Reviews 

This a wonderful book, about singing, male friendship, and embalming, so an interesting combination. A talented singer follows his dead...

I really enjoyed her book about Jane Austen, but found this a bit dull. Having no interest in Agatha Christie or her books probably...

Very different and quite strange. A fictionalised documentary history of a singing duo, Nev a brummie who escapes to the US to pursue...

This was on TV recently, a modern adaptation of a book written in the 1950s, so I thought I would read the book. The adaptation changes...

This is really good – I expected a rather frothy and lightweight book from a woman who likes to prance around in period costume in her TV...

A wonderful book, read it before (177 & 8) and still difficult. So, just to help out any other baffled reader, the even numbered chapters...

Bought this after indexing this blog and remembering 177 & 8. Didn’t enjoy it at all, 2 obscure narratives about young men in Australia...

Paddy recommended this, having heard the author on Women’s Hour. Although it has been widely praised, I thought it was rubbish, well that...

One of Paddy’s. A rather severe academic book about 5 women (Virginia Woolf, the poet HD, Dorothy Sayers, Jane Harrison, a Cambridge...

Heard an extract on Radio 4. This is a shocking book about slavery in the deep south in the 19th century, but it is not a very good book....

This was far better and I devoured it far faster. A debut novel about kids at university and their beguiling lecturer Lorna, who teaches,...

A library book via P. I thought, for most of this book, which is quite a hard work read, that ‘the interestings’ (5 or 6 student-y...

Quite a ‘quiet’ book, about the fictional life of an academic who abandons agricultural training (parents being farmers) for literature...

Not a lot of humour or mirth in this. I enjoyed The Age of Innocence (593) and thought I would try another Wharton. Proved to be (by the...

I have tried (I don’t think successfully) to read this is the past, but it is brilliant. The themes are all Henry James, but the cultural...

An unread birthday or Xmas present from a few years ago, but we went to see a tribute band just before we went away. Quite an academic...

I enjoyed this less than the previous 2 (505 & 508). The plot all seemed a bit clichéd, Agatha Christie-ish. Get this on Amazon

This is a good book but I found it slightly annoying because the plot is structurally very similar to 505 - adult woman drawn back into...

Brilliant. I found this hard to get into initially because it is very much a girl’s book, but after that initial difficulty it was...

Another book unread (by me) since May 1977, when we bought it. I couldn’t (quite) get into it; it was good in parts, but the narrative...