Just a few notes on my best reads of the year from all the books I’ve read, regardless of when published. I’ve read 111 books, just 3 short of last year, but slightly more pages at just over 32,000, and near enough 50/50 male to female authors. I had two themed reading periods, tackling books Read More
Month: December 2009
My Books of the Noughties
I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas with your family and friends, and got everything you wished for. I’m still mid-way through the round of family visits, so here’s a post I prepared earlier. Yes it is a list – I’m going to inflict my Books of the Decade on you – all five Read More
MERRY CHRISTMAS!
I’m signing off for a few days, so it just remains for me to wish all of you a M E R R Y C H R I S T M A S !!! Back soon with my books of the year and Reading Resolutions for 2010… Cheers! Lots of love Annabel x
The Truman Show meets Dickensian melodrama
Pastworld by Ian Beck Welcome to Pastworld. Imagine that London has been reinvented as a theme park; that Dickensian London has been recreated in every detail. Rich tourists undergo immersion training, get costumed and are then brought in by airship to become ‘gawkers’ in this new, old world. Caleb, son of Lucius Brown, one of Read More
My Secret Santa arrived – yippee!
My Secret Santa gift from the Book Blogger Holiday Swap arrived and I couldn’t wait to rip the paper off and see what was inside… Complete joy! two wonderful, and completely different books from my wishlist and super hand-crocheted bookmarks to go with them. The books were Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor, Read More
My Reading Resolutions for 2009 – how did I do #4 (the final one!)
By now you might have cottoned on, by the series of bookish but not books-read posts, that I’m suffering a severe case of end-of-term-can’t-read-itis and have thus resorted to fillers; (all this pondering the stats is helping me formulate my books of the year though). Aside from that, I am reading The Moonstone but mostly Read More
My Reading Resolutions for 2009 – How did I do #3
My third reading resolution for 2009 was to ‘read more world and translated fiction’. Last year I read a dozen which were all Nordic or French except for Blindness by Saramago. This year I did a bit better… Eighteen in translation, plus a sprinkling from parts other than the UK or USA. I spread my Read More
My Reading Resolutions for 2009 – How did I do #2
On Sunday I told you about the results of my first Reading Resolution that I made for 2009 – here’s the second. I said ‘I will read the Canongate Myths series of books’. Here they are sitting together on the shelf; at the start of the year I already owned the first eight, since added Read More
My Reading Resolutions for 2009 – how did I do #1
Back in the New Year of 2009, I made a set of ‘Reading Resolutions’. One of them was ‘I shall read more books published before I was born.’ So including all books read up to the beginning of December, how did I do? Not very well actually! I managed to read a huge 90 books Read More
Q&A with science writer Marcus Chown
It’s my great pleasure today to introduce you to Marcus Chown, author of We Need To Talk About Kelvin who is on a blog tour to promote the book (which I reviewed here). Apart from writing great popular science books, Marcus is cosmology consultant of magazine New Scientist, having formerly been a radio astronomer at Read More
An truly original modern fairy tale
The Girl With Glass Feet by Ali Shaw This novel is that rare thing – a thoroughly grown-up modern fairy tale that works. It’s also a beautifully designed book with an evocative cover and silver page edging. It is set in a remote cluster of islands around an archipelago called St Hauda’s land which feels Read More
Making Quantum Physics Accessible
On Wednesday, I am delighted that Marcus Chown, author of We Need to Talk About Kelvin: What Everyday Things Tell Us About the Universe” will be visiting my blog to do a Q&A as part of his blogtour to promote the book. Marcus is a best-selling science author and cosmology consultant for New Scientist magazine. Read More
Not enough time to read …
I’m very aware that I haven’t posted since last Thursday which is a long time for me. But there has been so much going on – we’re in December and suddenly Christmas rears its head and I’m behind with everything because November was even busier for me. So I shall fill the gap by telling Read More
