This post was edited and republished into its original place in my blog’s timeline from my lost posts archive. Lord of the Flies by William Golding Conceived, so I’ve read, as a response to the Utopian and rose-tinted worlds of Swallows and Amazons, and in particular, Ballantyne’s Coral Island, Golding’s Lord of the Flies, published in Read More
The case of the nasty young man
This post was republished into my blog’s original timeline from my lost posts archive. Dirty Snow by Georges Simenon Translated by Marc Romano and Louise Varèse For most of us, Simenon is famous, justly, for his creation of Maigret, the pipe-smoking French detective that appeared in over a hundred novels and short stories from the 1930s Read More
The mad scientist and his red ray
This post was edited and republished into my blog’s timeline from my lost posts archive. The Fatal Eggs by Mikhail Bulgakov Translated by Roger Cockerell Pre-blog, back in 2006, we read The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov in our book group and I loved it. This novel about the devil coming to a town of Read More
Two Psycho-thrillers: SJ Watson & Sophie Hannah
This post is combined from two in my lost posts archive, republished into their original place in my blog’s timeline. Before I Go To Sleep by S J Watson There is a lot of love out there for this novel. Despite the hype though, given the type of psychological thriller that it is, it was Read More
Playing by the rules …
Rules of Civility by Amor Towles Scene: New York City, 1966 – an elderly couple, Katey and Val, are at a gallery viewing of photographs, all taken of passengers on the subway over many years. The same man occurs in two photos, but in obviously different circumstances years apart. Katey recognises him – it’s Tinker Grey… 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
Book Group Report – The Little Stranger
This post was edited and republished into my blog’s timeline in its original place from my lost posts archives. The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters This made a great choice for a book group (as long as you have the time to read it’s 500+ pages), because we all had differing ideas on the mystery Read More
How to live alone and get by, Brookner style…
This post was edited and republished into my blog’s original timeline from my old blog lost posts archive. 16 July 2011, will be Anita Brookner’s 83rd birthday, and has been renamed International Anita Brookner Day by Thomas at Hogglestock and Simon at Savidge Reads. To celebrate this author, they have set up the IABD Website with a competition to win AB books Read More
Stephen King’s Dark Tower #2
The Dark Tower Book 2: The Drawing of the Three by Stephen King It’s month 2 of the Dark Tower Readalong hosted by Teresa and Jenny at Shelf Love. If you want to catch up with the first book, click to my review here, as I won’t re-explain what happened before. Book 2 starts exactly where we left Roland, the Read More
A Wartime Romance
This post was edited and republished back into my blog’s original timeline from my lost posts archive. The Novel in the Viola by Natasha Solomons In the same way that we all rejoiced when the TV powers that be gave us Downton Abbey and resurrected Upstairs Downstairs, not to mention the Oscar-winning success of The Read More
The spirit of Sir Humphrey lives on …
Salmon Fishing in the Yemen by Paul Torday (republished into its original place in the time-line from my lost post archive) This was our Book Group choice to read in May, and all those who made it, enjoyed this book. There were different degrees of love ranging from a good read to fantastic, but no-one Read More
Vinyl Memories – the 7″ single…
I originally published this post back in 2011. With the resurgence in popularity of records on vinyl, despite having kept just a small box full out of the 100s I sold, I’m acquiring a record deck again! All those pictured below still survive in my ‘If I ever had a juke-box’ pile. Nostalgia of a 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
The spirit of Hemingway lives on…
Tomorrow Pamplona by Jan van Mersbergen translated from the Dutch by Laura Watkinson There’s no mistaking it – Tomorrow Pamplona is a very masculine novel. It combines boxing and bull-running with two men on a road-trip; but thankfully, there is much more to it than just those testosterone-fuelled scenarios. With these subjects, you can’t not compare it to Read More
3 shorter reviews – Nesbo – Sabato – Teller
This post was edited and republished into my blog’s original timeline from my lost post archive. The Tunnel by Ernesto Sabato Translated by Margaret Sayers Peden, foreword by Colm Tóibín Ernesto Sabato died recently, just two months short of his one hundredth birthday. He was regarded as one of the greats of Argentinian literature, having Read More
Stephen King’s Dark Tower #1
The Dark Tower Book 1: The Gunslinger by Stephen King It’s simply years since I read any Stephen King, and then I only read his horror stories. I was only vaguely aware that he had written a series which was a dark fantasy. Then Jenny and Teresa at Shelflove decided to launch a readalong of The Dark Tower, 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
3 from April 2011 Set in the USA – Waite – Millar – Kwok
The Terror of Living by Urban Waite – A fine backwoods thriller… It was the quote from Daniel Woodrell, an author of whom I’m a huge fan, on the cover that made me instantly want to read this book, a debut novel set in the backwoods border country near Seattle. To all outward appearances it’s a crime thriller, Read More
2 YA/Children’s novels from April 2011 – Chris Westwood & Sally Nicholls
On the side of the angels – Ministry of Pandemonium by Chris Westwood Republished into my blog’s original timeline – one of my ‘lost posts’ Teenager Ben Harvester likes to get away from it all by taking his sketchbook into Highgate Cemetery. His Dad left his Mum several years ago, they’ve had to move into a Read More
One of the other bests of Beryl …
The Birthday Boys by Beryl Bainbridge. Now I’ve read three novels by the late great Dame Beryl Bainbridge, I can truly say that she has become one of my favourite authors, and I can’t wait to read more. She was a master of succinctly getting to the heart of the matter. Her novels aren’t long in Read More
In the Country of Men by Hisham Matar
Republished into my blogs original timeline from my lost posts archive Growing up with Gaddafi Since the escalation of political unrest in Libya recently, the author of this 2006 Booker shortlisted novel has been in demand to comment about living under Gaddafi – something he is particularly well placed to do. His own family fled Libya Read More
Getting the right man for the job …
Republished into my blog’s timeline from my lost posts archive – and for the 1968 club. True Grit by Charles Portis This was our Book Group choice for reading in March. It’s fair to say that while no-one hated it, not everybody loved it like I did. One thing that we were all agreed on Read More
Look inside …
This post was republished into my blog’s original timeline from my lost posts archive. Take one book – a 1965 Puffin paperback of The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Pages well tanned, covers worn, spine well-creased and starting to fall apart – it’s my well-loved edition I had as a child. The painting on the front Read More
2 from 2011 featuring dogs: Rhodes & Raisin
This post was republished into my blog’s timeline from my lost posts archive. A man, his lover, & his dog – Timoleon Vieta Come Home by Dan Rhodes This is the story of a mongrel dog with the ‘saddest eyes in the world’. One day a stray dog turns up at retired British composer Cockcroft’s Read More
3 from March 2011 – Handler – Reed – Fredericks
Adverbs by Daniel Handler – Lemony Snicket for Grown-ups 3 from March 2011 This author is best known as the writer of the fun Lemony Snicket series of novels for children. I’ve read the first Lemony Snicket novel, and heard the audiobook narrated by Tim Curry, (I just love his voice!) and one day intend to read the rest of the 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
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by Frank L Baum
The Wizard of Oz is one of our favourite family films at Gaskell Towers, and my daughter and I are really looking forward to going to see the new production at the Palladium during the Easter hols. It struck me though that I’d never actually read the original book, and the OUP very kindly sent me a Read More
The Hopkins Manuscript by R C Sheriff
Chicken Licken was right in this dystopia! Last weekend was Persephone Reading Weekend hosted by Claire and Verity. I did start my Persephone reading at the weekend, but didn’t finish until yesterday. But what a book I chose – one of the few by male authors, and a dystopian bit of science fiction to boot – yet it fits 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
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
