A lover of books and reading

A lover of books, her husband and the dog not necessarily in that order

[leahthebookworm]

Book 47 of 70

One of Our Thursdays is Missing by Jasper Fforde (Thursday Next book #6)

384 pages, published 2011

Slow paced

Fantasy

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

“She wasn't the only one to be physically morphed by reader expectation. Miss Havisham was now elderly whether she liked it or not, and Sherlock Holmes wore a deerstalker and smoked a ridiculously large pipe. The problem wasn't just confined to the classics. Harry Potter was seriously pissed off that he'd have to spend the rest of life looking like Daniel Radcliffe.”

― Jasper Fforde, One of Our Thursdays Is Missing

Thursday is missing, the real Thursday and the written Thursday has to investigate her disappearance with help from her butler.

[leahthebookworm]

Book 46 of 70

First Amongst Sequels by Jasper Fforde (Thursday Next book 5)

395 pages, published 2007

Medium paced

Fantasy

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

“You are the best, most loving, supportive family anyone could ever have," I said through my sobs. "I'm so sorry if I'm a burden."

They all told me not to be so bloody silly, I told them not to swear, and Landen gave me a handkerchief for my tears.”

― Jasper Fforde, First Among Sequels

Fourteen years after Thursday Next pegged out at Superhoop '88, her Jurisfiction job has been downgraded due to a potential conflict of interest, since her previous adventures are now themselves in print. Thursday's time is spent worrying about her teenage son Friday and tutoring new recruits. This being fiction, however, jeopardy is never far away. Sherlock Holmes is killed at the Rheinbach falls and his series is stopped in its tracks. Before this can be righted, Miss Marple dies in a narratively inexplicable car accident, bringing her series also to a close. Thursday, receiving a death-threat clearly intended for her written self, realises what is going on -- there is a serial killer loose in the Bookworld. Meanwhile, Goliath have perfected a 22-seater Prose Portal Luxury Coach, and plan on taking literary tourists on a holiday to the works of Jane Austen. Thursday alone realises the true intent of Goliath's unwanted incursions into fiction, but she can't fight all these battles on her own. She must team up with the one person she really can't get along with -- the written Thursday Next, currently starring in The Great Samuel Pepys Fiasco. But it's no time to be picky...

Description from Storygraph

[leahthebookworm]

Image from goodreads

Book 45 of 70

Tales of the Celestial Kingdom by Sue Lynn Tan

153 pages, published 2024

Fast paced

Fantasy

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

“Let us leave the stars as they are, for tonight they are where they should be.”

― Sue Lynn Tan, Tales of the Celestial Kingdom

Tales from the Celestial Kingdom collects nine spellbinding stories—two previously published, seven original, including the epilogue to the duology—set in the enchanting world of Sue Lynn Tan’s stunning debut. Filled with magic and mythology, friendship and love, these stories intertwine through the past, present, and future of the two novels, told from the perspectives of multiple characters, including Chang’e, Shuxiao, Liwei, and Wenzhi.

Description from Storygraph

I have really enjoyed reading this series and it's a shame it is now over, beautifully written and full of adventure.

[leahthebookworm]

Book 47 of 70

Heart of the Sun Warrior (Celestial Kingdom book 2) by Sue Lynn Tan

465 pages, published 2022

Medium paced

Fantasy

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

“For we were complex creatures of shades of gray, capable of wonderful and terrible things … of change, because our natures were not fixed like the stars in the sky but flowing as the river toward an unknown horizon.”

― Sue Lynn Tan, Heart of the Sun Warrior

After winning her mother’s freedom from the Celestial Emperor, Xingyin thrives in the enchanting tranquility of her home. But her fragile peace is threatened by the discovery of a strange magic on the moon and the unsettling changes in the Celestial Kingdom as the emperor tightens his grip on power. While Xingyin is determined to keep clear of the rising danger, the discovery of a shocking truth spurs her into a perilous confrontation.

