Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh This was our book group choice this month. Unfortunately we ended up not meeting to discuss it, but the emails swapped afterwards confirmed one thing – none of us loved it, and most found it a perplexing bore. This is strange for I’ve read several other Waughs over the Read More
Author: AnnaBookBel
Ranking Persephones…
While I haven’t managed to read a Persephone book so far during the Persephone Readathon hosted by Dwell in Possibility blog, I have been inspired by Simon’s recent post in which he ranks the Persephone books he has read, which is an amazing 57! At the end of his post he says ” I’d love it if Read More
A rather different kind of barrister…
Summary Justice by John Fairfax John Fairfax is a pen name for William Brodrick, who wrote the well-regarded Father Anselm mysteries. Brodrick was a practising barrister before giving up the law for becoming a writer, so I immediately had high hope for this new series of legal thrillers with a most fascinating pair of protagonists. Read More
Six Degrees of Separation: Lincoln in the Bardo
Hosted each month by Kate at Booksaremyfavouriteandbest, the Six Degrees of Separation meme picks a starting book for participants to go wherever it takes them in six more steps. Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders …is our starting point this month. Lots of ways to go from here – US Presidents obviously, and having looked Read More
Duncan Jones’s Bowie Book Club #1
After David Bowie died, (was it really over two years ago? it feels like yesterday), I added my own ‘Bowie Book Club‘ page to my blog with his 100 favourite books. I had no plans to read them systematically, but hoped to read or re-read at least a few of them, and read about some Read More
The Joy of Found Bookmarks
We’re reading Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh for Book Group this month. I got this Green Penguin Modern Classics edition from a charity shop. I opened it up to find a read luggage tag with this written on it (in capitals): NOTE REAR TYRES WORN DOWN TO 2. MM LEGAL LIMIT IS 1.6 MM. ? Read More
Two novellas, vignette style, but oh so different!
I really enjoy a good novella, one-sitting stories. One writing style that seems to particularly suit novellas is a story told in vignettes – each section a paragraph or two, at most a couple of pages. They often cut the story down to the bare bones, leaving you to read much between the lines – Read More
An artist’s memoir of childhood in London and Hollywood …
Unaccompanied Minor by Alexander Newley My review of this memoir by the son of Joan Collins and Anthony Newley is my first of the year for Shiny New Books. Newley is an artist and frequent self-portraitist, and this account of growing up in this dysfunctional story was illustrated and enriched by many of his pictures Read More
A Timely Thriller…
Anatomy of a Scandal by Sarah Vaughan This legal and psychological thriller has been on the receiving end of a lot of hype since its publication a couple of weeks ago. My local bookshop got some advance signed copies in for Christmas, so I got my hands on it early and read it before the Read More
Two Short Novels in Translation
One of my ‘Try Harder’ targets this year is to read more in translation. I got the year off to a good start with these two short novels… Bird in a Cage by Frédéric Dard Translated from the French by David Bellos I discovered Dard just over a year ago, when the lovely people at Read More
Review catch up – again – and the problem of remembering!
Two shorter reviews of books I read last year… Nutshell by Ian McEwan I read McEwan’s novel between Christmas and New Year, and the terrible thing is, I know I really enjoyed it. I know it was funny, outrageous and inspired by a quotation from Hamlet, yet I can’t really remember any detail about it Read More
A spec fiction novel that was almost too much!
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson Imagine, if you can, a world where the worst thing that can happen to ordinary folk is your pizza not arriving within thirty minutes of placing the order. That is such a bad thing, that the head of the Mafia, Uncle Enzo, who runs the Cosa Nostra Pizza business Read More
Back in the Panhandle…
Why Stuff Matters by Jen Waldo I loved Jen Waldo’s first novel, Old Buildings in North Texas which I reviewed for Shiny New Books here (with a Q&A with Jen here). In it, Olivia, a wise-cracking cocaine addict, is sent back home to Caprock in the Texas panhandle, under her mother’s control as rehab. Read More
Review catch-up!
I’ve rather a large pile of unreviewed books I read in 2017 to catch up on, so today I have some shorter reviews for you… When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi I love medical memoirs, especially surgeon’s tales, but occasionally a book will come along that will knock you sideways. When Breath Becomes Air Read More
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
I nearly always fail when I set resolutions, so no reading resolutions for 2018. Instead, I shall have reading ‘try harders’. In 2018, I will try harder to read: From my TBR – I own more books than I have time to read before I die! From my TBR – I need to save money. Read More
Year End Review #6: My Books of the Year!
