Coffee Break Books

What books are you reading on your coffee break?

February’s Update

2 books sit side by side on a wooden table. One book, Butter by Asako Yuzuki is a yellow book. It has the book's title on it going down the left side of the book in red capital letters, and the rest of the writing including Japanese characters in black text. There is a cow on the front cover as well as some smears of something - could be blood? Fourteen Days is the book on the right hand side. It is a book with text and illustrations in blues, whites and pinks. The illustration is of a square apartment block, with people sitting on the top of the roof. The names of the authors of the book are placed on the building in what appear to be billboard adverts.

Hello, and how are you?

February is nearly finished, and finally I can feel the first hints of Spring on the way. It has been so cold for so long here, that I am so very ready for Spring. In our home life we have been doing some work on my daughter’s bedroom to try to stop it from getting mould in. Originally I had hopefully thought that she would be out of her room for just a few weeks before we could get her moved back in. The reality has been somewhat different. And so she has been sharing her brother’s bedroom for the whole of this last month, and it looks set to be another couple of weeks before we can get her moved back in. It’s been easier than we thought in some ways, but quite challenging in others.

One of the nicest things that has come from this period is that we have got my daughter to join in with “Reading Night’ on a Thursday where we all sit in our sitting room after dinner and read our own books for a little while rather than reach to put the TV on. We have been doing this with our son, who is a voracious reader, for some years, and my daughter has recently started admitting to enjoying reading books for herself – she has been resisting it for a while to try to strike her own path separately from her brother, but has finally given in to the love of reading! And this way she gets to stay up late like her brother does one day a week.

We also had half term last week, which involved a stay near London to visit family who live there. We stayed at a Premier Inn near my sister’s home for a couple of days, and that involved sitting quietly in the dark while the children went to sleep, as these trips always do, and so quite a bit of reading on the kindle each night.

Writing

For much of February I didn’t post any book reviews – the jobs on my daughter’s room, some work for something I am doing for my day job, and the children have kept me quite busy. But I was able to publish 2 blog posts about the books I read in January right at the end of the month.

The reviews that I have published this month, in order of the date I published them on are:

Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt

A book about friendships, about family ties and about developing relationships. Not just with humans – although there are plenty of those explored in the book – but even with an Octopus named Marcellus who lives in the Sowell Bay Aquarium. It is a book about letting people in. Letting them become part of your life and letting go of hurt from the past.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and gave it 4.5 out of 5 stars from me. Click on the link below to read the full review.

The front cover of the book Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt. The cover is a bright yellow background with blue text giving the title and author's name. There is an illustration of a pink and blue octopus surrounded by bubbles. The octopus' body is largely pink with blue suckers on his tentacles. He is surrounded by bubbles, and is holding what looks like a take away cup with something like a milkshake in it.

Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt

The Children’s Bach by Helen Garner

The front cover of the book The Children's Bach by Helen Garner. The front cover has the book title and author name on it as well as a quote review from David Nicholls on the from "A jewel of a novel about a perfect family falling apart." On the bottom 1/3 of the cover is an illustration of a house. It is a single story house with a pink door in the centre, a bike propped up against one of the windows on the left hand side., and some shrubbery next to the window on the right of the door.

A book about family. About a family being formed and one breaking apart.

This wasn’t a book for me, though it was very well written and will stay with me for a while. I gave it 2.5 out of 5 stars.

The Children’s Bach by Helen Garner

Reading

This blog is all about the reading, isn’t it? So what books have I been reading this month and that you can expect reviews of next month?

Fiction

I finished two fiction books this month, both of which I thoroughly enjoyed. They were rather different in character, but I think I will remember both for a while. These are Circe by Madeline Miller and Whale Fall by Elizabeth O’Connor. I also started, but haven’t quite finished reading The Girl With The Louding Voice by Abi Daré. You will have to come back here to read my reviews – and hopefully it won’t take the whole month for me to sit down and write up my reviews. But, in the meantime, if you have read either of these books I’d love to know what you thought of them in the comments.

Non-fiction/Books About Music

I haven’t read much on the books about music front this month, and I had read ahead in January, and life got rather in the way of my music book reading. I have, today published my review of the book Wild Symphony by the author Dan Brown, whose music accompanying the book I was very pleasantly surprised by. This review appears on my other blog, but you can read it by clocking on the link below:

Wild Symphony by Dan Brown

So what’s coming up in March?

As I have written and posted my reviews of the books I read in January this month, then I obviously need to post reviews of the books I read in February next month. So look out for re views of Circe, Whale Fall and hopefully The Girl With The Louding Voice. For the music blog I will be posting my review of the book Practice Pie by Nicola Canton – a rather lovely book that builds up the text all about why music practice is a very good thing through the metaphor of baking a pie. As Practice Pie is a book aimed at adults, I will also be reading a reviewing the book Lives of the Musicians by Kathleen Krull & Kathryn Hewitt.

2 books sit side by side on a wooden table. One book, Butter by Asako Yuzuki is a yellow book. It has the book's title on it going down the left side of the book in red capital letters, and the rest of the writing including Japanese characters in black text. There is a cow on the front cover as well as some smears of something - could be blood? Fourteen Days is the book on the right hand side. It is a book with text and illustrations in blues, whites and pinks. The illustration is of a square apartment block, with people sitting on the top of the roof. The names of the authors of the book are placed on the building in what appear to be billboard adverts.

I will finish The Girl With The Louding Voice by Abi Daré in the next week or so I would think, and will need to find a new kindle book to read. Do you have any suggestions? I have a choice this month, for my paper book (which I read downstairs and out of the house while I am waiting for my children to finish their parties/extra curricular;ar activities and other courses), between Butter by Asako Yuzuki and Fourteen Days, a book written by many different authors, each writing a different character in the book. Which should I choose?

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