What Sophie Said

I’m really not doing well at getting these up as regularly as I want! Christmas has confused every schedule, but I can now start getting back on track. These reading list posts include 4 books at once, and I’m so behind that I’m rediscovering things I read and wrote up weeks ago! Oh well, here is the latest list: Sacred Hearts, Sarah Dunant In the 1570s, Serafina is sent to an Italian monastery to ‘save’ her from a restricted love affair. The novel is about Serafina and the other sisters of the monastery. The main focus seemed to be Sister Zuana, who watches over Serafina, and also takes charge of the apothecary. I liked Zuana’s character a lot, but never really felt very connected to Serafina, despite the fact she is supposedly the centre of the tale. There were lots of great things about this novel. The details about monastery life, about worship and about life outside the walls were interesting, and the hysterias and cures made fascinating reading. In terms of the...

Weekends are the perfect time to catch up on reading, so here’s the latest instalment of things I’ve been reading recently. Fatherland, Robert Harris It is 1964, and Hitler is nearing his 75 th birthday, having been victorious in the Second World War. Detective March finds a naked dead man in a lake, and this begins to unravel a huge conspiracy. The premise of this book was so interesting, and it certainly delivered. There is enough fact weaved in to make the events believable, and the atmosphere and architecture of this 1960s Germany is conjured up well. The book is realistic in that there is still plenty of discontent in the country, so it was a rounded picture, and then in amongst it all was a gripping detective story. This is well worth a try. Revenge Wears Prada, Lauren Weisberger Ten years after The Devil Wears Prada ended, Andy is co-running her own successful wedding magazine. Her life has changed a lot, and is the usual rollercoaster of emotio...