An influential book from an influential writer …

Howards End is on the landing by Susan Hill That pesky Susan Hill! She’s managed to set the book-blogging world alight with her latest – a memoir about reading the books in her house and the stories they are associated with. HEIOTL, as I shall abbreviate it to, has become a blogging hot topic – Read More

My Season of the Living Dead is over!

My month of vampire reading is over – Ended! Finito! I’ve read six novels back to back, mostly extremely enjoyable until I came to the last. Dracula – the Un-dead by Dacre Stoker and Ian Holt … Co-written by Bram Stoker’s great-grandnephew and a vampire expert, this official sequel tries to shoehorn in every single Read More

A chilling and contemporary twist on the vampire novel

Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist Translated by Ebba Segerberg All the other vampire books I’ve read in my ‘Season of the Living Dead’ have been rather cosy or had a good sense of humour. But then they’ve been mostly aimed at teens and young adults.Then I came to a Nordic vampire Read More

Paving the way for the teen vampire sensation

Vampire Diaries  by L J Smith Anyone reading this book would be forgiven for thinking that it was rather derivative of a certain other one – Twilight that is. It even has an apple on the black cover … Amazingly, it was published over ten years before Stephanie Meyer had even started hers. Understandingly, the Read More

Sookie & Vampire Bill – what a couple!

Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris The high-school vampire novels I read last week were but mere hors d’oevres in preparation for this – the main course. The Sookie Stackhouse novels have been given the HBO treatment by Alan ‘Six Feel Under‘ Ball, and are currently on our screens as True Blood, but before I Read More

Now I can see why teenage girls love vampires …

Although I have more of the same stacked up, (vampire novels aimed at teenagers that is), I think I’ve worked out why teenage girls love reading them… They have all the features of many traditional favourites:- set in schools pupilled with bullies, geeks, jocks, all the usual stereotypes are there; there’s good/bad, sympathetic/not teachers; an Read More

The Police are but a small episode in this busy life …

Strange Things Happen by Stewart Copeland The emphasis is on fun in this memoir – for Copeland is a hyperactive sort, a workaholic but easily bored, loving a challenge, never playing anything quite the same way twice, liking to be boss, and he’s also much more than a mere drummer. Jumping about in time with Read More

What happens when the woman of your dreams becomes a reality?

I’ve been saving a few reviews to post until I’m ready to start talking about vampires in my Season of the Living Dead. So today it’s time to introduce you to: Miss Hargreaves by Frank Baker Norman and his friend Henry are on holiday in Ireland. They duck into a church to shelter from the Read More