Book news, reviews and recommendations
There’s a multitude of tools in the publicist’s kit these days – advertising, social media, reviews, bookshop events, literary festivals all spring to mind – but what about those puffs that adorn book jackets, so often full of promise with seductive famous names attached to them. We all know about quotes full of ellipses where […]
The Power of the Puff Read More »
September is one of those months when the big guns are wheeled out to get those Christmas juices flowing. A couple of them will appear later on in this post but I’d like to start with a few novels that are less likely to be displayed at the front of your local bookshop or on
Books to Look Out for in September 2014 Read More »
Here’s my pick of the bunch from the July publishers’ schedules, three of them by authors I’ve read before so I’ll start with those. Kerry Hudson’s Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice-cream Float Before He Stole My Ma (brave title for a first novel) was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and was very
Books to look out for in July 2014 Read More »
H and I don’t entirely share the same taste in fiction – he enjoys crime but I prefer mine on TV; he’s a great fan of translated fiction and I know I should read more. Despite that, I like to pass the books I’ve most enjoyed on to him and often he’s delighted. The problem
Do you need a happy ending? Read More »
Look very closely at the picture on the left and you can see why I might have been swayed to rent this apartment for our hols in Madrid. Not just a book lover, I thought, but one with taste – that’s Elizabeth Strout’s The Burgess Boys thoughtfully placed next to the bed. It was sitting
Five days in Madrid and the case of the mutilated book Read More »
I was both delighted and flattered to be nominated by Anne at annethology for a Liebster Award alongside nine other bloggers, all of whose blogs look very interesting. The nomination acts like a chain letter introducing readers to blogs they might not otherwise find. As a past nominee it was Anne’s turn to put ten
My Liebster nomination answers to annethology’s questions Read More »
It’s that time of the month when I begin to look forward to what’s on offer a little further down the line. Not so greedy this month – May really was a feast for gluttons – but there are some very tempting looking titles in the early summer publishing schedules here in the UK. Harriet
Books to Look Out for in June 2014 Read More »
This post was prompted by my finishing Kathleen Jamie’s Findings which seems to me to be a perfect example of what I’ve been calling in my head the ‘new nature writing’. Jamie is an acclaimed poet and it shows in her wonderfully pared back descriptions of tracking the elusive corncrake on the island of Coll,
Findings by Kathleen Jamie: The new nature writing Read More »
As promised last Monday, here’s the second post trailing the bumper bundle of novels published in May that have found their way onto my wish list. Tom Rachman’s The Rise and Fall of Great Powers was always going to be there because it’s about a bookseller – not just any old bookseller but one with
Books to Look Out for in May 2014: Part Two Read More »
I wrote four posts like this before Christmas, trailing novels to be published in the first quarter of the year that I was particularly looking forward to. Time’s been marching on – and I enjoyed doing them enormously – so I thought I’d write one about books to be published in May that take my
Books to Look Out for in May 2014: Part One Read More »
There’ve been a few exchanges in my booky little Twitter corner recently about commercial and literary fiction, how one is thought to be more worthy of serious attention than the other. I haven’t been joining in partly because I’m not sure what I think about it. I do know that my own reading would be