Source: Book Club

Weekend Book Friends #27

Greetings you guys! It’s Friday and my Mommy is officially on holidays! Whoo hoo! The fact that it’s only the second time this whole year that we get to our Weekend Posts, does give you an indication of how the term went. It wasn’t bad at all, just busy. Luckily we can now relax and just read a bit. So what will we read this weekend? This one might be a bit on the heavy side, but it’s a carry over from last month and we really want to read it. There will still be enough time for the lighter holiday reads. For our first stop, we will pay a visit to @ Reading is my Super Power for First Line Friday and to Gilion @ Rose City Reader for Book Beginnings. Every Friday you can link up and share the first sentence of your current read (or the one you plan to devour over the weekend), as well as your initial thoughts and impressions. Songbirds open with a very short, but powerful chapter. One day, Nisha vanished and turned to gold. The turned to gold in the eyes of the creature that stood before me. She turned to gold in the […]

Posted April 1, 2022
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Wish you were here by Jodi Picoult

Wish you were here by Jodi Picoult Published by Ballantine Books on November 30th, 2021 Genres: Fiction Pages: 336 Format: Paperback Source: Book Club Buy on Amazon Goodreads A deeply moving novel about the resilience of the human spirit in a moment of crisis. Diana O’Toole is perfectly on track. She will be married by thirty, done having kids by thirty-five, and move out to the New York City suburbs, all while climbing the professional ladder in the cutthroat art auction world. She’s not engaged just yet, but she knows her boyfriend, Finn, a surgical resident, is about to propose on their romantic getaway to the Galápagos—days before her thirtieth birthday. Right on time. But then a virus that felt worlds away has appeared in the city, and on the eve of their departure, Finn breaks the news: It’s all hands on deck at the hospital. He has to stay behind. You should still go, he assures her, since it would be a shame for all of their nonrefundable trip to go to waste. And so, reluctantly, she goes. Almost immediately, Diana’s dream vacation goes awry. The whole island is now under quarantine, and she is stranded until the borders […]

Posted February 28, 2022
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Weekend Book Friends #24

Greetings Humans! First order of business today – it’s my adoption anniversary! Yea to me! And to Mommy for coming to my rescue from that horrible orphanage where we could never, ever get some more. No matter how nicely we asked. Oh, I’m such a Drama Queen. The pet shelter was actually lovely, but not a place any kitten would want to stay forever. My Mommy is at home today and I hope she will spend some time here on the blog, we’ve been a bit absent the last two weeks. The weather outside is however begging her to just take her book and go read. I am not going to complain about that. Snuggle time! My Mommy is very eager to start reading the following book later today: If you know my Mommy and read our blog regularly, you will know that this book might as well have been written for her. We are going to have a wonderful weekend! Let’s see who we can share it with: For our first stop, we will pay a visit to Gilion over at Rose City Reader to share our Book Beginnings. Every Friday you can link up and share the first sentence of […]

Posted November 12, 2021
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Wondrous Words Wednesday – Fright vs Freight

Greetings Humans! Welcome to another week of Wondrous Words Wednesday, hosted by yours truly. Wondrous Words Wednesday is a biweekly meme hosted by yours truly. The concept is fairly easy – all you need to do, is share any new (or new to you) words you came across this week and share them with us. You are also welcome to share words you simply want to show off to us. For more on Wondrous Words Wednesday, you can click here. As you know, my Mommy is a librarian and a language teacher. You can imagine all the funny things she comes across on a daily basis. In South Africa, there are 11 (nope, not a typing error – really eleven) official languages. My Mommy’s native tongue is Afrikaans and about 50% of her students speak Afrikaans first language as well. It’s not wonder that the kids sometimes get confused with certain words. Like these 2: One of the spell words my Mommy did with her students this week, was freight, but about 80% of her students read and interpret the word as fright. The best way she figured to explain to them, is through sentences: The cost of the freight, gave me such […]

Posted October 27, 2021
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The Rose Code by Kate Quinn

The Rose Code by Kate Quinn on March 9th 2011 Genres: Historical Fiction Pages: 624 Format: Paperback Source: Book Club Buy on Amazon Goodreads 1940. As England prepares to fight the Nazis, three very different women answer the call to mysterious country estate Bletchley Park, where the best minds in Britain train to break German military codes. Vivacious debutante Osla is the girl who has everything—beauty, wealth, and the dashing Prince Philip of Greece sending her roses—but she burns to prove herself as more than a society girl, and puts her fluent German to use as a translator of decoded enemy secrets. Imperious self-made Mab, product of east-end London poverty, works the legendary codebreaking machines as she conceals old wounds and looks for a socially advantageous husband. Both Osla and Mab are quick to see the potential in local village spinster Beth, whose shyness conceals a brilliant facility with puzzles, and soon Beth spreads her wings as one of the Park’s few female cryptanalysts. But war, loss, and the impossible pressure of secrecy will tear the three apart. 1947. As the royal wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip whips post-war Britain into a fever, three friends-turned-enemies are reunited by […]

Posted July 17, 2021
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Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys

