we move out into the big wide world our roles develop and change based on our experiences.

The only way to describe it is a rainy afternoon time filling read which i'm afraid, Pippa Lee and her lives left me cold!

By Christine Aziz. The Winner of the Richard and Judy "How to get Published" Competition.

This book is similar to George Orwells' 1984. She has written it now, about the the future of our World but looking back to now.

Quite a complicated theme. But she is good! I found hard to "get into", but after a couple of short chapters, I was hooked. The writting is very vivid and I could see it all happening in my mind.

Written by Pierre Peju, translated from the French by Ina Rilke.

This is a sad book, but beautifully written, About two lonely adults, a man and the mother of the child. He is a bookseller, one wet evening on his way back to his shop, a girl runs out in front of his vehicle and ends up very badly injured. The story coninues to tell what happens to the three of them.

I cannot believe the skill of the translator, it is so clever.

I have recently just completed Dostoevski's mammoth novel and have to say I felt a little cheated, as I always do whenever I finish one of his major works. I love 19th Russian history and have read every Tolstoy, Turgenev, Gogol, Pushkin, etc. novel, poem and short story. Fyodor is probably the most well known Russian writer and most discussed, but he is certainly not the best of these authors. Devils has a simple philosophy behind it; Dostoevski is warning/ prophesying against the (then) current dangers of the new generation of nihilists, materialists and atheists who are, generally, misguided, rather ignorant but have the potency to corrupt those around them. His main diagnosis of this is their, and indeed Russia's loss of religion, of God and of Faith within their lives and politics and we see this amorality especially in Nikolay Vysevolodovich and Petrushka. His point is well made, and then hammered home by their almost comical idiocy in some parts and brutal assaults and murders in others. But I was not overwhelmed by his message or felt much for the fifty or so characters within his story simply because there were too many and never enough time given to them (except, perhaps for the 'main' character, Stepan Trofimovitch).
Although the ostensible master of psychology, I did not feel I understood fully each of the mind sets of every character and only understood Stavrogin due to his similarity with Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment. He is far too insular and could have taken some lessons from Tolstoy in creating a grander theatre for his characters to interact within. The narrator, too, made the plot overly and superfluously complicated; he was a bit-part character within the story, telling us the events entirely from his point of view in the present, whilst continually alluring directly or indirectly to events that had not as yet unfolded in the story as one reads it; he also does not always know how or why things have happened because he was no there - which is frustrating for the reader - and at other times knows far too much about private liasons which leaves one wondering how he could have possibly known about them? As a framing device, it's rather crooked - unique, but not overly effective.
I don't know, I like his prophetic warning that, several decades later, came fruition to engulfed his country and indeed most of Asia and Eastern Europe, but it didn't flow enough for me, it wasn't engaging or the muddledness of the narrator made the plot far more complicated that it needed to be. Fyodor himself admitted to his problems with structure - you just always feel with him that it could have been a lot better. I will always maintain that his short story of a disgruntled, half-insane civil servant in his 'Underground' was his best work because of its brevity and pointedness. Read for your selves, maybe you can see something that maybe I missed.

this is a brilliant book. written by a single mother from manchester. its a memoir but in a chicklit style.
worth reading it...

Written by Mary Lawson. I enjoyed this book, the author writes about the North of Canada, about a community living on the edge of a large lake. The story centres on two brothers Arthur and Jake Dunn. I weaves a tale round their lives.

This is a second book, her first being Crow Lake. I shall be hoping to find more in the Library!

I recently read "No Time for Goodbye" by Linwood Barclay.

It was an excellent thriller and would make a good film. The plot starts with a family made up of husband, wife and two children of teenage years, a girl and boy. The whole plot is centred around the girl, who goes to bed one night after an argument with her parents. The next morning her family have disappeared without a trace! No clues are left and it is not until years later that the mystery starts to unravel.

The writer lays out the plot in such a way that you think you know what is about to happen but it has twists that are subtle and make you quickly realise it is not so easily read.

I feel it is a must read!

Three books to report on.
"Touchwood" by Karin Kallmaker. A first for me - a Lesbian Roamnce! I didn't know such things existed. A fairly lightweight read, a bit Mills and Boonish. It was a May to December story - young woman and and an older woman, both fancied each other but nothing happened until the last couple of chapters.

The second book was the opposite. This was "The Gathering" by Anne Enwright. It was the story of the gathering of an Irish family for the funeral of one of the children who had committed suicide by walking into the sea at Brighton. His sister had the job of goint to identify the body and escort it back to Ireland. As she journeys, she is thiking back over family history. A very well written book - almost literiture. I shall look out for more of her boooks.

The third book Best Loved Poems edited by Neil Philip. This is a lovely book, in print and paper quality, with beautiful little illustrations. There are sections of Poems, for children, on love and romance, On war, nature etc., well over a 100 poems by different poets.

All these are library books.

Hello Guys, i would love to recormend a good book i read while in spain. Rome SWEET home.