Sometimes, our reading choices benefit from external guidance. I began reading ‘The Siege’ out of a vague sense of obligation; I ended it with a sense of gratitude – to the author, who made what could have been Yet Another War Story beautiful and genuinely moving, and to the acquaintance who insisted I would enjoy […]
Why would a teenage girl deliberately step in front of a bus? It’s obvious that a fiction book called ‘The Accident’ and marketed as a suspense thriller is going to be about something more chilling than a simple accident, and so it proved with C. L. Taylor’s crime debut. The premise Sue Jackson is horrified […]
The only thing I love more than books are books about other books. Jasper Fforde obviously shares my feelings; he has created two series with a distinctive literary bent, one following the adventures of Literary Detective Thursday Next, the other called ‘The Nursery Crimes’. Both involve the intermingling of fictional and, er, differently fictional characters. […]
Equality as identical privilege: a parenting utopia? On Monday I began discussing Asher’s ideas in her book ‘Shattered: Modern Motherhood and the Illusion of Equality.’ She proposed creating a world of genuinely shared parenting, in which mother and father take significant parental leave – mostly independently – then both return to flexible paid work while […]
Why are women still left holding the baby? Today girls often outperform boys in education and grow up to become women who have successful, absorbing and well-paid careers. They may even earn more than their partners, with whom they typically have equal and rewarding relationships. And then many women have children, and find themselves back […]
Could you defend someone you knew was guilty? Perhaps it would depend what they were guilty of, or what mitigating circumstances there were, or on your own experiences of England’s legal system. Perhaps it would depend on more pragmatic considerations. Could you defend them in return for money, status and the prospect of job security? […]
Unreliable narrators fascinate me and other people’s psychological states intrigue me. So it’s not surprising that when I spotted ‘Confessions of a Sociopath’ it went straight onto my wish list. What’s it about? M.E. Thomas is (apparently) a successful American law professor writing about her sociopathy under a pseudonym. Originally, she founded a blog – […]
Secrets. Everyone has at least one. But would yours destroy your marriage? In an instance of pure serendipity, this month’s book group choice was one I had recently placed on my wish list, so I was glad to get the opportunity to try-before-you-buy. What’s it about? Cecilia finds a letter that isn’t meant to be […]
Comedies are tricky things. Jokes or conceits that I find simply dull, you may find hilarious – or offensive. I remember loathing ‘A short history of tractors in Ukrainan’ despite it being universally feted as a ‘jolly romp’ and I found that ‘Then we came to the End’ – supposedly a satire of modern office-life […]
Miserable winter weather always leads me to crank up the heating, feel guilty about it and read a book about sustainable living. Recently I re-read ‘Enough’, which could be described as a critique of our cluttered lifestyles from an evolutionary psychologist perspective. What’s it about? John Naish, lifestyle writer for The Times, argues that over human […]