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Oct 8, 20231 min read
1098. Anne Tyler - French Braid
Never read any before, and found this beautifully written but hard work to read. Like a porcelain statue. The plot, as I remember it,...
Aug 27, 20231 min read
1089. Peter Robinson - Cold Is The Grave
Enjoyed the last one enough to read another. This is brilliant and I think probably one of the best. A family tragedy, involving...
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...
Dec 16, 20221 min read
1036. Octavia E. Butler - Kindred
Interesting to read this following no.1035. This is about a contemporary black American woman, married to a white man, who is dragged...
Nov 26, 20221 min read
1032. Defne Suman - At The Breakfast Table
This is very good but quite difficult. Written from a contemporary viewpoint, it spans four generations of a Greek/Turkish family - the...
Oct 26, 20221 min read
1024. Samantha Ellis - Take Courage
Subtitled ‘Anne Brontë and the Art of Life’, this is very good. Effectively an impressionistic biography of the Brontë family (who all...
Jun 17, 20221 min read
990. Elif Shafak - The Bastard Of Istanbul
Very good and merits a re-read as hard to follow at times. The interaction of two families, one Turkish, and one diaspora Armenians based...
Jun 9, 20221 min read
987. Robert Galbraith - The Cuckoo's Calling
The first of the Cormorant Strike novels in which the eponymous hero and Robin his P.A, business partner and romantic partner are...
Feb 16, 20221 min read
947. Adam O'Riordan - The Falling Thread
Pleased that the local library is open again post lockdown; I am probably borrowing too many books, and the choices there are quite...
Oct 11, 20211 min read
904. Douglas Stuart - Shuggie Bain
I thought this was brilliant and well-deserving of the Booker prize it won in 2020. A very grim novel set in Glasgow in the 1980s. The...
Feb 5, 20141 min read
181. Patrick White - The Tree Of Man
Extraordinary. Long and difficult (although ultimately very simple) book, simply about human life. Very un-glorified. The characters are...
Jul 13, 20131 min read
127. Arnaldur Indridason - Voices
Have read this before but wanted to re-read it. It introduces Erlendur and explicates more of his family history than some of the other...
May 10, 20121 min read
8. William Shakespeare - King Lear
Haven't read this for about 40 years since studying it as an A-level set text. Found it surprisingly hard work; enjoyed it enormously at...