I often try to read at least one book by a French author for Paris in July, not in French though. Over the last few years I have read Antoine Laurain, Valerie Perrin and last year Victoria Mas's book The Mad Women's Ball. I was really surprised by how much I enjoyed that book given that it was quite dark.
That darkness is something that permeates The Island of Mists and Miracles, although it is a very different book. The story brings together a number of characters to a small together on l'île de Batz, a tiny island off the coast of Brittany.
Sister Anne is a nun who believes that she has been promised that she would see a visitation of Mother Mary, and therefore she accepts a mission that takes her to Brittany. She had turned to religion after some childhood trauma. Before accepting the mission, she had rarely left her community so it she is very much out of his comfort zone.
One of the residents of the island is Isaac, an outsider from a devout family and then there is Hugo, his only friend whose family life is shaped by the fact that his younger sister, Julia, is always sick.
With Anne waiting for the visitation, she is disappointed when she is not the one who sees but rather it is to Isaac that the vision is revealed, setting in wheels a series of events that quickly get out of control. At first the islanders are intrigued at the idea that Isaac is seeing the vision. Some believe wholeheartedly, like his grandmother Madden, but others do not, like Hugo's father who forbids Hugo from seeing Isaac. It doesn't take long for intrigue to turn to jealousy and other, more primitive emotions.
For a very short book, this story is very powerful and it has so many layers. It is a story of grief, of friendship, of small island rivalries, of faith and tragedy. It is mystical, mystical, shattering and human. The sea and the natural environment of the Breton countryside are very much part of the story and help build the atmosphere in the story! There are also quite a few mentions of traditions and foods from the area
In French, the title for this book is Un Miracle so it is interesting that the title in English is so much longer. I think the simpler title actually works better in this case.
Framing the story, we also hear the story of Catherine Labouré who was a young novice in 1830 who had a vision of the Virgin Mary
Both of the books from Victoria Mas have kind of mixed reviews, but for whatever reason her writing style really works for me. I like the depth that she achieves within a short time, the way that she looks at relationships with a good dash of mysticism and religion. I already know that I am to read whatever Victoria Mas comes out with next! As an aside, I just found out this week that Mad Women's Ball was adapted into a movie. I am planning to watch the movie over the weekend!
In addition to reading this book for Paris in July, it also counts for the Books in Translation challenge hosted at Introverted Reader and the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge which I host.
I haven't done Six in Six before but I saw it over at Words and Peace and I decided to join in! I thought it would also be a good way to do a roundup of the various challenges that I am doing this year. Along the way I will mention 7 out of the 8 books that I have given 5/5 to so far this year! I just couldn't make the last one fit into any of these challenges. That book is First Time Caller by B K Borison.
There is one challenge that I haven't included in this list as I really wanted to have a category for Australia authors and that is the New Release Challenge hosted by The Chocolate Lady's Book Review Blog. Of the 77 books I have read so far this year, 30 have counted for the New Release Challenges. Foodies Read (hosted at Based on a True Story) is probably not technically a challenge, but I do enjoy linking up whenever I read a foodie book!
6 Historical Fiction Books - 28 books read
The Goldsmith's Wife by Jean Plaidy, (5/5) - mini review
The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters (5/5) - mini review
The Silent Resistance by Anna Normann (5/5) - review
The Strawberry House by Rachel Burton - Also New Release Challenge - review
Seascraper by Benjamin Wood
The King's Jewel by Elizabeth Chadwick
6 Bookish Books - 10 Books read
The Little Wartime Library by Kate Thompson (5/5) - Also Historical Fiction Reading challenge - review
The Secret Society of Librarians by Kate Thompson (5/5) - Also Historical Fiction Reading Challenge
The Croatian Island Library by Eva Glyn - Also New Release Challenge - review
Welcome to this week's edition of Top Ten Tuesday which is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week the theme is Books I Want to Read by New to Me Authors (Share books from your to-read list that are written by authors you’ve never read before.)
I am going rogue today (again!) and sharing one to two sentence short reviews of books I have been meaning to review that I have read so far this year but not yet done so!
