When your job involves recommending books to young people, it’s a good idea to read at least a few of the more popular YA books, which is why I read Suzanne Collins’ ‘The Hunger Games’. What’s it about? Sometime in a dystopian future, North America has been divided into twelve districts and the Capitol. As […]
Blurbs can be tricky things: they often reveal too much, but sometimes they hint too little at key aspects of the tale within. Having recently read and mostly enjoyed Gillian Flynn’s thriller ‘Gone Girl’ I was keen to explore her back catalogue. ‘Sharp Objects’ is her debut novel – and it’s even darker than the […]
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. […]
Whenever my birthday or Christmas approaches my husband gets frustrated because my wishlist consists of books and, er, more books. Here are just some of the reasons why he should be celebrating my bookishness, rather than despairing. 1. Books are super-easy to wrap. 2. Books don’t NEED to be wrapped; they already have such beautiful […]
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 – […]