The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt If I had to make a movie pitch for this book, it would be the Coen brothers do The Blues Brothers crossed with Deadwood, HBO’s fantastic wild west series, and that encapsulates it in a nutshell for me, save to say that the combination is an absolute winner. The Blues Brothers also just happens to Read More
Author: AnnaBookBel
3 from April 2011 Set in the USA – Waite – Millar – Kwok
The Terror of Living by Urban Waite – A fine backwoods thriller… It was the quote from Daniel Woodrell, an author of whom I’m a huge fan, on the cover that made me instantly want to read this book, a debut novel set in the backwoods border country near Seattle. To all outward appearances it’s a crime thriller, Read More
2 YA/Children’s novels from April 2011 – Chris Westwood & Sally Nicholls
On the side of the angels – Ministry of Pandemonium by Chris Westwood Republished into my blog’s original timeline – one of my ‘lost posts’ Teenager Ben Harvester likes to get away from it all by taking his sketchbook into Highgate Cemetery. His Dad left his Mum several years ago, they’ve had to move into a Read More
One of the other bests of Beryl …
The Birthday Boys by Beryl Bainbridge. Now I’ve read three novels by the late great Dame Beryl Bainbridge, I can truly say that she has become one of my favourite authors, and I can’t wait to read more. She was a master of succinctly getting to the heart of the matter. Her novels aren’t long in Read More
In the Country of Men by Hisham Matar
Republished into my blogs original timeline from my lost posts archive Growing up with Gaddafi Since the escalation of political unrest in Libya recently, the author of this 2006 Booker shortlisted novel has been in demand to comment about living under Gaddafi – something he is particularly well placed to do. His own family fled Libya Read More
Getting the right man for the job …
Republished into my blog’s timeline from my lost posts archive – and for the 1968 club. True Grit by Charles Portis This was our Book Group choice for reading in March. It’s fair to say that while no-one hated it, not everybody loved it like I did. One thing that we were all agreed on Read More
Look inside …
This post was republished into my blog’s original timeline from my lost posts archive. Take one book – a 1965 Puffin paperback of The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Pages well tanned, covers worn, spine well-creased and starting to fall apart – it’s my well-loved edition I had as a child. The painting on the front Read More
2 from 2011 featuring dogs: Rhodes & Raisin
This post was republished into my blog’s timeline from my lost posts archive. A man, his lover, & his dog – Timoleon Vieta Come Home by Dan Rhodes This is the story of a mongrel dog with the ‘saddest eyes in the world’. One day a stray dog turns up at retired British composer Cockcroft’s Read More
3 from March 2011 – Handler – Reed – Fredericks
Adverbs by Daniel Handler – Lemony Snicket for Grown-ups 3 from March 2011 This author is best known as the writer of the fun Lemony Snicket series of novels for children. I’ve read the first Lemony Snicket novel, and heard the audiobook narrated by Tim Curry, (I just love his voice!) and one day intend to read the rest of the Read More
An evening with Penguin
Republished into my blog’s original timeline from my lost post archive. Living in a town near Oxford, it takes a lot to tempt me into London midweek during term-time – but when an invitation came to attend Penguin’s General Bloggers Evening in the swanky surroundings of a private room in a dining club in Soho, Read More
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by Frank L Baum
The Wizard of Oz is one of our favourite family films at Gaskell Towers, and my daughter and I are really looking forward to going to see the new production at the Palladium during the Easter hols. It struck me though that I’d never actually read the original book, and the OUP very kindly sent me a Read More
The Hopkins Manuscript by R C Sheriff
Chicken Licken was right in this dystopia! Last weekend was Persephone Reading Weekend hosted by Claire and Verity. I did start my Persephone reading at the weekend, but didn’t finish until yesterday. But what a book I chose – one of the few by male authors, and a dystopian bit of science fiction to boot – yet it fits Read More
Old reviews from Feb 2011: Jones – Lukas – Nicholls
A novel of ‘Great expectations’ – Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones With its lovely cover, and the promise of Dickensian fun in paradise, I was easily lured into this novel. I’ll admit that having missed most of the hype about it when it came out, I was expecting a soft and lightly humorous novel along the Read More
Celebrating 50 years of Penguin Modern Classics
This post was republished into my blog’s timeline from my lost posts archive. Penguin are very good at celebrating their anniversaries. Previously we’ve had the Penguin Sixties and then the Penguin Classics 60s back in the mid 1990s for the company’s sixtieth birthday – each series featuring sixty little pocket-sized books which were 60p each, Read More
Two 2011 reviews set during WWII: Fallada & Dogar
Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada Translated by Michael Hofmann I was put off reading this book for months, anticipating that it would be too difficult, too philosophical, too heavy; also that being 608 pages including appendices it would take too long to read. I was wrong on all accounts. Alone in Berlin was written in just Read More
Old reviews from 2011: The start of two dogged detective series…
Cop Hater by Ed McBain Ed McBain is the author who really created the police procedural novel, with his series of fifty-five 87th Precinct books written between 1956 and 2005. In the introduction to Cop Hater, he tells how he came up with the idea of a squadroom of police officers, all with different characters, whom together Read More
Old reviews from 2011 – 2 second novels
The Facility by Simon Lelic Simon Lelic’s first novel, Rupture, (see here) was such a breath of fresh air last year that when I was able to get my hands on an advance copy of his second, I could hardly wait to read it and for the publication date to get near. Would it be as innovative Read More
3 reviews from Jan 2011: Hornby, Jensen & Gaiman
Juliet Naked by Nick Hornby I don’t know how he does it, but there’s something about a Nick Hornby book that so hooks me, that I feel part of the story – I can always identify with some of the characters. Juliet Naked is the story of a lost rock star, a completist fan and his Read More
A Whale of a book – I finally read Moby Dick
From Jan 2011: Moby Dick by Herman Melville This was our Book Group’s choice for our Christmas 2010 read – we always tackle a classic over the festive season. This time we couldn’t decide between ourselves, so everyone threw a suggestion in the hat and this came out. Moby Dick is one of those books I always planned Read More
Art is a commodity not for looking at!
