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Books to Look Out for January in 2017: Part One
For those of you fed up with picking over the bones of 2016, I’m delighted to say that 2017 is starting with a literary bang. So many enticing books out in January that this will be a two-post preview,...
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Books to Look Out for in January 2017: Part Two
The first part of January’s preview roamed around the world taking in Pakistan, Poland, Estonia, Ghana and the UK – home for me. This second part has its feet firmly planted in the US, beginning with a...
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Paperbacks to Look Out for January 2017: Part One
Lots of lip-smacking paperbacks piled up on bookshop tables to tempt you this January, all ready and waiting for those Christmas book tokens we’ve been given, or hope we’ll have been given. Top of the...
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Paperbacks to Look Out for January 2017: Part Two
With luck you’ll be awash with book tokens by now and if you haven’t managed to spend them all already, here are a few paperbacks worth keeping an eye out for, starting with one I wasn’t at all drawn...
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Reading Bingo 2016
I first saw this year’s Reading Bingo on Cleo’s blog, then Marina posted hers – she was the one who put me on to it a few years back. Next, Janet posted one and it seemed rude not to join in, even if...
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Our Magic Hour by Jennifer Down: Learning to look after yourself
This book was actually published here in the UK at the very tail end of 2016 – I hope that won’t mean that it falls through the Christmas/New Year coverage cracks because it deserves attention. Our...
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When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi: Bearing witness
So much has been said about Paul Kalanithi’s account of the twenty-two months from his diagnosis with lung cancer to his death at the age of thirty-six that I’m not sure what I can add of any value...
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Books to Look Out for February 2017: Part One
February is my least favourite month – dull, often wet, drained of colour – it’s the fag-end of winter here in the UK but at least it’s short. In terms of books however, this year’s February is looking...
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Summer Before the Dark by Volker Weidermann (translated by Carol Brown...
I was drawn to Volker Weidermann’s Summer Before the Dark partly because of its translator, Carol Brown Janeway, who died last year. It was her work which made me understand that the translator is...
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Blasts from the Past: River Thieves by Michael Crummey (2001)
This is the latest in a series of occasional posts featuring books I read years ago about which I was wildly enthusiastic at the time, wanting to press a copy in as many hands as I could. I went...
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