Forced to flee her home once more, Xingyin and her companions venture to unexplored lands of the Immortal Realm, encountering legendary creatures and shrewd monarchs, beloved friends and bitter adversaries. With alliances shifting quicker than the tides, Xingyin has to overcome past grudges and enmities to forge a new path forward, seeking aid where she never imagined she would. As an unspeakable terror sweeps across the realm, Xingyin must uncover the truth of her heart and claw her way through devastation—to rise against this evil before it destroys everything she holds dear, and the worlds she has grown to love . . . even if doing so demands the greatest price of all.

- description by storygraph

A beautiful duology I have really enjoyed beautiful written

[leahthebookworm]

Book 46 of 70

Something Rotten by Jasper Fforde (Thursday Next book 4)

385 pages, published 2004, 12 hours 44 minutes

Medium paced

Fantasy

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

“To espresso or to latte, that is the question...whether 'tis tastier on the palate to choose white mocha over plain...or to take a cup to go. Or a mug to stay, or extra cream, or have nothing, and by opposing the endless choice, end one's heartache...”

― Jasper Fforde, Something Rotten

Detective Thursday Next has had her fill of her responsibilities as the Bellman in Jurisfiction. Packing up her son, Friday, Thursday returns to Swindon accompanied by none other than the dithering Danish prince Hamlet. But returning to SpecOps is no snap—as outlaw fictioneer Yorrick Kaine plots for absolute power, the return of Swindon's patron saint foretells doom, and if that isn't bad enough, back in the Book World The Merry Wives of Windsor is becoming entangled with Hamlet. Can Thursday find a Shakespeare clone to stop this hostile takeover? Can she vanquish Kaine and prevent the world from plunging into war?

- Description from storygraph

[leahthebookworm]

Book 45 0f 70

The Darkness by Ragnar Jónasson (Hidden Iceland book 1)

352 pages, published 2015

Medium paced

Thriller

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

“She would have to watch herself. What was it that Bishop Vídalín once wrote? Rage kindles an inferno in the eyes; a feeling she knew only too well.”

― Ragnar Jónasson, The Darkness

Detective Hulda Hermanssdóttir is retireing from the Reykjavik Police she is being forced to retire in order to bring in new blood, when her date of retirement is brought closer she is told she can work on one final case, she picks the death of a Russian woman called Elena, originally declared a suicide, that has never satisfied Hulda.

Amazing but dark book the ending I don't think I will ever get over, looking forward to finishing the rest of the series but after a little break.

[leahthebookworm]

Book 44 of 70

Strange Jest and Other Stories by Agatha Christie

4 hours and 25 minutes, published 1979

Fast paced

Mystery

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

A book of 6 short stories from the Queen of crime and mystery, a man is found dead in a church, a missing inheritance, a lady dies horse riding but was it an accident, the death of a wealthy lady but when did she die, and a cursed doll.

[leahthebookworm]

Book 43 of 70

Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde

375 pages, 10 hours, 27 minutes, published 2004

Medium paced

Fantasy/ mystery

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

“Books may look like nothing more than words on a page, but they are actually an infinitely complex imaginotransference technology that translates odd, inky squiggles into pictures inside your head.”

― Jasper Fforde, The Well of Lost Plots

Thursday Next is in hiding her hiding place an obscure unpublished novel, where she can build her strength to fight For Aornis for the memories of her irradiated husband Landon.

[leahthebookworm]

Book 42 of 70

A Murder is Announced by Agatha Christie

288 pages, 6 hours 50, published 1950

Medium paced

Mystery

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“A murder is announced and will take place on Friday, October 29th, at Little Paddocks at 6: 30 p.m. Friends please accept this, the only intimation.”

― Agatha Christie, A Murder Is Announced

When an announcement is placed in the local newspaper all the neighbours are expecting a murder mystery game and cheap sherry, they got a lot more than they bargained for.

[leahthebookworm]

Book 41 of 70

Seven Dials Mystery by Agatha Christie (superintendent Battle #2)

375 pages, published 1929

Fast paced

Genre - crime

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

“In my opinion half the people who spend their lives avoiding being run over by buses had much better be run over and put safely out of the way. They're no good.

