The Third Magpie by M.S. Clements The Third Magpie is a dystopian romance set in an insular post-Brexit England, now called New Albany, that is (at least partly inspired by I’d wager, and) approaching Atwood’s Gilead in some of its strictures. Sons are revered, young women are once again chattels, to be married off in Read More
Lockdown Review Avoidance Measures!
Playing with My Books – A Publisher’s A-Z Rather than write reviews, I’ve been ‘playing with my books’. Not bookspine poetry this time, but I thought I’d see how much of an A-Z I could make with publishers logos which are initials. I set some strict criteria, single letters only unless they were doubled, or Read More
20 Books of Summer 20
Yay, on June 1st, 20 Books of Summer as hosted for several years by Cathy at 746 Books, is back for 2020. I’ve signed up for this challenge for four years now, but never reaching the full twenty books, my best has been 15/20. However, it does help clear some books from the TBR. Yes, Read More
Matthew Haigh – Death Magazine – Blog Tour
I am not a poetry expert in any shape or form, having read little of it over the years. But last year I read a rather fab book, The Point of Poetry by Joe Nutt, reviewed here. This book aimed to encourage its readers to give poetry a go, and inspired, since then I’ve added Read More
Some good reads from pre-blog days, and what I thought about them then… #11
I am reading lots, but am finding it hard to get into reviewing whilst I’m preoccupied with rebuilding Shiny (which is going well). Thus, I’ve turned once more to my trusty spreadsheet to bring you a selection of my capsule reviews from my pre-blog days. This time, five crime/psycho thrillers that I read in 2006 Read More
Catch-Up – NOT the Wellcome – Obama – Diski
NOT the Wellcome Book Prize Firstly, I was absolutely delighted that Constellations by Sinéad Gleeson (reviewed here) won the vote for the ‘NOT the Wellcome Book Prize’. It’s an outstanding book, and I was relieved that it did win by a country mile. The shadow panel (Rebecca of Bookish Beck, Clare of A Little Blog of Books, Read More
NOT the Wellcome Book Prize – Two from our Shortlist
So the shadow panel (Rebecca of Bookish Beck, Clare of A Little Blog of Books, Laura of Dr. Laura Tisdall, Paul of Halfman, Halfbook and I) managed to pick half a dozen from the 19 books we longlisted – some picked themselves, others needed a bit of discussion and a deciding vote. The six are: Exhalation by Ted Chiang Invisible Read More
Shiny Linkiness
Today over at Shiny New Books is my review of the wonderful third novel from Natasha Pulley: The Lost Future of Pepperharrow Pulley’s third novel revisits the characters of her first, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street (reviewed here) and takes them back to Japan in the late 1880s, where the clairvoyant Keita Mori will be Read More
The 10 albums that most shaped my musical taste
There are millions of these so-called challenges on FB at the moment to post 10 pictures, 1 a day, no comments, etc etc etc. I recently did this, but closet rebel that I am, I declined to not comment – what’s the point if you can’t explain why you picked the item under consideration? However, Read More
Six Degrees of Separation: The Road
My favourite monthly tag, 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 the titles will take you to my reviews where they exist. This month, my links are all on a single theme, which I’ll tell you at Read More
NOT the Wellcome Prize Blog Tour – Ogawa & Metzl
As the Wellcome Book Prize, which celebrates literature with health, illness and medicine themes, is on hiatus this year, Rebecca, who has chaired the shadow panel got permission to run a ‘NOT’ The Wellcome Prize event. Today it’s my turn to spotlight two books, published last year that might have been selected for this year’s Read More
Great Idea but, again I wanted more science…
Body Tourists by Jane Rogers I should be reviewing the pile of books sitting beside me, but having finished this one yesterday, I just had to get my thoughts down straight away. The last book I read by Jane Rogers was her 2011 Booker longisted The Testament of Jessie Lamb (reviewed here). Although I loved Read More
Review Catch-up – Moor – Edwards – Moss
Thank you to everyone for their kind words about my Shiny cock-up! Much appreciated. About one year’s worth of reviews are now back up for your delectation – five to go – but I’m really enjoying revisiting them and getting links up to date and so on. Meanwhile I have been reading, and here are Read More
And with the click of a button…
…I inadvertently deleted the whole of Shiny New Books! It’s a long story – but involves finding ourselves as admins locked out of the website. Why?: Because we were using more than our allotted space, I discovered when I ‘chatted’ to our webhosting company. Solution: moving from ‘managed WordPress’ (controlled by web hosting co) to Read More
Review Catch-Up
I’ve built up rather a pile of books to catch up on reviewing – it’s all the lovely fault of getting stuck into my Shiny archiving project. So here are some shorter takes to reduce the pile somewhat. Dan Leno & the Limehouse Golem by Peter Ackroyd This was our book group choice this month, Read More
Easter Bunnies
Watership Down Cover Art Richard Adams’ first novel Watership Down was published in 1972 by the publisher Rex Collings in a rather sweet, but monochrome cover (above). The novel had been rejected by several publishers, but after publication went on to win the Carnegie Medal amongst many other awards. Thinking about Easter bunnies, I made Read More
The Shiny New Books Archive: A furlough project!
