Book news, reviews and recommendations
Douglas Bruton’s With or Without Angels and Hope Never Knew Horizon both made it on to my books of the year list. He writes about art, creativity and love in an original, engagingly imaginative way. Even before reading Woman in Blue I was pretty sure it would be landing alongside this year’s favourites. As many […]
Woman in Blue by Douglas Bruton: ‘He loves me, he loves me not’ Read More »
April marks the real start of spring although I tend to be on the lookout for it from the beginning of March. I certainly felt it had finally arrived sitting in the gardens around Manchester Cathedral when we visited the city for the second time in three years. Just one title stood out for me
Books of the Year 2024: Part Two 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 – Long Island to The Lodgers 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 – The Museum of Love to Did You Ever Have a Family? Read More »
This is an unusual one for me as it’s been published for a few months now, but I enjoyed Douglas Bruton’s With or Without Angels so much that I was more than happy to accept his offer of a review copy. Hope Never Knew Horizon weaves together three reimagined stories: the exhibiting of the Wexford
Hope Never Knew Horizon by Douglas Bruton: ‘Just breathe’ Read More »
I’m feeling quite pleased with myself having pared back this year’s list to twenty books, a first for me, although I’ll have to guard against more sneaking in as I look back over 2023. As usual, I’m planning four posts, one per quarter, beginning with a remarkable piece of writing which got my reading year
Books of Year 2023: Part One Read More »
I was intrigued by the blurb for Douglas Bruton’s brief novella, With or Without Angels, which described the book as ‘a response through fiction’ to ‘The New World’ an artwork by the late artist Alan Smith, itself a response to the eighteenth-century artist Giandomenico Tiepolo’s ‘Il Mondo Nuovo’. In his acknowledgements, Bruton explains that after
With or Without Angels by Dennis Bruton: A beautiful and original response to art Read More »
I’ve read just one of the titles in February’s second instalment but it may well be the one that scoops the most attention. I enjoyed both The Borrower and The Hundred-Year House so put up my hand for Rebecca Makkai’s I Have Some Questions for You which follows, Bodie, a misfit at the boarding school
Books to Look Out For in February 2023: Part Two Read More »