I am delighted to be one of those leading off the blog tour for this page-turning thriller. Imagine, if you will, that there is a long lineage of the world’s greatest hitmen – seventeen ‘generations’ actually – and that you only get to the top of the tree by killing the current leader. So seventeen Read More
Category: Authors B
Six Degrees of Separation: Time Shelter
First Saturday of the month, time for the super monthly tag Six Degrees of Separation, which is hosted by Kate at Booksaremyfavouriteandbest, Six Degrees of Separation #6degrees picks a starting book for participants to go wherever it takes them in six more steps. Links to my reviews are in the titles of the books chosen. This month Read More
Announcing another Beryl Bainbridge Reading Week
When Facebook reminded me that I had memories from June 2016, I was shocked to think it was that long ago that I last hosted a Beryl Bainbridge Reading Week! Beryl is one of my favourite authors, and I first hosted a BBRW in 2012, repeating in in 2016. Amazingly I still have a few Read More
Six Degrees of Separation: Friendaholic
First Saturday of the month, time for the super monthly tag Six Degrees of Separation, which is hosted by Kate at Booksaremyfavouriteandbest, Six Degrees of Separation #6degrees picks a starting book for participants to go wherever it takes them in six more steps. Links to my reviews are in the titles of the books chosen. This month Read More
Six Degrees of Separation: Hydra
First Saturday of the month, time for the super monthly tag Six Degrees of Separation, which is hosted by Kate at Booksaremyfavouriteandbest, Six Degrees of Separation #6degrees picks a starting book for participants to go wherever it takes them in six more steps. Links to my reviews are in the titles of the books chosen. This month Read More
The Acapulco by Simone Buchholz – Blogtour
Translated by Rachel Ward I joined Buchholz’s Chastity Riley series at #4 Hotel Cartagena, which was an amazing introduction to the fiesty, smoking, hard-drinking Hamburg State Prosecutor – she was caught in a hotel penthouse bar siege, with blood poisoning gradually affecting her which made for a truly different first person narrative. I followed her Read More
Watchlist: Feb into March
Theatre: The Tempest – Shakespeare’s Globe I went with our Year 8s to a special Schools Production of The Tempest at the open air Globe in London. Cut down to ninety minutes. So we got Prospero and Ariel’s magic, Miranda and Ferdinand’s love story, the drunken antics of Trinculo, Stefano and Caliban (the latter in Read More
Six Degrees of Separation: Passages by Gail Sheehy
First Saturday of the month, time for the super monthly tag Six Degrees of Separation, which is hosted by Kate at Booksaremyfavouriteandbest, Six Degrees of Separation #6degrees picks a starting book for participants to go wherever it takes them in six more steps. Links to my reviews are in the titles of the books chosen. This month Read More
Our Man in Kuwait by Louise Burfitt-Dons – Blogtour
The town of Ahmadi in Kuwait was only established in 1946 after the discovery of oil there, and the town built up around the operations of the Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) – it remains the KOC’s headquarters today. Many British and American ex-pats settled there and worked for the oil company, and entertainment centred around Read More
A Very Thought-Provoking Novella in Translation for #NovNov22
I had hoped to write more posts, but a very busy week with school trips, reports to proofread, and our big fireworks event on Friday meant I was too tired to write, or read much this week. The fireworks were great! But, luckily, I got some serious novella reading in the previous week, so here’s Read More
Two Modern Classics from Faber Editions #NovNov22
I adore reading novellas all year round, but particularly when we focus on them in November with the reading event hosted by Cathy and Rebecca. Week one concentrates on ‘classics’ – which are defined as pre-1980 for these purposes. Although one of the titles I’m including in this post was published after 1980 in 1982, Read More
Six Degrees of Separation: The Naked Chef
First Saturday of the month, and it’s time for the super monthly tag Six Degrees of Separation, which is hosted by Kate at Booksaremyfavouriteandbest, Six Degrees of Separation #6degrees picks a starting book for participants to go wherever it takes them in six more steps. Links to my reviews are in the titles of the books. This Read More
Salt Crystals by Cristina Bendek
Translated by Robin Myers Released earlier this month, this is the latest title from Charco Press, the Latin American translation specialists, by Colombian author Cristina Bendek. The setting is San Andrés, a small island in the Caribbean Sea which although geographically closer to Nicaragua, is under Colombian rule. It wasn’t always so, the Dutch settlers Read More
Keeping up the blog stats – YES! Bythell is Back!
