Books
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I picked up Scream for Me by Karen Rose from the book drop at work. I was in the mood for something lightweight and thrilling. Following the death of his brother, Detective Vartanian finds a collection of photographs that indicate that, when much younger, his brother participated in the gang-rape of several young women. When…
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June Book Club was a double bill: A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway and The Paris Wife by Paula McLain. A Moveable Feast is a collection of vignettes recalling the years in the 1920s Hemingway spent living in Paris. Each of the people he knew there, Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ford Maddox Ford, James…
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I don’t think I would have read God is not Great by Christopher Hitchens if it hadn’t been in the 99p kindle sale at Christmas. Maybe that was someone’s idea of irony. The premise is that not only is there no god, or any other creative consciousness, but also that organized religion is mad, bad…
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The Quest by Wilbur Smith is apparently the fourth book in a series (that once again I haven’t read the rest of), but I didn’t know that until I read the jacket blurb to write this post. According to the blurb, Egypt is beset by plagues and the Pharaoh has summoned a warlock to save…
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Reading War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy was my main reading goal for this year. I spend a couple of hours a day on a train and I like to use that time constructively. Some books need a bit of time and effort, and commuting makes it easy to do that. War and Peace has…
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I don’t often read YA fiction because of all the adult fiction I haven’t read yet. Last year I accidentally read some and wasn’t sure how to judge it. I couldn’t decide whether it was rubbish because it wasn’t well written or it was rubbish because my expectations were inappropriate for YA fiction. I didn’t…
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This charming little book was a gift and is not something I would have picked up for myself. Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops by Jen Campbell is a collection of funny things customers have said to salespeople in Ripping Yarns, the Edinburgh Bookshop and others. Some of the quotes are hilarious and some are…
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The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz is another re-read for me. I first read it several years ago and decided to read it again when I stumbled across a motivational poster with the Agreements on it. Those agreements are: 1. Be impeccable with your word. Don’t use your words against yourself or others. Don’t…
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Oh hai Jack Reacher. 61 Hours by Lee Child sees Reacher stuck in South Dakota during a snow blizzard of the kind that lasts for days and shuts whole towns down. Coincidentally, it’s a town with a problem that needs the kind of solution Reacher can provide. There’s an elderly woman who is a key…
Boudica Marginalia 