Reading as a cheap hobby

PipneyJane

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82169522#Comment_82169522

Fascinating documentary. I kept having to pause it so that I could look up the books that were cited.

What’s wrong with Rebecca @DigForVictory? I’ll admit that it is years since I last read it, but it is a good book.

Welcome @findingthisdifficult . I loved The Faraway Tree when I was a child. Always thought it was an analogy for a good book: open the pages climb the tree and get taken to a new world.

I have set aside The Thirties: An Intimate History of Britain by Juliet Gardner. Just couldn’t face reading any more of it. I wanted to read something that left me feeling connected to the people I was reading about, and that book didn’t do it. Pity. I was about half way though. I may return to it at some point.

Instead, I started reading Agatha Christie’s Evil Under The Sun. It’s a Poirot, but he’s only a minor character until after the murder occurs and that doesn’t happen until you’re a third of the way through the book. Really well written. I‘m 62% of the way though and still don’t have a clue who committed the murder, just that the victim had it coming to her and plenty of people wanted her out of their lives.

• Pip

MrsCD

I've finished The Rewilding of Molly McFlynn. It's possibly aimed at an older teenage audience, but I enjoyed the folklore and local history about the Newcastle witch trials of 1650.

I've also read some of the Agatha Christie short story books, where you can see how some of the stories were stretched to make them long enough for a film!

Now I'm back with Anthony Horowitz again.. A Deadly Episode. The 6th in The Word is Murder series. 😁

findingthisdifficult

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82170175#Comment_82170175

Thanks for the warm welcome. I agree with that analogy, get yourself lost in a good book and go on an adventure.

Floss

I find Juliet Gardner's books almost clinical, with no empathy or connection 🤷‍♀️

Wednesday2000

I have 6 books ready for me at the library!

Pennypincin

I've managed to find quite a few second hand books free, or very cheap in the past couple of months.

Either in charity shops, the local large supermarket rehoming bookcase or in a train station bookcase.

I've got a library book to read, that will finish a series by Trudy caravan, I think it's the millennium rule series. I still need to pick up the book club book for this month, plus there's a few books that I'd like to borrow from the library too.

I've been struggling to get back into reading again, but when I have managed to I've enjoyed what I've read.

Blackcats

@Pennypincin - I think Autumn and Winter are good for hunkering down with a book.
what's your book club book?

DigForVictory

Forgive me, I haven't quite rumbled how to cherrypick bits to quote, but @PipneyJane, you asked

What’s wrong with Rebecca @DigForVictory? I’ll admit that it is years since I last read it, but it is a good book.

And the short answer is Mrs.Danvers is a bully. (She gives me flashbacks to school, where I was required to read it, which so rarely helps you love a book.) Happily, I fell with a crashing thud for Shakespeare so whilst everyone else was grumbling through various plays, I was looking up meanings & generally enjoying it. I got into the sonnets as well, which startled the Drama teacher, but that got me onto the coach for school trips so she had one person to chat to on the drive back who was genuinely delighted to have seen whatever live, unlike the rest who were grimly forecasting what they would be asked in the exam.

weenancyinAmerica

That is why I think they should teach using some fun books to read so young people don't come out of school tired of heavy reading. I think Agatha Christie and Margery Allingham would make good authors to start with. The Latin class at the high school here read Winnie the Pooh (Winnie Ille Pooh) in Latin of course. It was much better than trying to read something you wouldn't like. I would have enjoyed my French class a lot more if I could have read The Three Musketeers (I did read it in English on my own) instead of Les Misérables (which I hated).

DigForVictory

Ah, but in school they can make you read books you later really need to lose a bet to have a go at - I got coshed through a stack of classics (and didn't hate All of them) as I went for the 'as many books as possible' syllabus rather than the 'these 6 in painful detail' version. However, I'll sign up to your school Willingly if you start a U3A class?! (How about getting the young to read real paper books not on their screens? And no audiobooks as they abridge something cruel.)
My French exchange was a bit surprised to find I devoured her brothers' comic strip books - Lucky Luke, Asterix (of course) & so forth. Her mother was clear the Smurfs had appalling grammar, but found more lucky luke for me!