Category: From My Bookshelf – Lynn Willoughby

From My Bookshelf ~ Featuring Karl Pilkington and Graeme Simsion

By Lynn Willoughby The Moaning of Life ~ Karl Pilkington If you are a fan of “An Idiot Abroad” on TV, you will be familiar with Karl Pilkington. This book is based on another travel documentary by the same name as the book. Both books and TV are hilariously funny. Here we travel to various…

November 23, 2014
From My Bookshelf ~ Featuring Glendon Swarthout

By Lynn Willoughby Bless the Beasts and Children ~ Glendon Swarthout Swarthout wrote this coming of age novel in 1970, and many of his novels were made into movies. Hollywood loved him. It tells the story of six emotionally disturbed boys sent to a summer camp in Arizona. They are from various cities in the…

November 9, 2014
From My Bookshelf Featuring Robert Harris and Jonas Jonasson

By Lynn Willoughby An Officer and a Spy – Robert Harris Thrilling historical fiction makes this novel about the Dreyfus affair a dark story of traitors, conspiracy and espionage. Alfred Dreyfus is a young officer in the French army. In 1895 he is convicted of treason. In front of thousands of Parisians he undergoes “degradation”.…

October 19, 2014
From My Bookshelf Featuring Graeme Simsion and Alice Munro

By Lynn Willoughby The Rosie Project ~ Graeme Simsion What a gem this book is! It is narrated by an odd, charming, socially awkward genetics professor. He is full of ticks, twitches, obsessions and can count his friends on one hand – two. He has a lifelong difficulty with social rituals, but he believes there…

October 5, 2014
From My Bookshelf ~ Featuring Rachel Simon and Victoria Sweet

By Lynn Willoughby The Story of Beautiful Girl ~ Rachel Simon In Pennsylvania in 1968 Lynnie is locked away in an institution – the School for the Incurable and Feebleminded. She was born with a developmental disability and lived at home until she was six. When she was taken to the School, the stench, the…

September 21, 2014
From My Bookshelf ~ Featuring Maya Angelou and Sue Monk Kidd

By Lynn Willoughby I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings ~ Maya Angelou This autobiography was written in 1969 and was the first of a seven volume series on her life. This is a coming of age story which begins with three year old Maya and her elder brother Bailey, as they are shipped off…

September 7, 2014
From My Bookshelf: Featuring Tom Rob Smith and Jodi Picoult

By Lynn Willoughby The Farm ~ Tom Rob Smith This novel opens with a phone call to Daniel, from his mother in Sweden. She has just left the insane asylum where her husband had her committed. She is on her way to London to see Daniel. No sooner does he hang up the phone when…

August 24, 2014
From My Bookshelf ~ Featuring Jhumpa Lahiri and Richard C. Morais

By Lynn Willoughby The Lowland ~ Jhumpa Lahiri Growing up in Calcutta in the 1960s, Subhash and Udayan Mita are inseparable brothers . Udayan, as an adult, is drawn to the Naxalite movement, a rebellion waged to eradicate inequality and poverty. Mao Tse Tung, Castro and Che Guevara were their heroes. Udayan becomes more and…

August 10, 2014
From My Bookshelf ~ Featuring Garth Stein and Alan Bradley

By Lynn Willoughby How Evan Broke His Head ~ Garth Stein “Fathers never forget seeing their kids for the first time, but Evan is greeting his son, Dean, fourteen years late.” This is the sum of the book. Evan believed his teenaged girlfriend, Tracy, had had an abortion. He’s even paid for it! Instead her…

July 27, 2014
From My Bookshelf ~ Featuring Laam and Horan

By Lynn Willoughby The Secret Daughter of the Tsar ~ Jennifer Laam “A compelling alternate history of the Romanov family in which a secret fifth daughter is smuggled out of Russia before the revolution, continues the royal lineage…” This is the theme of the debut novel by Laam, and it crosses oceans, time and the…

July 13, 2014