0208 | What I Loved – Siri Hustvedt
Context: Did my first ever work on a car engine while reading this. I replaced the rocker gasket. Now I feel like a real man! REVIEW Now, I’ve read a…
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0198 | The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
Context: Finished this off the day we went into Perth taking our friends’ bikes to cycle around King’s Park and the Swan River. REVIEW Never read any Oscar Wilde but,…
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0193 | The Radiant Way – Margaret Drabble
Context: Finished this off in a brand new armchair at my mate’s house. Gorgeous chair from Marks & Spencers. Perfect for reading in. REVIEW Fifty pages into this, I was…
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0166 | Learning How to Ask – Charles Briggs
REVIEW Briggs focusses on lessons he learned while working over a period of years with a community of Mexicanos in New Mexico. He’s learned some valuable lessons, mostly through his…
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0161 | A Modest Proposal – Jonathan Swift
Context: Very brief listen to this courtesy of librivox.org while working in the Wycliffe kitchens. REVIEW I was expecting something of a banal treatise on something mundane or other but,…
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0160 | The Road – Cormac McCarthy
Context: Listened to this in a day while preparing food in the Wycliffe kitchens. REVIEW This surprised me. Wasn’t what I thought. I thought it’d be some esoterical account of…
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0146 | Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes
Context: listened to this while I worked in the kitchens at Wycliffe. REVIEW This is a loooong book and I listened to it over about three weeks on my mp3…
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0137 | The Invention of Hugo Cabret – Brian Selznick
Context: this was a gift for my niece which I read before placing under the tree for our belated Christmas celebration. REVIEW Selznick really cares that children capture the beauty…
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0129 | The Magus – John Fowles
Context: Read often with a bit of nourishment at Wycliffe. REVIEW When Arukiyomi was a mere early teen, he read The French Lieutenant’s Woman. Didn’t understand it much but liked…
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0123 | Eugénie Grandet – Honoré de Balzac
Context: Finished this off in bed at the in-laws’ REVIEW Never read any Balzac but certainly will do again. This is a lovely period piece that gives you a great…
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0121 | A Kestrel for a Knave – Barry Hines
Context: Read this as I hitch-hiked into and back from Cambridge. REVIEW This is a novel that many people have had spoiled as it is, or at least used to…
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0119 | Villette – Charlotte Bronte
Context: Finished off in the garden while housesitting for some friends. REVIEW Forget Jane Eyre. Yes, I said forget her. There is such a huge chasm of difference between these…
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0116 | Hind’s Feet on High Places – Hannah Hurnard
Context: Read this a chapter as a time as part of my daily devotional and finished it on the plane back from Portugal to the UK. REVIEW This is one…
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0099 | The Satanic Verses – Salman Rushdie
Context: Picked this up from a certain university library and finished it while babysitting for my sister. REVIEW Read Midnight’s Children a long time ago and thought it was fantastic,…
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0094 | The Moonstone – Wilkie Collins
Context: read this in two decrepit and crumbling volumes that were over 100 years old as we worked our way from Turkey to Croatia REVIEW Deep down in an old…
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0090 | The Idiot – Fyodor Dostoevsky
Context: Started reading this in The Idiot restaurant in St. Petersburg. REVIEW This is my third Dostoevsky and I’m really beginning to develop a taste for this guy and starting…
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0089 | Angela’s Ashes – Frank McCourt
Context: After the wife had read this, I polished this off whilst in St. Petersburg REVIEW Not a bad book at all actually despite the fact that this was the…
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0086 | Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar – Simon Sebag Montefiore
Context: Finished on the Trans-Mongolian Express as we headed from Irkutsk to Moscow. REVIEW This is stellar piece of research and the book, once you get used to Montefiore’s style,…