Book news, reviews and recommendations
Five short thematically linked reviews
I’m sure there’s going to be more than one of these posts, particularly given Madame Bibliophile Recommends’ novella a day back in May 2018 , then this year’s selection lengthened my tbr list. The first task is to define a novella, something which varies from reader to reader, but for the purposes of this post […]
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Since I’ve been blogging my reading habits have changed a little. I’m still reaching for the bright shiny new thing, a habit picked up in bookselling, but it’s now more likely to be short stories or something in translation than it once was. Not that I’m claiming to read as widely as I should but
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I follow a couple of Canadian bloggers whose recommendations often hit the spot for me – Naomi at Consumed by Ink, in particular. Frustratingly, many of the books she reviews aren’t published here in the UK. I know I can get them via Amazon but I’ve sworn off them until they treat their staff like
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There’s a multitude of books focussing on love of the romantic variety and just as many on love of the familial kind but platonic love not so much. We talk about relationship breakups but not the breakup of a friendship although they can be almost as heart breaking, and for many, friends constitute family. Below
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The heading for this post could just as easily be 10, 15 or even 50 Irish books I’ve read. So much of the quietly elegant, understated writing I admire turns out to be by Irish authors. Their work is often tinged with more than a little melancholy, perhaps only to be expected given their country’s
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I’ve travelled a reasonable amount but I’ve never lived anywhere except my own country. Perhaps that’s why I’m so fascinated by the immigrant experience. There’s been a wave of fiction exploring the plight of refugees recently but all except one of the five novels below are about choosing to move to country rather than fleeing
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This one’s inevitable, isn’t it. What reader can resist a novel about other readers, or if you’re an old bookseller like me, about booksellers? They’re an anorak’s delight. There’s a librarian in the mix, too, albeit it a rather eccentric one. Here are five books about books, then, the first two with links to a
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Food features prominently on my agenda of pleasures in life, often overlapping neatly with travel, another priority for me. Naturally, I’ve spent many hours ogling cookery books with their gorgeous pictures of artfully arranged meals but I’m not averse to word pictures of food in fiction either. Here are five favourites which should get you
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Given that I nicked this idea from Kim, an Australian who blogs at Reading Matters, it seems only fair to round up five Australian books I’ve read. Below are five novels from that part of the world I’ve particularly enjoyed, all but one with links to a review on this blog. David Malouf’s Remembering Babylon
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This is an idea I spotted it over at Kim’s Reading Matters blog and thought I’d pinch it having enjoyed digging out books I’ve loved for my Blasts from the Past series so much. The plan is to periodically post five short thematically linked reviews, kicking off with short story collections. There was a time
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