LOTR Readalong Month Two: The Fellowship of the Ring

It’s the end of the second month of the Tolkien LOTR Readlong (see more here) and after starting with The Hobbit (my post here)  we’re onto the main event and I’ve now finished LOTR: The Fellowship of the Ring.  This month Clare at The Literary Omnivore is hosting, if you want to check others’ progress, Read More

Reading the Canongate Myths, vol XIII

Orphans of Eldorado by Milton Hatoum Translated by John Gledson I’ve temporarily jumped to the current end of the Canongate Myths list (see my dedicated page for the series here) to read this short novel inspired by Amazonian fables of an enchanted city, and the search for Eldorado. The action centres around the Brazilian city Read More

An evening with Sara Paretsky

Sara Paretsky, the creator of Chicago private investigator V.I.Warshawski, was in town yesterday to coincide with the publication of Hardball, her P.I.’s thirteenth outing.  Arriving, she cut a cool figure, clad in gold and skinny trousers with a trendy leopard-print cap and her short, cropped silver hair. The audience immediately warmed to her, with her Read More

A Gripping Novel of Sri Lanka and London

Brixton Beach by Roma Tearne Roma Tearne’s new novel is one of the books chosen for the C4 TV Book Club, it’ll be featured at the end of February. Although I thought it looked interesting, I hadn’t been in a hurry to read it, but then the publisher offered me a copy as the Oxford-based author Read More

Ever Decreasing Circles

Pastors and Masters by Ivy Compton Burnett I won this book from Librarything in their Early Pastors and Masters by Ivy Compton-Burnett Reviewers draw, and it’s a lovely little thing. Hesperus Press is another publisher whose raison d’être is bringing back neglected works into print and their list sounds very interesting (Pushkin, Flaubert and Charles Read More

A Disintegrating Life in Letters

The Cry Of The Sloth by Sam Savage Savage, whose delightful and quirky first novel, Firmin: Adventures Of A Metropolitan Lowlife was published at the age of 67, has done it again with The Cry Of The Sloth, upping the quirk quotient considerably in this bizarrely funny, yet sad story. Subtitled, ‘The Mostly Tragic Story of Read More

Weekly Geeks – Author Fun Facts

Weekly Geeks* is a bookbloggers community website which runs a weekly task for bloggers which you can participate in whenever you fancy. I’d not looked at it before but Jackie’s post at farmlanebooks on Jose Saramago piqued my interest, so I’m joining in this week. The task is to take an author who interests you and find Read More

The Allure of Gold and Guns in the Arctic Goldrush

Revolver by Marcus Sedgwick Sedgwick writes primarily for the young adult audience, but his books have much wider appeal and are always thought-provoking reads for adults too. Previous readers of this blog may be aware of my admiration for one of his other titles Blood Red, Snow White, and I also really enjoyed another of Read More

Only for Twilight fans who need something else to read…

Fallen by Lauren Kate I wish I could say this YA novel, which is nominally about fallen angels, was new and exciting, but with every page I read I could feel the burden of it trying to live up to the Twilight phenomenon.  It was also very derivative: * A new girl arrives at a Read More

Reading the Canongate Myths – Vol 2

The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood Penelope was the wife of Odysseus and cousin of Helen – both were to affect her life profoundly. Although Penelope’s was a happy marriage, when Helen was engaged in all those shenanigans that precipitated the Trojan War, Odysseus abandoned Penelope and rushed to Helen’s aid, and then took twenty years Read More