Book news, reviews and recommendations
This month’s snapshot includes a novel I’ve almost decided to give up, a short story collection from an acclaimed Irish author which has started well and a memoir that might make you think twice about eating in Parisian restaurants. The novel I’m reading is an unsolicited copy of Juhea Kim’s City of Night Birds sent […]
A Snapshot of My Reading #5 Read More »
I’ve read two from this second selection of July’s new fiction beginning with one I’d not expected to enjoy as much as I did. Opening in the early 2000s, Alexander Starritt’s Drayton and Mackenzie follows James Drayton and Roland Mackenzie who met briefly at Oxford. Driven and intensely competitive, even with himself, James is the
Books to Look Out For in July 2025: Part Two 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 – All Fours to Lessons in Chemistry 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 in as many hands as I could. This is the second novel by Tim Murphy I’ve featured in this series. I’m not sure I’ve done
Blasts from the Past: Correspondents by Tim Murphy (2019) Read More »
Lee Cole’s Groundskeeping was one of my books of the year back in 2022 raising my expectations for his second. Fulfillment sees two half-brothers returning to Kentucky, one with his hopes dashed and in debt, the other married and apparently successful, teaching for a term at a local university. For anyone discomfited by that extra
Fulfillment by Lee Cole: ‘Despair and Late Capitalism’ or ‘The Hero’s Journey’ Read More »
This first batch of new fiction is full of books I’m not entirely sure about but look worth a try, beginning with Kate Sawyer’s Getting Away which is aimed squarely at the summer reading market, not something I tend to be a part of, but it has an attractive premise. The Smith family visit the
Books to Look Out For in July 2025: Part One Read More »
I was delighted when Sarah Moss’s Ripeness popped through my letter box. It’s the eighth book by her I’ve reviewed on this blog, starting way back in 2013 with her Icelandic memoir, Names for the Sea. This new one sees a woman in her seventies remembering the months she spent in Italy as a seventeen-year-old
Ripeness by Sarah Moss: ‘Life has no form, you don’t get to choose.’ Read More »
I’d been toying with reading The Book of Guilt for a while thanks to some very positive reviews on NetGallery but it was Laura’s comment about Catherine Chidgey on my New Zealand writers post that tipped the balance. Chidgey’s novel follows a set of triplets living in a children’s home in the New Forest, one
The Book of Guilt by Catherine Chidgey: ‘Sometimes we lie to be kind.’ Read More »
June’s second batch of paperbacks kicks off with three novels I read and enjoyed last year beginning with Hari Kunzru’s Blue Ruin which opens in 2020 with a renowned British artist and his wife holed up on a wealthy collector’s New York country estate under lockdown. When Jay delivers groceries to a palatial house, he’s
Paperbacks to Look Out For in June 2025: Part Two Read More »
I’ve read all six of Austrian writer Daniel Kehlmann’s novels and reviewed four on here, each of them very different from the others. The Director tells the story of film director G. W. Pabst who found himself trapped after the annexation of Austria, apparently with no choice but to produce films for Goebbels’s Ministry of
The Director by Daniel Kehlmann (transl. Ross Benjamin): In a bind Read More »
I was a bit doubtful about Gethan Dick’s debut when it was pitched to me. Dystopian fiction doesn’t usually appeal but it’s published by Tramp Press, a small Irish indie whose books I’ve enjoyed in the past. Water in the Desert Fire in the Night follows a disparate group of people, neighbours on a London
Water in the Desert Fire in the Night by Gethan Dick: The end of the world as we know it Read More »