We’re so pleased that #bookadayuk will be continuing into July, this time curated by those lovely people at Doubleday. We’ll also being continuing to join in here at AWW Towers, and we hope you will too. It’s been brilliant fun raiding our bookshelves so a big shout-out to Borough Press for June, and here’s to another month of sharing our bookish choices. But, what are the challenges for each day? Continue reading “Goodbye June and hello July – #bookadayuk, now curated by Doubleday UK”
Tag: Doubleday
Review: Longbourn by Jo Baker
If Elizabeth Bennet had the washing of her own petticoats, Sarah thought, she would be more careful not to trudge through muddy fields.
It is wash-day for the housemaids at Longbourn House, and Sarah’s hands are chapped and bleeding. Domestic life below stairs, ruled tenderly and forcefully by Mrs Hill the housekeeper, is about to be disturbed by the arrival of a new footman, smelling of the sea and bearing secrets.
For in Georgian England, there is a world the young ladies in the drawing room will never know, a world of poverty, love and brutal war. Continue reading “Review: Longbourn by Jo Baker”
Review: Noble Conflict by Malorie Blackman
Nearly two centuries ago, the region on our Eastern borders was not the volcanic wasteland it is today. It was a land as beautiful as our own, but inhabited by another culture, the so-called Crusaders, whose very nature was intemperate and undisciplined. Whilst we in the Alliance lived in harmony with the land, valuing and living at one with nature, their highly skilled scientists sought to control and subdue nature through their technology. Whilst we lived in peace and were tolerant to all, they were aggressive and expansionist and viewed our lands and our lives with covetous eyes. Whilst we respected nature, they sought to modify the very face of the continents, shifting the tectonic plates beneath their feet to create more territory for their ever-expanding population by detonating nuclear explosives deep within the Earth.
But in their hubris they over-reached themselves… Continue reading “Review: Noble Conflict by Malorie Blackman”
Review: Perfect by Rachel Joyce
In 1972, in order to balance clock time with the movement of the earth, two seconds were added. Byron Hemmings knew this because James Lowe had told him and James was the cleverest boy at school. But how could time change? The steady movement of hands around a clock was as certain as their golden futures.
Then Byron’s mother, late for the school run, makes a devastating mistake. Byron’s perfect world is shattered. Were those two extra seconds to blame? Can what follows ever be set right? Infused with the profound insights into what makes us human, lightened with acute observations about the frailties of us all, Perfect is Rachel Joyce at her finest. A novel about misunderstandings, the small acts of kindness that make the difference and the redemptive nature of time. Continue reading “Review: Perfect by Rachel Joyce”