The Goldsmith's Wife by Jean Plaidy - Read this for the Childhood Favourite theme at my F2F book club. It's been years since I read a Plaidy but it was still so good! And a really interesting story about Jane Shore, a woman who was the mistress of a king and yet ended her life in poverty. Read this for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge. (5/5 read)
The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters - This book is set in 1930s US and Canada, and tells the story of a young indigenous girl who disappears one day while her family is working as berry pickers. We hear of her life but also that of her brother who was the last person to see her. Incredibly moving. A 5 star read for me. Read this for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge. (5/5 read)
We'll Prescribe You a Cat by Syou Ishida - I don't really like cats. I am more of a dog person, but I don't mind reading about cats in books, particularly in Japanese books where there is often a twist in the tail (see what I did there?). I read this one for the Goodreads Spring Challenge. (4/5 read)
We'll Prescribe You Another Cat by Syou Ishida - I think that you might not quite understand what is going on here unless you read the first book in the series. The third book comes out soon and I will be reading it! Both of these books count for the Books in Translation and Speccy Fic Challenge. The translator for both books was E (4/5 read)
Past the Shallows by Favel Parrett - I borrowed this book at least 10 years ago and so when my rerad on a theme book club had a book you borrowed from someone as the theme, it was finally time to read it. Set in Tasmania, it looks at a family whose mother has died and how that event has impacted the father and three sons. I really enjoyed this one and will more from this author, eventually. This is an Aussie author and the book counts for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge. (4.5/5 read)
The Astral Library by Kate Quinn - I have loved Kate Quinn's historical fiction novels. This one is a complete change in direction. It is set in the Boston Library where a young woman find the way to live inside books. It was good, but not as good as the historical fiction. Will be interested to see where Kate Quinn goes next. This book counts for the Speccy Fic Challenge, Bookish Books and New Release Challenges (4/5 read)
The Bonesetter's Daughter by Amy Tan - This was another book club read. This time the theme was Mothers and Daughters. I haven't read Amy Tan for many, many years and I liked this one a lot. It counts for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge
The Paradise Pact by Anita Heiss - I have met Australian author Anita Heiss a number of times and really like her. She is smart, opinionated, and passionate about her indigenous identity. These traits showed in the characters in this book but I didn't really connect with the story as well as I would have liked. This qualifies for the New Release challenge(3.5/5 read)
The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon - I feel like Ariel Lawhon is an author I should have read before now, but I haven't. I will read more from her now. I really liked that this book was based on the life of a midwife who lived in the 1800s, and tells the story of what happens in a small town when a body is found trapped under the ice in the frozen river. I read this for the Goodreads Spring Challenge and for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge. Even though this is a short review, this book counts as a Big Book of Summer at 448 pages long. (4/5 read)
The Couples Retreat by Mercedes Mercier - This is a book that I read for a recent book club retreat that I attended. This book was set on Kangaroo Island and features a newbie police officer who is pulled into a murder investigation at a luxurious house on the island. I liked it. It isn't my normal genre but that's one of the good things about book clubs right? This counts for the New Release Challenge and was one of the books I nominated for 20 Books of Winter. (3.5/5 read)
Every month I share some of the statistics related to the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge. I try very hard to visit every post which has been linked (time permitting) and I find it interesting to see what are the books that people are reading and reviewing! I often end up adding a couple of books to my never ending TBR list. In terms of the books read in June, there were 54 reviews linked up for the challenge, shared by 18 participants. There were 53 individual titles reviewed, written by 53 different authors. There were 2 reviewers who reviewed 5 or more books each. Thank you to everyone who shared their links whether it be 6 or just 1.
If you recall, last month we didn't have any titles that were reviewed more than once, which was very month. This month was similarly varied, although we did have one book that was reviewed twice
The Palace of Lost Virtue by Australian author Anthea Hodgson is a dual timeline set in both 1890s and 1920s Kalgoorlie, a mining town in remote Western Australia. I reviewed this book as did Shelleyrae at Book'd Out!
There were no other authors who had more than one book reviewed this month!
Given that we are now more than halfway through this year's challenge, I thought I would share some stats about the year....so far!
In terms of the books this year, there were 295 reviews linked up for the challenge, shared by 25 participants. There were 280 individual titles reviewed, written by 248 different authors. There were 4 reviewers who reviewed 20 or more books each. Thank you to everyone who shared their links. I appreciate everyone who participates in the challenge!
When I look at the book that has been reviewed the most throughout the year so far, there is one book that has been reviewed 3 times so far.
