Book news, reviews and recommendations
I ended 2017, 2019, 2020, 2021 2022 and 2023 with this meme having been prompted by a post from at least one blogger, usually Annabel who started the ball rolling again this year, followed not long after by Cathy then Karen. I’m using the same prompts as Annabel, drawing on the titles of books I’ve […]
My Life in Books (2024 edition) Read More »
The eighteenth century was a fascinating time in European history, a period which saw the development of the Enlightenment ideas that formed the modern Western world. Close to its end, the bloody convulsion of the French Revolution, sent shockwaves through the continent and beyond. Several of the five novels below are set around the time
Five Novels Set in the Eighteenth Century I’ve Read Read More »
I’ve read just two from January’s second batch of paperbacks, beginning with one I had hoped would make it on to my books of the year list. In Ainslie Hogarth’s Normal Women Dani has recently returned to her hometown, thanks to her husband’s promotion, and is now a fulltime mother. She slips into a routine
Paperbacks to Look Out For in January 2025: Part Two Read More »
Lots of tempting paperback goodies to spend your Christmas book tokens on if you’re lucky enough to be given some this year, including several I’ve already read. Spanning a decade in Nigeria beginning in 2006, Chukwuebuka Ibeh’s’s Blessings is a poignant coming-of-age story in which a boy struggles to keep his sexuality under wraps in
Paperbacks to Look Out For in January 2025: Part One Read More »
I’ve read just one from the second part of January’s preview but I’m kicking off with another I’m eagerly anticipating. You might think I’d had enough of American politics but it’s the political thread that attracts me to Elizabeth Harris’s How to Sleep at Night. Ethan and Gabe are happily raising their daughter together despite
Books to Look Out For in January 2025: Part Two Read More »
This week’s all about the new publishing year which kicks off with lots of potential treats for those of us in need of diversion from the winter gloom, beginning with two I’ve already read. The blurb for Catherine Airey’s Confessions promised an involving tale of two Irish sisters, one of whom emigrates to New York
Books to Look Out For in January 2025: Part One 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. Eating is one of life’s joys for me which is perhaps why I’m drawn to novels about cooking,
Blasts from the Past: The Book of Salt by Monique Truong (2003) Read More »
I’ve read so little Korean fiction that when Gu Byeong-Mo’s Your Neighbour’s Table popped up on NetGalley I decided to give it a try. It’s set in an apartment building for which there is a long waiting list and strict rules to obey: tenants must have at least one child and produce two more. You’d
Much of October was taken up with a trip to Portugal where we were lucky enough to snatch a last blast of summer. Hard to leave Lisbon on a balmy blue-skyed day but a standout book in my first week back eased the pain. Set on his beloved Shetland, singer-songwriter Malachy Tallack’s That Beautiful Atlantic
Books of the Year 2024: Part Four 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 – Sandwich to Much Depends on Dinner Read More »
Summer still hadn’t got off the ground by August. Very little time was spent on our new deck, reading or otherwise, and only one book stood out that month, too. Written in spare, crisp prose, Sarah Manguso’s Very Cold People was one of my books of 2022. Liars is the equally bleak story of a
Books of the Year 2024: Part Three Read More »