What are you reading?

[BlackMagicBabeXx]

This Forum

 

[xxwhite_dovexx]

My Bible !

 

[JennyFleck]

Engleby by Sebastian Faulks

 

[casiquaire]

Remind Me Who I Am, Again (by Linda Grant).............not really my thing but as i love second hand bookshops i picked it up for a whole quid. After 2 or 3 pages i was hooked and im sure this will allow to navigate the arena of chat with a little more patience and due diligence(thats a complete lie btw). The comment on the book by the Independent was "Grants account of her mothers dementia takes us on that descent into darkness, further and further from the light of the recognizable..."

 

[TwoWhalesInAPool]

Vaxxers: The Inside Story of the Oxford AstraZeneca Vaccine and the Race Against the Virus

author/s: Sarah Gilbert (Professor of Vaccinology at Oxford University) and Catherine Green (Associate Professor in Chromosome Dynamics, Oxford University)

''On 1 January 2020, Sarah Gilbert, Professor of Vaccinology at Oxford University, read an article about four people in China with a strange pneumonia. Within two weeks, she and her team had designed a vaccine against a pathogen that no one had ever seen before. Less than 12 months later, vaccination was rolled out across the world to save millions of lives from Covid-19.

In Vaxxers, we hear directly from Professor Gilbert and her colleague Dr Catherine Green as they reveal the inside story of making the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine and the cutting-edge science and sheer hard work behind it.

This is their story of fighting a pandemic as ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. Sarah and Cath share the heart-stopping moments in the eye of the storm; they separate fact from fiction; they explain how they made a highly effective vaccine in record time with the eyes of the world watching; and they give us hope for the future.

Vaxxers invites us into the lab to find out how science will save us from this pandemic, and how we can prepare for the inevitable next one.''

 

[TwoWhalesInAPool]

Life Support: Diary of an ICU Doctor on the Frontline of the Covid Crisis

author: Dr Jim Down. ICL, London

''One of the doctors with the most hands-on experience of COVID in the country.' (Edward Docx, New Statesman)

A powerful, moving account of an intensive care doctor's life on the frontline of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As a doctor running the intensive care unit at one of London's top hospitals, Jim Down has spent his life working as healthcare's last resort, where the unexpected is always around the corner and life and death decisions are an everyday occurrence.

But nothing had prepared Jim and his team for the events of spring 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic descended. In Life Support, he tells the extraordinary month-by-month story of how as the nation came to a standstill, he and his colleagues donned PPE, received an unprecedented influx of patients, transformed their hospital and ultimately faced down the biggest challenge in the history of the NHS.

The pandemic raised impossible questions for Jim: how do you fight a new disease? How do you go home at night to your wife and young children when you've spent all day around highly infectious patients? How do you tell a mother that her healthy young son has died, only days after falling ill?

With warmth, honesty and humour, this book is a gripping, moving testament to the everyday heroism of the NHS staff in a global crisis and an unforgettable insight into what was really happening in the wards as we clapped on our doorsteps.'' - A

 

[TwoWhalesInAPool]

Duty of Care: One Doctor's Story of the Covid-19 Crisis

author: Dr Dominic Pimenta

''The first book to tell the full story of the COVID-19 pandemic, from an NHS doctor working inside hospitals to save lives and combat the virus on the front line. This audiobook features additional questions and answers with the author, Dr Dominic Pimenta, providing even further expert insights.

On the eighth of February, Dr Dominic Pimenta encountered his first suspected case of coronavirus. Within a week, he began wearing a mask on the tube and within a month, he was moved over to the Intensive Care Unit to help fight the virus.

Duty of Care is the first book to tell the full story of the COVID-19 pandemic from someone on the front line, working in one of the NHS's hardest hit areas. From the initial whispers coming out of China and the collective hesitation to class this as a pandemic to full lockdown and the continued battle to treat whoever came through the doors, Dr Pimenta tells the heroic stories of how the entire system shifted to tackle this outbreak and how, ultimately, the staff managed to save lives.

This incredible account captures the shock and surprise, the panic and power of an unprecedented time, and how, at this moment of despair, human generosity and kindness prevailed.''

 

[LadyOnArooftop]

I've been reading The curious case of Benjamin Button by F Scott Fitzgerald. I picked it up in the local charity shop (where else!?). Now I've seen the movie with Brad Pitt and I thought it was an original screenplay, didn't realise it was based on a book.

 

[LadyOnArooftop]

I've just started The Liverpool Matchgirl by Lyn Andrews. I don't normally go for modern fiction but it is set in the past, and I was struggling to find a third book in the charity shop, so i picked this up. Why do I need to buy 3 books? glad you asked, so I'll tell you... The books are 3 for £1, amazing value I think you'll agree, but the proviso is - it's buy 1 get 2 free. So if you only buy 1 book it's still £1. Now here's the rub, if you only buy 2 books - it's £2! this is madness!

 

[JennyFleck]

The Four Fingers of Death by Rick Moody

 

[casiquaire]

not so much a book but my favourite second hand bookshop, a book collector/readers wet dream, strongly recommend if your in that part of the world to spend a few hours roaming through this place. Its the land of light brown duffel coats and stripey scarves. If you put into YT "Abandoned Train Station Is Now A Book Shop! | Barter Books Alnwick" youll get a short video of the place.

