It’s finally time for me to share my favourite books of the year with you. It’s always a difficult and enjoyable decision to make! I read 110 books this year (up to Christmas), of which I awarded 10/10 to 22 titles – many more than last year, and indicating some good reading choices; an awful Read More
Month: December 2025
Review of the Year #2 – 2025, It’s Book Stats Time!
Although I’ve cut down on the graphs these days, my master spreadsheet is still going strong. I love playing with all the data, mining it for nuggets of information that will tell me if my reading habits have changed. In truth, they bobble along generally, but there are some general trends, I think. Without further Read More
Review of the Year #1 – 2025, A Year of Reading and Blogging
As always, I’m saving my books of the year for the 31st, and you’ll get my book stats (my favourite post) on the 29th, but today as in previous years I’m sharing my blogging highlights, including all those reading weeks, months and challenges I took part in over the year and plenty else including Shiny Read More
Two Reids: Novels by Taylor Jenkins and Ava!
That’s right, it’s ‘Reid’ not ‘Two Reeds’ as any Only Connect fans will giggle at, and they’re authors of very different novels. Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid Joan always dreamed of going to the stars, single-mindedly becoming an astrophysics professor and then applying to NASA, and to her immense joy, being accepted onto the astronaut Read More
Non-Fiction Review Catch-up
I am sooo behind in my reviews at the moment, so you’ll see a couple of catch-up posts before I get onto my traditional year-end fare. Today it’s non-fiction, with 4 memoirs. Without further ado… Children of Radium by Joe Dunthorne Back at the end of May when this was published, I went to see Read More
#DoorstoppersInDecember: 1 sublime, 1 DNF – MacInnes & Winton
Laura is hosting #DoorstoppersInDecember partly as an antidote to #NovNov25, but as the weather gets colder/more unpredictable, what’s better than getting stuck into a chunky novel. There are no hard and fast rules as to what constitutes a doorstopper, but I’d normally call a book over 450 pages a chunkster. So far this month, I’ve Read More
Autumn Watchlist
It’s ages since I shared my watchlist and there’s been some great telly indeed over the past few months. My top 2 binge watches have been both Mick Herron adaptations on Apple TV+. Series 5 of Slow Horses was darker than the previous ones – building up to series 6 which is already in the Read More
Six Degrees of Separation: Seascraper
It’s time for the super monthly tag Six Degrees of Separation, which is hosted by Kate at Booksaremyfavouriteandbest, Six Degrees of Separation #6degrees picks a starting book for participants to go wherever it takes them in six more steps. Links to my reviews are in the titles of the books chosen. The starter book this month is: Seascraper Read More
Songs in Ursa Major by Emma Brodie – Book Group report
Finding flora and fauna books beginning with ‘U’ was difficult until someone suggested ursa for bear – which led me to suggest this one, which has been languishing on my shelves, and it came out of the hat. This debut novel was published in 2022, and unashamedly goes for a similar look to the huge Read More
Blackwater by Sarah Sultoon – blog tour
A few years ago, I very much enjoyed Dirt by Sarah Sultoon, which was set in an Israeli kibbutz near the Lebanese border, a multi-stranded thriller that was full of tension. Sultoon is an award-winning journalist who worked for CNN and Channel 4, and has extensive knowledge of world situations. Interestingly, she set that novel Read More
Two more for #NovNov25 : Tawada and Bemelmans
I’ve done well on short books for Novellas in November, hosted by Rebecca and Cathy, reading nine including the Seascraper – the buddy read. Here are short reviews of numbers 7 & 8. The ninth, The Cat, by Georges Simenon, I’ll be reviewing for Shiny soon. The Bridegroom was a Dog by Yoko Tawada, Translated Read More
