Dirty Work by Gabriel Weston I was profoundly impressed by Gabriel Weston’s literary debut – Direct Red – a slightly fictionalised memoir of her time as a junior surgeon. Her second book, Dirty Work, is a novel that looks at one of the toughest things that obs & gynae surgeons may ever have to do – Read More
Category: Title begins with D
Today's post is brought to you by the letter…
Simon T of Stuck in a Book has started off a new meme… he will assign those wanting to take part a random letter, and you then choose your favourite things beginning with that letter in these categories: Favourite Book Favourite Author Favourite Song Favourite Film Favourite object. … and I got a D So Read More
Stephen King’s Dark Tower #7
The Dark Tower Book 7: The Dark Tower by Stephen King I reached the Dark Tower! It’s been a long time a-coming, but I have finally reached the end of Stephen King’s epic fantasy series The Dark Tower. I began reading the books back in May 2011 in a readalong with Teresa and Jenny at ShelfLove. It was to Read More
Be of good cheer! (No, not that type of cheer)…
Dare Me by Megan Abbott An image of pony-tailed cheerleaders is arguably the ultimate cliché when we think of the most popular girls at High School in the USA. Most teen films portray them as bitchy, and not big on brains. They are there to look like clean-living girls next door, to strike poses, but Read More
‘The sleep of reason brings forth monsters’
Dark Satanic Mills by Marcus & Julian Sedgwick, John Higgins, Marc Olivent It’s a rare thing for me to read a graphic novel – in fact the only one I’ve read since starting this blog was The Crow by James O’Barr, (see here). When I finished reading that, I wasn’t so sure I wanted to Read More
What a nasty yet unputdownable novel! Book group report …
I didn’t mean to leave such a gap between posting – but that first week back at school is always a killer. The kittens don’t help either, those attention-seeking little bundles of fluff! Still, I have been reading and have more books read to write up, which is a good thing as I’ve just started Read More
An experiment in greed
This is my second post for Simon’s tribute to his late Gran – Greene for Gran. Last week I reviewed England Made Me, an early novel from 1935, which I hadn’t read before. This week, my second is Doctor Fischer of Geneva or the Bomb Party, one of his later books published in 1980, a Read More
Who’s your Doctor?
Doctor Who: Dreams of Empire by Justin Richards We will get to the book eventually, but first I want to talk about Doctor Who a bit. Things are hotting up for the 50th Anniversary of Doctor Who, and the memorabilia stakes are high. The Royal Mail have issued a set of eleven stamps with the Read More
An absolute pleasure to dip into …
The Diary of a Provincial Lady by E.M. Delafield I’m so glad I finally decided to give this book a go, as it has been a real pleasure to dip into over the past couple of weeks. As I already reported here, I was smitten by this book from its opening pages. Having obtained an Read More
A “perfick” entertainment…
It’s not often that you can successfully combine a phrase and idea from a Shakespeare sonnet – number 18 as it happens. You know the one that begins: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer’s lease Read More
A new heart of darkness?
The Devil’s Garden by Edward Docx Set primarily in the last inhabited river station up a tributary of the mighty Amazon, The Devil’s Garden conjures up strong visions and parallels. You immediately think of other ‘jungle’ novels – Heart of Darkness being the obvious one of course, and indeed they do share some heavy themes. Read More
If you go down to the woods today …
The Devil’s Beat by Robert Edric Reading the blurb of the latest novel from Edric, I had visions of Arthur Miller’s masterpiece, The Crucible, updated to the early 20th century but actually, it has more in common with The Suspicions of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale. Four girls claim to have seen the Devil while Read More
Another different Italian Inspector!
Death and the Olive Grove by Marco Vichi, translated by Stephen Sartarelli This is the second of Vichi’s novels featuring Inspector Bordelli of the Florentine police. I’ve yet to read the first, but I don’t think it really mattered. It was first published in Italian in 2003, the English translation was published this year. When Read More
Cuddle up with a cosy mystery
Death of a Cad by M C Beaton. Now that the weather is cold and frosty, what better type of book to huddle down with than a cosy mystery from M C Beaton. I did exactly this yesterday in between preparations for Christmas with the second in her Hamish Macbeth series set in the Highlands. Read More
The Baroness takes on Austen
Death Comes to Pemberleyby P D James Novels that take on the classics have a chequered history, and will always be subjected to increased scrutiny to see if they live up to the premise. Jane Eyre, Rebecca, and Gone with the wind, for instance, have all had prequels, sequels and adapations written with varying degrees Read More
Memories are made of this?