I am surprised and pleased to see that it is another Aussie author. A Far Flung Life by M L Stedman has been reviewed by Shelleyrae at Book'd Out, by Tracey at Carpe Librum and by Helen at She Reads Novels. I think it is interestesting because M L Stedman had a huge hit with The Light Between Oceans, but it that book came out in 2012 so it has been a very long time between books! I am planning to read this book soon, as long as I can get to it before it has to go back to the library!
There are five other authors who have been reviewed more than twice. Agatha Christie leads the way with 6 reviews, followed by Elizabeth Camden with 4 and then Colleen Cambridge, Ellis Peters and Lee Strauss have all been reviewed three times.
Whenever I do this milestone reviews I also like to share how bloodthirsty we are as readers. This year so far there have been 23 books read where the title includes the words murder, fatal or death in some form or another!
I look forwards to see what everyone reads during the second half of the year!
If you enjoy reading Historical Fiction why not join us? You can find all the details here.
When I put together my classics list, I deliberately went in search books that were considered Australian classics and included them as part of my list. One of my choices was this book, Careful, He Might Hear You by Sumner Lock Elliott. When the spin landed on this as the selection I was pretty happy. I had no idea, though, that I would love this as much as I did.
I am not sure that this author is one that I knew particularly much about, although I had heard of the movie version of this book which was made back in the 1980s. Apparently Elliott was a very successful writer and well known in the US. This book, which came out in 1963, was very autobiographical and also very successful, winning the 1963 Miles Franklin prize which is our top literary prize.
Our story opens with a glimpse into the life of a young boy named PS, so called because he was a postscript to his deceased mother's ridiculous life. Sinden died shortly after his birth, and with his father being perennially off searching for gold, his Aunt Lila and Uncle George are raising him as requested by his mother before she passed
They live a very modest lifestyle, but there is a lot of love and Sinden is fondly remembered as Little One. When PS and his aunt go to visit her grave they refer to it as the The Little Garden, planting flowers but never mentioning that it is his mother's final resting place. It might be more whimsical as opposed to truthful, but PS is happy and secure.
When Aunt Vanessa turns up, PS's life is gradually turned upside down. Vanessa was sent to England at a young age to be a companion to a relative and so the life she leads is very different to that of her sisters. Vanessa believes that she too has a mandate to care for PS. In her eyes, this means providing him with the very best of everything including education, elocution correction to get rid of his terrible Australian accent, piano lessons, a big house, and impressive toys. These are all things that the humble Lila and George can not possibly provide
Ultimately this leads to a bitter custody battle over the bewildered little boy who just wants to go home and who doesn't really understand what it going on.
Whilst this is PS's story, we also get glimpses into the past lives of the sisters, including Sinden who was a writer who had received critical claim but not financial success. We also meet the father, Logan, who is irresistible to the sisters and who, ultimately, absconds from all responsibility for his son. One of the fun things for me was that Logan comes from Bacchus Marsh which is just up the road from me.
Ultimately though, this is a quintessentially Sydney book. We catch the ferry across the harbour and the train to various locations, we feel the heat and witness spectacular summer storms and so much more. It is also a Depression story, with particular reference to the impact of the world financial situation on ordinary Aussie families.
This is a long book, coming in at 495 pages. It was very readable and I read it in a couple of days. I just had to pick it up to read and see what happened next at every opportunity My emotions ebbed and flowed with the story, and I recognised some of the bewilderment that PS felt from my own childhood experiences when my parents divorced.
Bring on the next Aussie classic!
This book was one of the books I nominated for 20 Books of Winter and counts for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge, the Big Books of Summer (hosted by Sue at Book by Book and Melinda from A Web of Stories) and also fits my read on a theme book club theme which is Secrets.
Thank you to everyone who contributed a review in June for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge. There were nearly 50 links shared during June and I am looking forward to coming and visiting them soon. I will be back in the next week or so with all the statistics for the month and maybe even a mid year recap!
I am looking forward to reading your reviews throughout the rest of the year! I am sure there is going to be a lot of great historical fiction discovered and shared with fellow HF lovers over the course of this year!
If you haven't already signed up, it's not too late! The sign up post is here.
Just to recap what participants need to know. At the beginning of each month I will put up a post which will have a Mr Linky embedded into it for you to add your link.
