Reviews

Jul 7, 20231 min read

1077. Barbara Kingsolver - Demon Copperfield

This is a very long bildungsroman and I found it very hard work. Would probably help if I had any memory of the plot of David...

Mar 19, 20231 min read

1052. Thomas Keneally - The Dickens Boy

A library book via P, as was no.1051. I struggled with the lack of any significant plot here. One of Charles Dickens’ many children...

Sep 26, 20211 min read

898. Philip Kerr - Prussian Blue

I think I may have read one of his before – a trilogy called 'Berlin Noir', many years ago. This was long and ponderous at times, but a...

Dec 3, 20201 min read

831. Stephen Fay & David Kynaston - Arlott, Swanton And The Soul...

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

Jun 2, 20191 min read

688. Olivia Kiernan - Too Close To Breath

I wanted a modern crime thriller after all this 19th century stuff and picked this (or rather her next book – I will always go back to...

Mar 31, 20191 min read

672. Milan Kundera - The Unbearable Lightness Of Being

Haven’t read this for a long time but it is a brilliant book. About sex, love, metaphysics, and the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia in...

Jul 10, 20181 min read

610. Hari Kunzru - Gods Without Men

I have read this before (499, Malaga last year). It is a good book, pretty weird, and my summary at 499 hasn’t really changed. Unclear...

Jun 15, 20171 min read

499. Hari Kunzru - Gods Without Men

Best book of the holiday. Strange, quite hard work, as I understood it's a book basically about a place in the Nevada desert and it's...

Feb 4, 20171 min read

465. Helena Kelly - Jane Austen: The Secret Radical

Very good book; ‘academic’ Lit Crit, but well written and argued. My problem was an ignorance of Jane Austen’s novels (which I must now...

Sep 28, 20161 min read

433. Chad Kultgen - The Lie

Pretty good and totally different. Full of pretty lurid sex which however becomes just a motif. Quite like an 18th century novel about...

Jun 8, 20161 min read

409. Simon Kernick - The Crime Trade

Complete rubbish. Get this on Amazon

May 29, 20161 min read

405. Simon Kernick - Relentless

This, I thought, was poorly written, but the terrific pace of the plot made up for that. A man is minding his own business in his garden...

May 28, 20161 min read

404. Dan Kavanagh - Duffy

I gather Dan Kavanagh is really Julian Barnes, writing private eye thrillers under this pseudonym. Certainly a fairly salacious page...

Dec 5, 20151 min read

359. Karl Ove Knausgaard - A Death In The Family

I hated this at first; to say that Zola is prolix is unjust in the context of Knausgaard. The first 200 pages seemed to be a tedious...

Jun 15, 20151 min read

313. Natsuo Kirino - Grotesque

Misleadingly packaged as a thriller (which it isn’t) this is the strangest book I've read on holiday. A very weird Japanese novel about...

Sep 17, 20141 min read

246. Franz Kafka - The Metamorphosis

Enjoyed ‘The Trial’ enough to read another Kafka, but Metamorphosis has less weight; it is very internal and apart from Gregor’s family,...

Sep 13, 20141 min read

244. Franz Kafka - The Trial

Bought this in 1972, a few years ago; wonder what I made of it then? I thought it was really good and quite funny – hard going in places,...

Aug 28, 20141 min read

238. Sue Monk Kidd - The Invention Of Wings

Paddy recommended this; I didn’t like it at first, but enjoyed it more and more as it progressed. It is a semi-fictionalised biography of...

Jun 15, 20141 min read

221. Jonathan Kellerman - True Detectives

Truly awful, but I needed a bit of a light read and found this in the villa. Kellerman is the worst type of US psycho-crime babble...

Sep 25, 20131 min read

147. Philip Kerr - A Man Without Breath

I have read a trilogy, I think called 'Berlin Noir' before, without really enjoying it. l am not sure that I enjoyed this a lot either-...