I must admit to a liking for books featuring dystopian futures. It’s really interesting to see what different authors do with the world left after the breakdown of society. Surprisingly then, I’ve yet to read Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, but it has gone up the list. In Far North by Marcel Theroux – Siberia has been Read More
Author: AnnaBookBel
My Easter kid-lit feast
I’ve decided that in the run-up to Easter, I shall concentrate on children’s literature and ya (young adult) novels. Like many readers, and notably dovegreyreader’s recent theme of revisiting her inner child, I get an awful lot out of reading proper children’s novels, the best of which are the equal of any adult book. However Read More
An evening with (the UK’s) Doctor Phil
So it was off to Abingdon School’s super Amey Theatre on Saturday evening for a couple of hours with the UK’s Doctor Phil – not to be confused with Oprah’s one! Phil Hammond is a doctor in general practice and a very funny comedian, and we were treated to his one man show full of Read More
Loser’s Town by Daniel Depp
Loser’s Town is the first novel by Daniel Depp, half-brother of the more famous Johnny. As a Hollywood insider, it is full of satirical glimpses of life in the public eye and what goes on behind closed doors. Dave Spandau, ex-stuntman turned private eye is an intelligent and gruff hero that you can’t help but warm Read More
Boring Postcards by Martin Parr is anything but!
Boring Postcards by Martin Parr This was a book I rescued from a local charity shop for just £1 and fell in love with instantly. Presented in their original size, beautifully printed onto heavyweight paper with plenty of white space surrounding them, these postcards make a brilliant topic for an art book from Phaidon, masters Read More
Capsule reviews
Sorry – I’ve been extremely busy so far this week, so two capsule reviews for you of what I’ve read recently … Marching Powder by Rusty Young This follows the incarceration of a young black Englishman in Bolivia’s San Pedro prison for drug-trafficking. I would not have got this book if my book group hadn’t Read More
What a show!
Oliver! by Lionel Bart has been my favourite musical ever since the time we performed some selections from the show at primary school, and I was Oliver, aged 11. Ever since then, I’ve needed very little encouragement to launch into Oom Pah Pah! on any suitable occasion or to recreate my star-turn singing the soppy Read More
A chef that stayed …
I was lucky enough to meet Raymond Blanc (very briefly) last year at a signing for this book. All in the room found him completely charming and his passion for food was totally infectious. He took time with everyone, gossiped about his TV series ‘The restaurant’, asked the children there what they liked to cook, Read More
Moviewatch – Burn After Reading
The latest film from the marvellous Coen brothers is another of their darker than dark comedies, a tale of dorky folk who all get caught up in a stupidly bizarrely circular chain of events . Burn After Reading has very few laugh out loud moments, but there are plenty of corner of the mouth secret Read More
Did they actually learn any science?
A new series started on BBC last Friday called ‘Rocket Science’. I don’t shout at the telly much, but I did watching this. An ‘inspirational’ science teacher who loves practical physics and chemistry takes a bunch of typical 13 year old kids who hate the subject and tries to convert them over a period of Read More
You might find this quite interesting …
Brian Eno – he of the bald dome, Roxy Music synth twiddling, U2 producing and of course Music for Airports wrote the Windows start-up theme apparently! Yes – all 3.25 seconds of it – so you can blame him every time you fire up your PC. However he’s such an interesting chap you can’t hold Read More
Opposites attract
Benny and Shrimp by Katarina Mazetti Translated by Sarah Death I’m doing well with my resolution to read more translated fiction – eight out of twenty books read so far this year. Benny and Shrimp by Katarina Mazetti is yet another brilliant Nordic novel from Sweden to be translated for us to read. Both heartwarming Read More
Guilty Secrets #3
This is another entry in the occasional series where I own up to not having read something. Today I am owning up to not having read the literary quarterly ‘Magazine of New Writing’ Granta. Nothing wrong with that you may say – literary quarterlies are often an acquired taste. The shocking thing is though that Read More
This great book will mess with your mind!
The Juggler by Sebastian Beaumont Last year one of my favourite new books, and really deserving of five stars, was Sebastian Beaumont’s debut novel, the marvellous Thirteen. Framed around the strange life of a depressed night-cabbie, it was multilayered, darkly surreal and edgy. It played tricks with your mind, (which with hindsight reminds me of Read More
Like Mother Like Daughter?