Please remember...
add the link(s) of your review(s) including your name and book title to the Mister Linky we’ll be adding to our monthly post (please, do not add your blog link, but the correct address that will guide us directly to your review).
it doesn't matter where you review - Bookstagram, Goodreads etc as long as you share a direct link to your review.
any kind of historical fiction is accepted (fantasy, young adult, graphic novels...)
if you have time, have a look some of the other links that are present. You never know when you will discover new blogs or books!
You can also join the challenge group on Facebook which you can find here and don't forget to use the #histficreadingchallenge hashtag on the socials.
Goldrush history is always something that I find really interesting. So many interesting characters who leave everything behind in the hope that they can change their lives and the lives of their families, the mix of nationalities, the colourful characters and so much more. Of course, more often than not, that dream find does not happen but the lure of gold is strong.
Marigold Harrington, a devout young Christian woman, arrives in the remote Western Australian gold town of Kalgoorlie in the late 1890s with only one plan. She and her mother have undertaken the long and arduous trip from Melbourne to be reunited father. He used to be a preacher but he headed west in the hope of making his fortune and save his family from their current financial problems. When Marigold and her mother arrive, there is no sign of her father.
It is hot, dry and dusty and Kalgoorlie is a typical gold town, full of miners, with limited numbers of women. And a lot of the women that there are prostitutes. American Pansy Arlington is the owner of the Palace of Pleasure. Pansy is rough around the edges, is prone to drinking too much, and is hiding a story of heartbreak
In theory, Marigold and Pansy should not even cross paths, but they do when Marigold joins the Christian Women's Temperance Union and she and the other members knock on the door to try and minister to the girls who work for Pansy. This unlikely pair form a friendship based on a love of good conversation, books and more.
This is a dual timeline novel with the second part of the story being set in the late 1920s when two gold detectives are murdered. As the investigation continues, we find out how the women's history impacts lives 30 years later.
Anthea Hodgson has found a great story to tell, packed with interesting history. Pansy Arlington was real life character from history, and the history of prostitution in Kalgoorlie is very interesting. The y came up with an interesting way of dealing with the problem of having ladies displaying their wares in public. This was through a policy called containment which meant all the brothels are located on just one street, known as Hay Street. There were also rules around how they could operate. It is something unique to Kalgoorlie. The murder case was also based on a true story which was also very interesting.
Many years ago we used to catch the train from Adelaide to Perth, which is a journey of around 36 hours. The last major stop before you get to Perth is in Kalgoorlie, where there was a fairly long stop. On one of those trips, I did a bus tour which took you down Hay Street, which is the street where all of the brothels were located. I mean, we looked at the mine heads and other things too. Apparently these days there is not much to see thanks to the advent of fly in fly out work and the internet but it was certainly an interesting tour to take.
Anthea Hodgson has given us another really interesting read with some little known aspects of history portrayed on the page. As a reader we were taken back to the dusty, rough streets of Kalgoorlie, warts and all. It wasn't an easy life and things happened to the characters that broke my heart.
I always intended to read this book, but it moved to the top of my list as it was one of the books that I needed to read for the Rachael John's Book Club Reader's Retreat that I attended last weekend. I might not read many of the other book club books, but I do make an effort to read the retreat ones!
This book counts for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge, which I host here, with the New Release Challenge hosted at The Chocolate Lady's Book Reviews and was also one of the books that I nominated for 20 Books of Winter hosted at AnnaBookBel.
According to Goodreads I started reading War and Peace back in July 2010. I did give it a good go, but then I put it down and just didn't pick it up again. It wasn't that I wasn't enjoying it, but I just stopped.
At the beginning of last year I decided I was going to try and read alongside the chapter a day readalong. I didn't join the group or anything like that. I just kind of kept up with the schedule. I was doing well until I started working again and I fell behind when I was about 2/3 of the way through. It sat on my desk, taunting me every day. Finally, I decided I was going to finish it, once and for all. And so I did!
Today I am sharing a number of thoughts about reading War and Peace. Fair warning....some will be deeper than others.
This isn't my first Tolstoy. Years ago I read and loved Anna Karenina when Oprah chose it for her Classics Book Club. I loved reading along with other readers and discussing the experience, even if not everyone loved it. I should have joined the readalong for this book but I chose to read alone. I knew that I could read Tolstoy but it was still daunting and it definitely felt like an achievement when I finished it.
