Synopsis
Great Expectations opens unforgettably in a twilit and overgrown churchyard on the eerie Kent marshes. 
There the orphan Pip is disturbed to meet an escaped convict, Magwitch, but gives him food, in an encounter that is to haunt both their lives. How Pip receives riches from a mysterious benefactor, snobbishly abandons his friends for London ( Read more... )

The Back of the Book
The story is a picaresque saga about a motley band of rabbits who desert their ancient warren when the gentle Fiver predicts imminent destruction of all who remain.  Led by Fiver's intelligent brother, Hazel, the refugees set out on an epic search for a new home.

What I thought
I remember that when I read this at school I thought ( Read more... )

The Back of the Book
The unforgettable tale of how Fernand her friend Charlotte the spider save Wilbur the pig from a pig's usual and very unhappy fate.

What I thought
This was the book that was being read to our class when my family left Northern Ireland to move to England. I remember not being terribly entranced by it at the time, so I can't ( Read more... )

Part of Amazon's synopsis
On a chilly February day two old friends meet in the throng outside a crematorium to pay their last respects to Molly Lane. Both Clive Linley and Vernon Halliday had been Molly's lovers in the days before they reached their current eminence, Clive as Britain's most successful modern composer, Vernon as editor of the quality ( Read more... )

The Back of the Book 
Every bride is entitled to some pre-wedding jitters. And what girl wouldn't think twice about marriage when her fiance gets his eyebrows shaved off just in time to look horrendous for the photographs. But what if it's not the ceremony that freaks you out but the happy ever after? Heidi Savage is wondering whether she can really ( Read more... )

There can't be many people who haven't read this at school, so I'm going to dispense with the plot summary and just paste my BookCrossing Journal Entry.

It's years since I read this but, having done so, this time I read the introduction first. Sometimes this spoils a book, but this one, by Susan Shillinglaw, added to my enjoyment more than I ( Read more... )

The Back of the Book
1910. Anna Karenina and War & Peace have made Leo Tolstoy the world's most famous author. But fame comes at a price.
In the tumultuous final year of his life, Tolstoy is desperate to find respite, so leaves his large family and the hounding press behind and heads into the wilderness. Too ill to venture beyond the tiny station of ( Read more... )

It worked, so here is the list for the year before last.

The Top 10
Emotional Geology - Linda Gillard
The Kite Runner - Khalid Hoseni
Stumbling on Happiness - Daniel Gilbert
I Know This Much is True - Wally Lamb
This Thing of Darkness - Harry S Thompson

Noughts & Crosses Trilogy - Malorie Blackman (well if others have put in series so can I)
Ella Minnow ( Read more... )

I'm well down on reading this year compared to last - I blame
( Read more... )

I have two volumes of poetry/little stories on the go at the moment for when I finish a book and want to read a little more but can't be bothered to get out of bed for another - or daren't lest I stay up all night! One of them is my Winnie the Pooh Collection and the other is Jacques Prevert's Paroles. Before listening to Champs-Elysees in the car ( Read more... )