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.Dark Fire (Shardlake)
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by: C.J. Sansom

May 18, 2007
I have just finished this book and, after Dissolution, I am well and truly addicted to this series. I really like the lead character of Matthew Shardlake and the other characters in this and the previous book. Will be starting on Sovereign asap and can't wait to read Revelation from what I've read on Amazon about that story. There seems to be a plethora of murder-thriller type books set in the 15th-16th century around at the moment but this is without doubt the best of them all.
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Used Price: £1.72

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.Sovereign (Shardlake)
City Travel Guides > Books > Paperback Deals
by: C.J. Sansom

March 16, 2007
I have not read any other works by the author so for me this is the first time I've met the character. The cover caught my attention, and as I enjoy detective novels and historical fiction, this looked the book for me.

The basic storyline is that our central character, a lawyer, is ordered to assist with some legal proceedings which take place during Henry VIII's progress to the north or more particularly York. The place in time is just after the great Northern Rebellion and during his marriage to the young and flakey Katherine Howard. The lawyer accidentally discovers some documents in a box, which as they implicate the legitimacy of the King's right to be king are highly contentious, as a result of the discovery there are attempts ... Read More:
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.Dinosaurs Love Underpants
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by: Claire Freedman

June 02, 2008
This book is based on same premise as the successful Aliens love underpants from the same author/illustrator duo, that small children will find the incongruity between everyday pants and imaginary creatures wearing them very funny, and of course they do. But whereas many follow up books are more of the same, this has a very different story which, in my opinion, is the stronger of the two (though no less silly).
Bright amusing illustrations of dinosaurs dressed in flamboyant and colourful pants accompany decent rhyming verse:
"Triceratops was happy, wearing pants on every horn,
Til Styracosaurus snatched them, and they ended up all torn."
Pants are so prized that squabbles erupt and it's dinosaur underwear anarchy as they fight to the ... Read More:
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.Raising Boys: Why Boys are Different - And How to Help Them Become Happy and Well-balanced Men: Why Boys Are Different - And How to Help Them Become Happy and Well-balanced Men
City Travel Guides > Books > Paperback Deals
by: Steve Biddulph

March 03, 2003
I felt completely depressed when pregnant with my second son when I read this book! Mr Biddulph basically tells you that, as a mother, you are important to your sons till they reach five, then you can basically forget it, as you will always be of secondary importance to them compared to their fathers and you should just get on with doing their laundry and cooking them the odd meal or two!
I'm sure he is right to a certain degree but, after speaking to many people after reading this, it is a huge generalisation to say that most men worship their fathers and take their mothers for granted.
Also, he could really have written one chapter instead of a whole book as the central message is repeated again and again: "Male children need strong male role models" ... Read More:
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Used Price: £3.11

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.Brilliant Project Management: What the Best Project Managers Know, Say and Do
City Travel Guides > Books > Paperback Deals
by: Stephen Barker, Rob Cole

March 01, 2007
Like most people who buy this sort of book, I had stuff thrust upon me at work, and had to swat up on project management PDQ. I am big fan of short introductory books like the "for dummies" series. This looked similar, so I bought it.

To say that it's useles would not be fair. It does contain useful advice. Most of it is at the level of rudimentary common sense. If put clearly and succinctly, all of it would probably fit into less than 25 pages. The rest of this book is waffle, and mindnumbingly boring waffle at that.

This is the very opposite of brilliant. The book is thin on substance and thin on entertainment value. It is singularly mediocre. AS I have since found out, there are many other books on project management which are more rigorous and more ... Read More:
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Used Price: £4.00

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.The Boleyn Inheritance
City Travel Guides > Books > Paperback Deals
by: Philippa Gregory

May 01, 2007
In this brilliant novel we get to see three women, one evil and guilt stricken the other shy and gullible, and the third women young beautiful and vain.

After reading the other Boleyn girl thirst, I was able to understood the true cruelty of Jane Boleyn (lady rochford) in this book once again she only thinks of herself , she befriends both of henrys new queens with only her interest in mind. She is most obsessed with Anne Boleyn and her brother George Boleyn. She feels the guilt as it was her who help put both brother and sister to death. She is a jealous vile women who gets her just deserts as someone uses her to his own advantage, giving her hopes and dreams and then easily taking it away from her.

Anne of Cleves is very shy and temperamental, being ... Read More:
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.The Discovery of France
City Travel Guides > Books > Paperback Deals
by: Graham Robb

July 04, 2008
This is a superbly written history-cum-travelogue. Robb is known for his books on French writers (Balzac, Hugo and Rimbaud) but here he ventures into peasant France, riding on his bicycle to make the time for the small details of life in rural France. He writes extremely well about landscape, an the book throughout is enjoyable to read. Drawing on travelogues of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Robb accentuates the backwardness of peasant France - mainly for effect, it seems. I found this increasingly annoying. It is an imbalance in the book. The French peasants come across as a nation of troglodytes. The second half of the book is more conventional history on the theme of nation-building in the nineteenth century. This is perhaps better covered in Eugene Weber's masterpiece, Peasants ... Read More:
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.Monkey Puzzle
City Travel Guides > Books > Paperback Deals
by: Julia Donaldson

August 11, 2000
She's the target audience, right? I'm a huge fan of Donaldson/Scheffler books, but this one isn't much fun to read aloud - for me! my daughter thinks it's great. She'd more or less memorised it in a couple of readings. I have already come to dread the repetition ('Come little monkey, come come come') and am frustrated by both the idiot butterfly and the ungrateful monkey. You can confidently go ahead and buy this book for your toddler to enjoy, but you may not have as good a time along with her.
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.Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
City Travel Guides > Books > Paperback Deals
by: Barack Obama

June 05, 2008
This book has been written with great literary flair. Every place in which Barack Obama has lived or which he has visited is described with the skill of a great travel-writer; every person, every social setting is graphically and memorably brought to life. His independently-minded maternal grandparents, white folk who had themselves eloped against the wishes of the grandmother's father, had no theory about racial equality but simply assumed it and were shocked when their surroundings did not. Apart from the fact that the grandfather had itchy feet, that may have been one of the reasons why they left Texas and moved to Hawaii, which was more racially tolerant than mainland America. When their daughter married Barack senior, a black Kenyan whom she had met at the University of Hawaii, they accepted him. ... Read More:
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.The Audacity of Hope
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by: Barack Obama

February 07, 2008
This is the first book by an aspirant politician, indeed the first political manifesto, (for that is what it is) that I have read cover to cover. (Perhaps, it occurs to me, I should read some of the works by serving British politicians, too, and not just rely on commentaries by journalists?) I bought the book the day after Barack Obama slipped up re-using the "lipstick on a pig" cliché, when, for the first time, McCain and Palin seemed to have achieved a significant lead in the polls.

Obama wrote this book to update his life story, including how he came to be elected senator for Illinois (he completed his first book "Dreams of my father" some ten years earlier), to offer an analysis of how modern American political life has become so polarised, but above all to state his personal and political ... Read More:
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Used Price: £4.39