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Books I Read in November 2024 | A Little Blog of Books
Impossible City by Simon Kuper is an expat’s view of Parisian society in the 21st century and how it has changed over the last two decades. Kuper bought an apartment in Paris in 2000 and still lives in the French capital with his American wife and their three children. From the point of view of…
Books I Read in October 2024 | A Little Blog of Books
Lives of the Wives by Carmela Ciuraru outlines the tempestuous relationships and careers of five literary couples: Radclyffe Hall and Una Troubridge, Elsa Morante and Alberto Moravia, Kenneth Tynan and Elaine Dundy, Kingsley Amis and Elizabeth Jane Howard, and Roald Dahl and Patricia Neal. I knew a bit about Kingsley Amis and Roald Dahl already,…
Books I Read in September 2024 | A Little Blog of Books
Ruskin Park by Rory Cellan-Jones is the former BBC journalist’s memoir about how his parents met in the 1950s. His mother, Sylvia, was separated from her first husband and worked at the BBC as a secretary. She had a brief affair with James Cellan Jones, a producer who was 15 years her junior. When Sylvia…
Books I Read in August 2024 | A Little Blog of Books
My Good Bright Wolf by Sarah Moss is a memoir about the author’s eating disorder which developed during her childhood with a serious relapse during the pandemic. I have enjoyed reading several novels by Moss over the years which often deal with food and illness, and her latest memoir is a complex account about these…
Books I Read in July 2024 | A Little Blog of Books
The Bee Sting by Paul Murray was shortlisted for the Booker Prize last year and is even more impressive than his second novel Skippy Dies which I read last year. It is a portrait of the Barnes family who live in a small Irish town and have fallen on hard times following the financial crash…
The Booker Prize 2024 Longlist | A Little Blog of Books
The Booker Prize longlist was announced on Tuesday. The 13 titles are: Wild Houses by Colin Barrett Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel James by Percival Everett Orbital by Samantha Harvey Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner My Friends by Hisham Matar This Strange Eventful History by Claire Messud Held by Anne Michaels Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange…
The Booker Prize 2024: Predictions, Preferences and Possibilities | A Little Blog of Books
The longlist for this year’s Booker Prize is due to be announced on Tuesday 30th July. I’ve had mixed results over the last decade or so in my attempts to predict some likely contenders alongside my personal preferences and other possibilities, but it’s always fun to guess anyway. Irish authors…
Books I Read in June 2024 | A Little Blog of Books
Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein won the first Women’s Prize for Non Fiction last month. I read Klein’s first book No Logo several years ago, which I felt had already dated somewhat over a decade after its release. In contrast, the ideas explored in ‘Doppelganger’ are very much of the…
Books I Read in May 2024 | A Little Blog of Books
Knife by Salman Rushdie recounts how the world-famous author survived an attempted murder at a literary event in New York in August 2022, over three decades after a fatwa was issued which forced him into hiding for several years. Rushdie manages to create suspense despite the outcome of the shocking attack being well known, and…
Books I Read in April 2024 | A Little Blog of Books
Pandora’s Box by Peter Biskind is about how the golden age of prestige television drama series in the early 2000s has evolved to an era of “peak TV” in which a saturated market produced 600 new scripted series in 2022 alone. It’s a three act story which begins with how the cable channel HBO distinguished…
Books I Read in March 2024 | A Little Blog of Books
A Tomb With a View by Peter Ross is a fascinating book about graveyards in Britain and Ireland and the stories of some well-known and forgotten residents as well as the work of those who care for them. The famous Victorian cemeteries in London such as Highgate and Kensal Rise face issues with limited space…
Books I Read in February 2024 | A Little Blog of Books
A Life of One’s Own by Joanna Biggs is a blend of literary criticism and mini biographies of eight female authors and how they carved out creative freedoms for themselves, alongside Biggs’s personal reflections on her experience of going through a divorce in her 30s and losing her mother to early-onset Alzheimer’s disease a few…
Books I Read in January 2024 | A Little Blog of Books
Wellness by Nathan Hill is set in the 1990s when Jack and Elizabeth meet as college students amid a vibrant art scene in Chicago. The novel follows the ups and downs of their relationship over the next 20 years through to middle age when they are married with a young son. Jack is a photographer…
My Most Anticipated Books of 2024 | A Little Blog of Books
My list of books to read continues to expand and there are lots to look forward to in 2024. All publication dates where known apply to the United Kingdom only. Wellness by Nathan Hill is published in January. I really enjoyed Hill’s debut novel The Nix and his second book is…
