Category: 2026

  • October 2026

    Land – Maggie O’Farrell I have been steeped in Ireland for 434 pages. This book has consumed me and led me to learn more about the history, religion and language of the place, over many centuries but particularly the last couple of hundred years. Apart from some very dry political text offered as part of […]

  • September 2026

    Names for the Sea: Strangers in Iceland – Sarah Moss I first read this book several years ago. No idea why but presumably it was a review that I’d read that prompted the purchase. As a memoir I enjoyed it, finding it both interesting and well written. Then, this summer, I was fortunate enough to […]

  • August 2026

    Stealing Dad – Sofka Zinovieff / Exposure – Helen Dunmore I love the programme Private Passions which is on Radio 3 at midday each Sunday. It is like Desert Island Discs but with more classical music than pop. The presenter is the composer Michael Berkeley who does an exemplary job interviewing the many very different […]

  • July 2026

    Predicament – William Boyd / The Things We Never Say – Elizabeth Strout Way back in October I wrote about Gabriel’s Moon by William Boyd. This was a new venture for the author. I really enjoyed the story and eagerly awaited the second book in the promised trilogy. Amazingly I held back until the paperback […]

  • June 2026

    Predicament – William Boyd / The Things We Never Say – Elizabeth Strout Way back in October I wrote about Gabriel’s Moon by William Boyd, his was a new venture for the author. I really enjoyed the story and eagerly awaited the second book in the promised trilogy. Amazingly I held back until the paperback […]

  • May 2026

    Darkness in Zennor – Helen Dunmore / Daffodil Days – Helen Bain DH Lawrence was told to leave Cornwall in 1917 because he had a German wife and the paranoia was such that the locals believed she was sending signals to U boats in the coastal waters. This is historical fact, but then Helen Dunmore […]

  • April 2026

    The Tin Nose Shop – Don J Snyder I don’t like being told what to read. Now that I am old I want to make my own choices and even friends suggesting books that they wish to lend me has a certain responsibility attached. To be polite I really ought to read the kind offering! […]

  • March 2026

    The Strike Novels – Robert Galbraith I feel I should have bookish indigestion having just read the first four Strike novels in very quick succession. However, I don’t. Instead, I feel replete, a very full, satisfied feeling as though I had just eaten an excellent meal. That surely must be the sign of some great […]

  • February 2026

    The Strike Novels: Robert Galbraith I feel I should have bookish indigestion having just read the first four Strike novels in very quick succession. However, I don’t. Instead, I feel replete, a very full, satisfied feeling as though I had just eaten an excellent meal. That surely must be the sign of some great writing. […]

  • January 2026

    The Poisoned King – Katherine Rundell I have read the first of this series of books: Impossible Creatures, and have written about it on my blog: beyondtheairingcupboard.co.uk, and having read that, I was eager for the sequel. The narrative, the plot, the characterisation are all brilliant but there is so much more. The author is […]