Book news, reviews and recommendations
Five short thematically linked reviews
Just as I enjoy a good road movie, I love a well turned out road novel. Lots of time for reflection, meeting new characters and maybe a bit of vivid landscape description. Beginning with one that’s named after a road, and a very famous one too, below are five novels that take their readers along […]
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When I first discovered Elizabeth Strout’s writing, the UK editions of her books came with off-putting, wish-washy covers. Fortunately, they were reissued by another publisher with much more appropriate jackets and Strout became a household literary name. Four of the following five are also by American writers, several likely much better known in the US
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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
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I’m surprised it’s taken me so long to do a second Five Books I’ve Read post on Irish novels given how many excellent ones I’ve read since I started this feature. The five below are a mix of Irish and Northen Irish all with links to reviews on this blog, beginning with a writer who’s
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I’ve read umpteen books by Americans, quite a few, although not as many as I’d like, by Canadian and Australian writers but not many by New Zealanders. Given the quality of those that I have read, I’m sure there are many more I’d like to, if only I could get my hands on them. Here
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Perhaps the most famous recent fictionalisation of a life is Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell but I’ve chosen some less well known examples for this post. Below are five novels based on real lives, all with links to reviews on this blog, beginning with one by a writer who excels at this form of fiction. I’ve
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This is my second post on small town American novels, a setting I find almost as irresistible as New York, and not one I’m likely to tire of anytime soon. Below are five more favourites, all with links to reviews on this blog. Sue Miller’s The Arsonist is set in the New Hampshire town of
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Much of my reading can be described as contemporary fiction but I sometimes stick my toe in the historical fiction water. I was convinced that was a rare occurrence but, apparently, I’ve read enough to put together several of these posts spread across different centuries. I should start off in the twentieth century but that
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Despite a preference for spare, concise fiction, I do enjoy a good chunkster. Done well, they can be the perfect escape when all you want is lose yourself in a good old-fashioned piece of storytelling. Below are five doorstoppers, each with a link to a review on my blog. Set in an Irish seaside town,
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I always look forward to summer, unfailingly optimistic at the prospect of long days full of light and warmth with perhaps a breeze to cool things down now and again. Living in my part of the world, I should know better. Climate change has also shortened the odds, delivering storms punctuated with brief heatwaves more
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I’ve been careful with that heading, not wanting to mislead readers. The qualifier’s there more to indicate what these thrillers aren’t – action packed, techie, blood-soaked, although one does have a gruesome murder – rather than what they are, and I couldn’t think of another word. It’s a genre I tend to watch rather than
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