Book news, reviews and recommendations
I suppose it was inevitable that I’d read and review Bookshops having worked in one for over a decade and spent a great deal of time in many others, both in my own country and abroad. It’s quite some time since I could call myself a bookseller but I still tidy up those table displays, […]
Bookshops by Jorge Carrión (translated by Peter Bush): An anorak’s delight Read More »
I first came across Diana Athill’s elegant prose in Stet, her account of her time at André Deutsch, the publishing house she co-founded in 1951 with her eponymous business partner. Deutsch was a refugee, one of the many who shaped modern British publishing. For readers who haven’t yet come across the book, it’s a treat
Alive, Alive Oh! by Diana Athill: A long life well lived Read More »
Back in 2012, I was sent a copy of Tim Winton’s Land’s Edge: A Coastal Memoir to read for a magazine I was working on. In it Winton writes about his passion for his country’s coastline, recalling childhood beach holidays then learning to surf as a lonely adolescent. I’d read and enjoyed Winton’s fiction but
Island Home by Tim Winton: A landscape memoir Read More »
I was attracted to Olivia Laing’s new book partly because of its setting – that old New York lure – partly because I’d enjoyed her exploration of the relationship between writers and drink, The Trip to Echo Spring. In The Lonely City she explores loneliness through the work of four artists – Edward Hopper, David
The Lonely City by Olivia Laing: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone Read More »
I was more than a little surprised to be sent a new Jhumpa Lahiri. I’m pretty up and together on my ‘Books to Look Out For’ previews and I’d seen nothing in the fiction schedules. Then I spotted that it had been translated which discombobulated me further. Reading the press release I found that In
In Other Words by Jhumpa Lahiri (translated by Anne Goldstein): A passion for language Read More »
It’s February and as often happens at this time of the year I’ve been feeling a little sorry for myself – life’s a bit dull, I’m in one of my periodic energy dips and winter seems to have dragged on too long despite the fact that we’ve been spared the wet miseries of last year.
Girl in the Dark by Anna Lyndsey: Grace under pressure Read More »
When Will Boast shows a writer friend a fictionalised version of his family history she tells him ‘If you put all that in, no one will believe it’. Perhaps she might have said no one would want to believe it for much of his story is too sad, striking too close to home. By the
Epilogue by Will Boast: You wouldn’t make it up Read More »
I’ll read anything by Philippe Claudel. His prose has a lovely, elegant expressiveness to it, trimmed of the flourishes and curlicues that some writers indulge in. All four of his novels are very different, from the dystopian The Investigation to Monsieur Linh and his Child, one of the most heart-wrenching novels I’ve ever read. He’s
Six Feet Under sits alongside The Wire, The West Wing and The Killing as one of the best television series in recent times in my book. In case you haven’t seen it – and if that’s the case I’d advise you to beg borrow or steal at least the first series – it’s set in
The Undertaker’s Daughter by Kate Mayfield: Six Feet Under in the American South Read More »
I’ve been reading Susan Cain’s Quiet, and feeling much better about myself. In it Cain posits the idea that the modern world is designed to be lived in and run by extroverts. We’re all made to feel we should be out there bouncing around the world, meeting as many people as we can and having
Quiet by Susan Cain: A vindication Read More »
This is a book I would have read anyway – it’s a book about books after all – but many years ago I worked very briefly with Andy Miller at Waterstones head office, when it was in full possession of an apostrophe, so there’s an added interest for me. Having spotted my blog, Andy remembered
The Year of Reading Dangerously by Andy Miller: How one man got his mojo back Read More »