Mal’s Books

 I started this blog in order to present my honest opinions on books or audiobooks. I have written two posts. An introductory one to say what I wanted to do and then a review of the excellent David Nicholls book “You Are Here”.  So far I have had a readership of exactly 0! This is because I no longer belong to Twitter aka “X” since it was taken over by the dreaded Elon Musk and allowed Donald Trump and his supporters to regain a platform for their version of the truth.  I used to have a blog which was helped by being advertised on Twitter where I had over 1000 followers. I of course lost all my contacts and followers when I took the fateful decision to quit a site I had learned so much from for so many years because I could not accept the outlook and attitudes of the man who would be running it. I am therefore left with no real means to advertise my blog and have to accept that henceforth I will be preaching to myself! If you are not me and are reading this due to some st...

  This was an excellent,highly readable novel. The characters are well drawn and I loved the idea of the setting being The Wainwright Trail. The trial is a perfect setting for the novel. Nicholls does not hold back from looking at the difficulties of fell walking in wet, windy and cold conditions. The walking though does give a perfect opportunity to bring people close together and in the moment when they rest or even as they are walking along, they are able to converse with one another and get to know each other better than would have been the possibility if they had. For example, met at a party. The author presents the two main characters’ stories as  the geography teacher from York interacts with the London proofreader. Both are very well presented and believable people and you find yourself wanting them to get together. I will not spoil the plot by saying whether they do.You will have to read this excellent novel to find out.

 I say “hello world” with expectation, based on previous blogging experience, that I’ll be lucky if two people actually read this! I have started this blog to talk about something that has been very important to me for much of my 70+ years, namely reading books. I hope to put some reviews in the blog and get some feedback from you (my reader) about what’s new and interesting in the world of books. So a brief introduction to me. I am a retired teacher, headteacher (primary) and mathematics consultant. I have blogged previously on a Wordpress site on education but after retiring 12 years ago I left education behind and have settled into a (sometimes) relaxed retirement in southern Lincolnshire in the U.K. I started a new lifestyle approach when I retired. I would begin  every morning, after walking my two toy dogs (a Bichon and a Toy  Poodle ) with watching YouTube. There was a lot of sport videos (I follow a famous North London football club that is not based in Islington)...