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book review: Gonzo Republic Hunter S. Thompson's America by William Stephenson
"Thompson was very well read and extremely articulate in print, but he was not a philosopher or even an intellectual. He was, first and foremost a journalist, who preferred to seek the Dream and report...
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Month in review - February
Let's not beat around the bush. February was a poor month on the reading front. This as a result hit the blog because it's hard to post about very little without sounding rather desperate.With only...
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Thoughts at the halfway point of The Sisters Brothers
Despite the potential unsavouriness of following two hired guns who kill at the drop of a hat you start to like Eli, the narrator of the tale of the two Sister Brothers.Both clearly have psychological...
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Shadow IFFP 2012
Never let it ever be said that the world of social media is not one where friendships are made and connections formed that add happiness and interest. One of those book loving friends I have made...
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First impressions of New Finnish Grammar
For a translated work of fiction its rather neat having a story that is all about language. In this case a man with a lost memory is encouraged to relearn Finnish and start to head back towards his...
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book review: Please Look After Mother by Kyung-Sook Shin
"Even though nobody knew that you were in my life, you were the person who brought a raft at every rapid current and helped me cross that water safely. I was happy that you were there. I came to tell...
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book review: New Finnish Grammar by Diego Marani
Language defines us all. What tells you I'm English in seconds are the words that come out of my mouth. But imagine if all I had was a name tag sewn in a sailors jacket and no memory of anything else,...
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book review: Next World Novella by Matthias Politycki
Hinrich wakes up one day to discover his wife has died of a stroke. He initially starts to think of all the things that you should do in that situation to register the death. But as he lingers,...
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Thoughts at the halfway point of The Names
In between reading some books that are on the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize shortlist I have also been getting through The Names by Don DeLillo.It's one of those books that feels dense and fairly...
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book review: Blooms of Darkness by Aharon Appelfeld
This story gives an account from an 11 year-old boy into what it's like to hide from Germans at the height of the holocaust. Hugo's father has already been taken to the labour camp at the start of the...
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book review: The Names by Don DeLillo
Language, specifically the names of things, is a theme from all angles in this book which manages to unsettle the reader until the last word.In a nutshell the story follows an American former...
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Independent Foreign Fiction prize shortlist
Over the past few weeks I've been reading a selection of books that were longlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. Along with other bloggers we assembl;ed a shadow jury that would come up...
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book review: The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco
You get to the end of this book and its not until you read the bits and pieces that are usually things you skip that you realise the sheer scale of the ambition.On one level the story is about the...
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book review: From the Mouth of the Whale by Sjon
This starts with a biblical come fairy story and the magical imagery of angels, demons and the supernatural stay throughout. Set in sometime in the 1600s in Iceland it follows the story of naturalist...
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book review: The Great Fire of London by Peter Ackroyd
Having read some Peter Ackroyd before the technique of overlapping history in different parts of London is not something unfamiliar.But this was the first time he tried it in his debut novel and this...
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From the Mouth...
This is late in the day but the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize (IFFP) was awarded to Blooms of Darkness, which I reviewed recently.Personally I would have liked to seen the Sjon win or New Finnish...
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hello again
apologies for the absence but having another child has rather changed my reading routine. In some ways it's not a lack of sleep but just the change of having another little life in the house. This time...
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some oldies
before I manage to finish something new i'm going to try to get round to posting some of the reviews of books i finished a while ago but never got round to sharing thoughts about. I have at least ten...
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book review: The Chalk Circle Man by Fred Vargas
What holds most crime books together is the personality of the detective leading the hunt for the killer. Think Morse, Holmes or Maigret and you get the picture.Here you are introduced to the eccentric...
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book review: Walks in the Wheatfield by Richard Jefferies
One of the numerous attractions of reading is the way that a book can transport you to a different world and give you a mental break from the day to day routine of a commute.This book describes a world...
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