Book news, reviews and recommendations
August’s new fiction’s a bit of a mixed bag, beginning with an author whose debut was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize in 2023. Jacqueline Crooks’s Sky City is set in the eponymous north London housing estate where Jaycee lives after years in a homeless hostel. When she finds a clue that may help her best […]
Books to Look Out For in August 2026: Part One Read More »
Six Degrees of Separation is a meme hosted by Kate over at Books Are My Favourite and Best. It works like this: each month a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six others to form a chain. A book doesn’t need to be connected to all the titles on the list,
Six Degrees of Separation – Yesteryear to The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay Read More »
This is the latest in a series of occasional posts featuring books I read years ago about which I was wildly enthusiastic at the time, wanting to press a copy into as many hands as I could. I often feel that publishers fail their authors with book covers. Sometimes I wonder if the designer was
Blasts from the Past: The Last Banquet by Jonathan Grimwood (2013) Read More »
I first used this meme three years ago having spotted it on Margaret’s Pyrenees to Pennines which I follow for her striking photography. She’d picked it up from Jo at The Book Jotter, the meme’s originator, who has since decided to throw in the blogging towel. Happily, Emma at Words and Peace has decided to
It’s almost two years since I posted my first five summer reads, mentioning how much I look forward to summer although not heatwaves like the poleaxing one we’ve been experiencing in Europe. The five novels below summon up the season for me, all with links to my reviews. Set over a single drenching summer’s day,
Five More Summer Books I’ve Read Read More »
I was delighted to spot a new Ann Patchett in the publishing schedules, even more so when a proof dropped through my letterbox. Whistler begins with Daphne and her husband sharing a day at the Metropolitan Museum of Art when he spots an elderly man who seems to be following her. I hadn’t known there
Whistler by Ann Pattchett: Doing what she does best Read More »
H and I loved last year‘s Airbnb so much we booked it again for our annual visit to our lovely friend M. Not going to pretend I hadn’t hoped for a repeat of supper on the sun warmed terrace looking out over the beautiful Holme valley, but it seemed increasingly unlikely. We did get to
Two Days in Yorkshire, Almost One in Lancashire, One in Shropshire and a Book Read More »
Back from my travels (more of which later in the week) with the second batch of July paperbacks beginning with one of last year’s favourites for me. Souvankham Thammavongsa’s Pick a Colour spans one day in a nail salon run by Ning who, in another life, was a boxer. Everyone’s called Susan at Ning’s: it
Paperbacks to Look Out For in July 2026: Part Two Read More »
The first batch of July’s paperbacks begins with one I enjoyed much more than I’d expected. When the unnamed narrator of Dominic Amerena’s I Want Everything spots a dead ringer for Australia’s most notorious bestselling novelist who apparently disappeared in the ’70s, he hatches a plan to rescue his own flagging writing career. Tracking her
Paperbacks to Look Out For in July 2026: Part One Read More »
I’ve a weakness for foodie fiction, devoting one of my Five Books I’ve Read to it, which was part of the attraction with Kit Fan’s Goodbye Chinatown, although his novel turned out to be much more than that. Through the experience of Amber whose parents brought her to London after the horrors of Tiananmen Square
Goodbye Chinatown by Kit Fan: Identity, belonging and food Read More »
June’s snapshot includes a short story collection which may turn out to be patchy, a biography for book nerds and a novel about art, writing, race and academia. The short story collection I’m reading is Irish writer Rebecca Ivory’s Free Therapy. I’ve read two stories, the best of which was the first about a two
A Snapshot of My Reading #16 Read More »