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….
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0673 | Self-Condemned | Wyndham Lewis
To a certain extent autobiographical, this again, as with The Driver’s Seat, is about someone making their own decisions. This resonated with me as Professor Rene Harding resigns from his…
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0669 | The Engineer of Human Souls | Josef Skvorecky
If Iain Sinclair wants to know how to eradicate plot but nevertheless write a novel that is at once funny, poignant, moving, funny, sad and tragic, he should put down…
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0640 | 1000 Years of Annoying the French | Stephen Clarke
This millennial look at the history of Britain and France is told with wry, sometimes childishly irritating, and rarely laugh-inducing humour. It’s pretty comprehensive, coming in at just under 650…
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0606 | The Soul of the Camera | David DuChemin
Picked this up from a fellow photographer at a photography event one evening and, were it not for the fact that I need to get up at 5am for work,…
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0565 | Fugitive Pieces | Anne Michaels
This was a strange book, the tale of a WW2 Jewish refugee who is initially harboured on a Greek island before emigrating to Canada. Michaels writes her own prose, and…
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0439 | Surfacing | Margaret Atwood
Atwood’s first second (thanks Irina!) published novel sees her get off to a good start with this eerie tale of a woman returning to her childhood home in the Canadian…
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0391 | Alias Grace | Margaret Atwood
Context: Was reading this as we pulled into the island of Malaita on a ferry in the Solomon Islands. REVIEW Another Atwood down. She’s quickly becoming an okay author. But…
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0284 | The Handmaid’s Tale–Margaret Atwood
Context: Read this while we hosted many villagers on our large veranda in PNG. REVIEW I’ve read a number of Atwoods but nothing comes close to this. Somehow she’s managed…
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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…
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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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0151 | Cat’s Eye – Margaret Atwood
Context: finished this off in our room in Piddington with a view out over the garden. REVIEW I liked this. It kept me wanting to read more and I was…
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0056 | Unless ~ Carol Shields
REVIEW Described on the back as “breathtaking… a masterpiece” I was delighted to find that a healthy cynicism of cover blurb reviews is entirely justified.
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0029 | The Robber Bride – Margaret Atwood
REVIEW: I’ve never read an Atwood and I was disappointed. I will read more so you Atwood fans can take your seats again. Perhaps this is not her best. That’s…