Book Hop

This is my first ever book blogger hop so be kind with me if I get this wrong. I first found this on http://crazy-for-books.com/ but this week it is being hosted over at Lori's reading corner.

Question: Who is the author that you are dying to meet?
Answer:
I am so torn as I have two! I would love to meet Diana Gabaldon as she has written my favourite book series of all time Cross Stitch (Outlander). But I would also love to meet Markus Zusak as The Book Thief is the most haunting book I have ever read and I think he would have some amazing stories to tell.

Okay this is a lot of fun. I'll have to try and do this every week! Now I'm off to find some other great book blogs! See ya.

Shadows Of The Workhouse (Jennifer Worth)

Number two in the autobiographical series that started with Call The Midwife. This book is structured differently to the first and is split into three major sections; Workhouse Children, The Trial of Sister Monica Joan, and The Old Soldier telling the story of a small selection of people in the authors life.

The workhouse section is simply fascinating, giving you an insight into a way of life we could never imagine. The witty and cunning and possibly crazy Sister Monica Joan is given a large portion of this book too in order to delve into a small part of her history and the Old Soldier introduces an old man the author meets in her nursing duties who fast becomes a dear friend.

I was a little concerned that I would not like number two as much as the first but I certainly wasn't disappointed. Each of these books also provide a series of photographs which complements the stories perfectly.

Amazon UK provides free international delivery for selected countries

Great news, Amazon Uk is now providing free international delivery to Australia, India, New Zealand and South Africa (currently ends August 15, 2011).

The book depository has always provided free international delivery worldwide so it is great to see a bit of competition out there.

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (Author Patrick Suskind)

READ IT

Living in 18th Century France, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, an extreme outsider delves into the world of perfumery thanks to his beyond-human sense of smell. A man with no scent himself, he longs to experience all the smells the world has to offer. With Grenouille comes a disturbing and unlikeable character, set amongst a sea of olfactory descriptions which gives this book a unique approach to story telling.

Throughout most of this book I was heavily inclined to dislike it, the overly descriptive narrative and downright creepy main character did not endear this book to my heart. But a unique thing happened, after reading this book I found myself thinking about it days and even weeks afterwards. Any book that provides twists and turns that stick in my mind long after I have read it gets the thumbs up from me!
 

ch...ch...ch....changes

I started this blog as a little bit of an experient. I didn't know if I would enjoy blogging but I wanted an opportunity to improve my writing skills and to talk about some of the things that interested me. This is only my second week and already I need a change. I read a few things before I started this to get some advice and one of the suggestions was to remove comments as they take a lot of time to respond to, you can get a lot of non-supportive replies and only a small percentage of people reading a blog actually comment. So that is where I started but I have learned one small crucial part that was missing. I want to know what people are thinking, I want to know if others agree with the books I like and the ones I don't. And I want the opportunity to find other blogs out there that I can follow. So I'm changing things up and along with my book review posts I'm going to be including a few more personal posts to tell you about the things I want to read, the kind of genres I like and just anything else book related I can think of.

I really hope you enjoy reading my reviews and feel free to let me know if you have a site I should check out!

p.s. I also found the original colour I picked looked bright yellow on some monitors instead of the warm colour I was trying to go for. So I've changed the colours around again. Hopefully will make for more pleasant reading.