Challenge 8: A Book At The Bottom Of Your "To Be Read" Pile

Donna's Book: "The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: Travels Through my Childhood" by Bill Bryson (Transworld, 2010)

I confess.  I just want to read some more Bryson.  But I got this book back in 2010 when it first came out and I've never got around to reading it, so I think it fits well enough into this challenge.  Bill Bryson writes with both intelligence and humour, and he is the perfect antidote to the madness-that-is-end-of-year-marking!

Comments:

I finished reading this ages ago, but the end-of-year-marking madness, and then the trying-to-write-as-much-as-possible-for-the-new-book-over-the-summer madness rather took over!  As always, Bill is wonderful and I recommend this to anyone who wants a nostalgic, humorous and insightful look back at the 1950s.  In telling the story of his own growing up, he also tells the story of the way that America 'grew up.'  As such, I realised that while I was reading this, I was actually 'at work.'  This will be added to the list of recommended reading for my students who study cultural changes in the US during the Cold War.  I recommend it to you too!

Challenge 8: A Book At The Bottom Of Your "To Be Read" Pile

Ida's book: "Did She Kill Him? A Victorian Tale Of Deception, Adultery, And Arsenic" by Kate Colquhoun (The Overlook Press, 2014).

I bought this book last year in the local Oxfam charity shop and it's been sitting on my shelf ever since. I don't really have any expectations of what it'll be like, so this is something of a leap of faith (as it was when I bought it on a whim) but I'm ready for a (possibly) murderous woman from the Victorian era, so bring it on!

Comments:
Okay, so this book became a bit of an obsession for me, which I hadn't actually expected! First of all, it's set in Liverpool which was nice because I knew the places described in the book. It also managed to paint a picture of the Victorian era, by piecing together letters, transcripts and the like (always in italics so you knew these were the 'facts' as they were written down in the 1880s). Finally, the fate of this young woman, Florence Maybrick just kept me coming back for more and I was genuinely angry at the shoddy police work done at the time and the incompetent judge. These books about murder cases are curious things, as it would be quite easy to just look up whether she was sentenced or not, but I managed to steel myself and read through the book without looking up the case, which really is the only way of reading this kind of book, constantly asking yourself - yeah, but did she do it? Amazing book about a time when arsenic was simply everywhere and a the worst a woman could do was to have an affair.