Context: the first of many books I read by kerosene lamp while living in a house in a village in Papua New Guinea. REVIEW Forgive me for not posting too…
Context: Finished this the weekend we started cooking our own food in shelters we’d built ourselves called haus kuks. REVIEW Seems to be a season of South Africa! Following…
Context: Packing our final bags for emigrating to Papua New Guinea REVIEW This is a moving portrayal of life in India shortly after the reign of Indira Ghandi when, in…
Context: Finally finished this off at our friends’ lovely house in Beamish, County Durham. REVIEW This was an amazing book and I can’t think why it isn’t better known. For…
Context: Weeded my mate’s allotment while reading this. REVIEW The final part of the Regeneration trilogy picks up with Billy Prior getting cleared to return to the front in France…
Context: Read this as the sun set over Parker’s Piece in Cambridge as I waited for my wife, sister and her kids to emerge from Parkside swimming pool. REVIEW Not…
Context: put some new strings on my old Eko and then got a blister I played it so much! REVIEW They don’t write books like this anymore. You know when…
Context: As I was reading this, our Dell printer ran out of ink and I got some ink to refill them manually. Never done that before. Dead easy. REVIEW This…
Context: read while I was suffering from the worst cold I’ve had in years. REVIEW It begins with the discovery, by young Michele, of something horrific which is all his…
Context: Night fell on my day in bed while I finished this off – the fourth book in a day. Felt much better afterwards. REVIEW Not only has Hamid got…
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…
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….
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….
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,…
Context: finished off a huge bar of Dairy Milk while reading this. Thought I’d better get some before Cadbury’s stops being British forever… REVIEW This is a definitive novel. There’s…
Context: Finished this off in the middle of a 1 mile run. Target: 3 miles in half an hour. REVIEW Haven’t read any short stories for a long time so…
Context: Read this on Holloways Beach, just north of Cairns as we settled into the sand for a day. REVIEW A true war story is never moral. It does not…
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…