​

 

[LadyOnArooftop]

not so much a book but my favourite second hand bookshop, a book collector/readers wet dream, strongly recommend if your in that part of the world to spend a few hours roaming through this place. Its the land of light brown duffel coats and stripey scarves. If you put into YT "Abandoned Train Station Is Now A Book Shop! | Barter Books Alnwick" youll get a short video of the place.

​

Oh, I love the look of the place. It looks expensive, but I wouldn't mind going for a drive there sometime, I'm in Sunderland, so not that far. It has a look of that 84 Charing Cross Rd, made famous in the movie. Though I'm spoilt these days, getting 3 for a pound, I object to even paying a £1 for a book

 

[casiquaire]

Oh, I love the look of the place. It looks expensive, but I wouldn't mind going for a drive there sometime, I'm in Sunderland, so not that far. It has a look of that 84 Charing Cross Rd, made famous in the movie. Though I'm spoilt these days, getting 3 for a pound, I object to even paying a £1 for a book

the fact that youre in Sunderland and youve never been is disgraceful, you could also hit Belsay Hall and Gardens on the way there, which also has a small second hand bookshop, £1 each kinda place but the one in Alnwick is the best around. Its not like Hills, where wed get dragged to AFTER wed go to the library in Sunderland where it used to be and the museum was in the same building (the one where there was loads of stuffed rare animals that no one gave a sh** about that they were rare and had been smuggled into the country). There used to be a great one at Barnard Castle at the bottom of the bank, not sure its there anymore, or it could be Richmond im thinking of.

 

[LadyOnArooftop]

As a connoisseur of charity shops, I find the ones on the high street are very expensive, individually priced books! You really have to go to poorer areas to get real bargains. Like in South Shields, the 'Save the children' and 'The Red Cross' at The Nook do 3 books for a pound. You can't argue with that. My next excursion will be to North Shields, then Newcastle. As for Barnard Castle I drive through there occasionally, not that I've stopped, it's the parking. but yes, I think there is a charity shop on the left hand side as you drive down the hill, before you turn right towards the castle. Only now made famous by Dominic Cummings.

 

[casiquaire]

As a connoisseur of charity shops, I find the ones on the high street are very expensive, individually priced books! You really have to go to poorer areas to get real bargains. Like in South Shields, the 'Save the children' and 'The Red Cross' at The Nook do 3 books for a pound. You can't argue with that. My next excursion will be to North Shields, then Newcastle. As for Barnard Castle I drive through there occasionally, not that I've stopped, it's the parking. but yes, I think there is a charity shop on the left hand side as you drive down the hill, before you turn right towards the castle. Only now made famous by Dominic Cummings.

theres a decent one next to the plant shop in stockton, theres also a great junk shop up at tow law on the way out of tow law heading east, its a bit of a mission but charity shops are great, theres also 2 in langley moor in durham - the one on the main street but its not good for parking and the one on littleburn industrial estate

 

[LadyOnArooftop]

Bitter Winds by Harry Wu. Picked this up this morning, and no, not in a charity shop but in South Shields flea market. It's worth a visit if anyone's ever down that way, plenty of stalls selling bric-a-brac and old books. I've been after this book for some time now, so you can imagine how pleased I was to finally get hold of it. Well, picture my joy when on opening it, I find it's been signed and inscribed by the author. It got me wondering how these books end up being discarded

 

[JennyFleck]

Lanny by Max Porter- a perfect novel 10/10

 

[casiquaire]

As a connoisseur of charity shops, I find the ones on the high street are very expensive, individually priced books! You really have to go to poorer areas to get real bargains. Like in South Shields, the 'Save the children' and 'The Red Cross' at The Nook do 3 books for a pound. You can't argue with that. My next excursion will be to North Shields, then Newcastle. As for Barnard Castle I drive through there occasionally, not that I've stopped, it's the parking. but yes, I think there is a charity shop on the left hand side as you drive down the hill, before you turn right towards the castle. Only now made famous by Dominic Cummings.

was in Richmond today, right up your street, 3 charity shops right next to each other with loads of books in each (one of them honked like a disused attic though), opposite the market place..........however id suggest to go when its not on the school holidays or a friday as it was besieged with old people dithering and pinballing about, collectively doing my head in.

 

[casiquaire]

And in amongst the 20 odd varying books i bought around Richmond today, i found this hidden gem, "abbey vale of lower yore" by Edmund Bogg (loved the name) printed in 1909, this was considered the "cheap edition"? The descriptive romantic explanations of places and pictures are absolutely brilliant. The first two paragraphs of the preface is as such "Little apology is needed for the issue of this Book describing the Lower Vale of the Yore. It has been written for all who love the beautiful and varied phases in Nature, the rushing torrent or shady dell, pleasant spots and famous places, a battlefield, a shattered castle or grey monastic ruin" . "Scenery is ever with us, and the glories of Light and Sky, repeat themselves with the unrolling Seasons, and something of Ancient Monuments are piously preserved to us, in ruin still beautiful, but much of ancient Custom and Tradition fades before the effacing brush of Time"

 

[JennyFleck]

Small Pleasures by Clare Chambers

The Sellout by Paul Beatty