I think the thing that I do enjoy about these books is the humanness of the characters and how relevant that is still today. Yes, Tolstoy goes off on massive tangents, and spends paragraphs talking about the fact that battles were won despite no one doing what they were ordered to do. I particularly thought where he was talking about the fact that we look back and say this one thing or one person was decisive but really there were many people and incidents that contribute to the eventualities was very perceptive. I think we see this evidenced in the fact that we say that WWI was started because of the shooting of the Archduke Ferdinand. It was, in effect, the straw that broke the camels back, but in reality tensions had been building for years. Another example is that the American's entered WWII due to Pearl Harbor but there had been many events that led up to that one decisive moment.
Getting back to the humaness of the characters, we saw characters who undertook big transformations due to their experiences, such as Pierre going from illegitimate son, to rightful heir, to husband, to member of the Masonic Lodge, to outwardly losing everything. And similarly the female characters such as Natasha and Princess Marya experienced love and loss, and were bound by duty but ultimately achieved happiness.
Whilst the title is War and Peace, it could just as easily have been Love and Loss or Power and what ever the opposite of that is.
Humour isn't the first word that comes to mind when I think of Tolstoy but there was definitely humour in the book, from the inept armies who couldn't follow orders and still triumphed to single lines that just made me smile, like the one late in the book which said about Pierre "Though the doctors treated him, let his blood, and gave him medications to drink, he nevertheless recovered."
Would War and Peace qualify as having one of the longest epilogues ever? There are two parts to the epilogue and together they are nearly 100 pages long which seems crazy. One was an epilogue in the more normal use of the word where we found out what happened to the characters after the main part of the story. The other part was more philosophical thoughts about war.
I read the Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky translation of the book because theirs was the version I read of Anna Karenina. It felt quite accessible, and I liked that they kept a lot of the French in the books.
Ultimately, reading a book like War and Peace is a commitment, and I am so glad that I was able to finish it this time. I did close the book with a sense of achievement, but also relief that I had finally got to the end. If you asked me to name Tolstoy books I probably would only be able to name this one and Anna K, but there are others out there, which I might try to read.....one day.
This book counts for the Books in Translation Challenge hosted by Introverted Reader, for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge which I hosted, counts as one of my 20 Books of Winter and was read for the Marathon reader prompt of the Spring Goodreads Challenge.
As a person who is older than I would like to admit some days, if you mention the words space shuttle, then there are probably two places where my mind goes straight away. First, the iconic images of the shuttle piggybacking on a jumbo but secondly it is the video of the Challenger exploding. Given that event happened 40 years ago this year, it does seem timely that this book, which was released last year, tells the story of a fictional shuttle called Navigator and the lives of the men and women who were part of the space program in the early 1980s.
The story centres on a female astronaut by the name of Joan Goodwin. The story starts in late 1984. Joan is working in Mission Control where she is CAPCOM, the only person who can speak directly to the crew on board the Navigator when things go wrong. She needs to be the rational and calm voice as she talks to her crew while they deal with a terrible incident.
Through a series of flashbacks we follow Joan's journey from the time that she was one of the earliest women accepted for the space program, through training and more training and more training. On a personal front, we watch as Joan is the stabilising figure in her beloved niece Frances' life and as she falls in love. However, the woman that Joan falls for is another astronaut and they must keep their relationship secret.
There were so many layers to this book from moments where the characters are looking at the stars and contemplating the meaning of life, to the strong friendships and rivalries which grow as the team learn about each other. After all, they are part of a very select group and there could be situations when you are relying on each other in life and death situations
I experienced a rollercoaster of emotions throughout this book. I laughed, I cried, I was prompted to think deep, I got angry at the double standards, and at Joan's sister for the way she treated Frances, and I learnt some things as well!
I am not much of a science fiction reader, so it seems kind of ironic that while I was reading this book I was also listening to the audio book of Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. What these two book have in common that while they are filled with science and space talk, they are both really accessible and have a great deal of emotional depth. This is a very sciency historical fiction book.
I know I am very late to the party, but this was my first ever read from Taylor Jenkins Reid. I have intended to read other books from here, especially books like Daisy Jones and the Six, but I haven't gotten to them yet. Given how much I enjoyed these I am going to try to read more from her soon. The reason why I picked this one up now is that it helped me cross off two different categories in the Goodreads Spring Challenge.
I am sharing this review with the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge which I host here.
