Book news, reviews and recommendations
This second January batch roams around the world much as I’d like to myself in January, escaping the dullness of the British winter. John Irving is a writer whose novels I’ve loved but who seems to have become distinctly hit and miss to me. I’d all but given up on him before Last Night in […]
Books to Look Out For in January 2016: Part 2 Read More »
Yes , I know – it’s not even Christmas week yet but if you’re a little weary of the same old titles popping up on Books of the Year lists – mine included – you might like a peek at what’s to come in 2016 which gets off to a very exciting start with a
Books to Look Out For in January 2016: Part 1 Read More »
My fourth and final selection begins with an award-winning novel. After differing with both the Baileys and the Man Booker judges I’ve finally found a set I can agree with: the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize. Of course, they’d made their minds up in June and I only got around to reading Jo Mazelis’ utterly engrossing
Books of the Year 2015: Part 4 Read More »
My third batch of 2015 favourites starts off on a note of sadness. I’ve long been a champion of Kent Haruf’s beautifully pared back, elegant novels set in Holt, Colorado and so was very sorry to hear that Our Souls at Night was to be his last. Haruf died in 2014, a sad loss at
Books of the Year 2015: Part 3 Read More »
This second batch of 2015 goodies covers April and May, and is made up entirely of women writers. No plan there – just the way this particular cookie crumbled. I’ll begin with The Shore, Sara Taylor’s beautifully packaged debut which appeared on both the Baileys longlist and the newly resurrected Sunday Times/ Peters Fraser Dunlop
Books of the Year 2015: Part 2 Read More »
Last year I was off the blocks at the very beginning of December with my books of the year posts, barely waiting for the starter’s pistol. This year I’ve managed to restrain myself but I’m still incapable of cutting the number of favourites back to a sensible figure. Consequently I’ll be spreading my choices over
Books of the Year 2015: Part 1 Read More »
Jacqui from JacquiWine’s Journal commented on my books to look out for in December post that Three Light-Years’ jacket seemed to fit its synopsis well: a grey, rainy day in which a woman is looking over her shoulder at a man, her expression a little solemn but unreadable. We can’t see his but it should
Three Light-Years by Andrea Canobbio (transl. Anne Milano Appel): A love story Read More »
I have to admit to picking this up because it’s Swedish. I read it during what seemed to be a period of deep virtual immersion in Scandiland – watching the first series of The Legacy re-watching Borgen and reading Martin Booth’s excellent The Almost Nearly Perfect People squarely aimed at people like me who have
A Summer with Kim Novak by Håkan Nesser (transl. Saskia Vogel): A Swedish period piece Read More »
Just two books worth recommending that I’ve read but not reviewed this month. Thanks are due to Jacqui at JacquiwinesJournals for pointing me in the direction of one of them – Daniela Krien’s Someday We’ll Tell Each Other Everything, set in 1991 in what was still the GDR during the summer before German reunification. Johannes
Books Read (But Not Reviewed) November 2015 Read More »
Regular readers may have noticed that I’ve taken to reviewing short stories recently but this is my first anthology. Previous reviews have all been of collections by a single author, one whose novels I love. Two things brought me to A Kind of Compass: firstly it’s edited by Belinda McKeon both of whose novels –
A Kind of Compass (Edited by Belinda McKeon): A little cherry picking Read More »
Way back in the mid-‘90s, Jonathan Coe published What a Carve Up!, a wickedly funny satire on Thatcherism in which the Winshaw family had their fingers in a multitude of nasty pies. I was in bookselling at the time and my Penguin rep and good friend, A, gave me a proof, praising it to the
Number 11 by Jonathan Coe: The Winshaws are back… Read More »