Reviews 

"I sucked twelve cocks in Magaluf" is an opening sentence to rival Jane Austen or Tolstoy. Subtitled "what if the worst thing you did...

I enjoyed this, but not as much as P did. A group of Californian women (+1 man) set up what the title indicates and discuss a book a...

I enjoyed the beginning of this, but as it progressed the similarities to (and repetitions of) My Brilliant Friend began to proliferate....

I enjoyed this, but don’t think I read it very well. It is quite a modest novel by Faulkes’ standards – no big themes, set in and around...

This is a brilliant book. I am not sure I had ever completed it before (the left had side of the spine is suspiciously unbent) and I had...

I have read I think all Tana French’s books but this is the best. I find her prose style can get a bit Jamesian and convoluted but not in...

I enjoyed this, particularly the last quarter after the boy’s death, but struggled with the early chapters where there were (for me) too...

The full title continues ‘of English cricket'. But I couldn’t really work out whether it was a parallel biography of these 2 cricket...

Inspired by 809 (Baudelaire and Flaubert contemporary and controversial) to re-read this. Remarkably (despite 14) I really enjoyed this,...

An Xmas present from Cristina next door, who is I think a fan and may even have met the guy. Very good, not the sort of book or writer I...

This is a case of ‘make a really poor TV adaptation of a book (Dublin Murders BBC 1)’ and drive a reader back to the original book. This...

Always try to read one big chunky classic novel on holiday and chose this, for some reason this year. A big and difficult novel, about...

Bought 1977, so probably haven’t read for 40+ years! Brilliant, hasn’t aged at all and I had minimal memory of either the book or (I am...

So pissed off with my new kindle (see 667) that I will read anything in paper rather than spend money with Amazon. But I can’t get on...

The 4th and final novel of the sequence. I never normally read books out of sequence but P had this from the library and we have watched...

This was quite a difficult book; I have read it before, but assume a long time ago. But as it progressed, I enjoyed it more and it is...

Another one not completed sadly, I don’t like this. A birthday present from P (like 539) so another unread. Nothing particularly wrong...

Quite a good modern female detective novel. Easily televisable I think. Plot clever, although maybe not all that believable in places,...

This is by a university academic about the rise of UKIP. Full of (to me) uninteresting graphs, but the basic narrative was quite...

Tried starting this two years ago in Spain; couldn’t get into it. A bit of a curate’s egg; some of his writing is excellent; some less...