Every month I share some of the statistics related to the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge. I try very hard to visit every post which has been linked (time permitting) and I find it interesting to see what are the books that people are reading and reviewing! I often end up adding a couple of books to my never ending TBR list.
In terms of the books read in May, there were 51 reviews linked up for the challenge, shared by 18 participants. There were 51 individual titles reviewed, written by 51 different authors. There were 3 reviewers who reviewed 5 or more books each. Thank you to everyone who shared their links whether it be 7 or just 1.
Now, if you look at those numbers carefully, you might note that there were 51 reviews of 51 individual titles and 51 different authors. It occasionally happens that we might not have a single title reviewed more than once, but it has never happened that we didn't have an author with multiple titles reviewed. Never!! I guess that is an interesting statistic in and of itself!
One thing of interest. We had two books reviewed this month that featured Abigail Adams, wife of US President John Adams. Laura from Laura's Reviews shared her review of Three Queens by Rebecca Connolly and Kim reviewed A Founding Mother: A Novel of Abigail Adams by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie on Goodreads!
If you enjoy reading Historical Fiction why not join us? You can find all the details here.
In 1942, Bethnal Green library in London was destroyed by a German bomb. The head librarian is killed and so children's librarian Clara Button starts a library in the tunnels of the nearby Tube station which is being used as a refuge from the nightly bombing raids for thousands of locals. Ably assisted by her best friend Ruby Munros, the library provides many valuable services to the community. They provide books to the local factory girls, they do children's story time, start a book club for the many women who otherwise wouldn't have any personal time and so much more.
Both Clara and Ruby have strong back stories. Clara is a widow whose mother and mother in law both dislike that she is working in the library. They both believe that she should be at home grieving her husband even though he has been dead for quite some time. Ruby has also suffered significant loss. She lost her older sister in a terrible tragedy and she blames herself. To numb the pain she drinks a lot, and parties hard, masking how much she is hurting underneath her brash exterior..
Clara clashes against her boss, the grandly named Mr Pinkerton-Smythe, who seems to think that libraries should only be available to the well to do, that only literature with a capital L should be available to readers. What libraries should absolutely not do is provide women with information or books that encourage them to take their own lives into their hands and decide things like they don't want any more children or that they don't have to stay in violent marriages. He does everything in his power to close Clara's version of the library down.
I loved the part of the book where the library is donated multiple copies of Forever Amber by Kathleen Winsor. It is a book that I have read a couple of times back in my late teens initially and it is an absolute romp. Amber is resourceful and ambitious, will do what it takes to get what she wants. What a woman! I am tempted to find it and read it again. I am pretty sure I still have a copy on my shelves somewhere.
I love a good WWII historical fiction novel, and this is undoubtedly one of the better ones out there. What makes it even more interesting is that it is based on little known true life events. There really was a library in the rail tunnels under Bethnal Green station. Unfortunately, the terrible tragedy which shaped Ruby's life so much is also based on a tragic, real life event.
I really enjoyed the quotes at the beginning of each chapter which come from real life librarians, including contemporary librarians. From the authors notes, it is clear that she is passionate about libraries and has been involved in some battles to save local libraries when the politicians decide to cut back services.
Having now read this book and The Wartime Book Club I can now declare myself a Kate Thompson fan. While she keeps writing about libraries I will keep reading the book. I am now on the waitlist for her latest book from my library!
This was a 5/5 read for me and I highly recommend it.
I am sharing this review with British Isles Friday hosted at Joy's Book Blog, Bookish Books Challenge hosted at Bloggin' Bout Books and the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge which I host here.
Thank you to everyone who contributed a review in May for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge. It's been a good start to the 2026 challenge. I will be back in the next week or so with all the statistics for the month.
I am looking forward to reading your reviews throughout the rest of the year! I am sure there is going to be a lot of great historical fiction discovered and shared with fellow HF lovers over the course of this year!
If you haven't already signed up, it's not too late! The sign up post is here.
Just to recap what participants need to know. At the beginning of each month I will put up a post which will have a Mr Linky embedded into it for you to add your link.
Please remember...
add the link(s) of your review(s) including your name and book title to the Mister Linky we’ll be adding to our monthly post (please, do not add your blog link, but the correct address that will guide us directly to your review).
it doesn't matter where you review - Bookstagram, Goodreads etc as long as you share a direct link to your review.
any kind of historical fiction is accepted (fantasy, young adult, graphic novels...)
if you have time, have a look some of the other links that are present. You never know when you will discover new blogs or books!
