Alice in Time by Penelope Bush This was our book group’s choice for our June meeting, chosen partly as Bush is the cousin of one of our members, but also as we haven’t read a young adult book for twelve months – we usually pick one per year. Alice is 14. She’s been best friends with Read More
Category: Authors B
More modern vampires
Fledgling by Octavia E Butler Fledgling was the last choice for the season of the ‘Not the TV Book Group’, and the lively discussion was hosted by Kim at Reading Matters. Published shortly before the author died, Fledgling is another different and slightly SF take on the vampire novel. Shori looks like a twelve year old black girl, but is actually Read More
A Promising Pair
Introducing Peirene Press Peirene Press, named after a Greek nymph who turned into a water spring which was drunk by poets for inspiration, is a new publishing house specialising in contemporary European literature of novella length in translation. I was lucky enough to win a copy of their first novel from Librarything, and was offered Read More
Whatever Happened to Snail Mail?
Burley Cross Postbox Theft by Nicola Barker I was really keen to read Nicola Barker’s new book. I’ve read three others of hers, (although not her Booker shortlisted chunkster Darkmans yet). In those books I found she has a rare feel for ordinary people’s lives in and around London, capturing lifestyles and dialogue perfectly with great wit. Clear: A Read More
An Education – See the film, read the book
Usually I always read the book before the film, but in the case of An Education by Lynn Barber, I saw the film on DVD first. In this case it didn’t matter, for the events that were adapted for the film, composed just a chapter in her memoir. It was originally written as an article for Granta magazine and Read More
Book Group Report – Celebrity Memoirs!
My S**t Life So Far by Frankie Boyle Out of all the celebrity memoirs available out there that we could have picked to read in our Book Group, we ended up with Frankie Boyle’s! For anyone who hasn’t seen the comedy panel game Mock the Week on BBC2, he’s a foul-mouthed Glaswegian comic who can be relied Read More
A novel to make your skin creep…
Skin Lane by Neil Bartlett Mr F has worked for 33 of his 47 years in the fur trade in 60s London and is a master cutter who takes pride in his work. A bachelor, he leads a strictly ordered life, running by a to the minute timetable that rarely deviates. It’s not a normal Read More
Weekly Geeks – Author Fun Facts
Weekly Geeks* is a bookbloggers community website which runs a weekly task for bloggers which you can participate in whenever you fancy. I’d not looked at it before but Jackie’s post at farmlanebooks on Jose Saramago piqued my interest, so I’m joining in this week. The task is to take an author who interests you and find Read More
The Truman Show meets Dickensian melodrama
Pastworld by Ian Beck Welcome to Pastworld. Imagine that London has been reinvented as a theme park; that Dickensian London has been recreated in every detail. Rich tourists undergo immersion training, get costumed and are then brought in by airship to become ‘gawkers’ in this new, old world. Caleb, son of Lucius Brown, one of Read More
What happens when the woman of your dreams becomes a reality?
I’ve been saving a few reviews to post until I’m ready to start talking about vampires in my Season of the Living Dead. So today it’s time to introduce you to: Miss Hargreaves by Frank Baker Norman and his friend Henry are on holiday in Ireland. They duck into a church to shelter from the Read More
Short Takes
Catching up on some shorter reviews … Amulet by Roberto Bolano Translated by Chris Andrews To paraphrase the Cranberries album title, Everybody else is reading it, so why can’t I? – I’ve finally read some Roberto Bolano. He is definitely the flavour of the moment; his posthumously published epic 2666 is generating acres of discussion Read More
From Wilson to Thatcher – what a decade!
When the Lights Went Out: Britain in the Seventies by Andy Beckett The 1970s were my formative years. I was ten years old in 1970, so I was a Seventies teenager. My 1970s were full of being a teenybopper with my beloved David Cassidy, girl guides then the youth club, and the hard graft of Read More
Sheer Poetry – a remarkable read
Cloud Busting by Malorie Blackman This is unlike any other children’s story I have ever read. A series of 26 short poems, telling the story of Sam and Davey, and all about bullying and friendship, secrets and lies, and the terrible thing that happened one day … Told entirely in Sam’s voice, the poems are Read More
A realistic novel of pampered pets and fearsome beasts in Ancient Rome
Tiger, Tiger by Lynne Reid Banks Two tiger cubs brought to Rome – one is destined for the arena; the other is defanged, booted and becomes a much loved pet for the Emperor’s daughter Aurelia who is twelve. She begins to fall for the tiger’s handler Julius, to her cousin Marcus’ dismay. When a prank 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
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
Three from the archives …
Let me introduce you to three books I particularly enjoyed reading back in 2006 … Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen Life in a travelling circus was hard, and when anything happened to upset the equilibrium it became brutal, as this well-researched novel details. These crises come one after the other here making this book Read More
Le Manoir comes to Abingdon
There was great excitement in Abingdon on Saturday. Raymond Blanc was coming to Mostly Books to do a signing – one of only a handful around the country for his autobiography A taste of my life . I got there half an hour early and was about 15th in the queue. By the time he Read More
Oct-Nov Book Group Report
Nine of us met at the new Ask? Italian in Abingdon last night for our monthly meeting. We had 2 books to discuss as October’s was cancelled. A nice place to eat, although slightly pricey for what you get, Ask? was not the ideal venue for a discussion as the high ceiling with gallery (it’s Read More
Boy in the striped pyjamas by John Boyne.
A lot has been written about this book, especially since it was filmed, so I came to it having realised the ending, but I hadn’t worked out how it happens. Told from the point of view of nine year old Bruno, the son of a high ranking soldier who gets promoted to become the Commandant Read More
Underneath its prickles is a charming story …
The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery Translated from the French by Alison Anderson. Get past the prickles in this novel by Muriel Barbery, and there is a charming story underneath. It’s told from the alternating viewpoints of Renée, a widowed concierge who has a love of philosophy, cinema and Tolstoy, and Paloma, an incredibly Read More
I Love Lists!
Books about books are like a magnet to me – if they’re booklist books, they have even more pull. They can also drive you mad when you find your own favourites titles or novelists are missing and others you think less of are included. Any book of this kind is entirely subjective and the opinion Read More