My Books of the Year 2023 | A Little Blog of Books
One of the stand-out novels I read in 2023 was Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld which is a fun and refreshingly original take on the genre. I also really enjoyed The Running Grave by Robert Galbraith which is the seventh outing for Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott’s detective agency as they…
Books I Read in December 2023 | A Little Blog of Books
I often seek out the books which receive rare positive reviews in Private Eye magazine and Wasteland by Oliver Franklin-Wallis is a truly eye-opening look at where our waste actually ends up. Franklin-Wallis probes a lot of uncomfortable truths about recycling and greenwashing on his travels around the world starting at a recycling centre in…
Books I Read in November 2023 | A Little Blog of Books
Nine Pints by Rose George is a non-fiction about “the mysterious, miraculous world of blood”. The title refers to the approximate amount of blood we have in our bodies, and George explores various blood-related topics across nine chapters covering disease, cultural attitudes and medical breakthroughs. George‘s global tour includes HIV education in South Africa, the…
Books I Read in October 2023 | A Little Blog of Books
The Running Grave by Robert Galbraith is the seventh outing for Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott’s private detective agency. When they are approached by the family of a young man feared to have been brainwashed by a religious cult, Robin goes undercover at Chapman’s farm in Norfolk to find out what is really going on…
Books I Read in September 2023 | A Little Blog of Books
The Fraud by Zadie Smith weaves together three storylines based on true events in the 19th century. A Cockney butcher arrives in London from Australia claiming to be Sir Roger Tichborne, the heir to a baronetcy and previously thought to have been lost at sea. His sensational fraud trial in London captures everyone’s attention, including…
Books I Read in August 2023 | A Little Blog of Books
The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell is a fictionalised account of the marriage of 15-year-old Lucrezia di Cosima de’Medici to Alfonso, Duke of Ferrera in sixteenth century Florence, merging two powerful family dynasties. Lucrezia would be dead barely a year later, allegedly of “putrid fever” but rumours persist that she was murdered, as per the…
Books I Read in July 2023 | A Little Blog of Books
Stasiland by Anna Funder won the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction in 2004 (now known as the Baillie Gifford Prize) and chronicles the lives of several people who lived in the German Democratic Republic, also known as East Germany, during the Cold War. Funder, an Australian journalist, was working in television in the mid-1990s when…
The Booker Prize 2023 Longlist | A Little Blog of Books
The Booker Prize longlist was announced on Tuesday. The 13 titles are: A Spell of Good Things by Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ Old God’s Time by Sebastian Barry Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery How to Build a Boat by Elaine Feeney This Other Eden by Paul Harding Pearl by…
The Booker Prize 2023: Predictions, Possibilities and Preferences | A Little Blog of Books
In my Booker Prize blog post last year, I noted that my longlist predictions lists in 2020 and 2021 included the eventual winners in those years: Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart and The Promise by Damon Galgut. I posed the question of whether I could make it three years in a row. The answer was a resounding no, but I…
Books I Read in June 2023 | A Little Blog of Books
I went to the Hay Festival for a couple of days at the end of May and picked up Regenesis by George Monbiot from the signed copies table in the Festival Bookshop (climate and food seemed to be big topics at the Festival this year). The first half of Monbiot’s book about the state of…
Books I Read in May 2023 | A Little Blog of Books
Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld is one of my most anticipated books of 2023. Sally is a comedy writer for the late-night sketch show The Night Owls - a fictionalised version of Saturday Night Live - where she meets Noah Brewster, a pop star since the early 2000s who is appearing as a guest host.…
Books I Read in April 2023 | A Little Blog of Books
Red Sauce Brown Sauce by Felicity Cloake is a travel memoir which documents the Guardian food writer’s “British breakfast odyssey” cycling around the UK in search of all the components of breakfast food from sausages in Glamorgan to potato bread in Northern Ireland to jam in Tiptree. Hampered by persistent hamstring injuries and COVID-19 restrictions…
Books I Read in March 2023 | A Little Blog of Books
Lessons by Ian McEwan spans the life of Roland Baines, born shortly after the Second World War. Taking in several major world crises from the Cuban Missile Crisis to the Chernobyl disaster to the COVID-19 pandemic as well as intimate domestic events, ‘Lessons’ is a sprawling epic and easily McEwan’s longest novel. Some elements of Roland’s…
