This post was republished into my blog’s timeline from my lost posts archive. Hangover Square by Patrick Hamilton Starting in the dying days of 1938, George Harvey Bone, a tall and ungainly young man is spending Christmas with his aunt in Hunstanton hoping she’ll give him some money to keep him and his ‘friends’ going. Read More
Month: January 2014
Mix Douglas Adams with Jewish Mysticism, Marco Polo, a dash of the X-Men and time travel for weird fun!
A Highly Unlikely Scenario : Or, a Neetsa Pizza Employee’s Guide to Saving the World by Rachel Cantor If I said that a wacky speculative fiction novel about a 21st century world governed by the philosophies adopted by fast food chains was actually great fun to read, you might begin to doubt my sanity. I Read More
A May to December romance with strings…
Hotel Iris by Yoko Ogawa Translated by Stephen Snyder Only reading from my TBR, I searched my shelves for books so that I could join in with January in Japan hosted by Tony’s Reading List. I could have chosen Murakami – but have had both good and bad experiences with him. It ended up being a choice 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
In this novel, meat IS murder …
Season to Taste by Natalie Young This is the strangest premise for a novel that I’ve read in a while, and I do enjoy a high quirk factor in a book. Season to Taste is the tale of a marriage gone wrong, and it starts off with a murder… One day Lizzie Prain snaps and Read More
A charming adventure inside fairy tales …
Most of you will know Ian Beck’s work without even realising it. He is an illustrator of renown and amongst many other things designed the cover of Goodbye Yellow Brick Road by Elton John. In the early 1980s, he started to write and illustrate picture books for young children, and later moved into writing children’s novels. Read More
Growing Old Disgracefully …
The Little Old Lady Who Broke All The Rules by Catharine Ingelman-Sundberg Translated by Rod Bradbury Let’s get it out of the way. If you enjoyed The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson as I did, (my review here), I’m certain that you will enjoy this novel. This Read More
Look what I won! …
Before Christmas I entered a competition run by The Omnivore online magazine to win an entire set of the Costa Book Prize 2013 shortlisted books – and heavens to Betsy, I got an email the other day saying I’d won. Today a big box of all the books arrived. THANK YOU! As the individual category winners Read More
Wendy takes the lead …
Wendy & Peter Pan by Ella Hickson, RSC at the RST, Stratford What a treat! Juliet and I went to the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford-upon-Avon on Saturday night to see their new family production Wendy & Peter Pan. Yes, you read it right – Wendy comes first in Ella Hickson’s re-telling of J M Read More
My first encounter with Richard Brautigan …
This post was republished into my blog’s original timeline from my lost post archive. It was last summer when Karen at Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings was participating in the Beats of Summer fortnight of reading from the Beat Generation, that I resolved to read a book by Richard Brautigan. As I am not a fan of On the Road or The Naked Lunch (bored Read More
My first encounter with Richard Brautigan …
It was last summer when Karen at Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings was participating in the Beats of Summer fortnight of reading from the Beat Generation, that I resolved to read a book by Richard Brautigan. As I am not a fan of On the Road or The Naked Lunch (bored by the former, weirded out by Read More
A sad beginning and a happy ending cut oh so short by tragedy …
This post was edited and republished into my blog’s original timeline from my lost posts archive. It’s Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini While I was doing some research into age appropriate novels for younger teens for a post on the topic back in November, I kept coming across books for older teens Read More
Lost in a good map …
Call of the Undertow by Linda Cracknell Variety in reading is usually my watchword, I try not to read books of a similar vein too close together, yet between Christmas and New Year I managed to read two about women running away from their existing life after life-changing events to sort themselves out. The first Read More
What the new Hoffmann addict read on Christmas Day …
The Nutcracker & The Strange Child by E.T.A. Hoffmann Translated by Anthea Bell My mum was a huge ballet fan, and it was a much-anticipated Christmas treat to be taken to London to the ballet to see The Nutcracker, preferably at the Royal Opera House for a grander experience and better tree (see below). It Read More
The stages of a widow’s grief
The Widow’s Tale by Mick Jackson A recently widowed woman in her early sixties flees her London home and well-meaning but irritating friends. She rents a cottage in a North Norfolk village, telling no-one where she’s gone. There, she gradually works her grief out – all the classic stages of denial, anger, what ifs, depression Read More
The Art of the Comb-over & American Hustle
American Hustle (15) It is a brave film that spends its opening minutes with its overweight paunchy, balding superstar acting lead perfecting his comb-over. Christian Bale put on 40 lbs to play Irving Rosenfeld, a small-time Bronx hustler who gets caught by the feds and offered immunity if he helps them in a big scam Read More
A novel of ‘The Troubles’
Harry’s Game by Gerald Seymour I was amazed to find that this thriller from 1975 was Gerald Seymour’s début novel. Because of its setting, it is the kind of book that my late mother would never have read, and we read a lot of thrillers betweeen us in our household back then. She was born and Read More
