January 2012 books

I've done very little in the way of writing any book reviews this month. Too much going on at home. Cold house. Very cold. No central heating. Single-glazed windows upstairs.  Draughts whichever way you look. Snow.  Main task has been to collect firewood from the local woods for open fire in Living Room. Only warm place in the house. Landlord of this tied cottage has much to answer for. However, to books ....

I started my Non- Fiction reading this month with John Suchet's My Bonnie: how dementia stole the love of my life. It is an incredibly sad story of how their incredible life together slowly disintegrated over a period of years. It brings tears to your eyes. Not only is the book beautifully written, but Suchet's love for Bonnie spills over on every single page. Henry Davey's Thomas Tallis: Elizabethan Musician is a short, factual biography concerned more with the musician than with the life.  Justin Marozzi's The Man who invented history is a wonderful sort of travelling biography of Herodotus, the Greek historian. Anna Timofeeva-Egorova's Over Fields of Fire: flying the Sturnovik in action on the Eastern Front 1942 - 1945 is a carefully written account of her career in the Soviet air force. It tends to focus on heroic deeds both by her and her comrades. It also records deaths of her close friends with regret. It really only tells about her love of flying with little or nothing about the rest of her life. I do wish it had filled out her personal life. Never mind. I'm grateful we've got what we have. Tracey Engelbrecht's The girl who couldn't say No: Memoir of a teenage Mom is a well-written account of the difficulties she had being pregnant and then rearing her baby single-handedly. It's quite inspirational reading. David Catchpole's Jesus People is about the teachings of Jesus and how the earliest Christian communities came into being and what they believed. Excellent book with a thorough Bibliography. And, an important trifle, Charlotte Bronte's brief  Notes on Pseudonyms used by the Bronte sisters.

The best Fiction I have read this month is pretty eclectic. It starts with Anne Bronte's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, that wonderful 19th century classic. Then Sofi Oksanen's Purge a brilliant novel set in Estonia controlled by the USSR. It says a lot for the translation, as well as the original, that this book keeps you turning the pages.

So Thrillers next. Cecilia Peartree's Crime in the Community is a pretty good read. As is Sarah Spann's romantic Wildflowers Come Back and Sue Fineman's On the Run. Katy Madison's Presumed Guilty until proven innocent is the story of the wrong person being identified by the community as a  serial killer. He had a bad past, so everyone assumed he was responsible. They didn't know he'd turned his life around. Until he was able to prove that the real killer was the sheriff who was the one leading the campaign against him. Gripping.

I only read one completely Romantic novel this month. It was Carol Manicelli's medical Emergency: Wife Lost and Found set in hospital. It's a really satisfying read when so many romances are rather straightforward.

And the last, is a rather silly Ghost novel S A Hunter's Scary Mary.