Today science writer Marcus Chown’s blog tour to promote his book What a Wonderful World: One Man’s Attempt to Explain the Big Stuff, stops here! Marcus is the cosmology consultant of New Scientist magazine, and has published several successful popular science volumes which have delighted science enthusiasts on cosmology, quantum physics, and other physics concepts, Read More
Category: Authors C
For popular science book fans …
A little bit of advance publicity. Marcus Chown writes for New Scientist, and has a new book coming out on October 3rd. It’s called What a Wonderful World: One Man’s Attempt to Explain the Big Stuff, and I’m delighted to be taking part in his blog tour. You can see all the blogs taking part Read More
A tale of two Richards …
Lion Heart by Justin Cartwright Richard I was a king I know very little about. The sum total of my knowledge comprises little more than knowing that he went on the crusades to the Holy Land, his mother was Eleanor of Acquitaine, and the minstrel Blondel was supposedly involved in his release from imprisonment in an Read More
Rule Britannia …
Expo 58 by Jonathan Coe I’ve long been a fan of Jonathan Coe, enjoying all of the books of his that I’ve read so far, from the broad comedy of What a carve up, to the heartbreak of The Rain Before it Falls, via the 1970s revisited in The Rotter’s Club. I was lucky enough Read More
Hollywood Noir down Mexico Way
Bitter Drink by FG Haghenbeck, translated from the Spanish by Tanya Huntingdon. Whenever I read some noir, I know I should read lots more, for I love it, but I get distracted onto other things – I think it’s a dead cert that’ll happen this time too. Meanwhile, although this slim novel is no masterpiece, Read More
What price progress for the peasant farmer?
Harvest by Jim Crace Harvest should mark a time to celebrate a year’s bounty, but right from the start of Crace’s atmospheric new novel, there’s a hint of underlying darkness to come. When strangers come to the village, announcing their arrival by a smoking fire, normal life is upset. When the Master’s dovecote is Read More
Penguin Bloggers Night
It was pleasure and privilege to be invited once again to Penguin’s Bloggers Night held in the third floor gallery at Foyles. Thank you to Penguin, and especially Lija there who arranged the evening. It is always especially pleasurable to meet up with blogging friends old and new. It always amazes me that we all Read More
Midweek Musings …
Dear Readers, I am smitten! No, not a new man in my life, but a book. Finally, inspired by Simon’s Guest post on Vulpes Libris, I dug out my copy of The Diary of a Provincial Lady, by E.M. Delafield. By page two, I was lapping it up, and I shall be dipping into this Read More
Back-Blogging – Five old posts about …
As I’m currently: only 88 pages into my current 470 page read, going out twice this week, and busy at work too, so it could be a few days before I have a book to review… so I thought I’d have a quick delve into my archives. To make it more fun, I’ve chosen a linking subject Read More
The other half's story …
Mr Bridge (Penguin Modern Classics) by Evan S Connell Written ten years after his 1959 novel Mrs Bridge, Connell’s companion piece Mr Bridge tells the story of the Bridge family through the same time period from the 1930s into WWII, but from the husband’s point of view. I read and adored Mrs Bridge a couple of weeks Read More
A life unfulfilled, funny but full of melancholy…
Mrs Bridge by Evan S Connell Just before Christmas, I acquired a review copy of the imminent Penguin Modern Classics reissue of Mr Bridge by Evan S Connell. I knew nothing about the book at all, but the synopsis intrigued me. Finding that Connell had previously written Mrs Bridge, and that Mr Bridge was therefore Read More
Getting to grips with the phenomenon that is Lee Child
Killing Floor: (Jack Reacher 1) by Lee Child Lee Child is a phenomenon. Made redundant by Granada TV at the age of forty, the Sheffield man who had initially studied law turned to writing and created the series of thrillers featuring Jack Reacher – there are now seventeen of them. Child is a worldwide bestselling 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
A new heart of darkness?
The Devil’s Garden by Edward Docx Set primarily in the last inhabited river station up a tributary of the mighty Amazon, The Devil’s Garden conjures up strong visions and parallels. You immediately think of other ‘jungle’ novels – Heart of Darkness being the obvious one of course, and indeed they do share some heavy themes. Read More
Book Group Report – Rutshire Redux
A couple of weeks ago, I reviewed our Book Group’s January read here. This week we met, so here’s an update on what the group thought about Riders by Jilly Cooper. I was the only woman in our group who’d never read a Jilly Cooper novel. The rest had read quite a few over the Read More
Australian Literature Month – Just about made it!
