Some books that I've really enjoyed recently

Welcome to one of my regular posts, when I share some of the books that I've read recently and have particularly enjoyed. I track all of the books that I read over on Goodreads. 

Moby Duck by Donovan Hohn

This read was inspired by our visit to the Frost Science Museum in Miami last year. I had heard the story of the bath toys that were lost from a container ship back in 1992 but I was interested to learn more. I took a quick photo of this book in one of the display cases, meaning to look it up when we got home. I forgot of course, and only came across the photo a few weeks ago. It looks as though the paperback is out of print, but I managed to find a decent second hand copy. 

The book charts the story of the Friendly Floatees spill, when a storm in the North Pacific Ocean washed twelve shipping containers overboard, including one filled with 28,000 bath toys. Usually only the ducks get a mention, but there were also plastic turtles, beavers and frogs. Oceanographers have used them to track ocean currents, based on where they were washed up over the next few years. 

The author (despite leaving behind a very heavily pregnant wife and subsequently a tiny baby, which did annoy me a little bit!) follows their journey on a variety of interested oceanic voyages, even visiting the factory in China where the toys were made. It's a long book and the narrative meanders about a bit but I quite like that style of writing and it's an intriguing story. I loved reading about the different ships that the author travelled on and the people that he met. It's also an important read when it comes to spreading the word about the negative impact of plastic in the ocean.  

The Christmas Book Hunt by Jenny Colgan

This was a free short story from Amazon First Reads this month, although in fact it's more of a short novel. The story involves the search for a long lost book and two people who are desperately hunting it for different reasons. It's not that complicated a plot, but I loved the descriptions of indulgent locations at Christmas time, and all the festive details. A real Christmassy read.

The Day Shelley Woodhouse Woke Up by Laura Pearson

This was a Kindle book borrowed from the Amazon Prime Library. Shelley Woodhouse wakes up in a coma knowing that she's there because her husband assaulted her, and she can't understand why the police haven't come to see her. But she has forgotten things too, and as time passes her memories start to come back, although she isn't sure which of those memories she can trust. It's one of those books when a mystery is revealed a little bit at a time, and gradually you come to realise what is really going on. What I particularly enjoyed about this book was that I felt the pacing was perfect - sometimes a back story is played out too slowly which leaves me frustrated (like a book that I'm reading at the moment!) I really liked it.