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| − | [[image:Bookbag-banner-obooko1.jpg|center|link=https://www.obooko.com/]]
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| | __NOTOC__ | | __NOTOC__ |
| − | | + | =='''4 JULY'''== |
| − | =='''2 JUNE'''== | |
| | {{Frontpage | | {{Frontpage |
| − | |isbn=1800901232 | + | |author=Max Boucherat |
| − | |title=Stitched Up | + | |title=The Last Life of Lori Mills |
| − | |author=Steve Cole
| + | |rating=4.5 |
| − | |rating=5 | |
| − | |genre=Dyslexia Friendly
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| − | |summary=Twelve-year-old Hanh wanted to be a fashion designer. Life in the rural village where she lived with her family was happy, if not prosperous, so when the smartly-dressed man and woman came to the village to offer Hahn a job in Hanoi it was an opportunity not to be missed. Some money changed hands and Hanh was on the mini-bus to Hanoi. Only, Hanh and the other girls were not going to work in a shop, they were to work in virtual slavery in an illegal garment factory. You know those jeans you really wanted: the ones with intricate embroidery and beading on the legs? The ones with the artfully-placed rips and distressed seams that felt so soft when you touched them? It's quite possible that Hanh and her co-workers made them.
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| − | {{Frontpage
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| − | |author=Fiona Longmuir
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| − | |title=Looking for Emily
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| − | |rating=5
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| | |genre=Confident Readers | | |genre=Confident Readers |
| − | |summary=Meet Lily. She and her mother have just moved from a city to a tiny seaside town called Edge, and everyone from said mother to her teacher are making demands of Lily that she make new friends. It turns out that she doesn't have any say in the matter, for while pretending when phoning home that she was with someone called Emily, she is unaware her neighbour, Sam, is just about to make herself known, and in a big way. But where does Emily come from? Well, Lily used that name because of what she'd just stumbled into – a mysterious collection of the most mundane objects, in some converted houses behind a most unassuming door, in a place calling itself 'The Museum of Emily'. Sam is completely unaware of this 'museum', too, leaving the two girls to make sure they leave no stone unturned in finding what's behind the intrigue... | + | |summary=We meet Lori on the first evening she's got the house to herself – no neighbour to pop in, babysitter poorly, mother at work, just an avidly rule-breaking eleven year old, on her lonesome. What could possibly go wrong? Snuggled in a blanket fort, she has one main intention, and that is to log on to Voxminer, the world-building, critter-collecting game that is a hit in Lori's world. But first Lori has a tiny inkling that this stormy night doesn't find herself entirely on her own, and then she finds something even more spooky. For the server she and her bestie and nobody else should be able to enter shows signs of tampering. When malevolent eyes spark up on her phone screen, and her safe place in the game has been doctored – well, where is a girl to turn? |
| − | |isbn=1839942754
| + | |isbn=0008666482 |
| − | }}
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| − | {{Frontpage
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| − | |author=John Henry Phillips
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| − | |title=The Search
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| − | |rating=5
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| − | |genre=History
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| − | |summary=Archaeology cannot be child's play, when you're scraping in the dirt looking to find what you can find, often knowing there should be something there but not always confident what. Archaeology must be a fair bit harder when you set out to find some specific thing. This book is a case of the latter, as our author promises to locate the topic of the titular search. And he really hasn't made it easy for himself – the search area is a wide one, the target might not exist any more – oh, and it's underwater, when he cannot dive. Latching on to a particular D-Day veteran through helping the heroic old man's visit back to France, our author has promised to find the landing craft that delivered him to Normandy, and that he was lucky to survive when it sank from beneath him. The secondary aim is to erect a memorial to everyone else aboard, the vast majority of whom perished. Who else would make such promises to someone in their nineties?
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| − | |isbn=1472146182 | |
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| − |
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| − | =='''9 JUNE'''==
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| | {{Frontpage | | {{Frontpage |
| − | |isbn=152941363X
| + | |author=Jenny Lecoat |
| − | |title=To Kill a Troubadour (A Bruno, Chief of Police Novel)
| + | |title=Beyond Summerland |
| − | |author=Martin Walker | |
| − | |rating=4.5
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| − | |genre=Crime
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| − | |summary=''Nobody knows what the truth is any more.''
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| − | | |
| − | Bruno Courrèges is the police chief for St Denis and much of the Vézère valley and works closely with Commissaire Jean-Jaques Jalipeau (known as 'JJ'), the head of detectives for the départment of the Dordogne. They're not just policemen - they're both deeply committed to the well-being and prosperity of this most beautiful part of France. The discovery of an old, stolen Peugeot, crashed and abandoned in a ditch wouldn't normally have worried them so much had it not been for the strange bullet, with Russian letters stamped on the base, which they found in the car. Oh, and there was a golf ball too, which didn't belong to the owner of the car. A golf bag would be a good place to hide a sniper's weapon. Was there going to be an attempt to kill someone, or were the detectives being pushed in a certain direction?
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| − | }}
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| − | {{Frontpage
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| − | |isbn=0241542405
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| − | |title=Meredith Alone | |
| − | |author=Claire Alexander
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| − | |rating=4.5
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| − | |genre=General Fiction
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| − | |summary=When we first meet Meredith Maggs it's Wednesday 14 November 2018 and she's not left her home for 1,214 days. She'd ''like'' to: in fact, she so nearly does. Her outdoor clothes are on and she's even considered which shoes to wear if she's going to catch her train. Then, she can't. She simply can't force herself to leave the safety of her home. She's fortunate that she has a good friend, Sadie, who visits regularly with her two children, James and Matilda. Sadie's a cardiac nurse and full of sound common sense. In fact it was Sadie who gave Meredith her cat, Fred. Groceries are online deliveries and there's also an internet-based support group where you'll find Meredith as JIGSAWGIRL, so you can guess what she does in her spare time. Then Tom McDermott arrives. He's from Holding Hands, a charity which supports people with problems such as Meredith's.