This January has been Australian Literature Month, hosted by Kim at Reading Matters, and the interweb has been alive with Aussie Lit. Before I give my thoughts on the book I read for the month, I’d like to recall my very first experience of Australian books… It was the early 1970s I think, and my Read More
Sex & Show-jumping – only in Rutshire!
Riders by Jilly Cooper. I have never had a personal desire to get on a horse, but watching show-jumping on telly was a fixture that I looked forward to while growing up. The Horse of the Year Show with the Puissance always ending with that gigantic wall getting higher and higher, the relay races, and the Read More
Gaskella Archive – 2011 in Miscellany posts
As I did for 2010 (see here), I’ve put together many of the snippets I posted on my old blog, but were lost in the transfer here, into one collection for 2011. Enjoy… May-2011 – An appropriate address … I’m still sifting through the home library and TBR searching for books I can bear to part Read More
What is normal anyway?
Sherry Cracker Gets Normal by D J Connell Sherry Cracker is not a normal girl – she’s a loner, loves tartan trousers, facts, and obsessively documents all the graffiti she sees around her town in her ‘OBSERVATIONS’ file. She works for Chinese businessman Mr Chin, in an office above the closed-down cinema, where they buy Read More
Cold war secrets the spooks can’t hide …
The Trinity Six by Charles Cumming We know about the Cambridge Five – Philby, Burgess, Maclean, Cairncross and Blunt. What if there had been a sixth man in this spy ring? What if that sixth man wanted to tell his story? What if his story could cause shame not just to the Russians but the British Read More
Press rewind and edit … Two novellas by Robert Coover
Briar Rose & Spanking the Maid by Robert Coover Earlier this year, I discovered American author Robert Coover when I was sent his volume in the Pengiun Mini Modern Classics series to read and review (click here). One of the three stories in that collection, a novella called The Babysitter, was a mini masterpiece; the other two Read More
Is this a case of middle-aged disappointment?
This post was edited and republished back into my blog’s original timeline from my lost posts archive. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Now my daughter is ten, she tends to read books to herself, but I still read to her at bedtime when there’s a book she requests. We’ve had great fun revisiting some of her 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
Too little too late?
All That Follows by Jim Crace It’s 2024 and the eve of jazzman Lennie Less’ 50th birthday. Leonard is on a break from sax-playing – he has a frozen shoulder. Sitting in front of the telly, he hears about a siege in a town not so far away, then he sees a photo of the hostage-taker; it’s Read More
Tales of beasts, wolves and crafty maidens
The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angela Carter I tried reading one of AC’s novels many years ago, but it was the wrong book for me at that time. When Claire at Paperback Reader who is a huge fan decided to host an Angela Carter month, it was time to try again. I’m glad Read More
Heatwaves can be murder!
August Heat by Andrea Camilleri Translated by Stephen Sartarelli This is the third of Camilleri’s novels that I’ve read, the tenth in the popular series featuring Inspector Salvo Montalbano, and it was the most enjoyable yet. It’s nearing the middle of August and the heat in Sicily is getting unbearable. Montalbano’s girlfriend Livia is arriving Read More
136 pages of Classic Noir
Double Indemnity by James M Cain I love the classic crime noir novels of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, but somehow never got round to read any by James M Cain. I wanted a short novel to fill in a couple of hours and with these 136 pages published in 1943, I found a perfect Read More
Entirely bonkers! But all the best people are.
Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland As you would expect of a Tim Burton film, this was such a visual treat, spectacular to look at from start to finish. We begin with young Alice having nightmares, then cut to nineteen year old Alice on the way to a garden party, where the toothsome fop Hamish will ask Read More
A Favourite Author – Michael Connelly
Weekly Geeks, the bookbloggers community website, posed an irresistible task for this week’s topic – to tell us about a favourite author and why you love their books. I’ve raved about Paul Auster who is my real literary hero before, so thought I’d talk about another very different author whose books I love today. I’ve Read More
Book Group Report – The Death of Grass
The Death of Grass by John Christopher A while ago I reviewed The Death of Grass by John Christopher (click here for the review. On Monday we discussed it at our Book Group, and it was a big hit. Unusually, everyone really enjoyed it, and although this meant no arguments, we did have a lively Read More
