Enchanted Ground

I picked this up in my local charity shop, which has a 'buy one get one free' offer on at the moment. I'm a sucker for a book offer... This looked like a light read, and had the tagline 'The haunting, evocative saga of the lives of three generations of women'. I do enjoy a good generation saga every now and again, so I gave this a go!

I was right - it was a light read, but also slightly confusing in the way that it was written so I had to concentrate. The main story concerns Paddy (Patricia), 40 years old in the 1920's and having to let the family home to make some money. It covers the period of a year in which her father dies, she interacts with the new family who rent the house and gradually makes friends with the farmer whose property adjoins the house - there has been a long running feud between the two families, but the reasons for this are not known to Paddy. Every now and again we hear the thoughts of her mother and Grandmother about what happened to them when they lived in the great house - over the course of the book we find out what caused the feud, and how each generation of women has kept the house going.

Overall it was a good read - I kept going, wanting to find out what had really happened to each of the women. It could also be considered slightly depressing though, as none of the characters were particularly happy. All had problems in their lives, and there wasn't a traditional 'happy' ending - but then there's something to be said for a book which is true to life, rather than tying up all the stories at the end. I felt that the characters lives would keep going after the end of the book, and that's what real family sagas are like!

I won't rush to read more books by Sarah Woodhouse, but if I come across any I'll probably give them a go.

The wind from the sun

I ordered this book from bibliophile, which is surprising as I usually order non-fiction titles from there. But I spotted this book, just after the death of Arthur C. Clarke was announced, and decided it was just my cup of tea. I enjoy science fiction, especially that from the late 50's and early 60's, and especially short stories. This is a collection of Clarke's stories from the 60's and 70's so seemed a good book to buy.

The stories were varied, both in length and content. Some of them were designed to be very amusing, which was good to see - so often science fiction can be a bit too earnest, so it was nice to see an author having lots of fun with it. My favourite two stories were the title story, 'The Wind from the sun' which was about a sailing race in space, and the final story, 'A Meeting with Medusa', about a manned mission to Jupiter and the weather and creatures they find there. Given the interest I had in Jupiter for my PhD it's a shame I didn't find this story years ago!

So will I keep this book? A tricky decision this. Although I enjoyed the stories I'm sure I'll want to read enough of them again to justify making room on the book shelves for it. I'll put it on bookmooch and see if someone else wants to give it a home...

Hello

Why a new blog? It's a good place to record all the books I get through in the course of my daily commute to and from London. How many do I read in a year? Are there any themes which keep occurring? It'll be fun to see what other stats I can come up with too! Hopefully it will be of interest to others as well - maybe some of you have similar reading tastes?

And why information hound? It's T's nickname for me, as I can't resist reading information in books/on noticeboards/in information centres.