I still haven’t been back to the cinema, but in a couple of weeks once my second jab takes full effect, I’d love to see the big screen again. Meanwhile here’s what I’ve been watching this month… Binge-Worthy TV I watched all of The Pact on BBC1, but it wasn’t great. It wasn’t bad, just Read More
#QuickReads 2021
Quick Reads, developed by the Reading Agency is celebrating 15 years of the scheme today. That’s 15 years of encouraging those who don’t read, or find reading difficult, as well as those who don’t have time to read much, to pick up one of their novella length £1 books, written by some of our best-known Read More
Genre-smashing with Jonathan Lethem
The Arrest by Jonathan Lethem Lethem may be best-known for his 1999 bestseller Motherless Brooklyn, which I loved and would like to re-read, it’s essentially a detective novel with a young protagonist who suffers from Tourette’s syndrome. However the majority of his output before and since have been less categorisable novels – genre-mash-ups, like his Read More
Back to Dungeness…
William Shaw is one of the few crime authors I automatically want to read now whenever they have a new book out. Although I’ve still got some catching up to do with his earlier ‘Breen & Tozer’ series set in the 1960s, I am up to date and still loving his ‘DI Alexandra Cupidi’ series Read More
The Whole Truth by Cara Hunter
I’m delighted to be today’s stop on the blog tour for the latest addition to Cara Hunter’s DI Fawley series. The Whole Truth is the fifth, and while thanks to the skilful way that some of the necessary explanations from underlying story arc involving Adam Fawley and his wife Alex are incorporated seamlessly into the Read More
Quizzing and the art of writing good quiz questions
A bit about me and quizzing As an inveterate quizzer, and setter of quizzes, I love testing myself against quiz shows on the small screen and radio, and doing quizzes from my quiz books shelf. I applied for ‘Brain of Britain’ (on R4) this year, but didn’t get through – the audition questions were multiple Read More
Book Group report: N is for Nora Ephron
Heartburn by Nora Ephron Our Book Group have reached the second half of the alphabet! May’s book for discussion was the only novel by the creator of peerless romcoms, When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle, the latter she directed too. She also wrote the screenplay, directed and produced Julie & Julia, the book Read More
The Dylan Thomas Prize 2021 & Kingdomtide by Rye Curtis
This Thursday sees the prize ceremony for one of the most interesting prizes for young writers. Run by Swansea University, The International Dylan Thomas Prize is awarded to the ‘best published literary work in the English language, written by an author aged 39 or under’ – the age of Dylan Thomas at his death. After Read More
Preparing for 20 Books of Summer
I’m so glad that Cathy is running her ‘20 Books of Summer‘ challenge again for 2021. Although I always sign up for the full 20 with good intentions, I’ve never quite managed it yet. Any challenge that gets me reading from my TBR piles is a good nudge for me not to only read the Read More
Famous last words – Just one more job…
Love and Theft by Stan Parish You know me, I LOVE my thrillers. All of ’em. However there are two types I love more than the rest: the first has spies, the second has a heist. Love and Theft is the latter, and I’m delighted to be taking part in the short blog tour for Read More
The Atomics by Paul Maunder
This psychodrama had two great selling points that immediately made me keen to read it. Firstly its timeline is the late 1960s, and secondly it’s set against the backdrop of a nuclear power station. The novel opens with a mystery, that will be explained fully as the story progresses. Frank is out for a walk Read More
Six Degrees of Separation: Beezus and Ramona
My favourite monthly tag, 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 starting book this month is: Beezus and Ramona by Beverly Cleary I’m the right age Read More
April Watchlist
Bingeworthy TV What with the über-excitement of Line of ‘Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the wee donkey’ Duty every Sunday evening, and rewatching each episode to make sure I got as much as possible from it, it’s a miracle I watched any other TV series, but I was very pleased to discover that BBC2 is reshowing Read More
Review catch-up!
