0712 | Flat Earth | Christine Garwood
Just before Christmas, this popped through the door completely anonymously. Tearing it open, it sounded like just the thing to while away a day or so reading over the break….
0711 | Nothing to Envy | Barbara Demick
Barbara Demick has struck exactly the right tone in her classic description of life in North Korea. Granted, the book was written in 2009 so it’s a bit dated now,…
0710 | Mother | Maxim Gorky
This reads like a cross between Dr Zhivago and the last part of The Jungle. It’s packed full of characters who, in true Russian fashion, each have seven names they…
0709 | The Triune God | Fred Sanders
Having completed The Deep Things of God by Sanders only recently, I was encouraged by that to continue with The Triune God, a book I was having a hard time…
0708 | The Gospel According to John | D. A. Carson
I read this meticulously over three years and loved every single minute of it. Previously, I’ve not been an avid fan of Bible commentaries. You can often find yourself following…
0707 | Hue 1968 | Mark Bowden
While Max Hastings attempted to do the impossible and cover the entire 14 years plus of the American War in Indochina, Mark Bowden humbles himself before the historic edifice and…
0705 | Baltasar and Blimunda | Jose Saramago
The last effort from Portugal I endeavoured to read through was the utterly futile Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa. It is with great thankfulness that I can report Saramago…
0706 | The Deep Things of God | Fred Sanders
The vast majority of us Christians aren’t as informed on the character of the God we worship as we should be. Neither are we adept at moving out of our…
0703 | No One Writes to the Colonel | Gabriel Garcia Marquez
A book of short stories which is far, far more satisfying than ploughing your way through the tedium that is One Hundred Years of Solitude. What Garcia Marquez has done…
0704 | The Circle | Dave Eggers
Whoever reviewed this for The Guardian said it was “prescient, important and very funny.” Two out of three ain’t bad, I suppose; there are precious few laughs to be had…
0702 | Did Muhammad Exist? | Robert Spencer
Oh, what a question? How could you even ask that? But, yes, this is exactly the kind of question Islam should be subjected to. For the last 200 years, beginning…
0701 | Moon Palace | Paul Auster
Again, another Auster, and the only question you’re left with is why he bothered writing it. Composing this review by copying and pasting chunks of my review of The New…
0700 | No God But One: Allah or Jesus | Nabeel Qureshi
The strength of this book lies in its unique perspective. Very few books comparing Islam and Christianity are written by people who have been committed to both camps. If there…
0699 | Pachinko | Min Jin Lee
My word this is a mess of a book. It’s a mess of a story, it’s a mess of characters, and most shockingly for me, it’s a literal mess: it…
0698 | Possession | A. S. Byatt
Oh boy, it seems Virgin in the Garden wasn’t large enough of a stage for Byatt to perform her one-woman show of intellectual capacity. 12 years later, she’s back with…
0697 | The Madness of Crowds | Douglas Murray
Boy, I needed this. A birthday present from my sister that really hit the spot. Murray is a gay Spectator magazine columnist so not exactly the kind of writer I…
0696 | Amongst Women | John McGahern
Lyrically written as so many Irish novels are, this centres around the inscrutable patriarch of a rural family. Moran rules his family with an iron fist. He’s an old freedom…
0695 | The Sound and the Fury | William Faulkner
That said, no one should be harsh on you if you reach the end and still aren’t quite sure what just happened.In fact, Faulkner admitted as such at least obliquely…