You can also join the challenge group on Facebook which you can find here and don't forget to use the #histficreadingchallenge hashtag on the socials.
Let the reading begin!!
If you have any more links please add them to the July linkup which you can find here.
One of the beauties of being involved in a book club is that some times you find yourself reading books that would otherwise not have crossed your reading radar. Some times, they don't work for you (Land of Milk and Honey, I am looking at you!) but some times they do. Call of the Camino is not a book that I recall hearing about before it being chosen for the current selection of Cook the Books. The question is did it work for me or not? Read on to find out!
When journalist Reina Watkins' nemesis at work is unable to make the start of a walk along the Camino that he was supposed to be doing for an article, she jumps at the opportunity. Not only is it a chance to get one up on Matt, but walking the Camino is something that she has always been interested in because her parents met on the trail years before. They both died when she was young, so armed with her father's journal, she is hopeful that it will help her understand her parent's story, and her own history.
Because it is very last minute, she hasn't done any training and she only has her trusty Doc Martin's the first few days are very trying for Reina, but as the trek continues she begins to understand the call of the Camino - why so many people have been taking this pilgrimage for so many years. When she hears that Matt, her rival, is hot on her trail, she is determined that this time she will be the one who writes the better article, especially given her personal connection.
Interspersed with Reina's story, we hear her mother's story. Reina always thought her mother was Portuguese but it turns out that she was from Andorra. Caught up in the middle of a historical family feud, Isabelle chooses to join the Camino to escape from danger. Ill-prepared, she hopes that the mantra of the Camino, the Camino will provide, is true for her.
The third voice in the story comes in the form of Reina's father's journal, and it is through this, and then a coincidental meeting that Reina learns more about Isabelle.
As readers, we are witness to the trials and tribulations of both women, from injuries to soreness, fatigue and danger. On the plus side there are the characters that they meet along the way, other pilgrims who are sharing in this significant journey, and it is this camaraderie that affected me the most.
I do know several people who have done the Camino. One of my friend's dads has done it three times, and her brother went with him one time and ended up meeting his now partner who lived in a different country. I definitely know that it changes lives, and we saw that with both of our main characters. Can I see myself doing the Camino? Not really. I do more steps when I am on holiday that I do the rest of the time but still, this kind of strenuous walking sounds too far, too far for me! I did, however, enjoy reading about it! And I would be more than happy to go to Spain at some point!
When this book was chosen, I immediately thought that I would be choosing some Spanish recipe. I did hope that something more would have jumped out of the text to help me decide. I thought about tortilla, but to be honest, I thought someone else would have chosen that to make.
Instead, it gave me the opportunity to pull one of my favourite cook books off the shelf. I say favourite, but it's a favourite book to look at. Even though I have owned it for years, and I posted about it for Weekend Cooking back in 2012, I don't believe I ever did get around to cooking from it! That changed this week.
The thing I loved about this book is that it gives you food history, regional specialties, spotlights ingredients and producers. It is an amazing book to look at and I love the dust jacket I have on my copy. The colours just pop! One thing I did find a little interesting was what wasn't in this book. It was originally published back in 2012, before the world went crazy for Basque cheesecake, alternatively known as San Sebastien cheesecake, and there is no recipe in the book for it! Just thought that was interesting!
I was hoping to choose a recipe that had been mentioned in Call of the Camino, or that at least came from the regions that the Camino passes through. In the end I chose this recipe for two reasons. One, there was a mention of roast chicken towards the end of the book, and I liked the fruitiness of this recipe, given that it echoed the part in the book where our characters stumbled across La Casa de los Dioses (The House of the Gods) where the walkers can help themselves to fruit. In the book it mainly talks about the watermelon, but I really, really don't like watermelon so I am going with apples and grapes.
In the intro to this recipe it mentions that in Asturias Reineta apples are used but the Golden Delicious variety is a good substitute. Asturias is one of the places that the Camino passes through so this recipe works as a regional dish. We ended up using a different variety of apples as there were no Golden Delicious at the supermarket.
It was an interesting recipe. I am not sure we would make it again. You can see the grape juice has kind of caught a bit, but the chicken itself was very moist, and it was interesting to have the apples and grapes with chicken. We would normally pair cooked apples with pork. We served it with roast potatoes as I wasn't really sure what else to serve it with.