This spring into summer period is shaping up to be a huge publishing push, as publishers catch-up with COVID-19 delays. It’s nice to see new books spread out over several months too, which I hope means that more will get the attention they deserve. Will they revert to form in September and October though? Woe Read More
Together – Luke Adam Hawker – Blog Tour
Today, it’s my turn on the blog tour for a deeply lovely book that’s not easy to write about! The lazy way to describe Together would be ‘This year’s The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse‘ for the combination of pictures and words with an ultimately inspirational message has a sort of similar Read More
#BanksRead2021 : 5 The Shock-Jock Thriller One
Dead Air by Iain Banks Phew! Life turned out to be busier than anticipated this week, but I managed to finish reading my third Iain Banks book for my #BanksRead2021 this morning. Now for a quick review! Dead Air, alongside The Steep Approach to Garbadale was one of the two mainstream novels by Banks that Read More
Reading the Decades #3: The 1930s
As a breather from Iain Banks, today, another of my Reading the Decades posts. Those who visit this blog regularly will know of my devotion to contemporary fiction, the shiny and the new. But I’m not really a one-trick pony in my reading. The metrics in my annual reading stats include the number of books Read More
#BanksRead2021: 4 – The Dystopian One
A Song of Stone by Iain Banks There’s something about Scotland that suits dystopias of the military takeover kind–the abundance of castles, lochs and game all play their parts. Distant memory reminds me of the last episodes of the mid-1970s BBC series Survivors which had the plucky survivors in the Highlands, negotiating with a laird Read More
#BanksRead2021: 3 – Dipping into Banks’s Poems
Banks and his close friend, fellow SF author, Ken MacLeod were working on publishing a joint collection of poems as Banks learnt of his terminal diagnosis, and he continued revising in his remaining time, their collaboration being published posthumously in 2015. Banks’s first published work in 1977 was a poem: ‘041’ – more on that Read More
#BanksRead2021: 2 – Which is your favourite Banks novel?
Today, I’m launching a poll to ascertain our favourite Banks novels. You can pick up to three and the poll will run until midnight on Sunday when #BanksRead2021 ends.
#BanksRead2021 : 1 -Walking on Glass
Although this was a re-read for me, given that it’s been 35 years since I read it and it’s not one of Banks’s more celebrated novels, I think I can be forgiven for not remembering a thing about it. I read my first edition UK Futura paperback in the small format, with a white cover Read More
It’s #BanksRead2021 time…
It’s Saturday April 10th, which means it’s #BanksRead 2021 time. I’m going to spend the week and a bit talking about one of my favourite authors of all time, Iain Banks – with or without the ‘M’. I’d like to invite you to join with me to celebrate this much-missed author, by reading one of Read More
The Coming of Christianity and the Beginning of the Death of Magic?
Sistersong by Lucy Holland I read less fantasy these days, but when I do, there’s no type I enjoy more than that with an Arthurian or Dark Ages setting. Sistersong is exactly that, and I found it hard to stop reading this novel which occupies that fertile fantasy crossover land between YA and adult reading, Read More
Discovering a new indie press – Broken Sleep Books
A few weeks ago, I was directly contacted by a new author, Rosanna Hildyard, to see if I’d like to read her booklet of three short stories, Slaughter, published by Broken Sleep Books. I’m a bit cagey about responding to direct author requests, just in case I don’t get on with their work. (Once I Read More
Six Degrees of Separation: Shuggie Bain
My favourite monthly tag, 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 starting book this month is: Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart I haven’t read last year’s Read More
Banksread is nearly here
Fancy joining me in reading something by the late, great, Iain Banks? Well, if you do, let’s do it together, whether you prefer his mainstream novels or science fiction. I’m planning to re-read his second novel ‘Walking on Glass‘, and later ‘A Song of Stone‘, both of which are hazy memories, then I”ll turn to Read More
The Book Blogger’s Prize – the results are in!
It’s been a while coming, but the results are finally in and a winner has been announced. Sadly it wasn’t me! However, I’d like to take the opportunity to say a huge thank you to everyone who voted for me and my review of Piranesi by Susanna Clarke, a book I’ve championed since its publication Read More
March Watchlist
With March feeling fairly never-ending, probably time was going slowly as we inched our way towards the 29th and the first little easing of the lockdown, I’ve managed to squeeze in a lot of films and television. I’ll begin with the telly… Binge-watching and more Telly I am continuing to love Snowpiercer, but am reduced Read More
Reading Ireland Month 2021
Having a Belfast mam and still having a yearning to claim my Irish passport, I couldn’t not join in with Reading Ireland Month 2021, hosted by Cathy at 746 Books. I had long planned to read a modern Irish classic, but it just didn’t do it for me, so I quickly revised my plans – Read More
Shiny Linkiness – Becky Chambers
Just a quick note here to say that my review of Becky Chambers’ final book of the Wayfarer’s Quartet is up at Shiny New Books today. All four novels stand alone, being set in the same galactic milieu with different characters, just a few minimal references to characters in the other novels. You can read Read More
