Tea with Tales Recommends

On a very cold and overcast morning we enjoyed hot drinks and cheese scones while we shared what age we would love to go back to just for a week.

We started with a short reading from The Remains of the Day by Kuzuo Ishiguro. This book won the Japanese born British author the Booker Prize in 1989. Stevens, an English butler, reflects on life in a great house between the wars. The novel captures a time when some English aristocracy thought fascism a better fit for Britain than socialism or democracy.

The books we read in the last month included recommendations from the previous month: American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins was read by two readers and caused much reflection on the journey across the American Mexican border. Ruth Shaw’s Bookshop Dogs was described as a book that lightens your thoughts. Easy to read and enjoyable was the verdict on Fern Britton’s Daughters of Cornwall. Britton’s other book on Cornwall, Newcomer, was enjoyed by another of our readers.

Captivating from the first page was how Michael Robotham’s thriller Lying Beside You was described, and we discovered this is the third in the Cyrus Haven series.

Stand-alone book, Doors Open, by Scottish author Ian Rankin was a good read for our reader of mystery and detective stories.

From one of our royalists there a recommendation to read Charles Spencer’s memoir A Very Private School. A real opener to English boarding schools.

Our last reader had a James Patterson binge-fest and thoroughly enjoyed Along Came a Spider along with Patterson’s non-fiction book (with John Connolly and Tim Malloy) Filthy Rich: The Jeffrey Epstein Story - the full shocking story about the billionaire pedophile.

2 July 2024

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