Remainders of the Day by Shaun Bythell It’s a running joke for me that my all-time most viewed post on this blog is ‘Return to Wigtown‘ that I wrote about the second volume of diaries by Shaun Bythell, owner of the Wigtown Bookshop. That book was published in 2019, and my write-up has amassed over Read More
Six Degrees of Separation: Wildcard
First Saturday of the month, and it’s time for the super monthly tag Six Degrees of Separation, which is hosted by Kate at Booksaremyfavouriteandbest, Six Degrees of Separation #6degrees picks a starting book for participants to go wherever it takes them in six more steps. Links to my reviews are in the titles of the books. This Read More
The Black Dog by Kevin Bridges
There is one sense in which the pandemic lock-downs have been a good thing: for many who were sure they had a novel inside them, all those months at home provided the concentrated time to try writing it. One of those new novelists is the Glaswegian comedian Kevin Bridges, who is famed for his storytelling Read More
Whisper of the Seals by Roxanne Bouchard Blog tour
Translated by David Warriner Today it’s my turn on the blog tour for the French-Canadian author’s latest crime thriller, set around Quebec’s Gaspé Peninsula, and the third to feature DS Joaquin Moralès. While I would love to now read the first two, there was not too much backstory to Moralès, so this novel stood up Read More
Two shorter reviews for #20BooksofSummer
I’m doing well with my 20 Books of Summer 22, hosted by Cathy at 746 Books, reaching 17/20 so I have every hope of completing my 20 Books I acquired before 2022 from my TBR. Two slightly shorter reviews for you today – a small town America psychological drama and that the book set in Read More
The Forgery by Ave Barrera
Translated by Ellen Jones and Robin Myers It’s my turn on the blog tour today for this super novel from Charco Press which hailing from Mexico, was written in Spanish, and thus also fits in with Spanish & Portuguese Lit Month hosted by Stu. There’s something that draws me to novels about art and artists Read More
More #20BooksofSummer22 – Braithwaite & Mason
No 5: Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason So much was written about this novel when published last year, and then it was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize this year and even more got written. I acquired my copy last summer – put it in a pile and forgot about it until this summer! As Read More
Six Degrees of Separation: Wintering
First Saturday of the month, and it’s time for the super monthly tag Six Degrees of Separation, which is hosted by Kate at Booksaremyfavouriteandbest, Six Degrees of Separation #6degrees picks a starting book for participants to go wherever it takes them in six more steps. Links to my reviews are in the titles of the books. Our Read More
Heritage by Miguel Bonnefoy – An Epic Novella
Translated by Emily Boyce Originally I planned to review this novella for Shiny, but I was enjoying it so much I neglected to make notes and mark pages to come back to. Then, when I sat down to write the usual longer form review that we aim for at Shiny, I couldn’t manage to write Read More
England’s library estate (with detours)
Before getting started with my review of the book pictured above, I just wanted to share a little about the three Croydon Borough libraries that shaped my childhood and adolescence. Coulsdon Library was the one I went to as a child every weekend to replenish my stock of reading materials. The children’s library had a Read More
River Clyde by Simone Buchholz – Blog Tour
Translated by Rachel Ward I first met German state prosectutor Chastity Riley last year when I read the fourth book to be translated in the series by ‘Queen of Krimi’ Simone Buchholz. Hotel Cartagena was very different to what I expected – not a legal crime thriller but rather more like Die Hard in Hamburg, Read More
My Year in Irish Lit
It’s Week 2 of Reading Ireland Month, hosted by Cathy at 746 Books and Raging Fluff. The prompt for this week is ‘My Year in Irish Lit’, and it is a pleasure to go back through the year to last March and see how many books by Irish authors I read – I was pleasantly surprised by the Read More
Review of the Year #3: 2021, Books of the Year!
I still award a score to the majority of books I read – out of 10, including halfs (so out of 20 really!). Those scores are only snapshots of course, and some books fade from your memory as others, which maybe scored lower initially, stay or grow. I read 150 books this year, of which Read More
“It was a pleasure to burn.” Twice!
What an iconic first line: one of those that often comes up in quizzes. Ray Bradbury’s 1953 novel Fahrenheit 451 is an absolute classic of spec fiction which I first read in the 1970s. I invested in the lovely Folio Society edition some years ago, but was finally spurred on to reread it due to Read More
#NovNov – Review round-up – 4 more novellas/short NF
I had a great month (plus a few days at the end of October) fitting in as many novellas as I could alongside other reading for #SciFiMonth and general for Novellas in November hosted by Rebecca at Bookish Beck and Cathy at 746 Books. I’m left with several yet to review – two short NF reads, and Read More
Kings of a Dead World by Jamie Mollart
Earlier this year, I was approached by Jamie to see if I’d like to read his Spec SF novel. I’m often slightly wary of direct author approaches in case I have to disappoint, but having fallen in love with the cover, I am relieved to tell you that this is a superb novel. It shows Read More
Two novellas for German Literature Month XI & #NovNov
Yet again, I can combine two reading months into one post. German Literature Month is now into its second decade, hosted by LIzzy and Caroline, and Novellas in November was taken over last year by Bookish Beck and Cathy at 746 Books. I chose two very different novellas, one with a true crime feel, and one set Read More
