The Rook by Daniel O’Malley and the problem with ‘chunksters’ #20booksofsummer24

Before I get to my review of The Rook, my third read in this year’s 20 Books of Summer challenge, let’s have a discussion about chunksters, shall we. Up until recently, I loosely defined chunksters as any book of 500 pages or over, nowadays I revised that down to 450, and I’m inclined to pull Read More

Boxes by Pascal Garnier – #ReadingtheMeow2024 #20booksofsummer24

Translated by Melanie Florence It’s a while since I read any Pascal Garnier novellas. Gallic Books have published translations of twelve of his dark tales told with an even darker sense of humour after the prolific author turned towards noir in the 1990s, and Boxes is the fifth I’ve read, so plenty of treats still Read More

Husbands by Mo Fanning, blogtour

I can’t resist a road trip novel, and one taking in Route 66 even more so. But we’re not there yet… In the prologue, a British guy gets married in a Vegas chapel – or is he married? His date, ‘a craggy daddy-bear’ type promises to get it annulled the next day, as our chap Read More

It’s #20booksofsummer24 reviews 1 & 2, Rinder & Moshfegh

And I’m away, with my first two books in Cathy’s #20booksofsummer24. May into the early days of June I had so many blogtours, but I’ve really cut down on them for the duration of the challenge, so I can give it a good go, and join in some of the other reading themed events too, Read More

The Venus of Salò by Ben Pastor – blog tour

Although The Venus of Salò is the eighth book in Ben Pastor’s Martin Bora series, due to the nature of Wehrmakt officer Colonel Martin von Bora being posted all around the Theatre of War in Italy, it’s more episodic a series in nature than many, so I was happy to jump in to the latest Read More

Piece of My Heart by Penelope Tree

In the 1960s, Penelope Tree was one of the supermodels of the day. Born in 1949, she was first photographed aged 13 by Diane Arbus, she was at Truman Capote’s ‘Black and White Ball’ in 1966, and was later photographed by Cecil Beaton and Richard Avedon, before becoming David Bailey’s live-in muse in 1967. That Read More