Book news, reviews and recommendations
I’ve had Charles Yu’s How to Life Safely in a Science Fictional Universe on my TBR list for quite some time but, as with so many books, never got around to buying it let alone reading it. His new novel sounded intriguing with its premise of a bit-part actor in a perpetual TV series, eyes …
Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu: Forever the guest Read More »
I failed miserably to find a link between titles for the first batch of September’s paperbacks but this one could be described as about relationships. I’ll begin with friendship and Sigrid Nunez’s What Are you Going Through which explores grief through a terminally ill woman who asks her friend to help her to die, promising …
Paperbacks to Look Out For in September 2021: Part Two Read More »
I read Joan Silber’s quietly impressive Improvement back in 2019 ending my review hoping to see more of her novels published here in the UK. I was delighted, then, to spot Secrets of Happiness in the publishing schedules. While Improvement explored the fallout of an accident through all that were affected by it, this new …
Secrets of Happiness by Joan Silber: More please! Read More »
I was a wee bit wary of reading Nickolas Butler’s Godspeed. His first novel, Cowboy Lovesongs, had set the bar so high that perhaps a slight feeling of disappointment in his second, The Hearts of Men, was inevitable. Rather than Butler’s beloved Wisconsin, this new novel is set in Wyoming where three men, friends and …
Godspeed by Nickolas Butler: Too good to be true Read More »
I like to have a theme running through these preview posts, a pleasing link between one title and the next but this first batch of September paperbacks is made up of such a disparate bunch of books I’ve given up, kicking off with one that I have hopes for despite a string of disappointments. Unsurprisingly, …
Paperbacks to Look Out For in September 2021: Part One Read More »
Isn’t that jacket splendid? Strikingly bright with just a hint of something nasty as a cockroach makes its way towards the elegantly attired woman’s manicured hands. Virginia Feito’s Mrs March lives up to that promise, a novel as smartly delivered as its jacket’s design. Married to a successful novelist, Mrs March is beginning to worry …
Mrs March by Virginia Feito: A deliciously dark debut Read More »
I’m a reader rather than a collector which is probably a good thing, keeping my book acquisitions clear of duplicates (or worse) bought because I couldn’t resist a new edition’s cover. Nicholas Royle is both but his collecting habits are very particular: his imprint of choice is Picador, the white spined variety although he has …
White Spines by Nicholas Royle: Confessions of a Book Collector Read More »
September may not be as jampacked with potential goodies as I might like but there are several titles that shine out like a beacon beginning with Sally Rooney’s Beautiful World Where Are You. Readers would have to have been living on Mars not to know about this one by an author who arouses feelings of …
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 – From Postcards from the Edge to The Book of Lights Read More »
Despite the fact that I rarely read poetry, I’m a sucker for novels by poets hence the attraction of Daisy Lafarge’s Paul which also promised a vicarious trip to France, somewhere I’m unlikely to visit in reality for a while. Spanning four weeks of a hot summer, Lafarge’s debut follows Frances who has volunteered to …
It’s that old art theme again. Given the popularity of my Five Books I’ve Read… on the subject, it’s clear I’m not the only reader who favours it. Australian author Alison Booth’s The Painting has the additional lure of being partly set in Budapest which I loved when we visited it back in 2017. Set …
The Painting by Alison Booth: The best kind of restitution Read More »