The Wee Writing Lassie’s 300 Books in a Year – Book 186

Red Bones by Ann Cleeves

Goodreads Blurb: An island shrouded in mist and a community with secrets buried in the past . . .

When a young archaeologist studying on a site at Whalsay discovers a set of human remains, the island settlers are intrigued. Is it an ancient find – or a more contemporary mystery?

Then an elderly woman is shot in a tragic accident in the middle of the night. Shetland detective Jimmy Perez is called in by her grandson – his own colleague, Sandy Wilson.

The sparse landscape and the emptiness of the sea have bred a fierce and secretive people. Mima Wilson was a recluse. She had her land, her pride and her family. As Jimmy looks to the islanders for answers, he finds instead two feuding families whose envy, greed and bitterness have lasted generations.

Surrounded by people he doesn’t know and in unfamiliar territory, Jimmy finds himself out of his depth. Then there’s another death and, as the spring weather shrouds the island in claustrophobic mists, Jimmy must dig up old secrets to stop a new killer from striking again . . .

(Goodreads Page)

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Goodreads Review: You will not see the ending of this book coming – it plays on everything we expect to see from a red herring. Also, and I’m not one hundred percent sure on this since it’s been a while since I’ve seen it, but I think the Tv show changed the ending again 😱

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The Wee Writing Lassie’s 300 Books in a Year – Book 185

Raven Black by Ann Cleeves

Goodreads Blurb: Winner of Britain’s coveted Duncan Lawrie Dagger Award, Ann Cleeves introduces a dazzling new suspense series to mystery readers.

Raven Black begins on New Year’s Eve with a lonely outcast named Magnus Tait, who stays home waiting for visitors who never come. But the next morning the body of a murdered teenage girl is discovered nearby, and suspicion falls on Magnus. Inspector Jimmy Perez enters an investigative maze that leads deeper into the past of the Shetland Islands than anyone wants to go.

(Goodreads Page)

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Goodreads Review: Very different from its adaption on the show – not worse, not better, just very different. To the point where I think they even changed who did it in the show. Strange, as the book’s ending takes you by surprise in the best of ways.

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The Wee Writing Lassie’s 300 Books in a Year – Book 184

Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder

Goodreads Blurb: Pa Ingalls decides to sell the little log house, and the family sets out for Indian country! They travel from Wisconsin to Kansas, and there, finally, Pa builds their little house on the prairie. Sometimes farm life is difficult, even dangerous, but Laura and her family are kept busy and are happy with the promise of their new life on the prairie.

(Goodreads Page)

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Goodreads Review: A lovely written, and yet strangely sad book.

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The Wee Writing Lassie’s 300 Books in a Year – Book 183

Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder

Goodreads Blurb: Based on the real-life adventures of Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House in the Big Woods is the first book in the award-winning Little House series, which has captivated generations of readers. This edition features the classic black-and-white artwork from Garth Williams.

Little House in the Big Woods takes place in 1871 and introduces us to four-year-old Laura, who lives in a log cabin on the edge of the Big Woods of Wisconsin. She shares the cabin with her Pa, her Ma, her sisters Mary and Carrie, and their lovable dog, Jack.

(Goodreads Page)

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Goodreads Review: I think Pa may be my favourite character – the books would certainly lose something without him 😁

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The Wee Writing Lassie’s 300 Books in a Year – Book 182

Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder

Goodreads Blurb: Growing up on his family’s farm in New York, Almanzo Wilder wishes for just one thing — his very own horse. But Father doesn’t yet trust him with such a big responsibility. Almanzo needs to prove himself — but how?

(Goodreads Page)

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Goodreads Review: An excellent read – but I think the later books in the series are actually better. They’ve got a little more bite to them.

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The Wee Writing Lassie’s 300 Books in a Year – Book 181

The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls

Goodreads Blurb: On the empty winter prairie, gray clouds to the northwest meant only one thing: a blizzard was seconds away. The first blizzard came in October. It snowed almost without stopping until April. The temperature dropped to forty below. Snow reached the roof-tops. And no trains could get through with food and coal. The townspeople began to starve. The Ingalls family barely lived through that winter. And Almanzo Wilder knew he would have to risk his life to save the town.

(Goodreads Page)

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Goodreads Review: By far and away one of the darkest of the series – can anyone say clinical depression, back breaking work in the snow and near starvation? – which is probably why this my favourite one.

