Holiday Reading

It's been a while since my last post I know and I did promise a post the next day, slaps own wrist, but life sometimes has a habit of getting in the way, especially now. Ever since I got back from holiday I don't seem to have stopped running either at home or at work and I'm desperately trying to carve out writing time on top of all that.

The holiday seems like a long time ago but it was a much needed break and helped me get my head round the news that my current job will be ending at the end of the next academic year. Now I'm trying to look on the positive - a year is more than most people have in job expectancy and it could be the era of change for the best. So I want to spend the next year saving as much money as I can, writing as much as I can and trying to find some freelance options, writing or otherwise, so that I can organise my life a bit better around childcare. You never know it might be a much needed opportunity to kick start a new career (fingers crossed).

I digress, what I was going to blog about was reading. One of the things I look forward to in a beach holiday is all that lovely reading time. Picking the books I'm going to take with me probably takes me longer than packing my clothes, because its a difficult choice from my ever increasing tbr pile.

Now, I'm going to tell you a little bit about my choice of books and if the technology works this will be complete with pictures. If not I may be asking for advice. So here goes.

The first book I read was Barbara Taylor-Bradford's Being Elizabeth.

I grew up reading The Woman of Substance series and dreamed of being as successful as Elizabeth Harte, so I’ve always had a soft spot for this author.

This book was a present for Christmas so has been on my TBR pile for a while now. The story is about Elizabeth Turner, a young woman who inherits a dynasty from the Deravenal family and is one of a series.

Barbara Taylor-Bradford paints the settings with her usual carefully detailed brushstrokes, and I enjoyed reading about the lifestyle of the rich, however, I was largely disappointed by this book. I must admit I didn’t really like the main character very much. Everyone else in the book revered her, thought she was brilliant business woman and was deserving of her success but I felt that this was down to both her inheritance and the people around her rather than from anything she had succeeded for herself and as such I found her character unconvincing.

I did, though, read the author’s note at the back of the book and was intrigued to find that the author had based the story on the life of Elizabeth I but had set it in the present day. I’m a big fan of Tudor history so I enjoyed seeing how she had replicated history in modern times and this was probably the biggest incentive for me to keep reading.

Next time, I'll tell you about some of my other reading.

Have a good weekend everyone.