Top Ten Tuesday: Books set in places on my bucket list

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish and now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. See the Mr Linky for others entries. This week, the topic is Books set in places on my bucket list. I’ve chosen ones that I’ve crossed off and actually been to… This Read More

The Last 10 Books Tag…

I got this via Simon (see his answers here) but it originated with Rick at Another Book Vlog. I couldn’t resist… The last book I gave up on There are a few books that I never really got started with, like Iris Murdoch’s The Nice and the Good, but the last one I read a decent chunk of Read More

Meanwhile at Shiny…

…I’ve had several reviews published recently. In the Name of the Family by Sarah Dunant Sarah Dunant’s latest novel chronicles the last year of Pope Alexander VI’s life. He was, of course, head of the Borgia family in Renaissance Italy. His mad and vicious soldier son Cesare, and daughter about to be thrice-married Lucrezia complete Read More

A Florentine treat

The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant I used to have all four of Sarah Dunant’s Italian Renaissance novels on my shelves. I liked the idea of them, as I love Italy, its art and architecture and so on but, I’m not a big reader of historical fiction, so they got forgotten and late last Read More