Book news, reviews and recommendations
Walking is the thing that’s helped keep me sane – so far – throughout the pandemic. That and blogging with its virtual community, still there when I can’t see my other friends. I’ve resisted using the term ‘lockdown’ because, for me, that would have meant the end of the permitted daily exercise outside the house […]
June’s paperback publishing schedules are in a rather sorry state, thanks to the cuts and postponements brought about by Covid-19. I’m left with just four in my sights, the first of which I’ve already read. Emma Forrest’s Royals is about a working-class Jewish boy drawn into the orbit of a poor little rich girl, set
Paperbacks to Look Out For in June 2020 Read More »
Rónán Hession’s Leonard and Hungry Paul had been sitting on my TBR shelves for far too long. Janet at From First Page to Last sent it to me and I’d meant to get to it before but somehow never did. Now seemed the perfect time given that I’ve edged closer to the cheery end of
Leonard and Hungry Paul by Rónán Hession: Another perfect comfort read Read More »
This blog tends to be all about the shiny and new but several titles reviewed on Ali’s HeavenAli blog from Handheld Press caught my eye, including Business as Usual first published in 1933. Then Covid-19 struck and the world turned upside down. Small presses seemed likely to be the hardest hit so I posted two
Business as Usual by Jane Oliver & Ann Stafford: A perfect comfort read 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 read U.S.A. not just years but decades ago. Both huge and experimental, it took me months to
Blasts from the Past: U. S. A. by John Dos Passos (1930-36) Read More »
Historical novelist Daniel Mason’s name will be well known to many readers, I’m sure. I remember The Piano Tuner causing quite a stir when it was published back in 2002 but it didn’t appeal to me. You might wonder, then, why I picked up A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth but its multitude
Five years ago I reviewed The Sunlit Night by Rebecca Dinerstein, as she was known then, describing it as ‘a quirky bit of escapism’. You can see why, given our current predicament, I was keen to read Hex hoping for something similar. Garlanded with praise from the likes of Jonathan Safran Foer and Emma Straub,
Hex by Rebecca Dinerstein Knight: A six-cornered love story with a botanical twist Read More »
David Foekinos’ The Mystery of Henri Pick marks the beginning of a collaboration between publishers Pushkin Press and Channel 4’s Walter Presents, a streaming service which provides a good deal of my TV entertainment with its subtitled European drama. Even without that, I’d have been interested in this book whose blurb promised a novel about
The Mystery of Henri Pick by David Foenkinos (transl. Sam Taylor): Tailor made Read More »
If 2020 had gone according to plan I’d have posted about our four-day break in the lovely city of Ghent in March and we’d be enjoying ourselves in Northern Italy right now. So strange are the times we’re living in that I’m just relieved that everyone I know is safe rather than disappointed but I
Pandemic Travels From My Sofa: Scandinavia Read More »
Rather like Berlin, a New York setting is catnip for me. I only need to spot it in a novel’s blurb and it’s on my list which is not always a good thing. I’ve only visited the city once but I think it’s more its almost mythical aura that attracts me rather than the actuality
Five Novels I’ve Read Set in New York Read More »
It was that title that attracted me to this collection of stories about immigrants and refugees, cleverly exemplifying the many idiosyncratic challenges English throws at those for whom it’s a second language. Born in a refugee camp in Thailand, Laotian writer Souvankham Thammavongsa is a poet whose own facility for language is demonstrated throughout this