Karl's Reading List

Published by Zaffre/Bonnier Books UK: London, 2021. Another book from my parents' book-swap library, this one is outside my usual genres of interest, but it still gripped me. I suppose that makes sense, as the genre in question is thriller. The set up is great. In the first chapter, our main POV character, Ellen Devlin, is sitting on the train when a woman with a baby asks to sit in the empty seat next to her. Before too long, the woman has to answer a phone call, and asks Ellen to look after the baby for a few minutes. The woman then gets off at the next station, and Ellen is left with the baby, and a note that says: Please look after Mia. Don't trust the police. Don't trust anyone. I mean, what would you do?! Ellen is a complicated character, something that we learn more about as time goes on. She is recently separated, and her ex-husband is expecting a child with his new partner. Ellen, who is barren, has wanted a child for years, and is drawn to looking after Mia, even ...

Published by Simon and Schuster Ltd: London, 2022. The same day I put Roger Moore's autobiography, My Word is My Bond , into the Book-Swap Library outside my parents' house, this book was in it. Thinking it was another similar style biography - and having enjoyed the earlier one for what it was, with some reservations - I decided to give this one a go as well. I was not prepared. Although Pocketful of Happiness is indeed another memoir, written by a respected England-based actor, who had a role in Spice World (the main point of overlap between the two actors I noticed), it is mostly focussed on the year in Grant's life when his beloved wife, dialect coach Joan Washington, was dying of lung cancer. And it is heart-breaking. Grant adores his wife, and they had 35 years of marriage together - a rarity in Hollywood circles. The love he has for her, and for their daughter Olivia (called "Oilly" by both parents, in a reference to Olive Oyl from Popeye), permeates this ...

Published as an ebook by Shadow Dragon Press: Tijeras, New Mexico, 2026. Comedy is hard to write. What seems hilarious to one person can come across as just-plain-dumb or confusing to another.  Or, just not that funny. Dr Gnoll is meant to be a comedy. It is loosely a parody of James Bond, particularly 'Dr No.' It is also billed as a humour-filled parody of "everything from spy movies, role-playing games, and video games." I appreciate what the authors are intending to do here. I just didn't find it that funny. The 'humour' comes from wordplay (such as Dr Gnoll being a gnoll, James Bond's Q becoming "Kew", and the lead female being called Maxine Charisma), some innuendo (particularly regarding the MacGuffin rod that Dr Gnoll is after, and the way it is described once Dr Gnoll has it), and then very out-of-place references to the fictionality of the world being described.  This latter element is a little jarring at times, as it is referenced s...

Published as an audiobook by Hodder Children's Books/Hachette Children's Books, 2013. Narrated by Jan Francis. Book 11 in the 'Famous Five' series. Preceded by ' Five on a Hike Together. ' Followed by 'Five Go Down to the Sea.' First published 1952. On occasion, Elise and I have noted that a particular Famous Five story might take a while to get on to the mystery itself. Five Go Adventuring Again is the first one to spring to mind in this way. However, Five Have a Wonderful Time takes this idea to the next level! Although the five are camping, and encounter some suspicious 'Fair Folk' whom they wish to befriend, the actual mystery or adventure element doesn't really kick in until literally over half the book has passed. At that point, the Five, along with returning character Jo from Five Fall Into Adventure , finally notice something suspicious in the ruins of a nearby castle - a face at a window! - and set out to find out how the face is th...

Published by Little, Brown and Company: Great Britain, 1999. A book that makes it clear from the title what it will be about, The Year 1000 is an easy read about life in the Year 1000, specifically, England in the Year 1000. The authors have taken a 'work calendar' from the era, decorated with images from everyday life, and have used those images as a launch-pad, letting each chapter be based on a 'month,' and a 'theme.'  We get looks at the Church, at farming, at trade, and even at the roles of women, which turn out to have been a lot more 'equal' than we might stereotypically think such an era would have been! For example, the authors point out that various wills from the era show that women could own and inherit property, with examples including: "Aelfflaed, a noblewoman [who]...had supervised the farming of many acres with apparent success, while Wulfgeat of Donnington clearly found nothing unusual in leaving his lands to be run by his womenfolk...

We have been living in my parents' house for two months now, and they have a lot of picture books here. As a result, we have been reading a lot of new stories to Ezekiel, and it feels only right that I should do another picture-book entry to acknowledge some of them. Keeping the list to only ten has been tricky, particularly as I also wanted to include two books we read when we went to a friend's bach at the lake a few months ago. Aside from those two, I have limited myself to books that belong to my parents, knowing that the ones we own will still be with us the next time I do one of these. As is now usual, each of these books has their own page, meaning that you can easily skip all ten if you want to just move on to the next 'proper' book on my list. Karl's List First Flight ; Good Night, Alice and Other Stories ; Skarloey ; Swiggo ; Minny Car Elise's List Just Me and My Puppy ; Dogs ; Who's Driving? ; Mosan Mouse ; I've Lost My Kisses Previous Book ~...

Published by Gecko Press: Australia and New Zealand, 2007 (2006). English translation by Gecko Press, 2007. First published in Belgium by Clavis Uitgeverij. I say this a lot for Ezekiel's books, but this is a beautifully illustrated book! And it's a pop-up book too! Who's Driving? is fairly self-explanatory. Each page has three animals dressed in different uniforms, each approaching a vehicle that they could conceivably be driving. When the pop-up tab is pulled, the driver of the vehicle is revealed, and sound effects are added as the vehicle 'drives' away. The illustrations are clever in that there are hints given as to which animal will be revealed. The desert jeep, for example, is being approached by a hippo in khaki. Of course the one in khaki is the driver! The pop-up elements are also cleverly done, with my favourte being a small convertible that is revealed as being driven by a giraffe. I am still impressed by how that giraffe pops up from that little convert...