Category: My Reading

When I had read ‘Lessons’ by Ian McEwan I decided I had to read more by this acclaimed writer. ‘Enduring Love’ is a fascinating if rather disturbing read. A hot air balloon floats over the Chilterns and suddenly seems to be in trouble. Several people picnicking go to help and grab hold of ropes. There […]

This book was on my shelves with half a dozen others by the same author. I must have read it before but I really don’t remember it. Margaret Forster, who died a few years ago was married to Hunter Davies, writer for the Times and Sunday Times and (much more importantly) biographer of The Beatles! […]

A short while ago I read the four novels by Jill Paton Walsh about her Cambridge quasi detective Imogen Quy. I loved them, and looking for more by the same author I came across novels that she had written with Dorothy L Sayers. With, and then by herself in the style of, once the older […]

I like a good memoir and I haven’t read one for some time. So, there I was in the London Review Bookshop in Bloomsbury and looking for what I might buy. Not sure I am really capable of going into a Bookshop and not buying something. Elif Shafak took my eye … and there is […]

I have great admiration for Tracy Chevalier. In my opinion she is an accomplished writer. As with most people I think, the first novel of hers that I read was ‘The Girl with a Pearl Earring’. This was the backstory created from the luminous picture by Vermeer. It was a convincing historical read and I […]

This is an author I really enjoy reading. There is also a really good BBC Imagine programme about him, should you care to look it up. This is a sequel to his book ‘Brooklyn’ which won many prizes when it was published in 2009, indeed it was long listed for the Booker. In Brooklyn, Eilis […]

I don’t know, but I would guess that the pain of losing someone close to you is magnified if the death occurs in a huge, very public tragedy. I’m thinking the Boxing Day Tsunami or the Grenfell Tower fire. The other obvious example is the destruction of the Twin Towers in the 9/11 atrocity in […]

I found this in a bookcase I rarely go to. It was a quick but enjoyable read. There are many examples of people becoming known in a particular field and then thinking they can use that fame to get published. The results are varied and the quality often questionable. However, Dick Francis is someone who […]