~Lincoln in the Bardo George Saunders I imagined this to be a long dense novel, one which I would have to slog my way through while convincing myself I was enjoying it. So I was a little surprised to find it to be a mere 330 pages or so, many of which have very little in the way of writing on them, which makes it a surprisingly quick read for such a literary novel. It is breathtakingly original and while — strange — once you get into it, it is both poignant and wildly funny. I love books which take a…
Category: <span>READING</span>
I stumbled upon this Penguin Random House post recently, lured in of course, by the desire to see if their list in any way echoes my own. Not that I have a real, written down list of such books, but there is one floating endlessly around in my head. I’ll be adding these books to this list. ++War and Peace Leo Tolstoy Ah, yes, War and Peace. Surely this book wears the crown as the classic book that everyone has been meaning to read. The granddaddy of the must-read nobility. How many people floating around in the universe have had…
By Its Cover is a series of posts wherein I read a book based solely on my love of the cover. No reading the jacket, no checking reviews! Just look at that cover. It cracks me up every time I see it. If those boys aren’t English then I’m the Queen of Sheba! I found this book in a used bookstore drawn instantly by those rascally faces and the title that seemed so appropriate. This just had to be a novel set in England. And indeed it is — Birmingham of the 1970’s. It is framed by opening and closing pages…
Nobody reads anymore. A wild exaggeration perhaps, but it is true that the amount we read, collectively, is on a slow and steady decline. Not that this will shock anyone. In a world where Netflix marathons have all but become an Olympic sport it is no wonder that reading time is squandered. In fairness there is so much good stuff on the small screen these days it’s hardly surprising that we are all culpable of this armchair sport (which pairs so well with a nice glass of red). It is sad though. Studies have shown that reading a good book has…
~Beasts Of Extraordinary Circumstance Ruth Emmie Lang If a little bit of happy is what you’re in need of then you’ll enjoy reading this enchanting book. It’s warm and inviting and light and charming, without ever being silly. On the day Weylyn Grey was born, the doctor knew there was something special about him when it started to snow…in the middle of June. Years later when Weylyn’s parents die in a car crash during a snowstorm, he grabs the emergency money from underneath the mattress and runs away to the woods where he is taken in and raised by a pack…
~Fates and Furies Lauren Groff A story told in two halves. Lotto – 6’6″, privileged and blessed with a charm and charisma that draws people to him, marries Mathilde a mere few weeks after they meet. They move to New York where Lotto struggles to make it as an actor and Mathilde works in an art gallery to make ends meet. They are poor but happy, with a marriage that’s the envy of their friends. The years pass until one New Year’s Eve in a drunken stupor, Lotto writes a play about his family and goes on to become a successful playwright.…
I know summer is just a distant memory at this point with the holidays just around the corner, but I’m finally getting around to posting what I read over the summer. ~Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death M.C.Beaton I had heard rumblings that people who had read this Agatha Raisin series were not happy with the screen version (see my review of that here). Curious, I decided to read the first book, Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death, and make a judgement call for myself. As a self-confessed lover of the so called “cosy” English mystery, I thought this was…
~The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo Taylor Jenkins Reid At 79, Evelyn Hugo has spent her adult life as a Hollywood darling. Now that everyone important to her is dead, she has decided to put a tell-all memoir of her life out into the world… to be published posthumously. Evelyn knows her story will be a hot commodity: after years of her life playing out in the media she then chose to hide herself away in relative anonymity. It is something of a surprise then that she hires an unknown journalist to write the book. Evelyn grew up poor and trades her…
~Killers Of The Flower Moon David Gann A true crime story that makes your blood boil and stuns you into stony silence at the potential for human depravity. In the 1800’s the Osage Indians were run off their reservations several times by the US government, in the end being forced to hand over nearly a hundred million acres of their ancestral land. In the 1870’s they found land in Kansas that was so hilly and rocky they deemed it of no interest to the white man and decided to purchase it. Then, in an amazing twist of fate, it turned out that…
The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley opens with the line “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” which is considered to be one of the best in literature. It is a quintessentially British story, evoking a bygone era with its country house setting and people who spend glorious summer days lounging, swimming and partaking of tea on the lawn. It is a classic coming- of- age story which embodies the confines of class structure and the rules and manners of Edwardian England while also encompassing themes of power, forbidden love, memory, lost innocence and the impact of the past on the future.…