Book news, reviews and recommendations
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 – Tom Lake to Death Comes for the Archbishop Read More »
Before writing this, I thought I’d check the definition of gothic literature of which, naturally, the internet being what it is, there are many to pick from. There seems to be general agreement that a gothic novel includes terror, the macabre or the bizarre which fits the five novels below, all written in recent years,
Five Modern Gothic Novels I’ve Read Read More »
I often read for the writing as much as for storytelling and although I rarely read poetry, I’ve found that novels by poets are often written with a pleasing attention to language, each word carefully chosen and not one wasted. Below are five favourite novels by poets, all with links to my reviews. Helen Dunmore
Five Novels I’ve Read by Poets Read More »
The second batch of January paperbacks starts with two novels that take swipes at social media, both of which I’ve read. Set in 2016 with Trump freshly elected, Lauren Oyler’s Fake Accounts follows an unnamed narrator, shocked to find her apparently liberal boyfriend is running a popular conspiracy theory website, taking herself off to Berlin
Paperbacks to Look Out for in January 2022: Part Two Read More »
Not such a strange year as 2020 but far from back to normal either. There’ve been many more outings and much more socialising but reading and blogging continued to keep me going through the more difficult parts of 2021. Perhaps partly as a result of that, I’ve failed to get my books of the year
Books of the Year 2021: Part One Read More »
When I first started this year’s Booker Prize wish list, I found it a bit of a struggle. Several of the books I’ve loved most this year have been translations – Jhumpa Lahiri’s Wherabouts, for instance – and obviously those don’t qualify. Then I read a novel I wanted to include at the last minute
My 2021 Booker Wish List Read More »
Hard as it may seem to credit, it’s already nearly time for the announcement of The Women’s Prize for Fiction longlist: Wednesday, 10th March is the date to add to your jam-packed diary. Only novels written by women in English published between April 1st 2020 and March 31st 2021 qualify. Over the past few years
My Wishlist for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2021 Read More »
I don’t think a novel’s title alone has convinced me I’d want to read it before but I couldn’t resist that wordplay: Mrs Death Misses Death promised to be clever, funny and all about a subject we privileged Westerners do our best to sanitise with all sorts of euphemisms. Salena Godden’s debut rubs our faces
Time to turn my sights away from 2020, at least my anticipatory reading ones, and explore what’s on offer in 2021. If the January publishing schedules are anything to go by, it will at least offer some distractions if we need them beginning with Raven Leilani’s Luster which has been popping up in my Twitter
Books to Look Out For in January 2021: Part One Read More »