0331 | Melmoth the Wanderer | Charles Robert Maturin
Context: Our gardener planted a ton of corn for us while I was reading this. It came up in hours, not days… not really but it seemed like it. REVIEW…
-
-
0326 | On Beauty | Zadie Smith
Context: Started reading this as I prepared to go on a 320km bike ride through Western Province, PNG. REVIEW Definitely enjoyed this more than White Teeth and this is an…
-
0322 | The Crow Road | Iain Banks
Context: While I read this, a friend left for a few months and gave me his motorbike REVIEW The only other Ian Banks I’ve read was the utterly bizarre Wasp…
-
302 | The Island of Dr. Moreau | H.G. Wells
Context: Finished this over a plate of beans one lunchtime. REVIEW Wells was a genius who was way ahead of his time in being able to grasp some of the…
-
0292 | The Master of Ballantrae – Robert Louis Stevenson
Context: The liklik haus or outhouse where I began reading this book in Male. REVIEW Read a number of Stevenson’s works (I’ve reviewed Treasure Island and Jekyll & Hyde on…
-
0280 | Kim – Rudyard Kipling
Context: Finished this off in the midst of packing for five weeks living in a village in Papua New Guinea. REVIEW This took a lot of getting through. Thankfully I’d…
-
0259 | Bel Ami – Guy de Maupassant
Context: Finished this off as we visited some friends in Cleveland, Ohio. REVIEW This book spirals downwards in a debilitating circle of debauchery as George Duroy aims to satsify his…
-
0244 | Mountains Beyond Mountains – Tracy Kidder
Context: Started this off at a friend’s house in Studley Green in the rolling Chiltern hills. REVIEW Another book given to me on my last birthday which I thought I…
-
0235 | The Prodigal God – Timothy Keller
Context: Read this while feeling grim in bed in my grandmother’s old bedroom with her crucifix above me. REVIEW A friend (the same one who lent me the superb Knowing…
-
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…
-
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,…
-
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…
-
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…
-
0214 | Candide – Voltaire
Context: Listened to this all the way back from taking my dad 2 hours to Heathrow Airport in driving rain and heavy traffic. REVIEW Way back in the 18th century,…
-
0210 | The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
Context: Read this as we walked the South West Coast Path for four days for our 15th wedding anniversary. REVIEW Collins practically invented the whodunnit and this is his first…
-
0206 | Neither Here nor There – Bill Bryson
Context: on the shelf at our friends’ place in Dubai so I thought I’d give it a go. REVIEW Read a lot of Bryson and I have to say that…
-
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!…
-
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….