The next selection for Cook the Book is called Kitchens of the Great Midwest by J. Ryan Stradal. Not sure what to expect with this one. I guess I will find out when I read it!
I am sharing this post with Foodies Read, hosted at Based on a True Story.
Roast Chicken with Apples and Grapes (Pollo con manzanas y uvas) - Claudia Roden
Serves 4-6
5 Golden Delicious apples Juice of ½ a lemon 1kg white seedless grapes, destalked 1 x 1.5kg chicken Salt and pepper 3 tablespoons olive oil 75g butter
Peel and core the apples. Cut one in half or into quarters, so the pieces will push easily inside the chicken, and the rest of the apples into 8 slices each. Drop the slices into a bowl of water acidulated with the lemon juice to prevent them from discolouring.
Blend half of the grapes in the food processor and collect the juice by pressing the mush through a small-holed sieve with a wooden spoon. Discard the skins left in the sieve. You should get about 250ml of juice. Stuff the chicken with the halved or quartered apple and put it in a baking dish. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and rub with 1 tablespoon of the oil. Turn the bird breast side down in the baking dish and pour in 125ml of the grape juice. Roast in an oven preheated to 190°C/gas 5 for 45 minutes, then take the chicken out, turn it over, pour the remaining grape juice over it and return to the oven. Cook for another 30 minutes or until the chicken is brown and caramelized and the juices run clear when you cut into the bird between the leg and the body with a pointed knife.
While the chicken is roasting, heat the butter with the remaining 2 tablespoons of oil in a large frying pan. Put in the drained apple slices and the remaining grapes and sauté over a medium heat, turning over the fruits and shaking the pan gently until the grapes are soft and golden and the apples tender and caramelized. It can take 20 minutes. Transfer to a baking dish with their juices and reheat in the oven when you are ready to serve.
Weekly meals
Saturday - Out for dinner Sunday - Roast Chicken with Apple and Grapes (new) Monday - Baked Gnocchi (new) Tuesday - Enchilada Wednesday - Molten Pumpkin Pasta Bake (new) Thursday - Out for dinner Friday - Takeaway
Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book reviews (novel, nonfiction), cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs, restaurant reviews, travel information, or fun food facts. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page
A little while ago Laura from Laura's Reviews shared a review of Passage to Tokyo by Poppy Kuroki which is the second book in the Ancestor Memories series. I was sufficiently intrigued by the premise that I knew I wanted to read the books, but I had to start with the first book. That was both because I prefer to read series in order but also become of how gorgeous that cover is!
Isla McKenzie may have a Scottish accent and red hair but she has always been attracted to Japanese history and culture, thanks to her Japanese grandfather and ancestry. She travels to Japan with the hope of finding out whether her one of her ancestors was a Samurai as per family legend, through doing some research and visiting local Samurai sites. She travels to Kagoshima at the very south of Kyushu where the Satsuma Rebellion started and finished, effectively marking the end of the Samurai era in Japan in the late 1870s.
However, no one would have expected that being stuck in a temple during a severe thunderstorm could possibly lead to a journey back in time. Suddenly Isla finds herself in the historical city in the weeks leading up to what she knows will be the end. Found by two warriors, Isla is put under the charge of Keiichirō. As a foreigner, Isla is not trusted, especially given how strangely she is dressed and her lack of understanding of the world around her.
Keiichirō comes from a family with a long history in the Samurai tradition. However, his family has fallen out of favour and so Kei is keen to do everything he can to please the Samurai leader. It doesn't really please his sister to have the foreigner in their home though.
Whilst the first half of the book really focusses on Isla and settling in to her new life, the second half of the book follows the rebellion with numerous brutal battles portrayed. Isla knows that it is not going to end well, and as her feelings for Kei grows she faces several agonising choices. How does she warn him of what is coming, will that change his decisions, and what will it mean for her if she can't get back to her own time. Does she even want to return to her own time, if she can?
I haven't read a lot of Japanese history, so this was really interesting to read. I think it was also a case of the right book at the right time as I enjoyed this! I am really looking forward to reading the second book, and hoping that there will be more books in the series!
I am sharing this review with the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge which I host here and the Speccy Fiction Challenge hosted at Book'd Out.
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