I've read eight books this month, three fiction and five non-fiction - two of the books were re-reads. While I enjoyed all the books that I read this month I've had a range of reading experiences with them. Goodbye Mr Chips,  I read in one sitting. I picked it up one night, intending to read a chapter or two, and I couldn't stop until I got to the end. This is a short read, at just 120 pages, but the author, James Hilton, packs a lot story into them. And yet somehow, the paci

Tom Chesshyre is one of my favourite writers. The first book of his that I read was From Source to Sea . It's an account of a 215-mile-long walk along the river Thames from its source in Trewsbury Mead in Gloucestershire, to the point where it joins the North Sea. I have a particular fondness for books about walking and hiking, so I knew I was going to enjoy this book, but what caught me was the history and the detail that he wove into his account of the walk. He's a journali

“If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.” While I don't agree entirely with this quote by Oscar Wilde, in the sense that there are some books which are brilliant and beautiful which don't lend themselves to re-reading, I'm wholly in sympathy with the spirit of the quote, that re-reading books is a big part of reading because there is much to be discovered in a good book on the second or third read that was perhaps missed e

One of my many bookish pleasures is picking up book one of a three volume or five volume or ten volume series that looks interesting, and settling in, comfortable in the knowledge that I've found a fictional world to inhabit for anywhere from a couple of weeks to a couple of months. There's nothing I like more than finding a bunch of characters that I like, set in a particular time and place, having adventures, and living their lives book after book with a narrative that keep

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