I’ve just read another two books about mothers and daughters. These short novels are rather different to the mother and daughter story in my last post though … Troubling Love by Elena Ferrante … is the first novel by one of Italy’s most acclaimed contemporary authors, a Neapolitan, who shuns publicity and is rather an Read More
Songs of Blue and Gold by Deborah Lawrenson
A few weeks ago the author of this book Deborah Lawrenson, having followed a trail from a comment I’d left on dovegreyreader scribbles to my blog, sent me a note to ask if I’d like to read her latest book. I was absolutely delighted, as once I’d visited Deborah’s website her books sounded very much Read More
To star or not to star …
Opinion has always been divided about whether or not to give ratings for books – be it points out of ten, stars out of five, or any other system you choose. When all is said and done, the words written about a book reveal far more than a mere rating. So why bother with the Read More
Spread the Word – World Book Day – The Shortlist
The Spread the Word shortlist is out. This is part of World Book Day, and the 100 books to talk about have been whittled down to the last ten as voted for by vistors to the site. You can vote until Feb 27th for the winner. One of the books on the longlist that didn’t Read More
Great title, great cover …
Up a Tree in the Park at Night with a Hedgehog by Paul Robert Smith Could the second book I’ve read in the past few months to feature the word ‘hedgehog’ in the title possibly be as good as the first here? Sadly, no – Up a Tree in the Park at Night with a Read More
Probability Angels by Joseph Devon
I won a copy of this book on a giveaway over at Me and My Big Mouth. Based on the snippet of blurb it sounded quirky and intriguing. I was surprised when it arrived on the doormat, as a) it was sent out from the USA, and b) it turns out that the author Joseph Read More
Bring on the revolution?
The Courilof Affair by Irene Nemirovsky The Russian Minister for Education, Courilof, is notorious for his cold-bloodedness and brutality and has been selected to be liquidated publicly to send a message to the masses that the revolution is coming. It’s 1903 and Leon M is assigned to the task. His initial job is to become Read More
Kitchen chemistry
As I’ve been very busy this week, and I’ve let myself get bogged down in a short novel of only 165 pages, I’m writing about something else again today… One of the nicest parts of working as a lab technician in a school is when you get to help the children in the classroom during Read More
I’m not going out on Tuesdays now (unless I get back early!)…
Last night saw the return of one of my favourite TV series from last year – the second season of Mad Men started, and it looks just as good as ever. Everything about this show is so stylish, they put an immense amount of research into getting it exactly right for the period at the Read More
Stevenson Under the Palm Trees by Alberto Manguel
An odd little novella about Robert Louis Stevenson; this edition is lushly produced with posh covers and illustrated with some of Stevenson’s own woodcuts (at 105 pages of big text it needs to justify its £7.99 price tag!). It’s a story based on Stevenson’s last days in Samoa as he is dying of tuberculosis. After Read More
I was a ’70s teenager!
As I’m currently reading a real chunkster with some way to go, I thought I’d post about music today. I was born in 1960 (I don’t feel that old mind!), so my teenage years spanned the whole of the ’70s. I can’t help but look back on the decade through rose-tinted glasses, and will forever Read More
My new rules for keeping books once read & GIVEAWAY!
It’s no good, my book mountains seem to be more and more like the Himalayas every day, new piles thrust up from spare bits of floor in the study, and existing ones seem to get higher and higher. I’ve probably got about fifteen years worth of reading if I can manage a hundred or more Read More
Friday Nights by Joanna Trollope
Recently I saw Joanna Trollope talk about her latest novel Friday Nights and wrote about it here. She was a great speaker and we had fun listening to her talk about her new experiences in researching for this book, and I had no hesitation in getting a signed copy. Now I’ve read the book, and, Read More
A Life’s Music by Andrei Makine
Translated by Geoffrey Strachan Last week I wrote here about Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith, a thriller set in Stalin’s USSR, with train tracks on the cover. Well I followed it up with another book set in Stalin’s USSR some years earlier during the war, which also has a railway line on the cover, Read More
John Martyn R.I.P.
Just heard that one of the greats of jazz-folk John Martyn has died. He was only 60 and was made an OBE in the New Years Honours just recently. I never got to see him live, and only really discovered his music in 1991 when he released The Apprentice as it featured Dave Gilmour, but Read More
An armchair traveller’s delight
The Travel Book by Lonely Planet Here’s my full written review… This is the new smaller format edition of Lonely Planet’s previous coffee table giant, but it’s still a doorstoppingly thick brick of a book! It has to be 900 pages to give even the tiniest snapshot of every country in the world, (plus a Read More
