My teetering TBR pile and haphazard reading choices mean I always seem to reach the ‘must-read-book-of-the-year’ just after everyone else has finished reading and talking about it. Gillian Flynn’s third novel, ‘Gone Girl’, is a case in point: hyped as THE thriller of 2013, I found myself reading it as we slipped into 2014. So […]
It seems it may no longer be possible to be “well-read”, although much depends on how you define the term. Once, a reader who had read Shakespeare, Milton and works by a few of their contemporaries could claim to be well-read. Now, there are so many new books published each month that it sometimes feels […]
Like most people, I love a freebie. Free ebooks always seem like a great way to fill up my kindle, which I only tend to use when a bulkier book would be inconvenient to pack. Unfortunately, in my experience, these books are often free because no-one would buy them otherwise and very little money has […]
I like narratives with a distinctive voice. That said, I find narrators with a truly distinctive voice can take a bit of getting used to. My first perusal of the opening pages of Ken Bruen’s ‘Purgatory’ didn’t inspire me to read further and I let most of the month slip by, reading other things, until […]
I’m always interested in the reasons writers choose to adopt pseudonyms. Crime novelist Agatha Christie published six “romance” novels as Mary Westmacott; adult sci-fi legend Isaac Asimov wrote a series of YA novels as Paul French; and, of course, Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling was recently unmasked as Robert Galbraith, author of ‘The Cuckoo’s […]
When I learned that Maggie O’Farrell would be speaking at my local library I immediately resolved to reread her debut novel, ‘After You’d Gone’*. What’s it about? Alice Raikes randomly boards a train from London to Edinburgh, thinking she will visit her family. Almost as soon as she arrives, she sees something that stuns her […]
This is why I love book groups: they draw your attention to books you might otherwise never have discovered. What’s it about? Jenn Ashworth’s debut novel, ‘A kind of Intimacy’, stars Annie, a lonely, obese woman who narrates her increasingly awkward attempts to build a new life and get to know her new neighbours – […]
Why are libraries constantly having book sales these days? Once upon a time I’m sure they had sales bi-annually or every quarter, but these days – much like the high street – the sales seem to be on constantly. This means bad things for my overcrowded bookshelves which this week became reluctant hosts to another […]
I’ll be honest: this was not a book that appealed to me. The title suggested fantastical doings and the blurb made reference to three equally irritating ideas: our hero has a “nemesis” and will be “pulled into the sinister and mysterious world of Georgian London” where he “must make a journey that will change his life forever”. So we have a set of clichés and a novel that’s keen to assert its historical credentials. And, to add insult to boredom, there was a Richard and Judy sticker slapped onto the top left hand corner.
Recently my reading group tried some books by Reginald Hill. I didn’t think the book I read was especially gripping or well-written but I knew that in 1995 Hill had won the Crime Writers’ Association Cartier Diamond Dagger for Lifetime Achievement and thought I should give the author another try. I decided to read one […]