It’s hard to believe perhaps, but the labour of love that is my other booky place, Shiny New Books, had its sixth birthday this week. Shiny launched on April 7th, 2014 as a quarterly book recommendations site, with four sections: Fiction, Non-fiction, Reprints and BookBuzz, edited by me, Harriet, Simon and Victoria respectively. We recruited Read More
A female revenge story – the first novel from an esteemed film director…
Are Snakes Necessary? by Brian De Palma and Susan Lehman Titan Books ‘Hard Case Crime’ imprint offers an interesting blend of old and new crime fiction, reprinting classics from the 1950s and 60s by authors such as Mickey Spillane, Donald Westlake and Ed McBain (I reviewed McBain’s Cut Me In for Shiny here) alongside new Read More
Blog Tour: Richard Russell – Liberation Through Hearing
Richard Russell is the producer and owner of XL Recordings, home of some artists I know well such as Radiohead, Adele, The Gotan Project and the White Stripes, but also a lot of fare that isn’t my normal listening such as The Prodigy, MIA, Dizzee Rascal and more. I may not listen to that second Read More
Six Degrees of Separation: Stasiland
My favourite monthly tag, 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 the titles will take you to my reviews where they exist. This month – the starting book is: Stasiland by Anna Funder A modern classic book Read More
Book Spine Poems for Strange Days
The other week Rebecca got this started again with her post here, and I responded with a Paul Auster book spine poem here. Then yesterday, Cathy came up with some splendid ones here, and, copycat that I am, I had to have another go. I so enjoy doing this… another way of playing with my Read More
Making plants fun! Review & Q&A
I Ate Sunshine for Breakfast by Michael Holland Illustrated by Philip Giordano I don’t feature many new children’s books on this blog, but I couldn’t say no when offered this one which is published today by Flying Eye Books. I mean, just look at that lovely cover. And then I opened the book up, and Read More
Japanese Literature Challenge 13: The Pain of the Clown
Spark by Naoki Matayoshi Translated by Alison Watts Just fitting in at the end of the season of the Japanese Reading Challenge 13, hosted by Dolce Bellezza, here’s my second contribution. (See here for my first.) In recent times, having read several Japanese novels which are understated but still thought-provoking comedies such as The Nakano Read More
The Return of Book Spine Poetry
Last time I did this, the whole of my bedroom floor was covered with small piles of books as I built up potential poem fragments – but this was the result – and I was very pleased with it. (Took ages to put all the books back though!) Now Bookish Beck has had another go, Read More
Dylan Thomas Prize Longlist Blogtour
Black Car Burning by Helen Mort This is my second post for the Dylan Thomas Prize Longlist Blogtour, and I couldn’t have picked two more contrasting books (my first was Exquisite Cadavers by Meena Kandasamy, reviewed here). They may have been contrasting in subject matter and style, but both were intense and thought-provoking books to Read More
Reading Wales & Ireland
One each for the Wales Readathon hosted by Paula and Reading Ireland Month hosted by Cathy today. The Dig by Cynan Jones This novella has sat on my shelves for a few years. I meant to read it for last year’s #Dewithon but ran out of time, so it was my first choice for Welsh Read More
Des livres en traduction pour les petits enfants
Il y a des ans, j’ai écrit un article de blog sur le sujet des livres traduits en latin, (ici). Récemment, un collègue qui enseigne le français à nos jeunes élèves a obtenu des éditions traduites de livres d’images classiques. Vachement chouette! (as they used to say in France for ‘really cool’!) I can’t resist Read More
The Rathbones Folio Prize: Thoughts on the Shortlist
The Rathbones Folio Prize definitely has a USP: Books are nominated by members of its Academy rather than publishers. The Folio Academy members are mostly writers and critics, nominated by the Prize Foundation or their peers and now number around 250. This leads to a rather different set of books (published in the previous year) Read More
Six Degrees of Separation: Wolfe Island
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 the titles will take you to my reviews where they exist. This month – the starting book is: Wolfe Island by Lucy Treloar This book hasn’t been published in the Read More
The Dylan Thomas Prize Longlist Blog Tour
The Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize has become one of my favourite literary awards. It is awarded 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, and the winner will receive £30,000! The longlist for Read More