What I’m reading

An Echo in the Bone

By Diana Gabaldon

I’m reading Diana Gabaldon’s An Echo in the Bone - the sixth volume in this time-travelling series which explores the lives of Jamie and Claire through Scotland and America in the 1700s. Claire is originally from the 1940s and travelled back in time through a stone circle. The series is riveting and I’m quite sad that this is the last one. I am also reading The Oxford Illustrated History of Britain by Kenneth O Morgan because I decided I wanted to know more about the history of our country. It is written chronologically and simply and is enough for a lay person like me to grasp a sense of each of the main periods.

The book I loved as a child

The Famous Five

By Enid Blyton

I could not get enough of Enid Blyton. I was totally transported by the Famous Five and their jolly hockey-sticks adventures. I was also a fan of the Malory Towers series and desperately wanted to go to the school. Darrell Rivers was my heroine in her never-ending battle with the nasty Gwendoline right from the first book. And at the end, of course, she got her place at the University of St Andrews. Well done, Darrell!

Read this before you die

The Lovely Bones

By Alice Sebold

This novel was lent to me by a friend. Susie is murdered and this story is told from her point of view after her death. Being a mum, I was moved by the fact that this family had lost a daughter, and that daughter is the voice of the novel as she watches her family live their grief-stricken lives without her. Although the premise of the novel is unbelievably sad, it has an uplifting ending. I promise you will not be able to put it down.

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