And finally, in my review of my reading year, it’s my Books of the Year. I saved this post for last, because since Christmas, I have just read a book which had to be added to this list. I tried to keep the list to a dozen, but it’s ended up as 14 – but Read More
Year End Review #5: The Stats
This is the post I love writing each year. I consult my trusty spreadsheet which now has over ten years of basic data on it, and pull out some comparative figures about my year of reading. These are accurate up to the book I finished reading yesterday! Books and Pages Read Very close to last Read More
Year End Review #4: In Translation
I’ve also decided to give books I read in translation a separate mention this year, if only to try and spur me on to do better in 2018. I was shocked to find that I’ve only read fourteen novels in translation this year, just over 10% of my reading; last year I read 27, (of Read More
Year End Review #3: Non-Fiction
I decided to give Non-fiction it’s own review this year because I’ve read 20 titles – the highest number I’ve read in a year, making up fractionally under 15% of books read. This is a trend I hope to continue, for I’m enjoying non-fiction more these days, but as you’ll see below – the areas Read More
Year End Review #2: The Disappointments
There are always some books that just don’t live up to expectations. Here are a few that didn’t gel with me for various reasons – plus my nominations for silliest thriller of the year. The DNFs I had a good year again with just 2 DNFs – books that I got a way into before Read More
Year End Review #1: My best discoveries of 2017
The best authors who were ‘New to me’ in 2017 Today in the first part of my review of the year, I’m going to highlight the new to me authors, several of whom have been writing for years, that have made themselves must-reads for the future. It’s inevitable, but my first discoveries are three Read More
MERRY CHRISTMAS!
The Ecco Book of Christmas Stories In the run up to Christmas, I’ve been reading short stories from this Canadian anthology, selected and introduced by Alberto Manguel. I thought I’d quote from some of them for Christmas Day, however, be warned – most of these Christmas stories only have fleeting happy moments (which has Read More
Two excellent thrillers – Moskva and The Ice
Moskva by Jack Grimwood You may know Grimwood through his literary novel The Last Banquet written as John Grimwood, or his fantasy/crime novels written as Jon Courtenay Grimwood. I’ve not read any of them, although I do own The Last Banquet, which I remember was very well received. It’s certainly going up my pile, having Read More
Not just any old day at work…
Last Night at the Lobster by Stewart O’Nan I read one of Stewart O’Nan’s early novels, The Speed Queen, when it came out in paperback in the late 1990s. I remember enjoying it, but I didn’t come across him again until I picked this novel up somewhere – I’m going to have to read more Read More
2017 in First Lines
This is a fun meme, giving a snapshot of one’s reading through the year – not necessarily an accurate sample, but fun. The title links will take you to my reviews. January: Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis ‘They made a silly mistake, though,’ the Professor of History said, and his smile, as Dixon watched, gradually Read More
Back into Lyra’s world…
The Book of Dust, Volume 1 – La Belle Sauvage by Philip Pullman My, it was good to get back into Lyra’s world. That familiar, yet unfamiliar universe – where humans have an animal counterpart, their daemons; the setting is sort of contemporary, yet steampunky, with landmarks we know set alongside ones that could be Read More
The Happy Reader is one of Penguin’s best kept secrets…
The Happy Reader A subscription to this unique magazine would make an ideal Christmas present for the cash-strapped. Published twice a year, it’ll set you back just £8 for two years worth of issues to send to UK addresses, a bit more beyond. The Happy Reader is hardbacked size, around 70 pages, and each issue comes Read More
The Young Writer of the Year Ceremony
So it was back down to London yesterday evening for the ceremony of the Sunday Times PFD Young Writer of the Year Award. The ceremony was held in the wonderful ‘Red Room’ of the London Library at St James Square near Piccadilly and all those Christmassy lights. The room gradually filled with all those involved Read More
Book Group Report: “Windows”
The High Window by Raymond Chandler Our key-word for this month’s book choice was ‘Window(s)’. The other choices pitched into the hat were: High Windows by Philip Larkin, House without windows by Nadia Hashimi and Microserfs by Douglas Coupland, but Raymond Chandler won out – a great choice for a busy period of the year. The Read More
Sunday fun – Author surname stats!
On a damp Sunday when you should be doing other things, what better procrastination activity than plot a graph of author surnames that occur on one’s blog. Very silly I know, but I did this before on my old blog, back in 2011 – and this morning I rediscovered that old post – and had Read More
