Book news, reviews and recommendations
I was delighted to spot Daniela Krien’s gorgeously jacketed Love in Five Acts in my Twitter timeline towards the end of last year. I’d read the haunting Someday We’ll Tell Each Other Everything back in 2015 which feels like an age ago now – pre-Brexit, pre-Trump and pre-pandemic. Born in the GDR, Krien was a […]
Love in Five Acts by Daniela Krien (transl. Jamie Bulloch): Take five women Read More »
April signals spring for most of us in the UK although I tend to get excited about it in early March. This year there’s more hope than usual vested in the longed-for change of weather and the possibility of socialising outside. Plenty of books to keep us occupied if that hope proves unfulfilled, four of
Books to Look Out For in April 2021: Part One Read More »
All but the first of the six books in January’s second batch of paperbacks are new to me although most are by authors whose previous books I’ve enjoyed which can also be said of Timur Vermes whose sharp, very funny satire, Look Who’s Back nailed the internet’s potential for political manipulation with admirable, if unsettling,
Paperbacks to Look Out for in January 2021: Part Two Read More »
Walking is the thing that’s helped keep me sane – so far – throughout the pandemic. That and blogging with its virtual community, still there when I can’t see my other friends. I’ve resisted using the term ‘lockdown’ because, for me, that would have meant the end of the permitted daily exercise outside the house
The first batch of February’s paperback goodies didn’t set foot outside America but this second instalment starts in the heart of Europe with Robert Menasse’s The Capital, something of a bittersweet read for me given my country’s Brexit shenanigans. This sprawling novel takes a sharply satirical view of the European Commission, exploring its many accumulated
Paperbacks to Look Out For in February 2020: Part Two Read More »
Timur Vermes is clearly not a man to shy away from controversy. His sharp, very funny satire, Look Who’s Back, nailed the internet’s potential for political manipulation with admirable, if unsettling, prescience when Hitler wakes up with a bad headache in 2011 and quickly becomes a YouTube star. The Hungry and the Fat takes on
The second part of January’s preview begins with a novel whose jacket seduced me when it appeared on Twitter, way back when. Francine Toon’s Pine is set in a remote Highlands village in the middle of a forest where Lauren lives with her father. When a woman stumbles in front of their pickup at Halloween,
Books to Look Out For in January 2020: Part Two Read More »
It’s that time again. Books of the year lists are being wheeled out right, left and centre. I’d love to tell you I’d managed to trim mine to a single post of gems but I’m not the decisive type so I’m afraid it will be the usual four, falling roughly into quarters, all with links
Books of the Year 2019: Part One Read More »
I’m sharing the last stop on The Capital‘s blog tour with Reader Dad. I’m not one for blog tours – this may well be both my first and last – but I couldn’t say no to this one. If you’ve been reading this blog for the last couple of years, you’ll be in no doubt
The Capital by Robert Menasse (transl. Jamie Bulloch): Better in than out Read More »
The second part of February’s preview wanders around all over the place rather as I’d like to be doing at this dank, drear time of the year here in the UK. I’m beginning the tour in Paris in 1929 with Whitney Scharer’s gorgeously jacketed The Age of Light which tells the story of renowned photographer
Books to Look Out for in February 2019: Part Two Read More »
I’ve read three of the paperbacks that have caught my eye for January, one of which is Jim Powell’s Things We Nearly Knew, a slice of American small town life seen through the eyes of an unnamed bartender. I’d enjoyed Powell’s second novel, Trading Futures, a few years back, admiring its narrator’s waspishly funny inner
Paperbacks to Look Out for in January 2019: Part One Read More »