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| − | {{Frontpage
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| − | |author=Will Brooker
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| − | |title=The Truth About Lisa Jewell
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| − | |rating=5
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| − | |genre=Biography
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| − | |summary=Meet [[:Category:Lisa Jewell|Lisa Jewell]], one of the most successful British authors I've never knowingly read. Now meet Will Brooker, one of the thousands of less successful authors I quite confidently never have read. This book starts with the two meeting each other, as well, and shows how 2021 drew the two closer and closer together. The meeting was some unspecified combination, it seems, of her anecdote about cup cakes, the words of her latest book she was reciting, and her being in a ''black lace mini-dress with gold brocade'' (certainly a get-up never commonly worn at the author events I get to attend), but pulled Brooker, a professor of cultural studies who has swallowed Roland Barthes, down the rabbit-hole that is Jewell's diverse output. Brooker decides he'd like nothing more than to follow her through a year in the published author's life, working to make a success of the latest title, and struggling with the next in line. Jewell, due diligence appropriately done, agrees. And this is the result.
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| − | |isbn=1529136024
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| − | }}
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| − | | |
| − | =='''21 JUNE'''==
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| − | {{Frontpage
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| − | |isbn=1635864674
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| − | |title=Tomato Love: 44 Mouthwatering Recipes for Salads, Sauces, Stews, and More
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| − | |author=Joy Howard
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| | |rating=4 | | |rating=4 |
| − | |genre=Cookery
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| − | |summary=''Think of it as no-whining dining.''
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| − | We know it's a fruit rather than a vegetable but the fact that so many people get confused just goes to show how versatile the tomato is. Then there are all the different types, not to mention the cultivars - and you begin to understand why Joy Howard says that she hasn't met one she didn't love. I'd argue with her there - I have no affection for the ones you find in the supermarket ''next'' to the ones labelled 'grown for flavour' to distinguish them from the ones that have obviously just been grown for profit. Personally, I'd prefer a tin of tomatoes to those - and Howard makes good use of these. She's not at all precious if you get the taste.
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| − | }}
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| − |
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| − | =='''23 JUNE'''==
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| − | {{Frontpage
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| − | |author=Ewald Arenz and Rachel Ward (translator)
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| − | |title=Tasting Sunlight
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| − | |rating=4.5
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| | |genre=General Fiction | | |genre=General Fiction |
| − | |summary=Sally is a teenager who has run away from an anorexia treatment clinic. She just wants space, and for people to stop questioning her, tiptoeing around her, and trying to fix her without ever truly understanding her. She finds herself on some farmland with a woman called Liss who is in her forties and seems to live alone. Liss is unlike any other adult Sally has ever met. She just accepts Sally as she is, giving her a room to sleep in, and the space to just be. As they work together on the farm, a closeness develops between them, becoming a beautiful, powerful friendship. | + | |summary=Jean lives on Jersey with her mother where they are celebrating the end of the occupation. During the war, Jean's father was arrested for listening to a banned radio and soldiers took him away one night, leaving Jean and her mother waiting for years for news of him. As the British finally free the Channel islands from the Nazis, and the war is finally over, their hopes rise that they will finally learn what became of him. But will the truth come as a relief, or will it raise further questions around what else happened during the war? Who was the informer who told the Nazis about the radio? And what other secrets have been kept throughout the occupation? |
| − | |isbn=1914585143
| + | |isbn=1846976537 |
| − | }}
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| − | {{Frontpage
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| − | |isbn=1398508632
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| − | |title=The Wilderness Cure
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| − | |author=Mo Wilde
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| − | |rating=5
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| − | |genre=Lifestyle
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| − | |summary=It had been on the cards for a while but it was the week-long consumer binge which pushed Mo Wilde into beginning her year of eating only wild food. The end of November, particularly in Central Scotland was perhaps not the best time to start, in a world where the normal sores had been exacerbated by climate change, Brexit and a pandemic. Wilde had a few advantages: the area around her was a known habitat with a variety of terrains. She had electricity which allowed her to run a fridge, freezer and dehydrator. She had a car - and fuel. Most importantly, she had shelter: this was not a plan to ''live'' wild just to live off its produce.
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| − | }}
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| − | | |
| − | =='''18 AUGUST'''==
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| − | {{Frontpage
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| − | |author= Kit De Waal
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| − | |title= Without Warning and Only Sometimes
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| − | |rating= 4
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| − | |genre= Autobiography
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| − | |summary= As Philip Larkin so eloquently put it, “They f*** you up, your mum and dad/ They may not mean to, but they do” Without Warning and Only Sometimes by Kit De Waal focuses on this idea of parenthood and the bonds that bind family. This book is a memoir focussing on the author’s formative years as a teenager living in a lower class area of Birmingham. Her father is from St. Kitts in the Caribbean and her mother is an Irish woman ostracized by her family for becoming pregnant by and marrying a black man. This intersectionality plays a large role in the autobiography. Kit De Waal faces multiple hurdles due to her race, her class and her gender. Her parents loom large and are written with care, love, and the kind of anger only a child can express to their parents.
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| − | |isbn=1472284836 | |
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