0112 | The Reader – Bernhard Schlink
Context: Read this in a day and finished it with the cat next to me in the study at my mum’s place in Portugal. REVIEW Poignant, evocative, thought-provoking and strong….
-
-
0105 | Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift
Context: Finished this off at a friend’s house in Hertford, UK. REVIEW Liechtenstein was my 57th country and so I could fairly claim to have travelled a lot. One of…
-
0102 | The Heather Blazing – Colm Toibin
Context: Finished this off on this bench at our friends’ house in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. REVIEW Like, Coetzee, Toibin writes in sparse prose that is so wonderfully crafted in this novel that…
-
0095 | Small Island – Andrea Levy
Context: friend in Albania lent me this and I read it while we hitched from Greece to Liechtenstein via this service station in Rosenheim, Germany. REVIEW Reading this at the…
-
0092 | The Monk – Matthew Lewis
Context: Finished this off on the bus from Istanbul to Izmir. REVIEW Absolutely loved this from beginning to end. After reading a couple of other Gothic novels that were hard…
-
0085 | Gulag: A History – Anne Applebaum
Context: Finished on the Trans-Mongolian railway somewhere in the Gobi desert. REVIEW A very compelling description of the infamous Russian camp system which strikes a great balance between the politico-historical…
-
0066 | Trainspotting ~ Irvine Welsh
REVIEW This was an amazing read. It’s violent, offensive, stomach-churning, tragic and yet somehow, under all this, deeply poignant.
-
0055 | Cider With Rosie ~ Laurie Lee
REVIEW Beautifully evocative, this is a classic memoir of the English idyll, where even winter is ‘summery’ and death has a romantic sheen.
-
0036 | Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoevsky
If you enjoyed this book, you’re going to love the map. REVIEW It took two attempts but I’ve finally finished this classic. The first time, I gave up after the…
-
0031 | 2001: A Space Odyssey – Arthur C. Clarke
REVIEW At last, the film makes sense! I can’t tell you how happy I am. The film is a masterpiece but it would have been nothing without the book, which…
-
0028 | Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
REVIEW Exquisitely crafted, this short novel is a classic for a very good reason. At the start of the book, it’s mice that succumb to powers they cannot comprehend or…
-
-
0007 | Crome Yellow – Aldous Huxley
I read this in 69 daily installments care of dailylit.com – a wonderful idea of a website. REVIEW: Huxley had a masterful vocabulary and he uses it to full effect…
-
0004 | Cannery Row – John Steinbeck
I actually downloaded a copy of this and listened to it over 4 hours. Beautifully read by Jerry Farmer in a great American drawl. REVIEW: The characters were magical and…