Reading Around the World with Tea with Tales

While sharing our favourite Christmas memories we indulged in savoury pastries and Christmas mince pies.

Our book reading, The Island Swimmer, was written by Scottish broadcaster Lorraine Kelly. Set in the Orkney Islands, Evie returns to the home she abandoned as a teenager. Connecting with old friends she tries to repair broken relationships as she clears out her father’s neglected house.

The books we had read in the last month took us from Australia to Africa, Germany to the United Kingdom before landing back in New Zealand.

Starting in Australia we have the novelisation of the life of Irish convict John Graham in White Spirit by Lance and James Morcan. After escaping from the notorious Moreton Bay Penal Settlement, Graham finds refuge with the Kabi, a tribe of Aborigines who eventually accept him as one of their own. Hard to read and hard to put down.

From convicts to crime, our next read was Death of a Friend by Australian detective writer Desmond L Kelly. Forensic accountant Karl Landry gets caught up in the world of art fraud and murder while trying to defend his closest friend.

To something a little gentler we had the first part of a trilogy with Karly Lane’s The Wrong Callahan. This Australian rural romance strikes the right note for an easy read.

Now to Africa and Karen Blixen’s memoir Out of Africa. Published in 1937 and made into a movie in 1985 starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford, Blixen describes life married to a Swiss baron in Kenya.

Moving to Botswana and the fictional world of Precious Ramotswe in Alexander McCall Smith’s The Kalahari Typing School for Men. This is the fourth novel in the mystery series the No.1 Ladies Detective Agency.

German politics is not a subject one of our readers would normally consider but she recommends Angela Merkel’s Freedom: memoirs 1954-2021. Leading Germany for sixteen years, Merkel reflects on her life including before and after the falling of the Berlin Wall.

From politics to scandal and royalty, our reader read both the harrowing memoir of Virginia Roberts Giuffre Nobody’s girl: a memoir of surviving abuse and fighting for justice and British historian Andrew Lownie’s Entitled: the rise and fall of the house of York. Two very different books but both enlightening.

Still in the UK but this time it’s the world of flying and The Wright Brothers by historian David McCullough. A behind the scenes story that was a good read.

Our last book is written by New Zealander Damien Wilkins. Delirious is a novel about aging and follows married couple Mary and Pete as they prepare themselves for moving from their family home to a retirement village. An excellent read.

That's it for another year of Tea with Tales, the book group for the vision impaired. Next year's first get-together takes place at the usual time on 12 January.

Posted by Miss Moneypenny

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