Category: My Reading

I picked this up from my bookshelves as a gentle remedy to struggling with Graham Greene’s existential questionings in ‘The end of the affair.’ It proved to be a very good choice. I haven’t read Ruth Rendell for a long time and I had forgotten what an accomplished, confident writer she is. I particularly enjoyed […]

I had decided to read some more by this acclaimed writer but I’m not sure I made the right choice. I did not enjoy this novel as much as his previous offerings, particularly Brighton Rock. Graham Greene became a Roman Catholic in his twenties and it was an important part of his life. In this […]

Usually I watch a film or a TV series after I’ve read the book but in this case the Netflix series was on my screen long before I realised there even was a book, written as it happens by an author I had never heard of either. Being Netflix, the available funds for this project […]

I really didn’t understand what I was buying here. This was a pop up Amazon suggestion and I clicked the button. I was expecting an interesting and well written family story, instead what I was reading was a searing indictment of the politics and law regarding lesbian mothers and the future of their children and […]

This is a book that several people had told me that I should read, or expressed surprise that I hadn’t! So, I did, and strange story that it is, it will certainly not be quickly forgotten. The main reason for this is that overseeing the whole thing is a large Pacific octopus. He lives in […]

This story has a feeling of impending disaster as you turn every page. It is a thriller but maybe not what you might generally expect from that genre. The setting is an imaginary island called Shearwater, situated somewhere between Tasmania and Antarctica. It is based on the very real island of Macquarie which is a […]

This slim novel is a model of excellent, taut writing. It has the flavour, the stringency of a short story where words cannot be used lazily or with any extravagance. However, it is a novel, albeit a short one. 180 pages of intense thought; a tight story. A work of Covid times, focusing on what […]

I enjoyed this novel but it did feel a tiny bit formulaic. We are in a mediocre Scottish cabin park in the holidays and it’s raining. Each cabin holds a different story because, well, everyone has their own back story don’t they? There is a retired couple who are having to re- align their relationship […]

Strike novel number 6 I have a doorstop, a dog labelled Dora by the gift shop in the grounds of Alnwick Castle in Northumberland. This particular book would do just as good a job as said dog. Oh my goodness, 1221 pages and as I do most of my reading lying in bed with my […]

These books are numbers 10 and 11 in the 44 Scotland Street series, all of which were first published in daily serialised form in the newspaper ‘The Scotsman.’ I cannot imagine the deadline headache that must be involved in providing copy on a daily basis. What pressure, and how far ahead was the author writing […]