0232 | Pippi Longstocking – Astrid Lindgren
Context: Got this for my niece for Christmas… when, unusually, I got a stocking from the mother-in-law. REVIEW This is one of the few books on the list which a…
-
-
0231 | Flaubert’s Parrot – Julian Barnes
Context: As I was reading this, it started snowing in the UK… and it went on an on for days. First white Christmas we’ve had for years. REVIEW This is…
-
0230 | The House of Mirth – Edith Wharton
Context: Finished this off while I was attending the first workshop of the Oral Literature Project at Cambridge University. REVIEW Another tale of woe from Wharton. I can forgive anyone…
-
0229 | The Waves – Virginia Woolf
Context: Mrs Arukiyomi made some great flower decorations for her parents’ anniversary while I was reading this. REVIEW Wow wow wow wow. What an amaaaaazing book. It’s in fact the…
-
0228 | The White Tiger – Aravind Adiga
Context: got back to a passtime that I last did nearly 20 years ago while reading this: sketching. REVIEW In the form of an email to the premier of China,…
-
0227 | Knowing Me, Knowing You – Goldberg & Wharton
Context: started working out with some weights while reading this. REVIEW This book has been a real milestone for me in understanding not just why I like to behave the…
-
0226 | The Unconsoled – Kazuo Ishiguro
Context: We got and started opening a chocolate advent calendar while I was finishing this off. REVIEW This is one of the strangest books I’ve read in a long time….
-
0225 | Marks of Identity – Juan Goytisolo
Context: Had to break out the hot water bottle on more than one occasion while reading this. It’s getting cold here. REVIEW Now the 1001 Books list has its critics….
-
0224 | The Subtle Knife – Philip Pullman
Context: Visited the Christmas Fayre at Bury St Edmunds while reading this. REVIEW This is the second book in Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. I read the first, Northern Lights…
-
0223 | The Coast Watchers – Eric Feldt
Context: finished this off at the desk where I’m doing my research job downstairs at 77 Field View. REVIEW This book tells the story of the Coast Watchers, a group…
-
0222 | Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe
Context: finished this off while doing weights. Jogging’s on hold as my left hamstring recovers from a slight strain. REVIEW Okonkwo is a man who doesn’t do things by halves….
-
0221 | Mansfield Park – Jane Austen
Context: This was my toilet book at Field View. It’s amazing how much you get through on the loo and while brushing your teeth. REVIEW Take a ball, a lovers’…
-
0220 | The Black Dahlia – James Ellroy
Context: Read this as our landlady’s pumpkin decayed slowly in the garden. REVIEW Hard-hitting crime writing doesn’t come much better written than this. Ellroy takes up where writers like Chandler…
-
0219 | The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – Muriel Spark
Context: finished this off over a bowl of Weetabix at our friends’ house in High Wycombe. REVIEW I was round at a friend’s house this weekend and, in the hallway,…
-
0218 | The Trobrianders of Papua New Guinea – Annette B. Weiner
Context: Read this in bed on a rainy, rainy autumn day in Bar Hill. REVIEW The Trobriand Islands are a small archipelago just north east of the mainland coast of…
-
0217 | The White Man Will Eat You – William F. Wormsley
Context: Finished this off while using a hot water bottle to ease an ache in my hamstring. Too much jogging. REVIEW A good ethnography gives you an inside view into…
-
0216 | Bunner Sisters – Edith Wharton
Context: I bought myself a nice reflective yellow top to wear jogging while I listened to this in autumn’s gathering gloom. REVIEW I really like Wharton. This is the third…
-
0215 | 11th Month, 11th Day, 11th Hour – Joseph E. Persico
Context: Finished this off, appropriately, on Remembrance Sunday here in the UK. This morning we’d attended the Remembrance Service at our local church. REVIEW My mate Gareth lent me this…