― Agatha Christie, quote from The Seven Dials Mystery

When a group of friends decide to play a practical joke on heavy sleeper Gerald Wade, only to find he has died of an apparent overdose in his sleep, now can Bundle, and Bill Eversleigh find out what actually happened

[leahthebookworm]

Book 40 of 70

Notes from a Big Country by Bill Bryson

Published 1998, 9 hours 19 minutes

Medium paced

Genre - adventure

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

 

“18th century scientists, the French in particular, seldom did things simply if an absurdly demanding alternative was available.”

― Bill Bryson

Bill has moved back to America after 25 years with with his English wife and their children, and a lot has changed in the past 25 years

[leahthebookworm]

Book 38 0f 79

Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde

399 pages (or 10 hours and 27 minutes), published 2002

Medium paced

Genre - fantasy

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

“We're in a psuedoscientific technobabble.”

― Jasper Fforde, Lost in a Good Book

Thursday Next discovers she is able to enter the world of books without the help of Mycrofts prose portal now she has to use her talents to enter Poes the Raven to remove someone who shouldn't be there in hopes to get her husband back.

[leahthebookworm]

Book 37 of 70

The Vampire Knitting Club (book 1) by Nancy Warren

262 pages, published 2018

Fast paced

Genre- fantasy and mystery

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

“At least modern vampires had blood banks and other ways to get the blood they needed, and, thanks to the rise in skin cancer, modern technology had invented all sorts of fabrics to keep sun off the body. It must be much nicer being a vampire now than in the past.”

― Nancy Warren, The Vampire Knitting Club

Lucy Swift is at a cross roads in her life so travels to Oxford in England to visit her Grandmother in her grandmothers wool shop, only to be told her Grandmother has died... if that's the case why is she stood in the wool shop, and why is she hosting a knitting club for the undead.

[leahthebookworm]

Book 36 of 70

Neither Here nor There - Travels Through Europe by Bill Bryson

256 pages, published 1992

Medium paced

Genre- non fiction/ travel/ memoir

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

“Traveling is more fun-- hell, life is more fun--if you can treat it as a series of impulses.”

― Bill Bryson, Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe

A fantastic book with Mr Brysons humour documenting his travels across Europe starting off as far north as he could get to see the Northern Lights, with a look back at a similar journey he took with a friend in the 1970s.

[leahthebookworm]

Book 35 of 70

The Eyre Affair (Thursday Next book 1) by Jasper Fforde

400 pages, published 2001

Medium paced

Genre- science fiction, mystery and fantasy

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

“What is there to forgive?. . .Ignore forgive and concentrate on living. Life for you is short; far too short to allow small jealousies to infringe on the happiness which can be yours only for the briefest of times.”

― Jasper Fforde, The Eyre Affair

Thursday Next a veteran of the Crimean war and a literary detective, thanks to a series of unexpected events finds herself back in her home town Swindon with her pet Dodo Pickwick. And accidentally changing the end of Jane Eyre with the help of Rochester.

[leahthebookworm]

Book 34 of 70

The Salmon of Doubt-Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time by Douglas Adams (Dirk Gently #3)

292 pages, published 2002

Medium paced

Genre- Science Fiction and interviews

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

“You know what a learning experience is? A learning experience is one of those things that says, ‘You know that thing you just did? Don’t do that.”

― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

This book has several interviews and articles that Douglas Adams has done and written plus a final chapter of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and the last part of the Dirk Gently series.

You learn a lot about a fascinating person,

[leahthebookworm]

In June I read 5 books

Who censored Roger Rabbit by Gary K. Wolf ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Early Riser by Jasper Fforde ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Alice's Adventure in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I Shall Wear Midnight by Terry Pratchett ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Favourite book of the month was I Shall Wear Midnight and I have just started the final Discworld book The Shepherds Crown and then the adventure is over

My reading list for July is

The Shepherds Crown by Terry Pratchett

Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde

Salmon of Doubt by Douglas Adams

Neither Here nor there by Bill Bryson

Last Tang Standing by Lauren Ho (I will finish it eventually)