Salt to the Sea by Rita Sepetys on February 02, 2016 Genres: Historical Fiction Pages: 391 Format: Paperback Source: Book Club Buy on Amazon Goodreads While the Titanic and Lusitania are both well-documented disasters, the single greatest tragedy in maritime history is the little-known January 30, 1945 sinking in the Baltic Sea by a Soviet submarine of the Wilhelm Gustloff, a German cruise liner that was supposed to ferry wartime personnel and refugees to safety from the advancing Red Army. The ship was overcrowded with more than 10,500 passengers — the intended capacity was approximately 1,800 — and more than 9,000 people, including 5,000 children, lost their lives. Sepetys (writer of ‘Between Shades of Gray’) crafts four fictionalized but historically accurate voices to convey the real-life tragedy. Joana, a Lithuanian with nursing experience; Florian, a Prussian soldier fleeing the Nazis with stolen treasure; and Emilia, a Polish girl close to the end of her pregnancy, converge on their escape journeys as Russian troops advance; each will eventually meet Albert, a Nazi peon with delusions of grandeur, assigned to the Gustloff decks. Paperback 390 pages Read 09 August 2016 Published February 2016 Goodreads Blurb: Winter, 1945. Four teenagers. Four secrets. Each […]

Posted August 12, 2016
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The Companionship of Harold Fry and Queenie Hennessy by Rachel Joyce

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry & The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy by Rachel Joyce on December 2nd, 2014 Genres: Fiction Pages: 700 Format: Paperback Source: Book Club Goodreads Two beloved novels in one volume! THE UNLIKELY PILGRIMAGE OF HAROLD FRY Recently retired, sweet, emotionally numb Harold Fry is jolted out of his passivity by a letter from Queenie Hennessy, an old friend, who he hasn’t heard from in twenty years. She has written to say she is in hospice and wanted to say goodbye. Leaving his tense, bitter wife Maureen to her chores, Harold intends a quick walk to the corner mailbox to post his reply but instead, inspired by a chance encounter, he becomes convinced he must deliver his message in person to Queenie–who is 600 miles away–because as long as he keeps walking, Harold believes that Queenie will not die. So without hiking boots, rain gear, map or cell phone, one of the most endearing characters in current fiction begins his unlikely pilgrimage across the English countryside. Along the way, strangers stir up memories–flashbacks, often painful, from when his marriage was filled with promise and then not, of his inadequacy as a father, and of […]

Posted July 28, 2016
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After You – Jojo Moyes

After You by Jojo Moyes Series: Me Before You #2 Published by Pamela Dorman Books on September 29th 2015 Genres: Contemporary, Romance Pages: 353 Format: Paperback Source: Book Club Buy on Amazon Goodreads How do you move on after losing the person you loved? How do you build a life worth living? Louisa Clark is no longer just an ordinary girl living an ordinary life. After the transformative six months spent with Will Traynor, she is struggling without him. When an extraordinary accident forces Lou to return home to her family, she can’t help but feel she’s right back where she started. Her body heals, but Lou herself knows that she needs to be kick-started back to life. Which is how she ends up in a church basement with the members of the Moving On support group, who share insights, laughter, frustrations, and terrible cookies. They will also lead her to the strong, capable Sam Fielding—the paramedic, whose business is life and death, and the one man who might be able to understand her. Then a figure from Will’s past appears and hijacks all her plans, propelling her into a very different future. . . . For Lou Clark, life […]

Posted July 23, 2016
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When God was a Rabbit – Sarah Winman

When God was a Rabbit by Sarah Winman Published by Headline Review on May 12th 2011 Pages: 341 Format: Paperback Source: Book Club Buy on Amazon Goodreads This is a book about a brother and a sister. It’s a book about secrets and starting over, friendship and family, triumph and tragedy, and everything in between. More than anything, it’s a book about love in all its forms. In a remarkably honest and confident voice, Sarah Winman has written the story of a memorable young heroine, Elly, and her loss of innocence- a magical portrait of growing up and the pull and power of family ties. From Essex and Cornwall to the streets of New York, from 1968 to the events of 9/11, When God Was a Rabbit follows the evolving bond of love and secrets between Elly and her brother Joe, and her increasing concern for an unusual best friend, Jenny Penny, who has secrets of her own. With its wit and humor, engaging characters whose eccentricities are adroitly and sometimes darkly drawn, and its themes of memory and identity, When God Was a Rabbit is a love letter to true friendship and fraternal love. Funny, utterly compelling, fully of […]

Posted May 2, 2016
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The girl who saved the king of Sweden – Jonas Jonasson

The Girl who saved the King of Sweden by Jonas Jonasson Published by Fourth Estate on April 24th 2014 Genres: Fiction, Humor Pages: 421 Format: Paperback Source: Book Club Buy on Amazon Goodreads Just because the world ignores you, doesn’t mean you can’t save it . . . Nombeko Mayeki was never meant to be a hero. Born in a Soweto shack, she seemed destined for a short, hard life. But now she is on the run from the world ‘s most ruthless secret service, with three Chinese sisters, twins who are officially one person and an elderly potato farmer. Oh, and the fate of the King of Sweden – and the world – rests on her shoulders. On June 14th, 2007, the King and Prime Minister of Sweden went missing from a gala banquet at the Royal Castle. Later it was said that both had fallen ill: the truth is different. The real story starts much earlier, in 1961, with the birth of Nombeko Mayeki in a shack in Soweto. Nombeko was fated to grow up fast and die early in her poverty-stricken township. But Nombeko takes a different path. She finds work as a housecleaner and eventually makes […]

Posted April 23, 2016
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Source: Book Club

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