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| − | [[image:Bookbag-banner-obooko1.jpg|center|link=https://www.obooko.com/]]
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| | __NOTOC__ | | __NOTOC__ |
| − | | + | =='''13 JUNE'''== |
| − | =='''9 JUNE'''== | |
| | {{Frontpage | | {{Frontpage |
| − | |isbn=152941363X | + | |isbn=1635866847 |
| − | |title=To Kill a Troubadour (A Bruno, Chief of Police Novel) | + | |title=The Lavender Companion |
| − | |author=Martin Walker | + | |author=Jessica Dunham and Terry Barlin Vesci |
| | |rating=4.5 | | |rating=4.5 |
| − | |genre=Crime | + | |genre=Lifestyle |
| − | |summary=''Nobody knows what the truth is any more.'' | + | |summary=It's strange, the things that make you ''immediately'' feel that this is the book for you. Before I started reading ''The Lavender Companion'', I visited the author's [https://www.pinelavenderfarm.com/ website] and there's a picture of a slice of chocolate cake on the homepage. I don't eat cakes and desserts - but I wanted that cake viscerally. (There's a recipe in the book, which I'm avoiding with some difficulty!!) Then I started reading the book and I was told to make a mess of it. Notes in the margins are sanctioned. You get to fold down the corners of pages. You suspect that smears of butter would not be a problem. I ''loved'' this book already. |
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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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| | }} | | }} |
| | + | =='''4 JULY'''== |
| | {{Frontpage | | {{Frontpage |
| − | |isbn=0241542405 | + | |author=Max Boucherat |
| − | |title=Meredith Alone | + | |title=The Last Life of Lori Mills |
| − | |author=Claire Alexander
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| | |rating=4.5 | | |rating=4.5 |
| − | |genre=General Fiction | + | |genre=Confident Readers |
| − | |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. | + | |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? |
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| + | |isbn=0008666482 |
| − | {{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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| | {{Frontpage | | {{Frontpage |
| − | |isbn=1801109265
| + | |author=Jenny Lecoat |
| − | |title=The Companion
| + | |title=Beyond Summerland |
| − | |author=Lesley Thomson | |
| − | |rating=5
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| − | |genre=Crime
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| − | |summary=James Ritchie thought of himself as ''a punctual man who was inexplicably never on time'' and he was - as usual - late to pick up his son, Wilbur, for their 'boys' day out'. These were always days which appealed more to James than to Wilbur and, competing for the boy's attention, his mother, Anna, promised him a roast dinner when he returned. The dinner would never be served, as James and Wilbur are the victims of a double stabbing on the beach. The case falls to DI Toni Kemp of Sussex police. She's feeling the pressure. You can always tell - she shoplifts Snickers Bars when the going gets tough.
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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 | |
| − | |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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| − | }}
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| − | {{Frontpage
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| − | |author=David Lagercrantz
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| − | |title=Dark Music
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| − | |rating=3
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| − | |genre=Crime
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| − | |summary=How far from the original can a book allegedly inspired by Sherlock Holmes get before the allusion breaks? This does have a wonder-mind at the heart of what little investigating is going on, but there is not a lot that Conan Doyle fans could really pin down as on their exact wavelength. For one, the main focus of the narrative, Micaela, is no John Watson MD. She's a Chilean in the Stockholm police, put on a murder squad as she knows the prime suspect of old, in a case where a referee of a junior football match was found stoned to death shortly after the match, and just outside the stadium. Beppe, the suspect, was drunkenly antagonistic to the ref during the closing minutes, but refuses to admit anything, through days and weeks of interrogation. When some disreputable coppers (the kind who dismiss anything their superior comes up with, the kind who think they can judge Micaela from her fringe and how she might dress – that kind) are told to go and see what brainbox Professor Rekke thinks of it all, she can only smirk when he says Beppe is innocent and the investigation is a shambles. But taken off the case, she can no longer help solve the crime, and with Rekke the most erratic, irregular kind of guy, she can't get his full verdict on it all. Until, that may be, she manages to stop him in the middle of an apparent suicide attempt...
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| − | |isbn=1529413192
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| − | }}
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| − | | |
| − | =='''6 OCTOBER'''==
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| − | {{Frontpage
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| − | |author=Alison Hughes
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| − | |title=Fly
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| − | |rating=4.5
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| − | |genre=Confident Readers
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| − | |summary=This is a very impressive read, as it does a lot of what mainstream teen and tween fiction still struggles with. Its focus is courtesy the first person narration from Fly, a secondary school lad with cerebral palsy, a down-on-her-luck single mom nearing retirement from being a cleaner, a carer while at school, and a bundle of assumptions people lay on him. First they assume that with a broken body comes a broken mind, then they decide he's a maths savant – they even believe they can get away with calling him Fly, which isn't his real name, but everybody just uses it.
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| − | |isbn=1525305832 | |
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