An Object of Beauty by Steve Martin Steve Martin’s latest novel is not funny. He plays it straight in An Object of Beauty as the world chronicled within is so full of self-parody that there’s little need to add extra layers of satire to achieve a certain sort of vicious comedy. Set in New York Read More
Reading Resolutions 2010 – How did I do?
Back in January, as always, I made some reading resolutions. There were just four of them, so how did I do this year? 1. As always, try and reduce the TBR mountains – goes without saying really. That also means acquiring less books – but I’m not going to impose any out and out purchasing Read More
Bah Humbug!
I Am Scrooge: A Zombie Story for Christmas by Adam Roberts Given that Yellow Blue Tibia by Roberts was both the maddest and best SF book I read this year, I had high hopes of this zombie take on Dickens’ A Christmas Carol as a bit of fun this festive season. Would it live up to the fun I had Read More
My Books of the Year 2010
Now I’ve read 100 books and it is nearly Christmas, I thought I’d look back on my year of reading and pick out my favourites from a very varied bunch. To celebrate that depth, I’ve chosen a bunch of categories to separate them into, so without further ado, here are my top eleven (couldn’t manage Read More
The World of Ephemera #9
The Cockney Alphabet & Railway Porter’s Prayer I rediscovered these whilst sorting out a pile of cuttings and other assorted papers I’d built up the other day. They come from articles in old editions of the Folio Society magazine. The Cockney Alphabet I love this, yet apparently there are millions of variations on it – so Read More
Where ‘they beat him up until the teardrops start’ …
Following the Detectives: Real Locations in Crime Fiction edited by Maxim Jakubowski Taking twenty key locations in crime novels and investigating what the areas mean to the authors and their detectives, this book contains a mine of useful information. From Inspector Morse’s Oxford to Wallander’s southern Sweden, from Brunetti’s Venice to Marlowe’s LA – each of Read More
What could have possessed Dr Jekyll?
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by R L Stevenson When I received an email from the publicist for this new series of classic novels in quality pocket hardback format from Whites books, Jekyll and Hyde was the one that leapt out of the list as I’d never read it before. The Read More
An evening with Toby Mundy
My local indie bookshop Mostly Books had an extra member of staff yesterday. Courtesy of an initiative by the Independent Alliance – a (now defunct) collective of ten independent UK publishers founded by Faber, Toby Mundy the CEO of Atlantic Books worked in the shop during the afternoon, and stayed on to give a talk about independent publishing in the evening. Read More
The World of Ephemera #8
Wool This week’s ephemera post is about a piece of paper that has hidden secrets! Who would have thought that an unpreposessing leaflet like this on the right which appears to be the equivalent of a paint chart for wool would open out into something as glorious as this below … In fact it opens Read More
An author I’ll always look out for …
Daniel Woodrell …is barely known in this country, but has started to increase his profile a little with the release of a highly acclaimed film (it won at Sundance) made of his 2006 novel Winter’s Bone. He’s actually written eight novels, all of them set in the area he knows best – the Missouri Ozarks – Read More
Peirene #3 – Train of thought …
Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman by Friedrich Christian Delius translated by Jamie Bulloch This is the third title from Peirene Press who launched this year publishing thought-provoking short novels of contemporary European literature in luxury paperback editions. Read my thoughts about their first two books here. Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman, appears rather Read More
