Having read the other books by Edward Rutherford, I was really looking forward to reading this one. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have the same breadth and quality as works like London or Sarum. The story starts in the year 430 AD and ends in 1533, thus not including the Celt era nor the modern era which in my opinion are integral parts of what Ireland is today. Rutherford has tried to compensate by adding more depth to the characters but there is still something missing.

Phew! It took me a long time to finish this book! It is a good book but I never managed to really get attached to the characters or the story. You can feel that, on occasions, Trollope is just trying to fill space, as it was standard for novels to be written in 2 or 3 volumes at the time. Another very annoying habit of him is to comment on the story or the feelings of the characters in the first person, thus reminding you that you are indeed reading a book and sort of preventing you from really getting immersed in it.

Having said this, the further you get in the book, the more interesting it becomes as you discover new facets of characters you thought you knew completely. And, like life, none of them is fully good nor fully evil, all of them are completely human.

This is a book that got me to miss my tube stop twice in the few weeks I needed to read it because I was so much into it. Charles Dickens weaves the thread of his story in a masterful way. The dialogues make the characters walk out of the page, the descriptions make Victorian London come to life and the parodies of Government and Society are absolutely spot on and still valid today.

Thank you Mr Dickens for making my commuting so enjoyable!

I was going home by tube, reading my book, when suddenly I looked up and realised I had just missed my stop. It doesn’t happen to me often: I can even fall asleep and wake up in time to get off. So missing my stop because of a book must mean I was so engrossed in it, it must be very good! And indeed it is!

Not only do I love this book (so far) but knowing, and being able to visualise, most of the places mentionned in it makes it even more engaging, more alive.

This account of the plague that decimated London in the year 1665 is written in Defoe’s journalistic style. There is no plot, apart from following the evolution of the desease. But for someone who knows London and especially the area around Aldgate where the narrator lives, this is a fascinating insight into the history of this city.

This book prompted me to go to the National Archives where I found a map of London in the 1660’s, showing that the layout of the city is still mostly the same today as it was 3 centuries ago. And indeed, most of the places mentionned in A Journal of the Plague Year still exist today.

The story is interesting but I found the book generally boring. I just couldn’t really get into it and felt quite detached from the characters.

It took me a long time to finish this book. I found it a very difficult read. Not so much because of the subject: the book is written in the first person thus giving a fascinating insight into the distorted mind of the main character, Humbert; but because of the narrative style of this same Humbert.

Lolita will make you smile, cry, shudder, will make your skin crawl and leave a sour taste in your mouth but you can’t stay indifferent to it. If the key to dealing with criminals is to understand how their brain works, then Nabokov did a brilliant job in exploring the thought process of a pedophile.

• Melt some butter in a frying pan on gentle fire,
• Drop a couple of sliced bananas in the pan,
• Cook while stirring until the bananas start becoming purée,
• Sprinkle some hot chocolate powder (preferably Green&Black’s Organic),
• Stir to incorporate the chocolate to the banana,
• Leave to cool down for 5 minutes or until you can’t resist the smell anymore,
• Eat and be in heaven!