Books
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Book club time! This month we read One Day by David Nicholls. It’s mainstream fiction of the Nick Hornby type. I don’t really know what to say about this. The writing was amazing. It was so deft, assured and done with such a light touch that I was left feeling very disappointed that this talent…
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So, I’m making my way through the Fantasy Masterworks series – this is going to take some time, bear with me – and lately I read The Broken Sword by the prolific Poul Anderson. It’s number 32 of 50; obviously I’m not doing this in order. For the record I’ve already read numbers 13, 17,…
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The Book People come to where I work and sometimes you can gets lots of books for little money. The last time they had eight Sookie Stackhouse novels for a tenner. Even taking off the two I’ve already bought, it was still a bargain, so here I am, reading more pulp fiction. Club Dead by…
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Confessor is the last of a long cycle by Terry Goodkind. Once again, I haven’t read the others; it’s just something I found on my shelf. I enjoyed the writing. There was extensive philosophical dialogue that was nicely handled. It made me realised that my characters tend to talk in short, clipped bursts, trading swifts…
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As I’m working my way through my enormous pile of unread books, which is not getting any smaller as I keep adding to it, not that I have some sort of addiction to buying books, I’m reading books that are in a series where I haven’t read the first one. The first of these is…
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Back to the classics. Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy is probably one of the most famous stories of english literature. The story follows the eponymous heroine as she is coming of age. She is seduced and ruined by one man, rejected by another when she discloses her shame and then further manipulated by…
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I bought The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson on the strength of the marketing, the fact that I saw everyone reading it and loads of people said it was good. Normally, I ignore that sort of mass trend but something about this book made me buy it despite its popularity. It was…
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As it’s been a while since I was posting regularly, I’ve gotten a bit out of order with the books I’ve read and for several reasons it’s been a non-fiction heavy month. Other books read in April include: The Reason of Things by A. C. Grayling. This is a collection of philosophical essays about values…
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I was going to leave Living Dead in Dallas by Charlaine Harris, the second Sookie Stackhouse novel, until True Blood Season 2 was on but I forgot until I was actually reading it. No matter, from what I’ve read about season 2 I think True Blood is going in a different direction. Which is good…
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April’s Book Club book was Brooklyn by Colm Toibin. It wasn’t my cup of tea. I was bored reading it and it felt like a chore. But that wasn’t because of the skill or talent on display, both of which were impressive. It was more about the subject matter. The novel is about a young…
Boudica Marginalia 