Wellcome Book Prize reading: #4 Amateur

Amateur by Thomas Page McBee McBee, a trans man, takes on the challenge of learning to box to appear in a charity match at Madison Square Gardens. Boxing, until recent years has been seen as a most masculine sport, and as he trains, McBee examines what makes a man and the interrelations between masculinity and Read More

Dylan Thomas Prize Blogtour: Folk

This prize is awarded by Swansea University for the best published literary work in the English language, written by an author aged 39 or under, named for the Swansea-born author, who died aged 39 in 1953. Today is my turn on the longlist blogtour, so without further ado, let me introduce you to: Folk by Read More

Hello World: An evening with Hannah Fry

One of the highlights of this year’s ATOM Science Festival in Abingdon was a lecture by Dr Hannah Fry (here’s her website) based on her latest book Hello World: How to be Human in the Age of the Machine which will be published in paperback next Thursday. Hannah will be known to many for her TV documentaries and her long-running Radio 4 series Read More

Reading Ireland Month #1

Cathy at 746 Books and Niall at The Fluff is Raging are our hosts once again for Reading Ireland Month, celebrating Irish literature and culture. I hope to be able to fit in a second book by a certain much-feted young Irish novelist before the month ends, but today here’s my review of… Modern Gods by Nick Read More

Just the job for this young lady…

MI5 and Me – A Coronet Among the Spooks by Charlotte Bingham Back in 1963, the young Charlotte Bingham published a book of humorous memoir called Coronet Among the Weeds. The daughter of the 7th Baron, Clanmorris, it told of Bingham’s experience of ‘The Season’ as a debutante among the chinless wonders, or weeds, as Read More

New Stories from the Mabinogion #5: The Tip of My Tongue by Trezza Azzopardi

The Wales Readathon, aka Dewithon is being hosted by Paula at Book Jotter. It’s running throughout March. Here is what I thought about my second Welsh read this month: Azzopardi was born in Cardiff to Welsh/Maltese parents. Her first novel The Hiding Place was shortlisted for the 2000 Booker Prize and was set in the Maltese Read More

Wellcome Book Prize 2019: Shadow Panel Shortlist

Since the longlist for the 2019 Wellcome Book Prize was announced, our shadow panel chaired by Rebecca has been reading as many of the books as we could get our hands on. Now we’ve come up with our own shortlist. Drumroll please… In alphabetical order they are: Amateur: A true story about what makes a Read More

Meet the Karenins

Monsieur Ka by Vesna Goldsworthy Back in 2016 I really enjoyed reading Vesna Goldsworthy’s first novel, Gorsky, which updated The Great Gatsby to contemporary Chelsea, aka Chelski due to the influx of Russians. Gatsby became Gorsky and Nick became Nikola – a Serbian bookseller. It was brilliantly done, delivering the doomed romance with great wit Read More

Some good reads from pre-blog days, and what I thought about them… #2

I’ve consulted my master spreadsheet again to bring you some more of my capsule reviews from my pre-blog years. Again, these are all from 2006 or before… Bringing Out the Dead by Joe Connelly This autobiographical novel is relentless, I read it in two sessions, only ending the first as I was completely drained. A Read More

Remembering ‘Mr Preview’

No Minor Chords: My Days in Hollywood by André Previn When André Previn died just a month short of his 90th birthday a couple of weeks ago, the world of music lost one of its real nice guys. I immediately dug out my copy of his Hollywood memoir which was published back in 1991 to Read More

Wales Readathon #1

The Wales Readathon, aka Dewithon is being hosted by Paula at Book Jotter. It’s running throughout March. Having plenty of books by Welsh authors on my shelves it’s a great opportunity to help the TBR piles, if only a little! I hope to read at least two titles, the first of which is below: The Read More

Six Degrees of Separation: The Arsonist

Hosted by Kate at Booksaremyfavouriteandbest,  Six Degrees of Separation picks a starting book for participants to go wherever it takes them in six more steps. Links in titles will take you to my reviews. So without further ado, our starting book this month is … The Arsonist by Chloe Hooper Sadly, this book isn’t out in the Read More

Wellcome Reading #3 – Turing

Murmur by Will Eaves Having read the two entries on the Wellcome Book Prize longlist that I was assigned to (see here and here), I looked to the library to find another and managed to get my hands on Oxfordshire Libraries’ only copy of Murmur. Let me say straight away, given that Alan Turing recently Read More