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The Wee Writing Lassie’s 300 Books in a Year – Book 180

By the Shores of Silver Lake by Laura Ingalls Wilder

Goodreads Blurb: The adventures of Laura Ingalls and her family continue as they move from their little house on the banks of Plum Creek to the wilderness of the unsettled Dakota Territory. Here Pa works on the new railroad until he finds a homestead claim that is perfect for their new little house. Laura takes her first train ride as she, her sisters, and their mother come out to live with Pa on the shores of Silver Lake. After a lonely winter in the surveyors’ house, Pa puts up the first building in what will soon be a brand-new town on the beautiful shores of Silver Lake. The Ingallses’ covered-wagon travels are finally over.

(Goodreads Page)

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Goodreads Review: I don’t know what was more harrowing the scene at the beginning or the scene at the end – either way these are starting to not feel like kids books anymore.

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The Wee Writing Lassie’s 300 Books in a Year – Book 179

The Beach by Alex Garland

Goodreads Blurb: The Khao San Road, Bangkok — first stop for the hordes of rootless young Westerners traveling in Southeast Asia. On Richard’s first night there, in a low-budget guest house, a fellow traveller slashes his wrists, bequeathing to Richard a meticulously drawn map to “the Beach.”

The Beach, as Richard has come to learn, is the subject of a legend among young travellers in Asia: a lagoon hidden from the sea, with white sand and coral gardens, freshwater falls surrounded by jungle, plants untouched for a thousand years. There, it is rumoured, a carefully selected international few have settled in a communal Eden.

Haunted by the figure of Mr. Duck — the name by which the Thai police have identified the dead man — and his own obsession with Vietnam movies, Richard sets off with a young French couple to an island hidden away in an archipelago forbidden to tourists. They discover the Beach, and it is as beautiful and idyllic as it is reputed to be. Yet over time it becomes clear that Beach culture, as Richard calls it, has troubling, even deadly, undercurrents.

Spellbinding and hallucinogenic, The Beach by Alex Garland — both a national bestseller and his debut — is a highly accomplished and suspenseful novel that fixates on a generation in their twenties, who, burdened with the legacy of the preceding generation and saturated by popular culture, long for an unruined landscape, but find it difficult to experience the world first hand.

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Goodreads Review: This is a very weird book – very well written, and I’m glad I read it but man is it a weird book.

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The Wee Writing Lassie’s 300 Books in a Year – Book 178

On the Banks of Plum Creek by Laura Ingalls Wilder

Goodreads Blurb: The adventures of Laura Ingalls and her family continue as they leave their little house on the prairie and travel in their covered wagon to Minnesota. They settle into a house made of sod on the banks of beautiful Plum Creek. Soon Pa builds them a sturdier house, with real glass windows and a hinged door. Laura and Mary go to school, help with the chores around the house, and fish in the creek. Pa’s fiddle lulls them all to sleep at the end of the day. But then disaster strikes—on top of a terrible blizzard, a grasshopper infestation devours their wheat crop. Now the family must work harder than ever to overcome these challenges.

(Goodreads Page)

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Goodreads Review: Even better than the previous book in the series – even if it’s not quite as famous 😁⭐️

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The Wee Writing Lassie’s 300 Books in a Year – Book 177

Caroline: Little House, Revisited by Sarah Miller

Goodreads Blurb: In this novel authorized by the Little House estate, Sarah Miller vividly recreates the beauty, hardship, and joys of the frontier in a dazzling work of historical fiction, a captivating story that illuminates one courageous, resilient, and loving pioneer woman as never before—Caroline Ingalls, “Ma” in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s beloved Little House books.

In the frigid days of February, 1870, Caroline Ingalls and her family leave the familiar comforts of the Big Woods of Wisconsin and the warm bosom of her family, for a new life in Kansas Indian Territory. Packing what they can carry in their wagon, Caroline, her husband Charles, and their little girls, Mary and Laura, head west to settle in a beautiful, unpredictable land full of promise and peril.

The pioneer life is a hard one, especially for a pregnant woman with no friends or kin to turn to for comfort or help. The burden of work must be shouldered alone, sickness tended without the aid of doctors, and babies birthed without the accustomed hands of mothers or sisters. But Caroline’s new world is also full of tender joys. In adapting to this strange new place and transforming a rough log house built by Charles’ hands into a home, Caroline must draw on untapped wells of strength she does not know she possesses.

For more than eighty years, generations of readers have been enchanted by the adventures of the American frontier’s most famous child, Laura Ingalls Wilder, in the Little House books. Now, that familiar story is retold in this captivating tale of family, fidelity, hardship, love, and survival that vividly reimagines our past.

(Goodreads Page)

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Goodreads Review: Little House, now with twice the depression 😁

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