Book news, reviews and recommendations
Whatever else 2021 brings us, and we can only hope it’s better than 2020, there are a fair number of paperbacks to keep us distracted, several of which I’ve read beginning with Sarah Leipiciger’s Coming Up for Air which neatly weaves together three apparently unconnected stories. A young woman jumps into the Seine on a […]
Paperbacks to Look Out for in January 2021: Part One Read More »
I’m kicking off this second instalment of January’s potential goodies with one I can confidently recommend having already read it. Bryan Washington’s Lot, was a favourite from 2019 for me, and I’m pleased to say Memorial is even better. Mike is about to fly to Japan to track down his estranged father when his mother
Books to Look Out for in January 2021: Part Two Read More »
Time to turn my sights away from 2020, at least my anticipatory reading ones, and explore what’s on offer in 2021. If the January publishing schedules are anything to go by, it will at least offer some distractions if we need them beginning with Raven Leilani’s Luster which has been popping up in my Twitter
Books to Look Out For in January 2021: Part One Read More »
The last quarter of the year brought both increasing hopes of a vaccine to liberate us all from Covid’s grip plus the somewhat nervous excitement of an American presidential election together with six more bookish delights for me. September proved to be my best reading month with three treats all from authors whose previous novels
Books of the Year 2020: Part Four Read More »
Summer saw a return to more serious reading after spring’s escapism, perhaps because we were experiencing a little respite from the pandemic in the UK. Coincidentally, both June choices overlapped in terms of their unusual theme, exploring the repercussions of nuclear fission. The first was Stuart Evers’ The Blind Light, a little daunting in its
Books of the Year 2020: Part Three Read More »
Spring saw several uncharacteristic reads hitting the spot for me, quite possibly as the result of seeking more distraction than usual. April got off to an excellent start with C Pam Zhang’s How Much of These Hills is Gold, set in a reimagined American West in the grips of the Gold Rush. Zhang’s novel is
Books of the Year 2020: Part Two Read More »
Strange to remember writing my books of the year posts for 2019 last December, blissfully unaware of the surreal year that lay ahead for us all. I’ve been one of those fortunate people whose concentration didn’t take too much of a pandemic hit instead burying myself in reading and blogging, finding solace in books and
Books of the Year 2020: 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 – From Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret to Expo 58 Read More »
Given my bah humbug attitude, readers are unlikely to have expected a Christmas read from me but I couldn’t resist a literary trip to the snow-covered German landscape with Urs Faes’ Twelve Nights, set not far from the Black Forest. Beginning just before Christmas, Faes’ brief novella tells the story of Manfred who’s returned home
Twelve Nights by Urs Faes (transl. Jamie Lee Searle): Christmas is coming… Read More »
Marina Kemp’s Nightingale is the second of the five titles shortlisted for the Sunday Times/University of Warwick Young Writer of the Year award I’ve chosen to review, both of which I’d planned to read before the judges picked them. In contrast to Naoise Dolan’s sharp, urban Exciting Times peopled with transients, Nightingale takes its time
Nightingale by Marina Kemp: Secrets and lies in rural France 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. I remember being pitched Helen Oyeyemi’s The Icarus Girl back in 2005 when I was the reviews editor
Blasts from the Past: The Icarus Girl by Helen Oyeyemi (2005) Read More »