The Lie Tree

 - was book club choice of the month and quite a surprise it was.  We had not realised it was supposed to be a children’s book, in fact it won the Costa Coffee Children’s book award in 2015 as well as the overall Book of the Year award. Only the second time a children’s book has done that. The first was The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman in 2001. The book is unusual and a bit dark for young children, crossing feminism, history and gothic fantasy genres.   The book split the group, those who didn’t like it could not accept the fantasy element. I really enjoyed it.  And if you are wondering what happened to the Costa Coffee book awards, they abruptly stopped in 2021 after Whitbread had sold Costa to Coca Cola. It’s a shame because the Whitbread/ Costa awards were aimed at more populist books to get reading to a wider spectrum of society than Booker. 

The other books are my finished summer holiday reading and I discovered I’d read another award winner.   Lessons in Chemistry won the Paul Tordy award this year.  The award for authors whose first  book is published when they are aged over 60. The award was set up by the family of the late Paul Tordy, author of Salmon Fishing in the Yemen which was published in 2007 when he was 60.  He died in 2013. An excellent book. 
I’ve spotted that Missing Presumed by the late Susan Steiner, yes, she sadly died last summer aged 51, was shortlisted for the Theakston’s Old Peculiar Crime Novel of the year award. Ill be looking out for the remaining 2 books in the series that Steiner wrote before she died because that was a good read too.  That’s enough from me for now