Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald The Original Screenplay by J.K. Rowling

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald The Original Screenplay by J.K. Rowling-272 pages

I have seen both films and I read the first original screenplay, so I really wanted to read this one, also. It is interesting to read the screenplay and compare it to what is portrayed on/in the film. I enjoyed the second film and screenplay, but not as much as the first. The plot of The Crimes of Grindelwald is a bit scattered and more difficult to follow than the first Fantastic Beasts.

Pooh Goes Visiting by A.A. Milne

Pooh Goes A Visiting by A.A. Milne, 20 pages

A classic Winnie the Pooh story.   When Pooh goes visiting rabbit, he eats too much honey and gets stuck in rabbit's hole.  When Christopher Robin sees what happens to Pooh, he says the only way to unstick himself is to not eat for a week.   But we all know how the story ends, all Pooh's friends are able to pull him out.

Day by Elie Wiesel

Day by Elie Wiesel, 108 pages

Day is Elie's second novel and third book.  It is the sequel to Dawn.  Although different characters, they do have the same internal makeup.  Day focuses on the conscience of the Holocaust.  Can Holocaust survivors live a new life even though they must live with the memories?  This was a thought provoking novel.

Dawn by Elie Wiesel

Dawn by Elie Wiesel, 82 pages

Unlike the book Night, Dawn is a work of fiction.  It is written as if to say what would have happened to himself after WWII. Dawn is about a man who survived WWII and now lives in Palestine.  He joins the Jewish underground and is forced to execute a British of officer who is now a hostage.  I had some difficulty following this story and found myself confusing the characters.

On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan

On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan, 203 pages

On Chesil Beach follows two young newlyweds Florence and Edward as they travel to a hotel on the Dorset coast for their much anticipated honeymoon in July 1962.  Both are virgins from very different backgrounds.  Edward is eager to get physical with his new bride.  But, to the contrary, Florence is disgusted to have any physical contact with Edward.  It is actually quite a sad story.  One cannot help feel sympathy for both Florence and Edward.

You Wouldn't Want to Live Without Libraries! by Fiona Macdonald, Illustrated by Mark Bergie

You Wouldn't Want to Live Without Libraries! by Fiona Macdonald

This is a great book for children and adults.  The book covers over 5000 years of the history of the library and what libraries offer their patrons!  A great book with beautiful illustrations!

Books, Books, Books by Mick Manning and Brita Granstrom

Books, Books, Books by Mick Manning and Brita Granstrom, 42 pages

How could I resist reading a book called Books?  This particular book is about the wide variety of  books in the British Library.  Come explore the amazing collection of the British Library.  This book is also beautifully illustrated.

The Mr. Men Collection by Roger Hargreaves

The Mr. Men Collection by Roger Hargreaves, 100 pages

I listened to this as an audio.    It as actuaally quite funny.   I read the Little Miss books when I was a child and thought it was cute.  Simple to understand and funny, these books have simple messages from Mr. Messy and Mr. Grumpy.  Roger Hargreaves was an English author who wrote these books for his son.

War of the Wolf by Bernard Cornwell

War of the Wolf by Barnard Cornwell --- 352 pages including Historical Note

Bernard Cornwell’s War of the Wolf is the latest, but (fingers crossed) not the last chapter in his Saxon Tales, the basis for the popular British television series The Last Kingdom, which tells of the ninth-tenth century struggle to unite the Saxon, Danish and Norse settlements into one Englaland, with one king and one (Christian) church.

In this eleventh book in the series, Uhtred is now over sixty years old but still riding against his enemies, and still a force to be reckoned with. Although Cornwell sensibly cuts Uhtred some slack --- his seconds in command ride either side of him to protect him, and he fights from the third row in the shield wall now,  letting younger warriors take the brunt of battle. But Uhtred is still the strategist; his battle craft assures victory against all odds.

His new enemy is Skoll, a Norse raider who has been driven out of Ireland and plots to wrest the kingship of Northumbria from Uhtred’s Danish son-in-law, Sigtrygger. Skoll has a blind sorcerer who can kill men with the power of his sightless eyes, and berserkers who eat poisonous henbane to induce a battle frenzy like a howling pack of wolves. Their savagery terrifies anyone who tries to face them. Anyone but Uhtred.

Uhtred himself seems to have grown more stark and implacable in dealing with his enemies as he has grown older. Yet at the same time maturity has allowed him to understand how competing loyalties and bonds of affection blur the boundaries between friendship and enmity.

Uhtred is a man who has lived his life straddling two worlds — the Saxons and the Danes, the Christians and the pagans. That struggle continues, with Uhtred as always, caught in the middle.

The end will come, inevitably --- but for fans of the Saxon Tales, hopefully, not too soon.

Click HERE to read the review from Kirkus Reviews.

Click HERE to read the review from the New York Journal of Books.

Click HERE to read the review from the Book Reporter.

