This post was edited and republished into my blog’s orignal timeline from my lost post archive. See, being an eternal optimist, I can’t even bring myself to say the word ‘suicide’ in my blog post title – yet as a subject of teen novels, I’m seeing it and mental health related illness cropping up more and Read More
Category: Authors E
John Buchan meets Umberto Eco via Dan Brown
The Pendragon Legend by Antal Szerb, translated by Len Rix OK – so I put Dan Brown into the title of this post to grab your attention! While I totally agree with the rest of the world that the Da Vinci Code is not great literature, there is no denying that however silly the whole Read More
My Books of the Year 2013
I’ve had a great reading year in 2013. I’ve managed to read more books than the past few years, topping the hundred mark, and at the time of review thirteen of those scored ten out of ten. Not all of those will make my list below though, as the score is just a snapshot – Read More
Ten Books that Represent Great Britain
A couple of days ago, Simon at Savidge Reads and Thomas at My Porch created a new meme (Yes Simon, I know you didn’t want to call it a meme, but it is one – a nice one!). The challenge is to pick ten books that sum up your own country geographically but authors from that Read More
“If a loving yuh looking for yuh buck upon the right one”
Mr Loverman by Bernardine Evaristo. This novel has gone straight into my shortlist of books of the year – I loved every single page. It is both hilariously funny yet compassionate and bittersweet, and eminently quotable. Meet sharp-suited seventy-four year old Barrington Jedidiah Walker, who emigrated from Antigua in the 1960s and has lived in Hackney 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
An unusual friendship
The Universe Versus Alex Woods by Gavin Extence Alex Woods is an unique young boy. It’s not that he is prime material for bullying because his single mum is a clairvoyant white witch who runs a new-age shop in Glastonbury, he has a much more bizarre claim to fame that has come to dominate his Read More
If you go down to the woods today …
The Devil’s Beat by Robert Edric Reading the blurb of the latest novel from Edric, I had visions of Arthur Miller’s masterpiece, The Crucible, updated to the early 20th century but actually, it has more in common with The Suspicions of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale. Four girls claim to have seen the Devil while Read More
This had me in fits …
Browsing in my super-local-indie-bookshop Mostly Books yesterday, my eye was drawn to this sitting by the till… Wendy: The Bumper Book of Fun for Women of a Certain Age by Jenny Eclair and Judith Holder. It’s a girl’s type annual for grumpy old women by one of the sharpest comedians on the planet. I only Read More
