There is a cast list of major characters at the beginning of my edition of The Game of Kings. For anyone joining in my Doing Dunnett readalong, I’ve made it into a bookmark which can be folded in half and glued/laminated should you so wish. If we make it on to Queen’s play, I’ll do Read More
Author: AnnaBookBel
“Lymond is back.”
These are the first words of the first book, The Game of Kings, by Dorothy Dunnett’s in her series, The Lymond Chronicles. I’ve not read any of Dunnett’s novels, and back at the end of August I mused on whether I should get stuck into her books. The response was tremendous and very encouraging – Read More
A book I wish I’d written …
Now don’t get me wrong, as someone who gave up English lessons at O-level, and has only written reports and policy documents, newsletters and blog posts (of course) since, I really don’t think I have a novel in me. More correctly, at the moment I don’t have a novel in me – much as I’d Read More
Sibling Rivalry, Love and Betrayal
The Heart Broke in by James Meek Meek, a former journalist at the Guardian, came to my attention with his strange but wonderful Russian novel, The People’s Act of Love which he started writing in the mid 1990s but wasn’t published until 2005, and subsequently longlisted for the Booker prize. The People’s Act was set in Read More
Half term movies
I’ve been to the pictures twice this half-term – two very different films and two gooduns. First, I went with my daughter to see Tim Burton’s new stop-animation film, Frankenweenie. Inspired by Frankenstein, natch, it’s the story of a boy and his dog, and like all the best classic horror films, it’s in black and Read More
A “perfick” entertainment…
It’s not often that you can successfully combine a phrase and idea from a Shakespeare sonnet – number 18 as it happens. You know the one that begins: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer’s lease Read More
“Fashion! Turn to the left. Fashion! Turn to the right…”
Fashionby DK When I was a young girl, my mother bought me a series of historical colouring books of fashion through the ages. I adored these books, and armed with my Caran d’Ache Swiss watercolour pencils, I spent hours devising colour schemes for the costumes. I then designed my own versions of the outfits for Read More
London lives
This post was republished into my blog’s timeline from my lost posts archive. N-Wby Zadie Smith Zadie Smith’s fourth novel, about the intersecting lives of a group of North Londoners, was one of the big publishing events of the late summer. Many other bloggers managed to read and review it much nearer its publication date Read More
A family drama with a Hollywood backdrop
Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures by Emma Straub A novel set during the golden age of Hollywood has an instant allure, promising old-fashioned glamour and a look behind the scenes of the movies, plus possibly a whiff of scandal. That’s not what this novel is really about though, despite its title and monochrome cover … Read More
Strange places for books
I think about the over-large extent of my TBR piles all the time. Blog-friend Simon Savidge has been doing that too recently. In his recent post on his TBR he asked “Where is the strangest place that you have ever left piles of books?” Rather than comment, I went to take a photo of my Read More
It’s good to share …
The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip by George Saunders This is a charming tale for children of all ages – a wonderfully quirky novella, that has been matched by equally bizarre illustrations and produced as a singleton in a neat slim volume. Three families live in a hamlet called Frip. They all keep goats and Read More
Serendipity makes this a timely read from And Other Stories…
Lightning Rods by Helen DeWitt I started reading this book around ten days ago, and was shocked and amused in equal measure – but I paused around a third of the way through to give in to the hype and read JK Rowling’s latest (see previous post here) – and by the time I picked Read More
Which side of the fence are you on?
