Our Man in Kuwait by Louise Burfitt-Dons – Blogtour

The town of Ahmadi in Kuwait was only established in 1946 after the discovery of oil there, and the town built up around the operations of the Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) – it remains the KOC’s headquarters today. Many British and American ex-pats settled there and worked for the oil company, and entertainment centred around Read More

Utopia by Heidi Sopinka

I’ve been mostly alternating my reading this summer between books from my TBR piles and new review copies, which has been a rather nice way to read. Getting to read my own choices between copies from my review pile has been good, but also, I’ve enjoyed the review copies more too, and have been lucky Read More

Book Group report: D is for … Dune

Dune by Frank Herbert This was our book group choice for this month – a good lockdown read being a veritable chunkster (884 pages in the edition I read). I’ve read it twice before, as a teenager in the 1970s followed by sequels Dune Messiah and Children of Dune, then again in the 1980s after Read More

20 Books of Summer: Book the 1st

Equilateral by Ken Kalfus Before I get to Equilateral, I’d like to tell you about my previous experience reading Ken Kalfus, pre-blog. Back in 2006, friend Mark lent me a copy of Kalfus’s second novel, A Disorder Peculiar to the Country.  I remember being quite shocked by it – although I soon got over that – for Read More

A fascinating setting for a crime novel…

City of Veils by Zoë Ferraris This is the first novel I’ve read set in modern day Arabia. It gives a tantalising glimpse of life in Jeddah, particularly how men and women live, and combines that with a complex crime story. The mutilated body of a woman is found on a beach.  Detective Osama Ibrahim Read More

‘In the desert you can remember your name’

Gods Without Men by Hari Kunzru Back in the early days of my blog, I posted about my favourite 1970s pop music in I was a 70s teenager.  The first song I talked about there was – still is – one that still inspires me ever since it first appeared back in 1971. It immediately resurfaced Read More