Difference between revisions of "Forthcoming Publications"

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=='''4 JANUARY'''==
+
=='''13 JUNE'''==
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=0760381267
+
|isbn=1635866847
|title=Verdura: Living a Garden Life
+
|title=The Lavender Companion
|author=Perla Sofia Curbelo-Santiago
+
|author=Jessica Dunham and Terry Barlin Vesci
|rating=3.5
+
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Lifestyle
 
|genre=Lifestyle
|summary=''The most important part of a garden is the one who enjoys it''.
+
|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 pagesYou suspect that smears of butter would not be a problem.  I ''loved'' this book already.
 
 
I've 'gardened' in a vague, indefinite sort of way for more than half a century.  I know (most of) the basics but life has changed and I needed 'projects' rather than a general commitment to gardening.  ''Verdura'' with its promise of projects for both indoors and outdoors of varying complexity seemed like the answer. So, how did it stack up?
 
 
}}
 
}}
=='''11 JANUARY'''==
+
=='''4 JULY'''==
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Alastair Humphreys
+
|author=Max Boucherat
|title=Local
+
|title=The Last Life of Lori Mills
|rating=5
+
|rating=4.5
|genre=Travel
+
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary= Alastair Humphreys has walked and cycled all over the world.  And then written about it.  For this book he walked and cycled very close to home and then wrote about it.  As he says in his introduction, the book is an attempt ''to share what I have learnt about some big issues from a year exploring a small mapNature loss, pollution, land use and access, agriculture, the food system, rewilding…''   One of the joys of the book for me was that the biggest thing he learned about all of these things was that there are no easy answers, no single 'right or wrong', that every upside is likely to have a downside for somebody and that there are some hard choices ahead.
+
|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 lonesomeWhat 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=1785633678
+
|isbn=0008666482
 
}}
 
}}
=='''31 JANUARY'''==
 
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=0811771741
+
|author=Jenny Lecoat
|title=InstaKnits for Baby
+
|title=Beyond Summerland
|author=Melissa Leapman
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=Crafts
 
|summary=Melissa Leapman's ''InstaKnits for Baby'' gives us a collection of knits from toys to blankets.  Some will be quick knits - others are of the 'long, cosy afternoons in front of the fire' variety.  The projects are divided by the time they'll take to complete - less than five hours, five to ten hours, ten to twenty hours and more than twenty hours.  All the projects are attractive, modern and useable.  I perhaps show my age when I wonder about 'social-media-worthy projects' but that's me being picky.
 
}}
 
=='''1 FEBRUARY'''==
 
{{Frontpage
 
|author=Sarah Marsh
 
|title=A Sign of Her Own
 
|rating=3.5
 
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=After a bout of scarlet fever as a child, Ellen Lark loses her hearing.  Suddenly plunged into a world of silence, everything about her life changes.  Living in a time when the use of sign language was seen as something only savages do, Ellen is sent to a school where she is taught to lip read, but physically restrained from signing.  From here, she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the deaf and using a system called Visible SpeechAt the same time, Bell is working on other inventions and ideas, and Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a complicated tangle of espionage.
+
|summary=Jean lives on Jersey with her mother where they are celebrating the end of the occupationDuring 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 himAs 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 radioAnd what other secrets have been kept throughout the occupation?
|isbn=1035401614
+
|isbn=1846976537
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
|author=Alex Bell and Tim McDonagh
 
|title=The Glorious Race of Magical Beasts
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|summary=Eli is a busy lad – by day an apprentice in the wondrous library we start by visiting with him, and in the evening a helper at the dessert cafe his gran owns and runs.  Eli lives with his lovely gran, too – for there is a generation missing in the family.  A few short years ago, Eli's parents were both lost to the titular race, a globe-trotting adventure where all entrants have to navigate the world in the company of a magical beastThis has made the race anathema to the pair – but when a bad incident at the eatery leads to a confession from gran, Eli knows his only hope is to dare to enter what he most hates, with the sole aim the prize of magic at the end – the only thing to possibly save his gran.
 
|isbn=0571382231
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
|author=Adam Stower
 
|title=Murray and Bun
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|summary=Murray is supposed to be a humble, tidy and friendly cat, one who is able to sleep and eat and eat and sleep and, well, whatever takes his fancy next of the two.  But he's a bad magician's cat, so his favourite bun has been turned into a hyperactive sticky rabbit called Bun, and the catflap they both use can chuck them out, not into the regular back garden, but into a world of frightening adventure and whiffs. This time round it drops them into a Viking land, where a troll hunter is expected – well, one much bigger than Murray was, to be honest, but he's turned up and he'll have to do…
 
|isbn=0008561249
 
}}
 
=='''14 MARCH'''==
 
{{Frontpage
 
|author=Christopher Edge
 
|title=Black Hole Cinema Club
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|summary=Lucas and his friends are all booked in for a movie marathon at their local cinema, a place that has the nickname of 'The Black Hole'.  All big movie fans, they're looking forward to lots of exciting films, and many, many snacks!  However, as the movie starts, they very quickly realise that something about this new film format is very different, and they are swept up into an adventure they couldn't even imagine.  But as they lurch from one film genre to the next, can they figure out what on earth is going onWill they ever get back to the cinema, and to their real lives?
 
|isbn=1839942738
 
}}
 
=='''13 JUNE'''==
 
{{Frontpage
 
|isbn=1635866847
 
|title=The Lavender Companion
 
|author=Jessica Dunham and Terry Barlin Vesci
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Lifestyle
 
|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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Latest revision as of 14:06, 5 June 2024

13 JUNE

1635866847.jpg

Review of

The Lavender Companion by Jessica Dunham and Terry Barlin Vesci

4.5star.jpg Lifestyle

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 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. Full Review

4 JULY

0008666482.jpg

Review of

The Last Life of Lori Mills by Max Boucherat

4.5star.jpg Confident Readers

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? Full Review

1846976537.jpg

Review of

Beyond Summerland by Jenny Lecoat

4star.jpg General Fiction

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? Full Review

You can work your way through the newest review, category by category, starting here.