Seems I give up easily!
I really tried with the one on the left 'The Crooked Cross' by Sally Carson until it got too depressing. It's a 2025 Persephone publication originally published in 1934 by an English author who spent a lot of time in Germany pre war. The story is an account of the fictional Kluger family, including daughter Lexa, who at Christmas 1932 is engaged to be married to a young doctor with a Jewish name - Moritz Weissman and how their lives are changed during the rise of the Nazis.
Persephone have now published the follow up to this story 'The Prisoner'. I won't be reading it.
Then I tried the middle book, which is 2013 crime fiction by a American author but set in the UK despite misgivings, as sometimes US authors have not bothered to use our English words for various things that have different names across the pond. This story is the 13th in a long series featuring American Dorothy Martin who lives in the UK with her retired British Chief Constable Alan. I was getting on OK with it and then the author starts to mention several times that Dorothy hasn't had time to floss her teeth! For goodness sake - talk about padding the word count!
Having abandoned two books quarter of the way in, I hoped to actually finish the book on the right 'The Weather Watcher ' by Claire Anders. It turned out to be a lighter than I thought read, a coming of age story about a young Scottish girl, who, when her mother decides she ought to marry the son of a family friend just before the War starts, decides instead to join the Women's Auxiliary Air Force and train as a Meteorology Assistant. I might have given up as it's leaning towards being a romance but persevered as the details about a 'Weather Watcher' were interesting and hopefully researched and accurate. There was information of something I'd never heard of despite it happening in Felixstowe - Operation Outward. I've read so many books about WWII but never heard of this.
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| Picture from Wikipedia of balloons being released on the east coast for Operation Outward |
I've still got 6 other library books to try before the library van is round again at the end of the month and only one of those I definitely know to be readable, so there may well be another post about trying and failing to finish!
Back Tomorrow
Life's too short to finish reading books we are really not enjoying
ReplyDelete“Flossing teeth”, that did make me smile Sue. I had a text from the library last week informing me that reservations will now have a £1.10 charge! As most of the books I read are usually reservations I’m… well I won’t say what I am I’m sure you can guess. Will the next thing be a charge when you take out a book off the library shelf? Our large, airy library was sold off to make way for flats, then transferred to a shop previously a bank How much longer we will have that who knows? The Barbarians are at the door! I’ll stop ranting now Sue🤣. June
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