I personally prefer books over films and rarely go to a film that I have read the book of.
There are obvious exceptions and I can remember Harry Potter being one of them.
I too like the detail that books give and being able to use my own imagination.

Update, Stephanie and Tpandav, I have you to thank that I am now onto my 3rd Jackson Brodie book, Will there be Good News.
My favourite to date is One Good Turn, I found it less assaulting than Case Histories and I became completely engrossed in the stories.
I do find that if I don't concentrate then can quickly lose track of where things are at, due to character and place changes but I am still enjoying them immensely.
Thanks, I have seen the light!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/02/2019 12:50AM by helen.

Really pleased, Helen, to hear this. I find the series hugely entertaining.
I am gorging myself on Tessa Hadley's novels thanks to TPANDAV's recommendation. She is VERY good. Have read four and now am having a break or will be cross with myself for being too greedy. One plus about being old is that after a month or so one can reread with even greater pleasure!

Excellent to hear, maybe Tessa Hadley is next on my list after I have read the 5 Brodie Jackson books.

Having now finished Will there Be Good News, I am needing a Kate Atkinson break before reading the other two in the series.
Her writing is undoubtedly highly skilled but there is something about her that does unsettle me. I have been googling trying to put my finger on it to see if anyone else is saying the same.
I found an interview with Atkinson on The Guardian from which I have copied the following:

Brodie fans will welcome the reappearance of Reggie, last seen as a 16-year-old nanny in 2008’s When Will There Be Good News?, now a young policewoman. “What else would she become?” Atkinson asks. “Now she’s never going to be allowed to be happy. Because she’s always going to be seeing bad things. She will be fulfilled.”

Atkinson has said that “you can’t write a novel about happy people having happy lives”. “There is so much misery around, I never seem to get round to it.”

After finishing Will there Be Good News last night I have spent this morning dwelling on the last few pages of the book where the mother whose police officer son was shot and left on life support. She has no husband and her son Marcus is an only child. She strokes his hair and sits until life support is turned off and then she goes and jumps into the Thames and drowns...
I maybe take these sorts of things too literally but I like things happier than this.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/06/2019 02:30AM by helen.

Helen, are you familiar with the novels of Alexander McCall Smith? He is extremely prolific, always worthwhile, and his series are all warm-hearted and positive without being at all sentimental. My favourite series is the "44 Scotland Street" one, which is very funny, I'm also very fond of the Isabel Dalhousie series.

Tpandav yes I have read quite a few of Alexander McCall Smith.
I have a list of books to read so not struggling for content but I have (obviously) been dwelling on Kate Atkinson and wanting to understand her following.
I do get it and there are parts of her books that I really enjoy. Out of the 3 so far I thought that One Good Turn suited my personality best. I was very happy with the wife and mistress flying off to fairer shores with loads of funds in a Swiss bank while the con man husband/lover dies in hospital.
I thought that out of the three of them this one was the most positive.
I find them less enjoyable when they have edgy elements and the characters are not able to find life happiness.
The mum committing suicide as she is so broken hearted with the loss of first a husband and then a son was just a disturbing way to tidy up loose ends at the end of the book...