Frog Music by Emma Donoghue I haven’t read Donoghue’s famous, or even infamous novel Room. I own a copy, but its dark subject matter requires a certain frame of mind to read and we haven’t coincided yet. I was very keen to read her latest novel Frog Music though, as it’s set in San Francisco Read More
Category: Authors D
‘My Heart Belongs to Daddy’ …
Reasons She Goes to the Woods by Deborah Kay Davies Deborah Kay Davies is one of those writers who does dark brilliantly. Her first novel True Things About Me (my review) was disturbing yet unputdownable – about a thrill-seeking young woman who gets into an abusive relationship. Her second novel, the Baileys longlisted Reasons She Read More
Rebecca covered…
I blame Simon – he started this off last week with posts on bad book covers for classic novels – Wuthering Heights after seeing this post on bad Jane Eyre ones. I thought I’d have a go too – and rather than choose a Victorian novel, I came a little back up the timeline and Read More
Rewarding YA reading for Grown-ups! Let me persuade you…
I’m in my early fifties prime (!) and I’m not afraid to say that I love reading modern YA books now and then … but only good ones, naturally. By using the term ‘YA’ here, I’m distinguishing them from those books we usually call ‘children’s classics’ (which still appeal to readers young and old alike). I’m Read More
An absolute pleasure to dip into …
The Diary of a Provincial Lady by E.M. Delafield I’m so glad I finally decided to give this book a go, as it has been a real pleasure to dip into over the past couple of weeks. As I already reported here, I was smitten by this book from its opening pages. Having obtained an 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
The adventures of a gentleman thief
Raffles: The Amateur Cracksman by E W Hornung Those of a certain age like me, may well remember the 1970s TV series Raffles with some fondness. It starred Anthony Valentine (right) as the titular gentleman thief, and Christopher Strauli as Bunny, his sidekick. A pair of dinner-suited scoundrels fleecing a bunch of toffs to fund Read More
What a stinker! But in a good way…
Mr Stink by David Walliams After watching the BBC’s enjoyable TV version of Mr Stink at Christmas, I was inspired to read the book to see what Walliams, who adapted his own book for the TV, and put in a cameo as the Prime Minister, was like on the page. I had read somewhere that Read More
Losing myself in the Lymond Chronicles
The Game Of Kings by Dorothy Dunnett I reported on my experiences about reading the first half of The Game of Kings, the first volume in Dorothy Dunnett’s saga of 16th century life in the Scottish border country, here. A month later I’ve finished the book and thus the first leg of my plans to read the series. Read More
Gaskella’s Books of 2012
Today is one of those dates that can only happen once every hundred years – 12-12-12, so it’s an ideal time to review my reading year. Yes, in common with many other bloggers, critics and reviewers I’ve picked out the best bits, so here are my personal top ten books that I’ve read in 2012, Read More
The Game of Kings – Half-time thoughts
Phew! I’ve made it to the halfway point of reading my first Dorothy Dunnett book, The Game of Kings – volume one of the Lymond Chronicles. At one stage, I wasn’t sure I’d make it in time for the dates I’d planned… If you’re joining in, how did you do? Although I enjoyed the book Read More
Carnegie Longlist 2013
The longlist for the 2013 Carnegie Medal has been announced and I was please to see quite a few books I’ve already read on it, plus several in my TBR pile – and of course in an ideal world I’d like to read all of them! The Carnegie Medal is awarded annually to an outstanding Read More
Bookmark for The Game of Kings
There is a cast list of major characters at the beginning of my edition of The Game of Kings. For anyone joining in my Doing Dunnett readalong, I’ve made it into a bookmark which can be folded in half and glued/laminated should you so wish. If we make it on to Queen’s play, I’ll do Read More
“Lymond is back.”
These are the first words of the first book, The Game of Kings, by Dorothy Dunnett’s in her series, The Lymond Chronicles. I’ve not read any of Dunnett’s novels, and back at the end of August I mused on whether I should get stuck into her books. The response was tremendous and very encouraging – Read More
Serendipity makes this a timely read from And Other Stories…
Lightning Rods by Helen DeWitt I started reading this book around ten days ago, and was shocked and amused in equal measure – but I paused around a third of the way through to give in to the hype and read JK Rowling’s latest (see previous post here) – and by the time I picked Read More
An exceptional story for all ages…
A Monster Callsby Patrick Ness The British writer Siobhan Dowd won the Carnegie Medal posthumously in 2009 for her last book, Bog Child. She’d started working on another, but died of breast cancer before she had started writing. Her outline was handed to Patrick Ness, author of the acclaimed Chaos Walking trilogy and he wrote the Read More
Should I do Dunnett?
One author I have yet to read is Dorothy Dunnett. I own the first few volumes of the Lymond chronicles thanks to my late Mum. She enjoyed them very much and was re-reading them back then. They are renowned for not being an easy read though, requiring perseverance and frequent referring back or to a Read More
The Glass Books Trilogy – an awfully fun adventure!
The Glass Books Trilogy by G W Dahlquist Bantam in the USA, reputedly paid début novelist Dahlquist an advance of $2,000,000 for the first two installments in this series. Although the first was well received, apparently they lost shedloads of money on the deal. Penguin, the books’ publisher in the UK, also published the first volume with a Read More
Medieval Iceland – a place of cod wars even then…
On the Cold Coasts by Vilborg Davidsdottir Transl Alda Sigmundsdottir At the heart of this novel is the tale of Ragna, a young Icelandic woman from a family with property in Greenland which she will inherit. Still a young teenager, yet betrothed to Thorkell, Ragna becomes unmarriageable when she becomes pregnant by an English sailor 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
“A story of literature and obsession”
The Paper House by Carlos Maria Dominguez, Translated by Nick Caistor This beautifully illustrated novella by Dominguez, an Argentinian author, is about people who are obsessed by books, and whose houses become libraries, (much like Gaskell Towers then, but I jest). It starts with a death… One day in the spring of 1998, Bluma Lennon bought Read More
Aaarrr! Here be Pirates, Aaarrr, me hearties!
This Easter, I shall be hotfooting it to the multiplex to see the latest film from the ever-wonderful Aardman (or should that be Aaarrr-dman, sic) Animations which is called The Pirates – Band of Misfits (Trailer here). With an all star cast of voices including Hugh Grant as the Pirate Captain and Salma Hayek as Read More
The return of everyone’s flying car
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Flies Again by Frank Cottrell Boyce When Mr Tooting is made redundant, he decides he needs a project and, with son Jem’s help, they rebuild an ancient old camper van. Then the plan is to go globe-trotting in it. It needs new vintage sparkplugs though despite all their travails. Off they Read More
Gaskella’s Books of the Year
It’s that time of year again, and I thought I’d highlight my top reads chosen from the 90 I’ve managed to read, so they’re not necessarily published this year. All the books I’ve chosen are ones I gave 9 or more out of ten to; I tend to be generous in my scoring, having given Read More
Generations of mothers and daughters
A Greyhound of a Girl by Roddy Doyle This short novel by the fine Irish writer Roddy Doyle is written for teens, but I thoroughly enjoyed it on an adult level too… Mary O’Hara is twelve. She’s feisty and rather cheeky – but then her Mum Scarlett was too when she was younger; it’s a Read More
Doing what comes naturally …
This post was edited and republished into its original place in my blog timeline from my lost posts archive. Lucky Bunny by Jill Dawson Jill Dawson is one of those authors who appears to write a different book every time, although when you look underneath, there are links. The Great Lover tells the story of poet Read More
My book of the year so far…
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
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
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
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
