Alice Chireux Chireux من عند Beeramanahalli, Karnataka, الهند من عند Beeramanahalli, Karnataka, الهند

كان هذا الكتاب أفضل بكثير من الأول! في الحقيقة بعد أول واحد ، لم أكن مقتنعا تمامًا أن هذه كانت السلسلة بالنسبة لي لكنها بالتأكيد استعادت نفسها بعد الانتهاء من هذه السلسلة. أعتقد أن هذه سلسلة رائعة تجذب الكثير من الناس. أستطيع أن أراهم فقط يتحسنون ويحسنون.

“Sepulchrally dismal, she was the three-dimensional equivalent of woe.” My third memoir for the year, Wendy Burden’s Dead End Gene Pool is a dizzying ride through the lives of the ultra-rich descendants of Cornelius Vanderbilt, starting briefly with her grandparents’ antecedents, focussing for quite some time on Wendy’s childhood, which was heavily influenced by her paternal grandparents, and moving into her teenage and student years. The first half of this book was highly comic – Wendy recounting the tales of her forebears, over-moneyed, over-sexed and often under-endowed with sanity. Similarly the stories of her early childhood, mostly revolving around her grandparents and their staff at the New York mansion. As Wendy grows older, though, the anecdotes get a bitter edge and the book becomes one of those ubiquitous misery memoirs of growing up with an alcoholic single parent. The grandparents become senile and sadly dependent, rather than amusing. Memoirs are clearly a form of non-fiction that I am coming to enjoy, though – I very much enjoyed Sleeping Naked Is Green and The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance (when I wrote that review, I hoped I’d never have to write the title again. It seems to be following me). Worth reading if you are interested in rich American people. Otherwise, there’s funnier material out there.

This was a witty book. I both adore 19th century novels and the kinds of novels that poke fun at them, like this one. It plays on a lot of the stereotypes and manners, etc. Not LOL funny, but kind of smirky, wry smile funny.

Lark Rise to Candleford is actually three books, "Larkrise", "Over to Candleford", and "Candleford Green". Set in rural 1890's Oxfordshire, the author recounts her childhood, writing down all the little details and beauty of country life. Flora Thompson was a naturalist and her love of nature is self-evident in this trilogy. "Nearer at hand where the trees and bushes and wild-flower patches beside the path she had trodden daily. The pond where the yellow brandyball waterlilies grew, the little birch thicket where the long-tailed tits had congregated , the boathouse where she had sheltered from the thunderstorm and seen the rain plash like leaden bullets into the leaden water, and the hillock beyond from which she had seen the perfect rainbow. She was never to see any of these again, but she was to carry a mental picture of them, to be recalled at will, through the changing scenes of lifetime. "As she went on her way, gossamer threads, sun from bush to bush, barricaded her pathway, and as she broke through one after another of these fairy barricades she thought, ‘They’re trying to bind and keep me’. But the threads which were to bind her to hernative county were more enduring than gossamer. They were spun of love and kinship and cherished memories" (The BBC TV Adaptation of "Lark Rise to Candleford" converted this final paragraph from "Candleford Green" into a poem that Mrs. Timmins recites) I loved this and all the frequent descriptions of nature, the narrations of the simplicity of country life, and the stories of everyday people was so heartwarming. The final paragraph (quoted above) proved so moving that my eyes began to water. :-) I recommend this book to everyone!