Reviews 

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...

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...

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...

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

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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

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...

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

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...

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

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

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

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

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...

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...

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...