Book news, reviews and recommendations
Rupert Thomson’s one of those authors who delivers well turned out, interesting fiction with little brouhaha. His work ranges widely from the early days of Soft!, a satire on the advertising world, to Secrecy, set in the Medici court of seventeenth-century Florence. Dark is the Morning takes us to a small town in Abruzzo where […]
Dark is the Morning by Rupert Thomson: An evocative tale of rural Italy Read More »
We’d rented an apartment in Milan, planning to give our stomachs a rest after a week of delicious but rich food although the excellent bakery just a few metres from our front door put paid to that. Unsurprisingly, the weather in Milan was very different from the Lakes, justifying my-pack-for-every-temperature tendency. We headed off to
Seven days in the Italian Lakes, Four Days in Milan and Four Books: Part Two Read More »
This is a first for me: a two-part what-I-did-on-my holidays piece. Our city and lakeside stays were so different I couldn’t fit them comfortably into one post, at least, that’s my excuse We’d booked a holiday in Italy just a few weeks before Covid knocked the world for six in February 2020, finally making it
Seven days in the Italian Lakes, Four Days in Milan and Four Books: Part One Read More »
We booked a short break back in March thinking that it might be our last chance to join the EU citizen passport queue but once again we were reprieved. Or at least that’s how I think of it. This time we were heading for Genoa, home of two of my favourite things to eat: focaccia
Almost Four Days in Genoa and One Book Read More »
I’d love to board a train at my local station and travel all the way to the Dolomites by rail but that would entail a good deal of time, organisation and probably money so we did the next best thing and flew from our local airport to Munich where we spent our first evening having
Walking in the Dolomites, the pleasures of the pudding buffet and a few books Read More »
I’m a sucker for biographical notes and always disappointed when they merely list previous books with a tight little sentence about where the author lives if you’re lucky. Partly nosiness on my part I’ll admit but often a little knowledge of an author’s life illuminates their writing. Reading one of Roma Tearne’s novels without knowing
The Road to Urbino by Roma Tearne: Last night I dreamt… Read More »