The Book Lovers’ Sanctuary

This week is a look back again at 2022 and those authors we met for the first time last year. And isn’t it great to meet new favourite authors year after year. Of course there are the old favourites, the reliable familiar authors who we just know we are going to enjoy, but new authors add some extra spice and variety… and often then become some of our new favourites!… Continue reading Top Ten Tuesday: New-to-Me Authors I Discovered in 2022 →

A book the teems with potential – an academic setting within a gothic museum, an unreliable narrator, intense relationships within the scholars, murder, tarot – and yet it somehow fell a little flat and slow. … Continue reading Book Review: The Cloisters by Katy Hays →

A gripping and fast-moving young adult alternative-reality fantasy novel with really effective world building, a (somewhat precocious) thoroughly engaging protagonist and a well-crafted plot. Comparisons with the Rivers of London series are both inevitable and, in general terms, justified.… Continue reading Book Review: The Library of the Dead, T. L. Huchu →

After looking forward to future releases in 2023 last week, we are looking at bookish goals for the upcoming year – new year resolutions for the bookish.… Continue reading Top Ten Tuesday: Bookish Goals for 2023 →

A truly strange and disturbing novel, simultaneously horrific and hilarious, brutal and humane – a coruscating satire of American racial conflict and politics, embedded in both Trump’s America and the lynching of Emmett Till in the 1955.… Continue reading Book Review: The Trees, Percival Everett →

Overall, 2023 looks like almost all of my favourite authors have new books coming out! A fantastic array of exciting new novels from a parade of wonderful writers! It’s looking like a good year! … Continue reading Top Ten Tuesday: Most Anticipated Books Releasing in the First Half of 2023 →

Another slippery little thriller with everything you would expect from Janice Hallett: an epistolary format using messages, emails, transcripts and, here, extracts from fictionalised accounts of events; vivid characters brought to life through their own (unreliable) voices, a twisty plot. A great, fun read to see the new year in with.… Continue reading Book Review: The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels, Janice Hallett →

An undeniably beautiful and lyrical piece of science fiction poetry but, for me, the beauty of the language and the translation came at the expense of vivid charaterisations; there was an ephemeralness about the characters, a transparency, that was perhaps deliberate – how small we are in the vastness of space and time and Light is, after all, a familiar science-fiction trope – but left me wanting more of the humans.… Continue reading Book Review: Deep Wheel Orcadia, Harry Josephine Giles →

And there we have it: Christmas has come; Christmas has gone again. The new school term looms at work – feeling like it is hot on the heels of the festive period this year – and my daughter and I are sharing last-day-of-the-holiday jitters! We are in the midst of the annual negotiation about when the Christmas Tree should come down: my wife wants her living room back from our rather expansive tree; I want my money’s worth from the rather expensive tree; and twelfth night superstitions… Anyway… this month on TTT is a combination of looking back at 2022, and looking forward to 2023, and this week’s topic is a list of my favourite books from 2022. I have already listed on my lookback on the year post my 5* reads which you can review here… but it does raise the question of whether a book needs to be a 5* read to be one of my favourite reads of the year…… Continue reading Top Ten Tuesday: Favorite Books of 2022 →

And as the year draws in its final breaths, it leaves me only to say fare well and thank you so much for contributing your time, your comments and your thoughts on the blog. I am truly humbled and have a fantastic new year!… Continue reading 2022: A Year in Books →

A gentle science fiction philosophical amble through the foothills of the world of Panga searching for the comfort of the perfect cup of tea in the company of a sentient robot, this novel never feels saccharine whilst looking at the world and its people with hope and faith and warmth.… Continue reading Book Review: Psalm for the Wild Built, Becky Chambers →

Occasionally brilliant, but somehow less satisfying than I would expect from an Ishiguro novel, When We Were Orphans explores familiar themes and characters but feels perhaps shackled by the weight of its own detective fiction baggage.… Continue reading Book Review: When We Were Orphans, Kazuo Ishiguro →

Replete with fascinating characters, Atkinson’s wit and humanity shines as she peels apart the sordid vapidity of the interwar Jazz Age and Bright Young Things – this delight is, by turns, tender, delicate and wonderfully satirical. … Continue reading Book Review: Shrines of Gaiety, Kate Atkinson →

Merry Christmas to you all! I do hope everyone had a lovely Christmas this week, with plenty of time with families, plenty of peace and goodwill, and not too much over indulgence. In the Book Lovers’ home Christmases are quiet and wonderful times…… Continue reading Top Ten Tuesday: Most Recent Additions to My Book Collection →

Anyway, this week’s Top Ten list is, seasonally enough, books I wish Santa would leave for me… which is a little tricky: I do tend to treat myself to books far too often and my wife refuses to buy me any, arguing that I’ll already have read them! Which is true, but somehow misses the point: someone browsing a bookshop and thinking of me is a gift in itself regardless of the book finally bought; and books that I may have electronically or in audiobook format I will still enjoy as a physical copy too!… Continue reading Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Hope Santa Brings This Year →