0339 | Jacob’s Room | Virginia Woolf
Context: Attended a Cultural Self-Discovery Workshop while I read this… fascinating… both the book and the workshop! REVIEW Boy this woman can write. With every book that I pick up…
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0337 | The Gathering | Anne Enright
Context: Finished burning off our piles of old paperwork as I finished reading this. REVIEW Right off the bat I’ll say that this is one of the most disappointing Booker…
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0332 | The Fox | D.H. Lawrence
Context: Starting a run of exhausting rehearsals for Cinderella. And, before you ask, no, I’m not an ugly sister. REVIEW Haven’t read any Lawrence for quite a while. Actually, not…
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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…
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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…
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0325 | The Way of All Flesh | Samuel Butler
Context: Finished this on my e-book reader as I cycled 320km around the far southwest of PNG on a survey of the communities of the Tonda Sub-Family of languages. REVIEW…
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0323 | Moll Flanders | Daniel Defoe
Context: Finished this as the wife and I read by the first fire we made in our new house. REVIEW This is a quite remarkable novel for its time and…
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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…
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0314 | What a Carve Up! | Jonathan Coe
Context: Read this while we visited some friends who are having a housing estate built where a school used to be over the back fence. REVIEW I haven’t enjoyed a…
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0313 | Man and Wife | Tony Parsons
Context: Finished this off in a day while me and the Mrs stayed for what could potentially be the last time with the mum-in-law at the lodge on the Norfolk…
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0312 | Remembering Babylon | David Malouf
Context: Read this as we enjoyed tea and cakes at the River Tea Rooms on the banks of the Great Ouse in St Ives, Cambridgeshire REVIEW I don’t think I’ve…
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0307 | The Riddle of the Sands – Erskine Childers
Context: Listened to this while cooking for myself when my wife returned home to attend to her sick father. REVIEW I wasn’t really sure where this book was going when…
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0293 | The Nine Tailors – Dorothy L. Sayers
Context: The local equivalent of a bell in the village where I read this is a garamut, a wooden drum as pictured. REVIEW I’m not really one for whodunnits, mysteries…
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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…
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0279 | The Return of the Native –Thomas Hardy
Context: Listened to this over weeks while travelling through Korea, Japan and Australia to emigrate to Papua New Guinea. REVIEW Some Hardy I like. Others I do not. This fell…
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0275 | A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
Context: Finished this off on Trinity Beach just north of Cairns which is mentioned often in this novel. REVIEW A very, very long time ago, I was a teenage boy….
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0273 | On Chesil Beach – Ian McEwan
Context: Read this while we were meeting the church staff for lunch at our immense church in Seoul, South Korea. REVIEW This is the most amazing book. It’s the fourth…
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0269 | In Europe – Geert Mak
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…