Books
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Target by Simon Kernick is an easy read. It’s a fast-paced thriller and is fairly typical of the genre. There were a few noteworthy things about it. Firstly, loads of people died. I know it was a thriller about a psychotic hitman, but still. It did feel like there was a bit of red-shirt syndrome…
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Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh is a delight. It follows the activities of the ‘it’ crowd in the late nineteen-twenties. They are the sons and daughters of the rich and famous. It’s funny and in places it’s tragic. In contrast to The Left Hand of Darkness, the writing was quite terse and restrained, but it…
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I put The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin up for my book club to read. There was a point before I’d read it where I was getting worried that it would be really hard going, because two people had given up on it only a few pages in. But I have two…
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Priestess of the White by Trudi Canavan is not a small book. It’s the first part of a trilogy and is a massive 650 pages. The first hundred or so of these pages made me feel that finishing it would be a chore. It didn’t turn out to be, but I can’t say it turned…
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Eleven Hours by Paullina Simons was my second pull from the book drop at the office. There was no non-fiction interlude between this and City of Beasts as I wasn’t organised enough. The book drop doesn’t contain vast amounts of books that I would jump at reading, so I just went for something lightweight and…
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I haven’t read Harry Potter. Sometimes it seems like I’m the only adult in the world that hasn’t and the reason is that I’m not a child and therefore I don’t read children’s literature. Plus, I have an uncontrollable contrarian streak that prevents me from partaking in mass cultural crazes, which is why I don’t…
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It’s been a while, but mainly because I’ve been writing a short story, so no apologies. Since I’ve been away I’ve cracked through lots of books and thus here comes a huge post. Following on from the epic Martin Chuzzlewit I finished off Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness by Richard H. Thaler…
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I feel so virtuous. Like my mind has been on a marathon session at the brain gym! Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens. I’m a bit ambiguous about Dickens. I had to read Great Expectations at school and I hated it. On the other hand, A Tale of Two Cities is one of my favourite books.…
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I joined a book club at work. This month we’re reading Graham Greene’s Travels with my Aunt and A Gun for Sale. I read Travels with my Aunt ages ago and loved it. Graham Greene is one of my favourite authors. A Gun for Sale was new to me and the first thing that struck…
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Ah, comic fantasy. There’s plenty of it out there, even if some people insist that Terry Pratchett is the only author in the genre. Humour is a very personal thing and my sense of humour is quite idiosyncratic, so I generally don’t read too much of it. I picked up Triumff: Her Majesty’s Hero by…
Boudica Marginalia 