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May 27, 20171 min read
490. David Mark - Dark Winter
The kindle book that briefly died. The first in another series of detective/procedural novels, this time featuring DS Aector McAvoy, and...
Apr 29, 20171 min read
483. Lisa McInerney - The Glorious Heresies
A strange book, based among the poor working and criminal class in Modern Cork city. Couldn’t really work out the genre; crimes, but no...
Dec 21, 20161 min read
454. Henning Mankell - Kennedy's Brain
The book referred to above. I think it is brilliant, but, as I thought before when I first read it, the conclusion left me baffled (or...
Dec 16, 20161 min read
453. Henning Mankell - Secrets In The Fire
A present from JG, as a bonus on top of the book (also by Mankell) that he lost and replaced. A short and slight book about a young girl...
Aug 8, 20161 min read
423. Marcia Muller - Pennies On A Dead Woman's Eyes
This has sat in the house for years. Origins unclear; published by The Women’s Press, a female private eye (well she’s not, she is a...
Mar 7, 20161 min read
383. Tim Marshall - Prisoners Of Geography
I found this quite hard work; it was a bit like watching the news. Basically an attempt to explain a lot of both history and the modern...
Jan 2, 20161 min read
367. Javier Marías - The Infatuations
A library book by a writer I had never heard of; apparently a prominent modern Spanish novelist. The narrator is a very verbose young...
Aug 1, 20151 min read
325. Ed McBain - Romance
Needed something lighter, so reverted to a McBain. He is a very good writer; I had forgotten having read a few many years ago. Unusually,...
Jul 25, 20151 min read
323. Rebecca Mead - The Road To Middlemarch
I found this hard work. If I had wanted to read a biography of George Eliot, I’d have done so. By the end of it, I felt somewhat...
May 28, 20151 min read
306. Ed McBain - Nocturne
A much later book than no.304, and much longer and more ponderous. The central conceit is quite clever (an apparent murder, which...
May 17, 20151 min read
304. Ed McBain - King's Ransom
Haven’t read one of these for years. This is an early book (1959) and surprisingly good. The story is beautifully constructed, as the...
May 9, 20151 min read
301. Maria McCann - As Meat Loves Salt
This is totally different; a kind of 17th century 'Brokeback Mountain'. It is huge in scope, covering bloody bits of the civil war which...
Mar 4, 20151 min read
286. Hilary Mantel - Wolf Hall
This is extremely good, but long and hard work and I am not doing it justice. I am going to break the habit of this record and return to...
Nov 15, 20141 min read
261. Paul Merton - Only When I Laugh
Merton is a very funny man, but not a great writer; the prose is pretty plodding, and the intersected jokes are mainly visual. I didn’t...
Sep 18, 20141 min read
247. Henning Mankell - An Event In Autumn
Another very short book, a Wallander novella, previously unpublished in the UK. Poor old Kurt looks at a house to buy but finds a couple...
Sep 3, 20141 min read
240. Andy Miller - The Year Of Reading Dangerously
This was a bit of a challenge as it is similar to this site. A book about the challenge he set himself to read 50 books, chosen I am not...
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...
Aug 21, 20141 min read
236. Peter May - Entry Island
Thriller with two parallel time lines; modern day Canada and the Highland land clearances in the mid 19th century. The two plot lines run...
Jun 18, 20141 min read
222. Thomas Mann - BuddenBrooks
If I have read Thomas Mann before, it was 'Death in Venice' 40 years ago. This, especially the first half, was a wonderfully stately...
Jun 12, 20141 min read
219. Robert Musil - The Confessions Of Young Torless
Couldn’t get ‘The Man Without Qualities’ on a Kindle so this as a substitute. Typical German early 20th century expressionist (is this...