0197 | To Have and Have Not – Ernest Hemingway
Context: finished this on our AirAsiaX flight from Stansted to Kuala Lumpur. Malaysian food was lovely. REVIEW This is not a well-known Hemingway as far as I’m aware. Nevertheless, it’s…
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0196 | Stargazing – Peter Hill
Context: Borrowed from my mate Gareth, and finished this off just as we were packing for a six week trip to Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, PNG and UAE. REVIEW My mate…
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0195 | The Plot Against America – Philip Roth
Context: Broke the back of this one whilst outside in the garden reading on some deceptively comfortable garden furniture. REVIEW Philip Roth’s Pulitzer prize-winning novel American Pastoral didn’t really do…
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0194 | Silas Marner – George Eliot
Context: Listened to this walking around Cambridge trying to find a decent pair of sandals for our trip to Papua New Guinea. REVIEW Only read Middlemarch before by Eliot although…
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0193 | The Radiant Way – Margaret Drabble
Context: Finished this off in a brand new armchair at my mate’s house. Gorgeous chair from Marks & Spencers. Perfect for reading in. REVIEW Fifty pages into this, I was…
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0192 | August is a Wicked Month – Edna O’Brien
Context: Read this while I waited for Barry to come and cut the church hedge with me. Incidentally, this is where I married Mrs Arukiyomi nearly 15 years ago. REVIEW…
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0191 | Japanese Language, Gender, and Ideology | Shigeko Okamoto & Janet Shibamoto Smith (eds.)
Context: Was reading this when we moved into the flat here at 77 Field View, Bar Hill. REVIEW This was a review copy I was sent for free. I’d chosen…
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0190 | Smiley’s People – John le Carré
Context: Got my first cold in a year and a half just as I finished this off. I should have been reading The Spy Who Came in from the Cold!…
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0189 | The Voice of the Tambaran – Donald Tuzin
Context: Read this throughout the first week of Wimbledon and finished it just as Serena Williams won her quarterfinal match. REVIEW Tambaran is more than a sum of ideas and…
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0188 | The Good Soldier Švejk – Jaroslav Hašek
Context: Borrowed a guitar while I was reading this as mine’s in PNG. REVIEW Švejk is one of literatures great great characters. If English did not so dominate the world…
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0187 | The Quiet American – Graham Greene
Context: Listened to this as we moved from High Wycombe to Cambridge and settled in in Bar Hill. REVIEW Not one of Greene’s best and one of his later works….
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0186 | Amsterdam – Ian McEwan
Context: A reclining chair, a lamp and a cushion on a cloudy Saturday morning. REVIEW I’ve read a couple of other McEwan’s which always captivated me until about halfway through….
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0185 | Thank You, Jeeves – P.G.Wodehouse
Context: On the bookshelf along with this were several other first edition Wodehouse hardbacks, some with very good dustjackets from the 1930s. Lovely. REVIEW I couldn’t help thinking of Huxley’s…
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0184 | Delivering the Goods – Colin Swatridge
Context: Moved my desk to a doorway to get a better wireless connection while reading this. REVIEW The latest in a series of books I’m reading at the moment to…
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0183 | Mambu – Kenelm Burridge
Context: Discovered the music of Eric Bibb while reading this one. Love it. REVIEW This is a bit mistitled I feel. Perhaps Kenelm felt that a name like Mambu would…
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0182 | Road Belong Cargo – Peter Lawrence
Context: The first book I read in a new pile of hard to find anthropology and linguistics books from Cambridge University Library which my resourceful helper found for me. REVIEW…
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0181 | Under Milk Wood – Dylan Thomas
Context: One of the books on the bookshelf in our bedroom at our new place in Bar Hill. REVIEW This only takes about thirty minutes to read from cover to…
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0180 | The Information | Martin Amis
Context: Finished this off just after a shopping trip to Tesco’s where I got two free blocks of cheese (always complain politely!) REVIEW Recently, I read The Old Devils by…