The Double Shadow by Sally Gardner Sally Gardner is moving up through the ages with her books. She started off with illustrating and writing picture books, then she wrote a series of Magical Children novels for younger readers, before writing several brilliant historical novels for older children (see my review of The Red Necklace here). Read More
Zombie mayhem to scare your pants off
The Enemy and The Dead by Charlie Higson Last month I had the privilege of interviewing Charlie Higson for Gaskella – see my write-uphere. He was in town for a big schools event, promoting the third volume in his series of horror books for teens. So far, I’ve read the first two – The Enemy Read More
The case of the nasty young man
This post was republished into my blog’s original timeline from my lost posts archive. Dirty Snow by Georges Simenon Translated by Marc Romano and Louise Varèse For most of us, Simenon is famous, justly, for his creation of Maigret, the pipe-smoking French detective that appeared in over a hundred novels and short stories from the 1930s Read More
Stephen King’s Dark Tower #2
The Dark Tower Book 2: The Drawing of the Three by Stephen King It’s month 2 of the Dark Tower Readalong hosted by Teresa and Jenny at Shelf Love. If you want to catch up with the first book, click to my review here, as I won’t re-explain what happened before. Book 2 starts exactly where we left Roland, the Read More
An author I’ll always look out for …
Daniel Woodrell …is barely known in this country, but has started to increase his profile a little with the release of a highly acclaimed film (it won at Sundance) made of his 2006 novel Winter’s Bone. He’s actually written eight novels, all of them set in the area he knows best – the Missouri Ozarks – Read More
The Death of King Arthur vs. Le Morte D’Arthur
The Death of King Arthur by Peter Ackroyd I am a huge fan of all things Arthurian – having always enjoyed books about myths and legends by Roger Lancelyn Green et al as a child, it was seeing the 1981 film Excalibur that turned this interest into a bit of an obsession. I read most of the old Read More
A Gothic spine-chiller for kids, adults too!
The Dead of Winter by Chris Priestley Priestley is an accomplished author and illustrator of children’s books, fiction and non-fiction. The past couple of years, he has specialised in horror stories for children. He’s written a series called Tales of Terror which have been well-received, (I know Scott Pack is a fan). The cover of his latest novel is brilliant Read More
Tracey Beaker meets the Famous Five
Dead Man’s Cove by Lauren St John Lauren St John is the author is a series of books for older children set in Africa. The White Giraffe and its sequels are heartwarming and well-loved, although I admit we’ve not read any of them (sadly, my daughter is not a fan of what she considers ‘animal tales’). However her Read More
Marshal Guarnaccia – kidnap in the Florentine hills
Death in Springtime by Magdalen Nabb. The first I’ve read, this is the third novel in Nabb’s series of police procedurals set around Florence and featuring Marshal Guarnaccia. I was recommended this series by good blog-friend LizF who kindly sent me this one to get me started. Nabb, who died in 2007, wrote fourteen novels in Read More
You need toughness to be a cutter …
Direct Red: A Surgeon’s Story by Gabriel Weston This slim book about becoming a surgeon is one of the best medical books I’ve ever read. Some days as an interested bystander, I secretly wish I’d become a doctor – even a surgeon, but then seeing programmes on telly or reading books like this, I know Read More
A Science Fiction Noir Classic from 1942
Donovan’s Brain by Curt Siodmak When I was writing my post the other week about my reading history I tried to remember my favourite Science Fiction books from my teens. John Wyndham’s The Chrysalids was one, Asimov’s Fantastic Voyage was another, but my absolute favourite from back then was Donovan’s Brain by Curt Siodmak. This Read More
136 pages of Classic Noir
Double Indemnity by James M Cain I love the classic crime noir novels of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, but somehow never got round to read any by James M Cain. I wanted a short novel to fill in a couple of hours and with these 136 pages published in 1943, I found a perfect Read More
Book Group Report – The Death of Grass
The Death of Grass by John Christopher A while ago I reviewed The Death of Grass by John Christopher (click here for the review. On Monday we discussed it at our Book Group, and it was a big hit. Unusually, everyone really enjoyed it, and although this meant no arguments, we did have a lively Read More
But darling the virus won’t affect us, will it?
The Death of Grass by John Christopher The 1950s saw an explosion of science fiction and cultural dystopias. In 1951 there was John Wyndham’s ground-breaking novel Day of the Triffids, followed by Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 in 1953. Then there was Quatermass on the television. William Golding’s classic Lord of the Flies was also published Read More
Medical Myths debunked
Don’t Swallow Your Gum: and Other Medical Myths Debunked by Dr Aaron Carroll and Dr Rachel Vreeman This short book looks into about seventy-five medical myths and old wives tales, examines the evidence, and debunks them. Many will have read Ben Goldacre’s bestselling book Bad Science – (If you haven’t read it, do! My review Read More
