Book news, reviews and recommendations
June’s second batch of paperbacks kicks off with three novels I read and enjoyed last year beginning with Hari Kunzru’s Blue Ruin which opens in 2020 with a renowned British artist and his wife holed up on a wealthy collector’s New York country estate under lockdown. When Jay delivers groceries to a palatial house, he’s […]
Paperbacks to Look Out For in June 2025: 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 – Sandwich to Much Depends on Dinner Read More »
Summer reading is on the horizon for publishers and this second batch of June fiction includes at least one novel that might be described as such although it’s a category I tend to avoid. I’ve yet to get around to Catherine Newman’s We All Want Impossible Things, despite several readers whose opinions I trust urging
Books to Look Out For in June 2024: Part Two Read More »
Door-stopping chunksters often fit the bill if you’re in the mood for a good old-fashioned bit of storytelling but if it’s a succinct, finely-honed literary punch you’re after, it’s hard to beat a novella. This is my fourth Five Novels I’ve Read post devoted to novellas which gives you some idea of how much I
Five Novellas in Translation I’ve Read Read More »
Only enough August paperbacks to fill one post, I’m afraid, half of which I’ve read including one reissue from quite some time ago. I’ll start with Jenni Fagan’s wonderful slice of feminist gothic, Luckenbooth, which spins the stories of the inhabitants of a many-floored Edinburgh tenement over nine decades, beginning with the arrival of the
Paperbacks to Look Out For in August 2021 Read More »
I’ve long been fascinated by Japan, partly because it’s so very different from my own country and partly because it seems to me to be a place of contradictions – on the one hand a set of very traditional, sometimes ancient values and beliefs, on the other an ultra-modern, throwaway urban culture. Or at least
Five Japanese Novels I’ve Read Read More »
I’m beginning this second instalment of August paperbacks with one I’ve already read. Linda Grant’s A Stranger City looks at how we’re all both connected and unconnected, portraying a post-referendum London through a set of disparate characters brought together by their links with a woman whose body has been pulled from the Thames. Each character’s
Paperbacks to Look Out for in August 2020: Part Two Read More »
The first batch of August’s new titles began with a book by a favourite author of mine as does this second, although I got off to a slow start with his writing. After being a wee bit underwhelmed by Donal Ryan’s The Thing About December, I loved From a Low and Quiet Sea and All
Books to Look Out for in August 2020: Part Two Read More »
I suspect we’re all in need of a comfort read now and again and never more so while the world grapples with the coronavirus pandemic that currently has us in its grip. I can’t promise that all five of these novels are entirely free of strife or upset – for me it’s hard to find
Five Comfort Reads I’ve Read 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 other books to form a chain. A book doesn’t need to be connected to all the others on the
Six Degrees of Separation – from Murmur to Johannesburg Read More »
There’s a fair old mix of attention-snagging titles published in paperback this June. I’ll start with one that was hotly anticipated in hardback: Peter Ho Davies’ The Fortunes, his first novel since the much-lauded The Welsh Girl back in 2007. Spanning 150 years, Davies’ novel explores the Chinese-American experience through the lens of four characters:
Paperbacks to Look Out for in June 2017: Part One Read More »