Saturday, March 24, 2012

New nordic crime


There are some great new Nordic crime novels out this spring!

Jo Nesbo's Phantom brings Detective Harry Hole back to Oslo from Hong Kong to investigate a murder involving his step son Oleg and a new heroin like drug...violin.











A new author James Hamilton, who doesnt sound nordic..but I assure you is- his Lucifer Tears is a gripping thriller featuring detective Kari Vaara who investigates a sadomasochistic killing in Stockholm.


















One final not so nordic crime novel which I am starting this weekend is Into the Darkest Corner by Elizabeth Haynes. Mary absolutely loved this thriller which she spent the last few nights reading under the covers.


















Friday, March 16, 2012

HAPPY ST PATRICK'S DAY

 



Happy St Patrick's Day to all our customers, have a lovely holiday 
weekend, and pop in to see us we are open!


 


Sunday, March 11, 2012

VILLAGE BOOK'S BOOK CLUB

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes,
was the 2nd book the book club discussed.


Jacket image for Sense of an Ending, The


Tony Webster and his clique first met Adrian Finn at school. Sex-hungry and book-hungry, they would navigate the girl-less sixth form together, trading in affectations, in-jokes, rumour and wit.
Maybe Adrian was a little more serious than the others, certainly more intelligent, but they all swore to stay friends for life. Now Tony is in middle age. He's had a career and a single marriage, a calm divorce.
He's certainly never tried to hurt anybody. Memory, though, is imperfect. It can always throw up surprises, as a lawyer's letter is about to prove. The Sense of an Ending is the story of one man coming to terms with the past.


The group, bar one dissenter, thought that it was a wonderful book full of wit and insights, the characters are believable and if not altogether sympathetic, one is immediately drawn into the story, and the complexities of the relationships.  It is also about loneliness and the wish to change the mistakes of youth. 
Personally I gave it a second reading as I had so enjoyed it the first time, and I found it just as intriguing the second time round.

Mary 


VILLAGE BOOK'S BOOK CLUB

The Book club met this week and we discussed two books:


Glass Room by Simon Mawer
The book tells the story of a house set high on a Czechoslovak hillthe Landauer House shines as a wonder of steel and glass and onyx built specially for newly-weds Viktor and Liesel Landauer , a Jew married to a gentile. But the radiant honesty of 1930 that the house, with its unique Glass Room, seems to engender quickly tarnishes as the storm clouds of WW2 gather, and eventually the family must flee, accompanied by Viktor's lover and her child.

But the house's story is far from over, and as it passes from hand to hand, from Czech to Russian, both the best and the worst of the history of Eastern Europe becomes somehow embodied and perhaps emboldened within the beautiful and austere surfaces and planes so carefully designed, until events become full-circle.
This house is based on a real house which you can visit today, it is the Tugendhat House in Brno Chechoslovakia
The Group really responded to this book, the many historical layers and the interesting characters in each period and yet the thread of the original owners remains throughout the book.  One might quibble that the ending is an little pat but overall it is a book that is well worth reading.

Jacket image for Glass Room, The

Thursday, March 1, 2012

WORLD BOOK DAY IS HERE!

Check out the bookshop girls celebrating World Book Day dressed as their favourite character, Fancy Nancy!



Don't forget to pop in to Village Books with your World Book Day voucher to claim your free book!