Reviews

Jul 31, 20201 min read

803. William Boyd - Ordinary Thunderstorms

Took the day off on Friday to enjoy the sun and wanted a chunky book. I had no clear memory of reading this before but it was quite a...

Jul 1, 20201 min read

795. William Boyd - The Dream Lover

Not generally a fan of short stories, but wanted a bit of a page turner after the longeurs of DHL. These were (mostly) fairly easy to...

May 5, 20201 min read

773. Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows - The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

This is a lovely book. Saw the film on the TV last week and discovered that our next door neighbour had given the book (twice) to Paddy...

Mar 1, 20201 min read

751. Anthony Burgess - Earthly Powers

Re-read this, possibly influenced or inspired by discussion about religions with Robert Spicer (738) and then reading Burgess’ book about...

Jan 30, 20201 min read

746. Anthony Burgess - Here Comes Everybody

A bit of a challenge for late January, but Burgess’s readers guide to James Joyce is lightly written (perhaps because he is not an...

Oct 26, 20191 min read

725. Jessie Burton - The Confession

This was on the radio a few weeks ago and is her much heralded 3rd book. I found it hard work, and not frankly that good. The narrative...

Sep 30, 20191 min read

717. Jessie Burton - The Muse

This is by the author of ‘The Miniturist’ which I have seen on television if not read. Not in the George Eliot class (well what would...

Sep 3, 20191 min read

709. Julian Barnes - The Only Story

An odd book, by a writer I am not sure I really like. About a love affair between a 19 year old chap and a 48 year old woman, set...

Jul 29, 20191 min read

700. Lawrence Block - Even The Wicked

I like this writer and hadn’t read one for years, but picked one of which I had no memory, perhaps because it is not that good. Three...

Jul 20, 20191 min read

697. Julian Barnes - Before She Met Me

Needed something easy to read after the rigours of 696 so plucked this off the bookshelf. It is pretty low grade really – a tiresome...

Jul 19, 20191 min read

969. Anna Burns - Milkman

Good, but very difficult read (assumed it had taken 2 weeks but seems to be only one). A dramatic monologue by the nameless narrator, a...

Feb 27, 20191 min read

663. John Boyne - A History Of Loneliness

Enjoyed 658, so thought I would try another. This was good and well written again, but I found the time shifts annoying and detracted...

Feb 12, 20191 min read

658. John Boyne - A Ladder To The Sky

Book of the year so far, by a novelist I had never heard of, although apparently quite prolific (wrote ‘The Boy in striped Pyjamas’ which...

Oct 18, 20181 min read

633. Pat Barker - The Silence Of The Girls

A retelling of ‘The Iliad’ from a woman’s perspective, so the central figure is Breisis (I think), a Trojan princess captured by the...

Jul 28, 20181 min read

613. Craig Brown - Ma'am Darling

A pretty atrocious book about a pretty atrocious person (Princess Margaret). Subtitled ’99 Glimpses of’ her, not one of these was...

Jun 17, 20181 min read

600. Laura Barnett - Greatest Hits

One of Paddy’s, the fictionalised biography of an English, Sandy Denny type and era folk/rock singer (born c1950 so of our era)....

Jan 6, 20181 min read

565. William Boyd - Any Human Heart

Still not certain whether I have read this before. The central figure, Logan Mountstewart, sounds very familiar, but I had no memory of...

Jan 2, 20181 min read

564. Shaun Bythell - The Diary Of A Bookseller

Dan gave this to Paddy for Xmas. The author is a 2nd hand bookseller in Wigtown, a small Scottish town in Galloway, not far from...

Dec 14, 20171 min read

557. Catherine Banner - The House At The Edge Of Night

One of P’s library books. I thought this was pretty good for a first novel; a big long chronicle covering the last 100 years or so of a...

Sep 26, 20171 min read

531. Helen Dunmore - Birdcage Walk

Obviously the author’s last book, as she died not long after completing it. She says, in an afterword, that she likes writing about the...