Book news, reviews and recommendations
Enough paperback goodies to brighten up what’s probably my least favourite month, I’m pleased to say, beginning with Andrew O’Hagan’s Caledonian Road billed as a state-of-the-nation novel which I always find appealing. Opening in May 2021, it follows Campbell Flynn, an art historian and celebrity intellectual who enjoys stirring things up, and Milo Manghasa, his […]
Paperbacks to Look Out For in February 2025: Part One Read More »
The premise of Elizabeth Harris’s How to Sleep at Night was catnip for me. Happily married and bringing up their daughter, Ethan and Gabe find themselves at opposite ends of the political spectrum. When Ethan announces he wants to run for Congress on a Republican ticket, he tells Gabe that he will only do it
How to Sleep at Night by Elizabeth Harris: A step too far? Read More »
Aiming to break up the winter gloom, H and I took ourselves off to London for a few days planning to catch up with a few friends and family plus take in a bit of culture. We arrived on a gloriously sunny afternoon and decided to visit the National Portrait Gallery which underwent a substantial
Three Days in London and One Book Read More »
Back from my London break (more of which later in the week) with February’s second batch of new fiction beginning with one I’ve already read. Opening in 1960s Vienna, Robert Seethaler’s The Café with No Name follows Robert Simon, whose dream is to run a bar, against a backdrop of a social change as Vienna
Books to Look Out For in February 2025: Part Two Read More »
Quite a few goodies to look out for in February’s publishing schedules, certainly enough to offer distraction from the grey gloom that usually prevails in my part of the world. I’ll begin with a gem I’ve already read. Garrett Carr’s adult debut, The Boy From the Sea, continues the seemingly never-ending stream of brilliant Irish
Books to Look Out For in February 2025: Part One Read More »
Six Degrees of Separation is a meme hosted by Kate over at Books Are My Favourite and Best. It works like this: each month a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six others to form a chain. A book doesn’t need to be connected to all the titles on the list,
Six Degrees of Separation – Orbital to Disobedience Read More »
This is the latest in a series of occasional posts featuring books I read years ago about which I was wildly enthusiastic at the time, wanting to press a copy in as many hands as I could. Regular readers of this blog will have noticed that I tend to shy away from fluffy novels, often heading
Blasts from the Past: The Republic of Love by Carol Shields (1992) Read More »
Happy New Year! Today seems a good day to try out an idea I’ve adapted from a weekly meme hosted by Sam at Taking On a World of Words with which I’m familiar from What Cathy Read Next. Coincidentally, it falls on a Wednesday but I’m plumping for a monthly, or thereabouts, snapshot, aiming to
A Snapshot of My Reading #1 Read More »
I ended 2017, 2019, 2020, 2021 2022 and 2023 with this meme having been prompted by a post from at least one blogger, usually Annabel who started the ball rolling again this year, followed not long after by Cathy then Karen. I’m using the same prompts as Annabel, drawing on the titles of books I’ve
My Life in Books (2024 edition) Read More »
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
Five Novels Set in the Eighteenth Century I’ve Read Read More »
I’ve read just two from January’s second batch of paperbacks, beginning with one I had hoped would make it on to my books of the year list. In Ainslie Hogarth’s Normal Women Dani has recently returned to her hometown, thanks to her husband’s promotion, and is now a fulltime mother. She slips into a routine
Paperbacks to Look Out For in January 2025: Part Two Read More »