On the blog last week
Monday – I shared my wrap-up of the 20 Books of Summer 2025 reading challenge.
Tuesday – This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was Books With Occupations in the Title.
Wednesday – As always WWW Wednesday is a weekly opportunity to share what I’ve just read, what I’m currently reading and what I plan to read next… and to take a peek at what others are reading.
Thursday – I shared My Top 3 August Reads.
Saturday – I took part in the #6Degrees of Separation meme forging a book chain from Ghosts Cities by Siang Lu to Shelter by Sarah Franklin.
New on my shelves
The Matchbox Girl by Alice Jolly (Bloomsbury via NetGalley)
Adelheid Brunner does not speak. She writes and draws instead and her ambition is to own one thousand matchboxes. Her grandmother cannot make sense of this, but Adelheid will stop at nothing to achieve her dream. She makes herself invisible, hiding in cupboards with her pet rat, Franz Joseph, listening in on conversations she can’t fully comprehend.
Then she meets Dr Asperger, a man who lets children play all day and who recognises the importance of matchboxes. He invites Adelheid to come and live at the Vienna paediatric clinic, where she and other children like herself will live under observation.
But the date is 1938 and the place is Vienna – a city of political instability, a place of increasing fear and violence. When the Nazis march into the city, a new world is created and difficult choices must be made.
Why are the clinic’s children disappearing, and where do they go? Adelheid starts to suspect that some of Dr Asperger’s games are played for the highest stakes. In order to survive, she must play a game whose rules she cannot yet understand.
What I’m currently reading
I’m reading The Blazing Sea from my NetGalley shelf, listening to the audiobook of Tombland and reading a physical copy of All the Lives We Never Lived.
Look out for…
- Book Review: The Predicament by William Boyd
- Book Review: The Two Roberts by Damian Barr
- Book Review: The Blazing Sea by Tim Hodkinson