Books I Read in February 2023 | A Little Blog of Books
Islands of Abandonment by Cal Flyn was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction and won the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award in 2021 - two of my favourite literary prizes. Flyn explores 13 places where humans used to live but have now left for good. While most of the locations…
The Women’s Prize for Fiction Longlist 2023 | A Little Blog of Books
The Women’s Prize for Fiction longlist for 2023 was announced yesterday. The 16 titles are: Glory by NoViolet Bulawayo Homesick by Jennifer Croft Fire Rush by Jacqueline Crooks Children of Paradise by Camilla Grudova Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes Trespasses by Louise Kennedy Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver Cursed Bread by Sophie Mackintosh The Dog…
Books I Read in January 2023 | A Little Blog of Books
Love Marriage by Monica Ali tells the story of 26-year-old junior doctor Yasmin Ghorani who is engaged to fellow medic Joe Sangster. The novel opens with Yasmin’s Bengali immigrant parents meeting Joe’s famous feminist mother for the first time at her house in Primrose Hill. The evening forces Yasmin to re-evaluate her assumptions and opinions about…
My Most Anticipated Books of 2023 | A Little Blog of Books
There are lots of new books due in 2023 which I’m looking forward to reading and my list continues to expand by the day. All publication dates where known apply to the United Kingdom only. There are some promising looking debut novels out in January including Really Good, Actually by Monica…
My Books of the Year 2022 | A Little Blog of Books
There were three novels which really stood out for me in 2022. Case Study by Graeme Macrae Burnet was longlisted for the Booker Prize last year and skilfully presents the fictional biography of psychoanalyst Arthur Collins Braithwaite as authentic source material. Careless by Kirsty Capes is an excellent debut novel which was longlisted for this…
Books I Read in December | A Little Blog of Books
For Richer For Poorer by Victoria Coren is the Only Connect presenter’s 2009 memoir about how she became a professional poker player and the first female winner of the European Poker Tour in 2006 in London. Overall, ‘For Richer, For Poorer’ will probably be appreciated the most by those who already know a fair amount…
Books I Read in November | A Little Blog of Books
Traitor King by Andrew Lownie is an account of the events which followed Edward VIII’s abdication of the throne in 1936 to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson. Lownie puts forward a convincing case that the newly created Duke and Duchess of Windsor were not just fascist sympathisers but also actively colluded with the Nazi regime.…
Autumn Reading: Part Two | A Little Blog of Books
Downing Street has been in the news rather a lot this week, so it seems rather timely to have been reading Number 10: The Geography of Power at Downing Street by Jack Brown recently. Brown was the first ever Researcher in Residence at No. 10 and his book examines how the role of the Prime Minister and…
The Booker Prize 2021: Predictions, Possibilities and Preferences | A Little Blog of Books
It’s that time of year again - the 2021 Booker Prize longlist will be announced on Tuesday 27th July and I have made a list of predictions in terms of what I think could be some strong possibilities alongside my own personal preferences, based on a few eligible books I have read in recent months, as…
Non-Fiction I Have Read Recently | A Little Blog of Books
This summer has mostly been a non-fiction reading binge for me. Blood on the Page by Thomas Harding is one of the most unique and intriguing true crime books I have come across in a long time. Photographer, writer and expert on the playwright George Bernard Shaw, 86-year-old Allan Chappelow was found beaten to death at…
Summer Reading: Part One | A Little Blog of Books
I have read a lot of great books over the summer and I now have a massive backlog of reviews to catch up on. Unsettled Ground by Claire Fuller tells the story of 51-year-old twins, Jeanie and Julius, who still live with their mother in rural isolation, until her sudden death forces them to confront some…
Autumn Reading: Part One | A Little Blog of Books
The world probably doesn’t need another review of Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney by now, but you’re going to get one anyway. Rooney’s much anticipated third novel tells the story of Alice and her friend Eileen, both approaching 30 and living in Ireland, having met as roommates at university. Alice is a successful…
The Booker Prize 2021 Longlist | A Little Blog of Books
The Booker Prize longlist was announced on Tuesday. The 13 titles are: A Passage North by Anuk Arudpragasam Second Place by Rachel Cusk The Promise by Damon Galgut The Sweetness of Water by Nathan Harris Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro An Island by Karen Jennings A Town Called Solace by Mary Lawson No One is Talking About This…