Quick reads

I am now making an official start on my Triple Eight book challenge and am reading the quick and easy ones!! By quick and easy, I mean my re-reads and my romantic novels - they may not be short, but either I am familiar with the books or am happy to devour them in one go rather than spread them over a week or so (like I am with Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin as it is a bit heavy going - not your typical romance!!).

A couple of the books in the reread and romance category actually tie up; for instance, I reread The Shop on Blossom Street and then bought the follow-up - A Good Yarn. Both of which I liked very much, they are to be found in the romance section of your local bookshop, but I actually think that they are more just simple romances as both books focus on more than one pair of lead characters. The first book looks at a knitting class in a newly opened shop and follows a year (or so) in the life of the shop owner plus the three people that joined the knitting class. The second book (A Good Yarn) is still in the same place with the shop owner, but looks at another class and we see those people live their lives. This is actually quite typical of Debbie Macomber as she has written other series that focus on a particular town - like Cedar Cove - and we get to see familiar faces popping in and out of each book, and I think that this is a lovely way to see how people and their relationships develop without trying to cram all the detail into one book.

I have also now read Without a Trace by Nora roberts - I had been looking for this one for a while as it is the fourth book in a series about the O'Hurley triplets and their brother. Unfortunately, I was not as taken with this book as I was the other O'Hurley books (or other Nora Roberts books for that matter), I don't know why - perhaps I have just read too many of Nora's books lately and am getting a bit fatigued by them!

Diana Gabaldon's Cross Stitch (or Outlander) series contains some of my favourite books, so I thought that I would reread those - Cross Stitch is done and I am now part way through Dragonfly in Amber. If you are not familiar with these books - they are about Claire and Jamie - Claire is a 20th Century English woman, whilst Jamie is an 18th Century Scotsman! The story seems a little implausible in that Claire travels into the past through the standing stones at Craigh na Dun, but Diana Gabaldon makes it all seem very possible and the books are hefty tomes full of detail and are hard to put down, particularly at the end of a lunch break at work! ;-)