Yotsuba&!, v.1-5 by Kiyohiko Azuma

Yotsuba&!, v. 1 by Kiyohiko Azuma - 232 pages
Yotsuba&!, v. 2 by Kiyohiko Azuma - 200 pages
Yotsuba&!, v. 3 by Kiyohiko Azuma - 184 pages
Yotsuba&!, v. 4 by Kiyohiko Azuma - 192 pages
Yotsuba&!, v. 5 by Kiyohiko Azuma - 216 pages

Yotsuba is an energetic, excitable girl that has newly moved to a new town.  She immediately makes friends with the family next door.  This manga series tells everyday stories of Yotsuba, her dad, their friends, and the family next door.  It's a cute, fun series to read.  I absolutely recommend it to everyone.

Dark Tide Rising by Anne Perry

Dark Tide Rising: A William Monk Novel by Anne Perry --- 289 pages

This is the 24th entry in Anne Perry's atmospheric Victorian mystery series featuring William Monk, Commander of the Thames River Police, and his wife Hester, a nurse who volunteered to serve with Florence Nightingale on the front lines of the Crimean War. 

Kate Exeter, the wife of a wealthy London real estate developer, has been  kidnapped in broad daylight from a riverside walk in Battersea Park, witnessed by her cousin and confidante Celia Darwin.The kidnappers have demanded an enormous ransom, which her frantic husband Harry Exeter has barely managed to scrape together in the 24 hours allowed him. Exeter has been directed to bring the ransom to a meeting place deep in the waterlogged and sinking slums of Jacob's Island, and he asks Monk to accompany him --- to insure that he finds the right spot and gets his wife safely away after the money is handed over. Monk, who still suffers flashbacks from when Hester was kidnapped --- Corridors of the Night (2015) ---  takes five of his most trusted officers, hoping that once Exeter and his wife are safe, he and his men can return to track down the kidnappers. But on the night of the exchange, all their careful plans go disastrously awry when Monk and his men are brutally ambushed.

Who is to blame for what went wrong? Monk must face the terrible suspicion that one of his own men betrayed his plan to the kidnappers. Now he and his men have a murder to solve, but tensions mount because no one knows who can be trusted. Then a bookkeeper for the banker who helped Harry Exeter raise the money for the ransom approaches Monk with her suspicions that money has been quietly disappearing from a large trust fund that Kate Exeter was due to inherit within a year. Suspicions that point to Kate's cousin and trustee, Maurice Latham; to the bank manager, Roger Doyle; even to Harry Exeter himself.

Anne Perry at her best, with several overlapping mysteries to solve: kidnapping, murders, embezzlement and betrayal.

Click HERE to read the review from Publishers Weekly.

Click HERE to read the review from Kirkus Reviews.

Voices in the Park by Anthony Browne

Voices in the Park by Anthony Browne - 32 pages

Four people enter a park, and through their eyes we see four different visions. There's the bossy woman, the sad man, the lonely boy, and the young girl whose warmth touches those she meets.  As the story moves from one voice to another, their perspectives are reflected in the shifting landscape and seasons.  This is an intriguing, multi-layered, enormously entertaining book that demands to be read again and again.

Exploring different points of view.

Blanche Hates the Night by Sibylle Delacroix

Blanche Hates the Night by Sibylle Delacroix - 32 pages

Every day ends the same. Night always falls. Blanche’s mom turns off the light and closes Blanche’s bedroom door. It’s time to go to sleep.

There’s just one problem: Blanche hates the night. She does not want to go to sleep! She would much rather play

(me too)

Good for opening the discussion with a child about the importance of sleep.

My Father's Arms are a Boat by Stein Erik Lunde

My Father's Arms are a Boat by Stein Erik Lunde - 40 pages

It's quieter than it's ever been. Unable to sleep, a young boy climbs into his father's arms. Feeling the warmth and closeness of his father, he begins to ask questions about the birds, the foxes, and whether his mom will ever wake up. They go outside under the starry sky. Loss and love are as present as the white spruces, while the father's clear answers and assurances calm his worried son. Here we feel the cycles of life and life's continuity, even in the face of absence and loss

Great illustrations.  They are all right despite the pain of a father and son moving through pain and grief.

Reasonable Doubts by Gianrico Carofiglio

Reasonable Doubts by Gianrico Carofiglio – 288 p.

Good legal suspense story translated from the original Italian. When criminal defense attorney Guido Guerrieri is called upon to defend a childhood archnemesis, he must re-evaluate long held feelings and assumptions. I especially enjoyed immersing myself in the southern Italian setting.

“Fabio Paolicelli has been sentenced to sixteen years for drug smuggling. The odds are stacked against the accused: not only the fact that he initially confessed to the crime but also his past as a neo-Fascist thug. It is only the intervention of Paolicelli's beautiful half-Japanese wife that finally overcomes Guerrieri's reluctance. Matters are further complicated when Guerrieri ends up in bed with her.”

Mr. Flood’s Last Resort by Jess Kidd

Mr. Flood’s Last Resort by Jess Kidd – 340 p.

Caregiver Maud Drennan is assigned to look after Cathal Flood, the non-bathing, crotchety hoarder who inhabits a crumbling mansion in West London. Maud uses good sense and snarky humor to cover up her tragic past, and ends up uncovering Cathal’s family’s unsavory history. Lovely language, a fully realized cast of sympathetic misfits and a cracking plot make this novel a winner. I look forward to reading the author’s novel Himself.