Reading, remainder of July
Aug. 4th, 2022 11:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cyphomandraSmokescreen, Dick Francis (re-read).
The Pug Who Wanted to be a Fairy, Bella Swift
Tales from the Treehouse: Too Silly to be Told… Until Now! Andy Griffiths & Terry Denton
First Term at Ravensbay, Cressida Burton
Goodbye Paradise, Sarina Bowen
Worrals of the WAAF, WE Johns
Smokescreen, Dick Francis. Action star Edward Lincoln is asked by a dying friend to investigate the poor performance of her racehorses in South Africa. However, as soon as he arrives there, “accidents” start happening to him… Solid, and the car sequence is particularly good. Lincoln is in many ways more overtly capable and settled than the average Francis hero, but he's still definitely on the Francis spectrum.
The Pug Who Wanted to be a Fairy, Bella Swift
Tales from the Treehouse: Too Silly to be Told… Until Now! Andy Griffiths & Terry Denton
Occasionally my children shove books at me and demand I read them. The first has a pug, Peggy, who wants to help save the local park from closure by finding a fairy; the Treehouse is a spin-off from the apparently endless series of Treehouse books (all in multiples of 13 - the 13 storey treehouse, the 26- etc) and is a bunch of, as it says, silly short stories. About the most I can say for these is that they’re nowhere near as bad as the David Walliams books, which I loathe, and which people keep giving the kids for presents.
First Term at Ravensbay, Cressida Burton. And sometimes I read kids’ books entirely for myself. Contemporary boarding school. Paige wins a magazine competition that gives her a scholarship to a prestigious riding school, and struggles to fit in with the more privileged students. They have their own horses, while she rides a school pony - but then she sees Blue Angel, an unrideable and skittish horse that the school took on as a favour and plan to sell on. It’s all satisfyingly obvious but I do quite like that the members of Paige’s dorm all have their own issues that are not all resolved by the end of book one and that are not all clearly good or bad.
Goodbye Paradise, Sarina Bowen. This has an extremely unhelpful cover (two topless adult males in a clinch) and blurb (first person narrative from secondary lead talking about him and his best friend on a ranch) combo that in no way mentions that the two characters are teenagers in a religious polygamous cult who go on the run. I enjoyed it - it’s quite a thoughtful book, and I liked that one of the other main plot lines is the fellow escapee they end up staying with getting post-natal depression - but I did feel that the two leads hadn’t had the time or maturity to really deal with their upbringing, and it might all fall apart in five years time.
Worrals of the WAAF, WE Johns. Because of peer pressure. Worrals and her best mate, Frecks, are bored flying training aeroplanes back for repairs and want to do something more exciting. Fortunately they are in a WE Johns book and by chapter II they have shot down an enemy agent attempting to escape with a British prototype plane and discovered an enemy plot to use farm animals to identify British airfields, and by chapter IV Worrals is in enemy hands and Frecks has to rescue her. Fast-paced, fun, and I’m sure it was very effective propaganda; also deftly light handed in terms of sexism, while allowing its leads a bit more emotional latitude than Biggles & his crew.
The Pug Who Wanted to be a Fairy, Bella Swift
Tales from the Treehouse: Too Silly to be Told… Until Now! Andy Griffiths & Terry Denton
First Term at Ravensbay, Cressida Burton
Goodbye Paradise, Sarina Bowen
Worrals of the WAAF, WE Johns
Smokescreen, Dick Francis. Action star Edward Lincoln is asked by a dying friend to investigate the poor performance of her racehorses in South Africa. However, as soon as he arrives there, “accidents” start happening to him… Solid, and the car sequence is particularly good. Lincoln is in many ways more overtly capable and settled than the average Francis hero, but he's still definitely on the Francis spectrum.
The Pug Who Wanted to be a Fairy, Bella Swift
Tales from the Treehouse: Too Silly to be Told… Until Now! Andy Griffiths & Terry Denton
Occasionally my children shove books at me and demand I read them. The first has a pug, Peggy, who wants to help save the local park from closure by finding a fairy; the Treehouse is a spin-off from the apparently endless series of Treehouse books (all in multiples of 13 - the 13 storey treehouse, the 26- etc) and is a bunch of, as it says, silly short stories. About the most I can say for these is that they’re nowhere near as bad as the David Walliams books, which I loathe, and which people keep giving the kids for presents.
First Term at Ravensbay, Cressida Burton. And sometimes I read kids’ books entirely for myself. Contemporary boarding school. Paige wins a magazine competition that gives her a scholarship to a prestigious riding school, and struggles to fit in with the more privileged students. They have their own horses, while she rides a school pony - but then she sees Blue Angel, an unrideable and skittish horse that the school took on as a favour and plan to sell on. It’s all satisfyingly obvious but I do quite like that the members of Paige’s dorm all have their own issues that are not all resolved by the end of book one and that are not all clearly good or bad.
Goodbye Paradise, Sarina Bowen. This has an extremely unhelpful cover (two topless adult males in a clinch) and blurb (first person narrative from secondary lead talking about him and his best friend on a ranch) combo that in no way mentions that the two characters are teenagers in a religious polygamous cult who go on the run. I enjoyed it - it’s quite a thoughtful book, and I liked that one of the other main plot lines is the fellow escapee they end up staying with getting post-natal depression - but I did feel that the two leads hadn’t had the time or maturity to really deal with their upbringing, and it might all fall apart in five years time.
Worrals of the WAAF, WE Johns. Because of peer pressure. Worrals and her best mate, Frecks, are bored flying training aeroplanes back for repairs and want to do something more exciting. Fortunately they are in a WE Johns book and by chapter II they have shot down an enemy agent attempting to escape with a British prototype plane and discovered an enemy plot to use farm animals to identify British airfields, and by chapter IV Worrals is in enemy hands and Frecks has to rescue her. Fast-paced, fun, and I’m sure it was very effective propaganda; also deftly light handed in terms of sexism, while allowing its leads a bit more emotional latitude than Biggles & his crew.
