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Sep 4, 20211 min read
891. Graham Masterson - Blood Sisters
This guy is very good. The books are full of very graphic violence, but are extremely well plotted and the central figure Kate Maguire is...
Mar 1, 20201 min read
751. Anthony Burgess - Earthly Powers
Re-read this, possibly influenced or inspired by discussion about religions with Robert Spicer (738) and then reading Burgess’ book about...
Dec 22, 20191 min read
737. Robert Spicer - From The Curates Egg
I enjoyed this enormously, but partly because I know Robert (a little) personally and our career paths have run slightly in parallel, and...
Feb 27, 20191 min read
663. John Boyne - A History Of Loneliness
Enjoyed 658, so thought I would try another. This was good and well written again, but I found the time shifts annoying and detracted...
Jan 11, 20191 min read
649. George Steiner - Tolstoy Or Dostoevsky
I have been meaning to read this for years, but thought I should read more Dostoyevsky first. Steiner wrote this in his late 20’s and his...
Jan 5, 20191 min read
647. Fydor Dostoyevsky - The Brothers Karamazov
This is a huge and very challenging book. The basic plot is relatively simple – three brothers with an unpleasant and dissolute father,...
Nov 30, 20181 min read
643. Albert Camus - L'etranger
Inspired I think by no. 641 to re-read this as the books are thematically quite similar, in that both have an obscurely motivated murder...
Nov 10, 20181 min read
638. Andrew Michael Hurley - The Loney
This is a strange book; Radio 4’s book of the month for November which is where I came across it. The Loney is a bit of actual (or...
Oct 29, 20181 min read
635. Patrick Gale - A Perfectly Good Man
Planned to read this before we went to Croatia, at which point my kindle rejected the card. No pun intended, since it is primarily about...
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...
Nov 11, 20171 min read
549. Helen Dunmore - Zennor In Darkness
I loved this; she said she likes to write about people on the periphery of major events so here we have a WW1 novel set in Zennor, just...
Sep 27, 20171 min read
532. Emma Cline - The Girls
Strange novel about a Manson type cult set in California in the late 60’s and the fascination of a young girl for an older cult member. I...
Jun 23, 20161 min read
414. Graham Greene - The Power And The Glory
Returned from holiday feeling quite alienated from reading and as a result struggled to get into this book (I must index this list as I...
Dec 13, 20151 min read
361. Justin Cartwright - Lion Heart
I think this guy is good. Hard to summarise this thematically, as there a multiple strands – Richard I’s attempt to recover the Cross...
Nov 9, 20151 min read
353. Lawrence Durrell - Mountolive
Meant to read a Zola next, but got a bit hooked by no.352. This is much more of a stand- alone novel, centering mainly on Mountolive, a...
Oct 16, 20151 min read
345. Elizabeth Strout - The Burgess Boys
P enjoyed this, but I didn’t much. You can tell it is a ‘good quality’ novel, but I just didn’t warm to it. The Burgess' are a couple of...
Jul 24, 20151 min read
322. Émile Zola - La Faute De L'Abbé Mouret
I didn’t read it in French, but don’t like the English translation (‘Abbe Mouret’s Transgression’ which misses half of the point) in my...
Jul 14, 20151 min read
321. Émile Zola - The Conquest Of Plassans
Plassans is the village where no.315 takes place, so we have moved back from Paris to Provence. A priest is taken in as lodger by a...
Mar 8, 20151 min read
288. Patrick Cockburn - The Rise Of Islamic State
It took me six chapters and nearly 100 pages to find out what I wanted to know. Chapter 7 summarises the recent Middle East history,...
Mar 9, 20141 min read
187. Honoré de Balzac - Eugenie Grandet
A proper story at last. I hadn’t realised how early in the 19th century Balzac was writing; 1820’s/30’s. So there is lots of classicism,...