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Thanks for the Memories
Thanks for the Memories
Cecelia Ahern | 2009 | Fiction & Poetry
6
6.8 (5 Ratings)
Book Rating
Justin Hancock is a guest lecturer at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. He is also a curator for a museum in London which is his new home. Recently divorced and uprooted from Chicago to be closer to his daughter who is studying ballet.

Joyce wakes up in the hospital to discover that she has just lost her baby and she now knows a lot of things she didn't know before. Especially Latin and about European architecture. How could she just know these things?

Then when Joyce leaves the hospital and as Justin is leaving Dublin to return to London, a chance encounter. When they see each other there is an instant connection. One that neither of them can explain, but both of them feel. When they 'run' into each other throughout London and Dublin, but never get the chance to officially meet the connection is stronger. But what is it that is drawing these two closer together?

Thanks for the Memories reminds me a lot of the movie Return to Me with Minnie Driver. Joyce has somehow 'inherited' all of Justin's memories, thoughts, and intelligence, from one simple act of kindness. Can you imagine waking up in the hospital one day and suddenly you are fluent in another language that just a few days earlier you wouldn't even know existed. Seeing people you have never met, but feeling as if you are old friends.

This was a cute story that makes you think about the connections people can have without ever realizing it. This book made me laugh out loud a few times and it definitely made me think about what goes into our bodies at the hospital. This is a great chick-lit book.
  
Thanks for the Memories
Thanks for the Memories
Cecelia Ahern | 2009 | Fiction & Poetry
6
6.8 (5 Ratings)
Book Rating
Justin Hancock is a guest lecturer at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. He is also a curator for a museum in London which is his new home. Recently divorced and uprooted from Chicago to be closer to his daughter who is studying ballet.

Joyce wakes up in the hospital to discover that she has just lost her baby and she now knows a lot of things she didn't know before. Especially Latin and about European architecture. How could she just know these things?

Then when Joyce leaves the hospital and as Justin is leaving Dublin to return to London, a chance encounter. When they see each other there is an instant connection. One that neither of them can explain, but both of them feel. When they 'run' into each other throughout London and Dublin, but never get the chance to officially meet the connection is stronger. But what is it that is drawing these two closer together?

Thanks for the Memories reminds me a lot of the movie Return to Me with Minnie Driver. Joyce has somehow 'inherited' all of Justin's memories, thoughts, and intelligence, from one simple act of kindness. Can you imagine waking up in the hospital one day and suddenly you are fluent in another language that just a few days earlier you wouldn't even know existed. Seeing people you have never met, but feeling as if you are old friends.

This was a cute story that makes you think about the connections people can have without ever realizing it. This book made me laugh out loud a few times and it definitely made me think about what goes into our bodies at the hospital. This is a great chick-lit book.
  
Between the Stops: The View of My Life from the Top of the Number 12 Bus
Between the Stops: The View of My Life from the Top of the Number 12 Bus
Sandi Toksvig | 2019 | Biography, History & Politics
5
5.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
A disjointed look into the life and mind of a modern-day icon.
Sandi does start this “memoir” off by stating it’s not going to be your run of the mill standard life story and that was undoubtedly true. Set along the route of the number 12 bus we get a mixture of Sandi’s life recollections, historical facts about London and observations about the people on the bus. An inventive idea to say the least and despite some truly interesting recollections, I didn’t find the format as a whole worked for me.

Each chapter roughly focuses on an area on the number 12 bus route but from there we jump almost in each paragraph between historical facts, recollections, and observations. It fails to develop any flow and where we do get some lovely passages of insight into Sandi’s fascinating life and experiences we are drawn all too quickly out of the experience to find out what used to be sold in this particular part of London in the dim and distant past, or what terrible bus habit another passenger may be exhibiting.

This book just was too all over the place as a sit down read, it would make a great addition to any toilet library though (and I truly mean that in the nicest way) as all the little titbits of facts and anecdotes are individually interesting they just don’t seem to flow together. I could easily read a more standard memoir from the ever amazing and inspiring Sandi based on the passages in this book that focused on her. Equally, I could read a book on the neglected women through history written by her or a general history of London but changing focus every paragraph or so was not for me.


Many thanks to the author, publisher, and Netgalley for the ARC in return for an honest review.
  
The Hemlock Cure
The Hemlock Cure
Joanne Burn | 2022 | Fiction & Poetry
8
8.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
The Hemlock Cure was a fascinating insight into the lives of ordinary people during the Black Death (Bubonic Plague) epidemic of 1665-1666. The plague is very much in the background of this story for most of it, though.

The real evil isn’t a disease, it’s being shut in with people who clearly do not have good intentions.

The village of Eyam is well known for the decision to shut itself off from the outside world when its inhabitants started to become ill and die. They understood that the only way to halt the spread of the disease was to isolate themselves - a selfless act.

This novel looks at some of the families and their relationships inside and outside of their family units. The local apothecary and his daughter Mae, are one such family. Mae is desperate to be her fathers apprentice, but this isn’t a time in history where it’s safe for a woman to be working with herbs. So Mae studies with the midwife and a local wise woman (who are both also skating on thin ice, truth be told).

The plague wasn’t a constant in London it appears, and we travel there with one of the main characters. The contrast between the country village and London was quite something to read. I could almost smell the difference off the page!!

I enjoyed the pacing of this book: in Eyam the time crawls, whilst in London everything is all hustle and bustle.

The slow reveal of the terrible secrets in Mae’s family are not so much shocking as terrifying. Wulfric, Mae’s father, is not a well man. It seems to be a race against time for Mae.

I would most definitely recommend this book to historical fiction fans - and if you like a mystery, you may well like this as well.