The Casual Vacancy by JK Rowling Everyone who encounters this book will have a point of view about it. The author is a global phenomenon through the Harry Potter series: she’s worked her way up to being a multimillionaire from being a single mum, and does a lot for charity. Now she’s taken a risk, Read More
Which path should one take? A novel choice…
Luminous Airplanes by Paul La Farge I had just come home from a festival in Nevada, the theme of which was Contact with Other Worlds, when my mother, or, I should say, one of my mothers, called to tell me that my grandfather had died. Thus begins Luminous Airplanes, a quirky novel right from the outset, Read More
A plague survivor’s tale
All Fall Down by Sally Nicholls Sally Nicholls is one of the best new writers of books for older children and teens. I loved and was moved by her debut: Ways To Live Forever, (review here), the diaries of an eleven year old boy dying from Leukaemia which won the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize and Read More
I gave in to the hype …
The Casual Vacancyby J K Rowling So I’ve given in to the hype and got me a cheap copy of JK’s new adult book, and it will be my weekend reading… I see the knives are already out on Amazon with 50% of the 50+ reader reviews so far being negative. I’m really hoping that Read More
Crime always soars in a heatwave …
The Summer of Dead Toys by Antonio Hill translated from the Spanish by Laura McGloughlin Inspector Héctor Salgado is a hot-blooded Argentine working in Barcelona. As the book opens, he has recently returned from enforced leave after he beat up a suspect in a Voodoo/paedophile trafficking ring. Investigation 1231-R Salgado Resolution Pending Three short lines Read More
A body’s life, a life’s memories
Winter Journal by Paul Auster I’ve been an Auster-fan ever since I first read The New York Trilogy in the late 1980s, which I re-read and reviewed here a couple of years ago. Between writing his novels, Auster also writes essays and volumes of memoir. Winter Journal is a memoir largely told through the things that Read More
Illustrated books and crossover editions
I bought a signed first edition of the hardback of A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness, which I wrote about here. After looking at some of the illustrations, I sat it in my bookcase as being almost too nice/collectible to read. The initial paperback edition is just like a slightly smaller version of the hardback Read More
An exceptional story for all ages…
A Monster Callsby Patrick Ness The British writer Siobhan Dowd won the Carnegie Medal posthumously in 2009 for her last book, Bog Child. She’d started working on another, but died of breast cancer before she had started writing. Her outline was handed to Patrick Ness, author of the acclaimed Chaos Walking trilogy and he wrote the Read More
The remote effects of war …
The Coveby Ron Rash. The fighting of WWI may be happening on the battlefields of Europe, but that doesn’t mean that remote communities in America don’t feel a ripple of its effects too… Young men who volunteered are returning home maimed – Hank Shelton lost a hand, and he’s doing his best to renovate the Read More
A short, sharp German legal thriller…
The Collini Caseby Ferdinand Von Schirach, translated from the German by Anthea Bell The author of The Collini Case, a prominent German defence lawyer himself, honed his writing on short stories – case histories of gruesome and shocking crimes, of people who get away with murder and the like. His first novel, a courtroom drama, Read More
Q&A with Sophie McKenzie and a giveaway of her latest teen book…
This week the final part of author Sophie McKenzie’s hard hitting ‘Missing‘ trilogy for teens is published. Missing Me completes the story started in Girl, Missing, and continued in Sister, Missing. The books follow the story of Lauren, who is adopted and has always known that. In Girl, Missing, Lauren is fourteen. One day she Read More
A fascinating setting for a crime novel…
City of Veils by Zoë Ferraris This is the first novel I’ve read set in modern day Arabia. It gives a tantalising glimpse of life in Jeddah, particularly how men and women live, and combines that with a complex crime story. The mutilated body of a woman is found on a beach. Detective Osama Ibrahim Read More
The Food of Love …
John Saturnall’s Feast by Lawrence Norfolk (republished into its original place in the time-line from my lost post archive) I’ve taken my time reading John Saturnall’s feast, the latest novel by Lawrence Norfolk. He’s a man that takes his time to write his novels, having published just four in twenty one years, and so I’ve Read More
Should I do Dunnett?
One author I have yet to read is Dorothy Dunnett. I own the first few volumes of the Lymond chronicles thanks to my late Mum. She enjoyed them very much and was re-reading them back then. They are renowned for not being an easy read though, requiring perseverance and frequent referring back or to a Read More
Who killed the penguin?
Morgue Drawer Next Door by Jutta Profijt Translated from the German by Erik J Macki. This unusual crime novel is narrated by Pascha – he used to be a car thief – the best young one in Cologne. Pascha has become a sort of detective, teaming up with Dr Martin Gänsewein, a forensic examiner for the Read More
“Summer fling, don’t mean a thing, But, oh, oh, the summer nights”
This post was republished into my blog’s timeline from my lost posts archive. August is a Wicked Month by Edna O’Brien When I came across this short novel published in 1965, in a bag of books from my late Mum’s, I had to read it straight away for two reasons. The obvious one is the Read More
Mid-book cull – pause for a giggle or three…
As you may have surmised, I’m in the throes of having a major book cull. I gave seven bags full to my daughter’s school fête back in June, and have been working my way through the other piles, double-stacked shelves and bags over the past weeks. I’ve sorted out some worth selling via various routes Read More
An evening with Vera and Jimmy … and Ann Cleeves
I spent a great evening hearing about two fictional British detectives yesterday. Two totally different people – the frumpy, middle-aged Vera Stanhope (pronounced Stannup) from Northumberland, and the descendant a Spanish sailor from the Armada who was shipwrecked at Fairisle in the Shetlands. Both were created by Ann Cleeves, who had escaped for the evening Read More
