The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams

 

This month I choose The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams  

Motherless Esme accompanies her widower father every day to the Scriptorium, an oversized, glorified garden shed where words are filed into pigeon holes. He is involved in putting together the first copy of the Oxford English Dictionary. As she grows older she also gradually begins working on the dictionary.

She also starts collecting other words that don’t make it into the dictionary.

This novel addresses several issues: feminism, the suffrage movement and in particular the suffragettes, the loss of life in the Great War, class differences, unmarried mothers and how a dictionary is made.

Pip Williams paints a vivid picture of historical Oxford and creates believable and well-rounded characters in The Dictionary of Lost Words. She captures Esme’s voice particularly well, including when she is a child.  

 Find your copy on Amazon 

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How To grow a Garden by Frances Tophill and Charlotte Ager

 

This month I choose How To grow a Garden by Frances Tophill and Charlotte Ager  

This is beautiful large picture book. It’s certainly suitable for children but also makes a good read for their parents and grandparents.

A contents page near the beginning of the book identifies sections: Flowers and Herbs, Trees, Hedges and Edges, Grass, Fruit and Veg, Water, Exotic Plants and Further Resources.

Each double spread shows pictures of the topics discussed and provides bite-sized information.

At the end of each section there are suggestions about what you can do in each season.

The book opens with an introduction about how the text works. It invites the reader to join in an interesting journey.

Throughout the text there are many activities suggested to the reader.

There is a glossary and an index at the end of the book.

Frances Tophill and Charlotte Ager will certainly get you enthusing about your garden in their inspirational How to Grow a Garden.   

Find your copy here  

Note, this is an affiliate link and a small portion of what you pay, at no extra cost to you,  may go to Bridge House Publishing.  

Trustee from the Toolroom by Nevil Shute

 

This month I choose Trustee from the Toolroom by Nevil Shute

It is my book group’s choice for our meeting on 16 June. It is a modern classic. 

The writing seems very smooth compared with many modern stories. The main character is so very well formed that we like him and we wish him well right to the very end.

Keith Stewart and his wife are very down-to-earth and though not poor they are certainly not as well off as Stewart’s sister and brother-in-law. His sister and brother-in-law are drowned as they cross the world in a small yacht and he becomes the guardian of his young niece Janice.

There are some very powerful descriptions of the sea voyage and though there are many technical details that go right over my head, I don’t feel as if the author is showing off.  These details are important to the two characters in the boat.

The same is true of the engineering detail that we are given as Keith discusses and thinks about his small scale model projects. Again I don’t understand those details but it’s clear they are important to Keith and to the men to whom he talks.

Keith goes on tricky journey to recover some items from the yacht and to make sure his relations have had a decent burial and this creates much of the tension in the story. We are kept guessing right until the last minute about whether it will all come good for the family.

Keith does get some help through the kindness of strangers, which is richly deserved, and that is a reassuring message.              

Find your copy here.   

Note, this is an affiliate link and a small portion of what you pay, at no extra cost to you,  may go to Bridge House Publishing