Category: My Reading

  • Rivers in the Sky – Elif Shafak

    I finished reading this book a few weeks ago but I have hesitated about writing about it. It’s difficult to say why, maybe because the distance the novel covers is so huge that I don’t really know where to start. It is three stories in one and these are joined together by water. This book […]

  • The Road to Lichfield – Penelope Lively

    This was the author’s first adult novel, published in 1977 and it was shortlisted for the Booker prize, not a bad start, but of course she had already been very successful as a children’s writer. I have to say this is not my favourite of her books but I can certainly appreciate the skilled writing. […]

  • The Memory Library – Kate Storey

    I don’t always follow through when someone recommends a book to me, for the same reason that I don’t belong to a book group (much as I love talking about books); I don’t want to be told what to read. However, sometimes I do listen and read a book that has excited another reader. I’m […]

  • Killing Time – Alan Bennett

    I try hard to avoid heavy, expensive hardback books but a round, wooden table artfully styled with small, beautifully produced hardbacks, well, that’s another matter … and very hard to resist. Such a table was near the checkout in Daunts the other day and just as so many people would in indulge in chocolates as […]

  • Caledonian Road – Andrew O’Hagan

    I had read lots of glowing reviews of this book and planned to buy it when it came out in paperback. As it happened I received the hardback for Christmas, all 600 pages, not then a book to read in bed, fall asleep and drop on one’s face! That was not going to happen actually […]

  • Into The London Fog: Eerie Tales from the Weird City – Edited by Elizabeth Dearnley

    On a lovely London Day just before Christmas we were killing time in Waterstones Piccadilly before going to see a matinee of The Mousetrap. Unusually for me, we found ourselves on the sci-fi and horror floor. Not my natural home but with books it’s always good to be open minded. I was drawn to a […]

  • Raising Hare – Chloe Dalton

    When I was a teenager in West Somerset, my father would drive me to the school bus stop each morning, about a mile away. During March and April we were frequently alarmingly late…and it was a logistical nightmare if I missed the bus! The reason for our tardiness was that we were watching hares from […]

  • By Any Other Name – Jodi Picoult

    It is the well-known title for many a university thesis or dissertation: Did Shakespeare write the works that are today attributed to him? And, of course, if he didn’t then who did? I will declare my personal position before we go any further: I really don’t care that much. I am very fond of some […]

  • Two Women in Rome – Elizabeth Buchan

    I asked some time ago: what book should I have taken on my visit to Rome as I read ‘A Room with a View’ whilst in Florence. Well, I think I have answered my own question, I should have had ‘Two women in Rome’ with me by Elizabeth Buchan. It would have been perfect I […]

  • The Lincoln Highway – Amor Towles

    For the first time ever I found a book I wanted in Waterstone’s bargain box. Hardback, heavy, 500 pages and costing £3.00. This is the second Amor Towles book I have read, The Gentleman in Moscow being the first. I fell in love, totally, with that novel but this was utterly different. It is a […]