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The 24-Hour Café by Libby Page When I read Libby Page’s debut novel The Lido upon its release in 2018 I was blown away about how good it was and it remained one of the best books of the year for me. I…
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My artistic life http://shepline.com/2020/02/09/my-artistic-life/ Thoughts inspired by @kiran_mh, @libbypagewrites, @blackwelloxford, and @oxfordshireartweeks • • • #amillustrating #amreading #amwritingart #ArtWeeks #books #bookshops #creativity #illustration #OxfordshireArtweeks #reading #writing
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Yesterday I spent the day in Oxford. I arrived early, the train delivering me right in the centre of the city, still beautifully quiet at half past nine even on a Saturday (compared to the frenetic hustle and bustle that…
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Some bookshops feature in my Booklover’s Guide to Bookshops because I’ve known about them for years and love like old friends; some I’ve not actually visited by my co-author Erica has, and some I’ve been told about with enthusiasm. The…
Continue readingBecause I smashed 2017’s target of 45 books with 56 books read, I set an always ambition target of reading 50 books this year, and only just scraped in on the last day of the year to make it (having…
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A Pinch of Magic by Michelle Harrison Michelle Harrison is perhaps best known for her award-winning 13 Treasures books with their dark elves and fairy magic, but beyond that world she has also gone spooky with (the maybe too-often overlooked) Unrest and her last, and delivered…
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Murder by the Book by Debbie Young When I think of cosy/village mysteries I think of the ‘lighter’ Miss Marples, or an episode of Bergerac or Death in Paradise. What all of these mysteries have in common is that all feature a murder (and often…
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Kill Land by Dan Holloway I approached this book with trepidation because a perceived reputation for it’s sole-destroying depression. Maybe that was a misunderstanding on my part because what Dan Holloway was saying was that it was “lacking redemption”. Either way, I…
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Cuckoo Call by Betty Salthouse Family loyalties, teenage angst, sibling rivalry, murder, attempted suicide. These are powerful, important subjects. Betty Salthouse’s third book Cuckoo Call pulls all the subjects in a story that could easily be about human relationships as it is about a…
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Time Shifters: Into the Past (Time Shifters, #1) by Kate Frost If I could rate this book with 6 stars then I would as it an outstanding rollercoaster of read. There was one brief moment near the beginning when I was left…
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The Land of Green Ginger by Noel Langley, Edward Ardizzone (Ilustrator) It was the Edward Ardizzone illustrations that drew me in compulsively to this book, and they are an absolute delight – full of magic and wonder and joy. From the beginning it’s a…
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True Tale of the Monster Billy Dean by David Almond I’ve been a huge fan of David Almond ever since I encountered his debut novel Skellig back when it all began in 1998. He is a prolific author and I always discover after the…
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There are countless quotes about books and reading. George R. R. Martin famously said: “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.” Whilst Lemony Snicket took the approach that: “Never trust…
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Trick or Murder? by Debbie Young This is the second of Debbie Young’s Sophie Sayers Village Mystery series, and as the name suggests the mystery in this book is, as the title suggests, is it a Trick or Murder? This is no psychological…
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Dæmon Voices by Philip Pullman I love, love, love Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, and his latest first book in the new Book of Dust series, but I have sometimes found sometimes when I’ve heard Philip talk in interviews for him to be a bit…
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A Stranger At Green Knowe by L.M. Boston I was not sure that I was going to like this book, the fourth in the sextet of Green Knowe books, because from the beginning – indeed for the first 50 or so pages…
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The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper I first read the entire sequence of The Dark Is Rising in the hot sunny conditions of a summer holiday in southern Italy – appropriate maybe for the first in the series, Over Sea, Under Stone but not so much for…
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I pledged to read 45 books this year, and ended up reading 56 books (although Thomas rules dictate that if it’s got an ISBN number it goes on the list!). I also pledged to finish writing the Mr Tumnal sequel, The Imaginary Wife…
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The Lost Words by Robert Macfarlane, Jackie Morris This a spell book of words. It is a book that you have to curl up in the armchair and pour over. It is a book that you can’t just just read, but touch and…
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The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern From its opening lines, “The circus arrives without warning […] Opens at Nightfall / Closes at Dawn”, this book and the story within it is an enticing prospect. Circuses are magical places in any normal world. Like…
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