Category Archives: literature

Winter holiday reading

A quick wintery ‘recently read’ roundup… Just My Type by Simon Garfield. My favourite of the bunch – an inspired Christmas present from @gwithiansunset. Apparently this was serialised on Radio 4, which is a bit odd for a book about … Continue reading

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November spawned a monster

Or, My NaNoWriMo Hell It was a mad, spur-of-the-moment decision. I hadn’t thought it through. A couple of friends were doing NaNoWriMo – and I thought, what the hell, why not? 50,000 words in a month, 1666 words a day. … Continue reading

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Review: Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi by Geoff Dyer

Caution: this review contains spoilers. This book is crap. Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi was recommended to me by an old school friend. (To be clear: the school is old. She isn’t). And I hated it. Awkward, as they … Continue reading

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HUNGRY the STARS and EVERYTHING

There’s a tagline on the back jacket of Emma Jane Unsworth’s first novel that is out of place: ‘Can Mr Wrong ever be Mr Right?’. This makes it sound like chick-lit, and it’s at odds with the rather sophisticated under-designed … Continue reading

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Is ‘Nordic Noir’ really so strange?

I’ve just finished reading Jar City by Arnaldur Indriðason – desperate to finish it so I can watch the film back. It’s another bit of ‘Nordic Noir’, so fashionable at the moment: Scandinavian crime fiction in the mould of Wallander … Continue reading

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Bittersweet Lucy Ellman

Poorly, elderly parents abound. I was convinced the other week that there was a great quote from the writer Lucy Ellman about the death of one’s parents. It was sad, it was witty, it was pithy. It was up there … Continue reading

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The Curious Case of Mr Faulks and Mr Fry

Mrs Wiki has been on at me for ages to read some Sebastian Faulks. Somehow, I never got round to it. I’m not as fascinated by the First World War as she is, and frankly, that Sebastian Faulks (Seb!) was … Continue reading

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The Sacred Art of Stealing

Thanks to Annie, I am almost at the end of my first Christopher Brookmyre – The Sacred Art of Stealing. A Situationist / Dadaist bank heist, some excellent misdirection, a girl and quite a few guns (though I always thought … Continue reading

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Recently read 2

Time to dump my overlong ‘Recently Read’ sidebar cruft into a post… The Dead by Charlie Higson. Prequel to The Enemy – everyone over the age of 14 is dead or a zombie. Excellent stuff. Eldest son quite rightly loved … Continue reading

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Amazon 3G Kindle first impressions

I finally got my Amazon Kindle today – here are my first impressions. It’s my first electronic book-reader – partly because it’s the first one to come up to snuff, but I also bought it because I was intrigued with … Continue reading

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